Wolf's-own: Ghost
Author: Carole Cummings
Date: 2012-02-16 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; M M Romance; Romance; Magic; Paranormal; Lgbt; M M Fantasy; Gay; Adult; Mythology; Action
Description: 2nd Edition Wolf’s-own: Book One Untouchable. Ghost. Assassin. Mad. Fen Jacin-rei is all these and none. His mind is host to the spirits of long-dead magicians, and Fen's fate should be one of madness and ignoble death. So how is it Fen lives, carrying out shadowy vengeance for his subjugated people and protecting the family he loves? Kamen Malick means to find out. When Malick and his own small band of assassins ambush Fen in an alley, Malick offers Fen a choice: Join us or die. Determined to decode the intrigue that surrounds Fen, Malick sets to unraveling the mysteries of Fen's past. As Fen
Publisher: DSP Publications

Copyright

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

382 NE 191st Street #88329

Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Wolf’s-own: Ghost

Copyright © 2012 by Carole Cummings

Cover Art by Anne Cain annecain.art@gmail.com Cover Design by Mara McKennen

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

ISBN: 978-1-61372-371-5

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

February 2012

eBook edition available
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-372-2

Acknowledgments

Not enough (because there will never be enough) thanks to Jenni, who loves me enough to beat me over the head with a tree until I see the forest. To Linda, who lets me borrow the brain, even though I always return it folded, spindled, and mutilated. To my LJ Enablers—Caroline, Connie, Donna, Julia, Marinella, and Marlene—who alternately wave pom poms and shake sticks at me, depending on what I need at the time.

To my husband, Eric, who continues to love my weirdness and continues to be proud of me. To the rest of my family—Jenna, Rachel, Eric Jr., Olivia, Aidan, Ellie, and Ethan—for existing and acquiescing to coexist with all the people in my head. And to my mom, my dad, my stepdad, and all my sisters and brothers, who apparently always knew I could, even when I didn’t.

Finally, to The Readers. Because “putting it out there” is not an easy thing, but you make it worth the angst.

Glossary

Ada

Once Jejin, the land ruled by the Jin, until they were conquered by the Adan.

Adan

The people of Ada. They shared a close relationship with the Jin until the Binding War, when the Jin used their magic against the Adan and so severed the kinship. Decades later, the Adan overrode the Jin and began stamping out those of the Jin who had magic.

The Ancestors

Descendants of Temshiel and mortals. They were once the guiding Voices of the Untouchables, who spoke for the Ancestors and advised the Jin, until the violence of the Binding War sent the Ancestors mad, and thus the Untouchables.

Banpair

Magical beings who were once maijin but who have angered their god in some way and been banished. They maintain their magic but can no longer draw strength from their god and so must draw it from the emotions of the mortals around them.

Beishin

A term of respect for one’s teacher or master.

Catalyst

An alternate title for Untouchable. Their purpose is to serve as a channel and Voice for the Ancestors, and to influence individuals and events per the Ancestors’ wishes.

Change

A term used by the Jin to describe the point at which a child with magic begins to manifest his/her powers.

Doujou

Ada’s guard unit, like a police force.

Doujoun

A guard of the Doujou.

Eremite

Hermit

Ghost

A derogatory term used to describe an Untouchable.

Gods

Bear, Dragon, Owl, Raven, Snake, Wolf. Each god is represented by his/her namesake moon and reaches his/her apogee of strength when his/her moon is in its primary Cycle.

Heldesan

A country to the north of Ada.

Incendiary

The paradigm upon which the Untouchables were molded. Nonmagical beings and servants of Fate whose job it was to influence world events to Fate’s desires. They were deemed too dangerous generations ago and stamped out by the gods.

Jejin

The land once ruled by the Jin until they were conquered by the Adan. The Adan annexed Jejin and made it a part of Ada.

Jin

A magical people of the land once known as Jejin before the Adan overran it and took the Jin prisoner. Jejin is now known as Ada. The Jin are descendants of the Ancestors, who were themselves descendants of Temshiel.

Ken-ken

A particularly vicious dog, known for its “happy puppy” appearance and used for guard dog purposes.

Kente

A country to the south of Ada.

Kiwa Shuua

Tsunami; tidal wave

Maijin

“Children” of the gods, but more involved with mortal concerns. Maijin are magical beings whose purpose is to interpret the laws of their gods in the mortal world and carry out the gods’ orders. Meant to balance out the Temshiel and represent mortals, where Temshiel represent the gods. Each maijin is sworn to only one of the six gods but must obey the laws of all of them.

Misin

An honorific used to address a woman, as in “ma’am” or “madam.”

-onna

An honorific added to the end of a woman’s name.

Rei

A word that means “ghost” in the Jin’s language.

-seyh

An honorific added to the end of a man’s name, used as an address, like “Sir.”

Temshiel

“Children” of the gods. Some Temshiel were once mortal and some were created whole by the gods. Temshiel are magical beings whose purpose is to interpret the laws of their gods in the mortal world and carry out the gods’

orders. Meant to balance out the maijin and represent the gods, where maijin represent mortals. Each Temshiel is sworn to only one of the six gods but must obey the laws of all of them.

Thecia

A country to the south of Ada.

Untouchable

An individual of Jin descent who hears the Voices of the Ancestors. Known also as Catalysts, their purpose is to serve as a channel and Voice for the Ancestors, and influence individuals and events per the Ancestors’ wishes.

Ghost

Harvest-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf IT WAS, Malick decided, the braid. Snaking between the blades of shoulders set just wide enough and sweeping down the pleasing taper of the torso. Thick and gleaming chestnut-claret in the dim half light of smoking oil lamps, long and thick and… far too fascinating. The leather-bound tail of it swung long enough to brush the backs of the man’s knees when he moved. Malick had never seen one so long. Those who wore them, after all, generally didn’t live long enough to grow them to such a length. This one must be close to twenty—still young by Malick’s definition, but ancient for what he was.

A messy, tangled fringe every now and then fell over the man’s brow, obscuring his eyes, and he let it, didn’t even bother to push it away. Like it had simply got in his way once, so he’d sheared it off with a dull blade, too impatient, or just not caring enough to make a neat job of it.

Pretty, though, with that not-quite-olive skin and angular face, sharp nose and chin, and high cheekbones. Too masculine to be delicate, but too cagey and set with subliminal rage to be as invulnerable as he was trying to look, even when he tried to make his mien pleasant for the whores who were disposed to ignoring the braid in favor of offered koin.

“Heart’s in his eyes, this one,” Malick murmured with a smile. That’s why he hides behind that fringe.

“What’s that, love?”

Malick spared a short glance toward the chippy on his knee as she slipped her small, warm fingers through the hair at his nape. Smiling languidly, she took a delicate sip of gooseberry wine, batting her poppy-soft, kohl-lined eyes over the rim of her cup. Damn, and he’d already paid for her too.

Shrugging, Malick returned her smile with sincere regret. “Nothing, um….” He paused. What was her name again? Some kind of fruit or flower—

Cherry? Blossom? Cherry-blossom? Didn’t matter. “Sorry, love, but we’ll

have to continue another time. Something more important just came up.”

Ignoring the flare of indignation in the sudden blush to her cheek, Malick shifted his legs just enough to compel her to gain her feet. Her soft eyes hardened. Malick forestalled what was sure to be some scathing commentary with a charming grin before he drained his cup. “Keep your fee, my dear,” he told the girl as he chucked his cards facedown on the table with a nod to the other players, and stood. “Your company alone this evening has been worth every koin.” He collected his small pile of winnings, dropping an extra bit of silver into the kitty and then another for the dealer. With a flourish that was entirely unnecessary but pleasingly theatrical—at least to him—Malick swept gentle fingers through the raven curls at the girl’s temple, behind her ear, and came up with another bit of silver; he held it between his fingers in front of her nose. “Next time, eh?”

He waited only long enough for her to snatch the koin before he sauntered away, eyes already narrowed through the gloom, fixed on his target. His heart was thumping a little more quickly than it should do, and his mouth was watering just a little. It was definitely the braid. Well, the braid was a good part of it, anyway. The face and build certainly didn’t hurt. And with that heart-hungry look in his eyes, the man was a walking wet dream come to glorious life.

Untouchable or no, Malick couldn’t help wondering what all that thick hair would look like unbound and spread across fine linen sheets. A tiny smile curled at one corner of his mouth, and he shook his head. It didn’t count as slavering if it didn’t actually dribble out, right?

A jostle to his ribs brought Malick back a little, and he suppressed a growl. Game Night at the Girou had brought the crowds, as usual. The smell of sweat and tobacco curled in his nostrils, the thick brume of poppy smoke enough by itself to turn him stupid, if he stayed too long. Good for business, Umeia would tell him. Kept the riffraff in line and the spenders spending. It also had the pleasant side effect of keeping Umeia in a good mood, though Malick sometimes suspected she was otherwise immune to the stuff; all the better.

No Doujou in the motley mix, though; Malick had paid quite a lot to make sure none of the city’s guard could interfere tonight. And still, most gave the Untouchable his own bubble of space. Only looking quickly enough to track his place in the room, his proximity to them, then glancing away.

Speaking only when he spoke to them, and that was limited to the small clutch of prostitutes that didn’t mind taking their chances.

He’d weeded out the chattel, Malick noted, sent them on their way to those less scrupulous, and ignored entirely those that even looked like they

Ghost
might be underage, though Umeia at least required the formality of fake papers when she hired… or acquired. Malick kept watching as the Untouchable crossed the room, ridiculously interested in which doxy he’d choose.

Blank-faced, the Ghost skulked about the edges of whores and customers and players and drinkers, not even bothering to try to look like he belonged—
and what would be the point? The braid marked him Untouchable more clearly than a missing hand would mark a thief.

Malick angled himself through scattered tables and bodies, and toward the low couches and mounds of cushions at the back of the room, where the shadows shirred more thickly into the corners. Where the views and paths to the doors were clear and unobstructed, if one didn’t mind the gyrating lumps of those who didn’t bother to take themselves to a place more private, or didn’t have the koin. Where a man could put his back to the wall and watch his quarry without risk of discovery too soon.

Unsurprisingly, Samin had already beaten him there and cleared them a spot. From the nasty looks he was getting and the dishabille of cushions and bodies scattered to either side of him, it appeared as though he’d not been terribly polite about it, either. Blue eyes, sharp and avid in a wide, granite face, focused on Malick as he approached. Malick gave Samin a slight nod as he joined him, leaning hip-shot against the wall, close enough to talk without being overheard, but far enough that they could always say they weren’t together if one got caught and the other got away. Not that they needed to worry about that here. It was just habit.

“It’s him,” Samin muttered in what was surely meant to be a whisper, but emerged more as a gruff growl.

Malick flicked him a look replete with No shit, genius. “Ya think?” How many Untouchables, after all, ventured into a place like this? How many of them lived long enough to be of age to enter? Not that “of age” really mattered, when it came to the laws of Untouchables.

Samin ignored Malick, merely narrowed his eyes at the man, tilting his head like a curious pup. “He doesn’t look mental.”

Malick’s eyebrows rose as he shot a look at Samin and then back at the Ghost. With the want clenching in Malick’s gut—well, more precisely, in his trousers—“mental” was rather beside the point, but Samin was right. Calm and calculating, not wild and desperate as the few Untouchables Malick had seen had been. And fit, too, where the others had been thin and fragile, rickety with ill health, and too pale. This one’s color was full and hearty, his eyes alive with intelligence. He was obviously well fed, and all that hair plaited

down his back looked thick and lustrous. Even as they watched, the braid swung heavily over the man’s shoulder as he dipped down a bit to sweep a quick, surreptitious touch to his right boot and then his left forearm. To anyone else, it might look like the man was scratching an itch.

“Knives,” Malick said quietly.

Samin’s head tilted farther. “Shouldn’t be allowed,” he muttered, disapproving, and when he noted the lift of Malick’s eyebrow, he shook his head. “They’re dangerous enough as it is. An Untouchable oughtn’t be allowed a weapon any more than a child.”

“You don’t think they should be allowed to defend themselves?” Malick posed the question with real interest. If anyone had an informed opinion on the matter, it would be Samin.

Samin’s mouth set in a grim line. “Defend themselves against what?” he wanted to know. “They’re called ‘Untouchable’ for a reason. No one—Jin or Adan—would dare lay hands on a Ghost, though they’ve not been true Catalysts for… too bloody long.” A weird mix of sympathy and disgust twisted his hard face. “I’ve seen enough of them, starved and raving. Their own kin won’t touch them, not even to help.”

Malick peered at Samin closely. “Would you ever interfere?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“You’re a funny man, Samin.”

“I’m a practical man, Mal.”

Malick politely refrained from giving Samin a sharp thwack to his big, giant head. “You know what I mean. A typical Untouchable.” Because the Untouchable quietly choosing himself a whore across the room was certainly not typical. In any way.

A long sigh huffed out of Samin’s chest, and he shot a careful glance to all sides, then leaned in closer to Malick. “The laws are there for a reason.”

The narrow blue gaze followed the Ghost, watched him pause to speak to one of the boys, before Samin turned his head to look at Malick squarely. “But the laws are still locked in fear. The Ancestors have been sending their Untouchables insane for too long, and something needs to be done. If I ever came across some poor, mad soul who couldn’t keep enough sense in his head to know he was hungry, or even remember how to eat… if I was alone and unobserved, yeah, I’d interfere.”

Ghost

Interesting. But not surprising, coming from Samin. Malick merely nodded. “I suppose the real worry is the ones who’ve gone completely off the jump, and decide they need to take a few others with them.”

He’d seen it once, when he’d had a commission in one of the camps: a young girl, perhaps thirteen or so, with that telltale braid, wild-eyed and snarling insanity, stoning a middle-aged woman who’d done nothing but stand there and scream, taking it. A crowd of onlookers merely stood watching, eyes full of horror and sorrow, but Malick hadn’t been able to tell for whom either was meant. And when a man Malick guessed was the woman’s husband attempted halfheartedly to lay hands on the girl, pull his wife away, the crowd stepped in and beat the man. Malick didn’t know if it was to death—he hadn't waited about to find out.

A far cry from what the Untouchables used to be. Catalysts once, now this man’s kind were merely Ghosts, haunted by the laws once meant to set them apart, almost revere them, but now only dragged out an inevitably ugly end.

Touching an Untouchable—for good or ill—with the intent to alter his course, was death. No excuses, no explanations, no quarter. One of the few laws the Jin were allowed to keep when they were overridden and conquered by Ada. Even the Adan held to it, though it had never really been tested, and Malick would be very surprised if an Adan were ever put to death for the sake of a Jin. At any rate, no Untouchable he’d heard of had ventured into the city for a very long time, let alone a whorehouse, and that after the Gates had already closed for the night. Not typical, indeed.

Malick wondered idly if this anomaly of a Ghost planned to stay the night in one of Umeia’s rooms, and then wondered—a little less idly—if he’d be able to talk her into telling him which one. Though, Malick supposed, if things worked out, this pretty Untouchable might even tell Malick himself. Or come with Malick to his own. His fingers twitched a bit with the urge to wrap themselves around that thick, soft-looking braid.

“So, if he pulls one of them knives on me,” Samin ventured slowly, “I’m not supposed to be allowed to turn it back on him.”

It wasn’t a question; Samin probably knew the laws regarding Untouchables as well as Malick did. It was a request for permission, a desire for the reassurance that Malick didn’t expect him to bare his throat if the Ghost came at him.

Malick shrugged. “Not supposed to.” A quick shift of his glance sideways, and he smirked. “But if no one’s about to see a thing, does it really happen?”

Samin heaved a loose snort. “Can’t make shit like this up,” he muttered sourly.

“Ah, you could—but who would want to?”

They were quiet for a moment, watching the Ghost watching the crowd and trying to look like he wasn’t, searching. “He’s pretty, though,” Samin finally put in, thoughtful.

“That’s why we’re going to take him in the bath,” Malick told him with a grin.

Samin grimaced. “Save me, Mal, is your mind always on—?”

“No, sometimes it’s on food and liquor,” Malick cut in, “but right now I was thinking more along the lines of not having to deal with those knives. The potential view is merely a bonus.”

“You can't use magic. It doesn't work on them.”

Malick waggled his eyebrows. “That's what makes it fun.”

“That's what makes it stupid and riskier than it needs to be,” Samin corrected, “and you a bloody idiot.”

“Aw, stop, I’ll blush.” Malick nodded toward the eastern door that led to the baths, where the Ghost was being escorted by his chosen whore. “Look, he’s picked one.” A dark-haired boy— boy, Malick’s nethers pointed out gleefully—with fair skin and a pleasant blankness to his expression that spoke to a willingness for just about anything that involved the proper amount of koin. The choice wasn’t terribly surprising; Madi was a ready favorite of many whose purses likely weighed heavier than this Untouchable’s. Too bad for said Untouchable that he wasn’t going to get the chance to find out why.

“Go tell Umeia we need twenty minutes.”

“You go tell Umeia,” Samin snapped. “Last time we brought our business here she threatened to castrate me. Me—like it isn’t you as gives the orders.”

“I only relay them, friend, I don’t give them.” That responsibility Malick happily laid squarely on the shoulders of the phantom he knew only as the Mage. And he had no interest whatsoever in learning any more than the scant bits he already knew. “Go on, then,” he told Samin, hardening his tone somewhat, “before he slips through. We’ll never hear the end of it if Shig and Yori get him.” He didn’t wait for Samin to stop sputtering. With a cocky wink, Malick slid away from the wall, merging unnoticed into the anonymity of the patronage like sinewy smoke. Hard angles and lanky limbs glided into unobtrusive grace as he slunk to the other end of the floor and down the lamp-lit stone stairway to the baths.

Ghost

The Ghost was already availing himself of one of the shower-boxes, rinsing off with a couple of buckets behind a screen of woven rushes. Naked, Malick’s nethers put in helpfully; he ignored them, though he couldn’t help wondering if all that hair was unbound, and what it would look like wet and stuck to sinewy arms and rippled torso. Just how long would it be, untethered from that braid that swung down about the man’s knees?—down to his calves, at least, surely. Ankles, maybe? Yum. All sorts of delightful possibilities swept through the little brain, and Malick forced the big brain to put them reluctantly but firmly aside. Business first. Though he did manage a bit of a leer when Madi slipped silently past him and back out the door with a conspiratory wink.

The coals in the corner hob glowed red and hot, the scented pot of water hanging above burbling quietly into the already steamy air. The metallic sting of minerals hung in the close cavern, weighted heavily with sulfur. Malick sucked a long breath through his nose, clearing his senses of the less organic residue of the Girou. Granite tiles wound about the rough rim of the great steaming pool, kept naturally hot by springs flowing beneath half the city.

Malick checked the shadows creased into the rough-hewn stone of the walls, the steady drip-drip-drip of condensation rhythmic beneath the sporadic splashing coming from the lone occupied shower-box. Empty, every corner.

Surprising, considering the traffic this evening. No one else lurked, not that Malick could see.

The black, high-collared tunic the man had been wearing, along with boots and belts and black trousers, were all lying safely out of reach on the stone bench meant for disrobing. Malick almost tsked at the carelessness, thought about searching the bundle—just out of idle curiosity, to see how many knives the Ghost carried, and what sorts he favored—but decided to err on caution’s side, for once. Samin would be so proud.

Making his way silently into the room, Malick checked the other boxes, as well, just to be sure, saw they were all empty, and smiled. Umeia must have been several steps ahead of him, as usual, and cleared everyone out when she spied their quarry. With the exception of Samin, likely now keeping watch outside the door, no one would stumble in and interrupt.

Everything was going perfectly so far, exactly according to plan, so Malick was a little surprised when the man’s soft voice—deeper than Malick had supposed, and laced tight with control—came like the point of a knife from the other side of that flimsy screen:

“Why are you watching me?”

Good thing Malick lived for the unexpected. Damn, he’d been so careful to appear as though he hadn’t been watching at all. His eyebrows only rose a little as he paused, propped his shoulder to the uneven stone of the wall, and casually crossed one leg over the other, draping his lanky self artistically, and adding a brash grin. For good measure—and better effect—he brushed the long skirt of his duster back to expose the small knife at his belt, propped elbow to hipbone and made a show of inspecting his fingernails. A damned tempting picture he made, if he did say so.

“Well, good evening to you too,” he drawled.

The screen jittered then rattled aside halfway. The man stood inside the box, using the screen as flimsy half cover, clad in nothing but a bathsheet and attitude, a hard glare scraping from amber-shot gray eyes ringed in indigo, and spiking through the mist of the bath straight into Malick’s chest. Fuck, the man was gorgeous. The hair was still disappointingly bound, but the wild fringe had come loose again to hang frayed and dripping over the eyes; Malick was surprised the fierce, furious stare didn’t singe the ends. Lamp-tawny droplets of water slipped over hard, masculine lines, lean and long.

Abrasions, bruises, and scars—apparent evidence of close wet-work—mottled unevenly but for a heavy swath of thin, silvery stripes on the left bicep, neat and straight, as though they’d been put there apurpose. His chest was hairless, Malick noted with a slight inner-trill, shaped by hard work and padded with mouth-watering rises and ripples as he breathed; the ridges of a tight abdomen stood out in sublime relief, sliding down to those enticing dual grooves beneath the barrier of the sheet where torso became groin.

Malick let his eyes rove unfettered, taking in every line and swell, lingering too long for manners on the way the sheet bunched in a white-knuckled fist between the man’s groin and the tantalizing wing of his left hip.

Gaze skidding upward, Malick took careful note that he couldn’t see the right hand behind the flimsy shield of the screen, and by the way the pectoral on that side quivered tense, the Ghost likely had something very unfriendly clutched in his fist. Malick was ridiculously pleased that the carelessness at which he’d earlier curled his lip was a figment of his own assumptions, and warned himself not to indulge them again. He would likely not live to regret underestimating this Untouchable.

“Why are you watching me?” Bitten out through teeth clenched tight.

Such pretty white little teeth, straight and even. Malick wondered if they’d draw blood when they snapped… wondered if he’d like it. Of course, if those full lips were to follow along, soothe the hurt….

Oh, fuck me. I really think I want this one.

Ghost

“And why wouldn’t I be?” was all Malick said.

“What do you want?”

Malick nearly snorted. What did he want? What a loaded question. He only let an eyebrow rise, let his smirk curl seductively. “Don’t ask questions to which you don’t want an answer, little Ghost.”

There was no flinch or other telltale—the man was too controlled for that—but his eyes darkened, deepened, and his nostrils flared the tiniest bit.

“If you know what I am,” he said slowly, “then you know what the penalty is for interfering.”

His accent was… odd. Malick had a very good ear for them, but he couldn’t place this one, and it certainly didn’t have the twangy Jin sound to it, like he’d expected. More like it was from everywhere and nowhere at once, no distinct characteristic to classify it, and yet hints of every one Malick had ever heard. Very strange.

Malick noted it but merely shrugged. “Funny, a friend and I were just discussing that. Seems the consensus is that a thing can’t actually be said to have happened, if no one was there to see it.”

The man’s eyes flickered over to the door with the mention of “a friend,”

and Malick’s smirk broadened. Not only pretty but clever, too, and if there was any madness behind that glare, it was the kind that was born of rage and… betrayal, most likely, because didn’t it usually come down to that?

Rage and betrayal—a lethal combination, the best combination with the highest potential. It didn’t generally take much to harness those emotions, point them, use them. The Mage was right again, but then, he always was.

“Here we are, all alone.” Malick pushed himself away from the wall, meandered lazily about the granite-tiled edges of the pool, boots clocking softly on wet stone, eyes locked to the Ghost’s. “No one to disturb us. No one to interrupt.”

Muscles beneath smooth, bare skin tightened and jumped ever so slightly as Malick neared—he never would’ve seen it, had he not been looking for it; fuck, but the man was good, all calm restraint—so Malick kept a loose perimeter, lingering at the periphery of the man’s personal space like a prowling tom. Deliberately seductive, eyes half-lidded, Malick leaned lightly into the screen, all too aware that the sharp point of a knife was no doubt just on the other side, aimed directly at his gut. No, his heart—this one would go for the sure, immediate kill.

Malick smiled, ran his fingers through his hair. With studied carelessness, he let his hand come to rest lightly over the short dirk on his belt. He flicked

his wrist in his sleeve a little out of habit to feel the garrote coiled about his forearm. Gaze still geared toward seduction, Malick peered into dark-rimmed gray, shot through with shards of gilt-amber, glaring back at him with a flat look of profound hatred and a disappointing lack of awe for his enticing self.

Perhaps he should’ve unlaced his shirt a bit.

“You,” Malick murmured through his smile, “have been a very naughty boy.”

A reaction, at least a small one, and one besides that impassive mask of abhorrence: the glittering eyes narrowed just slightly. “Step away,” the man hissed, low and full of venomous intent.

Not What are you talking about? not a question at all, in fact. The man merely stood his ground, glaring death at Malick. Cornered, bare but for a single bathsheet and whatever weapon he had in his hand behind that screen, and still his breath came steady and even. There was no trembling but for the ready tension thick between them, and those gray eyes betrayed nothing but loathing and disdain.

Fuck, I don’t even think I care if he guts me—I’ve got to have this one.

It was the braid, had to be, the novelty of it or… something. Or all that not-quite-olive skin and the solid curves of muscle beneath it. Surely it couldn’t be the glare, the dark look of profound menace that too closely resembled the part of a map that warned, Here be monsters.

Malick sighed theatrically and shook his head with overdone regret.

“Even if I wanted to, I’m afraid I can’t.” He let the smile crimp and shrugged.

“Orders.”

That got a further narrowing of the eyes. Reluctant interest.

“Mm,” Malick answered to the question in the man’s eyes, if not on his tongue, “I’m afraid you’ve gone and called attention to yourself, little Ghost.”

Daring, Malick reached out slowly, swiped a fingertip down the damp, smooth lumps of the plait hanging over a thew-molded shoulder. Malick wasn’t sure if the tiny hiss of breath was a reaction to the name or the liberty.

“Don’t worry, I haven’t come to kill you—”

A deliberate snort, a very clear as if you could, so Malick simply ignored it.

“—nor have I come to blackmail you, or any of the ten thousand other possibilities that are likely blooming in your twisted little mind this second.”

Malick paused, gaze flicking up through his lashes, let his fingers slip around the braid, and stepped a bit closer. “Although, I could be talked into a quick go against the wall if you’re—”

Ghost

He’d been wrong. The knife hadn’t been behind the screen in the man’s right hand, it had been twisted into the bathsheet in his left. Now its tip rested just below Malick’s chin, and he couldn’t even care, because the grip on the sheet had been forsaken for the advantage and now lay puddled about the man’s ankles.

Malick didn’t even reach for his own knife, didn’t slip his fingers through the loop of the garrote, didn’t try to step back or attack. He merely stared, raked his gaze up and down, groaned a little, and tightened his grip on the braid. Fizzy little bubbles went pop-pop-pop in his brain when his gaze instinctively hitched and hung between the man’s legs— gah, yum—before he forced it on. “Mm,” was all he said.

The same sort of scars as on the arm striped the man’s right thigh—thin and tight, most of them silvered, but a few still pink and new-ish. One wound was still scabbed and not yet scarred over. No suicide attempts, these. Still, they were… odd. Ritualistic, almost. Some Jin tradition Malick didn’t know about? Didn’t seem likely.

“Let go,” the man hissed.

So much control, such intensity beneath it, buried and locked down tight.

“Can’t, sorry.” Malick couldn’t help the sigh, the regret sincere this time.

It was looking less and less likely that the Untouchable was going to let Malick touch. “You assassinated the wrong prefect this time, and you’re—

Ah-ah, watch it.” The knife had jerked just a little, and Malick adjusted his stance to accommodate, though he didn’t draw back. “Don’t kill me just yet, or your exit from here will be a bit more difficult and attract a lot more attention than I’ve no doubt you’d prefer.”

“It’s a little damp in here,” the man said through his teeth. “My fingers are a bit slick, and you never know when my grip might… slip.” He stepped up, chest flush to the screen—well, what do you know, he did have a blade in his right hand, too, now poking just as firmly at Malick’s gut as the other was beneath his chin. “Perhaps it would be best if you got to the point.”

Bad dog. Sit.

Malick had to grin—he couldn’t help it. “I’m rather on the point, don’t you think? Two of them, in fact.” Apparently, the man was not as amused with Malick as Malick was with himself. The tips of both knives pressed harder, one drawing a slight, warm trickle of blood down Malick’s throat and one threatening to slip right through the layers of leather and thin mail under his tunic. Fuck, his trousers were actually getting a bit painful. Umeia always said his brain lived in his pants, and now here was proof. “All right, all right.”

Malick took a small step back but didn’t release his hold on the plait in his

hand. “To put it bluntly, you’ve been recruited. You are no longer an independent agent; you are no longer to be left to your own devices or discretion.”

The impassive mask, if possible, grew even stonier. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t. And so you won’t know exactly what’s happening to you the next time you go after a prefect or a curate or a lord, and we’re there waiting for you.” Gray eyes once again shot quickly to the door and back. Malick sighed again. “Look, what’s your name?” Cold silence and a slow blink were all he got for an answer. Malick rolled his eyes. “If you don’t give me a name to call you, I’m going to have to keep calling you ‘Ghost’, and I know you don’t like it.” Still with the blinking. And the unfortunate continued lack of awe. Malick’s jaw tightened. Definitely should’ve unlaced his shirt. Maybe tousled his hair a bit too. “Fine, Ghost. You’re causing too much trouble, Ghost. You’re making it all too risky for the rest of us, and your kills aren’t even making a difference.”

“Us,” the man repeated blandly. His head tilted a little, tugging on the braid in Malick’s hand. “A difference to whom?”

“Ah, not going to tell you that just yet. We’ve not yet reached the part where I decide whether to let you dress and come outside with me, or just kill you right here and pay the extra koin for the mess.”

Dark eyebrows rose and the gaze went half-lidded. Malick could read the You really think you can? as clearly as though the man had spoken it aloud, instead of merely standing there, no outward reaction but a long, slow blink.

Seriously—no man needed lashes that long and lush.

Malick shrugged, winked, then knocked the blade away from his chin, dodged a quick parry that almost got his throat cut for him, and snagged the dirk from his belt. He pinned the braid to the wooden frame of the screen with the tip of the blade before the man could lunge again. Good thing Malick had stepped back, because there was now a long, clean slice in the rushes of the screen, though the knife that did it had moved so fast he hadn’t even seen it.

Malick grinned, backing off with his hands held palms out. “Unless you’d prefer to prove your superiority in a more pleasant fashion?” he asked with a waggle of eyebrows. “I usually prefer top, but I’ve been known to make an exception now and again.”

The loathing in the man’s glare was almost tangible. And still no awe.

Bloody stone, the man was.

Ghost

Malick shook his head, impatient now. “Look, Ghost, we can have ourselves a little pissing contest in here, where one of us will surely end up very messily dead, or you can come with me and we’ll go somewhere we can talk about it like very much alive grown-ups. The customers will be clamoring for the baths all too soon, and we can’t faff about much longer—what’ll it be?”

Not only that, but Umeia was going to have Malick’s head if he cost her much more money tonight. Those screens were cheap, but Umeia wouldn’t see it that way, and he was already holding up the custom for the baths and so therefore the whores.

“Why should I?” the man wanted to know.

Ah, finally, an intelligent question. “Because you’ve been given a choice, if you can call it that—join us and live to see whatever vengeance it is you’re looking for, or the hunter becomes the hunted. My patron does not share the Adan’s generosity, and believes quite firmly that no one is Untouchable.”

The man’s control was slipping: his jaw tightened, and his eyes took on a very slight shimmer in the soft light. Malick couldn’t help but wonder what he would look like with all of that control puddled about his feet like that forgotten bathsheet.

“What d’you know about any of it?” the man whispered.

Another glimpse, only a tiny one, of what lay beneath all that hatred and iron rule. There was something achingly wrenching about the way the question emerged, though Malick couldn’t have said exactly what—the anger was still there, but the grief that crept out beneath it all nearly blared its misery at him. Malick slouched a bit, softened his stance. The adrenaline kick was wearing off, and even his libido had stopped muttering innuendo at him.

Unapologetic mercenary or no, compassion still existed beneath Malick’s surfaces, inconvenient and annoying though it might be.

“Nothing but what I know about myself,” Malick said kindly. “Except that you’ve been promised that the man you want will one day twitch at the end of your blade—if you join us. If not….” He sighed, stepped back over and retrieved his knife with a last, lingering caress of the shiny plaits of chestnut.

He purposefully turned his eyes to the small knife and watched the lamplight scud over its honed edge and now slightly blunted tip. Handing the Ghost an opportunity to attack, but avidly wary and on watch for it. The man didn’t take the opening. Intrigued, Malick flipped his gaze back up, met ambered gray, and shrugged. “I like you. You’re pretty, even if you are a bit of an ass.”

Malick flashed a grin when the man’s jaw tightened. “I don’t want to kill you.

And I certainly don’t want you to kill me. Do us both a favor—get dressed and come outside.”

The man stared for several long moments, eyes narrowed and intense beneath their obscuring fringe. Malick stared back, kept his own gaze and mien blank, and his hands very still. The urge to smirk was twitching at him, and he fought it down. Those knives were still out and looked very sharp.

“You go first,” the man finally said. “I’ll want privacy to dress. I’ll follow.”

Malick’s eyebrows rose, and his gaze dipped inexorably down the sleek, bare skin, resting on the bathsheet still crumpled on the floor, then gliding back up again—probably more slowly than it should’ve done. Privacy. Sure.

“You’re joking, right?”

Another of those slow blinks was all he got for an answer.

Malick narrowed his eyes. “What’s to stop you from just skiving off?”

The man shrugged, casually lifted the knife in his left hand and wound it through his fingers—blade-hilt-blade-hilt—like another would weave a koin.

“I should imagine you’ve all the exits covered.”

Too bloody right. And somehow, this Untouchable didn’t seem terribly worried about it. Suspicion flaring bright—why did Malick suddenly feel like a cat toy being batted about between a couple of deceptively clawless paws?—but intrigue flaring brighter, Malick allowed the budding smirk to bloom, dipped his head: challenge accepted.

“You’ll be there, then? I’ve your word?”

“Oh, I’ll be there.”

There was no way to know if the promise meant a thing, and that bland tone of the assertion could have implied anything at all. Malick was absurdly fascinated by the prospect of finding out what it could mean.

He slipped his own knife back into its sheath, stepped back with hands raised. “I’ll meet you in the alley out back by the kitchen doors, and we’ll go somewhere to talk where we won’t be overheard. Who knows? P’raps you’ll even allow me to make up for ruining your, um… plans for the evening.”

Malick didn’t wait for an answer, merely waggled his eyebrows and deliberately turned his back on the Ghost as he sauntered to the door. Those gray eyes might be glaring daggers into his back, but no actual daggers were coming for him, he could feel it. Somehow, Malick was absurdly certain that if he took a blade from this Untouchable, it wouldn’t be in the back. He didn’t even flick a glance over his shoulder to make sure as he opened the door and

Ghost
stepped through. He simply turned to Samin, waiting just on the other side, the scowl on his face telling Malick that he’d been listening very carefully, and was not at all happy about what he’d heard.

“Why’d you leave him alone?” Samin barked. “Have you completely lost your small mind?”

I just might’ve done, Malick didn’t say. “Manners,” he retorted instead.

Samin gave him a fair twin to the slow blink Malick had been getting for the past fifteen minutes. “Manners.”

“What, I have some!”

“Mal, I’m being serious.”

“So am I!”

“Yeah, but I’ve met you.”

No respect. Honestly. “Just shut it, will you? I gave him a chance to come quietly. It seemed… I dunno—fair.”

“Fair?” Samin snorted. “You kill people for a living—when has ‘fair’

ever meant a damn?”

“I kill bad people for a living, Samin.” Malick’s voice had frosted over.

“And so do you. Remember it.”

Samin chewed on that for a moment, somewhat chastened. “Will he come quietly?”

Malick shook his head, grimaced, and led the way up the stone stairs.

“Not a chance.” He jerked his head toward the back doors of the Girou. “Go give Shig and Yori a heads-up, then come back up and follow him down. I’ll be in the alley behind the kitchens. Waiting.”

It was the braid, Malick grumbled at himself as he made his way through the crowd and arrowed through the kitchen, retrieved his belts and kit from one of the lads then pounded down the steps and to the alley. He didn’t pause but merely strapped on his gear as he stalked, the long tails of his duster flapping behind him. That damned bloody braid.

SAMIN watched Malick go, shook his head, and rolled his eyes. Best tactical mind Samin knew, that lad, but in some things, he was purely and simply a blazing bloody idiot. Not enough blood to the big brain, because it was forever rushing down to the little one, that was Samin’s opinion.

Mouth tight, Samin spared a dark look down the stairs then shoved his way toward the gaming tables, where Umeia was busy keeping the losers from starting trouble and the winners playing. At least until she’d made sure the House had won back whatever the players thought they were going to walk away with. Since Umeia was the House, she gave it her full attention.

Samin didn’t even bother to try and catch her glance. One eye on the stairs to the baths, watching for their quarry to emerge, he instead waved down Lex, Umeia’s right hand, and if Samin wasn’t seriously mistaken, her toy when she was in the mood. Not that Lex seemed to mind. Nor would Samin, in truth—Umeia was gorgeous. And bloody well stunningly stacked.

“I need you for a moment,” Samin said as he grabbed hold of Lex’s arm.

“Haven’t got one,” Lex barked, and he made every effort to extract himself from Samin’s grip.

Good thing Samin had several inches and at least a score of pounds on him. “Make one,” he growled. “Or I’ll be sure and tell Malick he got a knife in the ribs because you couldn’t find the time to go tell his backup they’re needed out back.”

“Malick?” At least it got Lex to stop trying to tug away. Still, he wasn’t quite convinced yet. In fact, he looked somewhat suspicious. “Aren’t you his backup?”

Samin graciously refrained from knocking Lex cold. Anyway, he needed the favor. “Now,” he said, with every ounce of menace in what he knew to be an already very menacing face. He knew because he’d been told. Lots of times. And those on the receiving end of it generally backed down, and very quickly—just like Lex was doing. Rather un graciously.

“Right, fine,” Lex sighed, all put-upon and self-sacrificing. “But you owe me.”

Um, no, he really didn’t. But Samin was happy to let Lex think so, if it got his ass moving, which it did. “Shig’s watching the front, and Yori’s at the stairway up to the rooms. Tell them Mal’s on his way to the alley behind the kitchens, and tell them to move quick.”

“Done with the baths, then?” Lex wanted to know.

Samin rolled his eyes. “By the time you tell Shig and Yori, we will be, so haul ass—the sooner you’re back, the sooner Umeia’s purse swells.”

That seemed to convince Lex, finally. Samin would swear the man could throttle silver and make it cough up gold just as ably as Umeia could. He let Lex go and, still in a gracious mood, refrained from giving him a shove and a kick in the ass to hurry him along. Sucking in a long breath, Samin returned

Ghost
his full attention to the stairs to the baths, spearing his gaze through the gloom that gathered about the landing and trying not to step on any of the writhing bodies on the cushions near his feet as he sank into the shadows against the wall.

Leave it to bloody Malick to risk making this errand twice as dangerous as it needed to be, merely because he was a soft touch for a pretty face. As if Malick didn’t get his wick dipped enough as it was. Asking for a knife in the back or a cut throat, that boy was, letting his prick lead him like he did. Samin blew out a heavy sigh, gave the man accidentally humping his shin a swift kick, and stepped a little away.

What was taking the little bugger so long? There was only the one way in and out of the baths, so he couldn’t be trying to give them the slip. Drowning himself out of fear? He didn’t seem the type. Even if he did, it was no skin off Samin’s nose. He didn’t think they really needed a fifth, and it would likely make his life a bit easier if this ended tonight with the pretty Ghost dead.

Because if the boy let Malick shag him, he’d likely be impossible once Malick tired of him, because Malick always did, and if he didn’t let Malick shag him, Malick would be impossible until he eventually gave in, and there it went back to the first option—either way, Samin and the girls would be the ones to really suffer.

Samin rubbed at his eyes. The poppy fumes were starting to get to him.

The shadows he was watching thickened and blurred deeper for a moment, the greasy lamplight shifting and sputtering in the stir of a draft. Samin blinked, squinted, a spurt of adrenaline flowing through his heart and spangling up his backbone. Was that…?

No, couldn’t be. It wasn’t that dark, and even a man head to toe in black would’ve been obvious. No stealthy pretty Ghost could get by, no matter how good he was, and Malick had said this Ghost was supposed to be very good.

Took out an Adan prefect, of all people, and in his own office, with his guard right outside the door, or so Malick had said. These things always grew in the telling, Samin had found, so who knew, really? Still, it wouldn’t hurt to be careful. Damned poppy; it always softened the senses, and he’d be too stoned to be of any use at all soon enough, if he didn’t hurry things along.

Anyway, waiting wasn’t one of the things Samin did well.

Fuck manners. And fuck “fair.”

Setting his teeth, Samin pushed away from the wall and made his way quietly down the stairs. With all the stealth he could gather, which wasn’t much—he was built for brute force, not slinking—he pushed the heavy door open far enough to peer cautiously inside. Nothing. He frowned. Could be

right behind the door, waiting for him, and Samin knew Malick hadn’t disarmed the fellow. Idiot. Samin could see a little of the small chamber from this angle—the far side of the pool, and one shower-box—and it all appeared clear, but there was an awful lot he couldn’t see, and there was still the small fact that he couldn’t see through the door.

Damned thorny, fractious, little pretty boy.

“Lad?” Samin wasn’t really expecting an answer, which was good because he didn’t get one. He thought about craning his neck to get a look behind the door, but all that might have done was hand the little pain in the ass a good opportunity to break Samin’s neck—no fuss, no muss—and Samin would deserve it, if he did something that stupid. “I’m not here to fight, just to hie you along a little, yeah? Haven’t got all night.”

Still no answer. Bloody sodding rotten difficult Ghost.

Already-stretched patience at its limit, Samin didn’t give any further warning. He threw his weight into the door—if the man was waiting behind it, he’d be squashed like a very stroppy little bug, and Samin would merely shrug at Malick and find a good place to dispose of the body. Easier for everyone all around.

Samin crouched low as he came through the door, the heavy thunk of wood against stone rebounding in his ears and his gaze flying to every shadowed corner and recessed cranny. Benches, shower-boxes, linen cupboard, pool—all empty.

Gone. The little son of a bitch. How the hell…? Samin shook his head, looked again, but the chamber remained decidedly vacant. He’d been watching almost every bloody second, he couldn’t have missed….

Shit.

Untouchables didn’t have magic, and magic didn’t work on them. So how had the damned Ghost got by him?

More to the point— now what? Besides the fact that Malick was going to be… exquisitely pissed.

Yeah. Right.

Malick was going to be exquisitely pissed only if he actually got the opportunity. He was, after all, waiting by himself down in that alley, and who knew if Lex had bothered to hurry fetching Shig and Yori. And Malick had paid the Doujou to stay away tonight.

“Oh, fucking hell!”

Ghost

Not even sparing the two seconds it would take to kick his own ass, Samin spun, flung open the door, and raced up the stairs.

It was pure chance that Malick looked up when he did. Pure chance that he’d been growing bored and a little edgy, and a child’s song about Wolf and Raven and Bear had flitted through his head. Pure chance that he’d peered up to check which phases they happened to be in. Pure chance that Wolf was gibbous tonight, and backlit the creeping figure on the second floor’s terrace roof as though it had been limned in silver.

“Oh,” was all Malick managed as he stood there and watched the figure swirl down two stories from the sagging eaves, gliding to the ground only steps away from him with an ease he wouldn’t have credited had he not seen it himself. Long knives left smeary trails behind Malick’s retinas as they glittered in the moonlight, almost forming a tangled orbit about the Ghost as he advanced like a silent, twisting storm, the ropy length of braid trailing and fluttering behind him. Not graceful—it was too economical for that. Not a single unnecessary move, not a breath wasted. A perfect, spiraling tempest of ice and fire.

Malick hissed out a tight breath, very nearly sighed like a woman. “Well, would you lookit that,” he breathed.

Oh, yeah. He wanted this one.

Instinct had taken Malick’s hands to the belts crisscrossed over his hips, one drawing his dagger and the other drawing a short sword. He’d already shifted into a defensive stance. Now, he flicked his wrist, watched the man’s eyes narrow as the blade of the short sword swirled down and around Malick’s forearm, came back up to rest at an angle between them. Out of the corner of his eye, Malick noted the slim figure of Yori hugging the shadowed brick of the building, at least a dozen paces behind the man and to his left, her bow nocked and drawn. Shig must be about here somewhere too, then. Malick didn’t have to tell them—they’d wait for his signal. If he chose to give them one.

“You don’t have to do this,” Malick told the man evenly. “You’re safer with us. Think about it. You’re wanted. They’re looking for you.”

“They’re looking for a phantom,” was all the man said, voice as flat and cold as the steel in his hands.

“And look at this—I’ve gone and found one.” Malick shook his head.

“You’re good, but you’re not invincible. How long d’you think it’ll be before they hunt you down?”

“You didn’t find anything—your ‘patron’ did. He won’t find me again. I don’t need a pimp.”

Frosty and contemptuous. Clearly unwilling to hear reason, let alone see it. There was no point in arguing. Malick had known that from the moment he’d stepped into the baths. The Ghost wanted a fight—Malick would have to give him one. He’d rather tender another way to work out aggressions, but it seemed the stony little prick was also an uncooperative stony little prick. Who clearly didn’t recognize a good offer when he saw one—witness his repeated failure to succumb to awe.

Footsteps pounded down from the kitchen stairs behind Malick, a heavy tread that could only belong to Samin; the man was not known for his stealth.

Malick stopped him with a short whistle.

“Stay back,” he ordered. “I’ve got this.” Gray eyes narrowed to slits; Malick couldn’t help the smile. “All right, Ghost.” He firmed his stance.

“C’mon, love, at least give us your name, then. We’ll want to know who we’re burning incense for.”

The man sneered, twirled a knife in his long, nimble fingers, then flipped it up by the tip and caught it neatly in his gloved hand by its wire-bound hilt.

“Fuck you.”

“Promise?”

Malick parried when the first strike drew sparks from steel.

Then he grinned.

Change-month, Year 1299, Cycle of the Raven IN THE Old Days, Qiri fumed to herself—back when the Ancestors spoke sanity and sense to their Untouchables, and didn’t send them mad in the speaking—she would have been a lot happier to have been called to the more affluent part of the village on the cusp of the New Cycle, and in weather such as this. Though, “village,” she thought with a cynical bit of a snort, was putting it kindly these days, and getting less apposite with each Turning.

Camp, more like, but they weren’t allowed to call it that.

A sideways glare crept over to the man who stepped along beside her, though she yanked it back again before he caught her at it. Still, it wasn’t as though he wouldn’t know anyway, if he chose to, so what did it matter?

Ghost

Qiri bunched her bony shoulders beneath the cloak, sank deeper into the scraggy, frayed fox pelt of the hood, and blinked against the chill of the rain.

She risked another sideways glance, let it linger this time, but still the man didn’t look back, had hardly even acknowledged her existence at all since he’d come pounding on the door of her hut to inform her Fen-onna’s time had come ’round and she was to collect her kit and accompany him to the birth.

Telling Qiri her own business, that was what he’d been about. As though she’d needed anyone to do that, having been about it smartly enough herself for nearly half the Raven Cycle. And looking to be about it well into the Wolf Cycle, too, if the Adan didn’t one day tire of taking their lives away a hair at a time and simply decide to go for the whole head and have done with it.

And this Adan—this Adan seer, as if she didn’t know—looked to be as full of himself as the rest of them, with his high ways and ill manners. And what he wanted with poor Fen-onna, Qiri hardly dared speculate. Had he imposed himself to prevent or help along?

Would he do the deed himself, or just stand there and make sure she did?

Or would he simply take the babes from between their mother’s legs and Disappear them, like so many others? Though she’d never heard of them taking such tiny ones before. And she’d never heard of an Adan seer imposing himself on an actual birth. To what purpose, after all? No child manifested before their Change. What use would infants be to these people?

“She is unstable, this Fen-onna?”

Qiri’s eyebrows rose—they were the first words the man had spoken to her since they’d left her dooryard. She flicked a quick look through the weak, dusky light from the globed gas lamps that lined the muddy walk between shacks and huts and the occasional more respectable cottage. Class meant nothing anymore, and possessions were no longer truly their own, but some families had managed to keep more than others after the invasion, and the Adan hadn’t yet got ’round to taking what little wealth was left among those once well-off and influential.

“She is… delicate,” Qiri returned carefully.

Too delicate for her husband to trust the risk in keeping the first set of twins and hiding their magic, though Qiri’s price for silence was a mere pittance on that one, out of deference to Fen-onna’s hysteria and Fen-seyh’s honest grief for both his wife and lost children. More than a year ago, that was, but for Fen Marika, it might as well have been yesterday. Poor thing had always been delicate, from the moment Qiri had pulled her from her mother’s womb, all blue and frail, and singing with the Blood as its strength poured into Qiri’s hands.

Frailty turned to fragile beauty, back when Fen-onna had been little Marika, Changed and full with the spirits, and just beginning to catch the eye of young Fen Olanne. Not all could allow the spirits into their hearts and still keep their minds, and Qiri had continued to be surprised as each year passed and pretty little Marika somehow maintained the balance. Ripe with the Blood but without magic himself, Fen Olanne had been fascinated. They’d barely waited the proper six months before the Binding, and it was barely another fortnight before the Adan had tightened their noose, increased their raids, and the rumors of the Disappeared had crept through the camps.

Brilliant with life and stunningly bold once, little Fen Marika, but always with that delicate grip on the sane side of madness. The poor girl’s eyes, when Qiri had felt her full belly and told her it was twins again, the blood and pain when she’d tried to end the pregnancy and couldn’t.

A shiver wracked up Qiri’s spine and out through her creaking bones.

“You have known the family long?” the man went on, his tone much too casual and disinterested to trust.

The first thing the Adan had done upon the occupation—after they’d commandeered the ports and usurped all trade—was to outlaw Jin magic and put to death any who had it. Except for the midwives; they were “useful” to the Adan in a way that turned Qiri’s stomach, but she’d done her best over the years to be of as little use to them as possible. Qiri had helped many a desperate mother since the occupation took its newest, cruelest turn, and if the Ancestors had something to say about the blood on her hands when she finally faced them, she’d have a thing or two to say herself about their decided lack of help for their faithful.

Certainly, she’d taken koin from the Adan for carrying out her repugnant duties, and she’d taken koin from the Jin for pretending to. But more Jin families were intact because of her, and more magic was hidden in their folds than the Adan might suspect, regardless of their constant efforts to wipe it out or take it all for themselves. In Qiri’s own considered opinion, she’d done more to protect the Jin in the last few decades than the Ancestors had done since before the Binding Wars. And look how that had turned out.

“Being as ancient as I,” Qiri replied, her own tone even, though likely a bit hard, “I have known all of the families in the… village all their lives.” She paused, narrowed her eyes, and slid a bold glare sideways. “All that are and all that were. There are considerably fewer to keep track of these days.”

“Indeed,” was all the man said.

Qiri could have slit his throat right there for that one.

Ghost

The huts and shacks were dwindling behind them, more cottages and the rare house along the street now, and the walkway slowly turned from mud to rocky cart ruts beneath their feet. Meager, oily light flickered through slat-bound shutters, rain and shadow reeking of the tangy stench of animal fat cooked over coal fires; it coiled heavy through her nose and clenched with a warning burn at her bowels as they neared what was once the farm of Fen Olanne and his wife, Marika, and was now little more than ruined earth and scrag-strewn rows of wheat and rye. Verdant fields and pastureland, when Qiri was a girl, and before Fen Olanne was even a gleam in the corner of his father’s eye. Now it lay nearly as bald and blasted as Qiri felt.

This Cycle would not end well, likely for any of them.

She paused at the end of the muddy rut of a path that led up to their destination, reluctant to continue, but all too aware that she had no choice.

Already, she could hear the cries of labor, the high-pitched shrieking of driven panic and pre-emptive grief. A woman astride the teeth of insanity, merely biding in her throes, grinding through beatific agony to birth two hearts of her own who were already dead, or better so. Tears scorched Qiri’s eyes, and she was, for once this terrible evening, glad for the rain.

The man—the Adan prophet, damn him—merely stood silent on the path, mud up to the ankles of his fine boots and dragging heavy on the hem of his thick, fur-lined cloak. Waiting.

Qiri led the way to the door, her chin up and her eyes straight ahead, because how could she do else? She kept her expression calm when Fen Olanne shoved the door open, his mien moving quicksilver from relief to confusion to alarm and then, finally, knowing grief. He’d been good-looking and close to strapping once. Now he was thin and sallow, his lank hair hanging in amber-shot gray eyes gone dull—just another man defeated. He stared for a moment, his wife’s moans and nonsensical jabber leaking all around him and out into the oppressive night, turning it near unbearably heavy, before defeat slumped his shoulders, grayed his face. After a long, gravid moment, he merely cast his heavy gaze to the ground.

He stepped aside.

IT HAD gone harder this time, mostly because Qiri could not—no matter what she said or threatened—compel Fen-onna to cooperate, to push, to tilt her hips… to stop her bloody pitiful weeping before Qiri lost her damned

mind. The presence of the seer only seemed to drive Fen-onna closer to the edge, though Qiri had insisted that he keep himself out of her sight.

The first emerged red and squalling, announcing his arrival with all the ill grace of a hearty set of newborn lungs. “He’s beautiful,” Qiri said, to no one in particular; Fen-seyh had withdrawn directly after showing them to the bedchamber, and Fen-onna refused to look. Earth-bound this one, just like Fen-onna’s firstborn, rest him. Qiri could feel the tremble of it in her fingertips, and she closed her eyes, bowed her head. She nearly snapped the little thing’s neck right there.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to the child, kissed his scrunched brow. “I don’t know what waits for you, but I wish I could say I didn’t suspect.” The tremble moved right up her arms, swirled along her backbone and into her chest. Her heart took several painful lurches behind her breastbone, and she stubbornly choked back a small sob.

Strong enough to move continents, this one would one day be.

Qiri shot a look to the Adan man outside the door, then, on inexplicable impulse held the child up so he could see. Perhaps, if he could see the babe for the beautiful new life it was….

The man merely tipped her a curt nod, said, “So ends the Raven Cycle,”

and turned his eyes back to Fen-onna, expectant.

The second came quickly, almost too quickly for Qiri to clean the mouth and nose of the first and settle him in linens, even as his twin was crowning.

Fen-onna was shrieking again, refusing to push, so Qiri had to actually reach in and pull the child from her body in a rush of blood and viscid waters.

“Thus, the Cycle of the Wolf is born,” the seer intoned, and stepped into the room. Qiri expected Fen-onna to go into hysterics, but she merely lay there, panting and weeping softly, and stared blankly at the ceiling.

Quiet, this second-born, blinking his father’s eyes in his wrinkly little face, placid and puckered and altogether as beautiful as his brother. Qiri’s hands went numb this time, as though the child held within them had sucked all of the feeling out of them, and she nearly dropped him, even though she’d half expected it. This time, the sob escaped before she could stop it.

“Give him to me,” the seer commanded.

Qiri lifted a heavy gaze from the babe to the man as the child’s brother continued to wail his displeasure with lusty passion. She shook her head.

She’d never told Fen-onna, nor her husband, what sort of magic was in those first two little souls she’d put to rest last year—not only because they’d never asked and she’d thought it best they didn’t torture themselves more than they

Ghost
already would, but because to admit what the second child had been, and that she’d known, would be to speak her own death. With the Ancestors, she’d lift her chin defiantly and defend her actions with the sense they’d seemed to have forgotten in their collective insanity; with her own people, sense and justice and mercy would mean nothing.

“Let me see to him,” Qiri whispered to the man, pleading. “He is Untouchable. You don’t understand the sort of life—”

“Give him to me,” the man repeated. Harsh. Formidable.

As with everything since she’d opened the door of her hut that evening, Qiri had no choice. She wiped the child’s mouth, pinched then dabbed at the tiny nose, then wrapped him in more linens. With another whispered apology, she held the bundle out to the seer.

