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myself to sleep to forget until I met you, and we began a whole new round of
killing."
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"Killing?"Magiere shook her head. "We've never killed anything together
besides undeads."
Leesil took in her puzzled expression and hated himself even more. But as
long as it was allcoming out, she might as well face the whole past.
"The peasants?" he asked. "You're thinking too simply again. How many
peasants starved because we took their seed coin? Or died in the stocks from
exposure, or were worked to death in indentured service because they couldn't
pay their taxes?"
Her head hung low. "Now at least we try to make up for those years. But what
we did wasn't the same as being paid to take a life."
"You can never make up for it," he argued. "It doesn't work that way."
There was no bitterness in his voice, for this was simply how things were.
"Now we save people," he continued. "We do what we can to help. It's a better
life, for the most part, than the ones I've lived before."
Magiere sat there for a long time. Leesil kept quiet as well, waiting.
"It wasn't your life," she whispered."Just the one forced on you by birth."
As Leesil watched, her gaze became empty and hollow. Her words came from
somewhere other than this moment. She shook herself, clenching her eyes
briefly as she did.
"Your mother married a human," she said. "Do you know how strange that
sounds? Elves keep to themselves for the most part, and I've never even heard
of one working for a human lord. Not as an assassin, let alone a slave."
"My parents never talked about that, though a few times I tried to ask. I
don't know much beyond what I've told you."
"So they're still there and& " she stopped and then spit out the
words "killing for Darmouth. Why didn't they leave as well? They no longer
needed to protect you. Or is there something else they stayed for?"
"Magiere& " he began, and then dropped his head, frustrated.
She'd never fully understand the world he'd come from. He kept his words
quiet and detached.
"Slaves, remember?And always under a watchful eye hostages. That was the
chain Darmouth used to bind my family. You don't think about what you do. You
just do it, and stay alive, and keep those who depend on you alive. But I
couldn't kill anymore, and I ran."
This time he was the one to turn away, sitting on the bedside with his head
down and eyes closed. For all the lives he'd taken, the last two were the ones
he locked away so carefully they'd not even entered his nightmares.
"You did the right thing," Magiere offered.
"The right thing?"Leesil spit without looking at her. "They're dead, Magiere!
My parents& I ran. And so now they're dead."
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That was the end of it. He'd never spoken this to anyone, yet he'd told the
one person who should have never known.
Where would he go, now that this life with Magiere was at an end?
He sat with eyes closed, not wanting to see her leave. It was better that
when he opened them again, she was simply gone.
The sound of tapping metal reached his ears, and he realized she'd picked up
her sword. He listened to her footsteps around the bed as she headed for the
door. There came another soft tap of metal on wood, closer.
Fingers slid lightly up his cheeks to comb through his hair until palms
settled upon his temples.
Opening his eyes with his head still down, Leesil saw the tin basin resting
on the floor at Magiere's feet between her crouched legs. He heard her breath
close to his face as her forehead touched his.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you for telling me."
With his wrist bandaged tightly, Chane stepped from a coach into one of the
poorer areas of the outer ring. He preferred not to be announced by the
clatter of a coach rolling through a district where no one could afford such
luxuries. Paying the driver, he walked down the street toward what Domin
Tilswith and Wynn referred to as Hovel Row.
Only a short while ago, he'd left the house to find sustenance for the
wounded Sapphire. She had related small parts of what happened to her, how a
half-elf had outmaneuvered her through sheer speed and ability, and a
white-skinned woman had shown more strength than was possible for a mortal.
Toret's face had nearly glowed with anxiety.
More questions formed in Chane's mind as Toret ordered him out into the night
on this errand of mercy. These two old enemies of Toret's might indeed be the
key to Chane's freedom. He decided a brief detour was in order, but he must
hurry. If he was gone too long, Toret would not only be infuriated over
Sapphire's prolonged suffering but might become suspicious. Still, with
Toret's recent erratic behavior, there was no telling when he would have
another opportunity.
The hour was late, and Hovel Row had been aptly named.
Street gutters smelling of rot and decay, the shabby dwellings pushed against
one another. There came an infant's cry of hunger and a man shouting
obscenities. A woman's answering shout turned to defeated weeping.
Chane sped on toward his destination.
Wynn had told him of an elf living in the secluded squalor of Hovel Row.
Strangely, she had interacted with elves in her homeland and spoke their
language fluently. She had heard of one here in Bela, somehow, and was eager
to meet the elves of this continent. But upon her visit, she'd met with quiet
hostility and hadn't gotten past the front door.
Chane was not aware therewere elves anywhere other than the far northeast,
past the Warlands over the Venjetzf Rozpatje theCrownRange . He'd heard
through his father's friends of how the elves were reclusive to the point of
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paranoia. Now he had questions concerning them, or at least pertaining to one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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