The man took him up with avid eyes, a small smile curling his stern mouth, and genuine care in the delicacy of his hold and the way he rocked the child in his cupped palms. He stared for quite a while. Qiri could swear she saw a world of futures unfolding behind that lively, dark gaze—whole universes opening up. She was nearly spellbound.

“The first of the Wolf Cycle,” the seer murmured to the boy. He shook his head in something that looked like real awe. “True perfection; true potential.”

Qiri had no idea what to make of it. “Seyh.” She paused, cleared her throat, because her voice sounded shaky and small, and that simply wouldn’t do. “He is Untouchable. I felt it. He is as doomed as any sent to Ada’s Courts.

You must know—”

“And yet with more of a chance than his two elder brothers, no?”

Qiri’s throat closed up.

The man’s smile turned cold as he cut his sharp glance from the boy.

“You merely alerted me to Fate with your ‘good deed’, Qiri-onna, you did not change it, and for that, your own fate may be kind.” He turned back to the child. “So much to do, this one, and his chance to do it taken away by one who meant so well.” He shook his head, still enrapt with the puckered mouth and wrinkled brow.

Qiri slumped. She’d known. Somehow she’d known as soon as she held the first twin in her hands and felt the strength of the earth shiver through her limbs, and even when she’d held the second, she hadn’t really admitted it.

“They are…?” She couldn’t finish.

“They are the same. I would have known when he reached his Change, had you not… interceded, but his first death cried out to me.” The man smiled

again, slipped his little finger into the babe’s soft, creased palm. The smile curled wide and genuine when the child’s tiny fingers wrapped ’round and gripped. “It is better this way. Better that he is born under Wolf’s eye. He was never meant for Raven.” The man shook his head in wonder, and stepped slowly over toward the bed. “Go and fetch the father.”

And even though it would mean leaving poor Fen-onna—still weeping quietly, and whispering desperate prayers to the ceiling—alone with the man, Qiri merely stood, ignoring the sharp aches in her joints, and did as the man said.

When she returned, with a red-eyed Fen-seyh in tow, she found the seer bent over the bed, draping a soiled sheet over Fen-onna’s legs, speaking to her in a quiet, soothing voice. He paused once to stroke her damp brow with a gentle hand and—Qiri was shocked to note—what appeared to be real care.

Both babes were now swaddled, and even as Qiri watched, Fen-onna placed the firstborn to her breast, coaxing him to suckle. The room fell silent immediately when he latched on, the cries and mewls that had become so much background noise in the moments since his birth turning abruptly to soft sucking sounds and tiny grunts of effort.

“I don’t understand,” was all Qiri could whisper. She couldn’t even get Fen-onna to look at her children only moments ago.

The rain wept tap-tap-tap on the clay tiles of the roof, and the silence of the din was nearly as full of madness as this strung-out moment of thwarted destiny.

Fen-seyh seemed just as stunned as Qiri was. “What is this?” he asked, more confusion than command, though clear and bold and aimed at the seer.

“He says we may keep them,” Fen-onna whispered, beatific. There was still madness in her eyes, frailty, but it had softened with the apparent reprieve. “They have no magic.”

Qiri sucked in her breath. She’d felt it, she knew—they were twins; everyone knew. Twins meant magic, always. What was this man about, and how could he be so cruel to a woman already so fragile?

“This,” the seer said mildly, turning his gaze from the babe to the mother to the father, “is the beginning of the end.”

“We’ve been blessed, Olanne,” Fen-onna breathed, eyes shining. “He says we will have more children—another son and a daughter—and that they will not have magic. That they’ll be safe— safe, Olanne. Our children shall outlive us, all of them—he’s promised it.”

Ghost

The seer stepped over toward Qiri and Fen-seyh, nodded to the suckling child, and curled his voice low. “Your firstborn shall one day move the earth at his will. It is yours to teach him control and stealth. You will tell no one.

You will keep any—even your own, even his mother—from discovery, and if any should guess the truth of him, even suspect, you will deal death swiftly and quietly. Fen-onna will believe it because she wants to. It is yours to divine a way to convince your people.” He paused, leaned in, looming and intent.

“He must not be found out. There is no torture you can imagine that will be worse than what you will actually suffer, should harm come to him while in your care.”

Fen-seyh was speechless for several moments, trying to work through what the man was telling him. His shocked gaze turned thoughtful, wary.

“And what is an Adan’s price for this boon to a Jin?”

The seer smiled again, sardonic this time. He stepped back over to the bed, gently lifting the other babe from the crook of his mother’s arm. Fen-onna only smiled up at him, all weary contentment and open trust. He carried the child back over to his father, held him out like an offering, and stood silent until Fen-seyh took him up.

“He is to be called Fen Jacin-rei.”

The seer watched father look upon son, an eyebrow rising the slightest bit when Fen-seyh’s mouth curled down in an angry frown.

“Rei.” Fen-seyh repeated the epithet like it had a sour taste. “You would have me name my son ‘ghost’?”

“He is Untouchable, Fen-seyh,” Qiri told him quietly. “Ghost” was putting it all too gently.

Fen-seyh jolted, pained revulsion flaring at his sallow face, and he unconsciously held the child away from him. So very predictable, so very poignant, but Qiri couldn’t find blame in it.

“You will see to his needs until I come for him,” the seer admonished, narrowing his eyes slightly at Fen-seyh’s reaction.

“Come for him?” Fen-seyh whispered, dazed.

Qiri drew her first pain-free breath in too long, darkly relieved. Take the Untouchable, yes, this twice-born—death now or whatever life the Adan imposed on him. She almost didn’t care what this man wanted the boy for; it could hardly be that much worse than that to which he was fated. Neglect, disregard, fear, starvation, madness, hunger of the heart, the soul.

“The child is mine upon his Change. This is my price.”

Respite had come too soon. She should have known. Qiri dared to touch the seer’s sleeve. “If you mean to take the child,” she put in, less timidly than she’d feared, “why not take him now? No one needs to know what he is, not if he is among the Adan. You must know what awaits him if he is—”

“You will see to his needs,” the man overrode her, dark eyes hard on Fen-seyh. “He will wear the plait and learn what it means to be what he is. You will feed him and clothe him, educate and guide him until his Change, as is permitted by your traditions.”

“But….” Fen-seyh shook his head, too obviously reeling, and no wonder—for months, the man had been resigned to the murder of two more sons, and tonight he’d been given them back, only to be told he might love only one of them. “But I may not prevent him from doing harm. What if…?”

He paused, still staring at the babe, lying peaceful in his hands, small fists jammed tight in the seeking mouth. “His brother,” Fen-seyh went on. “You say his brother must not come to harm. What if this one—?”

“He will not,” the seer told him decisively then turned his mien threatening. “You will not keep him from his brother.”

Fen-seyh swallowed, his dazed stare drifting to the bed, and the child quiescent at his mother’s breast. Eyes soft with confusion but going harder, already pulling away from the son he still held in an easy grip, Fen-seyh’s shoulders slumped and a long sigh that sounded like it came from well-deep in his soul flowed out from his chest. He shook his head, murmured, “I will not, seyh.”

With one last stroke to the babe’s soft cheek, the seer nodded, pulled his cloak tight about his throat, and turned to leave. “I will come for him when he comes to his Change.”

“But how will you know?” Fen-seyh asked. “I don’t know who you are—
how shall I send for you?”

The man didn’t answer, merely smiled a little, almost pitying, and strode to the door.

“Why do you do this?” Fen-seyh called after him. “What are we to you?”

The man stopped, furrowed his brow, but didn’t turn. “You are nothing to me,” he answered, not entirely unkindly. “The Ghost is everything. My reasons are my own.” And he was gone—a swirl of his heavy cloak and the soft snick of the door closing as he left the house, and that was all.

Qiri stared after him for only a moment before Fen-seyh wordlessly pushed the child at her, looked at her with too obvious grief and regret, then, with one tender glance toward his wife and the son that still belonged to him, slowly quit the room. Still reeling herself, Qiri allowed another moment to

Ghost
gather her wits then placed the boy at the foot of the bed and set about the last of this evening’s business.

“Where is my son?” Fen-onna asked hazily as Qiri began to wash the blood from her thighs and set clean linens beneath her. Even now, Fen-onna clutched the other babe to her, as though afraid he would be snatched away.

“He is here, misin,” Qiri soothed. “I’ll have him cleaned up anon, and you may have him while I bathe the other.”

“No, give him to me now, clean him later.”

Only a tinge of panic in Fen-onna’s voice, but what could Qiri expect, really? She sighed, dropped the soiled linens to the floor and took the boy to his mother. Hesitated. “The boy is….” Faltered. Damn the men for cowards, both of them, leaving her this task. “He is Untouchable, misin,” she told Fen-onna as gently as she could.

Fen-onna stared for a long moment, hazel eyes stark and swimming, that too familiar madness crouching at the edges. And then her jaw tightened, her gaze hardened, and she held out her arm, crooking her fingers. “No child is Untouchable to his mother,” she said fiercely.

There was nothing for Qiri to do, even though she knew better. She sighed, nodded, and laid the boy to his mother’s breast. “Yes, misin,” was all she said.

THE rain had only come harder, by the time Qiri escaped into the bleak small hours of the morning. The dawn of the New Cycle, she reminded herself, the Cycle of the Wolf, though she couldn’t see him through the murky clouds.

Typical. Wolf only showed his face every hundred and fifty years, and that for only just over three decades, so his coming was rather ominous… or fortuitous. It depended upon how one looked at it, Qiri supposed. An age of reason and conflict, of division and union. Dichotomy, old Wolf. Six cycles in a Turning—one for each moon; one moon for each god—and the last, the Wolf Cycle, had always been the most tumultuous, its coming the most portentous. Still, Qiri would have liked to see him as he dawned for the first time in a century and a half.

She shook her head. She had just as much faith in the Cycles these days as she did the Ancestors. And what she’d seen tonight had done nothing toward changing her opinion. As for the gods….

The gods could go hang.

The Jin were a cowed people now, their numbers and power dwindling with each Turning. There was the occasional riot, still, and the last one had given her hope all too cruel, but it hadn’t succeeded in the end, had it? It never did. Even when the Jin dared use the little magic left to them, the Adan still had more thirst in their bloodthirst, more intent in their murderous intent, and all wielding magic did was ferret out those Jin who still had it for the Courts.

The Jin had been demi-divine warriors once, centuries ago, but peace and complacency had muted it. Now, it had been beaten out of them entirely.

The rain drummed a soft pit-pit-pat on the hood of her cloak, and though the fox fur about the collar was ancient and smelled of must and dry rot, she was still grateful to have it. She’d never seen a more dismal start to a New Cycle. Then again, she’d never seen one at all, so she’d just rather mooted her own grievance. Pointless natter. Still, better to let her mind blather on about nonsense than allow it to dwell on what she’d seen tonight, what she’d allowed to happen… what she’d conspired in. Because who knew what would come of it all?

The man had suffered children of the full-Blood to live, one as powerful as him whose delicate neck bones had crunched beneath her own strong fingers only little more than a year ago. And though a part of Qiri wanted desperately to believe it benevolence—not all of the Adan thought the Jin less than people; not all of them approved of the Courts or the camps—the man was still Adan. Who but he could even guess his purpose?

Qiri and the new family would be safe in exchange for their silence; of that much she could be sure, at least. The seer risked death himself, if any of his own were to discover what he’d done tonight—what he’d seen and what he’d permitted; that he could see at all—and though the Courts were harsh and terrible for the Jin, the Adan did not suffer traitors amongst their own. If the seer was found out, his death would be as long and cruel as any Jin’s. He risked much, in ensuring those children lived.

But to what purpose?

“And to what purpose do you wonder, old woman?” Qiri muttered to herself. Best this night was forgotten altogether.

She’d neglected to even collect her fee, either from the seer or Fen-seyh, too caught up in the insanity of the evening, but she found she somehow didn’t care. Surely it was enough that there was no blood on her hands to end the Old Cycle and begin the New? Surely she would suffer for any atrocity in which she’d colluded tonight another time. Not tonight, not this minute.

Tonight, she would get her sorry self home, dry off in front of the fire and get her throbbing bones to bed. Swaddle herself in the sheets that she could

Ghost
still imagine smelled of her Syuu, though he’d been gone near to ten years now, but she still missed him sometimes with a pain that was new and raw.

Tonight was one of those times.

Not even halfway there yet, and already burning knives were sticking at her knees, the gnawing, fiery ache working its predictable way into her hips and spine. Sighing against the self-pity that encroached when she considered the rest of her long walk home and the hobbled body with which she’d have to do it, Qiri hunched into her cloak and plodded on. When she’d limped her way to a lone stretch of nothing—a swath of sandy mud that used to be a barley field and was now merely an ugly fracture between one cluster of shanties and the next—somehow she wasn’t at all surprised to see the hooded figure waiting for her.

The seer stood tall and straight, limned in rain and shadow, and he tipped a polite nod to her as she approached. Qiri nodded back, wondering why she wasn’t afraid in the face of this man, who looked so much like the etchings of Death that used to frighten her so—back when she was a girl and still knew what happiness and freedom meant, though she hadn’t appreciated them then, not until the Adan decided almost-freedom was too much freedom, and so took away even the illusion of it. Of course, by then, Death had begun to look more like friend than foe.

“What would you give, Qiri-onna?” the man asked her, his voice gentle, almost affectionate.

It sent a cold chill up Qiri’s spine, but still, she wasn’t afraid. “I don’t know what you mean, seyh.” Though, she thought, maybe she did.

He sighed, shook his head inside the hood of his cloak, turned his face up to the rain. “It is a question I do not think many would ask themselves, but… I think you have done. Perhaps not in so many words, but in the small ways that you can affect yourself.” He pushed the hood from his head, turning so he was looking Qiri in the eye. “If I understand your traditions aright—and I assure you, I do—your soul was forfeit when you killed him the first time. Never to return to Raven to await a new Cycle, but instead a fiery death for your soul in the penury of the suns. Never to be reborn. And yet….” His head tilted to the side, avid interest in his dark gaze. “You were prepared to do it again a second time.”

He stopped, stared, as though waiting for a reply. Qiri didn’t think she had one. The beliefs of the Jin, perhaps, but they hadn’t been hers for a very long time. Someone like her couldn’t afford to keep them, not without forsaking the very last of her compassion. If she was here for a reason, as all were said to be, it wasn’t to watch idly while the Ancestors dragged children she’d

helped birth into their insanity, and it certainly wasn’t to keep feeding souls into the hungry bellies of weak gods who hadn’t lifted a finger for her people in… well, ever, as far as she’d witnessed.

“Yes,” was all she said.

The seer nodded, as if he’d known her answer before she’d spoken it, and she supposed he probably had. “So, I would like to know—what would you do, if you knew your action or inaction would save countless of those for whom you tell yourself you care so much?” He leaned in, pierced her with those strange oracle eyes. “Would you give yourself for them, Qiri-onna?

Would you give yourself for just one?”

The child, of course—the Untouchable. It seemed the man had more prices than just the one. No wonder she hadn’t feared him. He truly was Death after all. And she was but a mote in his eye.

“Yes,” she said again, though it was little more than a whisper this time.

After all, she’d done it once already, had sealed her fate a year ago with her own ruthless compassion. She swallowed, but didn’t cow or back away. “But, seyh… I would not tell.”

The man shook his head sadly. “You would not mean to.” He opened a hand, as if in apology. “A delirium, in your sickbed.”

Qiri nearly rolled her eyes at the irony. She almost never got sick.

Miles away, but she could swear she smelled the fishy-salt scent of the sea. Too dark and murky, but she knew she could see the stark, black shape of Mount Subie, home and chosen grave of the Ancestors, bracketing the man in cold outline, could feel the low grumble of its bowels in her chest. She closed her eyes, sighed.

Strangely placid. Resigned.

Shifting her weight from one sore hip to the other, she opened her eyes, tipped her face up into the rain as he had done, borrowed the sky’s tears, for she had none of her own. She would’ve liked to see Wolf dawn, at least once, but the damnable clouds….

Ah, well.

A long, somewhat wistful sigh that she refused to rue slid from her throat, then Qiri firmed her neck, straightened her shoulders. She looked at the man evenly.

“You said my fate might be kind.”

“And so it shall be,” the seer assured her, smiled, gentle and strangely benign. He reached out and placed two fingers to her temple.

Ghost

It didn’t hurt as much as she’d thought it would.

And then, it didn’t hurt at all.

Harvest-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf MALICK dodged yet another of those damned little throwing knives that seemed to grow right out of the man’s fingers, and cursed under his breath, willing the sweat not to run into his eyes and queer his focus. And how did the Ghost manage to throw the things and keep a grip on the long knife at the same time, that was what Malick would like to know. He hadn’t had such a workout in… well, a while now, and he’d never enjoyed a challenge like this before.

You’re a sick, sick man, Kamen Malick. He lunged to his right, sliding into a forward recovery that gained him a little ground and moved him just a half step farther away from the wall. Until now, he hadn’t thought allowing himself to be cornered and losing the advantage such a terrible thing, really—
he wasn’t playing for blood, after all. Malick had more or less assumed this would be a contest of skill, feints pulled at the last second and attacks blunted, limited to injury versus actual death. Ha-fucking-ha. The Ghost had other ideas, apparently. And a limitless supply of bloody throwing knives, it would seem.

The way things were going, this wasn’t going to end until one of them was dead, which would defeat Malick’s purposes, at best—hurt a lot, at worst.

Malick clenched his teeth, pressed in with the sword, then thrust up with the knife as he spun. The parry was predictable, but still something to see, all twirling limbs and spinning blades, glinting moonlight in an eddy of refracted, straightforward elegance. Hard, sinewy muscle clamped directly to the bone.

Tall, dark, and oh so fuckable. Gah.

If Malick didn’t need every last fiber of his concentration, he’d be sporting a rather frightening erection, which… no, he didn’t have the focus to spare on all of the things that were wrong with that. At the moment, thankfully, he didn’t have the time for it. The Ghost apparently didn’t believe in a contest of skill, playing for points, and not necessarily those tallied in

Ghost
actual blood. Either that, or he’d stopped his training right after the fight-to-the-death part and, of course, that would be the part that stuck.

“Nice attack,” Malick panted as he spun, swept the sword down on a forward feint then followed with a cross with the knife for a compound attack.

The Ghost didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to hear, merely whirled back in a counter-defense, whipped yet another of those cursed little knives.

Advanced again with a sweeping cut of the long knife that nearly took Malick’s nose off as he spun out of his dodge of the damned throwing knife.

Little shit was really trying to kill him.

“You’re—” Malick ducked under a press with the long knife, feinted to his right, watching for another of the little knives to come whistling at his head. “You’re very skilled.” He just managed to keep the wheeze out of his voice.

Again, the Ghost was silent, concentrating, entirely focused on what his body was doing and what Malick’s was doing in response.

Focus, purpose—all smooth economy and lethal drive, this pretty man with the hard glare and soft braid. Compact corded muscle and sinewy-sleek limbs; hard lines and angles; sculpted, silky masculinity, and every last ounce of it was out to part Malick very decisively from his life. Too focused, perhaps, too driven. Fast and seamless, but foreseeable, if one paid attention.

No personal little flourishes to the moves, no stepping outside the lines of that perfection of skill. Malick could almost count out the steps himself, trace the shapes of the positions in his own head just before the man made them. Like he was performing for a trainer, or reciting the instructions in his head as he followed the steps. The technique was nearly faultless, every move in perfect form, every parry and advance styled and structured—a flawless copy.

“Let’s see what you do with this,” Malick muttered under his breath as he lunged in with the knife and followed with an indirect attack with the sword.

His eyes narrowed when the knife was smoothly parried and the sword deflected with a forward press.

Malick smirked.

Control—that was the key, and Malick had never seen a body so completely under the control of the mind that inhabited it. Control was generally a good thing. Except when it equaled predictability.

No surprises from this man, none but the deadly drive behind his attacks and the apparent conviction that the only way this could end was with one of their corpses cooling on the damp, dirty stone of the alley. He could beat Malick with his speed and determination—he was more skilled, and more

focused in his attention to it—but Malick had to wonder what would happen if he changed the rules.

Grinning now, Malick lunged again, forced an opening when the man parried, and caught him in a spinning counterattack with a hard shove of his boot to the solar-plexus. A thin whoof huffed from the man’s chest, and his eyes went wide before they narrowed down to slits, nostrils flaring and lips pressing tight. Malick could almost hear the, Hey, that’s cheating! that was all too obvious in the man’s indignant glower.

Malick broadened his grin, waggled his eyebrows. With a deep breath he was all too aware might be his last, Malick turned to his right, left himself open—clear invitation—then swept the sword under his own arm. He caught the man in the momentum of his own spin to turn the offensive, putting them in positions opposite of where they’d been just a second ago. Lunged in again with a sideswipe of his foot toward the backs of the man’s knees. Turned it into a spinning kick to the thigh when the man dodged backward. Malick drove in right up close at the resulting stumble, one long knife tangled with Malick’s sword, the other grinding at the hilt of Malick’s knife.

“Figures you’d fight dirty,” the man growled, glaring directly into Malick’s eyes like it was the lowest form of insult he could imagine.

Malick’s brain went a little wobbly.

Almonds. He smells of almonds.

Sweat and leather and metal polish, too, but mostly almonds.

Right. And so does cyanide.

Pressing in close, so close they were chest to chest for a heady half second, Malick backed the man another two steps toward the wall of the building. Brick to his back and his left, Samin to his right and Malick in front of him. Two more steps and he’d be neatly cornered.

“C’mon, love.” Malick kept his smile and let his eyelids droop halfway.

“Everyone likes it dirty now and again.”

He allowed himself a light chuckle when the man growled again and shoved him away. Malick let loose a laugh as he swiped away the expected chop with the blunt of his sword and a strangely harmonic screech of metal on metal. Dodged in again, dipping between the extension and attack. Sliced a carved button off the man’s tunic and tweaked the braid with the same sweep before he spun back again. Mimed a kiss.

And the man… blinked. Stymied, just for a breath of a millisecond, but for that breath, he was stunned still. Like Malick had just yanked the ground

Ghost
from underneath him, or turned his own skin inside-out in front of him.

Outrage, affront, and wonderful, beautiful shock.

Untouchable. He wasn’t used to people challenging him, let alone following through. And young too—too old for what he was, but too young for what he was trying to be.

It was too easy then—Malick knew. The man had learned by the book, had a very skilled teacher, no doubt, who taught him all the moves, all the counterattacks and how to defend against them, and he’d practiced them, perfected them, made himself lethal with the use of them. But he’d never learned anything beyond them.

And he’d never expected to have to actually use them.

Heh. Gotcha.

A damned good assassin—at least from what Malick knew—but still, an assassin who did his bloody work through stealth and surprise. Aiming for all the points on the body that counted, but unable to handle a defense unless it was letter-perfect and rote. The man had sparred endlessly, Malick could tell just by the forms and the muscle tone he’d seen down in the bath, but he’d never had an opponent who didn’t follow the rules. And it shocked him. Two lords, a judge, and a prefect to this man’s tally, and those were only the ones Malick knew about—who among them would have given this man a real fight?

The conclusion was foregone, and all too obvious.

“I’ve just won.” Malick held up a hand when the man’s jaw ticced. “We can stop this now and call it a draw, or we can keep going, but I warn you—
you’re beaten, you just don’t know it yet.”

More of that outrage and fury, blaring out from the hate-filled glare, only this time, it only made Malick sigh. He hadn’t really expected the man to take his word for it, but he’d hoped. Malick was actually the lesser-skilled between them, and they both knew it—the knowledge peered out at him from that snarling scowl—but he was the better fighter, and of that, he had no doubt whatsoever. Too bad this stubborn, angry, pretty Untouchable wasn’t going to believe it until he was bleeding out on his back in the alley.

Malick didn’t want to see that. He certainly didn’t want to be the cause of it. And he wasn’t about to waste magic on preventing it. It was time to end this.

“Yori?” he called over his shoulder.

A soft snort. “As soon as you get your fat head out of the way,” she retorted.

Malick smirked. No respect.

“Not unless he kills me,” he ordered then drove himself in low. He took the body with his shoulder, dropped his own weapons and reached for the man’s wrists as Malick shoved them both back another step toward the brick wall. “Now, this is dirty,” he informed the man, then, without further warning or preamble, gave him a swift, brutal knee to the stones. Allowed himself a brief moment of sympathetic victory at the man’s strained gasp and wheezy little, “Fucking… fuck!” then swept his foot behind the man’s knees and tripped him back against the wall, pressing him flat.

“There,” Malick breathed into the man’s ear, inhaled deeply the scent of almonds, and only just kept himself from nipping at an earlobe. “Now we can talk.”

SAMIN let the knot in his lungs unwind, took a long breath and shook his head, mildly disgusted and thoroughly disgruntled. Bloody Malick and his bloody games—and he’d nearly lost this one. Grinning and chattering like a magpie, all the while dodging very clear attempts to kill him. Didn’t he know this silent Ghost wasn’t even close to sane, and would do nothing more than walk away and clean Malick’s guts off his blade if it had ended the other way

’round? Not that Samin would let him. If he had to, he’d even get Shig to do her… thing, even if it did give him a strange turn in his stomach every time he had to watch it.

“Have fun, Mal?” Samin asked, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice entirely.

Malick ignored the tone and simply grinned at him, hardly even panting, the bastard. He waggled his eyebrows. “Think I’ve just come a little in m’

pants.”

Samin half expected some kind of indignant reaction from the pretty Ghost pinned to the wall, but he was still busy trying and failing to curl himself into a ball and catch his breath—Malick had kneed him pretty hard.

Samin couldn’t help the sympathetic grimace.

“Take his right, Samin, and don’t let his hand free—he’s got knives bloody everywhere.”

“You’re enjoying this a little too much.” Samin allowed the caustic bite in his tone, annoyed when Malick ignored it. Especially as Samin relieved Malick of half his hold and reluctantly wedged himself up against their…

captive, potential associate, whatever the Ghost was supposed to be. Samin

Ghost
followed suit as Malick began patting the Ghost down and relieving him of the… save them all, how many knives did the man have? Strapped to his forearms, secured in sheaths and belts about waist and thighs, secreted in the tops of tall boots. And Malick bloody snorted, every time he found another.

Samin could’ve punched him. Too impressed by skill and enamored with aesthetics, Malick. He was going to get them all killed one of these days, and all for—

No, he wouldn’t get them all killed—Malick was too capable for that—
but he’d get himself killed, if he didn’t wise up. Samin sometimes suspected Malick’s death wish was a little more resolute than other people’s. He’d nearly had his head cut off three times only five minutes ago, and now the milksop was bloody grinning.

Samin watched Malick press his knee in to restrain the Ghost’s leg, watched his hand deftly feel about chest and shoulder and pinioned arm.

Watched him keep grinning, infuriatingly cheerful, considering all those close calls that’d had at least Samin’s heart stopping dead every five seconds. How dare Malick take such chances with himself and then have the audacity to be happy about it. Didn’t he know there were people depending on him? Didn’t he care that this pretty Ghost, against whom he was now so conveniently plastered, wanted him dead and likely wouldn’t stop trying?

Throttling back a growl, Samin eyed Malick’s hand as it continued to search for and find more weapons, made his narrow stare disapproving and deliberately all too plain when Malick’s search included a few quick pats over the lad’s trouser front. “You look like a dog that woke up in a world made of soup bones,” he snarked before he thought better of it.

He’d gone too far that time. Malick’s eyes slitted dangerously. “Not funny, Samin. I may have my moments, but I don’t like what you’re implying.”

Implying, hell, Samin thought sourly, but he was chastened nonetheless.

Business was, after all, business, and no one made that distinction more distinct than Malick. Profligate he might be, but Malick was not one to take liberties not given him willingly, at least not in the way Samin had inferred, and Samin knew it. He shouldn’t have said it, but Malick was pushing it tonight, and all for this… this… freaky-silent sacrosanct throwback to traditions best killed off quick—this relic sacrificed by his own people to a slow, wretched death right before their eyes.

The silence, that was what had got to Samin—the complete lack of curses or threats or even pleas. Malick prattling away as he’d danced with this lad, and nothing but stone-cold silence and death glares from the Ghost, rage made

flesh like Samin had never seen. Growls were what they got now, inarticulate breathless snarls and actual snapping of teeth, no better than an animal, as the Ghost tried to recover from the low blow and thrash himself loose at the same time. It wasn’t natural, the silence, it had made Samin uneasy, kept him uneasy even now that it wasn’t really silent anymore, and he didn’t know why, but he didn’t like it.

And now there were tears—of pain or humiliation or rage, Samin couldn’t tell—but he hated tears. Hated the soppy, squishy things they did in his chest.

And he bloody killed people for a living.

Malick chucked yet another of those bloody little throwing knives to the growing pile on the stone of the alley, frowning as he peered at the Ghost.

“Aw, don’t cry, love, it isn’t so bad, I promise.”

Samin nearly punched him. Instead, he took his anger out on the object of both his ire and Malick’s temporary affections, tightened his grip on the Ghost’s wrist, and ground bone into brick and mortar.

A sharp gasp that was completely unsatisfactory, but it at least seemed to snap the Ghost somewhat to the reality of his situation: he sucked in a wavery breath, glaring between them. “What are you?”

Finally, actual words, though they were snapped out in a manner not much different from the snarls. Yet still, the question curled something in Samin’s gut. “What are you?” not “Who are you?” There was a distinction, and the thin line of it made Samin narrow his eyes.

“I believe I’ve already introduced myself,” Malick said easily, tone friendly and almost gentle, the stupid fuck. Not even taking it seriously. “But perhaps you weren’t listening. I’m Malick. This is Samin.”

A hard jolt that shouldn’t have surprised Samin, but it did, and he nearly lost his grip. “Damn it, will you keep still for half a second?” he snapped as he rammed the Ghost’s wrist into the brick and ground down again.

“All right, Samin, don’t damage him,” Malick chided mildly, “this was all for a reason, y’know. Anyway, I doubt you’d be very still if you were in this position.”

“I’d like to see the punter who could get me in this position,” Samin grumbled, but he relaxed his grip nonetheless. Until the Ghost jolted again, tried to twist himself loose. It was too much, this writhing little Ghost’s silence and snarls and dangerous question, and Malick’s non-reaction to it all.

Samin ground his teeth. “Still, I tell you,” he grated and landed a heavy blow to the Ghost’s gut, made him gag on a gasp and try to curl in again, which

Ghost
only pissed Samin off more, for some reason, and he couldn’t help but grind the Ghost harder into the wall.

“Samin.”

Malick’s voice was harsh now, a very obvious reprimand. It snapped through Samin like a cold dash of water.

Pity—that was Samin’s problem. He was feeling sorry for the Ghost, and it pissed him off. Because mental or no, the lad was pinned to a wall, hopeless and helpless, and still fighting. Samin almost had to respect that. And he didn’t want to feel pity for someone who could be so potentially dangerous to all of them. He was paid to be pitiless, after all.

“C’mon, Ghost, settle down and tell me your name,” Malick pressed, tossed another of the small throwing knives to the pile with a bit of a clang, then shifted himself sideways to strengthen the restraint. He offered up a smile soft enough to give Samin some real worry. “You know mine, you know Samin’s—you’ll meet Shig and Yori in just a bit—so it’s only fair.”

The Ghost clenched his teeth against more gasping, shut his eyes tight.

For a long moment, Samin thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he sagged a little, tense muscles going looser, defeated. “Fen,” he grated, still winded.

He forced it out like victory spoils, like he was actually giving something up, but Samin wasn’t fooled—a consolation prize, maybe, or perhaps an attempt at delay and distraction.

“Fen, eh?” Malick waited for a beat, lifted an eyebrow. “That it?”

The Fen-ghost only wheezed out a weak growl.

Malick shrugged. “All right, have it your way, Fen,” he said easily. “Got it all, Samin?”

Even if he hadn’t, Samin was done looking. “If he’s got more, he’s got

’em stuck in places I’m not going.” He chucked another three knives to the ridiculously deep pile. Stars above, how did the man not jingle when he walked?

“Can I trust you not to run, if we let go?” Malick wanted to know.

The Fen-ghost didn’t even acknowledge the question. “What are you?” he asked again, narrow stare nailed to Malick. “What kind of magic is this?”

Bloody hell, was Malick trying to use his magic on the Untouchable?

Even when he knew magic didn’t work on them, because Samin had bloody well made sure to remind him, hadn’t he? And how was it the Untouchable could feel it? Damn it, Samin had known this one was all kinds of trouble.

Why hadn’t Malick?

Malick darted a sharp glance to Samin, index finger of his free hand tapping idly against brick—Samin could almost see his mind gearing up, calculating—then, slowly, he turned his gaze back to the Fen-ghost. Samin kept his mouth shut. Too cocky and brain in his trousers or no, Malick was the boss—it was his call.

“That’s a very dangerous question,” Malick said slowly. “You shouldn’t go about asking it, you’ll get people in trouble or worse.” He leaned in with narrowed his eyes. “Why d’you want to know?”

The Fen-ghost ground his teeth, tensing again, like he deserved something better to a question like that than the non-answer he’d got. Then he looked away, sank his gaze down to the ground. “It… it’s gone quiet.”

This time, it was Samin who lifted an eyebrow, peering at Malick with an expression that was very likely blaring I told you so, but he was too pissy and off-center to care. Pots clanging through the open door of the kitchen upstairs, shouting and laughing and the slide of the bodhaison and flute drifting down from the Girou, dogs yarking somewhere a few streets over, not to mention all of the normal city noises. Quiet. The man was mental. And they were supposed to just take him in and trust him at their backs.

Samin looked over at Yori, who’d been quietly watching and listening from her rearguard position toward the mouth of the alley; he caught her frown and grimaced in agreement. Shig had sidled up to her sister while Samin hadn’t been paying attention. Now she stood beside Yori, nodding her bizarre head of multicolored hair, staring at this Fen with sympathy, like she knew exactly what he was talking about and agreed. Samin rolled his eyes.

Shig had always been a bit off.

“Quiet,” Malick eventually grunted. “Right.” He thumped the Fen-ghost a little on the breastbone. “That’ll happen when you’re a violent, closed-mouthed little pain in the ass who’d rather skewer a person than bloody talk to him.”

It was the first thing Malick had said all night with which Samin completely agreed. “Mental,” he huffed.

The Ghost snapped the glare over at Samin, narrowed it. “Fuck you,” he grated.

Samin was ridiculously pleased that he’d gotten a reaction. He smirked.

“No thanks,” he retorted. “I like mine with a little more tit and a lot less snarl.”

As if to vindicate every thought in Samin’s head, the Ghost snarled again.

Ghost

“All right, now that we’ve established that you’re both five years old,”

Malick intoned, “p’raps we could move this along a little?”

The uppity little Ghost held Samin’s stony stare for several seconds longer, had the audacity to curl his lip—bloody sneering, at Samin, like he had the right—then shifted a dark look over to Malick. Glowered, jaw clamped tight.

Malick rolled his eyes. “We’re going upstairs now.” Slow and enunciated very clearly, like he was speaking to a halfwit or a child, or a half-witted child. Which didn’t seem altogether off the mark. “You’ll come quietly this time, won’t you.”

Not a question, and Samin could tell the Fen-ghost knew it. And apparently had no intention of giving them an answer. He merely stared for a long moment then deliberately turned his gaze up to the sky, rested his head back against the wall, and set his jaw. Like he was digging in for the night, hanging there against the wall, completely willing to wait them out, and not giving an inch more than he’d already been forced to.

“Oh, for the love of—” It was all Samin could do not to wallop him again.

“Are you bloody kidding me?”

“Samin,” Malick said tiredly, “will you just shut it for five seconds, you’re not exactly the most pleas—”

“No, Mal, this is getting absurd.” Samin was really pissed now. He was crossing lines all over the place, but some one had to say it. What did they need this little shit for, anyway? Sure, he was good, but they all were—even Shig, for all her oddities—they didn’t actually need him, and Samin was bloody tired of this bloody alley and bone-weary of being growled at by this, this… reprobate. “I say we just slit his fool throat and have done with it.

What are you going to do—drag him out and make him kill people for you?

What good is he, if he doesn’t even want to know what you’re about?”

And how dangerous would he be when he found out? Damn it, Mal, think with something other than your cock for five seconds!

Malick turned to glower at Samin. “Don’t you have a flesh-eating maijin to go taunt or something?”

“Why should I go looking for one?” Samin wanted to know. “There’s a handy one right here.”

A roll of light-brown eyes this time. “I’m not wasting a perfectly good opportunity and a promising asset because you’ve got your crooked nose out of joint.”

“He isn’t even that good!” A lie, but Samin wasn’t about to sing the crazy Ghost’s praises. “You managed to beat him, didn’t you?”

“Not without a hell of a lot of effort, and—wait, what’s that supposed to bloody mean, anyway, ‘ I managed to beat him,’ like I’m not—” Malick sputtered to a stop and tightened his jaw. “Why am I even arguing with you about this? Who hands you your purse every week, Samin? If I say he’s worth it then he’s damn well worth it!”

When Malick pulled rank, he really pulled it. Samin’s anger was further piqued by the flush he could feel spreading over his face. “That isn’t fair, Mal, and you bloody know it. How many times have I had your back?” He jerked his chin at the Fen-ghost accusingly. “Are you going to trust him in my place?

I’m well worth my purse, so are Yori and Shig, so why are we wasting time on this menace, and why is he worth risking us all to get him when he’d just as soon rip out all our throats as look at us? No one could be worth—”

“He’ll come along.”

Shig’s soft voice carried strangely down the alley. It stopped Samin in mid-insult. Propped against the wall now, staring up at the sky as the Fen-ghost had been doing, her blonde hair shone close to platinum in the silvery moonlight, dyed streaks of red and blue turned black—the effect was altogether too close to an inverted skunk. An incongruently pretty picture in the light of the moons, though; Samin had always thought so, with her elegantly angled face and snubbed nose, a sedate, dreamy look that softened her bearing and made her age hard to guess to any who didn’t know her.

She turned her head, looked at the Ghost with a placid quirk of her mouth.

“Just keep a hold on him,” she singsonged. “He’ll stay as long as it’s quiet.”

She broadened her smile, turned to Yori. “I don’t like it when it’s loud, either.”

Malick peered over his shoulder at Shig, his gaze focused. Samin sighed.

All the woman had to do was open her nonsensical pseudo-oracle of a mouth and Malick came over all attentive disciple. “And you know this, Shig?” he asked.

Shig merely snorted, shook her head, rolled her eyes at the Ghost like they shared some kind of private joke, then turned her gaze back up to the sky.

Samin stared, frowning, but she didn’t say anything else, and she didn’t look at him again.

“Well, there you have it,” Malick sighed, the smirk back in his voice, if not actually on his face. “Shig says so.”

Ghost

And then he merely stepped back—kept a light grip on the Ghost’s elbow.

Samin had no choice but to do the same, at least not when Malick glowered at him like that. He stepped back too, grudgingly held onto a wire-tense arm when breath abruptly filled the Fen-ghost’s starved lungs and he stumbled a little with the sudden lack of restraint.

Hunched in, guarded, the Fen-ghost peered about himself, gaze lingering a little too long on the pile of weapons that lay on the damp alley floor. Samin watched him warily, strangely pleased when the Fen-ghost’s glance quickly but carefully scanned over all the angles, marking Yori with her bow down the alley, the dead end at his back, Samin to his right and Malick to his left.

Malick had retrieved his sword, but all Samin really needed was his fists. A last almost desperate glance upward, like the Ghost was hoping for an escape from the heavens, then he clamped his mouth tight, curled his hands into empty fists. And just stood there. Silent.

It was bloody unnerving.

“Malick,” Samin said evenly, quietly, “just… let me.”

He didn’t have to elaborate. Samin had made no secret of what he’d wanted here. And he’d apparently finally run to the end of Malick’s patience with his protests.

Malick gave Samin a glare that rivaled the Fen-ghost’s, hard and cold and utterly devoid of the past five years of friendship and mutual survival. “When you question me, Samin,” he said, all cool detachment and blank professionalism, “you question our patron.” He paused, waited through Samin’s twitch and helplessly indrawn breath. “Is that your intention?”

Maybe it was. Their patron, after all, was the one who’d put them all here.

And though Samin had never questioned those bland orders in their block letters on parchment before, this one… he knew where it would lead, he could see it in those blank-bitter eyes of this Fen-creature and the lamps gone bright in Malick’s.

And Samin hadn’t a right to say any of it. Not if he didn’t want his own name to show up in those hateful block letters. He didn’t really fear death. He just didn’t want to have to watch Malick bring it.

“Fine,” Samin rumbled, trying very hard to keep the disgust out of his tone, and something he wouldn’t admit was fear, but he wasn’t very good at pretense. “You’ve got what you want, it seems, O Master. You don’t need me anymore, I trust?”

He’d been dancing about the edge of real insubordination all evening. He might have just crossed over.

Malick eyed him with two parts chagrin and eight parts cold anger. “No,”

he snapped, “I don’t expect I do.”

Samin sincerely hoped they were both talking about tonight, and tonight only. He hadn’t meant it as a threat—in fact, he’d been trying in his clumsy way to back away from threat—and he hoped like hell Malick didn’t take it as one, or at least a serious one. Because not only would that mean the loss of the only family Samin had, it would also mean that his name would shortly end up scratched on one of those pieces of parchment that showed up in Umeia’s hand like magic.

He just wanted out of here, and away from the ghost of a man who fought with death in his eyes and spoke with cold nothing in his voice, when he chose to speak at all. Samin knew crazy when he saw it, and this Fen-ghost might as well be carrying its banner and banging its drum.

Why couldn’t Malick see it, when he saw everything else so clearly?

What was it about this Ghost that lit that light behind Malick’s eyes and killed all the sense in him?

“We’ll see you tomorrow, then?” Shig asked into the silence. Strange and scary Shig might be, but she always managed to cut to the heart of things in her ruthless-passive way.

Samin looked from her to the Ghost then, a little hesitant, to Malick. He nodded, cleared his throat. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, staring at Malick, waiting.

Save him, but Malick could have a cruel stare when you found yourself on the wrong side of him. Samin had almost forgotten that—it had been so long since he’d had to notice. He nearly sagged in relief when Malick finally nodded at him, said, “Tomorrow, then,” tightened his hold on the Ghost’s arm, and steered him to the kitchen’s steps.

Samin waited until the shadows swallowed them up, waited for Yori to nod at him and follow, waited for Shig—making a sack of the apron of her tunic and collecting the Ghost’s weapons then flipping Samin a cheerful wave and a smile—to trail after her sister. Samin took a deep, long breath, and leaned against the wall until his heart slowed down a little.

He’d had to say it, every word of it. This Ghost was dangerous, more than Malick would see, because Malick would occasionally look past what the Mage told them was their purpose, but he wouldn’t look past what he wanted.

And he’d never see how dangerous he was to the lad—he’d refuse to even glance at it sideways from fifty paces.

Ghost

You didn’t fuck with people who were so delicately balanced, and Malick had a habit of accidentally breaking people. He didn’t mean it—he was always so sure that it was equally casual on both sides—but Malick was pretty in his own way, and kind, considering what he was, and left a trail of heart fragments behind him like fragile breadcrumbs. And he hadn’t a clue. And that lad’s mind was already in fragments, Samin could see it, and he thought likely Shig could too—probably Yori, as well, since she saw it so close up in her sister’s eyes every day, but Shig was different. She at least had all of herself, she just had a hard time fitting all the pieces together sometimes. That Ghost had the look of one who’d been lost in his own pieces for so long he’d forgotten how to even reach for them anymore. And was damned pissed about it too. Samin didn’t think the Ghost could afford to lose much more of himself, and Samin didn’t want to have to watch someone fall apart right up close to him. Not when the only man he could truthfully call “friend” would be the one responsible for it. And might even deserve the likely messy and very painful death the Ghost would no doubt try to deal him for it.

Damn it, Samin didn’t have magic, he wasn’t a prophet, and he wasn’t that smart—why did it seem like he was the only one who saw this?

What he needed was to keep a close eye on Malick and make sure he didn’t get his liver carved out of him in the middle of one of his cheerful I’ve grown bored with you kiss-offs. What he needed was to watch that lad and perhaps quietly take him out himself, if he started to teeter—fuck the braid and fuck “Untouchable.” It would likely be a mercy, anyway. What he needed was to do it all without Malick or Umeia noticing, and hope the Mage wasn’t in turn watching him, deadly pen in hand and just waiting for him to slip up.

What he needed was….

Samin sighed, rubbed at his neck.

What he needed was a very large drink.

UMEIA hadn’t really known what she’d been expecting when she’d watched Malick bully his way to the kitchen stairs. She’d known full well what he was up to, but she certainly hadn’t thought to see him less than an hour later, leading his sullen and surly objective through the crowded floor and up toward the rooms, a possessive hand locked to the Untouchable’s arm. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d expected to see the Untouchable again at all. Umeia didn’t approve of the addition, didn’t want anyone new to look after—
certainly not a Jin Untouchable—and Malick didn’t generally have patience for anything that didn’t lead to a bed. Then again, considering their direction….

No—not with that cold look of general animosity on the Untouchable’s face.

Umeia shook her head. “Lex!” She waited until his hopeful brown eyes found hers then motioned him over impatiently. She might fulfill that hope later, but right now, there were bigger issues. “Take over,” Umeia ordered when Lex reached her side, watching Shig and Yori follow after Malick and their new charge. Shig had that faraway look of concentration and that scary little smile on her face that told Umeia exactly what she was doing, and even though it was a very good and useful thing and had saved them trouble on many occasions, it still made Umeia’s mouth tighten. Because Shig shouldn’t be the one doing it. And where the hell was Samin?

“And get Suli over to fourteen to watch that redhead,” Umeia instructed Lex. “He’s cheating, but I can’t tell how.” She wouldn’t have bothered to worry about it or interfere, if he’d been smart enough to join a table of independent players—she’d get her percentage of the winnings one way or the other, regardless of who won—but the fool had been arrogant enough to try his “skill” with a House-dealt table. They could cheat each other, cut each other’s throats, for all Umeia cared, but she’d be damned if they cheated her.

“Where are you going?” Lex wanted to know, following after Umeia as she snagged the elbow of one of her best girls and instructed her to go distract the redhead until Suli could figure out how he was cheating. And to do it before he decided to give the Chance tables a go—if the bastard was using magic, they’d never catch him there, not unless Umeia had Malick come and….

No. Damn.

“Umeia? Love, c’mon, then.”

Umeia blew a frizz of brass-blonde out of her eye, turned to Lex, and raised an eyebrow. “You know, Lex, it’s a damned good thing I admire a little impudence in my men.” She did, actually. The wavy brown hair, soulful eyes, amazing stamina, and relative youth didn’t hurt, either. Her painted mouth tightened a little when Lex grinned smugly and he slipped a familiar hand to her hip. “Then again, I’ve found my tastes tend to change as I get older.”

Satisfied when Lex’s handsome face fell at the warning—so satisfied that Umeia didn’t even chide herself for implying she could get older—she knocked his hand away with a bump of her hip then swayed away, following after Malick, fully confident that Lex’s eyes watched her ass until she was out of sight. She smirked as she stepped lightly up the stairs. A little money, a firm hand, and a whole lot of sex appeal—she didn’t need any damnable spells or charms. And to think, she’d actually had to talk Malick into this life.

Ghost

A little smug herself, now, Umeia took her time walking the halls of the rooms. The closed doors outnumbered the open ones at least three to one, which meant good things for the coffers, but there were still too many of them open by her calculation. Perhaps merely a delay, since Malick’s stunt with the baths earlier had set business back a little. Umeia would have to check in with her “lads and ladies” when she got back downstairs, make sure they weren’t slacking. That new boy, Haru, didn’t seem to be backing up his proclaimed work ethic with actual work—maybe a few days of being assigned to the floor instead of the rooms would change his tune. Or maybe she’d dump him in the kitchens for a week and set Ragi loose on him. The man could turn even the smallest, most innocuous piece of kitchen equipment into a cudgel, when so moved.

Briskly, Umeia made her way down the hallways—stopping a maid along the way to chide her for turning the lamps in the sconces too high; waste of oil, damn it—took the turn for the attic floor and climbed the last set of stairs to where her “ducklings” lived. She grinned a little, matronly pride swelling in her generous bosom. Not exactly the motherly sort, but she had her moments, and she’d developed some real affection for her little flock. She’d had no choice with Malick—he’d grown up under her eye, and if she had her way, would remain under her eye—but Shig and Yori had been a conscious choice. Umeia hadn’t been able to help herself, so lost and heartsore, the both of them, and she’d taken one look at Shig and melted. In another world, the elder of the two, and Yori looked after her sister like a mama dragon looked after her pups, though you’d never guess it to look at her. But all it took was to find oneself on the receiving end of that empty stare of Yori’s, hear Shig’s anticipatory giggles…. Umeia wondered exactly how many had gone to hell with Yori’s blank-beautiful face burned behind their retinas, Shig’s laughter ringing in their ears, and shifted her shoulders in satisfaction.

Malick was the head and backbone, but the girls were the heart and spirit.

And Samin was… another story altogether.

They did good work, her ducklings, and Umeia had done good work in steering them along. If she’d done nothing else in this incarnation, she’d helped set at least three people on the right path and made sure they could get along on their own, if they ever had to. Malick, on the other hand….

Umeia sighed.

She wondered what this new one would be, and grimaced. If she’d known what the damned orders had been, she might’ve burned them instead of handing them over to Malick, but she’d never quite dared to break the anonymous wax seal when they came. Malick would tell her if she needed to

know, and not bother her with it if she didn’t. She’d needed to know this time, and her dismay over the money lost on the delay in custom tonight was nothing to her anger at the reason. An Untouchable, of all things—a risk to every one of them, including her. She didn’t like risk and she didn’t like another forcing her into taking one, regardless of the gold that came along with those sealed bits of parchment. There was enough risk just running the Girou and keeping all those in it out from under the notice of the Adan, and if word got out that an Untouchable….

Well, she’d leave it to Malick. He always came through, one way or another.

Sighing, making just enough noise to let them know she was coming, Umeia cleared the last riser to the attic floor and turned down toward Malick’s rooms. Shig and Yori were hovering outside the open door, Yori peering in intently, listening, and Shig dreamily dragging on one of those awful cherry smokes she liked and Umeia thought smelled like singed, cherry-scented horseshit. Shig’s multihued head rested against the wall, faraway gaze staring up through the smoke at the ceiling like she was watching the heavens move through it. And a big bloody pile of knives sat on the floor beside her thigh.

Moons in their heavens, what kind of Untouchable was this man?

Shig smiled vaguely when Umeia neared, waved her hand about, forming unintentional smoke-rings as she breathed a small sigh. “He’s very noisy,” she informed Umeia, cut a glance to her sister then back up to the ceiling. “Buzz, buzz, buzzzzz.” She snorted softly.

Yori rolled her eyes. “She can’t read him,” she murmured, in deference to Malick’s voice coming through the open door of the suite. “Says there are voices holding his spirit.”

“Noooooo.” Shig’s eyebrow lifted, and her head lolled a bit toward her sister, but she didn’t shift her glance. “I said there are spirits inside him, drowning out his own.” She frowned a little, closed one eye, like she was concentrating. “He’s in there. He just can’t hear himself.” A dreamy grin. “I can probably hear him better than he can, but….” Shig’s smile fell into sadness that seemed to Umeia all too real. “He doesn’t like his voice, and he hates the others. The pain’s the only thing he can stand. And the hate. So much hate. Rage.” Her expression turned pensive. “Almost the same thing, I guess.” She waved her smoke about, shrugged, as if to say, What can you do?

then fell silent.

Yori glanced up at Umeia, obviously gauging her reaction; when Umeia didn’t have one—she’d gotten used to Shig very quickly—Yori merely nodded at the open doorway. “They haven’t got far,” she told Umeia with a

Ghost
roll of her eyes. “He may be ‘noisy’, but… he doesn’t seem to actually talk much.”

Umeia hmphed, scowled, and stepped past Yori and into the room. They’d just see about that.

Planting-month, Year 1312, Cycle of the Wolf

“JOORI! Joori! Hey!”

Joori sighed, rolled his eyes. Very little could grate on him like Morin’s voice—and the little shithead knew it, delighted in it, was careful to make himself as annoying as he possibly could because of it.

“What?” Joori snapped, hunching in over the lump of wood he’d been trying to carve into some semblance of a bird, but his hands never seemed to do what he wanted them to. Jacin could carve just about anything with his nimble fingers—fingers that looked exactly like Joori’s—so why couldn’t Joori? It just wasn’t fair.

Grumbling, Joori brushed shavings off his leg and into the grass, shifted around to watch his brother’s fair head bounce amidst the early jasmine buds, bright sun turning it gold as riven wheat, and resigned himself to a moment of torture until Morin deigned to tell him what he’d come all the way out here for. Or maybe he hadn’t come for anything but the torture. Joori slipped the abysmal failure of a carving into his tunic—no sense in giving the little prick ammunition.

Morin jagged his way through vine and branch, bare feet squelching in the spring-soggy grass as he slipped and slid, his grin far too wide for his errand to be anything good. Either that or he’d just come from tormenting Jacin—
that always put the troll in too good a mood. Morin pulled up short, toes just barely brushing the knees of Joori’s grass-wet trousers, backlit—purposely, Joori had no doubt, just so Joori would have to squint when he looked at him—and more golden than he deserved to be.

Tethering patience to his tone with admirable—he thought—will, Joori dutifully peered at his brother, asked, “What d’you want?” The first of many times, he had no doubt. Why couldn’t it have been Caidi who’d come to fetch him? Well, except for the fact that she was only just barely toddling and likely having a nap. But still.

Morin shrugged with cheerful disregard, kicking idly at Joori’s knee with the tip of his muddy big toe. “What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

Joori thought about that carefully before he retorted. There were so many delightful ways he could answer, after all. He settled for scowling as fiercely as he was able, and making a show of curling his hand around the little carving knife. “How about I won’t give you a knee to the stones or a broken face?”

Morin’s reason for coming must be a really good one—his smile didn’t even twitch. Maybe their father had caught Jacin finishing up Joori’s hoeing in the western flat, though Joori doubted it. Jacin was pretty careful when it came to their father, since any resulting punishment came to Joori. Though careful didn’t always count when you had a blabbermouth like Morin around to keep everyone informed. And it wasn’t like Joori was taking advantage of Jacin, unlike certain people Joori could name. Sometimes Jacin just needed something to do, and letting him take care of some of Joori’s chores was…

well, in a strange way, it was like a kindness. It gave Jacin a normalcy their father wouldn’t permit him.

“Jacin-rei sent me,” Morin informed Joori, his grin skimming up into an evil little smirk as he slid his hands behind his back, bobbing up on the balls of his feet for a second then bouncing back down to his heels.

Joori hated him. Absolutely despised him. Hated that “rei” and hated Morin for making it a point to say it. Hated their father for his harsh rebukes for anyone who “forgot” it in his hearing. Hated his father for making a Ghost of his own son before the time actually came. Which maybe it wouldn’t. Joori had hit a Change he hadn’t even known was coming months ago, with all the terror that had involved. And blamed Morin for a lot of how it happened, even if he knew it was stupid to do so. Still, Morin had been there, he’d started it, made Joori so angry at him, though Joori couldn't even remember now why, but angry enough to think—even just for a fleeting moment—that he wouldn't mind it if his little brother died, just died, it would make everyone's lives so much more pleasant.

He hadn’t even noticed the earth sliding beneath his feet at first, all of his rage rising with it, inside it, rumbling like a belch in the belly of a sleeping beast. Twining with his anger, curling one into the other. It had seemed to shake right inside Joori's chest, shake his mind along with it, like he was one with it, hating the feel and loving it at the same time.

Jacin had saved Joori then, had slapped sense back into him, calmed him, and then given chase when Morin bolted, terrified. Joori could still see Jacin reliving that pursuit-and-tackle in his head sometimes when he looked at

Ghost

Morin, could still see the guilty flush that came with the remembrance. Morin had ended up with a broken wrist and a bitter hatred for his Ghost-brother, but he’d kept his bloody mouth shut, and that was what mattered.

Jacin was showing no signs of the terrible clutch of insanity that came with “Catalyst.” So, maybe they’d been wrong. Maybe Jacin wasn’t meant to be Untouchable after all. Maybe the Ancestors had… died or something, or just gone away, or decided to hear Joori’s prayers and leave his brother alone.

Maybe Joori could one day take that “rei” and shove it right down their father’s throat. And Morin’s.

“And what did Jacin send you for?” Joori demanded through clenched teeth, a little too pleased when Morin’s eyes narrowed at the purposeful abbreviation.

Morin shrugged, gave Joori an imperious sneer, and lifted his chin. “She’s doing it again.”

Joori was up on his feet before Morin had finished the sentence, already running toward home as he tucked the knife into his belt and shot back, “You little shit!” over his shoulder.

Only Morin the Miscreant could take pleasure in relaying that message.

He had just as much fun tormenting their mother as he did their brother. Caidi seemed to be the only one safe from his too imaginative harassments, so far, but Joori figured that would end once she was past the easily broken stage of toddlerhood. Mother said Morin would grow out of it someday, but Joori knew better. Morin might look like his dam, but he was his sire’s get in every other way possible.

Feet pounding just as hard as his heart, Joori reached the scrubby path that wound through new-awakened red maples, varying in height from knee- to chest-high. Vivid contrast to the otherwise barren ’scape on which their sorry excuse for a “farm” rested. The back door clattering aside, Joori bounded into the house, barreling through the kitchen then the common bower where their mats sat in rolled lumps against the wall. He reached his parents’ room with almost no breath left, scalp tingling with sweat and limbs shaky.

His mother lay curled on her bed—unusual for the middle of the day, but growing less unexpected just lately—gaze more alert than Joori had thought it would be, and achingly wary. Jacin sat on the pallet in the corner, staring at the door with anxious regard, his gray eyes wide and his back rigid. A quick flicker of what Joori thought looked too much like fear flittered through Jacin’s gaze, then recognition. Jacin sighed then slumped in relief. Joori could see the last ten minutes or so like he’d been there to witness them himself, because he had been too many times now—their mother’s Untouchable son

had been sitting with her, comforting her, touching her, talking her down from her bout with possession, and Jacin had expected Joori to be their father, coming in to catch him at it and take his frustrations out on… anyone other than Jacin.

It wasn’t so much the careful disregard from their father that plagued Jacin, nor was it their father’s insistence on treating Jacin like what he was meant to become, rather than what he was. It wasn’t even their father’s insistence that everyone else do the same—even their mother, who’d carried the Untouchable in her womb for all those long months; even Joori, who’d shared it with him.

It was the fear. It was the lack of anything else in their father’s eyes when he looked at his second son—not even hatred.

“Morin came to get me first,” Jacin said softly.

Good. That meant their father was still safely sowing cabbages and far enough away in the north field to have not heard their mother’s racket, or seen Jacin’s sprint when he came for her. Perhaps Morin had a tiny little heart after all.

Joori relaxed, smiled at Jacin in gratitude, then slipped over to the bed.

Sighing, he dropped himself to the edge of the thin mattress, heedless of the state of his trousers and what they might do to the linens. “Hey,” he whispered. His mother didn’t answer, though she put on a weak little smile.

Joori tried to return it as he reached out, sinking his fingers into lank flax, dismayed that it seemed to suck in the spray of sunlight through the gap in the curtains rather than refract it with its usual luster. She was getting worse.

At least Father had missed this one.

“It’s happening more now,” Jacin said softly.

“I know,” their mother answered, smile dipping down, turning rueful.

“The spirits are restive. Ever since that day Morin broke his wrist.”

Joori shot a nervous tic of a glance at Jacin, and then mouthed, Don’t, at the look of guilt and regret that flushed his brother’s face. It had been an accident. Jacin never would have touched Morin had Morin not been running away, Joori’s very life at stake if he’d blabbered. Jacin had only reached out to stop him, he’d had no intention of actually hurting Morin. Anyway, it hadn’t caused any permanent damage—Jacin knew that, but it didn’t stop him from feeling culpable. Because that was what Jacin did.

Jacin merely gave Joori a remorseful shrug, looked down, and ground his palm into his trouser leg like he had an itch that wouldn’t go away, then into his left eye. Jacin was too pale today, Joori noted belatedly, a light sheen of

Ghost
sweat on his upper lip that couldn’t be explained away by the cool spring air.

And he was trembling; only slightly, but Joori could see it.

Joori frowned at Jacin, narrowed his eyes, but his mother reached over then, took his hand, and held out her other toward Jacin. Jacin only hesitated a second before he pulled himself up from the pallet where they’d all spent their sick days and nights and made his way over to the bed. A light stumble made Joori frown again, but Jacin smiled at their mother as he accepted her grasp and sat on the other side of the bed, pulled her hand up to his mouth, and kissed her fingertips.

“The one who is there,” their mother murmured, squeezed both their hands. “That’s the one who will be there, the one who will refuse to abandon you, even if they should.” She spoke to both of them, but her foggy hazel eyes stayed steady on Jacin. “No laws will bind them, no laws will thwart them.

The one whose face hovers over yours when you wake from your death-sleep—that will be the one.”

Joori almost smiled, but it didn’t seem appropriate. He knew what she meant, even if he couldn’t put it into straight lines in his head: Jacin would always be that “one” for him, and he intended to be that “one” for his brother, even if the Ancestors did rain their “blessing” on their Untouchable. No laws would bind or thwart Joori, and he peered a silent message at his brother to let him know he understood, dismayed and bothered anew when Jacin wouldn’t look at him, in fact ducked his head and shook a little harder.

Their mother turned to Joori. “Deliver the key into the hands of the Null—all things come to Zero in the end, even the Catalyst.”

Joori started, almost wrenched his hand away. “What…?”

Catalyst—leave them to their fates, for those fates intersected the fates of the world in ways mortals couldn’t see. Let the Untouchables wander in their madness, starving and stumbling, touch them not—to help or hinder—because one wisp of a touch might alter their course, change Fate. Shackle them with the braid so all would know, all could see plainly.

Joori hated the braid almost as much as he hated the words. Almost as much as he hated the Ancestors.

Mother never said the word, never. “Catalyst” rotted in her mouth before she could spit it out, the same with “rei.” Their father had drilled it into them—Catalyst, Ghost, Untouchable—intent that Jacin knew what he was to be, intent that Joori knew his brother wasn’t his to keep, and trying to pry them apart since they’d emerged from the womb. But their mother….

Joori shook his head, angry now. “Mother, what—?”

“Joori.”

Soft and shaky: the voice of one dangling over some blade-spined precipice.

Joori snapped his glance up to Jacin, knowing and not wanting to, but Jacin’s grip on their mother’s hand had gone bone-white, and sweat was slicking tendrils of chestnut to his face, the frays of the hated braid clinging to his neck like grasping, possessive vines. Joori almost didn’t notice his mother squeeze his hand again, almost didn’t hear her whisper, “The Ancestors won’t be deceived. My Blood won’t contain them. My spirit is too small to hold them all.”

Bile rose to the back of Joori’s throat. She’d tried to trick them. Spirit-bound, she’d tried to bind the Ancestors to herself and spare her son. Joori’s limbs felt a little loose, his head light, because he had no idea if he loved her for trying or hated her for failing.

“Joori,” Jacin breathed again, wrenching himself blind from their mother’s grip, hands flying up to his head, clutching and tearing, and feet stumbling over nothing as he caromed into the wall at his back. “It’s…. I can’t….” And then he stopped, stared like a statue— screamed, high-pitched and desperate, covered his ears, and went to his knees for a heart-stopping moment before he was up again, bolting haphazardly for the doorway. He missed it, careened into the wall before he finally wobbled through it. Joori was still staring at the spot where Jacin had been, struck numb and paralyzed, when he heard the chickens in the yard squawking protest, then another of those piercing shrieks. It put him into motion before he even realized it.

He tore after Jacin, following the sobs and eerie, frightened howls.

Bursting back out the door and into the yard, Joori pulled up short, could do nothing but stare at the huddled figure of his brother for a moment before he gathered the courage to go to him. The screeches crawled right up Joori’s backbone, spasmed through him as he stood over Jacin weeping facedown in the dirt of the weedy yard, like he was trying to press himself through it, covering his ears and tearing at his hair by turns. It was… heartbreaking and hideously unnerving at the same time.

He was insanity made flesh. He was every Untouchable Joori had ever seen, telling himself as he skirted about them, obedient to tradition, that his brother would never look like that, not Jacin, not the boy who dragged his mat right up close in the middle of the night and then back again before their father rose at dawn; not the boy who bore their father’s refusal to love him, rather than risk the slightest touch of pain when he lost him; not the boy who switched his fishing pole with Joori’s sometimes when he fell asleep at the

Ghost
creek, because fish seemed to throw themselves at Jacin’s line and run screaming from Joori’s.

Not the boy who was the other half of him, who protected him and let Joori counter with his own version of it with a soft smile and good grace.

Who’d saved him when a Change Joori hadn’t even known was coming had hit him in ways for which he couldn’t possibly have been prepared, not even if he had known.

This writhing mass of tears and tremors, shrieks and shivers, trying to mindlessly bury itself in fallow earth and tear the ears from its head—this was not his brother.

Joori clenched his jaw, crouched down, and made himself move his hand, lay it to Jacin’s back, rigid and quaking through the linen of his sweat-heavy tunic. Joori owed this to Jacin, the boy who’d saved him. And he refused to lose his other Self to those treacherous ancients who just wouldn’t bloody die and stay that way.

“Jacin,” Joori said, though it came out a little raspy and shaky, so he cleared his throat, said it again, “Jacin,” louder and with a firm shake to his brother’s shoulder.

A cringe and more muffled screaming was all he got, so he dragged Jacin up to his knees, shook him, screamed it, right in his face, “Jacin,” and slapped him. It didn’t have nearly the effect it had had on Joori when Jacin had done it to him to stop the earth from shattering beneath them, but Joori tried it again, only he curled his fist this time, turned the blow into a great wallop that came right from his shoulder. “JACIN!”

It got through, at least a little bit, the sobs and shrieks curling down to lunatic babbling that was almost worse, things coming out his intelligent, articulate brother’s mouth that made no sense, no sense at all, and tripping over themselves in their haste to wobble off his tongue.

“Balk batter baffle them all crushed and craven Wolf will not be thwarted he sees the Eye and calls the Prime to his own leers through a veil of burning skies to Raven’s duplicity—”

“Jacin, stop it!” Joori thumped Jacin again with a hard fist, right to the temple, dazed him, and still, it wouldn’t stop.

“—the gods speak no more silent silent dead and quiet—”

Joori couldn’t take it, knew Jacin couldn’t, either—his eyes had gone glazed and hectic, madness pushing out whatever it was inside them that made him Jacin. Joori knew his brother well enough to know Jacin would rather die than live like this, knew him well enough to know he’d never ask it and damn

Joori’s soul to the suns. Staring into that face so like his own, those eyes—the only part of their father Joori loved anymore—it was a forfeit he was willing to offer. Somewhere, even when he’d convinced himself it would never happen, he’d known it would come to this.

Joori took the small carving knife from his belt, gripped it in a tight fist.

“—too many voices everything and everything wordswordswords…

Joori—”

Drew his arm back, small blade glinting in sunlight that burned bright-hot on the crown of Joori’s head, yet chilled him to the bone. Watched the flare catch his brother’s blank, dementia-driven stare—

“Please, I can’t… it won’t… stop, make it stop makeitstopmakeitstop—”

—swept the blade down, and… pulled it shy. Aimed for Jacin’s throat and glanced his chest instead, tried to end the misery of the heart of his heart, and couldn’t. Blinked, wretched sobs caught blunt in his throat as he watched bright scarlet bloom into the slashed weave of the tunic.

“Oh, no. Jacin.” Weeping, shaking. “Jacin, please, I’m sorry.” Joori hadn’t even realized he’d lunged in and clamped his arms about Jacin’s neck, sobbing his treachery into the despised braid that smelled of linseed soap and sweat. “Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry, I couldn’t, can’t….”

Sobbed harder when he felt shaking arms slide around his ribs. Harder still when he listened through his own babbling and realized Jacin had gone silent. Joori pushed away, just a little, just so he could see Jacin’s eyes….

Almost sanity. Almost comprehension.

“It’s… quieter,” Jacin told him, voice hoarse but even, rational, and his eyes were frightened and a little bit cloudy, but he was in them. Jacin pushed Joori back a little more, looked down, ran his fingers over the blood-stained tunic, dipping them mercilessly into the wound beneath it. He hissed a little, but merely pressed harder. Joori could almost see the pain in his eyes crowding out the delirium.

“Gone?” Joori asked, throttling the threat of exhilarated hope.

“Not gone.” Jacin shook his head, stared at his fingertips, bright with blood. “It’s quieter,” he whispered again, then… he smiled.

“YOU won’t!” Joori grated, watching with intense satisfaction when his father’s eyes went wide in surprise. It was only a second before they narrowed

Ghost
with blind resolve, but that second was almost euphoric. “He’s your son just as much as I am—you will not turn him out like a dog to fend for himself.”

“He is Untouchable,” was all his father said. He turned away from the door and calmly sat down on his accustomed mat at the table.

Joori could have happily strangled him. “And what’s he to do? Survive on the moldy bread of halfhearted shrines? Eat the scattered seeds left for the ghosts? He’s your son! He’s my brother!”

“No!” his father shouted, pounding his hand flat to the table; despite himself, Joori jumped. “No one’s son, no one’s brother, no one’s father, no one’s lover. He is Untouchable! It is his fate!”

“Fuck Fate!” Joori screamed, satisfied again when his father looked at him like he had no idea who he was, because he didn’t, not really. Not if he thought Joori could just stand there and watch Jacin cast out to wander, pretend he didn’t even know his own brother, his twin, pretend the insane babble that had come from Jacin’s mouth had even meant anything. None of it ever meant anything. Why did they keep doing this, keep believing? Perhaps the Jin had deserved what they got from the Adan.

Joori took a long breath while his father recovered himself, tried to keep calm, approach it all like Jacin would’ve done. He could feel the tremble in his gut, threatening, wanting to wind itself into earth, and he dug his fingernails into his palm to drive it away, bit down hard on the inside of his cheek.

Calmer. Clearer.

“Father,” Joori said evenly, “he is your son, he has always been your son.

Look at me, I have the same face, the same eyes—they’re your eyes, Father, he’s yours. How can you just….” His hands were aching, they were clenched so tight. Again, Joori collected himself, took another deep breath. “All we’d have to do is cut off the braid, take him to the—”

“Sacrilege!” his father roared.

And Joori knew—by the single-minded determination, the fervent conviction. He’d never hated his father so profoundly in his life.

“Yes,” Joori said, defeated and full of dull, impotent fury. “It is.” And he didn’t care if he burned for it.

And what would you do if I told you what I am, Father-mine? Betray me to the Courts? Pretend I never existed after I’ve Disappeared? Or hide me, like you do for her—a captive to “love” in my own home, like she’s been since the Adan?

He shook his head, sad-eyed and full of a disturbing mix of hatred and loss.

And what would you do if they finally came for her? Give them me instead? You’ve already sacrificed one son to your useless gods and their cruel traditions—what’s one more?

“What will you tell Mother?”

His father was silent for too long, staring at his callused hands on the table, then: “You ask as though you don’t know what she did—for him.” He looked up, looked Joori in the eye. The sadness and beaten loss in his father’s gaze might have affected Joori a moment ago, but not now. “Your mother…

my Marika….” Joori’s father bowed his head, shoulders slumping. “She has never been well. I no longer know my wife, and you will not know your mother. She is not behind her own eyes.”

Joori doubted that—he could see things behind another’s eyes for which others didn’t bother to look. He knew that now, couldn’t help knowing it, not after what had happened today. But damn it, Jacin was still in there, and so was their mother. This coward of a man would not take them both from him.

Anger climbing again, Joori reined it in, shouldered his pack and Jacin’s, staring at his father all the while, daring him to deny his second son at least his clothes and whatever provisions Joori had been able to scrounge from the kitchen. Daring him to ask why Joori had readied a pack for himself too.

Fuck Fate, and fuck you, Joori sneered silently and stormed out into the yard, punting one of the chickens out of the way when it strutted in front of him and sending the rest squawking away in a flurry of brown feathers and indignant clucks.

“You know you can’t come with me,” Jacin told him quietly, toying with the tender buds of one of the little maples and staring tiredly up at the sky, watching Wolf slide his bloated way across clots of stars. Jacin had lit an incense stick on the shrine. Joori wondered who it was for but wouldn’t ask.

Jacin’s voice was heavier than normal, deeper, like he’d aged a thousand years just since this morning. His eyes had a faraway look they’d never had before, a wariness and a narrow, eerie haze that was nothing like him, like he was listening to—

Joori’s teeth clenched.

Like he was listening to a thousand voices in his head, and Joori pushed that away, because it was exactly what Jacin was doing, and Joori didn’t want to think about it. Jacin was in there, damn it, and now they knew how to keep him in there.

Ghost

“You can’t go by yourself, Jacin. And I can’t stay here by myself, not with him.”

“He’s only what he is, Joori. And now I’m… what I am.” Jacin paused, gaze drifting to Joori like he was moving inside a dream. “You can’t leave her alone with him.”

All the rage Joori had felt toward his father a moment ago came boiling back up. Not at Jacin, really, but… because of him. For him. The bruises on Jacin’s face in the shape of Joori’s own hand shone near-black in the gloom, and it only notched the fury up from Joori’s gut to the middle of his chest.

“That isn’t fair, and you know it! You can’t make me choose, you can’t—”

“I’m not making you choose. I’m choosing.”

Joori’s teeth clenched. “That isn’t your right. You need me, you can’t do this by yourself, no one can, you’ve seen it! You’ll live a year, maybe two.

Jacin.” Joori stepped in, took hold of Jacin’s shoulders, shook him until the gaze that met Joori’s own was brighter and more… more Jacin. “You’ve seen, you know. You can’t expect me to—”

“If you came with me and someone caught you, they’d kill you, Joori.”

“Don’t you think I’m smarter than that? I’ve got it all figured. All we have to do is get out of the camp—there are houses on the coast, just sitting there empty. Dozens of them—even that hairy gate guard says so.”

“Because their Jin owners were killed by the Adan.” Jacin sighed, leaned in, and pressed their foreheads together. Joori could have wept. “You’d be no safer there than—”

“We’re not worrying about me right now, damn it! You’re the one—”

“I’m worried about you!”

“Well, stop it and let me be the one to worry for once! ‘No laws will bind them, no laws will thwart them,’ remember?” Joori firmed his hands on Jacin’s shoulders, shook again, harder, refusing to think about the fact that now he could be stoned for something like this. It only made him tighten his grip. “Jacin, it hasn’t gone away, just… quieted. What if it gets too loud again? And where are you going to find food? Shelter? No one will touch you, they’ll watch you die in the street rather than help you, and they’ll think the gods are up there smiling at them and patting them on the head for doing it.

Well, fuck the gods, I’m not going to—”

“Your concern for your brother is both touching and admirable, young Fen-seyh,” a rich voice put in from the gloom of the dooryard, “but unnecessary now.”

Joori jolted, let go of Jacin’s arms, and put himself between his brother and the stranger. “Who the hell are you?”

And what was he doing sneaking about in their dooryard after dark? And exactly what had he heard? Joori carded back through the conversation, alarmed by how much of it was deadly incriminating. No one in the camp had been told about what had happened yet—at least one thing Morin hadn’t blabbered so far—there was still a chance to get Jacin away, but if this stranger had heard….

Dark-cloaked and dark-cowled, the man stepped through the weak, slatted light striping through the shutters of the kitchen window. The man didn’t speak, just kept gliding toward them like a starlit phantom, until Joori fumbled the little knife from his belt, let the moonlight catch on the blade.

The man stopped, turned down the hood of his cloak, eyes gone black in the moonlight and looking right past Joori to lock onto Jacin. Adan, Joori could see now, and wondered why he hadn’t twigged when he’d first caught sight of the stranger. The cloak alone would be cause for a quick arrest and some heavy questioning, if a Jin were caught wearing something so fine.

“I am Asai,” the deep voice intoned. “Please go and fetch your father. Tell him I have come to collect my fee.”

Ghost

Harvest-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf

“FOR the love of the gods, Malick, where are your manners?” Umeia shrilled as she cleared the short foyer that led into Malick’s sitting room, then stopped so suddenly that Yori almost sailed into her back and Shig into Yori’s. “What is that man doing on the floor?”

“Hey, don’t look at me.” Malick’s tone was defensive, which was a bit of a change from the annoyed-cajoling-aggrieved notes it had been reaching while Yori and Shig had been lingering in the hall. “I offered him the couch.”

Yori bobbed up on her toes and peered around Umeia’s shoulder, took in the arrangement, and raised her eyebrows. Kneeling on the floor beneath the one window, fists planted on knees and head bowed, that long braid flopped over his shoulder and lying like a snake on the floor. The Ghost’s eyes were shut tight, and his jaw was clenched so hard Yori could see the muscles ticcing beneath the skin.

Meditating. Yori had seen Shig do it often enough, even tried it herself a few times, but she didn’t have the patience or concentration for it. It wasn’t a terribly odd thing to do, she supposed, but… right now? After what had just happened in the alley? Even Shig had never done something so…. All right, yes, she had, but Shig was Shig, and this man was… well, not Shig.

“Huh,” Yori blurted before she could stop herself, inadvertently catching Malick’s eye, but he only gave her a quick glance—neither welcoming nor forbidding—before shifting his gaze again, chagrined, to the man on the floor.

Black tunic beneath a black jacket, black trousers stuffed in black boots up to his knees—Yori hadn’t really paid attention to his dress out in the alley, but now she wondered just exactly what this Ghost was trying to be. A part of the night, perhaps, a man made of shadow itself, and Yori supposed it made sense, what with what he did and all. Still, they never made it such a business when they went out on jobs, and they did just fine.

Shig breathed a happy little, “Ah!” behind Yori then elbowed her out of the way, nearly shoving Yori into Umeia again as she clapped softly and squeezed past them and into the room. Smiling at the man like some kind of old friend, Shig knelt in front of him, almost knee to knee, and mirrored his pose, dipped her head and breathed in deep then went still and silent.

Yori’s eyebrows climbed again, but Malick’s had jumped up his brow like two startled caterpillars. He shook his head, shared a dubious look with Umeia, then waved them in. Umeia took the couch that had apparently been shunned by the young man, her expression thoughtful and eyes flicking back and forth between him and Shig. Yori took a spot against the wall near the window—not that she thought anything would happen, exactly, but she didn’t trust the Ghost and she wanted to be close and able to keep an eye on her sister. Just in case.

“Well, then,” Umeia said, turning to Malick. “Is this… normal?”

Malick growled exasperation, threw out his hands. “How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“Watch your mouth, young man,” was the cool and entirely expected reply.

Yori nearly snorted. Umeia was the only one who usually dared to chastise Malick, and it was always amusing to see him grimace aggrievedly and do as he was told. Then again, Malick seemed to treat Umeia as a sort of… mother figure?—so it likely shouldn’t be as surprising and entertaining as it infallibly was. Anyway, it wasn’t as though the rest of them didn’t react the same when on the receiving end of Umeia’s “discipline,” even Samin, so the fact that Malick fell into line when Umeia snapped her fingers really shouldn’t make Yori snort into her collar, but it did. It was just… it was Malick.

“…to his wrist?” Umeia was asking, her tone sharp and bending accusatory.

Malick grimaced, shrugged. “Samin got a little… enthusiastic.” He frowned, lips pursed. “Now that you mention it, he may need some ice for…

someplace else. I had to, um… well, I had to get him down quickly, and….”

Umeia gave Malick a sour look and shook her head, but unconsciously crossed her legs when she did it. Funny, the way women reacted almost as vigorously as men to the thought—even Yori winced in sympathy, and she didn’t even have stones, though she sometimes wondered if Umeia did…

great big brass ones, at that. Perhaps it was the instant pity that had overtaken Yori at the man’s look of profound agony and white-faced blank shock when it had happened, the instant flight of anything from his angry eyes but

Ghost
stunned, mindless animal pain. Or perhaps it was merely Yori’s surprise that Malick had stooped to such a low blow. He wasn’t usually the sort. Then again, people tended to change their “sort” in the blink of an eye, if it suited them. And Malick was nothing if not changeable.

“…like that,” Malick was protesting heatedly to whatever vituperation Umeia had just lobbed at him. “Ask Yori, she saw it. He wasn’t going to quit until one of us was dead, and I’d prefer it if neither of us wound up that way, thank you. Apparently, not everyone is thrilled when told they’ve been chosen as one of our own.”

Yori nodded in support, but didn’t answer, just watched Shig with a bit of unease as she began to quietly plait braids through her motley hair, whispering to the Ghost in a sympathetic croon. Umeia and Malick were still sniping familiarly at each other, but Shig had apparently tuned them out, concentrating instead on the Ghost, who just knelt there, stiff, and as unresponsive as he’d seemed since they’d walked through the door. Except now that Shig had set herself in front of him, he appeared to be wound a little tighter, fists white-knuckled on his knees and pressing into his legs hard enough to gather and bunch the heavy fabric beneath them. There were deep creases around eyes squeezed tight-shut, and a thin trickle of blood running down his chin. Yori frowned, took a step in. “Mal?”

“…the fu— deuce else was I supposed to do?” Malick was growling at Umeia. “He stomped in here, planted himself, and hasn’t moved or spoken since. I don’t even know if he can hear me.”

“It’s no excuse for not tending to him properly,” Umeia snapped back.

“Especially after kneeing him like that. I’m ashamed of you, Malick—I wouldn’t expect you to stoop so low.”

“Oh, bullshit, Umeia, you’re the dirtiest fighter I know. You’d’ve taken the chance if it had been you who—”

“I would not have—”

“I’m not bloody arguing about it! He’s alive, isn’t he? And so am I, because I stooped—I know how you so worry.”

“Mal?” Yori repeated, watching the little runlet drip in tiny splashes from the corner of the Ghost’s mouth down to the wood flooring, a small pool of scarlet already gathered and seeping into the weave of rush mats covering the floorboards. She could hear Shig now, nearly chanting at the man, real entreaty:

“He can help you, noisy Ghost. Don’t you love the quiet?” Shig reached out a languid hand, swept it down near the side of the man’s face, but didn’t

touch. “Sometimes I could crawl inside it and sleep forever.” Shig’s hand moved to hover over his heart, but still, it was as though she didn’t dare actually lay hands him. And why did Yori find that reassuring? “A hard man, you are,” Shig sighed sadly, “you’ll choose your angry pain over the quiet every time, won’t you?”

It was very subtle, but Yori marked it uneasily: the man hunched in the slightest bit, and his breathing picked up pace.

“Mal?”

“…supposed to be one of us now,” Umeia was snarking—somewhere along the line, though Yori had missed it completely, Umeia had come up with her medicinal kit and a cloth she waved about while chiding Malick at the same time. “Probably didn’t even offer him tea, no wonder he’s ignoring you.”

“He didn’t give me a bloody chance to—”

“If I have to tell you one more time to watch that mouth, I’ll—”

“Malick!”

Finally, they both stopped their bickering and turned to Yori, Umeia still with her finger pointed accusingly at Malick, and Malick with something that looked suspiciously like annoyed relief. Yori looked between them, then pointed at the man on the floor. “He’s bleeding.”

Shig was still whispering to him: “…can teach you how to make sense of it, but fighting it will only hurt more, and you’ve enough scars, I’m thinking.”

Something about it made gooseflesh bloom up Yori’s back.

Malick had gone still, narrow-eyed, the way he always did when Shig wandered into semi-coherency. Umeia dove into her satchel, quickly and brusquely, but Malick held up a staying hand and brushed slowly past her, stepping softly over to stand beside Shig, deep in her one-sided conversation with this strange Untouchable.

“Can you ‘hear’ him, Shig?” Malick kept his voice gentle and dulcet, as he did with no one else but Shig.

Shig smirked up at him, sly. “You’d have me listen to one of our own?”

Malick’s mouth tightened. It was the one thing he’d demanded of Shig, not to “eavesdrop,” and it had been an easy promise for her, really, because she couldn’t, not with them, not with Malick around, or at least when he was paying attention. Still, Malick was apparently not pleased to be reminded of something he knew very well, and mildly chided for it besides.

“He isn’t one of ‘our own’ yet, is he, then?” he retorted evenly.

Ghost

“Isn’t he?” Shig’s soft voice was amused, snorting at her own cryptic tone. She merely shrugged at Malick’s light growl, toying with the new braids tangled in her hair—an attempted kinship, no doubt, which Yori abruptly decided she didn’t like at all. Shig shook her head. “He can’t even hear himself,” she lamented. “And there’s so much to hear.” Again, she reached out, like she wanted to stroke the Ghost’s cheek, but she refrained from actually touching him. Nevertheless, even with his eyes squeezed tight, he flinched back minutely. Shig pouted. “The pain isn’t the only thing with a voice, prickly Ghost,” she murmured to him. “It won’t help you recover what you’ve lost.” She nodded sagely, reached down, fingers creeping toward the braid curled on the floor between them; she ran a fingertip lightly over glistening chestnut then reached up and did the same to her own. To Yori’s sincere chagrin, her sister next leaned down, ran her fingertips through the small puddle of blood on the floor, rubbed them together, then lifted them to her mouth and tasted it. “What have you lost, angry Ghost?” she whispered.

Again, something walked up Yori’s spine, and she suppressed a shudder.

“Get her away from me.”

It was tight and thin, the first words the Ghost had spoken since the alley, full of rigid anxiety and seething malice, and yet still, it made Yori breathe just a little easier.

“Yori.”

Yori peered over at the gentle command implicit in Malick’s tone.

Calmly, she crouched down next to Shig and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“C’mon, love, let’s let Malick and Umeia have at him for a bit, yeah?”

Shig turned to Yori with a sad smile, shook her head, then returned her mercurial attention to the Ghost. “We’ll help you get them.” Earnest and as close to serious as Shig got. “Isn’t that what you want? It’s what we do, y’know.”

It got a reaction where nothing before had done: the Ghost’s eyes sprang open, narrowed and honed in on Shig in a way that made Yori want to drag her sister back and away and out of the room entirely.

The hard, lethal stare didn’t affect Shig in the least. “Ah, that’s got ’im,”

she snickered to Malick, far too pleased with herself, considering the unease blundering through Yori. “Promise to find what the Ghost has lost, promise to crucify the one who took it….” Shig turned back, leaned in, lowered her voice. “He can, y’know.” Her braided head—red, blue, and blonde—bobbed a subtle nod toward Malick. “There’s a promise from me to you.” She winked at the Ghost’s cagey scowl, nodded resolute confirmation, then leaned back, grinning up at Yori. “Promise him, Yori.”

Yori rather suspected her eyebrows were doing the same surprised-caterpillar thing Malick’s were doing again. She stared at Shig, turning a questioning look to Umeia first, then Malick. Malick merely shifted a faint shrug and then a nod. With a bemused frown, Yori met the Ghost’s— No, he was one of their own now, Shig had said so, and he had a name.

She met Fen’s wary distrust with an open look and a nod of her own.

“Your goals are ours, or so I’ve been told. I’m already oath-bound.”

Fen stared at her for so long Yori had to concentrate on not squirming. It wasn’t any outward threat that tightened her chest and her nerves, or even an inward one, really—she couldn’t see inside people the way Shig or even Malick could do. It was the intensity inside the stare, the way it came at her like a verbal shout, and yet she had no idea what it was saying.

Then, finally: “Goals,” Fen whispered.

The tension that had built itself into the silence broke effectively with that single word. Malick stepped in closer, crouching down on Shig’s other side, Umeia edging up right behind him.

“I’ve been trying to tell you, but you don’t listen very well,” Malick said, not unkindly. “We want the same things. All of us.” He gave Yori a quick look of silent apology, then went on, “Yori and Shig are both half-Blood, sold by their Kente mother to an Adan sharper for Blood-magic. Show him, Shig.”

Shig agreeably reached for the cuff of her sleeve, but Yori stopped her before she could draw it up. “Mal,” Yori warned.

Malick only gave Yori a level stare, unmoved. “Show him,” he repeated to Shig, his light-brown eyes firm on Yori, until Yori slumped a little and let go of Shig’s arm. Malick was the boss, after all. Damn him.

Shig gave Yori’s hand a light pat for comfort then rolled up her sleeve without even a slight hesitation and no hint of the wince that Yori knew shadowed her own face. Scar upon scar. There were times when the skin was so thin and fragile that Yori had feared it would never knit together again. The rage still took her, every time her glance accidentally lit on her sister’s wrists, but it never seemed to bother Shig, and when it did, it was only because she knew it bothered Yori.

When Yori looked up, Fen’s narrow stare was not leveled on Shig’s scars, but Yori’s face, and the things inside his severe gaze…. Ah. All right, then.

This, Yori could recognize. Now she half understood the strange kinship with Fen toward which Shig had been leaning. Yori felt it herself this time, caught up in amber-shot gray, looking back at her with watchful mutual understanding. Oh, yes—perhaps she couldn’t see into others with the clarity

Ghost
with which her sister had been cursed, but Yori knew common misery when she saw it.

This Fen was theirs now. He just didn’t know it yet.

“Samin was a doujoun once,” Malick said, “then retired and took a job as an Adan lord’s minder.”

Fen’s eyes snapped over to Malick at the statement, his gaze now slanting dangerously toward malice again, the tension in his body renewed and ratcheting up near to levels that made Yori blink and stiffen up herself. “He hadn’t known,” Malick went on, “no one does, not really, except those who are doing it. It takes a lot to sicken a man like Samin to the point where he’d turn on his leash, but what he saw, what that lord was doing, what he was demanding Samin do for him….” He opened his hands, kept Fen’s hostile gaze with a direct one of his own. “He doesn’t look it, but he’s got a heart under that scowl.”

Shig interjected with a soft snort and a murmured, “Samin’s got a great, squishy center.” Her ingenuous grin turned toward Malick. “Like a cream comfit!”

Malick snorted too, brushing his knuckles along Shig’s cheek with a tenderness they didn’t see very often. Well, except for when he was on the make, which hardly counted. “A great big squishy one, at that. ‘Some things should not be borne, and some people should never have been born at all,’

that’s what Samin says, and he….” Malick paused, thoughtful, his smile slowly losing to a more serious expression, and his eyes found Fen’s again before he shrugged. “It isn’t telling tales, I suppose—Samin enjoys fixing the mistakes of the gods and executing those he says should never have been born. He likes what he does. Says it’s his calling.” Another shrug. “And I feel better having him at my back than aiming for it.”

It was almost like he was justifying Samin to Fen, and Yori had to frown a little. It didn’t seem… fair, somehow. Samin didn’t need justification—he was theirs.

There was a pause, gravid, while Fen and Malick stared at each other, measuring.

“Adan?” Fen finally asked, suspicious. Remembering, no doubt, Samin’s protests and threats in the alley.

Malick merely nodded, no apologies or rationalizations this time. “You’ll find they’re not all alike, if you bother to look.”

Fen’s mouth flattened, though Yori couldn’t tell if it was anger at the implied reprimand, disbelief, or even agreement. His gaze kept flicking to

Shig, hanging there, before he willfully pulled it away—pointing it at the floor, the ceiling, his own hands—then, finally, allowing it to meet and settle once again on Malick. “And you?”

Malick smiled, a rare soft one, like Fen had just handed him some kind of compliment. “I—”

“Malick has his reasons,” Umeia interjected with a quelling look at Malick that Yori thought for a moment Malick would ignore. He shot a narrow glance up at Umeia, his mouth still open and his mien clearly annoyed. Some secret almost spilled, maybe? If it was, Umeia seemed to care more about keeping it so than Malick apparently did. When Umeia held her warning glare and tightened her mouth, Malick only sighed and shook his head. Whether it was or it wasn’t, Umeia seemed to take it as concordance.

Yori almost slumped, strangely disappointed. If this Fen was to be one of their own, shouldn’t their secrets be his? Especially if they were supposed to be prying his out of him. And anyway, Yori kinda wanted to know too.

Shig giggled. “Back to Zero and start again,” she caroled, then threw herself forward, slapped her hands to the floor so hard and quick on either side of Fen’s thighs she made Fen startle back into the wall with a vicious snarl and reach for weapons he didn’t have. “Go ahead,” Shig whispered, cajoling, completely unaffected, “let him touch you. You’ll see.” She grinned over at Malick, a clump of messy braids falling down over her face, obscuring her eyes. “Right, Mal?”

Malick only stared back, for once seeming completely at a loss for words.

He shifted a questioning lift of an eyebrow at Yori. Yori could only shake her head. Sometimes she could serve as interpreter, but sometimes Shig was too obscure for even Yori to understand. And sometimes the things that spilled out of Shig’s mouth really were, plain and simple, nonsense, spoken aloud purely for her own amusement. Strangely, though, the little outburst had Fen peering at Shig, like he knew what she meant and was waiting for more, and not at all sure he actually wanted it. Perhaps he did know; Shig seemed to see him as some kind of kindred, after all.

Yori gently took hold of her sister’s shoulder, urging her back, which in turn seemed to loosen something in Fen. He breathed a touch easier, eyes losing a bit of their malice and wariness, and no longer looking like he was trying to back himself through the wall.

Umeia hmphed, satisfied, and kicked at Malick’s thigh with the toe of her pointy shoe until he rose to his feet and backed away, allowing Umeia to take his place. She crouched down in front of Fen with the damp cloth in her hand.

“What’ve you done to yourself, lad?” she wanted to know, ignoring the flinch

Ghost
back and fiery glare she got when she came at Fen’s face with the cloth. Lips pursing in annoyance, Umeia disregarded his obvious discomfort and took hold of his chin. “Keep still, then,” she chided, her tone that familiar mix of vexation and comfort that had, over the last years, come to be inextricably tangled up with the word “home” in Yori’s consciousness. “What’s your name, eh?” Umeia wanted to know. “Malick hasn’t got any manners—”

“Hey!”

“—so, we’d best not wait for him to make introductions.” Umeia cut Malick a narrow look; Malick returned it, which only made Umeia smirk.

“You’ve met Shig and Yori, yes? I’m Umeia.” And then she stared at Fen, expectant, all the while cleaning the blood from his chin, when he clearly wanted to be anywhere else but on the receiving end of her steel-limned concern. His mouth only tightened when she finished with his face and moved on to his wrist.

Grudgingly, he finally muttered, “Fen,” fingers reflexively curling in and arm jerking a little away from her touch, but Umeia never let go and gave no quarter. “Fen Jacin-rei.”

Yori very nearly blurted out an inappropriate guffaw at Malick’s look of betrayed chagrin. Umeia had, after all, bullied more out of Fen with two sentences than Malick had managed all evening.

“Buzz, buzz, buzzzz,” Shig hummed.

Umeia gave Shig an annoyed grimace, but otherwise paid no heed. “Jacin-rei, eh? Rei.” She grunted, eyes narrowing slightly, but her hands kept hold and kept soothing the hurts. “Does that mean what I think it means? Someone actually named you ‘Ghost’?”

Clearly, that was the wrong question. Whatever softness had been leaching into Fen’s expression, even through the discomfort, hardened immediately. He didn’t answer, just jerked his hand away from Umeia with a finality that even she didn’t protest, curled it into his chest, and looked down at his knees. Went silent. Again.

Umeia only sighed, not even looking annoyed this time. She shook her head and looked up at Malick. “No one can know he’s here. We can’t have it get ’round that we’re harboring an Untouchable.”

“I’ve thought about that.” Malick didn’t even appear put out that Umeia was telling him his business. “We could always say that he just showed up and took a room for his own, and we could hardly get in his way, could we?”

He shrugged with a grimace to show his dislike of the idea.

“How many saw him come through?” Umeia wanted to know.

“Not many, and Shig tweaked any who did,” Yori told her. Maybe that was why Shig was so flighty tonight. Having to adjust the memories of so many people at once had perhaps sent her outside herself for too long.

Malick was looking Fen over critically. “We could cover the braid with a hood, or something, I suppose.”

“I thought that wasn’t allowed,” Yori put in.

“There’s that too,” Malick agreed. “To be precise, none of this is allowed, so one more transgression won’t matter in the end, though any one of them could get us caught, so it’s best to limit them. But I think it shouldn’t get about at all. Not only would we have people coming to gawk, but I think the fact that you’re—pardon me, Jacin-rei, don’t take this the wrong way—but the fact that you’re not some—”

“Fen.” Sharp and bitten out from between clenched teeth.

Malick paused. “Sorry?”

Shig was shaking her head, her eyes rolling in disapproval as she frowned up at Malick, reproachful. Umeia gave both Shig and Fen a dubious look, but she didn’t try to resume her fussing.

Fen didn’t answer, just knelt there with his head bowed, because it was clear what he was saying. Yori understood it, so Malick had to. The question was some sort of bait, Yori had no doubt, or a test, to see what would happen.

It was just the sort of thing Malick did. He agitated, because it was useful.

And sometimes, it was just because it entertained him. Yori thought this time it was the former.

Malick stared down, eyebrows beetling for a beat, then he merely picked up from where he’d been cut off: “The fact that Fen is not some wild-eyed lunatic would draw too much attention.” He paused again, waiting, though Fen still refused to look up, still glaring at his knees with his jaw locked just as tight as his fists. “Our patron has instructed us to acquire you and facilitate you,” Malick finally continued, “two things which I’ve no doubt you’re aware could get us all hanged, and not only us, but every soul who happens to be patronizing the House at the time if we’re discovered.” Malick shot a weary look at Umeia. “We’ll figure out later how we’re to go about keeping it a secret.

“In return,” he went on, looking back at Fen, “he asks only that you repay his generosity by keeping our secrets as if they were your own, and assisting us in our work. I’ve seen what you can do, I think you can be an asset, if you so choose, but Samin is right: I can’t make you. I can tell you, though—
you’re in a position I don’t envy, and I know I’ve put you there, but it doesn’t

Ghost
change the fact that if you don’t accept the offer, I’ll have no choice in the matter anymore. I’ll give it until tomorrow before your name shows up on an order in my patron’s hand, and I follow his orders without question.”

Shig groaned, making a great show of falling back against Yori with a theatrical roll of her eyes. “For pity’s sake, will you just promise?”

Yori shoved her sister off her lap, trying to keep a surprised snort from breaking loose. “Promise what, love?”

“Yeah, promise what?” Malick wanted to know.

Shig sighed at Fen. “Words, words, words.” Her sympathetic expression split into a grin. “We get paid, though!” she put in cheerfully then turned to Umeia. “Malick’s still stuck on the touching part. You promise, Umeia.”

Umeia twitched a lopsided smile at her, apparently bemused but still more than willing to seize the opening. “You will be paid for your contributions, of course,” she agreed. “Two hundred a week, room and board, plus discretionary bonuses at the completion of each commission. The discretion is, of course, your patron’s.”

Yori noted the wording—‘your patron’ and not ‘our patron’. She often wondered about the relationship, or lack thereof, between Umeia and the Mage, but it wasn’t a subject she’d ever felt welcome to broach, and neither Malick nor Umeia ever gave any clue. Umeia leaned in again, reached out as only Umeia would dare to do, and slipped her fingers, gently but firmly, beneath Fen’s chin, lifting his head. Fen growled glared as expected, but he met her gaze and there was no growling or snapping of teeth as there had been earlier.

“Your… causes coincide.” Umeia was as somber and sincere as she ever got, except for when it involved her coffers. “I can’t promise you that you’ll get back whatever it is Shig says you’ve lost, but I can promise you that you will have the one you seek. And you’ll have the others there behind you to make sure you do. The Mage keeps his promises. Dubious choice or no, it’s a good offer. If I were you, I’d take it.”

“There!” Shig slumped down, happily relieved. “Finally.”

Fen only stared at her gaudy braids, frowning, more in question now than anger. It should have made Yori less uneasy, but it didn’t. His hard gaze moved to Umeia, hung there for a while, then flitted quickly to and away from Yori. Finally, it settled on Malick. Stayed there. Hard as granite. Even Umeia reaching again for his wrist didn’t move him.

Shig peered up at Malick through her hair. “He’s waiting for you to promise,” she stage-whispered. Yori swallowed yet another snort. Shig turned to eye her with reproach. “’S not funny, Yori.”

If Shig sometimes reminded Yori of a child, this was not one of those times. Her jade-green gaze was just as hard and cold as Fen’s, and sharper than usual, strange worlds swirling within it of which Yori could only sometimes catch a glimpse. It lumped something in her chest, dried up all her precarious good humor.

Yori nodded—more like a respectful bow of her head—and patted Shig’s arm. “I’m sorry, sweetie.” As if to directly negate everything Yori had just been thinking, Shig grinned, wide and lovely, then turned back to Malick, all bright-eyed and expectant.

Malick was still staring at her, chewing his lip, his brow bunched tight.

Finally, he blew out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair. He turned to Fen. “Exactly who are you looking for?”

“I don’t know.” The reply was instant and straightforward.

“You don’t know.” Malick’s head cocked to the side, his expression doubtful. “Do you know where this mystery person lives? Works? What he looks like?”

Fen only stared. Then he blinked. Slowly.

“Right.” Malick sighed with a shake of his head. “A Ghost looking for a phantom. Brilliant.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Why d’you want him?”

Fen thought about that for a moment before answering. “He’s stolen something from me.” It was flat, somewhat thick, and he swallowed heavily, obviously not wanting to answer even that much.

Malick was relentless. Because that was just Malick. “What’s he stolen?”

Fen’s gaze made the rounds again—from Umeia to Yori, then finally pausing on Shig—as though gauging, calculating. He looked back up at Malick. “He… he murdered my father and took….” He paused, set his jaw.

“Took my mother.”

Malick was quiet for a long moment, gone instantly from hard and nearly cruel to all soft understanding. “And your mother is—”

“She is spirit-bound.” It was shoved out between clenched teeth, like it hurt to let go of it. “Of the full-Blood.”

Yori’s stomach dropped a little. No wonder Shig’s scars had so plainly affected Fen. She knew what most of these people did with their “property,”

Ghost
and she knew Shig had been relatively lucky, so to speak. The man who’d bought them hadn’t had the money or the connections to do what had likely happened to Fen’s mother, but it had only been a matter of time before Shig’s

“help” enabled their keeper to acquire both. The brief touch of empathy Yori had felt before closed her in a tight fist this time. Thinking back to how she’d behaved when Umeia took them in—all bold posturing and prickly fake pride—Yori thought perhaps this snarling, snapping Untouchable wasn’t so incomprehensible after all. No wonder Shig took to him.

Malick was nodding slowly, eyes narrowed. “We need to talk in private,”

he said quietly.

MALICK waited until Umeia had finished her fluttering and shoved the bloody cloth at him—“Just in case,” she’d said, but with stern instructions not to do anything that might require it again and a severe look to go along with it. She didn’t, Malick noticed with a sour curl of his lip, demand the same from Fen. Instead, she informed him she’d bring him some salve later and bandage his wrist for him. Fen, predictably, didn’t answer.

Shig and Yori wandered out behind Umeia. Malick didn’t think he’d ever been so pleased before to see the back of that multicolored head. He liked Shig, even loved her in his way, and for all her outward nonsensical jabber, she usually fit quite a few gems of wisdom in between the streams of twaddle.

Still, she’d unnerved him tonight, several times. That whole “promise”

business was asking quite a lot, and she’d demanded it for someone who refused to demand for himself. Shig could be as bitchy as she could be sweet, but Malick couldn’t remember her ever actually demanding anything before.

And while he thought he had a good idea what all the talk about “quiet” was, he didn’t like Shig making promises for him. Certainly not about something he might be able to use as leverage. What with him being an unapologetic mercenary and all.

“I’m sorry,” Malick said honestly after the door had closed behind Yori.

Heh—unapologetic. Right. He waited, but when Fen just sat there, like he’d been for almost an hour now, kneeling on the floor in his meditative pose, head bowed, Malick went on, “About your mother, I mean.”

He frowned when there was no reaction, not even a nod in acknowledgement. And he’d been sincere too, damn it. What did a man have to do to get one little conciliation?

“Listen… can I call you Jacin-rei?”

Perhaps a new, more casual start would help move things along.

“No,” was the immediate reply.

Malick’s mouth went tight, but he let the slight pass. “All right, Fen, then.

I want to give you that promise, I really do, but you must see the difficulty.

You’re going to have to pry open that mouth of yours and give me some more information.”

“I thought your patron knew it all.” Sneered this time. Fen lifted his head, that glare that did unwise things inside Malick’s chest nearly nailing him to the floor. “‘Twitch at the end of my blade,’ isn’t that what you said before?”

Damn, was it? Probably. And it was close enough to the truth, but a thing like this…. Malick didn’t think “patience” was going to be a word Fen wanted to hear. And if Fen's mother had dropped into the same nowhere hole most of the Disappeared had gone, the promise of the Mage was perhaps not one Malick felt inclined to offer himself.

“My patron tends to do things in his own time,” he offered, a bit chagrined. “I’m thinking this is something you want right now, yeah?” As expected, Fen only glared at him, but Malick took it for a yes. He nodded.

“Right. And I’m thinking you plan to make my life absurdly difficult unless you get what you want right now?” Still with the glare. Malick was beginning to think it was a language all its own. He nodded again. “Uh-huh. Then I’ll offer you this: join us and I’ll help you find her.”

Shit, had he really just said that? Well, all right, he’d said it, but he hadn’t said he’d do anything about it. The ‘twitch at the end of your blade’ part had been the Mage, not Malick. He was still safe. Relatively.

The gray eyes narrowed in warning this time. Malick held back a growl.

Damn it, didn’t sincerity—even lackluster, accidental sincerity—mean anything to this man? There was only so much of it Malick owned, and he was wasting it on this cold little prick.

“All right, I’ll do my best to help you find her.” There—that should cover Malick’s ass, or at least give him enough time to get familiar with Fen’s.

“Look, I’m very good at what I do, and this is what I do. However, I’ll admit that the detective work is usually done for me, and you’re going to have to cooperate by giving me the information I need. What you want is next to impossible, just so we’re clear”—well, probably—“but as long as it doesn’t interfere with our orders, I see no reason why I can’t spend my spare time helping you.” He wouldn’t mention that it would afford all kinds of opportunities to be near the Untouchable enigma, who was, after tonight, just a tiny bit less enigmatic. Who knew what Malick might find out, what could happen in the time spent working toward a goal so close to Fen’s black little

Ghost
heart? “That’s a promise over and above the one you get from the others and the Mage. And certainly not one I’ve ever offered before. Take Umeia’s advice and accept it.”

Fen scowled, dragged his eyes away, and pointed them once more to the floor. “Why me?” he whispered, so low Malick almost missed it.

He thought about that, tilted his head. “First, tell me what made you come here tonight.”

No games this time—Malick really had been wondering about that, and how the Mage had known, and why he’d set them on the Untouchable at all, considering the very real risks. Their patron tended to know quite a lot of things no one could know, and Malick rarely ever questioned their assignments, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t wary. Fen’s answer might help Malick give him one in return. Maybe even one Malick wouldn’t mind giving.

Fen didn’t answer for a while, but gravid pauses seemed to be the rule for him, so Malick waited him out. Then, finally: “The boy’s name was on a note in Lord Hende’s chambers, with the address of the Girou.”

Malick’s eyebrows shot up. “You did Lord Hende?” He hadn’t been told about that one, but he remembered the talk last week when it happened. “They said he’d hung himself.”

“Well, they would, wouldn’t they?”

Malick hadn’t really expected a reply. He nearly cheered—it was the first unnecessary sentence Fen had spoken all night, and Malick hadn’t even had to pry it out of him. Still, the information was interesting. And he supposed these men would be getting more careful with what details they turned loose in public. Between Fen working alone and Malick’s little bunch, quite a few wealthy, important men had been picked off just lately, and it made sense that they’d close ranks about each other and try to handle it between themselves and their personal, feudal armies. After all, what they were doing was not only ghastly, but highly illegal, and it wasn’t surprising they wouldn’t want the Doujou to get too interested. Malick had noticed with concern the increased number of guards and minders about their targets the last few weeks, which was one reason he’d been so keen to do the Mage’s bidding on acquiring Fen.

But none of it answered Malick’s original question. Lord Hende, Fen’s latest victim, had been a new admirer of Madi’s, so it wasn’t terribly surprising that the boy’s name had been found somewhere in the man’s effects, and it wasn’t terribly surprising that Fen would seize on it as a breadcrumb on the way to finding his mother. It still wasn’t something that anyone other than Hende or Fen would have known, so the Mage seemed to

be living up to his name. A little too well. It smelled like a setup. Malick just didn’t know from which side it was coming.

“So, you found Madi’s name on a piece of paper, and you came here to…

what? Beat some information out of him?” Malick paused, lifted an eyebrow.

“Kill him?”

That would be a shame. Malick didn’t really know the boy, but he’d seen him around and he seemed the soft, pleasant sort. Madi was only half-Jin, no magic, and he had that Jin prettiness, though he wasn’t nearly as pretty as Fen.

Fen’s hands clenched tighter, and he looked down again. “Perhaps,” he admitted.

And why did the thought of Fen killing the pretty, pleasant-enough boy sit better with Malick than Fen fucking him? Or being fucked by him? Malick caught the thought before it took his mind down into places it shouldn’t be going right now.

“I’m afraid I can’t really answer your question. I don’t know why the Mage chose you.” Malick held a hand out when Fen’s head snapped up and his glare narrowed on Malick again. “I would if I could, but I honestly don’t know. The Mage has his reasons, and I don’t generally disagree with them, since they usually turn out right in the end. He said, ‘Get the Untouchable,’

told us when you’d come, and we did it. I can’t guess why he wanted you, except that perhaps you’re meant for more than being Untouchable.”

Malick paused, thoughtful. He hadn’t said Untouchable, actually, he’d said Catalyst, which was what had raised Malick’s suspicions and made him wonder about these orders more than he’d usually wondered about the others.

He had his own deal with the Mage, after all, and he was going to be rather pissed if this was the first stage in the breaking of it—angry, pretty Fen-the-Untouchable or no.

“I don’t know,” he went on slowly, shrugged and tried to make it less uneasy than it was. “Maybe he just wants the one who took your mother, and you’re his best chance of getting him. The Mage does not explain himself to me, and it’s the best guess I’ve got.”

Malick could live with that, he supposed—as long as Fen was the one doing the getting, if the mother was where Malick thought she might be.

He hadn’t realized what he’d just said would have an effect like nothing else he’d said all night: Fen’s gaze went from fierce to pensive between one slow blink and the next. Perhaps because it was likely very close to what he wanted to hear. No, it was probably exactly what he wanted to hear. He’d mowed through four—no, five, including Hende now—victims in as many

Ghost
weeks, and had still got nowhere. That was a long time to be imagining all of the horrible things that could be happening to one’s mother. And now, Malick was offering probably the first bit of hope Fen had had, and backing it up with ready-made allies and an anonymous magician.

Fen was theirs, Malick had him, he could nearly taste it; all Fen had to do was say the words. Malick could actually see him wanting to. Still, something held him back.

He peered steadily at Malick, asked, “Who is this Mage?”

Damn. He wasn’t going to like this answer. “I don’t know,” Malick said honestly.

“You don’t know.”

“I don’t know. No one does.” Malick shrugged. “I get my orders, I follow them, he pays me. Very well. Since those I’m paid to eliminate are generally those who deserve it, I don’t ask questions.”

Fen’s head tilted. “And if you were paid to murder a Jin farmer’s wife?

Son? Daughter?”

So, you’re from farming stock, eh? Did you mean to give that away, or was it an accident?

Malick couldn’t give an honest answer to this one. Right now, Fen wanted very specific answers, and would believe them only because they were what he wanted to hear. And he wouldn’t want to hear Malick’s honest answer.

“Then I may have cause for the very rare occasion of questioning my orders,” he said instead.

It might be at least half-true. Then again, he might do it without question.

He used to do his own digging when he got a name and the scant information necessary to doing his job—mostly out of his own curiosity, and because he didn’t trust someone he’d never met face to face, just on principle. Once he’d recognized the common goal to the varied assignments, investigating the targets beforehand for anything other than determining their routines and weaknesses seemed like a waste of time. He’d twigged to the Mage’s pattern right away, and by lucky chance, agreed with it. Malick had no problem assuaging any demons that might come to call with the justification that those he took money to kill were best got off the skin of the world anyway, Wolf would approve, and he killed no one he was forbidden to kill, so he was actually doing good deeds. No different than Samin, when you got right down to it. Except that Samin sincerely believed it. Samin had lines he wouldn’t cross. Malick really didn’t know if he did.

“I need some time,” Fen said quietly, head dipped down again in what another might take for submission, but Malick thought it was more like avoidance. “I have… things I need to… take care of.”

Malick’s eyes narrowed. What could an Untouchable have to take care of? No home, no kin, no connections, wasn’t that how it was supposed to work? Wander about, influence others by mere presence, and whatever the Catalyst chose to do or not do was a command from the Ancestors and would affect the world in the way they so chose—at least that was the idea. It had rather changed since the Ancestors had gone stridently insane nearly a century and a half ago. What loose ends could this man possibly have to tie up?

Then again, why was this Fen not a babbling madman? Why was there a missing mother about whom he apparently cared deeply enough to leave a swath of corpses behind him on his hunt for her? Why was he well clothed and well fed? He certainly didn’t have the look of one taking his chances in the elements, so he obviously had a home of some sort. Damn it, why had Malick not looked into this one before? He’d received the orders almost a week ago, he’d had plenty of time. Perhaps he’d gone lazy over the years.

“What things?” Malick asked, though he knew he wasn’t going to get an answer. He waited for a moment anyway, taking in the deceptively submissive pose: a man on his knees, head bowed, long, glistening braid snaking on the floor beside him. Gah. Malick really needed to stick to business tonight. He sighed. “And do you plan to return?”

You accept, we both know you do, just say the words.

“Have I a choice?” Fen asked coldly.

Malick rolled his eyes. “Not a very good one, no,” he admitted. He shrugged. “Fine. Go take care of your things. I’ll expect you back for breakfast. Can I trust you to not let anyone follow you back?” Shig would be pissed if Malick dragged her out of bed before dawn to take care of any inconvenient strangers’ memories.

Fen’s head came up a little, his full mouth twisted sideways, but he locked his gaze to the wall behind Malick, rather than on Malick himself. “I’ll manage.”

“I expect you will,” Malick muttered.

And had every intention of finding out how. There was no way in the world he was going to let Fen wander about, not with all of the deadly information he now possessed. And Malick knew Fen was not going to allow him to invite himself along—kept things far too close to his chest, this one—
and if Malick forced his presence on him, those “things” Fen wanted to take

Ghost
care of would simply wait for a time when he’d be out from under Malick’s eye. Not that Malick would allow that to happen anytime soon. Fen-the-Untouchable had been dangerous before, but now he was a potential risk to them all.

“Fine, then,” Malick said. “I’ll expect you back at sunup. If you’re not here….” He opened a hand, let the threat hang.

Fen said nothing, just got to his feet, somehow doing it without a single grunt or apparent twinge, considering he’d been kneeling in the same position, rod-rigid, for nearly an hour. Malick expected Fen to breeze past him without another word, perhaps even a disdainful scowl for a “good-bye,” but he didn’t. He paused right next to Malick, stood stock-still for half a breath, then, without even an obvious shift, his hand snapped up and latched onto Malick’s.

Malick had to stop himself from a flinch—an instinctive block to keep Fen from grabbing one of Malick’s weapons, and then deliberate stillness to keep Malick from drawing one himself—but this wasn’t an attack.

Head up, narrow gray gaze fastened to Malick’s surprised one, and a grip like bound wire. Fen stared, eyes going just a touch wider, breath indrawn quick and silent, like a throttled gasp.

It’s… it’s gone quiet.

Malick almost— almost—smirked but managed to choke it back and keep his face blank.

Go ahead, little Ghost, ask me again what I am. I might just answer you this time. Then again, I might not.

Fen didn’t ask, though. Wouldn’t. Like he couldn’t make himself, when he too obviously wanted to.

Malick gave him a purposeful hint of a smile. “Breakfast, then,” he said easily. “Have a lovely evening, little Ghost.”

Chew on that.

Fen’s mouth tightened; so did his grip for half a second, then he abruptly let go, took a step back. Stared. With the tiniest curl of his lip, Fen lifted his chin, looked down his straight nose the half inch he had on Malick. Made a great show of looking Malick’s wide-wiry build over thoroughly and then his own. “Who d’you keep calling little?” he snapped, and irritably quit the room.

Malick only smirked and gave him to the count of thirty before he followed.

Planting-month, Year 1312, Cycle of the Wolf JACIN only stood there like a crack-brained fool while Joori threatened and snarled at the strange man. Then again, Jacin supposed he rather was a crack-brained fool now, and whatever sanity was still ramming about the edges of the chaos would sink inside it soon enough, so he’d best use it while he still could.

A whining white buzz droned in the back of his mind, but every now and then, it would ramp itself up, take to screaming, and it was all he could do not to scream along with it. Perhaps, if any of it made sense, if he could latch on to a string of words and bend them into sanity, it wouldn’t twist his mind so, but now he thought he had a much better idea of why Untouchables lost themselves inside it all so quickly. He supposed he was lucky he could still follow a conversation if he concentrated, and he hadn’t really expected better for himself than the fates suffered by others, but… he’d dared to hope. Had caught Joori’s hope by accident like some kind of contagious infection. His biggest miscalculation, no doubt.

“What fee?” Joori was demanding, bold and a little too angry in the face of this Adan. “What do you want from my father?”

The man chuckled, strangely not angered by Joori’s impudence. “I assure you, young Fen-seyh, I want nothing from your father he did not willingly—
indeed, gladly—agree to give me.” His dark eyes shifted over to Jacin again, oddly warm and purposefully looking right at him, not shifting away like others always did when they caught sight of the braid—like his father always did. The man dipped his head in what couldn’t be a respectful nod but nevertheless was. “Jacin-rei, I am pleased to make your acquaintance once again.”

Jacin only kept staring. All the words made sense, but they kept getting tangled up with the confusion, and surely he couldn’t have heard what he thought he’d just heard?

But perhaps he had, because Joori had stopped his angry posturing, struck abruptly mute, his fingers digging into Jacin’s arm in a way that would have hurt this morning but now gave Jacin a teetering little center on which to latch his mind. “‘Once again.’” Joori’s tone was cautious. “What does that mean?”

The man’s eyes slid over to Joori, a little cooler than before. “I see you have come well through your Change, Fen… Joori, is it?” He smiled when both boys sucked in short, sharp breaths. “And how does your mother fare with the spirits that so test her?”

Ghost

Jacin’s gut tumbled down to the ground. This man knew. An Adan knew.

He could snap his fingers and rain fire on both Joori and their mother, and there was nothing they could do to stop him.

Everything notched up in volume, scrabbled inside Jacin’s mind like greedy fingers, tearing and splitting a wide, gaping hole in his sanity. He floundered on its edges, tracking what was going on around him only vaguely, but he held to it with wild desperation—
boy our boy must listen only say it once miss the sense miss the chance

“You son of a—” Joori would have leapt at the man’s throat, had Jacin not taken hold of him, dragged him back. The knife was flailing about, catching Wolf’s grinning face and refracting it at the Adan’s calm one. “Let me go, Jacin, didn’t you hear—?”

“Joori,” Jacin breathed, because it was all he could breathe, all he could say, all he could think, because Joori brought the sense with him somehow, opened up Jacin’s balance and forced it still with the singing sweetness of brilliant pain—
dying magic Catalyst slides to Zero our twice-born listenlistenlisten the day comes the Null veils the Eye a cloak of night our boy clinging to corpses

—Joori, only Joori— too much, too much, help me, brother, paladin, real Self—made the insanity take a step back and quiet down, let Jacin’s own thoughts through, and ah, fuck, he couldn’t listen to it for another second.

“Joori!” The one word that made sense to him amidst all the mad raving.

“Sound the vaults of Raven cast acid to the sky they don’t see like Owl won’t hear mockery it’s all gone sour worm-ridden carcass of faith and hope the gods won’t save them they’ve all gone home clinging to corpses too loud please our boy wandering both edges gutted on the spit of the crux—”

Moaning—actually moaning—between snatches of lunatic blather. It was everywhere—in his head, in his mouth, in his ears, crawling all over his mind like spiky-legged spiders. Everything and everything. Words, words, words, one over the other, whispering to him, screaming at him, and he couldn’t tease them apart, make sense of more than two at a time. Zero bleeding into Catalyst blurring into WolfRavenWolfRaven, then slurring all together and trying to spill out his mouth, over and over again.

It drove into his skull like so much static, whining and buzzing so loud it nearly set his teeth gnashing and his hand reaching, reaching, and oh, save him, Joori—

“It’s all right, Jacin, it’ll be all right, just calm down, listen to me, concentrate on me—” A quick shake. “—on this, Jacin, listen to me!”

Ignoring the strange man who watched them, who knew them, ignoring the braid and what it meant, because Joori always had—

“Hold on, listen to my voice—”

—he took his little knife and cut across Jacin’s—

Jacin, I’ve always been Jacin to him, no “rei,” not from Joori.

—cut across Jacin’s palm, dug deep with the tip until the sharp burn brushed along the edges of the noise. Cut him again and then himself, gripped Jacin’s hand and bled with him until the pain laid a fuzzy layer of despair over the din. Sat with him—fuck, Jacin had gone to his knees, weeping and babbling in the dirt in front of this stranger who knew them—and rocked him until he stopped weeping and shaking, listened to the voices with him and told him he wasn’t insane.

Jacin didn’t lift his head away from Joori’s chest, didn’t want to see.

Couldn’t bear for him to see. It didn’t even matter that this was his brother who loved him and had never flinched from him, never called him Ghost, never looked away— you’re my brother, you idiot, there’s no such thing as Untouchable—no one should see this. No one should be witness to a Ghost’s humiliation, his degradation, it wasn’t fair, unacceptable, unbearable, he hadn’t given his permission, not to Joori, Joori shouldn’t have to—

“How very… interesting,” the Adan murmured.

Joori’s arms stiffened about Jacin’s ribs, like he’d forgotten the man was there just as thoroughly as Jacin had. “We have to run,” Joori whispered, soft and low in Jacin’s ear. “We’ve no choice now. I’ve just touched an Untouchable in front of an Adan.”

The horrible sense of it got through where even the pain had left gaping holes. Jacin had just doomed Joori with his delirious begging. He could have screamed, he could have torn his own eyes out, he could have punched Joori right in the mouth, because why had he listened when Jacin had begged, why had he risked himself when he knew what he was doing?

“You mustn’t try to run,” the man’s deep voice warned, as though he’d heard, except he couldn’t have. “I promise you, you will both end badly, if you do. On the other hand….” Dangled there, like a bright, shiny lure in murky depths, but he didn’t finish the apparent snare. Instead, there was a pause, a shift of boots in the weedy spring growth as the man stepped slowly closer. “It’s a shame your father did not warn you. Tonight would be so much easier.” A heavy sigh. “Death does not follow my steps tonight, fear not, Fen Joori. I have not come to Disappear you or your mother. I have, in fact, done my very best over the years to make sure you are not discovered.”

Ghost

Joori pushed away from Jacin slowly but kept a firm hold on his hand, squeezing every few seconds to renew the sharp bite in his palm. “Why?”

Joori asked, tone suspicious and far too brash.

“Joori,” Jacin whispered, weak warning, but he couldn’t manage to get his voice to do anything but rasp ineffectively.

“Hush, brother,” Joori murmured. “Let me.”

Let him what? Talk himself into a noose or worse?

“Your father has not told you anything at all, has he?” Jacin opened his eyes to see the man looking down at Joori with what looked like real compassion. “How terrible your Change must have been, unprepared as you were.” His head tilted and his lips tightened—a thin line of anger Jacin couldn’t fathom. “Tell me, how did you manage to keep undiscovered before?

Twins, after all.”

Because there were no twins anymore, twins meant magic, and if a woman managed to birth them to term, no one ever saw them after. One way or another. Except for Joori and Jacin, but Jacin didn’t count, wasn’t half of a Self, but a void at his brother’s side.

“Our father didn’t know,” Joori told the man grudgingly—whether because he was giving away information he thought no one’s business or because he was obliquely defending their father and resented the necessity, Jacin couldn’t tell. Likely both. “The midwife told our parents that Jacin….”

He paused, turned a guilty glance on Jacin then a defiant one back up to the Adan. “…that perhaps I had magic once, before we were born, but the Untouchable—” He spat the word. “—nulled it in the womb.”

“Hm,” the man hummed, then twitched his dark eyebrows. “I expect all that matters is that it was effective.” He seemed to speak mostly to himself, then shook his head in disapproval. He turned a sharp glance on Jacin. “And your Change?”

“What Change?” Joori snapped, insolent. “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

Jacin tightened his grip on Joori’s hand, slippery with their blood, hissed,

“Joori,” more alarmed by the second at the chances his brother was taking with this stranger who could be the end of him so easily. And what did it matter? What Change? Like the man didn’t already know. Like anyone couldn’t tell just by looking.

The man merely chuckled again, no condescension or derision in the pleasant surge of it. “Have it your way, Fen Joori. You are and remain undiscovered, and I am content.” His dark gaze turned serious. “You must

keep undiscovered—a redundant warning, I am sure, but one worth wasting breath on. Fate has a use for you. It always does.”

“You’re a seer,” Joori said, almost accusing. When the man merely smiled, Joori’s eyes narrowed. “And how have you remained undiscovered?”

This time, the man laughed, full and rich from his throat; such a lovely counterpoint to the noise blundering about in Jacin’s head. Jacin was nearly mesmerized. Absorbed and enrapt. What a beautiful man, with his dark eyes and dark hair, that melodic laugh sliding up through his chest and winding all around Jacin in symphonic tones of calm, wordless reassurance. It managed to soothe him where all of Joori’s bravado and selfless shielding had not.

“It helps that Fate’s voice is not quite so obvious as trembling earth,” the Adan told Joori. “I have remained undiscovered simply because I do not wish to be discovered, and am careful to prevent it.”

Joori’s head cocked to the side. “Would they Disappear you too, if they found you?” His tone was less harsh than a moment ago—real interest, rather than blatant testing of boundaries.

The Adan shrugged, unconcerned. “I expect that would depend on who discovered me. Some would keep quiet for a price, others would bleed me just as dry as any Jin, though my blood would do them little good. I have no Jin in me.” Incredibly, he looked almost saddened by the statement. “They might perhaps manage a shadow charm or two, maybe even a weak healing serum, if they’re skilled enough, but nothing worth the time and expense to those who seek profit in such things.”

“And the Courts?”

“The Courts would put an end to me quite thoroughly and painfully, I expect. Yet more painfully, if it were discovered that I have deliberately hidden Jin magic from them.”

“Then why—?”

“And that is all I have time for, young Fen-seyh. The moons ripen, and I cannot linger. Please—go and fetch your father. There is still the matter of my fee.”

“Fee for what?” Joori pressed, though he stood, dragging Jacin to his feet with a crushing wrench to his hand, pulling together the thoughts threatening to scatter apart. “What does my father owe you?”

“I think….” The man paused, sighed and shook his head. “That is a question I leave to your father to answer. But I will thank you now for the care of your brother, and warn you once more—keep your magic cloaked deep, and watch over your mother. I do not see that she will be your

Ghost
inadvertent betrayal, but even Fate is changeable and one must take no chances.”

Joori stared for a long moment, shaking his head in bewildered fascination. “Who are you to thank me for caring for my own brother? What are we to you, and why are you—?”

“Your father, Fen Joori.” Snapped out this time, stern and cool, where a moment ago it had been warm and friendly. “I will not ask again.”

Joori scowled, distrustful, but he reached for Jacin and tugged him to a stumbling step behind him.

“Leave your brother,” the man ordered. “I would speak with Fen Jacin-rei.”

“Jacin,” Joori corrected automatically, then he realized what he’d said and shut his mouth. He peered angrily at the man and more contritely at Jacin.

“Such a useful thing, hope,” was the man’s only retort, small smile bending cryptic. Playing with them, but… not. It gave Jacin a strange, exhilarated little shiver, before the drone fuzzed out whatever sense he’d been trying to make of it. Joori. Right. Protect Joori from his own tongue.

“Go,” Jacin murmured, giving Joori a little shove. “Before your mouth manages to slit your own throat.”

“Jacin, you—” Joori cut himself off with a growl, peered from the man to Jacin again, then stepped in close. “I don’t trust him. He’s not here to protect us, he wants something, and the gods only know what Father promised him, or why. Don’t say—”

“I’ll be careful,” Jacin told him, shrugging at his brother’s dubious look, because right, sure, how was he supposed to be careful when things came spewing from his mouth he couldn’t even remember? He closed his fingers over his torn palm, dipped the tips mercilessly into the gash, sighing a little at the soothing bite of clarity. “I’ll be careful,” he repeated, his bloody fist held between them so his brother would see, would know he meant it. “He seems….” Another shrug and a quick look at the Adan prophet. “He could’ve killed us already, or brought the Doujou down on us, if that’s what he wanted.

He seems all right.”

Not entirely, but mostly, and he looked at Jacin, like only Joori and Mother did—Caidi too, but she was only little, it was only a matter of time before she began averting her eyes and treating him like the Ghost he was now. But this man, this Adan, knew exactly what Jacin was, and met his eyes like he mattered. It was too novel not to explore.

Joori grunted unhappily, curling Jacin’s fist tighter with a significant look, then hurried into the house. Jacin rhythmically poked his fingers— one, two, three, four, Adan’s knocking on your door—into the wound, ignoring the slippery-slick ooze of blood dripping through his knuckles. He stared at the ground, silent. Waiting and hoping for something, though he had no idea what.

“I am sorry I could not be here to help you when the Ancestors called,”

the man said quietly.

And that was it, what Jacin had hoped for—words spoken directly to him, not at and around him, like Morin, not oblique messages through Joori like his father. Not sudden silence at the bartering stalls or on the streets, people dipping their heads and looking away, pretending they didn’t see him, pretending he couldn’t see them, making a Ghost of him before he was even dead or Changed. And here he was, noise in his head, shaking his sanity every second, forcing him to try and think around it, building up dams and little mazes through it anchored to pain—now he was a Ghost, Untouchable, ragged braid hanging heavy over his shoulder—and still, this man spoke to him. Jacin was instantly besotted, tears leaking out from the corners of his eyes, and he didn’t care. A warm hand to his shoulder, and he slid from besotted to dangerously infatuated with a single squeeze of long fingers.

“I had foreseen that your brother would be the one to find a way for you, and I see that he has.” The hand moved from Jacin’s shoulder, took up his own, and pried open his fingers. A sharp look from the dark eyes, and the man poked cautiously at the wound, tilted his head and did it again with less caution and more intent. He smiled when Jacin sucked in a quick breath and tightened his teeth. “Very good,” the man told him, curling Jacin’s fingers over again and patting his fist. “It will make things easier.”

What things? Jacin wanted to know, Easier how? What am I to you? Why have you come? Why have you hidden my mother and my brother? And what does my father owe you for it?

He didn’t ask any of it, not entirely sure he cared. Instead, he asked,

“Who are you?”

Another of those warm smiles lit the man’s dark eyes and turned him ageless. “Ah, yes, I expect perhaps you didn’t hear me when I introduced myself.” He stepped back, swept Jacin a mystifying bow—an Adan bowing to a Jin—and squeezed his hand again. “I am Asai. I have come—”

“—cowardly son of a bitch!” Joori came barreling through the kitchen door, followed closely by their father, slumped and beaten, where Joori was very nearly on fire with seething malice. Joori ran toward Jacin, eyes intent on

Ghost

Jacin’s hand in Asai’s, and didn’t stop ’til he’d nearly tackled Jacin away. “He sold you!” he bellowed. “The son of a bitch sold you—to him!” Joori’s arm snapped out, finger pointed accusingly at Asai as he jerked Jacin away and behind him.

“Sold…?” Jacin shook his head, unable to make sense of the statement.

Sold him for what? Who would pay even a skipping stone for a Ghost?

And would it be so bad?

Joori was weeping now, anger and outrage all over his dirty, tear-stained face. “To keep me and Mother hidden—that was his ‘fee’, Jacin. He knew, he saw, and he’s come to take you away as his fee. Father knew and he’s going to let him!”

And again, that single question— Would that be so bad? —turned inside Jacin’s head like a faceted gem, and he had a moment of brilliant, crystal-sharp clarity.

Joori loved Jacin, was enraged on his behalf, was terrified of losing him, and Jacin didn’t doubt that. But Joori had never allowed himself to believe in Jacin’s fate, had sometimes even half convinced Jacin to hope against it himself. Had refused to even tack the “rei” onto Jacin’s name when he could get away with it; made it a point to try and get away with it every time, even though their father never failed to make an equal point to force Joori to say it.

And it was forced—bitten out through anger swathed like a prickly blanket over their entire lives. Willing to turn his back on the beliefs and traditions of a dying people and abscond with the Untouchable, against every law and all reason. Willing to sacrifice their mother—because oh, yes, Jacin had understood the things Joori wouldn’t say—for the vague hope that he could save Jacin from letting the voices untether his mind and keep his spirit from following after. Denying all the while that it was likely hopeless in the end.

Jacin would slip one day, the Ancestors would have their useless oracle-sacrifice.

It wasn’t that Joori didn’t love Jacin—it was just that he loved the Jacin that had been this morning. He would never accept that the boy he’d grown up with, shared a womb with, was no more. He would throw himself between Jacin and any threat, still hanging on to that denial. And he’d never believe any of it. Jacin knew Joori, all too well, knew that if this man, this Asai, had not shown up tonight, Joori would have merely waited until Jacin was overcome again, unable to argue with him, and dragged him off to keep him safe. Would look after him, do everything he could to help Jacin keep his sanity, would likely even cut off the braid and damn himself just as surely as that aborted attempt to put Jacin out of his misery could’ve done. And would

one day get himself killed for a boy who didn’t even exist anymore, whose life had always been counted in stolen hours until Fate and the ghosts of long-dead magicians finally caught him out.

Joori likely could love Jacin-rei-the-Untouchable, because that’s just the way Joori was—all great big heart and ready fury—but he’d never let go of Fen Jacin enough to give him room. The boy Jacin had been this morning was just as much a ghost as… as he was now.

“It’s you.”

Jacin peered up to watch his mother come slowly across the yard, sidestepping his father like she didn’t even see him, and stop in front of Asai.

She absently adjusted Caidi in her arms, wobbled a half-choked sob.

“You’ve come back.”

That was it, then, confirmation, final and solid, in his mother’s ingenuous greeting.

Sold. Traded as a safeguard. Used.

Strangely, it curled a smile at Jacin’s mouth. It was the only time his father had ever acknowledged overtly that his Ghost-son actually existed.

“Mother,” Joori moaned, betrayed and distraught, “say you didn’t know.”

Jacin hadn’t realized that Joori had taken up his hand again, compulsively squeezing it, keeping him here. It comforted Jacin and made him bitterly sad, all at the same time.

Their mother turned slowly from Asai to Joori, shook her head. “I didn’t,”

she answered, her eyes saner than they’d been the last time Jacin had seen her, and her voice steady. “But… Joori.” She clenched her teeth, set Caidi down to toddle over to the boys. Caidi’s smile was bright and open as she latched onto the leg of Jacin’s trousers and beamed up at him. “He saved you once,” their mother said. “Perhaps…?” Her gaze went back to Asai, hopeful now.

“Perhaps he has come again to save Jacin?”

“Jacin-rei,” their father put in automatically.

Joori growled under his breath, but Jacin merely ignored it, stooping down to pull his little sister into a hug. She dipped in willingly, chubby little arms curling about his neck, and he closed his eyes, pressed his face into her golden curls and breathed in her clean baby-scent. Morin was hovering just outside the back door, watching—alternately frightened and smug—and Jacin thought that, oddly, he’d miss Morin too.

Ghost

He wasn’t surprised when his sister was wrenched from his grip so hard she started to wail, and the chickens started up their edgy prattle again. He wasn’t surprised to see it was his father who dragged her away from him.

“You’re a hypocrite!” Joori was shouting. “All our lives, you’ve treated him like a Ghost because you said you believed your traditions, and now you’re going to piss in the faces of the gods and hand him over like a piece of property. You’re no better than an Adan, you cowardly fuck!”

“Joori,” their mother soothed, stepping over to her sons and taking their bloodied joined hands in both of her own. “Fate does with us what it will.

This man….” She peered over at Asai, tried to smile a little, but it turned confused, and she shuddered. “They will meet again.” Oddly defiant, but too murky about the edges for the confidence she was trying to force.

Joori’s grip on Jacin tightened, trying to yank their hands away, but their mother wouldn’t let go. “Mother,” Joori whimpered, “don’t. Please.” He peered at her, beseeching. “Say you didn’t know.” Like he hadn’t believed her the first time. He probably hadn’t; perhaps wouldn’t ever, no matter how many times he asked the question and she answered it.

She turned back to them, her smile soft and sad. “I did not.” With a quiver of her chin, she reached out and tucked a tangled hank of chestnut behind Joori’s ear. “But I would have agreed, nonetheless. There is little choice. A hard road your brother must walk, but he must be what he must be. He cannot be that here.”

The clutch of Joori’s hand on Jacin’s had gone past the point of comfort and slid steadily into nothing but pain. “You can’t mean—”

“Fen Jacin-rei,” Asai said quietly, only for Jacin’s ears, while Joori raved at their parents and their mother tried to soothe him out of his anger and betrayal. Jacin looked up, the clench of Joori’s hand over his compelling him to clarity and presence. “He will listen to none but you, and he will hear untruths, if you speak them. This can go hard, if it is not what you want, but Fate has blazed your path. Even your mother, who loves you when she shouldn’t, agrees.”

Easy enough to understand: this man was going to take Jacin, whether Jacin wanted it or not, payment for some morbid deal made with their father upon their births—save one son and forfeit the one already forfeit. Not a bad deal, in truth. Jacin would’ve encouraged him to take it himself, if he’d been able, and if his father would ever hear anything from a Ghost’s mouth in the first place but for prophecies he pretended to heed and believe. Jacin would give up anything to save Joori, even if Joori didn’t think he needed saving.

Even if they ran—and they would; even if Jacin refused, Joori would see to it somehow—Jacin would bring Joori down eventually, one way or another.

A violent death at the hands of their own people, or a final, blank desolation when Joori was ultimately forced to understand his brother was no longer his brother, no longer even sane, even if he could sometimes wring snatches of sanity from him.

Funny—Jacin hadn’t even asked what Asai wanted with him. He didn’t even think he cared. What difference did it make? He’d be well beyond worrying about what became of him soon enough. The constant white din was already crowding out his ability to follow one thought to another, link them together in a chain of reason.

No one should have to watch that.

“With me, there is a chance,” Asai told him, his low voice somehow getting through the whispers in Jacin’s head and the shouts going on all around him. “I offer you a life with meaning, and not one wandering, alone and soul-starved, until the Ancestors’ insanity has used you up. Under my guardianship, your mother and your brother will be overlooked, their Blood safe in their veins.”

Under my guardianship. Did Jacin imagine the implication that whatever safeguard this man had held over them, was offering still, would be withdrawn at Jacin’s refusal? Probably best not to find out. His “right” to refuse, after all, was probably just as much a fiction as his entire life of pretending to be Jacin and not Jacin-rei had been.

Jacin tore his gaze away from the deep-dark depths of Asai’s and turned to his brother, still pleading with their mother and growling at their father every time he thought to insert himself. Gently, Jacin pulled his hand from Joori’s, sliding it, blood-slick, from beneath his mother’s.

“I’m going with him,” Jacin said softly.

Joori only stared at Jacin for an interminable moment, his face going from stunned to confused to betrayed. “You don’t mean that.” He shook his head, face crumpling. “Jacin… you don’t know what you’re saying.”

It stung. Because it came from Joori, from Jacin’s real Self, and it wasn’t true right now. It had been and it would be again, but not right now. Jacin did know what he was saying, he was sure of it.

“Right now, I’m making more sense than you are,” Jacin snapped, strangely unmoved by Joori’s flinch. Like Jacin’s corpse was already growing cold, and death stiffness setting in.

“Jacin,” Joori said, hoarse and small, “it’s not your debt.”

Ghost

Jacin pulled in a long breath, reached for Joori, warmed and grateful when Joori reached back. “Ah, brother,” Jacin whispered, leaning in until they were brow to brow, “don’t you know I’d pay any debt for you?”

“Don’t say that!” Joori pleaded, weeping openly now, shaking. “Not for me, please, Jacin. This isn’t for me, none of it is, and I won’t have it done in my name!”

“In mine, then?” Jacin hugged Joori tight. “He offers what you want for me, Joori, what I want, and with no price to you, or to Mother. Any debt in your name has already been cleared. I would do this for myself. Let me.”

Willingly discard tradition, the Ancestors, the gods, and thumb his nose at everything his father had ever told him he was meant for. And what did it matter? Hadn’t his father done the same from the moment Jacin had been born? If Jacin’s soul was cast to burn in the suns… well, at least he’d have company.

Joori pushed Jacin back, stared at him long and hard, distraught face limned silver-blue in Wolf’s heavy mantle. “Is it what you really want, Jacin?”

Joori would hear a lie, Asai had told him, and Jacin knew it to be the truth. They’d breathed each other’s breath, thought each other’s thoughts, and losing that—and he would, one way or another, no matter what he chose—
was like its own death. So what did anything else matter, really? Being handed the choice to lift that away from his brother was a gift for which Jacin had never dared hope, and he would have paid any debt, any price at all for it.

“It is,” Jacin told Joori, hoping nothing shone in his eyes right now but calm conviction and whatever sanity he had left.

Joori yanked him in again, his tears flowing harder. Jacin could feel the heavy sobs locked in Joori’s chest through his own breastbone. Strange—he hadn’t realized he was weeping too. He was unaccountably relieved.

“Who’ll braid your hair?” Thin and small, not at all Joori’s voice, but it lumped a chuckle in Jacin’s throat and made his tears flow hard and painful.

“I will,” was his wobbly reply. “And it will be messy and crooked, because I never was as good at it as you are.”

Joori tried to snort, choked instead, and held on tighter. “Will I see you again?”

Jacin shifted his blurry gaze to Asai, waited for an answer, not entirely sure which one he wanted. Perhaps it would be better for Joori if—

“That will depend on Jacin-rei,” Asai said quietly.

Jacin didn’t know what that meant, but their mother had said they would, and she just knew things like that sometimes, so he answered his brother,

“Yes,” firmly and without the uncertainty of only a half second ago. If he was sane enough to think straight, to remember Joori, he would want to see him and would do whatever this man demanded to have it so. “Yes,” he repeated, and he held his brother tighter, ignored Caidi tugging at his trouser leg, ignored his father’s mulish insistence that Joori unhand the Untouchable, even ignored the soft touch of his mother’s hand on the crown of his head. “Yes,”

he swore, teeth set firm and arms clamped tight about Joori’s neck, “I will see you again, brother. I swear it.”

IT TOOK some time for Jacin to let go of Joori, gather the strength to step back, step away. The strange comfort of Asai’s hand on his shoulder helped.

His mother was fading in and out again by the time Jacin went to her for a last embrace, and he had to stare his father down for a long, tense moment before his father finally dropped his eyes and moved out of Jacin’s way, allowed the Untouchable to touch his mother. Joori was right—in the end, Fen Olanne was little better than a hypocritical coward. Jacin rued every moment he’d wished for even a scrap of love from his father’s small, terrified heart.

He didn’t even bother with Morin—a miniature of their father—though he wished he had the patience to gather some bit of pity or regret for the boy. He didn’t suppose it was entirely Morin’s fault that he was his father’s son.

Caidi clung to him for as long as Father would allow it, crying pitifully because everyone else was, not really understanding why, but it shook Jacin a little, nonetheless. “Hush, then,” he told her gently, “it’ll be all right, Caidi-love. Go hug Mother now, give her another kiss for me.”

Joori was there again when Caidi had been shooed off, his tears dry, but his face still swollen and mottled. His eyes were over-bright and full of anger, perhaps even a touch of jealousy he couldn’t help, when he let his glance fall on Asai.

“I’ll always be the one, Jacin.” Nearly voiceless, the warm susurrus stirring the wispy hairs at Jacin’s nape as Joori clutched him tight, sending a pleasant shiver sprawling down Jacin’s backbone. One more embrace, one more thing to imprint and keep for an uncertain future. “The one who will be there. All right? Keep that, if you lose everything else. All right?”

It made Jacin smile, though he couldn’t believe his face had actually made the shape. “You’ve always been the one, Joori,” he whispered back, snuffled

Ghost
into Joori’s shoulder and then he broke away gently, smiling again, though wobbly, when Joori pushed the little knife into his hand with a pained grimace.

Silent, subdued, Jacin tucked it into his belt, following slowly after Asai as he swept off into the gloom. They didn’t take the road, where the dip and rise of the land would obscure his view after twenty or so paces. They went through his father’s fields, fresh-turned earth that should’ve smelled sweet and new, but only smelled like dirt.

Jacin walked backward, clutching the strap of the pack his brother had thrown together for him and watching Joori grow smaller and farther away with every slow step. He’d never known anything could hurt so badly, so deeply, could raze the core of him and leave it scraped raw and burned to cinders. Like every step he took formed a scar between himself and Joori, wide and malformed, and ugly as the bare, scrubby earth over which he trod.

Too many times, Jacin almost stopped, reversed his direction, for all the reprieve that would get him. He didn’t, only kept walking, stumbling now and then on clumps of sod he couldn’t see through tears and darkness.

He raised his hand when his focus started to waver—an attempt at a brave farewell that Joori met and held—kept it raised and kept walking backward until his brother was a small wink of pale shadow in the darkness, and then nothing at all. Like Joori was the ghost. Only then did Jacin wipe his face with his sleeve, throbbing fist still clenched tight, and turn himself around to face whatever his future might be with this strange savior who’d come to thieve him away in payment of a debt owed by his father.

“There is a cart waiting for us at the gate of the camp,” Asai told Jacin, matter-of-fact and even. No sneers at Jacin’s runaway emotions, no sympathetic commentary attempting to smooth over his losses.

Jacin snuffled again, swallowed the chunks of grief locked tight in his throat. “How will we get by the Doujou?”

Asai only smiled, laid that warm hand to Jacin’s shoulder, and squeezed.

“You will find, my boy, that all things are possible. With the proper…

motivation.”

Harvest-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf

“OH, YOU sneaky little bastard.” Malick shook his head with a grin as he watched the shadows spiral out from the charm Fen had drawn from inside his high collar, watched them fold him inside their smoky sinews.

With hardly even a glance aside or behind, Fen strolled past the Doujou and boosted himself to the vertical struts of the closed Gate, then braced himself to the iron pickets. Quick and agile as a tree-monkey, he levered up the near two-story climb until he breached the top, perched there for quite some time, just looking up at the sky, like he wasn’t quite literally in the process of penetrating a city gate in plain view of its minders. Well, in plain view, were it not for that charm.

Malick had wondered how one with no magic had managed to slip in and out unseen by either prey or sentinel. No surprise there were whispers of a wraith. Fen had said he’d found Madi’s name on a paper in Lord Hende’s chambers, for pity’s sake. Why hadn’t that clicked before? Hende was said to have been in his nightclothes, his wife and two daughters asleep in their beds, when he’d “hanged himself.” The mysterious fire that had leveled the estate’s garden shed had been a mere footnote, passed along as one more bit of not-terribly-juicy gossip, a strange coincidence of no real import, considering, and then dropped from the later tellings of the story altogether. Now, Malick had to wonder.

He was well aware that magic wouldn’t work on an Untouchable, but he hadn’t even thought about whether or not it would work for one. And the lean figure biding at the top of the Gate, communing with the moons, seemed to answer a question Malick had never thought to ask.

“Clever, clever Ghost.” Malick allowed a soft chuckle, peering at the ten wardens stationed at the Gate. All of them were alert and doing their jobs, none of them were slacking or not paying attention, so he had to assume the charm was a rather potent one. Blood-magic, though, which made Malick

Ghost
raise his eyebrows a bit. Not many contributed their Blood voluntarily, and those who did set the price steep. Selling it, after all, was just as illegal as having it running through one’s veins to begin with. Considering what little information Fen had told him, Malick didn’t think he’d be the sort to use stolen Blood. In fact, Malick rather thought Fen would be viciously opposed to it. And a charm of that strength had to be made from full-Blood.

Malick shook his head. A Ghost wrapped in enigma shrouded by mystery.

This could be the most fun he’d had in a very long time. Or it could send him insane with frustration. Either way, life would not be dull for the foreseeable future.

Still chuckling, Malick made his own way over the Gate—unheard and unseen, though no charms for Malick—and waited, still watching. Fen was still staring up at the sky, and though his pose wasn’t even close to the meditative one into which he’d drawn himself back in Malick’s sitting room, it was even more obviously contemplative. Propped against a spiked spire, legs crossed at the ankle and hands tucked into the small of his back, head atilt and angular face lit by moons and stars, he looked more like a sculpture than he did a person, chiseled out of marble stolen from the hills of Tougei, where the Temshiel once carved the altars for the gods and the shrines for the dead.

Like Hitsuke, sent away from the sight of the gods because they couldn’t bear a beauty more striking than their own, and ever-after gazing up at his former purlieu, wondering why he’d been cursed so and cast out, never permitted to return home. That was, if one believed the romanticized legends. The reality of Hitsuke’s fate had been quite a bit different, and not nearly as pleasant.

Malick’s chest went a little tight, relieved when whatever introspection in which Fen was engaged apparently ended, and he shook himself to examine his surroundings. For a moment, that gilt-gray gaze caromed right into Malick’s, seemed to glitter for a breath or two, then moved on, unseeing, merely scanning for threats or a good spot to land. Malick didn’t know why his heart had stopped—Fen couldn’t see him, no one could see him, not unless he wanted them to. But for a moment it had almost seemed….

There wasn’t time to finish the thought; when Fen finally moved again, Malick found himself a bit too preoccupied with trying to put a muzzle on his libido. Bloody hell, but the man could move.

It was almost the same as when Fen had swirled down from the roof, only this time, Malick got to see the preparation, the skill and concentration that went into it. It had merely been a pretty thing before, something dangerous and pleasing to watch, something clever and novel. Now, it was something else altogether: bottom lip held between white teeth; eyes narrowed and marking a landing spot; limbs extending then contracting then extending

again, their placement just so; long, deep breaths then shortshortshort; the timing of it all counted out in almost visible beats of the heart. No glittering knives this time to distract the eye, and Malick almost regretted not having given Fen’s weapons back before, sending him out unarmed, but between the shadow magic and this…. Weapons almost seemed redundant.

Focused, completely unaware what sort of picture he made—all efficient elegance and sinewy poise—Fen twirled down like a contained little dervish then lit with a startling little flip-and-turn. He came to a stop just fifteen paces from Malick, took another look about himself, not even breathing hard. Like he’d just breached a barrier no more challenging than a wide puddle. Sparing a dark glance and a curl of his lip for the pikes and crows’ cages, Fen straightened his tunic then turned himself west, away from the city.

Malick couldn’t have stopped himself from following if he’d cut off his own legs.

WOLF had reached his apogee by the time Malick followed Fen into a small village, slightly alarmed to realize they were venturing onto Asai’s lands now.

He’d done his very best, since arriving in Ada, to keep himself and Umeia—

Shig and Yori and Samin, later—cloaked from the seer’s sight while Malick had bided and watched, and a misstep here could cost him the advantage, should he ever need it. And with what he was almost sure was going on in Yakuli’s lands just west of Asai’s, Malick wanted to preserve any slim advantage he could. So far, he’d not gone beyond keeping a sharp eye on Asai and his ostensibly completely legal and innocuous doings, but tripping up and letting the arrogant “lord” know one of Malick’s kind was here could be…

problematic. In too many ways. He’d have to keep it in mind.

He could smell the salt air of the sea more strongly than he could even from the city, where the tanneries and smelters obliterated the scent with their own reek. Fen’s path had taken them through the city’s outskirts, quiet and dark, then on through sparser hamlets and lone estates. Oblate groves were abundant here, the sandy soil not good for much else besides sage, and Fen seemed to have no problem with helping himself to several oblates and tying them into his tunic.

Fascination took firm hold as Malick watched Fen pause at the open-air, white-columned hummock of the Shrine of the Moons, quietly pillage the marble altar for a thin balsa tile and paint, then hang his wish from the bare bough of one of the surrounding hackberry trees. Silent, Fen stood and stared up through the branches for several long moments, gazing once again at the

Ghost
moons, his face set strangely defiant for a supplicant at a shrine. Almost glaring. He didn’t linger to pray, only flipped a koin into the offering fountain and took a perfunctory sip of the clear, streaming water from the ladle.

Having done what he’d apparently come to do, Fen bobbed his head with a fist over his breastbone, thumped once, and moved off again. Malick wasn’t really surprised when he pulled down the branch himself to read what Fen had not-quite-prayed for. The wish-tile merely read: Justice. Oblique and cryptic, even when calling upon the gods. Fen’s plea—more like a demand—was painted in tight, controlled characters. Naturally.

Malick didn’t linger, either, or even pause to pay brief respect. Wolf would understand. Wolf would approve. And Malick didn’t want to miss anything.

He was learning an awful lot about how a Ghost went about surviving, when the laws were such that it made it extraordinarily difficult to even exist.

Once, places were set at every table for the Ancestors’ Voice, meals served and reserved, in case an Untouchable came to call, and if the place remained empty at the end of the meal, the offering untouched and gone cold, the plate was set on the family’s private shrine. Jin and Adan alike. Even the Kente had absorbed the tradition, back when the Jin were revered and not feared, before magic was turned against those who had none, and the Ancestors—poor, pious, well-intentioned fools—were driven to shrieking. Before their Untouchables became no better than pitiable Ghosts that none would dare put out of their misery.

Now, shrines were as rare as a sane Untouchable, and those that existed were more guilty charity than real belief. Who, after all, really wanted an Untouchable to come calling now, considering what they’d become? Malick supposed the shrines were likely more common in the camps—the Jin held tightly to the letter of their traditions, if not the spirit, even if they’d forgotten why—but some Adan still took their chances, though their offerings were just as rote and equally lacking the beliefs behind them. Crusts of bread gone moldy, or rancid vegetables even a starving beggar would stop and think about. Seeds scattered in rings about dwellings to form a picket of hungry ghosts to keep them feeding and discourage the Untouchables from stumbling past them, looking for an empty place that was no longer left empty and waiting.

Fen apparently knew where to look, bypassing dozens of dwellings altogether without so much as a glance or curious look before he’d turn into a yard, make his way to whatever offering was placed in the bole of a tree or beneath an overgrown arbor, inspect the tender then either take it or toss it into ditches or bracken. Malick was beginning to feel rather small, chiding

himself for not feeding Fen before—Umeia had been right: Malick hadn’t even offered Fen tea, and Fen had, at least in theory, been a guest—but he apparently wasn’t ravenous. He didn’t eat any of the loot he collected.

Instead, he slipped it into pockets or, in the case where the offering was what looked like a decent-sized loaf of black bread, tucked it under his arm and moved on. Efficient, like always, no time wasted, and he continued to move west at a good clip, despite the infrequent intervals at the shrines, clad in his shadows the whole way. Not even dogs or dark-dwelling scrub beasts sensed him. Malick really wanted a look at that charm.

He kept following, shaking his head now and then, growing more mystified with every little detail about Fen he learned, because every one of them seemed to lead to a thousand more questions. The puzzle of how Fen kept himself clad in better than the rags more familiar to his kind seemed to solve itself when he helped himself to a pair of gloves from the closed shop of a leathersmith, picking the lock with a small knife both Malick and Samin had somehow missed when they’d searched him and taken his weapons. He apparently had some sort of scruples when it came to things not freely offered in shrines, though: he left several koins on the tanner’s bench in payment; whether that included the fleshing knife he also liberated and tucked into his boot, Malick didn’t know.

Then there were the times when Fen would stop dead, stand in whatever spot he’d been, and cock his head to the side, as though listening. Sometimes for a few seconds, one stretch for so long Malick debated revealing himself and shaking him to see if he’d died on his feet. And then, each time, like a ritual, Fen’s shoulders would sag a little, his head would shake, and he’d growl, curse quite colorfully, then move on. Malick was fairly certain he knew what it was about, but still, like everything else about Fen, it was intriguing. He wanted to hear the things Fen heard, see if he could make sense of it… touch him and let it all go away for a little while.

By the set of the stars, midnight had come and gone when Fen angled into a copse of kentsha. Dense and quiet as death, it opened out onto a stretch of scruff-lands just off the strand of an inlet cut by seawater into a bed of basalt.

Nothing more than a gorge striated through with glimmering veins of obsidian—ancient evidence of Subie’s erratic temper and indifferent wrath.

They were close to the coast now. Malick could feel the rimy salt breeze on his skin. If he climbed one of the trees, he’d likely be able to see the ocean. Or break a leg. He decided not to try it.

A tiny cottage—no more than an abandoned grover’s hut, likely—stood ramshackle and battered, grayed by the sea air and years standing beneath the heat of the suns in paintless skin. Its one window stood unshuttered and dark:

Ghost
an empty eye socket staring out into what used to be. Overgrown with scrub and kuuh vines, the “yard” attested to years untrod, but a thin ribbon of bent growth led through from the copse and right to the crooked door of the shack.

Fen made his steady way along the primitive path before he hitched up at the door, pausing for several long moments with his hand on the cracked, rotting wood, head bent, eyes closed. With one long, deep breath, he gave himself a little shake then silently pushed open the door and slid inside.

Malick frowned.

Not a target, surely. Any with the wealth to do what the men Fen had been hunting were able to do wouldn’t be holing up in a place like this. And surely Fen wouldn’t go into a potentially hostile hideaway without even having checked through the window first, and clutching nothing more lethal than a loaf of bread.

Before Malick could even form a theory, Fen came back through the door, just as silently as he’d gone in, shadows gathered ’round him like smoky skin.

He carefully shut the door, hands notably empty—he’d left the bread at least behind—but with a small beaten leather rucksack over one shoulder. Face set, Fen paused for a moment, head bowed and hand to the door like before, as though reaching for a connection through it, then he merely straightened his shoulders and went back the way he’d come.

For the first time, Malick was torn. Follow after Fen, or risk losing him and have himself a look inside that hut? Curiosity got him; it always did. Just as silently as Fen, Malick made his way through the wild growth then into the little shack… and stopped short.

This… was not what he’d expected.

Four mats—three occupied, another made up, expectant, but empty of the body apparently meant for it. Two fair heads and one chestnut rested on the occupied mats, the faces of their owners soft in sleep. The two fair-haired children held Malick’s attention just long enough for him to determine they were young: one a boy of about thirteen or so, and the other a girl who couldn’t be ten yet. The other was the one who caught and held his eye.

Fen… but not. The hair was shorter, and no braid, but there was no mistaking the resemblance. Had to be a twin, except there were no twins anymore, not Jin twins, anyway, but the similitude was too damned close to be anything else. Although, Malick doubted Fen’s face ever looked so unguarded and still, not even in sleep. A person couldn’t have so much rage knocking about inside his chest without it one way or another etching itself into his face, and this sleeping young man was… what? A cleaner version of Fen? More… innocent? Not that one could tell much about a person when

they were sleeping, no matter what the romantic twaddle of the day would have one believe, but this one…. Malick frowned. Not as compelling, somehow, and maybe that was simply because Malick couldn’t see the young man’s eyes, but he didn’t think so. This copy of Fen didn’t have the…

harshness, the intrigue, the….

Malick shook his head. He’d grown so used to having Shig about, knowing everything he wanted to about a person, by her sight or his own touch, that he seemed to be trying to make up for it by inventing his own versions. Curious, though, he reached out, touched a fingertip to the sleeping face… frowned and drew it back. When he’d touched Fen, he’d felt, for the first time in a very long time, not a single thing but the corporeal tremors of a living body. This one, though….

Of the full-Blood, and earth-bound at that. And apparently hiding on Asai’s lands. And Asai was apparently, inexplicably, unaware. Malick knew Asai’s connections too well, and no way would he let this much power just sit here, untapped. Terrifyingly strong, this one, and untrained, so far as Malick could tell. The power was there and writhing, but clamped down tight and buried. That ability alone, to leash such straining might, was testament to the young man’s power. The source of the Blood for the amulet, perhaps? Had Fen and his apparent twin dabbled in spell-making? No, couldn’t be—an earth-bound couldn’t make shadows.

How had the mother been taken away and not this one? Buried or not, that kind of power should have been blaring out to any hunter who happened to train their talent in this young man’s direction. And Adan hunters had their sights set on the camps almost continually.

More interesting—and possibly alarming—how was Asai missing this?

On his own lands. Only the veil of another like Malick himself could have hidden an earth-bound so thoroughly from Asai’s sight, and none of those—

Oh, hell.

Teeth set tight, Malick reached out again, really focusing this time…. He grated a silent curse. Definitely a veil. Shit.

Rip it away? Deconstruct it and figure out to whom it belonged? No. He ruffled at it, but that was all he dared. It was dense and secure, too tightly woven, and if he did rip it away, or even messed with it too much, he risked exposing not only himself but also what appeared to be the remnants of Fen’s family to Asai.

Bloody hell. This had damn well better not turn out to be what Malick was beginning to suspect it was.

Ghost

He was abruptly very interested himself now in finding out who had taken away Fen’s mother and how it was they’d missed her much more powerful son. Perhaps that promise Malick had handed out so casually earlier was not as ill-conceived as he’d feared it might be. Then again, it could be just as dangerous as he was only now beginning to imagine. With that one touch to a sleeping stranger’s face, the stakes had risen. Malick considered for a moment contacting the Mage and demanding to know whether or not he’d known about this little hut on the outskirts of Asai’s own freeholds, and its occupants, but he knew he wouldn’t. As attractive as answers might be, he wasn’t about to tip his hand until he was sure. If Malick’s suspicions were even close to reality, the Mage might well be the one person he didn’t want to ask. And if he did ask, Malick might have to kill him when he got an answer. He might have to kill Fen too. Damn it. He’d been hoping for more pleasant ways to get his hands on that braid.

Still… the prospect of getting one over on Asai….

Smirking, Malick checked the other two, as well, further bemused and interest inescapably piqued when he found no power waiting to erupt from either of them. Only the Blood singing, full and biding. Pensive, he turned back to the not-Fen.

So, if this was Fen’s twin brother—and really, what else could he be?—
the others were likely related, as well. So, how had Fen got them out of the camp? Had he got them out? And how long ago? And what about that unoccupied mat? Was it waiting for Fen? Were they waiting for Fen?

Thwarting all their laws and traditions by keeping company with an Untouchable? That pack Fen had carried away seemed to say so; at least if it turned out that it held his own possessions and he hadn’t just stolen from his siblings.

Somehow, that didn’t seem like Fen.

Malick had a look around, noted mounds of what had to be clothes and blankets that appeared to be in good repair, cast his eye farther and saw a respectable pile of foodstuffs on a long board nailed to the wall to form a crude table. Not unexpectedly, that loaf of black bread to which Fen had been clinging lay prominent amongst the rest of it, along with the mound of oblates and other edible offerings he’d managed to scoop up along the way.

Small and dingy and rundown the shack might be, but these children had clothes, a place to sleep, and food, and seemed as safe as renegade Jin could be, way out here. The kills the Mage had said belonged to Fen had begun about five weeks ago, and if Fen was to be believed—and Malick had believed him tonight, every reluctant word wrung from his stubborn mouth—

his father had been killed and his mother taken some time prior to Fen beginning his personal blood grudge those five weeks ago. Which coincided a little too neatly with the rumor of a botched raid in the east camp that none of Malick’s more reliable contacts would talk about. And the presence of what appeared to be the rest of Fen’s family here, and the hut’s rather lived-in look, told Malick that Fen was the one who’d been providing for them since the loss of their parents.

And really— how had they ended up on Asai’s lands, with Asai apparently completely oblivious? More importantly, how had they ended up protected by a Temshiel’s veil? Did Fen know? If he did, how was it that he hadn’t moved them from Asai’s reach? Did Fen have any clue what sort of man it was who owned the lands on which he’d chosen to stash his family?

Possible, Malick thought, but not likely. Fen might be on the unstable side, but he too obviously wasn’t stupid. Either he knew about the veil and about Asai and had his own plots and machinations going, or he knew neither and there were bigger fingers in this Untouchable’s metaphorical pie than Malick had guessed. Malick was betting on the latter; now that he was paying attention, the signs of mystical manipulation were just too plain to think otherwise. Which meant that someone other than a servant of Wolf was interfering with Wolf’s Catalyst.

Interesting, to say the least. And dangerous.

Besides the prickly little swell of annoyance that Fen had held back the information about his family from his “confessions” earlier, there was also some satisfaction in the irony of the situation proving Malick’s instincts right: there was a lot more to Fen that Malick and the others hadn’t even touched tonight. The rage was just the surface, frozen over and protecting the rest of it.

It was going to be very interesting to see if Malick could manage to charm his way to the bottom. Perhaps extracting Fen from whatever sticky web in which he’d become enmeshed, helping him to avenge himself and the family he obviously cared about—maybe it could be the first step in putting a fissure in that ice. And once he got Fen to a point where he trusted Malick, told him about this little hut and those who dwelt here, Malick would help him get them out—send them to… Thesia, maybe, or even Heldesan. Malick had both the money and the resources to swoop in at just the right moment, turn himself from Fen’s antagonist to Fen’s hero. And then….

Malick couldn’t help the grin.

He caught up with Fen on the road, heading back the way he’d come.

Malick followed again, too interested now to even think about doing anything else. He followed him back to the little hamlet where Fen had gotten the

Ghost
gloves and the knife, then followed when he turned slightly southward.

Stopped when Fen stopped. Fen was breathing heavily, face clamped down into an expression of… Malick couldn’t tell, but it didn’t look good.

Frowning, Malick moved closer when Fen dropped his pack to the ground like he’d lost all strength to hold it. He swayed a little then abruptly went to one knee in the middle of the dirt road, almost collapsing. Not even really being careful anymore, Malick shifted closer still and just watched as Fen bent over, wrenched in several gasping breaths, painful-sounding and harsh, and crooked his elbow over his eyes.

Alarmed, Malick slipped in tight and knelt in front of Fen as he wept, alone in the road in the middle of the night, and used every bit of will he owned not to reach out, and…. He didn’t know. He rather thought any hand extended in sympathy or comfort to this man would get bitten off, so Malick had no idea what he could do, even if he were to discard his veil and reveal himself. His hand went out nonetheless, hovering, uncertain, just over Fen’s nape where the braid began its twisting descent down his back.

With a thankfully inward curse, Malick snatched his hand back when Fen’s head snapped up, brow bunched and gaze narrowed and wary, flitting everywhere at once, before he frowned, shook his head dismissively, and irritably swiped at his eyes. Fen’s glance went to the sky again, tracking Wolf for a moment in his heavy-bellied descent, then drifted down again, settled…

on Malick. And again, like it had been at the Gate, Malick almost thought Fen could see him, looked right at him and perceived him, but the gray eyes only focused on Malick’s for a slip of a moment and then drifted off over his right shoulder.

Malick didn’t know what had him reeling more—the rush of adrenaline that was dragging ropes of lightning all through him, or the passing glimpse of stricken despair in Fen’s unguarded gaze. And then it was gone, from frown to scowl, smothered once again by that all too familiar resentment and rage. It built for a moment, Malick could see the rising pressure in the clench of Fen’s jaw, then Fen dropped his head back, sucked in a long breath, and let it out in a furious, wordless roar at the sky. Piercing, and not just for the decibel levels. Hollow wrath, from way down deep. If he’d not been cloaked by his shadows, dogs would be baying for leagues. Fists clenched tight, nails digging into palms, voice a helpless blade of profound, directionless hatred and rage, thrusting nowhere, wounding nothing, no satisfaction, no blood let, no enemy at his feet.

It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, silence collapsing all around them like a smothering shroud. Malick could hear every night rodent and insect in the brush lining the road, even through the empty ringing in his ears. Fen’s

head was tilted to the side again, gaze angled inward… listening. He blinked, narrowed his eyes. His lip curled, teeth tightened, and he loosed a sharp snarl, snatched up the rucksack then snapped to his feet so fast that Malick had to break quickly sideways to avoid being stumbled over and discovered. Back straight and shoulders squared, Fen aimed an obscene gesture first at the moons and then at the distant shadow of Subie then moved on again. Like none of it had happened, or like it didn’t matter that it had. Malick had to catch his breath and shake himself a little before he could follow.

Oh, hell—he really is mental.

Malick only growled, firmed his jaw. Because it wasn’t nearly so simple.

There was so much here—so much to know, to dig out from beneath that icy shield, to turn in his hand like a faceted gem and study. Perhaps there was nothing beneath it but insanity and more hatred and anger, but Malick had caught infinitesimal glimpses of things that flitted by too fast for him to grasp, and he wanted the opportunity to catch and hold them. Catch and hold Fen.

Samin would curl his lip and roll his eyes, Umeia would tighten her mouth and say nothing, but Malick didn’t care, and it wasn’t the same as his usual capricious pursuits. There were mysteries here, ones he really wanted to solve, and that hadn’t happened in… a long, long time. All he had to do was find a way to chip through the frost and lend some warmth to pry them loose.

In all his years, there had never been a puzzle so compelling as Fen Jacin-rei.

Despite the apparent misery in the object of his fascination, Malick was perversely cheered. He nearly whistled as he followed after Fen, watching the braid sway down his back, bobbing against the backs of his calves now and again. Even those times Fen stopped to commune with his gibbering phantoms, Malick merely stopped, too, and waited patiently, almost hoping Fen wasn’t merely on his way back to the Girou to fulfill his promise. Perhaps one more stop would hand Malick another bit of mystery to add to the growing cache. The hope lasted until he got his wish.

This time, when Fen’s steps took them farther in toward the city but then angled southwest, Malick had a sinking feeling about where Fen might be headed. And when he bypassed one of the wealthier villages and instead headed up to the hilltop that overlooked it, Malick knew.

The estate was sprawling, the mere size of it a brazen telltale to the wealth that had built it a century ago and managed to keep hold of it since. Oceans of tree cover—cypress, maple, and white pine—ringed the holding, giving it picturesque privacy and natural defense all at once. Manicured and lush, autumn flowers grew fat and healthy, lining the walk and curling vined

Ghost
fingers over trellises and low stone walls that anchored the slate path around a sedate little pond. The house was grand, even by the standards of the most prosperous lords. Four stories, a wealth of windows—light still glowing in two of them on the ground floor, despite the hour—and each of them with actual glass panes. Stonework and masonry and real clay roof tiles, rather than the more modest wood- and mud- and rush-roofed standard of Adan society.

Outbuildings, a gatehouse, even, and guards set about the iron-fenced perimeter, walking the watch in the moonlight led by ken-ken on their leashes.

Malick paused on the path, uncertain what he should do as he watched Fen conceal his pack in some brush in the trees then clear the gate and stroll unseen between two guards passing each other on their circuits. Fen was obviously intent on the house.

The Mage’s orders had been very clear—Fen was not to be allowed to take out whomever he pleased. Assassinating a wealthy, influential “lord” like Asai could have some very serious reverberations, especially with the privileged circles in which they were all hunting beginning to draw in on themselves and build up defenses. Not to mention the stir it would cause in the Courts.

Then again, Malick really didn’t care much about any of that. Malick had wanted Asai dead for a long, long time. Maybe Fen had some reason to want the same. Maybe he knew what a threat Asai posed to his family and intended to eliminate it. This amazingly still-sane Untouchable, with all his lethal skill, could very well be an answer to the problem of Asai, now that Malick thought about it. Perhaps even an answer to the problem of the Disappeared. It would all depend on what Fen was doing here, and what Malick could make of it when he found out.

Fen was an assassin, after all. Perhaps Asai was one of those “things” Fen had said needed taking care of, and really—did Malick care why?

Except, when Fen abruptly dropped his shadows and actually bloody knocked on the front door…. Malick paused. Because most assassins—and he knew more than most people—didn’t actually knock on the doors of their intended victims. At least not smart ones, and even if Malick—and certainly Samin—had doubts about Fen’s sanity, there were none whatsoever about his intelligence. Or his skill. So, Malick merely watched, a little bit stunned, while Fen stood there and waited politely on the porch, hands tucked to the small of his back and feet planted apart, chin up. Kept watching when, not a servant as expected, but Asai himself threw open the door half a moment later, gaze at first eager then relieved when he saw who it was.

“I hoped you’d come,” was his greeting, and strangely, it looked to Malick to be completely sincere.

Fen only tilted his head, his face impassive. “Didn’t you know…

Beishin?” His tone was mild, but hostility curled on that last word, just as unease curled in Malick’s gut upon hearing it.

Asai’s slight smile curdled immediately, turned bitter, and then fell altogether. He stared at Fen, measuring, cooler than his greeting had been, but when he apparently couldn’t read anything in Fen’s inscrutable face, he grimaced. With a quick look around—placing the guards, no doubt—Asai sighed, shook his head, stepped back, and swung the door open. Waited.

Fen stared blankly at him for another long moment before he pointed his eyes straight ahead and entered without a word.

Malick stayed where he was. Thinking. His gut churned a little as all of the possibilities, all of the implications slowly wended through his mind. He closed his eyes, dipped his head. This could turn out very, very badly.

“Oh, little Ghost,” he breathed, “what have you got yourself into?”

Halfheartedly, he told himself he didn’t really want to know what Fen was doing here, how he knew Asai, what it all might have to do with how Fen had gotten so skilled with his knives, and what his three siblings were doing in that hut. Told himself to go home and wait, and if Fen didn’t show up, report it to the Mage and wait for the inevitable order. Malick would know where to find him now, wouldn’t he?

Told himself more sternly that he didn’t want anything more to do with this Ghost, or his secrets. It was all going to be a lot more trouble than Malick was willing to take on.

Told himself he really didn’t want to know why Fen had called Asai

“beishin,” and why it churned a darker emotion in Malick’s chest than mere suspicion—one that felt something like resentful jealousy but clearly couldn’t be. Wasn’t. Clearly.

He had to get a message to the Mage, a warning. The full-Blood earth-bound asleep in a shack out on Asai’s own lands, an Untouchable with attachments he shouldn’t have and sanity he shouldn’t own, Asai’s apparent involvement—it changed everything. Samin, Yori and Shig—even Umeia and everyone at the Girou—were all Malick’s responsibility, and this had just taken a turn down onto more dangerous paths than Malick had suspected. Fen could be a serious risk to them all.

Malick sighed, took a step back, and turned to go.

Then he growled a curse and followed Fen.

Ghost

ASAI paced. Over to the window, peer out, pretend to be looking at something, then turn back again. Cross the room to the fireplace, glare at the flames for not needing to be stirred and therefore give him something to do with his hands, then back again to the window. Pause once or twice to pick up a book, raise his eyebrows like he’d forgotten he’d left it on the tea table, put it back down. Examine a small figurine of a raven carved from obsidian and another of a wolf carved from marble on his next circuit, swipe a finger over the bear and the dragon…. Try not to care that it practically blared his discomfort to the boy standing silently against the wall, shoulder propped to the bookshelf, watching him.

“Boy”—ha. Young man, now, had been for some time, and too knowing, too observant, too…. Damn it. It was Asai’s own mistake. He should have taken the boy the night he slipped from his mother’s womb as the midwife had practically begged him to do. He would have had more influence over it all, would have been able to mold the Catalyst into what he—

No use railing against Fate for not bending to his own preferences. There were blank spots in his sight, naturally, but most of the things he’d foreseen were still in futures-possible and not changed entirely. He’d done right to take the boy, even if it now appeared it hadn’t been soon enough, so perhaps it wasn’t yet unsalvageable.

“Here you are, seyh.”

A little too much relief flooded Asai with the appearance of Vonshi, sleep-tousled and a little bleary, but carrying a tray of tea and the cakes Asai knew Jacin-rei preferred. Vonshi blinked at Asai, inquiring, but Asai merely shook his head; he’d serve it himself. He didn’t think he’d want anyone else overhearing what the boy had come to say to him, whatever it might be.

Vonshi merely dipped his head, shot a sideways glance over at Jacin-rei, then quietly left the room, sliding the double doors shut behind him. Asai sat on the couch and made himself busy with pouring tea.

“Well, it appears Vonshi sends you his greetings in his way,” he said lightly, angling his chin toward the plate of sweets. “He’s brought you the sweet bean-paste squares you like. Don’t know why he still makes them, you’re the only one who eats them, and now that you’ve….” Asai held up a bowl, sweeping his hand toward the opposite couch. “Come. Sit.”

Jacin-rei merely blinked at him and didn’t move. Unreadable, but then, he’d been that for a long while now, and Asai had only himself to hold responsible—for good or ill. It remained to be seen.

“I’ve worried about you, you know.” Asai was sincere, and tried to make that plain in both his voice and his expression.

“Why?”

No inflection, no emotion beneath it. Just that one-word question that still held a world of accusation and doubt inside it. Or maybe that was all just in Asai’s own head.

“Because I care what happens to you.” Asai set Jacin-rei’s bowl down on the table and took his time pouring his own. “I care what happens to your brothers and your sister.” He took a sip, peered over the rim of the bowl, and met the cold stare squarely. “If you’ll tell me where they are—”

A snort, derisive and… yes, angry. Jacin-rei pushed himself away from the wall, walked slowly to the end table by the chair, picked up the little wolf figurine and carelessly tumbled it into his palm. “I’m not going to tell you.

Don’t ask me again.” Flat and frosted. Jacin-rei tilted his head, eyes narrowed.

“Why don’t you know?”

Asai scowled—he couldn’t help it. Giving away his thoughts all over his face, when Jacin-rei was careful to give away none, and yet it was a contest Asai knew he wouldn’t win. He needed his Ghost.

“They have been gone from my sight since—” Asai cut himself off, but not quickly enough.

“Since when?” Jacin-rei asked, harder now. “Since before or after she was taken?” He set down the marble wolf carefully, picked up the raven. “You’re going to tell me you didn’t see it?” His eyes flicked up, nailed Asai with a cool glare. “You’re going to tell me it wasn’t you who gave them up?”

Asai’s stomach turned over, but he managed to keep his own mien calm.

He’d been wondering exactly what the boy had heard that night. “Why would I do that?” he asked reasonably. “It was I who kept them safe all these years, Jacin-rei. You’ve no right to question me now.”

Another snort. “I’ve no right to be alive, either, to be speaking intelligibly, to think for myself, or even feel, but….” A shrug.

“My work,” Asai said through his teeth. “My teachings.”

“Oh, yes.” A small twist of a smile set Jacin-rei’s face into lines Asai didn’t recognize. Jacin-rei set the raven next to the wolf. “And I’ve got the scars to prove it.”

Ghost

Not fair. Asai had merely used the tool Fate handed him—what Jacin-rei’s own brother had so naively and unintentionally shown him. There had been no other way. And everything Jacin-rei was now was because of that tool.

“You’re upset.” Asai set his tea down, pushing it away with the tip of his finger. “You know that everything I did was necessary. Everything I did, I did for you, I would never—”

“Don’t—” Jacin-rei clenched his teeth, shut his eyes tight; the most emotion he’d shown in front of Asai in… years. “Do not pretend for a second that any thing you did was for me. Fate is your god, and you will sacrifice anyone on its altar, even those you pretend to love and trick into lov—” He cut himself off again, but they both knew what he almost said.

It heartened Asai. It was the first useable thing that had come his way in weeks. “I never gave you false hope, Jacin-rei. Perhaps… perhaps if—”

“I want a name.” Cold as a glacier. “Give me one and I’ll go. I’ll even let you live.” Jacin-rei lifted his head, twisted that cruel little smile again. “For old times’ sake.”

Old times’ sake. Indeed. The one thing for which Asai rightfully held fault. The one mistake he’d made in all his careful stepping through sight and visions and the machinations of Fate and the gods. The one time he’d let his own discipline falter….

Jacin-rei’s almost-slip before was the only thing that kept Asai’s fear away. He knew what Jacin-rei could do. But he also knew what lay at the core of him.

“I can’t give you a name,” Asai said calmly, then he sat back and spread his arms to his sides, opening himself in a pose of trust.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes!” Jacin-rei fisted his hands, propping himself up on the table with them, and dipped his head so that Asai couldn’t see his face. He was breathing heavily, jaw ticcing with the effort of controlling himself. Under other circumstance, Asai would have been proud of him. “It matters,” Jacin-rei ground out, “to those of us who can’t see and don’t necessarily care that our misery pleases Fate, or that we have a part to play in it, whether we want it or not. It matters, Beishin, and if I ever mattered to you, you will give me a name!”

Asai sighed. There was no one in the world who mattered more to him right now, but it couldn’t be in the way the boy wanted it to be. Too much

hinged on him, too many futures depended on him being what Asai had built him to be, and right now, the idealized, unrequited facet of Jacin’s-rei’s love for his beishin was the only thing keeping him from doing something irreparable. This break of emotion wasn’t necessarily what Asai had wanted—
despite what Jacin-rei thought, Asai did have a heart—but it was at least something he could work with. The boy wanted an explanation, something he could believe, and it didn’t necessarily matter if it was plausible—he’d believe it anyway, because he needed to believe in some thing.

“You mattered to me, Jacin.” The abbreviation was calculated, and it had the desired effect: Jacin-rei’s posture tightened, and his jaw clamped tight again. “You matter to me still, as do those you love. I cannot give you a name—I will not, not until the time is exactly right. If you choose to turn your knife on me for it….” Asai sighed, shrugged. “Bring the children to me, Jacin.

I can protect them better than you can, I can—”

“I saw your ‘guests’ that night, Beishin.” It was low, breathed out on a hiss between clenched teeth. “I… I heard. They’d all be dead, Joori Disappeared like my mother, had I not disobeyed you and gone to them.”

Jacin-rei’s head lifted, his eyes so cold and flat they were almost those of a dead man. “And now you want me to believe you saw nothing. You gave him amulets!” He shook his head, the braid knocking soundless against the table’s leg. “I would slit my own stomach and pull out my entrails for a jump rope before I would entrust them to you again.”

And the worst part about it was that he was completely serious. Jacin-rei only had so much focus to spare, and all of it right now was narrowed on what remained of his family—even the one who might as well be his father reborn.

And Asai’s “betrayal” would not be justified or forgiven, not even when Fate stepped in to validate his actions. If Fate stepped in—Asai just didn’t know anymore.

“I cannot see you, Jacin-rei,” he tried to explain, “I never could, you know that. Your nature prevents it. I see you only in the moments when your fate intersects another’s. And your family went from my sight weeks ago.” Asai clenched his teeth, frustrated. “It’s like a conjurer has draped a shroud over their places in Fate, and I can only now and then catch glimpses of them enough to know our purpose is not lost.”

“Your purpose.”

That made Asai pause, discomfited. “It was ours, once.”

“So were other things. Or so I… imagined.” Jacin-rei straightened and turned to face Asai squarely. “I come from a race of people who have forgotten what they are so completely that they can’t even see how they’ve

Ghost
brought their fortunes on themselves. I no longer have a wish to save those who don’t know they need saving.”

Asai sat back, shocked. “You don’t mean that, you’re just upset. Your own brother—”

“Do not,” Jacin-rei grated, “think to use my brother to persuade me again to your cause. You bought me once, and now you’ve sold him, but he is out of your reach now, and if what you say is true, out of your sight—don’t seek to regain your hold over me through him.”

“There was never any ‘hold’,” Asai defended, angry now, and somewhat stung. “I never forced you to anything, Ghost. I only ever gave you a choice.

Everything between us was always by your choice.”

It only made the glare go colder. “Anything that once might have been

‘between us’ is no more. I see now it never was. Any debt I may have owed you was forfeit the night you let those men leave your house, handed them what they needed to destroy my family. Any love I may once have had for you, Beishin, died when they took my mother.”

“You mean when you were too late to save her.” Asai couldn’t help the mix of satisfaction and regret when Jacin-rei flinched, paled. “You didn’t wait, Jacin-rei. You’ve no idea what my orders that night might’ve been, how we might have saved them all— together.” He paused, leaned in. “What if that night was all a part of the design, the impetus that would start the Wheels of Fate turning, save your family, save the Jin, and you ruined it because you wouldn’t listen to your beishin?” Asai’s mouth wanted to curl up on a satisfied smile, watching Jacin-rei trying not to believe it. “Your failure, little Ghost.”

And Jacin-rei… sagged. Only the slightest bend in the rigid posture, but a show of weakness, however subtle.

As much as he’d grown as unreadable as he could be now, Asai remembered the boy Jacin-rei had been, remembered what mattered to him, what had always hit him at his core. And that boy still lived inside Jacin-rei, beneath all the control, all the fury, all the hatred that Asai himself had carefully cultivated.

Despair. Guilt. Loneliness.

The trinity of Fen Jacin-rei’s very being. It was why it had been so easy to mold him into the killer Asai needed him to be, why he’d pulled at Asai’s heart in ways Asai never should have allowed. Why he would leave this house without giving Asai the answers he needed, but would nonetheless leave him alive so he could perhaps find them. And despite whatever Jacin-rei believed

Asai’s part had been in his family’s destruction, he would not betray Asai and leave him vulnerable to the Courts, not even if his own life were forfeit.

Although, if the lives of his family were in the balance….

Asai shook that away until the time when his sight might tell him it was a real possibility. No sense in fretting blind. Hard not to, though, when everything that had been so clear mere weeks ago now wavered in his inner vista, distorted but not yet obliterated.

Perhaps Asai truly had been wrong about the brother, about the lure that would drag Jacin-rei to do his part. And if he hadn’t been altogether wrong, the actions of Jacin-rei, which Asai hadn’t seen or been able to predict, might have altered things to a point where all futures were now possible, for good or ill. Perhaps Asai’s suspicions about the void that hovered over all of the potentials, the same suspicions that had prompted him to slog through a muddy Jin camp in the rain more than twenty years ago, were more right than he wanted to know and there was an influence over the Untouchable Asai couldn’t foresee or control.

There was only one kind of being that could hold such influence. Only one kind who could purposefully cloud Asai’s sight. He didn’t know if that exhilarated or terrified him.

“Jacin-rei,” Asai said softly, with as much seduction in it as he dared, just enough to remind the man of what the boy had craved, “tell me where you’ve been. I have heard… rumors.” Eight men dead, all of them dealing in magic, all of them known to Asai, and all of them done in with the ruthless style of this Untouchable. Asai should know. “I fear you are testing Fate, and she is a cruel mistress. These men are not those you were trained to destroy. You don’t know what you might alter, and you won’t find what you’re looking for by—”

“I am a Catalyst, no?” Jacin-rei arched an eyebrow, control and composure once again wrapped about him like a suit of armor. “Whatever influence I impose on Fate is my right and my purpose.” He smiled a little, head atilt. “And you know all about purpose, don’t you, Beishin?”

He kept saying the word like it was a curse. Asai’s eyes narrowed. “And the Ancestors gave you leave to kill those men?”

A sneer. “They didn’t tell me not to.”

Damn it, the boy had always been too intelligent, and now he was using that intelligence to actually think. Blind devotion was gone, categorical loyalty denied. Asai couldn’t have it. Couldn’t stop it, either. Fate had been set into motion. A dangerous thing, this deadly Catalyst that he’d made, but

Ghost

Asai had not foreseen the danger the boy’s mind might be to Asai himself.

Why had he not foreseen it? Why had he not foreseen any of this?

“I won’t be back,” Jacin-rei said evenly. “I have… new matters I am compelled to attend.”

“New matters.” The beat of Asai’s heart picked up pace. Whatever the influence now hovering over the future, threatening it, it had everything to do with these “new matters,” it had to—there was no other explanation. “Where are you going? What are these ‘new matters’?” He paused, trying very hard not to look as eager as he felt. “Jacin-rei… have you met—?”

Jacin-rei puffed that disdainful little snort again and shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you that. And if I ever see you again, I will return one of your knives to you in a way you won’t like.” He stepped swiftly up to Asai, leaned in until Asai was compelled to push back into the couch cushions so he could meet the cold glare. “Hear me, Beishin—I will find him and I will find the one who pulls his strings. If those strings lead back to you, I will garrote you with them, then cut your heart from your chest and make you watch it beat its last while you choke on them.” Flames had bloomed behind Jacin-rei’s eyes now, their tongues licking out to lash at Asai with every word shoved through teeth clenched tight. “You are no longer my beishin, you no longer have a voice in what I choose to do or not do. You are dead to me.”

Asai forced himself to breathe evenly, speak with no quaver in his voice.

As with everything else Jacin-rei said, he meant it. Whatever control Asai might have had over any futures or fates through the Untouchable was now in very serious jeopardy. He would have to seek other ways. And two of them were finding out what these “new matters” were and where the boy had hidden his siblings.

“You won’t kill me now, then?” was all Asai said. It was delivered with a cavalier composure he hadn’t truly had for weeks, not since Jacin-rei had dropped from his sight like the Ghost he was.

Jacin-rei straightened his back slowly, toying with a long, curved knife Asai didn’t recognize and hadn’t seen him draw. “If I ever see you again,” he said coldly, “yes.”

And then he merely turned sharply and stalked to the door, threw it open and was gone. No more key to futures-possible, no more relaxing back on the comfortable surety of What Will Be, but only squinting into the blurry future and interpreting vague signs of What Might Be. Asai’s pet Ghost had shaken his leash and turned his bite on his owner. Which was never what Jacin-rei had been to Asai, but he could have been, Asai could have been so much crueler, if he were a different man, one with no heart, like Jacin-rei thought, one who didn’t truly care for anything or anyone. But if that were true, if that

was what Asai really was, his chest wouldn’t be so tight, and his comfortable sitting room would not now feel so empty for its lack of a Ghost.

Asai shook his head, collapsed back into the couch, all at once exhausted, and closed his eyes with a long sigh—

The abrupt, deafening crash of shattering stone had him jolting up, his heart thundering in his chest as the report echoed from the fireplace. Asai snapped to his feet, stared, momentarily uncomprehending, at the broken figurines littering the hearthstone. Raven, Dragon, Bear, Owl, and Snake—all of them in pieces on the smooth granite. All but Wolf, who leered at him from his place in the center of the table where they’d all rested only a moment ago, tongue lolling from his marble mouth, blank eyes staring with a malice Asai had to be imaging.

“Who’s there?” Asai called, his voice thinner than it should have been, but he couldn’t keep it steady. “Who are you?” He threw his glance all about the room, but there was no one there, not even shadows, but still he called,

“Jacin-rei?”

No one answered, nothing else went flying about, no movement or sound at all but that of the logs burning bright and crackling dispassionately. Asai turned his eyes back to the table, back to the carved figure that still seemed to glare at him with eyes that burned bright as the suns.

“So, then,” he said quietly. “You’ve come after all.” The smile that quirked his mouth was a little shaky but no less sincere. He dipped his head, placed a hand over his breastbone. “Temshiel.”

Somehow, he wasn’t surprised when the wolf came whistling at his head.

Things were going to plan after all.

Planting-month, Year 1312, Cycle of the Wolf JACIN held it together for a little while, following Asai through yards and fields, the night sounds swaying with then bleeding into the whining buzz inside, a cacophony that turned everything around him to the barest shadow of reality. He could tell when he should lift his feet more to clear clods of dirt or hop the occasional streambed, when he should step faster because the dark cloak he was following was flapping too far ahead of him.

He couldn’t remember where he was going exactly, who wore that cloak, why the fog in his mind was so disconcerting—

Ghost
ourboylistenlistenlistenmustn’tmissyourchance

—why his hand was sore and sticky, nor why clenching it into a fist, poking his fingers down deep, was a good—

Bright-hot pain, searing through the porridge of his mind with a warm knife, quelling the noise, letting real thoughts through it like water through a sluice-gate—

Joori, Joori gave me this, Brother, Self, thank you, I’m sorry

—and then a different sort of pain weltered in, this one squeezing his heart too tight. Tears burned his eyes, blurred his vision, but he kept sight of that cloak, following like an obedient pup, and every once in a while, if he stumbled or lagged too far, that warm hand would come back, clamp down on his shoulder, and give him something else on which to ground himself.

Chosen, he’d chosen this, his choice, to walk away from his brother—

Joori, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean… didn’t mean to make you cry, Mother, I only wanted… I don’t know what I wanted, just… something else

—and into the hands of this stranger with the beautiful dark eyes and handsome face and warm hand that tingled at his skin even through his shirt.

“…hear me, Jacin-rei?”

A sharp shake to Jacin’s shoulders, that warmth spangling all down his arms and backbone, then a jagged spark of reality when a ruthless blow landed on the side of his face. White spots flashed through Jacin’s wobbly vision, a high-pitched ring shrilled out the voices, and through it, Asai’s voice came to him, clear and solid: “You must listen to me now, Jacin-rei. Can you do that? Are you able?”

Jacin blinked away the sparkles, focusing on the throbbing over his cheekbone and temple, and Asai’s deep-dark eyes. He nodded. “I hear you.”

“Good.” Asai squeezed Jacin’s arms, keeping tight hold. “Now, I’ve a cart waiting, do you remember I told you that?”

Cart. Right. A cart at the gate. Jacin nodded again.

“Good,” Asai repeated. “The Doujou won’t stop you going through the gate, they’ll more likely pretend they don’t even see you, just make sure they see the braid before they stop you. Here.” Asai pulled the braid from where it hung down Jacin’s back and draped it over his left shoulder. “They won’t stop you, but I cannot be seen taking you away with me, do you understand?”

An Adan lord making off with an Untouchable. No, Asai couldn’t be seen taking Jacin away. “They can’t know,” he muttered.

Roll him up and stuff him in a carpet, a rucksack, hide him in a cellar….

touch the Untouchable control the Catalyst belong everywhere and nowhere no one’s boy the grace of the Ghost our boy

“You’re doing very well, Jacin-rei. I need you to concentrate for a little while longer, all right? Once we’ve got you to the cart, we’ll be safe, but we need to get you there first, and without getting me hung for it.”

Hung.

No. Asai arrested and hung, or…. No.

“What d’you want me to do?”

Asai smiled, so warm and rife with approval, that everything inside Jacin sparked and popped, and he smiled back. That warm hand covered the place where it had slapped before; it was all Jacin could do not to close his eyes and turn his face into it, but Asai needed him to concentrate.

Asai closed his hand over Jacin’s bloody fist, squeezed it tight, apparently satisfied when Jacin hissed out a tight breath. “I want you to focus on this. I want you to keep your wits until we are both through the gate, hold to them—
hold to the pain—with everything you are. Can you do that?” He waited for Jacin to nod again. “All right. I shall go first. You will stay here and watch while I check out with the Doujou and drive away in the cart.”

Drive…? Wait.

“Drive away?” Bright panic shot through Jacin. Even the reflexive squeeze of Asai’s hand over his didn’t dull it. What…? No. Drive away?

Another slap, this one sharper, and no warm caress to dull the sting this time.

“—not leaving you, you must listen to me.”

Not leaving you.

Not. Leaving.

All right. Not leaving. All right. Notleavingnotleavingnotleaving—

“I’m listening,” Jacin managed.

“Tell me what I said.”

“You’ll go first, check out with the Doujou, drive aw-way….” Jacin swallowed then made himself speak the rest: “I’ll s-stay here and w-watch.”

Asai loosed a heavy breath, tilting Jacin another one of those smiles.

“You will watch, Jacin-rei, and then, after I’ve driven away, you will go out the gate too.”

Jacin frowned, shook his head. “The Doujou—”

Ghost

Asai gave the braid a sharp yank, so hard it rocked Jacin’s head to the side. “The Doujou will not stop you. You are Untouchable, you are meant to wander; the Doujou have no authority to stop you. Do you understand?” He waited again for Jacin to nod. “Talk to yourself as you go by. Stagger. Weep.

Do anything you like, but do not allow the voices to overwhelm you. Can you do that?”

Jacin scowled. “You want me to act insane?”

As soon as it came out his mouth, he knew how stupid it was. What was he, after all? Hanging onto sanity by one fingernail and a mutilated palm.

What right did he have to feel offended and hurt that Asai wanted him to act like what he was? After what this man was in the process of doing for him?

Risking for him?

Jacin firmed his jaw, clamping his fingers down tighter. “I can do it,” he said.

Asai’s hand went once again to the side of Jacin’s face, taking the burning thud down to a warm pulse. “I know you can, Jacin-rei. Watch which way the cart goes, then get you through the gate and follow after. Keep your wits and do not stray from the road—I shall be waiting less than fifty paces away, where the road takes a bend out of sight of the sentries. Repeat it back to me.”

“Watch which way—”

“From the beginning, Jacin-rei.”

Jacin bit his lip, shut his eyes tight. Forced a stanchion through the roaring susurrus of empty chatter, made a dam of it, and pushed sense through the gap.

“Stay here until you’ve gone through the gate. Watch which way the cart goes then follow after. Make sure they see the braid and try to act crazy.” He snorted a little—he couldn’t help it. “Stay on the road. You’ll be waiting with the cart just ’round the bend.” He went through it all in his head again, nodded, then opened his eyes and grinned.

Asai smiled back. “Very good, my boy. Very good.” He took up Jacin’s curled fist again and held it between them. “Keep sharp,” he warned.

“Whatever you have to do, keep sharp. Do everything I’ve told you, as I’ve told you, and you will leave behind the doom of an Untouchable this night.

There is a better life with me, Jacin-rei. But you cannot have any of it unless you do this now. Understand?”

Oh, yes. Jacin understood. Hadn’t he just walked away from—?

The tears threatened for the… he’d lost count of how many times he’d wept tonight. Had he ever stopped?

“Will I see him again?”

Asai sighed, straightened, and threw a glance around the small copse of scraggy pines where they stood, just short of the bare stretch of dirt and lingering bruises in the land where houses used to be, razed so the Doujou had a clear view of the road. His smile this time was uneasy.

“It will depend on you, Jacin-rei,” Asai finally answered.

Could Jacin really ask for anything more? Did he even deserve to see his brother again, after he’d left him standing in the yard with nothing more than a few tears and an embrace Jacin could still feel if he tried? Would Joori ever forgive him?

Of course he would. He was Joori.

“I understand,” Jacin said firmly, looking right into Asai’s eyes when he said it so Asai would see that Jacin knew what he was saying. “I can do it.”

“I know you can,” Asai assured him, squeezing his shoulder once more. “I shall see you when you are free of this camp and the life of an Untouchable.”

Then, in a swirl of dark fabric and a flash of that warm smile, Asai turned away and left Jacin standing amidst sharp-smelling pine, trying to cling to the absurd promise, his groundless faith in it and the man who’d handed it to him.

Jacin drew the little knife his brother had given him, closed it into his palm, squeezed. Watched Asai stroll confidently up to the gate, converse politely with the doujoun who guarded it, wait patiently while they checked his papers, asked him questions Jacin couldn’t hear, then passed him on. Asai didn’t hesitate or look back, only took his time walking to his….

That was no cart, that was a carriage… drawn by a horse. Jacin blinked, more mystified now than he had been when Asai had first sauntered into their scrubby dooryard. Who was this lord-prophet who had bargained for an Untouchable all those years ago then come for him in a swirl of rich fabric and warm, dark eyes? A bloody horse, for pity’s sake. No one owned horses—too rare, too costly, too impractical for any but those with wealth beyond… well, beyond Jacin’s imagining, anyway.

Jacin’s hand pulsed steadily as he goggled, rhythmically curling his fingers and goring his palm as he watched Asai climb into the back of the carriage, signal to the waiting driver, and start off. The thin shrill of panic still speared through Jacin—

Don’t leave me, I’ll be good, I promise, please, I won’t go crazy

—but he pushed it back with a faith too blind to be sane. Sane. Jacin snickered. He ran his fingers over the messy plait that had been smooth and

Ghost
shiny this morning, when his brother had woven it for him, choked back a watery little sob and willed away fresh tears… clenched his fist tighter and bit down on the inside of his cheek besides.

As steadily as he could, Jacin took a long, deep breath and headed for the gate.

IT WAS so easy. The hard part was not letting himself get lost in the babble coming out his own mouth, not stopping in shock when one of the doujoun slipped out a surprised little cry and reached for his hand as he tottered by, muttering and yanking at his braid to be sure they saw it.

“Don’t touch him, Syl!” one of them snapped.

The guard blinked, stopping with his hand just inches away from Jacin’s.

“But surely you can’t… he’s bleeding, seyh.”

“And he’ll bleed more, poor lad,” said the other. He put a hand on his comrade’s arm and drew him back, real, inconceivable sympathy in his eyes as he looked down at Jacin. Jacin had to remind himself to renew his stream of babble. “Let him go, Syl,” the guard said. “The law says we can’t touch

’em, so we can’t touch ’em.”

And that was it. They got out of his way and let him wander right past them. He could feel their unaccountable sympathetic gazes on his back as he made a point of staggering to the road, paused like he didn’t know what to do with himself next, then followed the way the carriage had gone.

He kept expecting a shout behind him, a sharp command to stop, but it never came. Only night sounds, and white whispers in his head, and those compassionate gazes watching the mad Untouchable wander into the night.

Sympathy. Sympathy. It was… not what Jacin had expected. He’d seen Adan before Asai. He’d more than once skirted the perimeter of the various gates and boundaries keeping the Jin in their places, and he’d seen the doujoun walking their watches, blank-faced but vigilant, keeping a sideways eye on him lest he make a rush for it. He’d witnessed two raids. One where the Adan hunters had killed a man outright and taken his wife to face the Courts for conspiracy, plus carted off one girl and three boys, weeping and shrieking, all of them. One where the hunters left empty-handed and angry for it. And each time, he’d seen the guards’ impassive faces, carrying out their bloody orders with emotionless efficiency. He’d come to think that perhaps the Adan had no emotions at all. Perhaps they couldn’t have them, in order to do their work.

Except now there was Asai, and these Adan doujoun who pitied an Untouchable. Jacin didn’t know what to think anymore.

And then he didn’t think at all. Asai was waiting, right where he’d said he’d be, and the rush of relief that swamped Jacin almost made him go down to his knees in the road. He hadn’t realized how terrified he’d been that he’d dreamed it all, or imagined it, or…. It didn’t matter—Asai was there, waiting, offering a new life, and Jacin staggered to the waiting carriage with something knotted high in his chest that had the frightening feel of hope.

“You have done well, Jacin-rei,” Asai told him. With a smile, he uncurled Jacin’s fingers, placed a clean cloth over the mess of blood and mangled tissue that was Jacin’s palm, and pushed him down on the seat, covering him with a blanket. “Your work for now is done, my boy. Rest, if you can. We’ve a long night ahead of us.”

Jacin didn’t care. And probably couldn’t rest, not with all the noise ramping itself back up again. Our boy, it nattered at him, and Jacin shut his eyes tight, clamped his jaw, and shook his head. No, he snapped back, his, and he let his mind slip down into the clamor, absurdly sure that Asai would bring him back.

THE night lasted for days—weeks, years, ages. Long stripes of reality veined through with disarray and a constant grasping at sense. A great house that was obviously a dream, and Asai leading him to it, talking at him, saying, Vonshi will show you where you are to sleep. You will address me as Beishin, and Jacin frowned, dull alarm and confusion, Have you bought me, then? He thought he remembered Asai answering back, telling him, No, my boy, I have merely bought a future for you, but Jacin didn’t exactly care, and it was all a dream anyway, so what did it matter?

“We’ll just put your things… lad? Lad, can you hear me?”

He was raving in a corner of the dooryard, scaring the chickens, wanting to be let back in, but his father pretended he didn’t see him, and wouldn’t let anyone else see, and that was all right, Jacin didn’t really want them to see him anyway.

Or maybe Joori had taken him away, refusing to believe, refusing to say his full name, dragging him drooling to a freedom that didn’t exist, just a brutal death for Joori and a continuous hell for Jacin, and then Joori would go to Raven to await rebirth, and Jacin would go to Wolf, and they wouldn’t meet again for a thousand years. Except Joori would go to the suns, because

Ghost
he’d dared touch the Untouchable, and Jacin wanted to go there with him, because anything would be better than having no room for himself in his own mind.

the one the only one our boy listen always listenlistenlisten our boy we’ve chosen seek the Null

“I don’t know, Beishin. I don’t think he can hear me.”

“He can hear you, Vonshi. He just needs help finding his way to reason.”

He wept, he knew he wept, and he tried to count the tears, but got caught up in the prismed shards, resenting the delight they took in their beauty as they shattered from his eyes and broke his mind with each deafening drip-drip-drop. He screamed, he knew he screamed, because he had to, he had no choice, he had to get them out somehow before they pulverized his brain, he could feel it liquefying, all hot and steaming inside his head, and he couldn’t remember anymore how to make them stop or quiet or at least make sense.

“I need you to watch, Vonshi. You may need to do it yourself.”

back to Zero and start again Wolf cannot forsake Raven would pick the corpses clean

And then Asai—wonderful, blessed Asai, Beishin, Master, savior—
ripping away the bandage on Jacin’s palm, the sharp-hot slap of leather and the bright sting of sanity. Asai was kneeling where Jacin had curled on the floor, that rich voice calm, confident: “I know it looks brutal, but right now it’s the only way. We’ll come up with better as soon as he’s well enough to train.” Asai peered up from Jacin’s hand to Jacin’s eyes, a wary smile curving his mouth. “Better now?” he asked.

Jacin could barely see, could barely breathe, his nose clotted with snot, his face swollen and flaming, and his chest was caught in mid-sob; he let it go on a gasp, sucked in a long, wet breath. He splayed his hand flat. “Another.”

“Seyh,” said a voice, cragged and dry with years, “surely there must be—”

“Just watch, Vonshi,” Asai ordered.

Jacin waited for it, didn’t flinch when it came, only latched on to the pain of it, sighed, and started the business of piecing his mind back together again.

Asai. A carriage ride. A manor on a hill. A future.

“Thank you, Beishin,” Jacin breathed, opened his eyes, and smiled at his master.

Harvest-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf STORMING off as Samin had done—well, perhaps it had been more like slinking, but still—had been all well and good for making a point… up until the time he’d gotten to the end of the alley and realized he had nowhere to go.

He wasn’t exactly wanted for what he’d done years ago, no alerts filed with the Doujou, at least as far as he or Malick had ever been able to dig up, nor had any suspicions been directed his way when Lord Mizin—Samin paused and spat—went missing. In truth, no one had missed the bastard. Well, no one but those who had an eye toward appropriating his estate, but they were hardly going to launch a search or investigation. Still, Samin had spent the past five years keeping more or less to himself, to the Girou, and to his job. There were still some he’d known in the Doujou, and besides the few he used as contacts when Malick needed information otherwise not easily got, well… it was just best that Samin fade from the memories of those in the Doujou who might remember him, all things considered.

So when he’d decided for the first time in… probably ever to make a dramatic exit, it had lost all its drama before he’d taken ten steps. Bloody typical.

He walked. For hours. City streets at night were unique: quiet stretches where the only things moving or breathing were yourself and the rats, interspersed with splotches of drunkards or prostitutes or revelers, or all of them together; cutthroats and cutpurses with narrowed, calculating eyes, staring out from the shadows of alleys or doorways; the occasional loner, just trying to make it from one place to another without running into any of the former. All of them gave Samin a wide berth. They always had. Samin just had that look to him. It came in handy a lot.

He fetched up hours later, right back where he’d started, leaning against the brick wall by the kitchen doors in the alley, listening to the kitchens wind down and start the cleanup, watching the moons slide across the sky, and

Ghost
scaring away the occasional mutt that came looking for the heaps of waste the kitchen lads came to dump.

“Have you got a light, seyh?”

One of the kitchen boys. Samin couldn’t remember his name, but he’d always been a pleasant sort, taking care to save for “Malick-seyh’s people” a bit of whatever special was being served that night. He held an unlit smoke between his fingers, peering at Samin a little hopefully. His companion—
another boy whom Samin had probably seen before but didn’t remember—
hovered by the kitchen doors, staring at Samin as though afraid Samin might eat him.

Samin gave them a light then listened to them chatter for a while.

Complaints about Ragi and the tyrannical way he ran the kitchens, lewd speculation about whomever had crossed their sight this evening, more complaints about how much there was left to do before they could go home and do… whatever it was boys like this did when they weren’t working.

Samin accepted a smoke when the braver one offered it, but he didn’t smile.

He wished he remembered the lad’s name. He wished he were the sort of person who cared enough to bother.

He’d cared when it had mattered, though. He cared now, just not about people who could bloody well take care of themselves. That was at least something. He’d had to be shocked into it, but it still mattered, and what he did about it all now mattered too. Stopping men from doing the things Mizin had been doing, the things Mizin had arrogantly expected Samin to help him do….

Perhaps that was why Samin’s moral compass was all askew with the Fen-ghost. Samin had done his turn in the Doujou, believed in what he was doing, because magic was a frightening proposition, and no one could be trusted with it, at least as far as Samin had been concerned back then, when he’d been young and stupid. That kind of unchecked power had already proven deadly to those who didn’t have it, so Samin had been taught, and he’d had no problem whatsoever with collecting those who did have it when he was told to do it, though he’d had yet to meet anyone like Malick before then, or even Shig. And he did have to admit to too many uneasy nights, wondering what might have happened to those he’d arrested and presented to the Court, though, in truth, that hadn’t come ’til much later—not until he’d begun to hear the rumors. After that, when Samin’s rotation in one of the camps would come due, he’d find himself wondering far too much, watching the Jin a little too closely, marking faces and hoping he’d never have to drag one of them from their beds, hoping his rotation wouldn’t coincide with a raid.

The smoke had burned down to singe his fingers without him noticing it.

The boys had gone on their way, and he hadn’t noticed that, either. With a muttered curse, Samin flung the smoke to the ground, crushing the rest of it beneath his bootheel. Peered up when the parade of evening staff who didn’t live in-house slouched through the door and turned their separate ways home.

Samin nodded politely when necessary, saying good-nights and offering smiles when they were turned on him.

“A trade for a bit of your luck, seyh, and the gods’ blessing.”

Absently sucking on his scorched fingers, Samin hooked a glance sideways into a proud grin, the young man offering it somewhat shy about it, but Samin admired the bit of bravery in the approach. He slid his gaze down to the fresh rice cake in the young man’s hand, a touch of fragrant steam wafting from it in the cool of the not-yet-morning, a poppy blossom set in its center. The young man held a basket full of the little cakes, obviously having just baked them in Umeia’s kitchen to help him celebrate his good fortune.

Samin nodded, as affable as he could make it, and fished a koin out of his pocket to exchange for the cake. “The blessings of the gods on you and your babe to come.” He nodded at the man and then the little group behind him.

“This your first?”

The young man’s grin widened. “The first of many, seyh, if the gods will it and the poppies do their job.”

Samin held back a sigh. “Congratulations, seyh,” he said, just watching as the young man rejoined his cheery little group and led the way out of the alley, presumably to accost everyone he saw along the way and politely strong-arm good luck and koins out of strangers in exchange for cakes. The blessings of the gods, indeed.

Samin had seen the “blessings” the gods bestowed on the mortals that worshipped them, even on those who were supposed to be their most favored.

He’d seen the futile, doomed lives swelling in Jin bellies like the one that young man was celebrating now. And then, one turn of the midwife’s hand….

Samin grimaced and chucked the cake into the rubbish bin.

He almost wished he could blame the Jin for his turn in sentiment, back when the Doujou had made so much sense to him and then suddenly hadn’t anymore. After all, if they didn’t try to hide the children, if they’d just pluck them out—quick and clean—at birth, like they were supposed to, they wouldn’t grow so attached, and the children wouldn’t be the ones who ended up having to pay for their parents’ crimes. Samin had held to that one for years, until it occurred to him to wonder if he’d be able to hold a squalling

Ghost
infant in his big hands and snuff its life so blithely. And he didn’t even really like children.

Perhaps that was why this Fen seemed to affect Samin the way he did, with this strange mix of pity and anger. Fen had come from the camps, obviously, and what did Samin know about him, really?—perhaps someone the lad loved had been done to like that little girl in Mizin’s cellars had been done to. Fen had fought them bitterly, and that little girl had never had the chance to do the same. Samin had been taking his revenge for her for more than five years now, and he hadn’t even known her. He couldn’t deny that perhaps the Jin Untouchable had more of a right than Samin himself. Perhaps Fen even had a right to his apparent hatred of everyone and everything, and his determination to take it out on anyone he could reach. Perhaps it was Samin’s own fault for getting in his way. Wouldn’t Samin do his own best to take down anyone who stood between him and his bloody calling?

It was nearing dawn when Malick finally showed up again, the sky just taking on that hazy indigo that softened the stars into blurry puffs instead of sharp pinpoints. It had gone quiet, the sounds of the living underbelly of the city grinding down into weary silence, when the familiar lazy gait sounded against brick and stone, bootheels clocking on cobbles with an unmistakable scuff-and-drag on each step—like their owner couldn’t be bothered with lifting his feet all the way. Samin’s mouth drew up into a fond smirk, staying that way when Malick came into view. Malick didn’t pause, didn’t frown, didn’t even look at Samin cross-eyed. Samin’s breath came a touch more freely.

“Evening,” Malick said easily as he sauntered to the kitchen door, paused and leaned against it, rather than opening it.

“Morning,” Samin returned, just as easily.

Whatever had gone wrong between them had been either forgiven or forgotten, perhaps even both. Samin could tell just by the way Malick gave him a hard, close look, like he did all of them after jobs, making sure everyone was well and any incidental injuries were minor. It unknotted the low hum of tension that had been vibrating in Samin’s chest all night, exhausting him and making him jittery all at the same time, even though he’d made a point not to think about anything in particular since he’d left the alley.

Still, all was not right with Malick. Stress wound about him in an almost visible fist, stretching his lazy smile a bit hectic and making his eyes glitter with… something. Something simmering, something dangerous.

Samin only sighed on the inside. “Where’s the… Fen?” It was too much to hope that Malick had killed him and was only just getting back from burying his ashes.

The tension lines about Malick’s mouth went deeper and his eyes went harder, and somehow, his face did all of that without changing the easy expression. “Up on the roof,” was all he said.

“The roof?” Samin’s eyebrows rose. “So… he’s staying?”

“He’s staying.” Malick’s gaze slid sideways, appraising. “Problem?”

None you’ll want to hear. Samin only shook his head. “I just don’t think I expected….”

…both of you to still be alive.

Malick snorted, dropped his head back to the door, and closed his eyes. “I don’t expect you did,” he said, then he took a deep breath and shoved his hands in his pockets. Malick could be very good at cryptic when he wanted to be.

Samin turned his gaze up to the fading stars. “So… he’s got a story, then?”

“He’s Jin, Samin, they’ve all got a story.” Malick huffed tiredly and with a touch of anger in it that seemed… off, somehow. “Bloody Untouchable who’s somehow managed to hang onto his sanity by means I’m not sure I want to know. Well… most of it, it seems, at least. But if you’re asking if he’s been entertaining himself with his knives for a reason, the answer is yes.”

The resulting pause was weighted. Samin turned his gaze once again to Malick and took a good look. Not just tired but exhausted, boots and the cuffs of his trousers layered in dust he hadn’t picked up in the Girou, certainly. Just where had Malick been tonight? And why had he come back so out of sorts?

Malick sighed again, rubbed at his eyes, and then met Samin’s stare.

“Dead father, Disappeared mother, and—” He stopped, shook his head. “And that’s enough to be getting on with. He’s ours now, that’s all that matters at the moment.”

Samin’s mouth twisted sourly. He turned his eyes to the toes of his boots.

“His mother, eh?” He shook his head, rubbing at his chin to keep his hands from fisting. “Well, then.”

He had nothing else to say. It was reason enough for him.

Reason enough back when he’d retired from the Doujou to take what had looked like a comfortable position: getting paid a damned lot of money for guarding the lily ass of Mizin. Reason enough when he’d been shown down to the cellars in his second week, when he’d seen the blank… thing that used to be a pretty Jin girl of about fifteen, and listened to Mizin explain in his supercilious tones exactly what he wanted Samin to do—

Ghost

Samin shuddered, rubbing at his stubbled jaw. He’d been as gentle as he could when he’d put the girl out of her horrible, mindless misery. He hadn’t been quite so gentle with Mizin. At any rate, Samin had made sure no one found the bodies—a proper pyre for the girl; mud and pond slime for Mizin—
and by that time, it was all anyone could do.

Malick’s eyes slid open and turned to Samin, too knowing. But he was Malick, and Malick didn’t pick at your sore places, not if he cared about you, and if he didn’t… well, he’d make you some. “You good for maybe another hour or so?” he asked Samin.

Now that Malick had gone and mentioned it, Samin’s body was feeling a little heavier, his eyes starting to burn and blink a little too much, but… but this was Malick asking. “I expect I could last for a bit longer.”

“Good.” It was heartfelt and grateful. “I gave him ’til breakfast. I expect he’ll roost up there until then. He doesn’t know I know he’s there. When he shows up, feed him, show him the room between yours and mine, and tell him he’s not to go about without Shig with him, at least until I figure out how to keep him a secret without keeping him a prisoner.”

“Babysitting, eh?” Samin smiled a little when Malick let loose a tired snort. “You going somewhere?”

Malick’s mouth went tight again, face pinching down into anger. “I need to talk to Umeia for a bit,” he said, paused, and then he shoved himself away from the door, laying a grip to the handle. “And then I’ll be in Madi’s room.”

He said that last with the tiniest bit of venom.

It made Samin’s eyebrows rise again. The same lad the Fen-ghost had chosen when all this started. Some kind of retribution, maybe? Rubbing Fen’s face in his complete lack of power over his own situation? Trying to prove something to… someone?

This once, just for now, Samin didn’t want to know.

“I’ll see to our new accomplice,” Samin said, purposefully amiable, then, more somberly: “You see to yourself, Mal. We need you, y’know.”

Malick didn’t answer, only tightened his mouth again, nodded, and let himself through the door. Samin listened to his plodding steps on the stairway until the door drifted shut again. Then he listened to nothing at all, not even whatever bungled through his own head.

Somehow, ignoring it didn’t take away that small coal of fear in Samin’s guts, that strangely clear knowledge that the determination and anger that Samin almost had to admire in Fen were also the things that were going to make Fen dangerous—to all of them, but especially to Malick. Because

Malick had a way of making himself everyone’s hero, but he didn’t actually care about many. It was what kept him safe, kept them all safe beneath his

“wing.” But Malick cared about this Fen, right from the moment the initial attraction had warped into fascination. Samin had never seen that light go bright in Malick’s eyes before, but he’d recognized it right away nonetheless, and it was….

And it was none of Samin’s business, in the end. Malick had made that more than clear. Samin wouldn’t forget it, but he’d be watching.

Renewed noise from the kitchens alerted him to the change of night to day, the lighter, less-experienced daytime crew getting down to the more sedate business of beginning the baking and preparing breakfast for the staff and those who’d stayed the night. The day staff had it so much easier than their counterparts: less rushing about, fewer demands, less work in general.

Samin waited until the first hint of rose touched the sky and one of the lads came out to burn the rubbish, then he made his way up the four flights to the roof. He approached with as much caution and stealth as he was able, turning the rusted knob that would let him out onto the stretch of gangly herbs and pungent wild spices laid out in pots and shallow beds on the roof, and which Umeia insisted upon calling her “garden.”

Fen was on the other side of the flat roof, where it was kept open by Malick’s orders. Though Malick himself hardly ever came up here, except perhaps once or twice a year when he’d drag a sulking Shig up for sword practice.

Sparring. The Fen-ghost was bloody sparring. Slicing at shadows at bloody-ridiculous-in-the-morning on the roof of the place he’d been ordered to make his new home, whether he liked it or not. And Malick had judged Fen mostly sane.

Of a sudden, Samin was bone-weary.

Moving like the ghost he was—severe and silent—his lean form a dark silhouette against the silvered ashes-of-roses of false dawn, winding through parries and thrusts, dealing out death to nothing more than night’s lingering shadows. The glint of a knife swirled at the end of Fen’s hand, and Samin could only heave an internal sigh. Malick hadn’t told him the Fen-ghost was armed again. He made a mental note to clock Malick for that one, and just hoped Malick hadn’t given Fen all those damned little throwing knives back.

Samin kept quiet, hugged the door, and watched. Only perhaps a week or so ago, he would have been startling roosting pigeons, stealth next to impossible with the presence of the buggy little rats with wings. Now, with

Ghost
the migration nearly done for the season, all was silent but for the soft-landing footfalls and slightly strained breaths of a Ghost.

The lad could move, Samin had to give him that. Fast as the wind, Samin had thought when he’d watched Fen fight Malick. And his forms were almost immaculate—no wasted steps, every move carried out with intense concentration, even when his opponent was imaginary. Samin had lied when he’d told Malick that Fen wasn’t that good—he was likely the best Samin had ever seen, and Malick had been lucky he’d walked away from it with his insides where they belonged.

Samin could only see Fen’s face in profile, and that only dimly, but the jaw was set hard, like it had been when he and Malick had fought, long braid flying as he whirled beneath an imaginary lunge then feinted and counterattacked with an upward sweep. A soft grunt as he speared in with his left hand then flicked his right, as though throwing….

Samin’s mouth fell open, gaze intent and attentive as he marked every move, counted them… recognized them. His eyes widened and his eyebrows rose. “I’ll be damned,” Samin breathed. “Is he…?”

He was going through the paces of the fight again, repeating each step, defending against Malick’s remembered attacks, driving into the echoes of his own. Trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. How he’d lost.

There was something horribly poignant about it. And Samin didn’t want to watch it anymore. And strangely, he didn’t want to leave the little Ghost up here alone, knowing what he was doing, but Samin didn’t know exactly why.

Unease curling in his chest, Samin made a business of rattling the door, cursing at the rusty knob, eyes keeping watch out the corners. For whatever reason, he didn’t want Fen to know he’d been watching, and he also didn’t want to surprise him into throwing that knife. He wanted to give Fen enough time to stop, maybe pretend he hadn’t been doing anything at all, which was what it appeared the lad had chosen. By the time Samin had finished his feigned argument with the door, Fen was crouched at the far end of the roof, down on one knee on the wide, raised ledge, and hunched over himself, body tense and eyes riveted on Samin over his shoulder. Not even breathing hard, only a light sheen of sweat glistening at his lip and brow to testify to what he’d been doing.

He didn’t relax when he recognized Samin, but Samin didn’t suppose that was so strange, considering how things had turned out in the alley. Still, Samin did his best to smile and look pleasant, even though Umeia had told him once that even his best, most sincere smile looked like a jackal’s grin.

“I’ve come to fetch you for breakfast.” Samin kept his tone light and easy.

Fen stared at him for a long moment—no malice, no interest, nothing remarkable at all, really—crouching there on the edge of the roof like some kind of judgmental gargoyle. He didn’t, however, whip out one of his knives and chuck it at Samin’s head, so Samin took that as invitation. He let the door close behind him, ambling slowly through a tangle of brown-leafed mint and scraggly talapo, struggling, like they always did, to survive the cooler, drier weather of the autumn, when Umeia tended to get bored with nursing them.

“You were a doujoun.”

The way it came at him—all deep and flat, and yet still somehow accusing—stopped Samin some ten paces away. He consciously kept his smile in place and made his acknowledging nod offhand. “For twenty years.”

Until he’d realized where his sentiments had turned. A doujoun who spent more time watching the children of the camps at play and finding himself smiling sadly at them, hoping for them, rather than making sure they weren’t trying to dig themselves under the fences, should probably not be a doujoun.

Fen’s head tilted to the side, brow kinking. “Did you know a man named Syl?”

Samin blinked. He hadn’t really been expecting conversation, and certainly not voluntary conversation. Somehow, he hadn’t imagined the Ghost capable of small talk. “No,” Samin answered, curious. “Why do you ask?”

Gray eyes pierced him for another long moment, and though the mien couldn’t exactly be called “pleasant,” Samin didn’t feel the weight of hatred in the stare this time. Plenty of wariness, loads of discontent, but no malice.

Fen didn’t answer him, just turned away again, fixed his gaze out over the city and Subie beyond.

Dismissed. Ignored. It didn’t necessarily piss Samin off, but it didn’t endear Fen to him, either. Samin cleared his throat and rocked a little on his feet.

“Listen, little Ghost, you—”

“Fen.”

Not snarled this time, merely pushed out on a wave of impatience, like he’d repeated it a hundred times in the last hour and was more than tired of it.

Fair enough. Samin wouldn’t be terribly pleased if someone took to calling him Big Ugly Troll, which was what he knew he looked like.

“Fen. Your pardon.” Samin bobbed a small nod at Fen’s back. “Fen, you’ll do well enough here if you remember a few things. Number one is to have the courtesy to look at someone when he’s talking to you.” He waited, watched Fen’s shoulders slump, listened to the weary sigh, satisfied when Fen

Ghost
finally made a conciliatory half turn on knee and bootheel and craned his neck around to meet Samin’s gaze. Samin smiled again, quite sincere, pleased with this small effort at progress. “Number two is that we’re a family here, or as close to one as I’ve ever had, at any rate. We look out for each other. Which means we’re all looking out for you now.”

He watched Fen’s mouth turn down in annoyance, could almost hear the I didn’t ask you to, and nodded his head in acknowledgement, because it was true. Still, it didn’t change the fact that Fen was in it now, and there would come a time when their lives might well depend on him being in it all the way.

“You didn’t ask for this,” Samin went on, “I know that, and I feel for your… situation. Only remember that we didn’t ask for it, either, and it’s our situation now. Whether we like it or not, we’re in it together. You back us up and we’ll all back you up.”

And you fuck with my family, I’ll happily kill you.

Samin didn’t say it aloud, of course, but he had no doubt his eyes relayed the message quite clearly. He just had a face for threat. It came in handy.

Fen stared at him for a moment longer then turned again to his vigil over the city, eyes on the bruise of Subie overlooking it. Samin only looked at Fen’s profile, wondering if he should drag him downstairs and feed him, like Malick had asked, or just leave him to his stubborn solitude up here. He wasn’t to be locked in his room, after all, nor tied to a chair. Apparently, he was to have the run of his freedom, so long as he toted Shig along wherever he went so she could make sure he remained unremarkable to any who might remark him. So Samin merely waited him out, though he was getting closer and closer to just growling and stomping away—he’d tried, after all—when Fen’s head finally cocked to the side, and he went utterly still, gaze drifting off and going distant. Even his breath paused. Almost the same look Shig got, when she went “wandering,” though this Fen looked… blanker? No—on the contrary: more intent. The “blankness” was merely the face of a man whose mind whirled faster than the outside could keep up with. Whatever was going on in there, Fen was devoting his full attention to it, and simply hadn’t any left to spare. Half a moment later, Fen loosed a short little growl, shook his head, hand fisting on his knee. Like he’d been listening to something no one else could hear and it had pissed him off.

“You’re Samin, right?”

Again, it caught Samin off-guard, and he found himself nodding, compelled to answer a question from a man who apparently had no reciprocal compulsion to answer his own. “Kel Saminil, to be exact, though I’ve not gone by that since… for a long while.”

Fen stood slowly, hopped off the ledge, and turned to face Samin squarely, then, to Samin’s bemusement, he placed a fist over his breastbone and dipped his head in formal greeting. “Kel-seyh,” he said then just stood there again, staring at Samin, waiting. He offered nothing further, not even the rest of his name, but somehow, Samin got the feeling that something like this from this man was likely a pretty big concession.

Thoroughly swottled now, Samin narrowed his eyes a bit, but placed a fist over his own breast and bowed his head, as well. “Fen-seyh.” He straightened his neck. “Please call me Samin and forget the rest of it, and I’ll be grateful.”

Fen nodded again, said, “Fen,” like Samin didn’t already know it, and again, that was all. He only stood there, staring and waiting, with the suns beginning to crest over his shoulder, splaying one side of his face in rosy gold and arranging the other in murky planes of alternating shadow. Subie was a backlit smudge behind him, silhouetting him, and Samin had the sudden, absurdly poetic notion that it was all too fitting that the Ancestors’ Voice seemed overshadowed and overwhelmed by the Ancestors’ grave.

Samin cleared his throat and shifted a little uncomfortably. “Right, then, Fen. It’s been a long night. Come along and I’ll show you about. I imagine a meal and a bed would sit well about now?”

The tiniest of nods was all he got for answer, but all things considered, it was a step forward. Samin turned and led the way across the roof and to the door to the stairs. Paused halfway there and turned again. Sudden inspiration from a place he couldn’t fathom, but no less compelling. Samin gestured to where Fen had just sparred with Malick’s phantom, hesitated for a half second, then plowed on: “I noticed you could do with some work on your hand-to-hand.” Fen gave him that slow blink, expressionless. For some reason, Samin hastened to soothe any offense, even though none was apparent. “I admire your skill with the knives—so does Malick. I’ve not seen anyone move like that before. You’re very good. But you can’t allow someone to get in so close to you the way Malick did. I thought you might like to spar.”

Fen’s brow crinkled. “Spar.”

Samin shrugged. “I could show you some tactics in hand-to-hand, and perhaps you could help me improve my knife work.”

“You’ve skill?”

“Um, well, no, not really. I used to do well with a broadsword, but I’ve gone out of practice. Not much call for it, anyway—Mal usually takes the close work and Yori and Shig take backup.” He snorted. “I’m mainly for

Ghost
scaring the shit out of targets, sometimes beating the shit out of them, if we need them to talk.”

Fen tilted his head. “And Shig does…?”

“Shig does things I’d best let Shig explain,” was all Samin said. Because he didn’t think he could explain.

The dark look of appraisal was back again, Fen’s gray eyes half glimmering in the budding light at his back, then he nodded, said, “Thank you,” and went silent again.

Samin supposed his offer had been accepted. And had no idea how he felt about that.

With a sigh and a slight roll of his eyes, Samin turned again and led Fen down to their quarters.

UMEIA watched Malick pace, her face set consciously in lingering outrage, but in truth, her heart wasn’t in it—too busy hammering away at her ribcage.

Mind racing, wondering what had got him in a state ill-tempered enough that he’d actually stormed into her private chambers, almost literally thrown Lex out without ceremony or even a robe, and then took to pacing in very obvious agitation. Malick didn’t get agitated.

“How old is he, Umeia?”

The question came at her from a seething mass of… damn it, she couldn’t tell. Anger? Outrage? Fear?

“How old is who, Kamen?” she asked steadily, the address a reminder and a warning both.

Malick stopped short, turned on her with eyes gone dark and dangerous.

“Let’s not forget,” he said slowly, “exactly who works for whom.”

Umeia paled, but kept her gaze locked to Malick’s. He could be cold and terrifying when he wanted to be, but if she showed one hint of fear or retreat, he’d eat her alive, and their shared history wouldn’t stop him. She lifted her chin, said, “He looks about twenty or so to me,” then she firmed her stance when he came at her from across the room, eyes blazing, teeth bared.

“You know damn well what I mean.” As lethal a warning growl as she’d ever heard from a predatory animal, and so close she could feel his hot breath on her face as he towered over her.

Umeia swallowed, set her teeth. “Lives uncounted,” she told him steadily.

“He’s the mark of Raven in him, but he’s Wolf’s creature now.”

Most of her—the prideful part—was pleased when Malick jerked back, eyes narrowed and jaw ticcing involuntarily. The other part—the part that had sense and healthy caution, the part that knew how smart Malick was and how hard it was to surprise him—was on the verge of real fear. Because Malick was surprised. Malick was surprised. Umeia watched him as he dragged a hand roughly through his hair, teeth clenched.

“Where did you go tonight, Kamen?” she asked, putting every bit of matronly command she owned into the tone. “What happened?”

An angry snort as Malick stepped back and walked slowly over to the window. “I went for a walk.”

The unease in Malick and the crawling dread in Umeia’s gut were doing unwise things to her temper. “What,” she asked, slowly and through her teeth,

“happened?”

Malick was silent, staring out into the night, the thin gold light of Umeia’s night-lamp scudding over his fine, handsome face. He sighed, long and deep, then fisted his hands, pressed them to the sill, and leaned his forehead to the chill glass.

“Asai knows,” he said, another snarl.

Through the white buzz in her ears, Umeia was abstractly surprised Malick’s statement hadn’t come out an actual roaring growl. Damn it, they’d been so careful. “Knows?” was all she was able to warble.

“Fen went there tonight.” Malick’s tone was calmer now—too alarming for its sudden composure. “If I’m not very much mistaken, Asai has been harboring him, teaching him. And if my gut is right, he’s why Fen’s mother’s been Disappeared. I think she might be the connection between Asai and Yakuli I’ve been looking for.”

Somehow, Umeia managed to make it over to the bed and settle herself on the rumpled sheets without her knees giving on her. “And Fen didn’t kill him?” she asked.

“He wanted to. I could see it all over him. But he wasn’t sure—I don’t think he wanted to be sure.” Malick shook his head against the glass, tightened his jaw. “I think there’s… something between them.”

“Then you have to get rid of Fen,” Umeia said immediately. “Right now.

Malick, Asai is pledged to Wolf, but he’s still Raven’s, and he’s always had his own agenda. He doesn’t even follow the gods’ orders unless there’s something in it for him, and you don’t believe any more than I do that defecting from Raven will change that. If he’s made this Fen his pawn, then it’s better for—”

“Then it’s my duty to find out why and try to save Fen from himself.”

Ghost

It was all Umeia could do not to laugh outright. “Duty,” she scoffed.

“Stop thinking with your prick, for once, Kamen Malick. When’s the last time duty meant a damn to you?”

Malick turned to her slowly, gaze level and hard as diamonds. “I have never stopped doing my duty.” Low and deadly quiet. “If you’ve got a problem with how I do it….” He tipped his head toward the door. “You’ve always the option of severing our tie. I’ve never kept you oath-bound—

Kamen Umeia.”

A reminder, just as much as hers had been. It put a blush to Umeia’s cheek that she resented with appalling embarrassment. She nodded, conceding the point. Since they were being blunt, she might as well deal her own verbal slaps.

“And how convenient for you, little brother,” she said coldly. “A lack of oaths between us allows so many cracks in honor, between which dishonesty can slip through unnoticed.” She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. “Tell me, Malick: does your wish to save your new pet Untouchable have as much to do with his pretty face as it does your hatred of Asai? Do you actually care about the Disappeared, or are you merely building your case against an old enemy? Or is this all vengeance for—”

“If it was vengeance,” Malick grated, tight and blistering, “it would be my right.”

Umeia held the furious gaze for quite a while, making herself see the pain behind it, the grief. Finally, she nodded, sighed, and rubbed at her brow. “I have never denied that, little brother,” she said quietly. “And if we were not what we are, I would help you get it, oath-bound or no. As it is, I will help you get what you can— within the limits of our laws. But you have pulled other souls into your orbit now, and you endanger them all. To them, I am oath-bound, and I won’t watch you go against the laws and risk the suns for a Catalyst who likely won’t live out the month.” And she’d be damned if she’d allow her headstrong little brother to lead the others all-unknowing into an impulsive pursuit for vengeance that would get them all killed. “Malick,” she said, low with warning, “you can’t touch Asai. And you can’t touch Yakuli.”

“I know, Umeia!” he snapped. “Did you think I forgot?”

“No,” she replied calmly. “But I think you might, for a pair of tragic gray eyes and a pretty face.” She got up, stepping over to Malick and laying a gentle hand to his arm. “We have traveled long together, you and I, seen many places and many things, and you’re right—everywhere you go, you do your duty to the spirit of Wolf’s law, if not exactly the letter. But I have watched you languish in your relentless pleasure-seeking, watched you care less about yourself and your obligations with every drink and tumble. You have hidden

yourself away in cavalier desires for too long, and you’ve forgotten it was your heart that made you Wolf’s creature in the beginning. And yet now that it’s been prodded awake, you’ve gone and pointed it in a direction that risks everything.”

“My heart.” Malick closed his eyes and took hold of Umeia’s hand, squeezed. “Umeia….” Small and thick. “It’s too close. He’s doing the same damned thing he did with….” He trailed off, swallowing like he was trying not to choke. Umeia wasn’t the least surprised he couldn’t quite finish the thought. A long breath, bracing. “Is it… is Fen…?”

Umeia tried not to make her sigh sound as sad as she felt. This again.

Still.

“He is not,” she said gently. “He couldn’t be, Malick, you must know that. I felt it when Skel went to the suns, so did you.” Skel would never be reborn, and certainly not as a Jin Untouchable. Skel was as gone as the tears Umeia had wept for him when his soul had cried out as the suns swallowed it.

As gone as Malick’s sense when he’d all but challenged the gods in the wake of the unfairness of the punishment and then retreated from them, if not entirely spurned their laws.

Umeia blinked back the burning in her eyes. “Please tell me we have not traveled, all these years and all these leagues, only to end up right back where we started and looking for one who cannot be found.”

Malick shook his head, gaze dropping down to the floor. “No,” he told her, and the sadness in it convinced her where certainty wouldn’t have done.

“But… Umeia….”

“Perhaps looking for one who might take his place?” Umeia tightened her jaw, made her voice stern. “If you mean to mold the boy into what you want him to be, Kamen Malick, it would be cleaner and more merciful to just kill him now. He’s got enough pulling his spirit apart already, ask Shig—add one more voice to the din, and it may scatter him to ash.”

“I don’t want to….” Malick pulled away. “I don’t know how to explain it, Umeia. There’s something… there, something… something more than want. I won’t kill him, he’s important, and now with Asai up to his old tricks, I’m sure of it. And if Fen’s mother is where I think she might be….” His jaw tightened, and he shook his head. “Fen Jacin-rei, more than anyone I’ve ever met before, needs saving, and isn’t that my duty? It’s nothing to do with Skel.

Yes, I want Fen, but that’s not all of it, and if he doesn’t want me, I can live with it. But if he does want me, if I can get him to want me, you’re damn right I’ll take him.”

Ghost

And not only take him, Umeia knew, because she heard what Malick didn’t say, what he might not even know himself: I’ll take him away from Asai. Because Malick might have a heart he refused to believe was as soft as it was, but he also had more pride than he’d admit to. Bloody hell, for Fen to come to them straight from Asai, of all people….

Damn it, how had they not seen this? How had Malick not seen it? He’d been watching, for pity’s sake.

“To your bed or to your heart, Malick?”

The question was crucial, and the answer imperative. But Malick was Malick, and he only snorted. “I’ve no heart to speak of anymore.”

Umeia sighed and shut her eyes. Malick might believe that—indeed, did everything he could to prove it—but he was horribly, terribly wrong. Oath-bound or no, Umeia couldn’t leave him to this, not on his own. He likely wouldn’t listen to her—his practiced blindness was quite stunning in its determined shallowness sometimes—but it seemed the habit of looking after Malick was not an easy one to break.

“And how d’you think to save him, then?” she asked gently. “Through the power of your Almighty Cock? It isn’t a magic wand, y’know.”

Malick stopped and turned a heavy glare on her. “Crude, sister dear.”

But all too true, she didn’t retort. Because arguing with Malick was like shouting into a vacuum and she had no breath left. Umeia merely shook her head and changed the subject: “How d’you know Asai knows?”

Strangely, Malick reddened a little. “He called me Temshiel.”

Umeia’s shoulders drooped. “So, he knows who you are, then.” She nodded. Damn it, she liked it here. And now they were going to have to—

“No,” Malick told her; the tone was confident, full of conviction. “I was veiled. He didn’t see me. He knows I’m here, but he doesn’t know who I am or where. I think that’s why he’s involved a Catalyst—either trying to set him up to expose me or draw me out so I expose myself. He must’ve known he was being watched, but damned if I know how—I’ve been so bloody careful.”

Another growl, short and sharp. “Maybe too careful. I should have seen this, damn it! How did I miss an Untouchable?— Wolf’s Untouchable.” He paused, nailing Umeia with a hard look. “Umeia, who d’you think the Mage is?”

Umeia’s eyebrows rose. She’d done her best over the years to try not to even hazard a guess. “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “But whoever he is, he’s at least a seer.” Her gut slipped down a bit. “You’re not thinking Asai—?”

“No.” Malick snorted, shaking his head, like the mere thought was too incredible to even consider. Umeia supposed it was. “I’m thinking much bigger than Asai.”

Oh.

Oh.

Umeia sat back down again. Her knees were being far too indecisive tonight. “Malick,” she said slowly, her voice thick with warning, “you don’t really think—”

“I think it’s very strange that the Mage’s ‘deal’ came right about the time I was getting bored with hunting down the dregs in Kent and thinking about finding a ship to take us across to Tambalon. I think it’s very strange that he insisted on the heart of Ada, where Wolf’s favored Jin have been so long oppressed, and that we just happened to stumble upon Asai’s reek when we got here.”

And yet refusing had never once occurred to him, not even when Umeia had pointed out—rather stridently, if she remembered right—that the gods had made their decision, and defying them would only get him damned.

Altogether too eager for intrigue and risk, her little brother. Vengeance, more like. He’d bided and watched Asai with more patience over the past years than she’d ever seen him do anything else.

“I also think it’s very strange,” Malick went on more slowly, “that an Untouchable was apparently seized from Raven, and drawn under Wolf’s own purview, and I never even felt a tremor.”

Yes. Very strange, indeed. Malick should have felt something like that.

And the fact that he hadn’t suggested something covert and deliberate, and there weren’t many who could pull something like that over on Malick—not now, not when they were in Wolf’s Cycle. In fact, Umeia couldn’t think of a single one who had that kind of power but for the gods themselves.

Then again, if Malick had been paying attention to something other than Asai and his own libido, maybe he would have seen this coming.

Umeia frowned, pensive. If it was some kind of setup, it seemed rather unnecessarily elaborate—there were other, more direct ways to piss Malick off enough to draw him out. With his temper, it was all too easy, if one hit on just the right sore spot.

“I want this sent to the Mage.” Malick reached into his pocket, drew out a folded piece of parchment, and pushed it into her hand. “First thing in the morning.”

Ghost

“It is first thing in the morning,” Umeia grumbled, opening the note, and when Malick didn’t stop her, she read what it said. She shut her eyes.

“Malick—”

“First thing in the morning,” he repeated. He slipped his fingers beneath Umeia’s chin and waited until she opened her eyes. He gave her a grin. She could have killed him. “It’ll be all right, sister dear.” He dipped down and laid a kiss to her brow. “Do as I ask, and it’ll be all right.”

He gave her shoulder a light squeeze, then turned and quit the room.

Umeia sat for a while, staring at the slow flicker of the lamp’s flame until her eyes started to water, then determinedly thought about nothing at all. It wasn’t until she felt a lone, hot tear slip down her cheek that she stood, telling herself it was the brightness and staring into it for too long. Quietly, she slipped down the stairs and into the silent Girou, lifted the lid on the stone jar at the end of the bar… paused. One more time, she unfolded the note, blinked until the bold lettering slid into focus:

Meet. Now.

Tightening her jaw, Umeia shook her head, dropped the note in the jar, slammed the lid down, and went to go find where Lex had taken himself. She damn well needed the distraction.

MALICK woke with a light hangover, the suns far too bright through the half-open curtains of… where the hell was he? He blinked, squinted, made note of the dark head of hair on the pillow next to him, thought back….

Ah. Madi. Because he’d really wanted Fen, and Madi was the closest Malick was going to get right now. And the boy had been eager to try and make Malick forget, agreeably calling his name as Malick had taken him, drawn it out and made him writhe helplessly, pleasure-drenched and shuddering. Malick could see why Madi would be the fast favorite of reprehensible lords—so driven to please and not afraid to show his own pleasure, to be commanded and possessed. Madi liked what he did, and he threw his affections freely at any who shared his contentment.

Malick peered blearily at the boy’s sleeping face, noted the sharp angles that didn’t tilt exactly into the slopes Malick wanted them to, the dark hair that was neither chestnut nor braided in a long plait that reached his knees, the skin that was pale and unblemished, not olive-toned and scarred in deliberate lines that both fascinated and horrified. He smiled a little when Madi mumbled something thick and drowsy into the pillow then burrowed down

deeper under the covers, brow scrunching up adorably at the thin stream of daylight that blundered across the bridge of his nose.

Not Fen, and now it seemed there was an obstacle to Fen’s affections that Malick would never have guessed in a million years. Fucking Asai. How could any one be in love with fucking Asai? It made Malick’s heart pound with… anger, mostly, and yes, there was jealousy—that Asai had control over something Malick wanted, that Asai had ever touched….

Malick pushed that away, because it was making him growl, and he didn’t want to wake Madi.

It wasn’t the braid, he decided. It was that unruly fringe that hung in contrast—a bit of untamed rebellion to counteract the too tame adherence to law and tradition. The passion that escaped, even when bound down all neat and tidy; the wildness that defied the control. Malick had seen some of it tonight—in the baths, in the alley, with bloody Asai… on the road, echoing in that useless raging at the moons.

He wanted to see it all, unbound and laid out completely bare, for him alone.

And it bloody infuriated him that Asai had apparently gotten there first.

And might still be there. Malick was almost sure the passion Fen had directed at Asai last night had been hatred, or at least bordered on it, but passion cut both ways, and love was the other side of that blade.

Fuck.

Umeia was wrong, about this one thing, at least: Malick might well be a little mournful and sullen that Madi was not Fen, but he wasn’t trying to make Fen into Skel. Despite what Umeia thought, Malick wasn’t that stupid. He might have had a moment or two of blind hope, but he’d known the second the halting question stumbled from his mouth that it was impossible. Had known for a lot longer that his grief was more guilt and regret than any idealistic lost love. Skel had been Malick’s friend and his occasional bedmate, but he hadn’t been any more to Malick than Malick had been to him. He’d bring Skel back in a second, if he could, but not for the reasons Umeia had always assumed. Malick hadn’t been pining all these years—he’d been seething.

And yes, perhaps Malick did tend to attempt drowning out with too much drink and too much pleasure the impotent fury that rotted in his belly, sliding into too many indulgences of the flesh in any way that might bring reprieve and a few moments of forgetful satisfaction. Chasing redemption to the bottom of a glass. Chasing bliss through the writhing of faceless, nameless

Ghost
bodies, too many, all blurred together now. Chasing blank-minded amnesty in every vice he could fathom. Hopeless. All of it. He’d never catch any of it.

Still, to Malick’s mind, he had a right. And so long as he abided by his nature, carried out his duties and kept the Balance, he could do as he damn well pleased.

And it pleased him to pursue Fen, with his tragic eyes and angry snarls.

His Disappeared mother and his earth-bound brother. He’d told Malick about the mother, but only because he’d had to. He’d withheld the brother. Half-trust, and Malick didn’t suppose he could blame Fen, but Malick wanted all of it. And oddly, he thought he would have been disappointed if it had just been handed to him. He sort of looked forward to winning it.

Except… this thing with Asai…. If there was any similarity at all between Fen and Skel, it was the influence of Asai, and Malick would not watch it all happen again. If he couldn’t get Asai for Skel, perhaps he’d find that vengeance he’d been denied through Fen. If Fen was not already fully Asai’s creature. Malick supposed that would be the first piece of information he’d have to force out of Fen before the shit got too deep.

Fully awake now, Malick carefully pushed back the covers and slipped from Madi’s bed, laying an overabundance of koin on the clothespress in gratitude as he dressed. Umeia didn’t allow him to indulge himself in the help for free—had told him once with a typical roll of her eyes that she’d have to close down, because they’d all be too exhausted to service paying customers—but he didn’t begrudge it with Madi. The boy had given Malick everything he’d asked for, and more.

He stole from the room, boots clutched in his hand and shirt unlaced, and made his way down the hallway toward the attic stairs. Low noise clattered up from downstairs—lunchtime, he supposed, by the set of the suns—and several maids were busy rousting Umeia’s “lads and ladies” so they could freshen their rooms for this evening, giving the occasional leftover customer the boot in the process. Malick greeted and grinned his way by. He didn’t stop to chat and flirt as he’d normally do, just kept himself moving, dodging out from any attempted conversation or proposition with his quick gait and cheerful shrugs and promises of later.

A bath first, when he didn’t have to worry about customers intruding, then he’d see if an answer had come to his query—well, all right, demand—to the Mage. And then, perhaps, he’d seek out Fen, draw him out under the pretense of seeing that he was settling in, find out just what exactly he had to do with Asai and whether or not they’d been—

No. That answer would have to come with trust. That answer Malick would have to earn. It was the existence of the siblings he’d drag out of Fen, cooperation or not.

With a bit more energy than he’d had a moment ago, Malick reached the top of the steps and rounded the bend in the hall just in time to see Fen and Samin emerging from the steps to the roof down at the other end. Malick’s eyebrows jumped up into his hairline, surprised both at the fact that Fen was still here and apparently hadn’t attempted to slink off, as well as the fact that he was just coming down from where Malick had left him… hours ago.

Surely, Samin couldn’t just now be dragging Fen down from his brooding?

Startled, Malick caught Fen’s eye, watched, bemused as the hard gaze traveled Malick up and down, taking in his trousers slung too low, his wide-open shirt, his boots in his hand. Watched the notice, the appraisal, the… what did that slight flicker of Fen’s glance mean, damn it? Before Malick could be sure he’d interpreted it correctly, it was gone, and Fen was looking once again at Samin.

Malick’s eyes narrowed, and his heart picked up pace. It took him a moment, but he managed to note Samin’s ruddy color and the sweat on his brow, a light bruise blooming along Fen’s cheekbone and temple… Samin’s hand laid to Fen’s shoulder in a way that seemed more friendly than commanding, and Fen’s failure to try and twitch it off. Fen’s face didn’t give anything away, but Malick hadn’t really expected it to. And then Samin completely scragged Malick’s tottering mind when he gave Malick what passed for a pleasant grin on his stone-cut face, and tipped him a nod in salute.

“G’mornin’, boss,” Samin said, a note of cheerful sarcasm in his tone.

“Up with the suns, I see.”

Still smiling, Samin gave Fen a little nudge forward, ignoring the tiny growl, and led him over to Malick. Now that they were closer, Malick noted they were both barefoot, and neither of them were wearing the clothes they’d had on the night before, both of them with splotches of dust on trouser-knees and elbows, and Fen with a smear of it all along the entire left side of his body.

A thwarted escape attempt? A challenge and resulting brawl?

Fen wasn’t looking at either of them, wrinkling his nose a little as Samin fetched him up in front of Malick. Fen’s blank expression was no help at all in trying to discern exactly what had gone on while Malick had been distracting himself with the pretty boy Fen had bought last night with the possible intention of fucking him or killing him.

Ghost

“You’ve missed lunch,” Samin told Malick amiably. “And you’ve missed the entertainment.” He grinned again, giving Fen a slap on the back that almost sent him careening into Malick’s chest. Again, Samin good-naturedly ignored Fen’s growl. “Had ourselves a bit of a session up on the roof. Yori and Shig are still up there wrestling.” He gestured at the bruise on Fen’s face with what looked like real apology. “I’m afraid I didn’t pull a punch in time, but he got me back when we worked with the knives.” Samin lifted his tunic, as though showing off the long stripe of crusted blood that ran just under his ribs, grinning like a proud father. “He’s bloody fast, Mal. He’ll do well on the job, mark that.” Samin’s smile tilted sly, and he shot a glance at Fen. “He’ll make a knife man out of me yet, if he’d only learn to use actual words when he teaches.”

Fen gusted a small snort, rolled his eyes, and… smiled. Just a tiny thing, a flash of a tic at the corner of his mouth, and you really had to look for it, but it was there. A real smile. From Fen.

Had Malick woken in an alternate universe? Was he stoned and didn’t know it? Last night, Samin had done nothing but growl antipathy to and about

“the Fen-ghost,” and Fen had been… well, Fen. Now, Samin was clapping Fen on the back, and Fen was bloody smiling. Smiling at bloody Samin.

It wasn’t fair.

“Sparring,” was all Malick managed to echo stupidly. He rubbed at his eyes. “Already?”

He’d meant “already” in the sense that it seemed a little early for Samin to be trusting Fen coming at him with knives, but Samin answered to the more obvious implication:

“It’s early afternoon, Mal.”

And far too soon after Malick had woken from a night of pretending he was fucking Fen, and with a hangover to boot, to be dealing with the ludicrously improbable. Malick shook his head and pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Whatever,” he muttered. He dropped his hand and gave Samin a look. “Give us a minute, would you?”

Samin’s eyebrows rose, annoying Malick beyond sense when he peered at Fen, as though asking if it was all right with him, before shrugging and sauntering away. “I’ll be ready for another go after supper, if you’re game,”

he threw over his shoulder as he headed up the hall. He seemed to take the slight tightening of Fen’s mouth for an affirmative, because he grinned again—all chipper amusement—and let himself into his rooms.

Malick stared after him for a long, fuzzy moment before he shook himself, nodded sharply at the door to what was now Fen’s room, and lifted

an eyebrow. Fen’s mouth tightened again—somehow, it didn’t seem as friendly as it had when it had been aimed at Samin—but he merely breathed a little sigh, turned, and allowed Malick to follow him into his new quarters.

Malick dropped his boots out in the hallway then shut the door behind him, ignoring how Fen’s eyes narrowed at the liberty, and had himself a look around.

With the exception of the empty beaten pack now hanging off the footpost of the bed’s iron frame, it looked exactly the same. The bed didn’t even look slept in. Malick didn’t know why it gave him a turn of irritation; it wasn’t like Fen could’ve really made himself at home already, right? Except… Samin.

Malick shook his head.

“Shig gave you back your knives, I see.” Malick was going to have to have a little chat with Shig about taking that kind of decision for herself— he certainly hadn’t given her the say-so to rearm the lethal little Ghost.

Naturally, Fen didn’t answer, just stared. Well, glared, actually, but it was almost the same thing with Fen, Malick decided.

It made Malick’s jaw want to clench, but he didn’t let it. “Are you finding your way about all right?”

Fen leaned himself back to the far wall beside the window, looked Malick over thoroughly, then merely nodded. And why did Malick sense scorn beneath the blank expression?

“You slept well?” Malick ventured next. “Eaten?”

Again, a nod. And it was pissing Malick off. Samin had got a bloody smile from the little prick, and all Malick seemed to rate was silent derision and an invisible sneer.

“And you’ve been told you’re not to go about without Shig, to—”

“I’ve been briefed,” Fen cut in stonily. “What do you want?”

This time, Malick’s jaw did clench. Fine. If that was the way Fen chose to play it, they’d just see who came out the winner. There was more than one way, after all, to get something coveted. Malick was very good at getting. And he was almost certain what had been in Fen’s eyes in that momentary glimpse Malick had seen out in the hallway.

Malick made himself relax, let his limbs go loose and tipped his chin down so he peered at Fen through half-lidded eyes. He smiled, all sultry sin.

“You keep asking me that.” He reached up, ran a hand through his hair, marked how Fen’s eyes followed the movement, and so moved the hand slowly down to tease at the flaps of his shirt. “I’d think it would be obvious.”

No response but a narrow stare and three slow blinks.

Ghost

“We didn’t get to, um… talk much last night,” Malick said easily, taking a step away from the door and toward Fen, keeping his voice low and silky. “I want to know what you’ve not told me. I want to know where you went last night and what you did.”

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Damn the little prick.

As he’d done last night in the baths, Malick slid into Fen’s personal space, hovering there, and as it had done last night, tension wound through Fen’s stance, curled tight about him. His breathing picked up pace, but it wasn’t all anger and outrage this time.

Malick knew what he looked like, sauntering in here, looking rumpled and just fucked. And he knew a reaction when he saw one. He’d seen the beginnings of it out in the hall, and he saw it again now. It seemed the little Ghost wasn’t made entirely of stone after all.

Malick smiled, calculated smoky seduction, tipped in, murmured, “I want to know why you’re here, and why you stayed.”

Fen was staring at him, his gaze just as sharp as his blades, teeth clenched tight and jaw ticcing. “You said you’d help—”

“Oh, I will,” Malick cut in, soft and smooth as he reached up and ran his finger along the shiny plait hanging heavy over Fen’s shoulder. “But tell me, Fen….” He drifted a hair closer, letting the tip of his index finger sweep up and over the bruise on Fen’s cheek, satisfied at the little gasp he drew forth.

It’s gone quiet. And then he withdrew the touch, satisfied again when Fen’s body instinctively followed against his will. “What else d’you think I might find, when I find your mother, hmm?” Malick sidled up close, near enough to align his front to Fen’s side, but not quite touching. He dipped in to Fen’s ear, whispered, “Who else are you hiding, little Ghost?”

As expected, the glint of a knife sparked out the corner of Malick’s eye, and he whipped his hand down and over, catching Fen’s left wrist before he could do anything more threatening. Malick didn’t hold onto him, though, very much aware of what his touch did to this Untouchable. In fact, he was counting on it when he let go but didn’t back off. He had something Fen wanted now, and if it helped him get his answers, he was prepared to use it with all ruthless intent.

“Step away,” Fen said evenly.

Malick didn’t. He slid an obvious glance all up and down Fen’s body, raking him deliberately, then back up to his eyes—grinned. “I don’t think you really want me to,” he retorted.

“Since when has it mattered to you what I want?”

“Since I decided that what you want is me.”

“Want you?” Fen chuffed that now familiar derisive snort, but it shook around the edges. “You reek of stale liquor and day-old sex.”

Malick thought about that, smirked. “Would it be better if the sex was fresher?”

Fen’s arms twitched, the knife gripped tight in his fist, but he didn’t lunge with it and he didn’t move or push Malick away—almost like he didn’t dare get too far or close enough to touch again, for fear of… what exactly? Malick would pay anything at all for an answer to that question.

“You’re delusional,” Fen told him, the tone brave but crumbling. “I don’t want you, and I don’t want you touching me. Step. Away.”

Malick snorted, bobbed his head down, breathed in—sweat and leather and almonds—ran a fingertip over the knuckles of the hand still clutched tight about the hilt of the knife, drew it back, then brushed his mouth over Fen’s.

And Fen… stilled. Even his breath stopped. For a moment, Malick was torn—
if he closed the distance, Fen would let him kiss him, Malick could feel it, not just the tiny seed of want he could detect in the reluctant reactions, but the need for the silence Malick’s touch could give him.

Fen was on the edge. Fen had got beaten up in an alley last night and was now following one of the men who’d done it around like a puppy. Fen had walked away from what was left of his family without even saying goodbye to them then wept alone in the road in the middle of the night. Fen had been unequivocally rejected only a little while later, and still couldn’t bring himself to murder for it. Fen was in love with a man who didn’t love him back, and if Asai had given him the smallest encouragement last night, Fen would have believed him and stayed, Malick had seen it. Fen was desperate for contact, but wouldn’t allow himself to have it. Fen was desperate for love, but didn’t think he deserved it, rejection more easily accepted than offering.

Fen was willing to sell his soul for a moment of quiet, and he knew Malick could give it to him.

“I don’t want you,” Fen repeated, no strength in the tone, no attempt to draw away, but no attempt to move closer, either.

Tempting to seal the deal, but not why Malick was here. Malick smiled a little, licked his lips, whispered, “Liar.”

He’d been expecting it, but Fen was damned fast, and he’d apparently been sparring with Samin, so Malick really should have known—he’d been guarding the left hand to keep the knife where it was, but Fen’s right fist caught Malick just beneath the chin, sent his teeth jarring together and his ears ringing just a little. The angle had been off, and it didn’t have the force behind

Ghost
it could have done, what with how close Malick was pressed in, but damn—it hurt. Malick didn’t back off, though; he merely flexed his jaw, dabbed at his lip and checked his fingers for blood, and when there wasn’t any, he grinned again. He turned and put out his arms, bracing himself so he had Fen caged between them, back to the wall. The knife had come to rest at Fen’s hip, but his hand was still clenched around it, tight and white-knuckled.

“You like it when I touch you.” Malick slid the tip of his nose along Fen’s temple. “But you’ve grown so used to thinking around the noise, you don’t know how anymore when the noise isn’t there.”

“Shut up.”

“Mm, I don’t think so.” Malick kept a sideways eye on the knife, drew back from direct contact again, and hovered at its edges. It was cruel, and he didn’t care. “If I shut up every time you wanted me to,” he whispered, “I wouldn’t even know your name.”

“How are you doing this?” Small and nearly breathless.

A hand to Fen’s arm, the vibrations sliding up beneath Malick’s skin and down his backbone, and the unwilling gasp at the contact going right to his groin. “Tell me who sent you.”

Real surprise flitted over Fen’s face, consternation then indignation. “No one sent me. You’re the one—”

“No one?” Malick’s grip tightened. “No one tied you up in a pretty bow, sent you along to catch my eye?”

Fen’s arm jerked in Malick’s grip, but it seemed halfhearted, like he didn’t really want Malick to let go, but couldn’t stop himself from trying. “I wouldn’t think it terribly difficult to catch your eye,” he sneered. “I wasn’t sent, I was caught.” He snatched hold of Malick’s tunic, dragged him in until they were pressed together, chest to hip. “Is this what you want?” Fen demanded, enraged, composure tottering. “If I give it to you, will you stop…

stop mocking me?”

A tiny part of Malick’s brain was elated by the offer. The larger part plunged directly into discomfiture.

There were tears pressing at the corners of Fen’s eyes. Confusion and…

damn it all—that was real pleading. There was nothing beneath the anger but a wide swath of vulnerability that Fen was killing himself trying to hide. And someone who would interpret Malick’s overtures as mockery was not someone playing coy and unattainable—it was someone who thought he wasn’t worth the attention and couldn’t fathom any other reason it would be paid to him. Which meant all of this was merely torture for torture’s sake,

taunting a man whose mind was filled with noise, dangling silence in front of his nose, then snatching it away.

Asai hadn’t sent Fen, nor had anyone else but perhaps the gods. And if the Mage had seen him coming and seized the opportunity, that was all it had been, at least from Fen’s side.

Malick slumped, his breath going out of him in a hollow hiss, shame teasing at its edges.

Bad dog. Sit. No Fen for you.

He kept his hand where it was, but relaxed his grip, giving Fen the option of keeping the contact or drawing away. “I’m sorry,” Malick offered with every bit of sincerity he owned. On impulse, unthinking, he reached up, swept the messy fringe from Fen’s eyes, letting his fingertips skim the sweated brow. Fen gasped again and flinched, as if the soft touch had been a slap, as if tenderness hurt. Or maybe just tenderness offered by Malick. “Fen,” he said softly, “I’m sorry. I had to be sure.”

“And are you?” Shaky but still defiant, filled with uncertain wrath.

Malick could only whiff a hollow snort, shake his head. “No. Not of anything right now.” He noted the wariness slipping back into the gilt-gray eyes, the guarded frown. “But I don’t think… what I was thinking. I’m sorry, Fen. I’ve got a lot at stake. I had to be sure.”

Fen stared at him for quite some time, measuring, equilibrium settling back behind his eyes again, but he still didn’t shake himself loose from Malick’s light grip. “And you’ll still… help?”

He said the word like it was foreign to him, like he didn’t really know how to use it or ask for it. Didn’t really expect it when he did.

“I’ll help,” Malick told him, keeping his gaze level with Fen’s. “We’ll find her.” Damn—he really thought he might mean that. He paused, then squeezed Fen’s arm again. “Fen… you realize… I mean, she won’t be—”

“I know what she’ll be.” The softness of Fen’s voice masked… probably hundreds of things Malick would never see.

Malick merely nodded. “I take it we’re on a hunt for a proper pyre, then.”

When Fen said nothing, Malick nodded again, tilted his head. “Is that what the fire at Hende’s was about?”

Again, Fen didn’t answer, but he looked away, which told Malick everything he needed to know. Fen had taken care of Hende, then taken care of his victims, lit them a pyre and sent them to the gods. For all Malick knew, Fen even painted the prayers on their brows and spoke the rites, burned incense for them; somehow, it was all too believable.

Ghost

“All right.” Malick gave Fen’s arm yet another squeeze then moved his hand to Fen’s shoulder. “We can start now, if you like.”

And if the search ended where Malick thought it might? Well. The laws might prevent Malick from killing Yakuli himself, but he didn’t think it would take much to get Fen to do it. And if Malick was very lucky, Asai would make himself a very convenient blockade to that path, and Fen could take care of him too. All Malick had to do was make sure Asai was the one pulling the strings of the Puppet Master. And that Fen knew it.

All right, Malick hoped that was all he had to do.

Fen kept staring at the floor, but he nodded. After a moment, with something that looked like reluctance, he tucked the knife in his belt and angled himself out from Malick’s touch as he stepped away from the wall.

Malick’s hand unconsciously lingered, fingers gliding along the braid as Fen moved away, and knocking it off his shoulder. Back straight, shoulders squared, braid once again swinging against the backs of his knees, Fen crossed the room. He paused with his hand on the door’s knob.

“Who did you think sent me?” he asked quietly.

Malick rubbed his fingers together, already missing the silky feel of the braid between them. He shook his head. “No one,” he answered, just as quietly.

Fen was silent for a long moment before he ventured haltingly, “How can you… what are—?”

“I can’t tell you that yet,” Malick cut in softly. “I’m sorry.”

Fen couldn’t have liked the answer, but he showed no reaction, just jerked a sharp little nod then threw open the door and turned back to face Malick. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared. “Take a bath first,” he snapped.

Malick could think of nothing to do but sigh a little and let Fen have this one.

Tides-month, Year 1315, Cycle of the Wolf

THE thing about Dani, Jacin thought as he stood in the shadows and watched him whirl, watched his knives flash in a glittering embrace of his sleek-sinewed body, was that Jacin had wanted him right away. From the first moment Jacin had seen him, he’d wanted Dani, even though Jacin knew it was… perhaps not a betrayal to Asai, but… disrespectful, maybe? Except Jacin couldn’t have Asai, had to be satisfied with the distant love of a tutor, a

foster father; Asai had made that clear in his careful disregard of hints and clumsy overtures. Not outright rejection, Asai was too kind for that, but it was all the same in the end.

Jacin couldn’t have Asai. Asai would never have Jacin.

All right. There was plenty for which to be eternally grateful, and if Jacin couldn’t have Asai in the way his body wanted, he had no right to resentment.

Despite his raging hormones, Jacin would manage to live with it. He’d be sixteen on the next Turn, and he was still a virgin, but he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t insane—well, mostly—and if he perfected his new forms by the end of the month, he’d been promised he would see Joori for his birthday.

It had been too long now, and the lack of Joori wasn’t so much a sharp pain in Jacin’s chest anymore as a low, constant ache. Wondering what Joori was doing. Wondering if he was looking after their mother. Wondering if he’d managed to breach some girl’s maidenhead and left Jacin behind in the “not a virgin anymore” category too. Wondering if Joori missed him, if he’d forgiven him, if his life was easier now, without a Ghost-brother dragging at him, if he was keeping his nature hidden well enough, if Caidi was still sunny and pretty, if Morin was still a little toad, if, if, if….

There were accounts from Asai, assuring Jacin all was well and he was keeping them safe, and Jacin gave him letters at least once a week. He never asked if Asai actually dispatched them, and Asai never volunteered. Jacin didn’t push, because Asai had saved him, saved his mother and his brother, he owed his beishin everything, and if Asai decided when and how Jacin should have contact with his family, it was his right.

And Asai had given him Dani. Where Asai was mentor and tutor, Dani was trainer, had come just when Jacin had begun to despair that he’d ever manage to get his mind under control without flaying every inch of skin off his bones. When he’d begun to wonder if Asai wouldn’t give up on him after all, and when Vonshi had finally begun to balk at the only method of maintaining relative quiet. A deferential old man, acquiescent to all of Beishin’s commands, except when it came to strapping a boy to stop him babbling.

“It is wrong, seyh,” Vonshi had told Asai. “The boy is Untouchable. You do enough damage just by taking him in, but I will not beat him at your pleasure, though he might beg for it. He must listen, it is what he is, and he cannot hear if you take it away.”

Jacin had wept, apologized, pleaded, because if Vonshi wouldn’t help him, Asai might decide the Ghost was too much trouble after all, and then….

Jacin didn’t even want to think about “and then.”

Ghost

“You said you would begin training,” Vonshi had gone on, quieting Jacin’s blather with a bony hand to his shoulder. “You cannot wait for perfection in concentration to begin it. Surely the concentration necessary to it, and the….” He’d paused, pursed his lips. “…the incidental injuries?”

It had sparked something in Asai, and then there’d been Dani. Handsome, ruthless, grinning Dani, who’d relentlessly beaten the shit out of Jacin for months before the sense of the instructions with each blow had begun to sink in. Almost immediately, Dani’s voice had become louder than the noise in Jacin’s head, almost as loud to him as Asai’s could be sometimes.

Block your right side when you attack from the left, don’t let me get under—good! Exactly like that, now go back to the beginning, perfect the form, your wrist is all wrong, Jacin-rei, control, control, control.

Control and perfection, because those were the things Asai expected Jacin to learn, and the things he expected Dani to teach him. They both wanted to please Asai, and Jacin wanted to please Dani.

Dani, who lived in the rooms just three doors down the massive hallway from Jacin’s; who let Jacin come to chatter at him sometimes; who was patient when Jacin stopped to listen and never looked at him askance for it and never tattled on him to Beishin; who called him Jacin-rei but never Ghost. Dani, who’d managed to corner Jacin only weeks ago as he taught him a new drill, got Jacin’s back to the wall, and when their bodies had pressed together, all sweat and slick and heat coming at Jacin from every direction….

Jacin’s hormones had shoved his body up more firmly, and Dani’s eyes had gone wide, and now Dani looked at Jacin with more than a trainer’s eyes, pretty blue gaze almost smoldering at him. Jacin met it all with tension-exhilaration-anticipation-fear. Jacin didn’t love Dani, he loved Asai, but he wanted, needed, and Asai didn’t, and Jacin had no right to want in the first place, he was what he was— no one’s son, no one’s brother, no one’s father, no one’s lover—but Dani… Dani might let Jacin have.

Heart fluttering and alternately climbing up into his throat then plummeting to his stomach, Jacin stepped out of the shadows against the wall of the oversized hall Asai had given them for an exercise room, long knives gripped in each fist. Shirtless, because he’d filled out just lately, widened, and he’d seen Dani looking. And he’d come here for a reason.

He stood there with the last of the evening sun glinting in through the high windows, slanting down and feathering warmth over the crown of his head, the tops of his shoulders. Waited.

He knew Dani saw him—Dani saw everything, he never missed anything, except for the one time he’d had Jacin spar him while wearing the shadow

charm, and Jacin had managed to blood him more than usual, but Dani had still beaten him in the end. Now, Jacin could feel Dani watching him, even though Dani’s eyes were half-lidded, staring inward as he swept through his forms, knives a-twirl and muscles gliding silky under the golden sweated skin of his bared torso, toffee-colored wisps of wavy hair sticking to brow and cheeks.

Dani didn’t shift his gaze, didn’t falter in his rhythm, but he smiled.

And Jacin needed.

With no shout or warning, Jacin drove at Dani, lunging into an attack from the right that was smoothly countered with a block and quick parry.

Jacin managed to gain temporary advantage only because he was willing to allow Dani’s knife to graze his chest as he pushed in and forced Dani to back up a pace. Dani counterattacked with an upward thrust at Jacin’s throat and a block down low, forcing Jacin to give back the ground he’d gained only a second ago.

Dani grinned. “Your advantage is that you don’t fear pain,” he told Jacin, flicking his eyes down to the shallow slice that ran along Jacin’s pectoral from collarbone to sternum. “Mine is that you still fear death.” Then he lunged in again with another lethal sweep at Jacin’s throat from which Jacin only just barely managed to jerk away and still maintain equilibrium while keeping his guard up to block and not lose ground.

Concentration. Winnowing out everything but the flash of knives and the flex of muscle over bone. Focusing one part of his mind on Dani’s motions and his own in answer, and forcing the rest of it into a low hum beneath it all.

Marking how Dani’s skin took on a cast of burnt-gold umber as the light faded, how his shape should have been getting dimmer in the quick-falling gloaming, and yet it only set the lines and angles of him more stark against the gloom.

They danced. It seemed like hours. Gliding through each other’s moves, steel clashing and scraping between them, Jacin meeting Dani’s constant grin with a hard stare. Jacin’s voices had gone lower, if not entirely quiet, but there was enough pain in maintaining the perfection of skill, twisting himself into the proper shapes, to keep them to a minimal shriek. Time lost, and lust a hot, heavy thing in his gut. Muscles screaming and drowning out everything but his need and that alluring blue gaze locked to his own. Knives locking together, bodies pressing, gyrating in brief concert for stunted, sensual moments, then flying apart again.

Perfection of form. Perfection of control. Dani had it and Jacin wanted it.

It was a clean ache in his chest, a not-so-clean ache in his groin, hotter and more intense.

Ghost

Jacin needed.

He let Dani force him back, gave ground with an unconvincing performance of chagrin as he allowed himself to be backed to the wall, allowed Dani’s right hand to disarm his left, allowed his left to pin Jacin’s right…. Allowed his head to lift, baring his throat—submission—as Dani leaned in, narrowed his blue gaze on Jacin’s, that grin still there, but a little more feral now.

“I’ve caught myself a Ghost,” Dani breathed, and though the heat of it slithered right through Jacin’s bones, he still couldn’t help the slight flinch at the name. Dani didn’t seem to notice, only tightened his grip on Jacin’s wrist, slid his mouth lightly along Jacin’s throat. “Whatever shall I do with him?”

Right at the moment, Jacin didn’t care if Dani called him Petunia, but he couldn’t just give in—it wasn’t his nature. So, he glared, set his jaw, butted his brow into Dani’s head a little until Dani drew back and looked Jacin in the eye. “Don’t,” was all Jacin said.

Dani’s grin broadened. “Don’t what?” Like he really didn’t know. Jacin meant to tell him not to call him that, but Dani slipped his free hand down Jacin’s chest, smearing a trail of blood down his torso, then flattened his palm over the front of Jacin’s loose exercise trousers. “Don’t do this?” He gripped Jacin’s erection through the fabric, set a light nibble to the lobe of Jacin’s ear.

Jacin’s knees almost buckled. Oh, yes, do that, do that, please. Opened his mouth to say as much, the vague niggle of Ghost still teasing at the back of his mind, flaring a touch of resentment, but oh, the hand.

“I don’t… oh, fuck.” Jacin shook his head, leaned in and nipped at Dani’s bottom lip. “Don’t… want you… uhn….”

Don’t want you to call me that, not you, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get his mouth to work properly, all he seemed able to do with it was suck on Dani’s lip, his throat, and breathe little curses and moans into his skin.

And then Dani rubbed his thumb all up and down the length of Jacin’s erection, traced his shape with deliberate care, grinned at Jacin’s glazed eyes and whimpering moans. “Liar,” was all he said, then ran his tongue along the shell of Jacin’s ear and set his teeth more firmly about the lobe.

Divine touch, searing contact, wide swaths of pleasure striping Jacin’s skin from his thighs up his backbone. Jacin whined a little, let his head drop back, opened his mouth again when Dani’s descended on it, that hand that felt nothing like his own doing things to his body that wound into his head and chest and made him feel like nothing so much as a quivering mess of loose nerves. Jaw working to keep up with the slippery slide of Dani’s tongue against his own, Jacin’s hand drifted up and latched onto a slick pectoral then

down the sensual ridges of a chiseled torso, hesitating on that last dip for perhaps a second or two before plunging down into Dani’s trousers, taking hold with a low groan. Rigid and hot and thick, and oh, Jacin could smell it, breathing it in, flaring his nostrils and pushing in tight, hips flexing now with not even a pretense at control as sweat and spit and arousal whirled together in a spicy cocktail that turned him lightheaded. Sensation tore an open gap of bliss right down the middle of him as Dani’s hand dipped down in return, slipped in.

Concentration. Control. Forcing his focus down to nothing but touch and smell and sweat-slick motion. Feeling. Fuck, when was the last time Jacin had felt this much?

It was all heat and motion now, no voices, no thoughts, no sense at all, just thrusting hips and building tension fisting Jacin’s spine, a widening swath of ecstasy that unfurled in his chest and shattered all through him. Dani pressed tight against him, crushing Jacin’s hand between his erection and Jacin’s hip, shifting them a little clumsily so Jacin could reciprocate. Hot breath gusting over the join of neck and shoulder, and salt-sweet skin against his lips; Jacin wanted to taste it, so he licked a stripe from Dani’s throat to his jawbone, grazed his teeth, delighted at the groan he pulled out from Dani’s chest.

“Fuck,” Dani grated through his teeth, shoved against Jacin harder, like he was trying to turn him into a vaguely Jacin-shaped smear on the wall, then tightened his grip, moved his hand faster. Sank his teeth into Jacin’s shoulder and bit down hard, heightening pleasure with a sharp contrast of pain.

Holy fucking shit.

“Ah!” was all Jacin managed before hot, buzzing white flashed all through him, blanked his mind, tripped him into a pleasure so intense he lost everything else. Relentless, it dragged his orgasm from him in wavering cries, liquefied his bones, introduced new colors to him in blinding surges of bright-hot sensation, complete and devastating transcendence. He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t see. He was going to die, and he just didn’t care.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The pleasure he’d managed to dredge from his own hand had never been anything like this.

Amazing.

Brilliant.

Silence. Not real silence, it was all still back there, waiting, but fuck, it was close.

Almost— almost—perfection.

Ghost

“Oh,” he heard Dani say into his shoulder.

They’d slithered to the floor in a sweaty heap while Jacin had been caught in rapture, limbs tangled in loose knots, bare skin sticking together and trousers pushed down in messy bunches around their hips. It was… actually a bit absurd. Jacin had to snort.

“What?” Dani wanted to know, feigning offense as he peeled himself back a little so he could slant that sly grin at Jacin again. “You didn’t like it?”

Jacin smirked, reached up, and gave Dani a light bop on the forehead.

“And what will you do if I didn’t?”

He was hoping Dani would say, Why, do it again until I get it right, of course, but instead, Dani flashed his teeth, said, “Whatever I please.” He leaned in and nuzzled Jacin’s shoulder, tugging at the braid. “You’re my Ghost, I caught you, I can do what I like with you.”

It was meant lightly, even affectionately, Jacin knew that, but still… it was somehow unbearable, coming from Dani. The buzz in Jacin’s head reawakened, or perhaps he was just noticing it again—it didn’t matter. He shouldered Dani off him, shoved him away. “Don’t call me that.”

Dani reared back, blinking, grin falling a little, but still there. “All right,”

he agreed easily enough. “I meant no—”

“Jacin-rei.”

It was soft—not angry, not even upset—just quiet and firm. It made all the blood in Jacin’s body skitter down to his gut, made heat flare at his cheeks and the voices ramp up in incoherent mocking. Slowly, Jacin lifted his head and peered over Dani’s shoulder.

Asai stood inside the double doors, a harsh flare of light at his fingertips momentarily blinding the eye. Jacin only sat there, stunned, blinking as Asai lit the sconce beside the door, then Jacin was peering into dark eyes, piercing him, drilling into his with… nothing. No rebuke, which would have at least given Jacin something to latch onto, and no anger or jealousy, which would have given him a seed of hope he thought perhaps he’d kill for.

I wanted him because I couldn’t have you, he wanted to scream, wanted to hurl the words like throwing knives, cut him, except Asai wouldn’t care. And even if Asai did care, he still wouldn’t… wouldn’t do.

“Beishin?” Jacin managed.

Dani stood up, adjusting his trousers as he did it, leaving Jacin exposed in a disheveled heap on the floor. “Seyh,” Dani murmured, bobbing his head in an apologetic bow.

“Out,” was all Asai said.

With a single diffident glance down at Jacin, Dani obeyed. Jacin watched him go, kept his eyes riveted to the broad back until Dani was out the door and Jacin had nowhere else to look but Asai.

“Cover yourself,” Asai said.

Cheeks flaming, Jacin did, then stood, feet planted apart, hands at the small of his back, head bowed. Waiting.

Asai said nothing. Continued to say nothing. Just kept staring, like he had no idea who or what Jacin was. The silence lurched like a great lumbering beast, rolling Jacin under its feet, crushing him slowly, grinding him down as he stood there and waited for Asai to punish him. Beat him, repudiate him, sneer at him, anything. Only nothing and more nothing from his beishin. The voices had renewed their striving, impatient chatter, but for once, the outward quiet pounded at Jacin with more force. A small eternity ago, he’d felt like flying, felt good, felt… almost normal. Body pressed in close to another’s, hips moving in the motion for which they’d been meant, mindless pleasure soaking through every bit of him, right down to his fingertips.

Now, he was the Ghost again, he was Untouchable, and he’d let himself be touched. By someone other than Asai. And he’d liked it.

He couldn’t stand it anymore. Asai’s silence was killing him, pulverizing him and letting the voices take him over, whispering to him of his failure. He hadn’t been listening, damn it, he’d let everything else drown them out, and what if they’d said something important and he’d missed it?

Everything in him writhing, unfocused begging, Jacin tentatively lifted his chin, cast a shrinking glance at the door….

Empty.

He frowned, shut his eyes tight, shook his head, and opened them again.

Gone.

No rebuke. No lecture. No reminders of his lack of perfection, his abysmal control.

Nothing. Nothing and more nothing—like he wasn’t even worth the breath it would waste to chide him. Like Jacin didn’t matter to him at all.

Like his father.

Except this was… so much worse.

Numb, Jacin stared at the door until it blurred out of focus, shook his head slowly in denial of… what? He couldn’t remember, couldn’t think—
seek the Null the Catalyst and Incendiary light the lamps of the sky and burn the heavens whet your blades with the rites of vengeance will not thwart Wolf

Ghost

—and shit, he was saying it out loud, gabbling their nonsense because he hadn’t had a hold on it, he’d forgotten, how could he forget?

He’d gone down to his knees, right against the wall, right where Dani had made him feel like he was a person, where he’d forgotten to wish Dani were Asai. Jacin could only crouch there, down on the padded floor, hands clutching his head, staring blindly at a small indent in the padding where Dani’s knee had pressed a divot and whimpering—bloody whimpering, damn it—between snatches of insane blather. It came right out of the calm that was there just a minute ago, filling his head, spilling out his mouth, stoppering his ears, except he couldn’t stopper his mind and it bloody hurt in ways that had nothing to do with pain. Everywhere and everything. Words, words, words, always, words in all the right shapes, but none of them locking together, and yet he couldn’t stop listening as they bled all together and poured out his mouth.

It hadn’t hit him this hard since the first time. He couldn’t move.

Hand shaking, Jacin forced his arm to reach, stretch out until his fingertips blundered onto the knife he’d dropped somewhere between Dani cornering him and Dani kissing him, closed his fist around it. The heart, he kept thinking, better than the throat, faster, no chance of missing—
survive endure no rest not yet Wolf comes blaze the path back to Zero and start again not yours to spill

—except his hand wouldn’t do it, obeying their voices instead of his own.

He snarled— how dare they, how dare they—and swiped the blade through the air in a savage arc, wild and furious, slashing at nothing, slashing at everything, slashing at them, because they didn’t have the decency to die and stay dead, didn’t have the mercy to leave him the fuck alone, didn’t have the sanity or wisdom to make the least bit of fucking sense. And now they didn’t have the courtesy to let him die, just die, what could they possibly want him for, what could any one want him for, they never said anything, and how could Asai just walk away, just walk away—

Searing heat slashed through the winding madness, a hot band of pure, perfect pain radiating from his upper arm, settling itself on top of the chaos, giving him a place to focus. He blinked his blurry gaze, watched the blood ooze from the long, perfect stripe in sluggish rivulets of bright scarlet.

“Not mine to spill,” he whispered, snorted, then he swiped at his face with the crook of his elbow. “Fuck you,” he muttered and threw the knife, watched as it embedded itself in the wall with a dull twang, and then screamed it,

“Fuck you!” before his eyes rolled back and he let it all slip away.

“HE IS gone, Jacin-rei,” Vonshi said as he handed over a pot of salve and watched to make sure Jacin got all of the swollen gash with it before winding a bandage about it. He’d found Jacin passed out in the exercise room this morning, roused him and chivvied him upstairs and asked no uncomfortable questions, helped him to brush out his hair until Jacin grabbed at a knife.

Vonshi stopped him from cutting off all his hair, dooming his soul, with hands stronger than they should have been and gentle care inside stern rebuke. He tsked when Jacin finally calmed enough that Vonshi could let him go, shook his head at the hank of yards-long hair that Jacin had managed to slice away from his brow and arranged the messy fringe that was left just over Jacin’s eyes like it belonged there.

“You cannot hide this from Beishin,” he told Jacin quietly. “Do not try. It will only make it worse.”

Jacin didn’t care. “Where did he go?”

Vonshi seemed to know exactly who Jacin was talking about. He was quiet as he set about plaiting the hated braid, tsking again at the ragged lengths over Jacin’s brow. He didn’t speak again until he was through with Jacin’s hair and reaching for the bandaging around Jacin’s arm.

“He left no word,” Vonshi finally said. “He was simply gone when the house woke this morning. Beishin says it’s for the best.”

Jacin didn’t say anything, just nodded, let Vonshi fix the mess Jacin had made of the bandage then gave him a small smile in thanks as Vonshi quietly left Jacin’s room. He waited until Vonshi’s steps receded down the hallway then Jacin slipped out himself, made his way down to Dani’s room, and tested the door. Not locked. Checking either end of the hallway, Jacin let himself in and shut the door behind him. Peered about.

It looked remarkably the same. The linen quilt still lay on the bed, creased a little on the right side, like Dani had perhaps sat there to dress. The loose trousers Dani had worn yesterday down to the exercise room were in a crumpled ball in the corner next to the basket that held the rest of his laundry, along with his indoor slippers. Jacin ventured farther into the room, quietly opened the top drawer of the clothespress. Tunics and trousers folded neatly and lined up like little soldiers. Everything was still here—Dani’s books and papers, his clothes, his shaving kit, his robe….

Jacin frowned.

… a purse, filled with a goodly collection of koin.

Dani didn’t seem the sort to run away, not even from Asai. And anyway, Asai hated Jacin for what happened, not Dani. No—Asai didn’t bother to hate

Ghost

Jacin, didn’t bother to care enough to bother, but he obviously hadn’t blamed Dani for it. So, there had been no reason for Dani to steal away in the dead of night for something his employer wasn’t even blaming him for, and certainly not without at least his clothes, or the money to buy some new ones.

Not without at least telling Jacin goodbye. Not Dani.

It didn’t make sense.

Beishin says it’s for the best.

Perhaps Asai had forced Dani out without allowing him to collect his belongings. Perhaps Asai was angry with Dani, after all. Dani had touched the Untouchable. He’d touched Jacin. And Asai hadn’t liked it.

A tiny, dubious smile tilted at Jacin’s mouth, wilting almost immediately when he took another look around. It was like looking at the private quarters of someone who’d suddenly passed away.

Jacin’s head jerked a little, and he shook it—denial. Because it was absurd. Except….

Beishin says it’s for the best.

Dani was gone. Dani with his toffee-colored hair and his blue eyes and his bright grin. Dani with his ruthless drills and his constant insistence on perfection and control. Dani with his hot mouth and long, clever fingers.

Gone.

Dani had touched the Untouchable. And Asai hadn’t liked it.

Beishin says it’s for the best.

Jacin jerked a sharp little nod, stepped over to the bed and straightened the quilt. Quickly, efficiently, he picked up the trousers in the corner and placed them in the basket, then tucked the slippers beneath the bed, ignoring the twinges in his arm as he moved it. Last, he straightened the books into a neat stack, lined them up with the corner of the press, then tucked the papers into an orderly pile and lined them up too.

He stepped back, scanned the room with a critical eye.

Perfect.

With another nod, Jacin paced back over to the press and retrieved the purse. Then he turned his back and quit the room.

After that, Asai took over Jacin’s training himself. Jacin sparred alone.

Harvest-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf YOU could learn a lot about a person in a few days. Malick had learned everything he needed to know about Samin in two hours. Blunt and direct, Samin. The Mage had given Malick Samin’s name, and all Malick had to do was approach him, tell him what he wanted, tell him he’d appreciate a demonstration of skill—with no actual loss of life, if he could help it—then Malick sat back and watched Samin pick a fight with a rowdy group of five in the Girou. After Samin had won, quite handily and without even drawing a weapon, Malick had made him an offer and Samin had accepted it. End of story.

Yori and Shig took perhaps two days, but that was mostly because Malick had to wait for Shig to come down from whatever she’d been on and for Yori to stop hissing and spitting before she’d tell Umeia—not Malick, not at first—
their story. Elder sister used and abused for her blood, younger sister who had plenty of opportunity to get herself loose but hadn’t because she wouldn’t leave the elder. End of story.

Fen didn’t have an end to his story. Fen didn’t have a beginning to his story. Fen wouldn’t tell his story. He’d answer questions, if he didn’t think they were too personal or wouldn’t give too much away, but the questions had to be worded exactly right to elicit the right answers. Otherwise, you were likely to get a precise answer to one aspect of the question, worded in such a way as to make you think you’d got a complete one, until you were walking away and realized you were no better informed than you’d been five minutes ago. Either that, or you’d simply get a blank stare.

“All right, so tell me about your family,” Malick told Fen that first day—
after his bath, of course—because there’d been no answer from the Mage yet, so he’d figured he might as well begin by supplying Fen with a broad starting point that Malick hoped would narrow quickly and eventually yield up the secret of that hut and its occupants. He could very well have simply revealed the fact that he already knew and hope to surprise Fen into candor, but that

Ghost
would defeat Malick’s purpose. For whatever reason, he wanted Fen to tell him. Tell him.

“My father is dead and my mother is Disappeared,” was all Fen replied.

“Well, I know that, don’t I?” Fucking figured. Malick should have known better. Too easy, anyway, and Fen was most certainly not, even a little bit, easy. “Are there any others I should know about?”

Just tell me. You can’t keep them hidden there forever. I can help, I will
help, even if you’ve been fucking Asai into the mattress or letting him do it to you—all you have to do is say it.

A blank stare was all Malick got. Slow blinking. And then a clipped, hostile, “No.”

Malick had been quite proud of himself for not growling. Teeth only slightly clenched, he changed direction. “What is your mother’s name?”

“Fen Marika.”

All right. Answered immediately and succinctly. Apparently, Fen viewed it as information pertinent to finding her, and so had provided it without hesitation, though still with a bit of a snarl. It was like he couldn’t help himself. Words snapped out of him in that deep voice that seemed more suited to flowing, dulcet tones than constant growls. Sneers and scowls came as naturally to Fen as sultry smiles and innuendo came to Malick. Why did Malick find that so incredibly, unbelievably sexy?

It took almost an hour more, Malick carefully wording questions, stumbling through trial and error of phrasing, before he got… not necessarily the answer he wanted but the one he needed. He wanted Fen to tell him about his family; he got Fen to give him something else altogether.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Malick groused irritably, sloshing the cold tea around in his bowl and smacking the porcelain a little too firmly to the tea table in his little sitting room, glaring at Fen, who sat stiffly across from him in the one chair, scowling back. Malick had supposed at first that Fen accepting the chair rather than the floor had been a step in the right direction, but now…. “For a man who wants blood and vengeance, you’re not being terribly helpful,” Malick griped. “‘A Jin farmer’s wife taken from the east camp five weeks ago,’ could be bloody anyone, and it’s not like we’re going to find her by going door to door in the city and asking if anyone in the house happens to have a spirit-bound in their cellar.”

Fen’s teeth clenched at that, and he flinched.

Malick instantly felt like a callous idiot. He sagged. “I’m sorry, that was crass and unnecessary. But you have to understand—I need more than what you’re giving me. I need somewhere to start.”

“Why can’t we start at the camp?”

A reasonable question, in any other circumstance. “Because no one at the camp is going to talk to us.” Except for the guard Malick paid a little too well, but Malick didn’t think anyone in the Doujou actually knew the name he was after but didn’t really want. Instead, he went on, “Every one of them either has someone they’re trying to hide themselves or knows someone who is, if they’re not informing on their neighbors to keep their own family safe.”

“They don’t.” It was clipped and terse.

“Don’t they?” Malick lifted an eyebrow when Fen scowled. Perhaps he really didn’t know. Malick knew otherwise for a fact, but he saw no reason to wander off into arguments over the supposed righteousness of the Jin. “I’m not Jin and you’re Untouchable,” he said instead. “They see us coming, and we’ll be lucky to even get a glimpse of them before they hide away in their huts, let alone actually giving us information we can use. Plus, I doubt we’d get past the Doujou.” Which certainly wasn’t true for Malick, and obviously not for Fen, but Malick wasn’t about to give Fen an idea of his own capabilities for either bribery or stealth until Fen confessed about that handy little shadow charm and why an Untouchable no one would dare stop or question would even feel the need for one. Malick had to assume it was so Fen wouldn’t lead anyone back to that hut, but he couldn’t know for sure unless Fen told him. Which was another matter entirely, and one Malick doubted he’d get to address today. Malick slumped back, toying with the fraying fabric on the arm of the couch. “Anyway, it isn’t a good idea for you to be traipsing about, speaking coherently.”

Fen’s mouth twisted sourly at that, but he didn’t add anything.

It spurred the questions Malick had really wanted to ask, set them at the front of his mind like gristly bones, ripe for gnawing. How have you managed not to cause even a whisper of a stir all this time? How many know about you? Anyone? Did Asai keep you locked up and hidden on his grand estate all this time? And how is it that you can apparently show up at his house in the middle of the night, threaten to gut him, and he doesn’t even appear to consider calling to one of his guards? You’re suspicious enough of him to have done what you did, said what you said, and I could see you meant it, even though I could also see that you at least loved him once, if not still—so why won’t you just say it?

Ghost

Malick’s eyebrows rose, that last question pinging at a nerve at the base of his skull. Fen’s answers weren’t actually evasive—they were just extremely precise. If he didn’t want to answer a question, he simply shut his mouth and stared. The answers he did give addressed particular points of the questions Malick addressed to him, not the broad meaning. Fen didn’t respond to nuance; Fen only responded to directness. Perhaps that was why he tolerated Samin so well—Samin was one of the most direct people Malick knew. Clarity bloomed.

Well, perhaps he hasn’t given me the right answers because I’ve not actually asked the right question in the right way.

Malick propped his elbow on the arm of the couch and rested his chin in his palm, eyes narrowed. “You’ve been going after very specific men. Men known to each other, traveling in the same circles. You’re taking out those who you know are Disappearing people, and that’s not something easy to find out, so you obviously had a way of figuring where to start. You must have some idea of how your mother was discovered. I need a name.”

Fen frowned, real confusion. “Fen Marika,” he said, like he thought perhaps Malick hadn’t understood him when he’d said it an hour ago, or perhaps had forgotten that part.

Malick sighed, shook his head. “Her name doesn’t help,” he told Fen as steadily as he could, and didn’t bother to say that it was because the men who did such things didn’t concern themselves with names. Fen would know that.

“I need the name of the one who took her.”

Fen’s fists curled tight. “I don’t know who took her. If I knew, I’d—”

“D’you know how she was found out?”

“No,” Fen said, paused, opened his mouth like he might go on, but then he just closed it and looked at the floor.

“Do you suspect?” Malick asked quietly.

“Yes.” Whisper-thin but laced tight with anger.

It might have frustrated Malick further, had he not already twigged to how Fen’s mind worked, how he focused on the exact wording of what had been asked and answered just as exactly. Malick leaned forward, propping his elbows to his knees. “And who d’you suspect?” he asked, soft and low.

Dark eyelashes swept down, laid dense smudges like thick spatters of ink across high cheekbones. “Lord Asai,” Fen answered. No hesitation, only perhaps mild pain as the name slipped from his mouth. It had taken an hour of aggravating, frustrating questioning, and yet when the right question had been asked plainly, the answer came just as plainly.

Malick knew then: Fen might have been Asai’s creature, might have trusted him and loved him and been willing to do anything for him, even seek out Temshiel for him and risk the suns, but not now. Whatever Asai had been to Fen—teacher, very likely; protector, almost definitely; lover, quite probably—it was over now. Even if Asai had not betrayed Fen’s family, Fen believed him capable of it, and his love for the woman who was no longer his mother, and the brothers and sister he still chose not to disclose, far outweighed anything he might feel for Asai. It was, in every sense, an excellent place to start.

“All right,” Malick told Fen, trying very hard to keep the delight out of his voice. “I have a few sources. I’ll go and see what I can find out tonight, and tomorrow—”

“You?” Fen was glaring again, plain distrust on his face.

Malick shrugged and sat back, feigning indifference. “Well, you can’t be seen, can you? I show up with you, and my sources will never give me another bit of information again.”

Fen’s mouth twisted, and he stared down at his hands, curling them into fists then flexing them flat. Thinking. Malick waited him out, until, finally,

“And if they can’t see me?” Fen asked evenly.

Malick allowed his eyebrows to rise, mild surprise, and he curled a small skeptical smile. “I didn’t think Untouchables were also invisible.”

He got a scowl this time, a scornful curl of the lip. But he also got Fen to reach into the high neck of his tunic and pull out the shadow charm.

As soon as Malick touched it, he knew. He had to stop himself from flying off the couch, heading straight for Asai and tearing his throat out. Had to stop himself from plowing through Fen first on his way. He clenched his teeth, held the amulet tight in his fist for a long, painful moment, then let it drop on its bit of leather, held it back out to Fen. Amazingly, his hand didn’t shake. Good thing, too, because he needed his reflexes when it came to Fen, and he definitely needed surprise.

As soon as Fen’s hand reached to retrieve the charm, Malick snapped a hard grip around Fen’s wrist. Malick lurched up from the couch and dragged Fen toward him until Fen was teetering over the tea table, off balance. With a sharp downward jerk to Fen’s arm, removing the last of his equilibrium, Malick kicked the table out from between then, snagged Fen’s other hand, and twisted it up behind his back. Fast learner, Fen—his knee came up, tried Malick’s own trick on him, but Malick merely trapped Fen’s leg between his thighs, pressed in tight and leaned in until he had Fen bent backward, taking away his leverage, along with his balance.

Ghost

“Where did you get it?” Malick growled.

“Get off!” Fen grated back, twisted and tried to get his arms free.

Malick only wrenched the one behind Fen’s back up harder. “Not this time. Who gave it to you?”

Fen was panting—with anger, surprise, the strain of the position—but Malick knew what the shock of silence did to him too. All of it seemed to combine to stagger an answer out of him more quickly than he would’ve done otherwise: “My… my patron.”

“Patron,” Malick sneered, tightening his grip until he was sure he was inflicting real pain, though Fen wasn’t showing it. “And when your patron hands you charms made of stolen Blood, you just take them and say, ‘ Thank you, Beishin’?”

Fen stopped fighting, stared at him, flecked gray ringed in indigo flaring with indignation at first, then disbelief. “Lie,” he wheezed. Then… pain. The ache of uncertainty. Lashing out for all of half a second then shuttered back tight. “Asai made them. With his own blood. He studied alchemy, he made the spells himself, he wouldn’t… he… he wouldn’t, not….” Fen trailed off, like he’d run out of words and no longer believed the ones he’d just spoken. He just stopped, stared at Malick, like he was hoping Malick was going to give them veracity, put his world back on its axis.

Malick stared back, all the anger in him colliding with doubt, then, as it had been in Fen’s room only a little while ago, almost shame. “How could you not have known? D’you know what they use those things for?” Malick had softened his voice, but not his hold. “Have you ever wondered how it is the Adan hunters can manage to trot into a house where one of its occupants can wield fire or move the earth or even explode a man’s skull, and yet they not only remain untouched and unharmed, but take them away in chains?”

“They… the—” Stuttering. Reeling.

“It’s the amulets, Fen. Made with the same Blood as your shadow charm, but with different spells. And believe me—the Blood did not come from Asai.”

“It…. No.” Fen’s chin quivered for the blink of an eye, then he tightened his jaw. “He… Asai said….”

The rage leaked out of Malick as he watched the hope leak out of Fen. All that was left was a seething sort of frustrated sorrow.

Asai. Fucking Asai. Bloody history repeating itself. Fen was a setup, he just didn’t know it. And whatever Asai was up to this time… Malick would be damned if he’d sit back and watch.

Malick shook his head, bowed it ’til his brow pressed Fen’s lightly.

“Fuck, Fen,” he whispered, “you really did love him, didn’t you?”

A sharp jolt against him abruptly reminded Malick of their positions, the press of the hard, lean body solid to his, the heat he honestly hadn’t noticed until the certainty that Fen really hadn’t known set itself firmly in his bones.

And, fuck, now all he could smell was almonds. Slowly, Malick straightened, pulling Fen up with him, and loosened his grip on both wrists, but only let go of one. More gently this time, he took the hand he had twisted behind Fen, settled it against the small of his back, shifting them into more of an embrace than a hold, thick, silky plait knocking lightly against the backs of Malick’s knuckles. Without letting himself think it through, Malick laid a hand to the side of Fen’s face. “You’ve no idea in the world what he is, have you?” he asked, low and soft.

Surprisingly, Fen didn’t fight against him, just submitted to Malick’s maneuvering with a poignant look of dull shock. “He was….” He shook his head, looking straight into Malick’s eyes. “He said he was going to save…

save the Jin.”

Malick couldn’t even find the rage for Asai the lie should have raised in him. All he could feel was an odd removed regret at shattering more of Fen’s illusions. He sighed, released Fen entirely, took him by the shoulders and pushed him gently back. Again, Fen merely let him, stood and watched as Malick righted the table again and collected the books and papers that had scattered, stacking them atop it. Fen only stood there, spine straight and shoulders back, like he didn’t know how to be any other way but inflexible—
control of the body, when his mind was so obviously reeling in muted anguish. Fen looked like he might stand there all day, staring blankly wherever Malick wasn’t, so Malick gently took him by the arm and guided him back to the chair, then took his own seat across from Fen on the couch.

Right back where they’d started.

Well… not quite.

Without a word, Fen stood again, looked at the door, staring like he was thinking of just walking through it and not coming back, then he shut his eyes and bowed his head. The messy fringe hung down, covering most of his face; all Malick could see was the line of his straight nose and a quivering chin. Fen shook his head, a sharp jerk back and forth, then took a long breath and came to sit silently beside Malick on the couch, his knee touching Malick’s thigh.

Just sat there, back straight, head bowed, hands clenched into tight fists in his lap. Trembling, just enough for Malick to notice. Wound so tight he might fly apart at any second.

Not surrender, but… something else.

Ghost

Malick could have him. Right now. All he’d have to do was make one move, whisper one innuendo, make one offer, and it wouldn’t matter this time how crude it was.

Confused. Betrayed. On the edge. Misplaced devotion and all his illusions shattered with one revelation. Ripe for any kind of acknowledgment and from anyone at all—Fen would probably have Samin right now, if he was here and asked nicely. And if he could give Fen silence.

Malick tilted a small smile, almost reached out and set a hand on Fen’s knee in invitation, but stopped himself. It wasn’t enough. He wanted Fen to want more than silence.

“All right,” Malick said evenly. “I think it’s time you told me everything.”

“COME on, then, lads, show some backbone.” Umeia’s voice came from about halfway up the stairs, impatient and just edging into exasperated. Yori poked her head out the door and peered down the hallway, though at the moment, only the crown of Umeia’s brass-blonde head was visible over the top riser. “Van,” Umeia growled, “that thing goes bouncing down the steps, and your head bounces after it.”

A grunt and a wavery, “Yes, misin,” was all Yori heard in response.

“Umeia?” she called.

Umeia peered up over the top step, smiled ruefully at Yori, said, “Ah!

Hullo, love,” and beckoned her over. “For the common room down the end.”

Umeia met Yori at the top of the steps, nodding at the shabby couch two of the bouncers were trying to angle up the stairwell.

Yori blinked. “We have a common room?” She’d lived here for several years; she was pretty sure she would have noticed one, and “down the end”

was only a strangely angled empty space where the roof stairs connected askew to the hallway.

“You will,” Umeia replied briskly, then she pinched her mouth, eyes on the wobbling couch. She went back down a couple of steps. “Van, I swear, if you can’t—”

“What the hell is this?” Malick sauntered up behind Yori, leaning over her shoulder and taking in Umeia, the men, and the couch with a twist of his eyebrows. Yori craned her neck and gave Malick a quick smile, which he returned before he narrowed his eyes again at Umeia. “Umeia, what are Van and Bone doing up here?” His voice had taken on an edge of warning. “You can’t let—”

“I know,” Umeia interrupted, “and they’re not up here quite yet, are they?”

“Damn it, Umeia, you know what I—”

“We can’t have—” Umeia cut herself off, checked the progress of the men and the couch, then hurried back up the last several steps to Malick and Yori. “Our little Ghost has to eat, and yet we can’t have him coming down to the kitchens. The girls brought him up trays for breakfast and lunch and said they were for you, but then you went down and annoyed ‘another’ lunch out of Ragi. I’ve heard about it, the kitchen staff’s heard about it, everyone within six blocks probably heard about it. So, I had to come up with something more practical.” Umeia looked over her shoulder again, rolling her eyes when she noted Van and Bone had managed to get the couch stuck at an angle between the fold of a riser and the ceiling. She turned back to Malick and Yori. “I’m putting in a common room for you. After the idiot twins get the couch up, there’s another to come and a table and chairs. The kitchens will send your meals up here from now on.” She smirked. “You can all sit down together like a family. Samin will be the dad, which I expect makes you the—”

“Don’t say it,” Malick warned. He shook his head. “It’s a fine idea, Umeia, but….” He shot a look at the stairs, where the men had managed to get the couch unstuck, but now Van was scowling at Bone and griping about how unfair it was that he was the one ended up having to navigate backward.

Malick gripped Yori’s shoulder as he leaned in toward Umeia, lowering his voice. “You have to warn us when someone’s coming. In fact.” He gave Yori a squeeze. “Go to my rooms and make sure Fen doesn’t poke his head out, yeah?”

Yori hated to miss Umeia bullying the bouncers—it was always great fun to watch her cow men twice her size—and especially Bone, on whom, as Yori had only just learned a few days ago, Shig happened to have her eye, and whom Yori had immediately decided she no longer liked in the least. But she hadn’t really thought about them seeing Fen, and gossip did get around the Girou rather quickly. She heaved a disappointed little sigh and angled out from under Malick’s grip, slightly appeased when he squeezed her arm and then patted it as she went to do as he’d asked.

If Yori had been thinking a little more practically, if she’d been in her

“job” mindset, she never would have just opened the door and let herself in without a bit more caution. But she was at home, and her mind was occupied with the still-new idea of Bone and her sister and how much she hated it. So the hand that shot out from beside the door and flung her up against it and then the knife suddenly at her throat rather took Yori off her guard. Evasion tactics and Samin’s years of instruction on how to break a hold and a few

Ghost
bones in the process ran through her mind in the space of half a second. Yori had already braced herself for her first counterattack before she registered the wary gray eyes glaring into hers from an inch away, and understood what had happened: thumping racket out in the hall, unfamiliar voices, and Malick had likely said nothing more than, Stay here, before he’d left Fen in his rooms to go and see what the disturbance was about.

This wasn’t a safe place for Fen, not yet, not like it was for Yori—home for her, but he’d only just got here. She deliberately relaxed, put on an easy smile, and raised her hands slowly. “Just me,” she said, all sunny good cheer.

Fen frowned, dark eyebrows drawing together, no recognition, and for a moment, Yori worried that “just me” would mean nothing to him, that perhaps he didn’t even know who she was, despite the fact that she and Shig had made it a point to bring their own meals up at breakfast and lunch and drag him in to join them on the floor in their room to eat. Perhaps he didn’t remember; he hadn’t said a word, all through either meal, after all, and Yori had no idea what he actually kenned through all his “voices” Shig was always on about. Damn, Yori hoped not. Malick would be really pissed if she had to kill Fen. Then again, considering her current position….

“Sorry,” Fen finally said, frowned again then lowered the knife, sheathing it as he stepped away. Without even a word, he turned sharply and walked toward the sitting room where he and Malick had apparently been doing…

whatever it was they’d been doing. Knowing Malick, and noting the city registries and papers Yori spotted as she caught up with Fen, not at all what Malick would prefer they had been doing.

Yori almost snorted and made a crack, but paused when Fen’s head tilted to the side and his eyes went a bit distant. Doing that listening thing he did, which still disconcerted Yori but which Samin ignored. Shig always went quiet when Fen did, trying to listen in, too, though she said she never heard anything.

Yori waited until Fen’s head un-tilted, waited for the little under the breath growl. She cleared her throat, nudged softly at Fen’s back to get him moving again, and ventured, “That won’t happen in the middle of a job, will it?”

Fen twitched a little at her touch, but didn’t jerk away, just headed steadily back into the room, Yori trailing right behind him. “It might,” he told her.

Oh, terrific. Yori wondered if Fen had thought to mention that to Malick.

Probably not, so she’d better do it.

“Umeia’s having some furniture brought up,” she informed Fen, “that’s what the noise is about. She’s got some of the lads making us a common room so you don’t have to sit on the floor in our room anymore. Malick said I should come tell you to keep out of sight until they’ve done.”

Fen sat down in the awful chair—ugly and uncomfortable—and merely watched Yori as she flopped on the couch across from him, propped her bare feet atop a small stack of bound books on the tea table, and gave him a smile.

“We usually eat down in the kitchens,” she went on. “Kinda noisy and Ragi gets pissy if we come in the middle of a supper rush, so this’ll be nice, I think.”

Fen just kept looking at her—no hostility that Yori could detect, but no affability, either.

“Nobody here would hurt you or get in your way,” she assured Fen, though he didn’t appear to have any intention of asking, if it had even occurred to him in the first place. “But people do talk, and we can’t have them talking about you, can we?” Yori paused, but Fen only kept staring. “We’ve done it before. Hidden people, I mean. Nobody usually comes up here but us and Umeia, so it’s not too risky. Once, we had two little—” She stopped herself. Once, we had two little Jin children up here, because their uncle meant to betray them to the Adan hunters. Bastard was pissed that his brother’s wife wouldn’t have him, so he decided he wasn’t as interested in keeping his family safe as he thought he was. Malick took care of the uncle while we went in and took the children then hid them up here in what’s now your room until the Thesian caravans came through for the Festivals, and no one was the wiser. Yori never did find out if the parents knew their children were safe. Come to think of it, she didn’t even know if the parents were even still alive. “We had two people up here for nearly two whole months, and nobody twigged,” was all she ended up saying. Fen was theirs now, certainly, but it still wasn’t up to her to blather all their secrets at him.

It got his attention, though. Fen’s gaze went fixed and canny. “You’ve hidden refugees?”

“Uh-huh.” Yori shrugged. “We don’t kill every one we meet, y’know.”

“Did they pay you?”

“Who?”

“The refugees.”

Yori paused. That was an odd question. “Um… dunno, actually. Don’t think so, but Malick doesn’t tell me everything. But, y'know, me and Shig were refugees once, and we never paid anything.”

Ghost

Dark eyebrows rose, but that was all. Yori wondered why she felt such a distinct compulsion to go on, explain herself to a man who seemed to think he owed no explanations to anyone.

“Our mother sold us,” she said, the tone casual, but a frisson still moved up her spine when she said it out loud. “For Shig's Blood.” She shrugged again, gesturing vaguely at her own wrist, and kept her mouth shut about what she herself had been sold for. “You know—the scars.”

Fen nodded, gaze still narrow, intent. “How old?”

Yori shifted, not uncomfortable, really, but… confused. Hadn't she been asking the questions a second ago?

“Young,” was all she said.

She’d been… what, twelve?—when Umeia had taken them in, hiding from the caravan of the minor argent who’d bought them, hungry and terrified and willing to face almost any indignity but that from which they’d fled. If Yori’d had to comfort her sister through one more session with the chance stones, one more terrifying bleeding, she might have lost her own grip, and then she’d be no good at all to Shig. Fucking for money hadn’t seemed such a terrible thing when Yori had found herself begging from the kitchens in that same back alley of the Girou. She’d been fucked almost every night for two years for nothing more than one meal a day and the assurance that her sister would stay alive through another night, so this could only be better, right?

And she was pretty, so she’d been told—not as pretty as Shig, who had only seemed to grow even more comely once her Change hit her, though what Shig had gained in beauty, she seemed to have lost in reality. But a decent bath and some clothes that didn’t reek could have had Yori ready for at least the floor of Umeia’s House, if not one of the rooms.

She snorted a little, muttered, “Bloody hell,” and she cut a quick glance to Fen. He was still watching her, paying very close attention, but he stayed silent. Just as well; Yori didn't think she wanted Fen's opinion on whether or not he thought people might have paid her for what she'd given away for free for years.

Well… not given. And certainly not free. Getting paid for it would have been a step up, in Yori's considered opinion.

Malick had seen something else in her, though—in Yori and Shig both.

He’d gone out to ensure no one in the caravan would ever come looking for them, had Umeia clean Shig and Yori up, feed them, give them a room, and set to coaching Yori with a bow. Malick had tried to teach Shig sword work, but it had never really taken, though she could swing one about efficiently enough to defend herself for a few minutes, if she had to. Shig didn’t have to.

Once the argent’s various spells and drugs had worn off, and she was as much herself as she would ever be, they’d discovered another, more effective means of self-defense. And an offense that made even Yori shiver sometimes when she had to watch it. If only they’d known when their mother had exchanged them for an insultingly small bag of silver.

Somehow, Malick had known they were coming, had been watching for them. Malick didn’t use his magic very often, and Yori never asked him about it—it was safer not knowing—but he’d seen things for Shig and Yori they never would have seen for themselves. Things that suited Yori a hell of a lot better than whoring. And though some might think that spending your life on your back was better than taking the lives of others, Yori knew what darkness lived in those others, had seen it up close. She’d much rather put an arrow through a man’s eye than accept koin to let him groan atop her for an hour and leave his spunk inside her, like a mark of his power over her. The Girou was their home now, Umeia and Malick and Samin their family; even the Mage was like some kind of invisible father figure. Killing people who would take it all away from them, who would use others like Shig had been used, wasn’t even the price they paid to keep it—it was a bonus; Yori would do it for free, but she certainly didn’t complain that she was well-paid for it.

“So….” Fen cleared his throat, gray eyes sober in his blank face. “You were fugitives.”

For whatever reason, that made Yori grin. “You could call it that.”

“And there have been others.”

“Uh-huh." Yori tilted her head. That was the second time Fen had asked that question, and from someone who hardly even spoke, it had to be significant. Samin said that sometimes the questions a person asked could be more telling than the answers he chose to give or not give. Damn, she wished Malick was here. “Why?” She kept her expression neutral. “Know someone who—?”

“Who is the Mage?”

This time, Yori blinked, unnerved again that she felt compelled to answer.

“Don’t know, don’t care. He pays me and makes it possible for me to kill Blood thieves. I don’t ask.”

“Who’s Ragi?”

Yori blinked again as she tried to adjust to the sudden twists. Perhaps Fen simply couldn’t concentrate on any one subject for too long. His turns in conversation were a bit jerkier and more noticeable than Shig’s, but no more peculiar.

Ghost

“Ragi is in charge of the kitchens,” Yori answered. “You’re lucky you won’t have to meet him. I don’t think the man’s ever smiled in his life, and if he did, his face would likely split in half. He only let us eat in the kitchens because Umeia made him, and no one argues with Umeia, not if they want to live for long.” She grinned. “And now we don’t have to eat in the kitchens anymore.”

It would certainly make mealtimes more pleasant, and less stressful for Shig. Shig didn’t like to be around Ragi if she didn’t have to be. She got headaches if he came too close to her.

“And this way, we can all eat together,” Yori went on. “Like a family.

Umeia was teasing Malick, saying that would make Samin the father and him the mother.” She snorted. “Malick didn’t think it was very funny.”

That got a slight flick of the eyebrows. A heavy thump came from out in the hall, followed by Umeia shrilling epithets and, if Yori didn’t miss her guess, some rather colorful insults, but she couldn’t hear words, only volume and cadence. Still, she grinned, caught Fen’s eye, and thought she saw a tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth. For some reason, Yori was ridiculously encouraged.

“Bet she’s got Malick humping furniture now too,” she said then paused when Fen’s eyebrows twitched, realized what she’d said and burst out laughing. “Oh!” Yori shook her head, slapping at her knee as the snorts shook her. “What a mental picture. And if he wasn’t so damned pretty, probably not too far off. I swear, the man would fuck anything that—” She caught herself, took her snorts down to low chuckles and changed the subject. “So, what d’you think so far?”

Fen’s eyebrows didn’t dance all over his forehead like Malick’s did, but they were expressive nonetheless, with their subtle shifts and twitches. This time, they quirked up, questioning.

Yori waved her hand about. “You know. What d’you think about being here? About us? Think we can grow on you?”

Fen frowned, looked down at his hands, clenched tight in his lap, for so long that Yori thought perhaps he wasn’t going to answer. Then, quietly:

“It’s… acceptable.”

“Meaning we’re all right for a bunch of assassins who hijacked you and made you live in the attic of a whorehouse, yeah?”

That tiny little quirk of the mouth again, and Fen shrugged. Maybe it was because he was so quiet, so undemonstrative except when he was pissed, but those miniscule twitches heartened Yori like they were helpless guffaws.

“Shig’s quite taken with you,” she ventured.

That was putting it lightly. Shig had practically begged Fen to let her braid his hair this afternoon when Samin had given him the key to the baths downstairs after they’d sparred. Fen hadn’t said anything, just sort of stared at Shig like he had no idea what to make of her. Shig had been in their room, pouting, since she’d stomped back up after accompanying Fen downstairs, and griped to Yori that he’d made it clear she was not to come into the empty baths with him and then had come out with his hair already braided. She’d taken it as a personal insult, and seemed determined to sulk about it for a while. Though now that Yori thought about it, Bone’s presence out in the hallway might manage to coax Shig out of it, if she was paying attention enough to realize he was out there. The thought gave Yori feelings that were an annoying mix of sourness and optimism.

“She’s never known anyone else who might… understand. That’s why, I think. She….” Yori paused, thought about what she wanted to say. “You’ve noticed the braids?” She waited until Fen cut her a quick look through his fringe and jerked a slight nod. “I think she wants to be like you. It wouldn’t—

”

“No,” Fen said, quiet but sharp. “She doesn’t.”

For a minute, Yori thought perhaps he meant she’d got it wrong, and her chest puffed up—telling her how to interpret her own sister, who did he think…? And then she twigged to what he was really saying.

Yori nodded, because she agreed wholeheartedly. She didn’t want her sister to be anything like this man, not even a little—the small similarities were bad enough. “You don’t even want to be like you, do you?”

Clearly, it was too… personal, maybe, or too close to the mark, or maybe just too painful, because Fen’s version of friendliness closed up so abruptly that Yori hadn’t even realized that was what the tiny flashes of openness were until they were gone entirely. Too close to the mark, she decided. What was that Shig had said last night? He doesn’t like his voice, and he hates the others.

“Well,” she sighed, “Shig says Malick can help with that.” That got a bit of a twitch and a sharp look up through that fringe. Yori shrugged. “Don’t know how, but sometimes he lets her crawl into bed with him, and—” She caught the slight pinch of lips and shook her head with a grin. “Not anything like that, Mal would never… well, I suppose you can’t ever say ‘never’ with Malick, but not with Shig. Or me, I expect. For all Umeia’s joking, and for all Malick would deny it, I think he’s not so much a father as a big brother. Not that I’d mind, understand—he’s quite fit and he’s not my brother, after all, is he, then?—but anyway. Shig dreams a lot, and sometimes they’re… bad ones.

Ghost

She says Malick makes it quiet for her.” Another shrug. “He helps her. Maybe you could let him help you too.”

Silence again, this one a little prickly as Fen narrowed his eyes at her. “I should sleep with him?”

The question, so serious and wary, made Yori laugh again. She shook her head, snorting. “Well, that’s not for me to say, is it?” she teased. “And Malick would likely give me a raise if I told you ‘yes’.” She quirked a sly look at Fen.

“You can tell he’s got it bad for you, can’t you?” He didn’t need to answer—
the scowl did it for him. Yori snorted again. “Sleep with him, don’t sleep with him, I don’t care. I’m only saying he helps Shig, and she says he can help you. How you take it is up to you.” The unintentional innuendo hit her again.

She held back the chuckles this time.

“How?” Fen wanted to know.

Preoccupied with breathing properly, Yori raised her eyebrows. “‘How’

what?”

“How does he help?”

“Well, he makes it quiet, of course. Didn’t I say?” She was sure Shig had, at least.

Fen shook his head, gray eyes intent. “No, how does he make it quiet?”

“Ah.” She shrugged, honestly rueful. “Don’t know. And he doesn’t say. I don’t care much, really. He is what he is, whatever he is, and he helps Shig.

How he does it matters much less than the fact that he does.” Because, oh, sometimes Shig needed it badly. “You should let her braid your hair for you,”

Yori went on, paused for a second when Fen’s mouth tightened, but pushed ahead: “It must be very difficult to get it so neat and perfect, and she….” Yori sighed. “Shig likes you. And she really does want to help. And… and it would make her happy.”

Fen didn’t answer, but he didn’t refuse, though what did that mean, really? And why should he care about making Shig happy? Not everyone loved Shig like Yori did. In fact, Shig made most people uncomfortable, and some actively disliked her. Like Ragi, for instance. Yori often thought Ragi gave Shig headaches because of all the silent animosity he drove at her whenever he laid eyes on her.

It seemed to kill conversation for a while, though what conversation there was had been fairly one-sided. Still, Yori thought perhaps this Fen wasn’t so hard to get along with as she’d thought he might be. He didn’t snap and snarl when you weren’t actively trying to kidnap him, and if Yori paid attention, she could interpret the silences and flickers of expression easily enough, and most of them were… well, not friendly, but not hostile, either.

Yori listened to the continued bustle out in the hallway for a while, grinning a little when she heard Samin’s distinct unhappy muttering, then turning thoughtful when she realized she was actually rather content with the silence in the room, which wasn’t strained or heavy—just there. She didn’t have to stay, really; could have, in fact, left directly after she’d told Fen to keep himself hidden away in here until Malick came to tell him all was clear again. Somehow, either getting dragooned into helping move furniture or hiding herself in her own room and watching Shig sulk were less appealing than keeping Fen company. Surprisingly, Fen didn’t seem to particularly mind that she kept not leaving—he just didn’t seem to know what to do about it.

“Have you found out anything helpful?” Yori jerked her chin at the stacks of registries and directories on the table and aimed a lift of her eyebrows up at Fen.

He followed her gaze, lips flattening. His mouth opened, stayed that way for a second, then clamped down tight. He shook his head. “No,” was all he said, though it packed so much passion into it, she could almost hear the scream of frustrated fury inside it.

A topic Yori thought perhaps she’d best not push. She wouldn’t like it, after all, if Fen started asking her all about her sister’s scars.

“Have you got any brothers or sisters?” she asked instead. Yori didn’t know much about Untouchables. They didn’t have them in Kente. She knew their father had been Jin, somehow escaped from Ada and dead before Yori had turned a year, but she’d never known him and their mother wasn’t exactly the religious sort. All Yori knew was what she’d heard from Umeia and Malick, and it sounded to her like the whole idea was that they had no attachments, since the point was for them to wander about at will. It stood to reason that family ties would curb one’s wandering. Still, Fen obviously hadn’t sprung whole from Subie or anything, since there was a missing mother out there somewhere, and it seemed Fen was an unusual Untouchable, from what Yori knew. It didn’t seem unreasonable to think he might have siblings.

Perhaps not unreasonable to Yori, but… maybe to Fen, because he’d gone stiff and closed up again, eyes narrowed down to little slits and mouth tight.

“Why d’you ask that?”

Yori’s eyebrows went up. “Um… well, it’s rather a normal question, y’know. Sort of a ‘getting to know you’ thing when you meet new people.”

Perhaps he just didn’t know the way it worked. Shig wasn’t terribly good at social graces, either, at least not since her Change took her. Maybe Fen simply took it the wrong way. Yori couldn’t quite figure how it could be taken the wrong way, but she was used to dealing with her sister—who was right this

Ghost
moment sulking because she hadn’t been allowed to braid a relative stranger’s hair. Unreasonable indeed. “I ask you something, you answer, and then we have a conversation about it,” Yori explained. “So, do you?”

Fen was staring again. Uncertain this time, Yori could tell—his face was set in a frown, but his eyes weren’t blazing at her. He wasn’t so hard to read, if you paid attention to the eyes. “I—”

“Sorry, sorry,” Malick called as he rushed through the door and shut it firmly behind him, likely escaping Umeia before she found something else for him to move. “Didn’t mean to be gone so long.” There was still noise out in the hall, but not as loud and busy as it had been. Malick was swiping at his tunic as he came in, paused and lifted his eyebrows when he saw Yori lounging on his couch, and shot a quick glance to Fen. “Everything all right?”

Unconsciously—Yori was positive it was unconscious—Malick ran his fingers through his hair, fluffed it up a bit as he looked between them, as though he couldn’t decide if he should be considering Yori a rival and slathering on the charm for a quick one-up. Yori couldn’t help the snort as she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Just fine,” she told Malick and stood with a smirk. “Just getting to know each other a little.” She tilted a meaningful smile over at Fen, of which Fen likely didn’t catch the meaning, but she was sure Malick would. He did. And gave her a glare for her effort. It only made her snort again. “I assume this means I’ll see you all for supper, then?” she asked on her way to the door.

“Mm,” Malick replied, still glaring. “Bone just has to bring up two more chairs, and we’ve a shiny new common room, all for our own.”

“Ooh,” Yori breathed, making sure she had her hand on the doorknob before she angled her gaze back at Fen, went on, “nice, comfy couches where we can continue to get to know each other better later,” then swung the door open before Malick could chase her out. She laughed out loud when she heard his quick steps coming after her, and almost ran straight into Bone as she shot through the door and thumped it closed. Bone had a chair in each hand and a questioning look Yori ignored, the same way she ignored Malick’s garbled growling through the door at her back.

“Well, get on with you, then,” Yori snapped at Bone, mimicking Umeia’s more commanding tones, satisfied when he blinked and stepped back and out of her way. She nodded to herself in pure satisfaction. She didn’t know if Bone even knew Shig was alive, but if he ever found out, he should know who was in charge. And who would happily put an arrow through his eye, if he ever dared touch.

With a superior look she enjoyed a little too much, Yori ambled down the hall to have a look at their new common room.

SHE shouldn’t have taken her eyes off it, damn it. At the least, she should have dragged Malick’s ass down here to watch. Or given Bone and Van their orders and trusted them to—

Umeia rolled her eyes, snorted. Right. Those two had definitely been busy comparing biceps when the gods were handing out brains.

Clutching the single sheet of folded paper in her hand, Umeia considered for the hundredth time just throwing it into the nearest grate and standing over it until it was safely burned to ash. And yet still, her feet kept taking her forward—down the hall, up the steps, turn left, up more steps…. She stood outside Malick’s door, listening to Yori harassing Shig from down the hall, obviously wasting no time in getting used to their new common room. Despite Umeia’s unease and the sweaty grip she had on the damned missive, she had to smile when Samin’s voice chimed in with… agreement, sounded like. Both of them advising Shig to keep away from Bone— Bone? Seriously?—and Shig just giggling lightly at them both. Umeia could see her in her mind’s-eye, lounging on one of the couches, smiling softly to herself, staring at the ceiling and playing with her braids.

She shook her head when she caught herself wanting to turn away from Malick’s door and toward the voices, join them for a while instead of doing what she’d come for, and leave Malick and Trouble to themselves. Whatever was written on this piece of paper, no good would come of it, Umeia had known it before she’d even read Malick’s demand—hell, before he’d even handed it to her. She’d checked the crock this morning, saw Malick’s message was still there, just as she’d left it, and had kept an eye on it since. Not really wanting to see who came for it, or how, but everything had changed now.

Now, she had to know. She’d given her oaths to those three down the hall, and no strange little Ghost—whether sent by Asai, the Mage, or Wolf himself—was going to get in her way of keeping it. And someone had to keep Malick’s head on straight.

Mouth tightening, Umeia knocked once before pushing Malick’s door open and stepping briskly through. Malick was sitting on the couch when she breezed into the sitting room, but Fen was standing stiffly, eyes narrowed at her, arm crossed over his waist and hand on the hilt of the knife strapped there. Lucky for Umeia, Malick’s hand was clamped over Fen’s, restraining.

She’d have to be more careful about abrupt entrances until the lad settled in more securely. If he ever did. She wasn’t quite sure she wanted that. She wasn’t quite sure she wanted him here at all.

Ghost

She waved the paper at Malick, wordless.

“Already?”

Malick stood, giving an absent pat to Fen’s hand as he made his way past him and around the couch toward Umeia, eyes intent on the parchment in her hand. He didn’t look like his stomach was dipping down to his toes like Umeia’s had done when she’d seen it—he looked pleased. Surprised but pleased. She could have smacked him.

Without even a slight hesitation, Malick cracked the seal and folded it open. He peered at it for all of two seconds before his jaw clamped and his eyes narrowed down to slits. “Bloody fucking bastard,” he growled as he mashed the parchment in his fist, then ran a hand through his hair. “A job,” he told Umeia, indignant. “I ask him for a meeting and he sends me a fucking job.”

Relief flooded Umeia, but she wouldn’t dare show as much to Malick.

She tilted her head. “For when?”

“Turn of the month,” Malick answered absently, one hand clamped to the back of his neck, the other still balled around the message.

Umeia frowned. “That’s less than a week away.” She couldn’t help how her gaze flicked over at Fen, couldn’t help the worry that must have been behind it, because Malick caught it and his mouth tightened further.

“We’ll be ready,” he said—not quite threatening, but aggressive, at least.

“If I even agree to take it.”

That one made Umeia’s stomach do the little floppy thing again.

“Malick,” she warned, “you can’t—”

“I can do anything I damn well please. And especially if this is turning out to be what I think it is.”

Damn him and his quick temper, his singular sense of justice, and his complete inability to turn away someone he thought needed rescuing.

Especially if the someone happened to look like his new favorite Untouchable. Bloody Malick—any damsel would do.

“Maybe there just wasn’t time?” Umeia ventured. It made perfect sense as soon as she’d said it, so she pushed a little. “We don’t even know who picks up and leaves the messages,” she said reasonably. “And yours was still there this morning when I checked. Perhaps the Mage simply hasn’t got it yet.”

It made Malick pause, at least, though he was still wound pretty tight. He growled again, drew back his arm like he meant to hurl the balled-up parchment, but only lowered it again when Fen caught his eye. Fen had just been standing there, watching silently as usual, gaze shunting back and forth

between Umeia and Malick. Now, he seemed to retreat from both their glances. He pulled his eyes away and quietly sat in the ugly, uncomfortable chair Malick kept not throwing out on the midden heap, folded his hands in his lap, and stared at them. Malick slumped a little, like he was…

disappointed, maybe, and waved Umeia over to the couch. Umeia took a seat with an eye on the stacks of registries and directories on the tea table. She lifted a questioning gaze to Malick.

“Fen and I have been….” He paused, shot a glance over at Fen then back to Umeia, settling back into the cushions with a casual sprawl. “We’ve been going over some names, people who I know have been associated in some way with Asai, to see if Fen recognizes any of them.”

It made Umeia startle just a little. They were “discussing” Asai? Had Fen brought up the name, or had Malick? It would matter. “And does he?”

“Not so far. At least—” Malick stopped, narrowed his eyes, flattened out the crumpled parchment in his hand, and held it out to Fen.

Fen took it with a questioning frown, but had himself a look, mouth tightening. “Pon is a prefect under Lord Sonji,” he said quietly. “Or was.

Sonji controlled the lands to the west of Asai’s cherry orchards before his sudden death about three weeks ago, and Pon was a frequent guest of Asai’s. I used to… watch when Asai had callers. Asai was always most intent on keeping Pon an ally. Or, at least, intent that Pon thought Asai one.”

Umeia’s eyebrows shot up. It was the most she’d ever heard Fen say all at once.

“Huh.” Malick was grinning. “You spied.”

Fen said nothing, just flattened his mouth down to a thin, tight line.

“Go on,” Malick prompted quietly.

Fen shrugged, irritated, but Umeia couldn’t tell at what. “I recognized the name when the criers started calling the news of Sonji’s stroke. Pon has laid a claim to the lands and to Sonji’s wife. It seemed… convenient.”

Malick’s eyes were nearly sparkling, all knowing approval. “So why isn’t Pon dead yet?” he wanted to know.

Again, the irritation. This time, Fen’s head came up and he glared, but though he was looking at Malick, Umeia didn’t think the glare was for him.

“He’s not been to his own estate since then. I’d been watching before….” His mouth twisted, and he waved a hand between Umeia and Malick. “I’ve kept an eye on Sonji-onna, as well, but Pon hasn’t been to see her—he hasn’t been any where, and there was nothing—” He stopped, frowning suspiciously at Umeia.

Ghost

“It’s all right,” Malick put in. “You can talk in front of her.”

Fen shot the glare back at Malick, jaw twitching, but he merely nodded.

“If he’s getting his good luck through magic, he’s got the source with him, wherever he is. I looked.”

“I’ll bet you did,” Malick murmured. He turned to Umeia, noted her stunned surprise at the revelations—and from this man—and grinned. “I’m afraid we haven’t got far in pursuing Fen’s own hunt, but he’s enlightened me on a few things I think you’ll be interested in.” He waved a hand. “Get us some tea, would you? Then we’ll fill you in.”

Umeia did. And then Malick did. He filled her in on what Fen had told him about Asai—how he’d taken Fen from the camp and harbored him, trained him, told him his skills would be needed one day to save the Jin, but wouldn’t tell him how. Fen bided through it all silently, sitting stiffly in the uncomfortable chair, holding his bowl of tea in both hands and staring down into it, head tilted slightly to the side.

“He’s listening,” Malick told Umeia quietly when he caught her staring with a question on her face. “Asai apparently tried to beat it out of him, but there was a steward who he said helped him learn to split his concentration.”

Umeia frowned. “That doesn’t look split to me.”

“Seems to work for him,” Malick said with a shrug.

“Can’t you make it…?” Umeia shifted uncomfortably. “Can’t you make it go away?”

“If he wants me to.”

He sounded so… relaxed, so bloody pleased with himself. Umeia’s hands fisted until her knuckles cracked. “He doesn’t want you to?”

“Sometimes.”

This time she did hit him—just a smart smack to his thigh, to wipe that look of unperturbed satisfaction off his face, pleased when it twisted into surprise and pique.

“Ow, Umeia, what the hell?”

“What if he does that on a job?” Umeia wanted to know.

“Then I expect,” Fen put in, quiet but cross, “I’ll have to devote more attention to one thing than the other.” He paused, peering at Umeia with a flat look of challenge. “I can hear, y’know. And I have done this before.”

“Not with my ducklings, you haven’t,” Umeia retorted. She stood, drew herself up, and tried for ‘looming’ but suspected she only got “hovering.”

“Trouble, that’s what you are,” she snapped at him. “Be all the trouble you like with him—” She pointed behind her at Malick. “—he can take care of

himself, and generally deserves what he gets, but you do anything to endanger the others, and you’ll have me to deal with.”

Fen’s face had closed down, expression gone cool and blank, which only stoked Umeia’s anger. She sucked in a breath, readying more, when Malick tapped her on the shoulder, dangled a charm in front of her face. Reflexively, she grabbed at it, gasped when she touched it like he’d just punched her in the stomach. Her fist closed around the charm, and she turned to Malick, mouth hanging open, stunned speechless, thoughtless.

Oh, Skel. Oh, shit.

“Asai gave it to him,” Malick said softly. “Told him he’d made it with his own blood. Told him he’d need it for his ‘work’.” He turned a soft look on Fen. “Told him anything he wanted to hear to get him to do what he wanted.”

He paused, looked back at Umeia, intent. “Sound familiar?”

THEY left together, Umeia and Fen, Umeia with more distressing things on her mind than she’d had in… a long, long time, thoughts occupied with a past which seemed determined to repeat itself. And there she’d been, all ready—in fact, resolved—to dislike the little Ghost, and now look. Bloody Asai and his bloody grandiose opinion of himself, his endless scheming and his willingness to use anyone and anything to bring about the changes he wanted. And damn all gods to the suns for letting him.

She stood out in the hallway for some time after she’d closed Malick’s door behind her, staring down at the toes of her shoes, brooding, before she realized that Fen hadn’t taken the opportunity to relieve himself of her presence, even after the hostility she couldn’t quite help, and the accusations to which she had no right. He dipped his head when she finally noticed him, placed a fist over his breastbone.

“Umeia-onna,” Fen said quietly. “I understand… I’ve heard….” He clenched his teeth, irritated, apparently with himself, then firmed his jaw. He lifted his head and looked her in the eye. “How much to harbor a refugee?”

…What?

Umeia blinked, paused for a moment to let it sink in, make sure she’d heard correctly.

She still wasn’t sure. “Sorry?”

“I….” Fen hesitated, staring, wide-eyed with abrupt trepidation. Umeia tried to wipe whatever forbidding expression might be on her face off it, but too late; Fen’s face paled as he backed away from her, shaking his head.

Ghost

“Nothing,” he said quietly, dipped her another of those odd, formal bows, “I beg your pardon, Umeia-onna.” Then he turned quickly up the hallway and escaped into his room.

Umeia pushed out a long, slow breath, said, “Oh, bloody hell,” then turned around and shoved open Malick’s door again.

Hallows-month, Year 1315, Cycle of the Wolf

“I’LL need you to wear this today, Jacin-rei.”

Asai held the shadow charm out on its fine chain. Jacin watched it spin slowly in front of his nose, the afternoon sun through the window catching the chain and flaring tiny shards of gold on the walls.

“Guests, Beishin?” he asked as he took it up.

Asai smiled and patted Jacin’s shoulder. Jacin slipped the chain over his neck, Asai’s touch sending a warm thrill through his belly.

“We need allies, if we’re to save your people.”

“Yes, Beishin,” Jacin said automatically, then went back to the manuscript Asai had set him to this morning. A history of the Jin through the centuries, written by Asai himself, thick and crammed full of more detail than Jacin thought even his mother likely knew. Different viewpoints on familiar tales than Jacin had heard before too. If this volume was to be believed, it was shocking that the Adan had overtaken the Jin. Shocking that anyone had overtaken the Jin. Of course it was to be believed—Asai had written it, after all, and to doubt the book was to doubt the man.

“Beishin….” Jacin tilted his head, peering curiously at Asai. “It says in here that the Adan feared the Jin, and that’s why they invaded. That the Jin had offended the gods and the gods set the Temshiel on them. But….” He paused, trying to come up with wording that didn’t imply doubt, wouldn’t offend. “The Adan and the Jin were almost one for centuries. The Adan even abandoned their one god for the moons. Our traditions are very nearly the same. We honor the same gods. Why—?”

“Why would the Adan suddenly turn on the Jin?” Asai smiled sadly and sat across from Jacin. “Why would the gods?” He waited until Jacin nodded.

“Magic is a frightening concept to those who do not have it,” Asai said, voice slipping into the smooth lecture tones that Jacin found almost hypnotic. It was amazing, the information he retained, when Asai spoke to him in this voice.

“The Jin have always had a strict tradition, so far as breeding—the full-Blood was to remain pure.”

“So, the Jin weren’t allowed to bind outside?” Jacin frowned. “But my mother said—”

“Laws were… set aside for a period.” Asai shrugged, apparently unperturbed by Jacin’s questions and willing to discuss the subject with him like Jacin was an actual thinking adult. “As you say, the two peoples were almost one, for a time. Traditions and laws were… not so much annulled as unobserved. It was not long after bindings between those of the Blood and those not of the Blood had become more or less open secrets that the Jin began to realize that their magic was being diluted. The Ancestors instructed their voices to proclaim an end to such bindings, and so the laws were once again enforced.” Asai lifted an eyebrow at Jacin. “Can you speculate as to what the repercussions of that decision might have been, from the Adan’s perspective?”

Jacin thought about the implications, concentrated on the political thread alone, and followed it. “The Adan would begin to suspect the Jin were merely trying to keep the magic to themselves.”

“Very good, Jacin-rei, very good.” Asai was beaming. It warmed Jacin right through. “The Ancestors were descendents of the Temshiel, and learned at their knees. They left many teachings before they bound their magic to their people and their lands and gave themselves to Subie. The laws concerning the protection of their lines were quite clear. And when the Untouchables began to go mad, the Jin understood it as punishment for diluting the Blood.”

It was said matter-of-factly, no judgment, not even a critical flick of an eye, but Jacin couldn’t help how his stomach turned over and his cheeks warmed. Except he also couldn’t help noting that the timeline was very different from the one he’d been taught—according to everything he’d ever heard, the Untouchables hadn’t begun to go mad until well into the Binding War itself, when the land to which the Ancestors had bound themselves was razed by the Jin to drive away the Temshiel and maijin who’d interfered on behalf of the gods. He’d never heard the Untouchables had been a factor in starting it.

“The Temshiel,” Asai went on, “fought on the side of the Adan, while maijin fought for the Jin.” He sat back and waved a hand, his expression sad.

“A hard betrayal by the Temshiel, for they’d always before been the… I suppose you would say guardians to the Jin, though it was the place of the maijin to be such advocates to mortals, and thus unprecedented.” He smirked.

“Temshiel are ever the obedient hands of their gods.” His mein sobered, and he looked at Jacin closely. “When the gods instructed the Temshiel to subdue

Ghost
the Jin, the Temshiel obeyed. Many of the Jin’s troubles can be laid directly at the feet of the Temshiel. The maijin assisted your people and advocated as they could, but in the end, it simply was not enough.”

Jacin frowned again. According to Vonshi’s tutoring, it wasn’t as though either Temshiel or maijin had much of a choice. They weren’t allowed to defy orders from their gods, not like mortals could. And Jacin had a bit of a difficult time believing that maijin—whose main roles seemed to be as troublemakers and bogeys to frighten children—could actually be considered champions for the Jin. And if they were, what did that make the Jin?

“So….” Jacin’s voice was too soft, Asai would not approve, so he cleared his throat. “It would seem just, I suppose. The Ancestors gave themselves so their wisdom would not be lost, so they could speak through my k… the Untouchables, and when the Jin abandoned their decree, their voices were lost. The Jin are being punished.”

Asai’s version had to be the right one. Didn’t it?

Asai was shaking his head, but his smile was still warm and approving.

“An unfortunate side effect, perhaps, but no, not punishment.” His expression went distant, pensive. “I doubt the Ancestors foresaw the toll their laws would take on their Voices.

“No, I think rather the Ancestors were well-intentioned but ultimately short-sighted,” Asai continued. “Even the full-Blood is not powerful enough to see so far ahead into the future. One would need the Blood of….” He paused, narrowing his eyes at the table. “The dilution and subsequent reduction of power in the Jin as a whole is likely what has caused the Voices of the Ancestors to diverge from the paths of wisdom and into madness.” He peered at Jacin, dark eyes intense. “All of it made possible by the interference and machinations of the Temshiel. That is why, my boy, we must do as we can to save your people from their bondage, and thus restore the Voices to sanity. With every bound soul the Adan stamp out or enslave, the Ancestors’

cries intensify. We must stop it before the full-Blood lines are permanently eradicated.”

Jacin thought of Joori, of his mother, and held back a shudder.

“It is why you must dedicate yourself to your training,” Asai went on, his voice gentler now. “I know sometimes I can be… harsh.”

“No, Beishin.” Jacin shook his head, honest negation. “My control—”

“Is improving, Jacin-rei, never lose heart.” The sincerity, the approval in Asai’s voice made Jacin’s heart flip a little. “You have come a long way, my boy. You’ve a long way to go, yet, but there is time. You will be what you need to be when the time is right.”

My boy. It always made stupid, embarrassing tears rise to the backs of Jacin’s eyes. “I will be what you need me to be, Beishin.”

He knew very well that involved killing. He didn’t know whom, but… did it matter? He’d be doing it for Asai, for Joori, for his mother, for his people.

Any who would enslave and use an entire people, any who threatened the ones Jacin loved… surely they deserved whatever they got?

“I know you will, Jacin-rei,” Asai told him then stood, rubbing his hands together. “And now, I must prepare for my guest. You will remember about the charm, yes?”

Jacin touched the little amulet. “Of course, Beishin.”

“Of course.” Asai gave him another pat on the shoulder as he passed him on the way to the door. “It would not do for word to spread that Lord Asai is thwarting law and tradition by treating an Untouchable with love and respect.”

That one brought the idiotic tears back, and this time, Jacin’s throat clogged a little. Love and respect. Love and respect. “Yes, Beishin,” he managed.

“And Jacin-rei?” Asai paused in the doorway, peering back at Jacin over his shoulder.

“Yes, Beishin?”

“Should you… overhear something….” Asai tilted a knowing little smile that heated Jacin’s cheeks. “Always remember that what one says is not always what one believes, nor is it that for which he will fight, in the end.

Sometimes we must… say what another wants to hear, in order to gain or keep an ally.”

Jacin frowned, a little perplexed, but he merely nodded. “Yes, Beishin.”

“I UNDERSTAND what you’re saying, Asai. But you must see—arranging a judgeship is… delicate, to say the least.”

Asai’s eyebrows rose, and he smiled a little. “Why, Sonji,” he crooned,

“are you saying there is something you cannot do?”

Jacin almost snorted when the fat lord flushed and scowled.

“‘Cannot’ is one thing,” Sonji retorted, “‘will not’ is quite another.”

“Ah.” Asai sat back, took a sip of his tea. “Tell me, Sonji,” he said thoughtfully, “does Jin magic frighten you?”

Sonji’s teabowl hit his saucer with enough force to slop the tea over its rim. “I beg your pardon!”

Ghost

Asai held up a hand, placating. “I mean no insult. It’s only that I should like things to be clear between us. If you won’t because you fear the magic, well, then….” He shrugged, unconcerned. “However, if you won’t because you don’t believe in the Adan’s policies….”

Sedition hung in the air, so thick Jacin could almost feel it himself from the shadows crouching on the narrow gallery above the two men in Asai’s formal parlor.

“An accusation of treason from Lord Asai,” Sonji said slowly, “could surely ruin a man.”

“Oh, worse, I’m quite certain.” Asai smiled cordially and waved a hand, dismissive. “I do not accuse, dear Sonji. I merely inquire.” He set his bowl on its saucer, leaned forward. “Taru is a like-minded man. If he were set into a judgeship, he would be… beneficial to other like-minded men.” Asai’s glance shot upward, scanning the room and the gallery where Jacin hunkered, screened by his shadows. “It is no secret that the Courts funnel the doomed to those who are willing to pay for their magic. The people of Ada would not approve. And yet, it continues, because the judges are men who appreciate their comforts a little too much. However.” He paused, sat back, eyed Sonji with sharp attention. “If the Courts were peopled by the right judges, men who would, perhaps… ensure such valuable Blood was not spilled and wasted….” He smiled again, picked up his tea and sat back. “Taru would ensure that the Blood would, shall we say, travel the proper channels.”

“And you have a particular proper channel in mind, I assume?”

Asai merely looked at him steadily, appraising. There was no affirmation, but one was clear nonetheless.

That… couldn’t be right. It sounded like Asai was arguing for using Jin Blood to… no, he was just being careful in his wording, phrasing it so his words couldn’t be used against him. Protecting himself. And Jacin certainly wanted Beishin to protect himself. Jacin thought of what could happen, should Sonji leave here and go to the Courts, level a charge against Asai.

Disaster. On too many levels to count.

The men were silent for several long moments, before Sonji finally sighed and shook his head. “It is not an easy thing, what you propose.”

Asai smiled, wide and pleased. “Which is why it is a task for a man who can do the impossible.”

It made sense, now that Jacin thought about it, latched onto the political thread, and followed it through the noise. Perhaps these men they were talking about—these judges who sold doomed full-Bloods to those who stole their magic—were the very ones Jacin would one day be called upon to execute.

Cut their throats or stick a knife through their ribs, then remove their hearts from their chests to be sure they could never be reborn. The thought failed to horrify.

Always remember that what one says is not always what one believes, Asai had told Jacin. And Asai had already made it abundantly clear what he really believed. He’d risked his life, he’d risked everything when he took Jacin from that camp. He continued to risk it all to save the Jin. Save Joori.

Save their mother.

He was Asai. He was Beishin. And Jacin believed.

The talk moved on to more mundane, social matters while Jacin pondered and half listened, then it segued into mutual invitations and well-wishing to Sonji’s family while Asai led him cordially to the door and saw him out. Jacin kept his shadows, crouched up on the gallery, watching Asai walk slowly back into the parlor, pick up his tea again and take a sip, grimace; it must have gone cold. Relaxed, careless, Asai set the bowl back in its saucer and sank into the cushions of the couch with a sigh.

“Have you any questions, Jacin-rei?” he asked softly, staring straight ahead, out the window and over the lush grounds.

Jacin started a little, though he didn’t know why—of course, Asai had known he was here. He’d all but endorsed Jacin’s presence.

Jacin stood slowly, whispering the spell and dropping the shadows from about him as he straightened. “No, Beishin,” he said.

Because he really didn’t. Because it was Beishin.

And Jacin believed.

Ghost

Storm-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf

“I KNOW there was a botched raid six weeks ago,” Malick snapped irritably.

He leaned over the cup warmer and the cards they weren’t really playing, letting the temperature of his gaze drop a few obvious degrees. “I want to know what exactly happened and why no one will talk about it.”

Denchai cut a glance to all points, taking in the crowd and the noise and the smoke, hopefully concluding that they wouldn’t be overheard. “It was just—” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. Young, poor, and a little too easily intimidated for a doujoun, which made him rather useful to Malick, generally. Until now, anyway. “It was just another raid. That’s all anyone knew. It’s only… well, it didn’t quite… work out.” His fingers nervously twiddled with the silver buttons of his surcoat.

“Didn’t work out how?” Malick pressed.

“Well, the raids don’t often end in dead hunters, for one.” Denchai reached for one of the cups and tossed the liquor back. He shook his head. “I wasn’t on duty, Mal, and no one who was will talk about it. Timura was there, and it’s like he doesn’t even remember it.”

Malick’s eyebrow went up, and he cut a surreptitious glance to Shig over at the Luck table as he refilled Denchai’s cup. Shig didn’t even look up at him, only angled a small, casual nod and threw her stones. Malick sighed.

Brilliant. So, whatever else happened the night Fen’s mother was taken, it appeared that—one way or another—there were no witnesses, and so no one who could give Malick a clear trail to follow. And this was the first Malick was hearing apparent evidence that the Doujou had the ability to mess with people’s minds so blatantly. The only magic they’d used up ’til now had been that contained in the hunters’ amulets. The implications of Denchai’s news were not good. And considering that Malick had got fuck-all else so far….

A waste of another night. Malick had already spent the last two here on the floor of the Girou, chatting with the regulars, listening, but this wasn’t a

subject that arose in casual conversation—even those with senses dulled from drink or poppy were careful to keep away from even talking about magic, and walked quickly away when it came up. Perhaps individual chats with Umeia’s

“lads and ladies” would be in order. It couldn’t hurt. It was truly astonishing, the things people told them sometimes—like they really did think the prostitutes were there only for their own amusement and then ceased to exist altogether when they went home.

“Fine,” Malick sighed, and folded his cards down on the table. He slid what was left of his stake over to Denchai. “But if you hear anything….”

“Right,” Denchai said with obvious relief, and a small smile ticced at the corner of his mouth as he eagerly snatched up the koins. “Anything at all, Mal, you know you can count on me.”

Yeah, all the way to the bottom of my purse.

Malick merely put on an easy grin and stood, gaze slanting over toward the bar where he’d last seen Madi. If Malick was going to start covertly questioning the help, he might as well enjoy it.

“AND exactly how does catting about downstairs count as looking for my mother?” Fen’s tone was, if not exactly deadly, at least fairly dangerous.

Everything else about him, though, was blank with stiff-necked control.

Malick was only half-aware of it. He was too busy watching through a still bleary haze as Fen prepared his breakfast. Malick had twigged to Fen’s strange meal routines by lunch of the second full day of Fen’s residence, and since then, they’d become Malick’s favorite daily entertainment.

“It is looking of a sort,” Samin put in when Malick just kept staring. Good old Samin. A decent sort for a cold-blooded killer. Yori snorted, but Malick couldn’t be bothered to snap her a glare. “You’d be surprised what people will tell a whore sometimes,” Samin added.

Malick had missed breakfast and lunch the first day, but he’d joined the others in their new shared common room thereafter without fail. They sat, as Umeia had teased, like a family, all gathered at the table, sharing the large dishes of various courses Samin and the girls took turns fetching from the kitchens.

It was… odd, at first, for Malick, the new arrangement, and he didn’t know why, but he went along with it easily enough. And anyway, besides what he was finding to be very interesting conversation over the shared meals, and the surprising realization that he was getting to know Samin and Shig and

Ghost

Yori better in a week of casual togetherness than he had in the years previous—who knew Shig ever even looked at men, let alone had a crush on one of the bouncers, and who knew Samin would come over all protective auntie when he heard it?—there was also the added fascination of watching Fen.

“Exactly which ‘whore’ are we talking about?” Fen muttered, snide.

Yori barked a laugh at that one, even Shig chuckled, but still, Malick just kept staring, absently chewing on… well, he had no idea what he was eating, actually. Almost every bit of his attention was on what Fen was doing.

Because Malick’s favorite part would be coming any moment now.

Tea, with every meal—one bowl, strong and scalding hot, with nothing added for sweetness or to weaken its natural flavor; always set to the upper left of Fen’s rice bowl. One small mound of rice, the portion of which was so precise that Malick thought he could probably count the grains each time, and each time, he’d come up with the same number; the rice was always centered exactly in the middle of the bowl before Fen broke the egg yolk over it with the tips of his henjiisticks. At breakfast and lunch, there would be a small cup of broth set to the right of the rice bowl and a slice of bread to the left; for breakfast, exactly two equal-sized dollops of clover honey would be added to the bread, spread out in a precise, thin layer; for lunch, it was a single spoonful of monyo-butter and a half helping of cabbage. Supper was the same as lunch, except there would be a serving of whatever meat or fish was sent up, minus the cabbage but plus a half mugful of watered beer, and one of the sweet bean-paste squares Malick had covertly asked Ragi to add to their evening meals once he’d learned of the new routine. Again, as it had apparently been at Asai’s, no one but Fen ate the nasty little things.

Breakfast, though… breakfast was what Malick thought he lived for these first several days, and was sorry as hell that he’d missed the first one. Because Fen had his one vegetable a day with lunch, his one serving of meat a day with supper, but at breakfast, he had his serving of fruit. An oblate, to be precise. And watching him eat it had to be one of the more arousing, riveting things Malick had seen in his life. The skin peeling away at the tips of long, nimble fingers, sticky with juice. The pieces pulled carefully into succulent, ruby sections, segmented individually and set like a burst of wet, rosy petals on the plate. Moist tongue sliding from between full lips, white teeth sinking into fleshy red fruit, pink juice in a tiny spray caught by lips and tongue, licked from fingers with meticulous deliberation.

The first time Malick had watched it, he’d had to make a run for his room halfway through, and that only because he knew all of the whores would still be asleep. Umeia would kill him if one of them complained that Malick had

woken them because he’d just watched Fen make love to an oblate and needed relief right now.

Fen’s lips would be sour-sweet, Malick thought now as he watched Fen take his first bite, and a little cool from the chill of juice. He’d taste tangy, and his tongue would have a fizzy zing that would trickle into Malick’s mouth as he—

“…tonight.” Malick vaguely heard Fen’s clipped tone, but he was more interested in the tiny pink droplet of juice hovering just at the edge of Fen’s bottom lip as he spoke. “…join me….”

It took another second or two, but the sense of the words finally wriggled through the remnants of poppy and liquor and lust and lack of sleep that hovered around Malick’s head like a sticky cloud.

Tonight. Join me.

Malick’s bloodshot eyes popped wide and he sat up straight. “Sorry, what?”

Fen’s lip curled, but not before that slick, pink tongue poked out to slide over his lip and catch the stray droplet of juice. “I said,” he growled, “I’m going to Pon’s. Tonight. Join me or not, but I’m going, and you won’t stop me.”

Malick merely blinked several times, ignored Yori’s muffled snorts, and gave Fen a nod. “Pon’s. Tonight. Right.”

Because the others would likely notice if Malick ripped the damned oblate out of Fen’s hands and fucked him right there on the floor. It would probably piss Fen off a little too.

“GET your bloody hands off of me!”

“As soon as you calm the hell down and stop fighting me!”

Fen stopped, but Malick could still feel the muscles under his hands, tensed and wound tight to spring. “I can’t….” Fen paused and sucked in a shaky breath. “Stop. Fucking. Touching me.”

He’d tried to break away from Malick the second the light in Pon’s bedroom was put out. Tried to bolt to the house and ruin every moment of the last three hours he and Malick had just spent surveying the place, learning its routines, counting its staff. Tried to drive right in and kill Pon in his bed so he could search the house for the source of the magic Malick could feel slithering out in a weak pulse.

Ghost

Malick had Fen now in an almost full-body hold, Fen’s back pressed tight into Malick’s chest, Malick wrapped around Fen’s arms and ribs, trying to make sure none of those damned knives came at him while still keeping Fen from doing what Malick had to admit he’d want to do himself, if their positions were reversed. Then again, if their positions were reversed, Malick didn’t think he’d be fighting so hard to get out of it.

Still, Malick had been on the receiving end of Fen’s offense before—if Fen really wanted to get loose, he could’ve done it already. So Malick didn’t feel quite so smarmy for dipping his nose to Fen’s neck, taking a good long whiff— gah, leather and almonds and light musky sweat—and noticing how Fen stilled and tilted his head just the slightest bit before Malick whispered:

“We can’t go get him now. Understand? We can’t.” They could, actually. It would be pretty easy. But then Malick would have to use magic, and he didn’t want to give that away if he didn’t have to. “We go home tonight, we plan tomorrow, and then we can go in.”

“And what if she’s there?” Fen grated, though he did it quietly, so as not to alert the few guards wandering about to their presence.

“Then she’ll still be there tomorrow or the night after,” Malick answered, tightening his grip again when Fen gave a little jerk in his arms, but Fen still didn’t fight with everything, and Malick didn’t let go. “She’s not going anywhere, Fen.”

A shift of Fen’s arms, a hook of his foot around the back of Malick’s ankle, and Fen’s elbow slammed into Malick’s ribs as Fen snapped sideways and out of Malick’s hold. Malick had to bend over a little and press at his ribs.

“Fucking ow, Fen!”

“Fuck you,” was all Fen breathed, raspy and a little bit shaky. “Just…

fuck you,” and he stalked away. Luckily in the opposite direction of Pon’s house and out of the paths of the guards’ circuits.

Malick supposed he should be grateful that Fen spent most of his time controlling every single minute reaction, or Malick might have ended up with a knife in the ribs, as opposed to an elbow. With a scowl, Malick followed Fen’s retreating form back the way they’d come.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Fen snapped when Malick caught up to him.

He rounded on Malick only briefly, but it was with a glare so malevolent that Malick stopped where he was and pulled back the hand that had been mindlessly reaching for Fen’s shoulder, despite the clear warning. “If she’s—

” Fen clenched his teeth, visibly pulling his control down around himself in a tight fist. “It’ll be on your head. Understand? Your fault. And I will fucking kill you.”

He didn’t wait for Malick to reply; he merely spun and stalked away again. Which was kind of good, because Malick didn’t really have a reply, anyway. He merely followed after Fen again, thinking, keeping the stiff back in his sight as they made their way back home.

Blame. Well, that was at least a change from being alternately sneered at or ignored. Fen couldn’t take his anger out on Asai, where it belonged, so he’d take it out on Malick because Malick was convenient.

Or maybe Fen just didn’t like that Malick could get reactions out of him.

He hadn’t exactly fought to the death to get himself out of Malick’s hold just now, had he? Bloody hell, Malick could still smell the damned almonds.

Fen wanted Malick. Other people might mistake that little display a moment ago for loathing, but Malick was very good at reading a body—even one that couldn’t be “touched” with magic—and he knew bloody well what Fen’s was telling him. So why was Fen fighting it so bloody hard, damn it?

Malick would’ve thought they’d already be fucking like minks, and yet Fen wouldn’t have a damned thing to do with Malick unless he absolutely had to.

Not even for the silence Malick knew Fen wanted with an almost wild desperation. Don’t fucking touch me. Malick couldn’t help miming the words and making a face at Fen’s back like a five-year-old.

Damn it, Fen would have let Malick have him that first day in Malick’s rooms, all Malick would have had to do was swoop in and seize him in his weak moment. And it either pissed Fen off that he wanted Malick, or that Malick hadn’t taken the opportunity. Or maybe that he’d had a weak moment at all. Malick only wished he knew which.

Fucking figured.

HE WAS almost getting used to waking up with Madi scrunched against him.

Almost getting used to the bit of disappointment at realizing where he was and who he was with—and who he wasn’t with—and the slow throb of too much liquor the night before still wending through his veins. Almost getting used to wondering a little blearily whose name he’d been muttering into skin that was smooth and damp with sweat but didn’t smell of almonds.

Shit. He should probably put a stop to this before it got out of hand. This made it… well, at least three nights in a row with Madi. That Malick could remember. Madi was a sweet lad, and Malick didn’t want things to get…

unpleasant. He gently extracted himself from the loose grip, got dressed, and left his koin on the press.

Ghost

Damn it, the amount of sunlight drilling into his eyes through Madi’s curtains told him he’d slept through breakfast. Which only added to the low level of irritation that had been steadily building in Malick for days. He shut the door silently and headed upstairs, stopping at Umeia’s door only long enough to be told that no, there’d been no new notes waiting in the jar, and then have the door shut in his face.

Shit.

Almost a week, and still no answer from the Mage. And it was pissing Malick off. Almost enough that he considered simply not fulfilling tonight’s commission, but… only almost. He couldn’t take this one away from Fen. If, however, Malick still hadn’t gotten an answer from the Mage when the next one came—or if he got an answer he didn’t like—he would reconsider his loyalties.

It was too quiet when Malick climbed the attic stairs. He hadn’t been paying attention to the sounds of the Girou around him, nor had he noticed the set of the suns, but damn it, he’d apparently missed lunch too.

Fine, then. He’d just go up to watch the sparring, kill some time, because he was pissy and at loose ends and a little antsy about the job tonight, and…

well, what else did he have to do with himself? Despite what Fen obviously thought, Malick really was trying. Because Malick would give just about anything to find Fen’s mother someplace other than where he was growing more certain every day she actually was. Still, there wasn’t a whole lot more Malick could do.

All obvious avenues he had to further their hunt for Fen’s mother had been temporarily exhausted.

He’d had Samin put the word out to his two doujoun contacts, but wouldn’t hear back from either of them unless they heard something pertinent.

Umeia had put a whisper into Judge Canti’s ear, but it would likely take days before he could give her anything useful. A visit needed to be paid to Malick’s informant in the east camp. Malick had promised Fen it was next on the list, after this job was done tonight. Malick wondered if that was an errand at which Fen would balk or insist upon attending, a former prisoner walking willingly back into the camp in which he’d been imprisoned. Malick was rather leaning toward the insisting—Fen was not one to balk at much.

A damned lot of care needed to be taken in hunting up information on Asai’s doings. Tread very lightly, be bloody sure of sources before asking them the wrong questions, that was the key. And it was all a lot more difficult than Fen seemed to think it was. Damn it, Malick deserved to dip down into

drink and debauchery every chance he got. He was working bloody hard at all this.

“Bloody hell,” Samin was saying when Malick reached the roof door,

“give a man a chance, why don’t you. Here, when you block with the cross like that, bring your other arm up and you can get a good punch in right under the jaw. See? Do it hard enough and you’ll break some teeth, at least—send a man’s jawbone up into his brain at best.”

Malick didn’t impose, just watched, noting with keen interest how Fen listened attentively to Samin’s instructions in hand-to-hand then did exactly what Samin told him to do in exactly the way Samin had told him to do it. No mistakes, no deviations, and he always got it right the first time. He hit every mark, and always remembered to keep his guard up. Step-turn-jab-hook-cross-counter.

Malick narrowed his eyes. Still doing things by rote— perfectly by rote, but still rote. They were going to have to work on the principle behind the words lateral thinking, but Malick would see how Fen did on the job tonight before making any suggestions.

They switched to the knives while Yori and Shig went back and forth between lazily wrestling and stopping to watch Samin and Fen. This time, Fen was the teacher, and it was really something else to watch.

Fen and Samin worked in a strange alchemy of non-verbal expression on Fen’s part and a near-constant stream of banter on Samin’s. He joked good-naturedly with Fen, providing both the straight lines and the punch lines, with the laughter supplied by Shig and Yori, if they weren’t busy putting each other into headlocks. Fen never answered, never laughed, but Samin seemed to interpret the silence in any way he felt appropriate, just like he did with the apparently mute instructions in knife work. Whether Samin really could deduce what Fen wanted from him by the shift of gray eyes alone or not, Malick had no idea, but neither of them ended up seriously hacked, so Malick supposed it was working for them. And Samin could definitely use a better offense than just his fists. He’d not needed it thus far, but one never knew, and Malick preferred all of his people as well prepared as possible. And it would be nice to know that no one was ever going to get Fen down in the way Malick had done. All in all, Malick approved.

He waited for an opening. When Fen and Samin disentangled from a particularly intense deadlock, backing away from each other with knives lowered and bowed their heads, signaling the finish or at least a break, Malick stepped up and said, “Nice work.” He smiled, all easy affability, and peered specifically at Fen. “Care for a go?”

Ghost

Because the idea of having an excuse to be so close again was making Malick’s mouth water. The oblates were bloody killing him—he couldn’t even look at one anymore without getting a semi-erection, and just the thought of one sent him rummaging for his purse and snagging whichever of the whores were available for a quickie. Fen wasn’t even hovering for a snatch of quiet, like Malick had thought he might. No, like Malick had been sure he would. And that too-brief moment of almost intimacy last night had shown Malick that Fen wanted. He just didn’t want to want.

Stubborn prick.

So Malick figured that sparring was a good excuse. Get in close, give Fen another taste of the silence, get him wanting—get him admitting to the wanting. But Fen merely stared at Malick for a bit too long, slipped his knives into the sheaths at his belt, and shook his head. And then he walked off, Shig following happily after him. No “thank you, anyway,” no “perhaps another time”—Fen merely made his way across the roof, opened the door for Shig, and then let himself through it without looking back.

Fucking stubborn prick.

“It isn’t you,” Samin told Malick, smirking as Malick turned to him.

Malick didn’t know what his expression was broadcasting, but it made Samin’s smirk widen—probably something pathetically crestfallen, which made Malick growl. Samin nodded at the door through which Fen and Shig had just gone, said, “It’s only that we have lunch, he meditates for half an hour, we spar, then he has a bath.” Samin shrugged. “I didn’t realize it was going to be a daily thing. Caught me out the second day when I found him haunting my door with his knives strapped on. Didn’t say anything, either, just walked off down the hall and waited for me by the stairs.”

“Routines,” Yori put in from behind Malick. She smiled a little when he turned to her, stretched her legs out in front of her where she lounged up on the wide ledge, hands propped behind her, deftly missing the spatters of old bird shit, dried and baked to flat, gray powder on the clay by the suns. “I didn’t get it, either. But Shig got pissy with me the other day when I laughed at Samin, said if I had no control over anything in my own head, I’d probably want it over everything else too.” She shrugged, closed her eyes, and tilted her face up into the sunlight, her mid-length gold hair, loosed from its habitual tail and slightly mussed, catching the light in a bright corona. “Doesn’t really make it less funny, though.”

“Shig’s quite taken with him,” Malick mused.

Yori snorted. “Shig’s dying to braid his hair, and he keeps not letting her.”

Malick had to clench his teeth against the tiny little moan that rose to the back of his throat. Thankfully, neither Yori nor Samin seemed to notice.

“But yes,” Yori went on, “Shig really likes him. I guess I do, too, though he’s more work than I’d put up with if you weren’t making me. You really have to watch his eyes to know what he’s thinking. Surprisingly, he’s not generally thinking of murdering us, even if his face says so.”

“Mm,” Samin grunted as he dug an oily cloth out of his tunic and started wiping down his knife. “He’s still here—he’s got a use for us.”

“Still don’t trust him, Samin?” Malick asked, genuinely curious.

“Depends on what you want me to trust him for,” was the blunt reply. “He takes the job seriously. We go out tonight with a new man we had to almost knock unconscious and threaten to assassinate if he didn’t come along, and strangely, I trust him to watch my back while we’re on the job. He needs structure, routine. He probably needs it like we need food. Right now, we’re giving it to him.”

Malick’s eyebrows rose. “Didn’t know you were such a people watcher.”

“Don’t usually need to be.” Samin lifted an eyebrow at Malick before looking back at what his hands were doing. “There are three kinds of people to someone like Fen—those he thinks of as ‘mine’, those who don’t matter, and those who need to die. We moved from the ‘those who need to die’

category when you promised to help find his mother. Right now, we’re all hovering just outside of ‘mine’, and making ourselves part of his structure will move us into it by the time our job is done tonight.” Samin flicked at the tip of his knife with a fingernail, slanting Malick a look. “You wanted him, you’ve got him. But break his structure, and you’re likely to break him. I’d have a care, if I were you.”

There was a wealth of meaning in both the statement and the look. “A warning, seyh?” Malick asked mildly.

“If you’d care to take it as such, seyh.” Samin shrugged again, slipped the knife into his belt, and made a business of stuffing the cloth back into his tunic. “I like him,” he said frankly, “more than I thought I would. We get on.

Even when he’s not saying a damn thing, he’s more honest than just about anyone I’ve ever known. His silences don’t ‘say’ anything, but he doesn’t fill them up with shit, either.”

It made odd sense. And it made even odder sense that Samin and Fen would get along, now that Malick really thought about it. Both of them were brutally blunt, neither of them seemed to know or give a shit when that bluntness went unappreciated, or even when it wounded, and Malick rather

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thought Samin understood that “three kinds of people” thing so well because it was a view he held himself.

“I trust him,” Samin went on, peering levelly at Malick and narrowing his eyes. “But if he breaks, I’d be the first to take him out. Because if the foundation goes, there’s not a whole lot he’s got to keep the rest from coming down too. And that man can take someone’s head off with one swipe of a blade better than any executioner with an ax in his hand. I don’t want to see the poor sap who starts the first crack.” He paused, looked at Malick straight.

“He’s temporary, Mal. More than anyone I’ve ever met before. That man is measured in moments, not years. You won’t hold him, and if you try….” He shrugged, left it there, his meaning all too clear.

So don’t even try went unsaid.

A definite warning. Malick thought about swatting Samin, putting him in his place, but he didn’t. However it came out, it was done out of loyalty, worry for Malick himself, and it was quite a lot more astute, for all its wrongness, than Malick ever would have given Samin credit for. Weirdly accurate, when Malick thought about it—for Samin. Not for Fen. Samin saw what he saw because he felt an outer-kinship with Fen, so he assumed everything on the inside was the same too. But a surface similarity was all it was. Samin liked his routines, Samin liked his structure, Samin needed to know what to expect. It was why he’d stayed in the Doujou for so long, even after he’d begun to realize the ideals he upheld weren’t quite the same as his own. Samin saw structures and walls and crumbling foundations and only insanity waiting behind it, because that’s all Samin could see. He’d had his own foundation shimmy beneath him in the Doujou, disintegrate shortly after he’d left it, and his sanity ground down beneath his shattering walls until Umeia’d got hold of him.

Malick didn’t see walls and structures and stanchions when he looked at Fen. Malick saw a dense layer of ice, with so much more biding beneath it—
he just didn’t know what yet. Passion, for certain, but nothing else Malick could see clearly but for the rage Fen showed all too readily. But there was more. A lot more. So much passion beneath all the frost that Malick wondered if there would be any survivors when it finally broke the tether Fen kept on it so tightly. Malick hoped he was there to find out.

Shig had it righter than Samin did, but control wasn’t all it was about, either.

Perfection—that was what Fen was after. All you really had to do was watch him for a day to see it. And Malick had gotten a few glimpses of the

kind of pressure the expectation of perfection of self was apparently yoking to Fen’s shoulders. You merely had to look past the snarls.

Malick met Samin’s direct gaze with one of his own, then tipped his head in acknowledgment. “I expect we’ll all have to be careful, then.”

“Mm,” Samin grunted again, and he turned for the door.

Malick watched him until he’d made his way through the pots of dying herbs of Umeia’s “garden,” shaking his head as Samin disappeared down the stairs. Sighing, Malick ambled past Yori and stood at the ledge, peering down over the cityscape then up at Subie, hazed blue and smoking quietly as it loomed over Jejin-that-was.

They liked Fen, all of them did, except perhaps for Umeia, but that was out of concerns startlingly similar to those Samin had just expressed, which made Malick entirely too twitchy, so he dismissed them. They liked Fen, and that was good—better than he’d thought. It would make all of this much easier if Malick didn’t have to worry about them all at each other’s throats. In fact, it seemed Fen’s mere presence and the necessity of keeping it a secret had forced them all into a new familiarity Malick hadn’t even noticed was absent before. And that was very good.

Strange, though. The most antisocial little prick Malick had ever met, and somehow, Fen had been the impetus of a coming together of everyone around him in only a few days, and with no apparent desire or effort on his part. Fen still rarely articulated when a glare would do, and glares seemed to come more naturally to him than breathing. He never spoke unless someone addressed him directly, and when they did, he responded with short, terse answers or that same slow blink Malick usually got. He kept to himself, even when he was in their midst. He tolerated their presence, and yet they tended to seek his out deliberately. He hovered grimly at their edges, and they responded by casually drawing him to the center.

Malick understood it with Shig, or at least he thought he did. And where Shig went, so did Yori. Certainly, Malick understood why he himself sought Fen out. He wasn’t entirely getting it with Samin, though, even though Samin thought he understood Fen better than Malick did. The whole situation caught Malick somewhat off-guard, made him a little… fuck. Was he jealous of Samin? Surely not. Then again, it did seem like Fen tolerated the presence of just about everyone but Malick. Even when they were discussing Fen’s mother, all Malick got were the same old scowls when he said the wrong thing, and cold silence when he didn’t. It wasn’t fair.

Maybe it was the silence, Malick mused—it brought out the chattiness in others. Malick had even felt it himself: that urge to fill up blank spaces, to

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take an empty pocket of nothing and cram it with meaning that wasn’t there.

Watching Fen quietly pretending not to watch your back, thinking his Fen-thoughts, and desperately wanting to know what was going on in there, what he saw when he looked at you. There were different kinds of silences, Malick thought, different degrees—Fen had mastered them all. Angry, comfortable, thunderous, even semi-amiable. And it seemed every one of them wanted some part of that. Like Fen was a sun, pulling them inexorably into his orbit, without even trying… probably without even wanting to.

No, not like a sun—like a black fucking hole, sucking Malick into a hopeless trajectory, eating up reason like a void ate light.

Catalyst, indeed.

Malick growled, kicked at the stone beneath his boot. He needed to get himself back on course. He’d managed to get Fen to give up Asai to him, but Malick had let himself get too distracted since then. He’d been so busy drooling and watching, and obsessing about the Mage, he hadn’t been trying to get beneath that layer of ice the way the others had done with no apparent effort at all. And Malick was going to have to try, because there was an attraction there that Fen didn’t want to have—ironically, the hostility was the giveaway; that and the fact that Fen hadn’t actually killed Malick yet—so Fen was going to dig his heels in more firmly with Malick than with anyone else.

What Yori said about control made a whole lot of sense—Fen didn’t like his own reactions around Malick, couldn’t control them the way he wanted to, so he’d control them by not giving Malick an opportunity to elicit them.

Malick would have to remedy that.

And while he was at it, he was going to have to work on the trust thing some more. Getting Asai’s name out of Fen had been a heartening surprise, but he still hadn’t been able to get Fen around to admitting the existence of his siblings. And the longer they were out there, the more chance there was of them being found out. Adan hunters focused mainly on the camps, but not only on the camps. Fen had to know that—surely trusting Malick was better than trusting to chance?

Malick wondered how he might manage to let it “slip” that the little hut sat in Asai’s own backyard. If Fen didn’t know that already—and it appeared he didn’t or he wouldn’t have hidden them there to begin with—perhaps spilling the information would rattle him enough that he’d finally cough up what Malick was waiting for him to cough up. And perhaps Malick making a move toward their rescue would not only cause whoever was veiling them to step out of his or her metaphorical sniper’s nest, but it would bring Fen closer

to Malick too. Which wasn’t the most important point, but it was right up there.

If the damned Mage would just bloody answer him, agree to meet him, maybe Malick could feel him out, see if he really was to be trusted, and then figure out what to do about the rest of Fen’s family from there. Because the more Malick thought about it, the more he thought something should be done quickly. The earth-bound was Raven’s, but the other two were clearly Wolf’s, and therefore Malick’s responsibility. All right, in a roundabout way, and if he squinted at it sideways, but still.

Malick trusted now that Fen had not come to them as Asai’s pawn, that if this turned out to be some kind of setup, it wouldn’t be because of complicity on Fen’s part. If it turned out they were dupes, so was Fen. Fen wouldn’t tell Malick much more about Asai than he’d said that first day, except that he was aware of some of his associates, and that he had reason to suspect Asai might have been responsible for the mother being found out. Fen hadn’t seemed to recognize Yakuli’s name when Malick had casually included it in the list of names he’d run by Fen, and Malick believed very firmly that if Fen gave up Asai in order to find his mother, he’d give up anyone. Fen wasn’t in on whatever machinations were going on around him.

If Asai had once meant to Fen what Malick was sure he’d meant, telling Malick even the little Fen had told him was as good as severing all ties to his

“beishin,” so Malick’s initial panicked assumptions had come to nothing. He was still toying with the idea of telling Fen he wanted to pay Asai a visit, make him talk, and watching Fen’s reaction—that had to tell Malick something—but he wasn’t prepared to follow through on that threat, at least not yet. And he rather suspected that, where Fen was concerned, you either made your threats and carried them through, or you lost all credibility in his eyes. Malick wasn’t ready for the gamble.

It was early days yet. Malick wanted answers now, but there were some things he dared not rush. Fen had been here a little over a week, after all. And he’d admitted the important things about Asai. It wasn’t like Malick could expect Fen to know that everything about Asai’s doings was important, not unless he told Fen why, and Malick wasn’t likely to ever find himself in a position that would make him want to do that.

There were other ways to find out what Asai was about. To prove it.

Malick would have to work on those too. Stop losing himself in oblates and

“family togetherness” contrasted with quick, dirty shags afterward with whomever was available, and start paying attention to more important things.

Send another demand to the Mage, that was the first thing. Maybe even mention Asai—a swift reaction or none at all would at least tell Malick

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whether or not the Mage was anything close to what he suspected. Change his tactics with Fen, too, because gaining Fen’s trust was going to be important, and acting like a tomcat in a room full of mollies in heat was getting Malick nowhere.

Direct and blunt worked for Samin. Perhaps Malick should give it a go.

And if that didn’t work, he’d just follow Fen out the next time he went to the hut—which ought to be soon, since it had been days and they likely didn’t have another way to get supplies other than their Untouchable brother—and confront him there. Bring them back here, maybe, like Fen had obviously intended to ask, had Umeia been using her head. Maybe Malick should find a way to make the offer, or at least get Fen to ask the question. Malick could hide them just as easily as he hid himself and Shig, and all the others at the Girou that needed hiding. Maybe then Fen’s scowls would come less frequently.

One way or another, Malick would make it work. He’d find out what Asai was up to—oh, and what wouldn’t he give to find some real dirt on the arrogant fuck—get Fen’s siblings somewhere safer, and figure out what, if anything, Fen’s Disappeared mother had to do with it all. And if Malick managed to get Fen between the sheets in the meantime….

“Thinking happy things, Mal?” Yori asked, all smartass-y and smug.

“Anyone I know?”

Malick merely shot her a look, smirked. “Never you mind, love,” he said, then he gave her hip a nudge with the toe of his boot and turned for the stairs.

“Be ready by nightfall.”

IT SHOULD have gone beautifully. They’d planned it perfectly. There shouldn’t have been a single snag or hitch. Too bad no one told Pon.

Yori looked down over the small crest that ran along the eastern side of the property: the best vantage, Malick had told them, and only patrolled in a regular circuit, a sentry passing routinely once every half hour or so, depending on his pace. It had looked so easy on the drawing, sounded easy when Malick explained the plan. Two sentries about the perimeter, and once all the day staff went home after they’d served the master his supper, only a steward and two maids were in residence overnight, besides Pon himself. Fen and Malick had watched for hours only two days ago, timed it all, and come back with the plan. No inconvenient wife to try not to accidentally kill, no children who might get in the way. Malick would go in, question then take out

Pon, Fen would locate and take care of the full-Blood, and Yori and Samin would tend to any unlucky sentries who might stumble into an ill-timed circuit. Get in, kill those needing killing, get out, go home. Yori should have known it sounded too easy.

“Son of a bitch looks like he’s packing for an extended holiday,” Samin put in, peering over Malick’s shoulder at the ridiculous number of guards and minders swarming the small estate, helping to pack and load carts. A man that looked very close to the description Fen had given them of Pon was directing.

“We’ll have to call it.”

“Someone’s warned him,” Fen pushed out through his teeth, staring down with his jaw clenched. The leather of his gloves creaked loudly as he fisted his hands tight.

Malick nodded. “I expect that’s probably why our orders were for tonight.

If we don’t get him now….”

“Then we live to tell about it,” Samin pointed out. “There are too many, Mal.”

Personally, Yori agreed with Samin. It looked like Pon had commandeered Sonji’s own mercenaries for himself. That was the Sonji heraldry on their hauberks.

But Malick was the boss and he was looking rather ambivalent. “Shig?”

Shig wandered up beside Malick and surveyed the scene. She shook her head. “They’re all charmed,” she told him. “Good charms too.”

Meaning made from full-Blood, Yori knew, over which Shig had very little influence, half-Blood that she was. Strange. Yori could understand it with Pon himself, but why hand out protections to all the guards too?

“I could maybe get in through a few of the weaker ones,” Shig went on.

“Maybe. That would take care of….” She hesitated, gaze drifting inward, then: “I can do five.” A pause, then, once again: “Maybe.”

“Definitely warned,” Samin grumbled.

“Shig.” Malick’s voice had gone tight. “You can or you can’t.”

Shig went silent again, closing her eyes for a long moment before she scowled, opened her eyes, and looked guiltily at Malick. “Probably not,” she admitted.

“Shit.” Malick reached out, laid a hand to Shig’s shoulder and squeezed.

“It’s not your fault, love, no worries. You just keep alert to anyone approaching, yeah? Let’s keep this as quiet as we can.”

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He blew out a breath, irritated. “All right, that’s… looks like twenty, at least.” He growled. “What the fuck. What does one bloody jumped-up prefect need with all this?”

Twenty. Or more. Who knew if there were more in the house they couldn’t see?

Yori considered it. She could get at least three from up here before they started to notice, considering their current distraction. Another three or five when they started to charge, and that was assuming her aim was true each time. But with the time for re-nocking, they’d be on her before she could get many more, even taking into account that they’d be huffing up the rise after her. Those boys looked fit. That would still leave at least twelve—four or more each for Malick, Samin, and Fen. Samin could take on more than that, and all at once, if his opponents were armed only with fists, but these men all had swords and knives. Samin was getting better with the knives, and he’d come equipped with two of Fen’s, but he wasn’t ready for a serious knife fight yet—he just didn’t have the speed or finesse—and he almost never carried his broadsword anymore. Malick could probably take all of them, if they waited for him and came one or two at a time, but they weren’t likely to wait patiently in line for their turn. Fen… the same, probably. Yori had only ever seen Fen fight Malick for real, but she’d been impressed, and she’d been watching him spar with Samin. Maybe two at a time for Fen, three if he was lucky and faster than usual.

Any way Yori looked at it, there were too many of them. Even if they managed to get Pon as ordered, and took out every one of these men in the process, they were still too likely to limp away from it at least one less than they’d come with. She peered about her, unwilling to imagine the group without one of the faces now present. They were her family. Even Fen.

Speaking of….

“Where’s Fen?” she asked Malick.

Samin frowned. “Fen?”

“Yeah—tall fellow, braid, scary fondness for knives?”

Malick turned sharply, eyes quickly studying each of them in turn, as though he thought perhaps Fen might be wearing a Samin-mask and if he looked hard enough….

“Good bloody question,” Malick grated, turning again to scan the surroundings, gaze roving over the green, the garden, the roof—

“Fucking shit.” He jerked forward, as though he meant to make a run for the house, but Samin grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “What the hell does he think he’s doing?”

Shig was grinning, her bright head bobbing in the moonlight. Yori followed her gaze, almost snorted a little when she spied the skulking figure on the roof of the porch, but… it wasn’t really funny. Before Yori could even form an opinion on what Fen might be up to, he was swirling down from the rain gutter and right into the center of the clustered guards. Without a single sound, knives flashing, Fen went to work.

Malick just stood there for a second, shaking his head. “Can’t help it,” he breathed. “I bloody love it when he does that.” He shrugged off Samin’s grip and jerked his chin at Yori. “We’re on.”

It was messy. It was chaotic. It was bloodier than Yori had seen in a long time.

It was fucking exhilarating.

Fen had gotten four down before Yori let fly her first arrow—she’d forgotten about his little throwing knives. Everyone else was so busy wondering what was going on, heads turning to look at the sudden commotion in their midst, that they didn’t even see Malick coming. He took out three before Yori stopped counting. Samin had moved about to flank them, planting himself between the house and the overgrown gulley at the bottom of the ridge where Yori and Shig still stood; exposed, but Yori kept an eye to make sure no one got behind him, and that not too many at once came at him.

Her bow sang and her arrows flew. Yori loved when it all narrowed down around her like that—just her and her targets, nothing else in the world but willing her arrows home. It was like her own kind of magic.

A spray of blood caught the corner of Yori’s eye. She shifted her glance in time to catch the crumpling form of one of the guards trying to flank Samin, the side of the man’s skull blown right out in a way Yori recognized all too well. Yori nocked another arrow as the man folded silently down to the ground. The snort behind her confirmed her assumption, and Yori shook her head.

“I thought you couldn’t get any of them,” she said, sighting down the line of her arrow as another of them made a run at Fen’s back.

“It looked like too much fun not to try,” Shig replied.

Yori couldn’t help the grin.

She herself ended up getting Pon. After the initial confusion settled into actual battle, a good number of the men moved in to try and manhandle him back inside, forming a circle around him and hustling him behind a cart first.

When Fen carved his way through three of them, they made a run for the

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house. Yori picked off the two guards first, then Pon himself—one, two, three.

Easy.

“Fen’s going to be pissed that they can’t question Pon now,” Shig said quietly behind her, the tiniest touch of reprimand, but amusement too.

Oh. Right. Yori had kind of forgotten about that part. If Malick didn’t kill her, Fen probably would.

“Oh, damn,” Shig sighed. “He’s gone looking for the full-Blood.”

Yori looked over her shoulder to see her sister shaking her head sadly, turned back to the yard and watched Fen disappear at a run into the house.

Malick and Samin were each finishing up the dregs, so all Malick could do was call after Fen then curse—loud and eye-poppingly filthy, even for Malick—when he was ignored.

“He won’t find her,” Shig went on. “She’s gone. She was a present.”

Yori had no idea what that might mean, but she found out only a little while later when Fen stormed out the house, face set hard and fists still balled tight. He walked right past Malick—who was still cursing—and started sorting through the dead, collecting his knives and searching the corpses for the charms.

“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Malick snarled at Fen’s back, snagged his arm and spun him to his feet. Fen merely snarled back, wordless, and shook Malick off, then went back to sorting. They were both blood-spattered, the whole left side of Fen’s face dripping with it; Samin much less so, now that Yori could see him. “You could’ve got us all killed,”

Malick was growling as Fen finished up and began to stalk up the hill toward Yori and Shig. “You stupid son of a bitch, just what did you—?”

“I didn’t make you engage,” Fen snapped.

They were only a few dozen paces away now. Yori prudently stepped back and out of their path and tugged Shig along with her.

“You didn’t make—?” Malick’s eyes went dark and dangerous, even in the uncertain light of the half faces of Raven and Dragon and the crescent koin of Wolf. “You didn’t make us engage? Are you bloody kidding me? In case it’s escaped you, I’m the one in charge here!”

Fen stopped abruptly, stalked back to Malick, knife still drawn and clenched in his hand, but not raised or threatening. “You were taking too long,” was all he said, though he said it in a way that someone else might say, Die, you slimy fuck!

Malick looked like he couldn’t decide between laughing and punching Fen in the mouth. “I was taking too long?”

“He was leaving. Someone warned him off. If we didn’t get him tonight, we never would’ve got him at all. As it is, he’s got rid of his full-Blood.”

“She was a present,” Shig put in, puffing that sad little sigh again.

Fen turned sharply and eyed Shig so intensely Yori almost stepped between them. “She?”

Shig nodded. “She was a present,” she repeated.

Fen tilted his head, narrowed his eyes for a second or two, then merely gave Shig a bit of a nod in salute, paced over to her swiftly and shoved the bloody charms into her hands. Without a word or so much as another snarl, he pushed past Malick toward the front of the house. Malick grabbed him again, but again, Fen shook him off.

“Where d’you think you’re going?” Malick wanted to know.

“Sonji-onna,” Fen said as he stalked away. “She was a fucking present.”

Malick cursed some more, staring after him for a several long seconds before he turned to Samin. He shook his head. “Anyone hurt?”

Samin sighed, resigned. “I’ll get the girls home.”

Malick gave him a quick nod, said, “See Umeia as soon as you get in,”

and he took off after Fen.

Samin watched him until he was little more than a dark blur against a darker landscape, sighed again, then waved his arms at Yori and Shig. “Well, let’s get on, then,” he rumbled, frowning up at Shig with a tilt of his head.

“What’s got you so gloomy, lovie? We won, didn’t we?”

Shig merely scowled with an unhappy shrug. “I wanted to go with Fen.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Yori muttered, rolled her eyes and went to retrieve her arrows.

IT HAD been almost a week. Joori peered around the darkness, eyes roving over the sleeping faces of his brother and sister, the rumpled state of his own mat, the neat lines of the one made up for Jacin. Waiting. Empty. Had been for days now.

He’d been back, Joori could tell. Well, no great deduction necessary, actually—food would be running low when Joori finally dropped off at night,

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and then somehow replenished when he awoke. Three times, now, Jacin had come and gone in the dead of night like a—

No. Even now, Joori wouldn’t think it. Not even if Jacin was trying to make him.

He smothered a light growl, pushed his back into the wall—deliberate discomfort to get blood moving through his nerve endings, wake him up a little. Jacin would come tonight. Joori was sure of it. Then again, he’d been sure last night, too, and all he’d gotten for his certainty was a long, sleepless night and a stiff neck.

Perhaps Jacin knew somehow. Perhaps he had deliberately stayed away last night because he’d known Joori was awake. Perhaps he knew now, and Joori would have to resign himself to another wasted night, once the black outside the shutterless window started its inexorable fade into indigo.

He didn’t like to think it, but… Jacin had changed. Not surprising, really—so had Joori. So had they all. It was more than that with Jacin. And the grim transformation nearly broke Joori’s heart.

He’d been shocked and overjoyed to see Jacin again that horrible night, to recognize him through the flames and the blood as he’d emerged from the thick of Adan hunters like some kind of vengeful maijin. Even through the grief and fear and horror of watching his father murdered in front of him, the terror of seeing his mother, limp and blank-eyed as she was carried away, the surety and resignation as Joori just stood there and watched them come for him, unable to move, bewitched and paralyzed, not even the rage could shudder up and raise the earth to swallow their attackers….

Even through all that, real, honest joy had moved through Joori when he’d recognized Jacin through a glittering storm of flashing blades, his braid—
grown long in the years since Joori had seen him—winding out behind him as he whirled in a spray of screams and blood. Joori had been shocked, amazed, appalled, terrified, but most of all, relieved. Exultant. He’d watched his brother—kind, serene, sensitive Jacin: protector, other Self, heart—immerse himself in a squall of death and gore, blood on his face and hate in his eyes, and had been nothing less than euphoric. Watched Jacin lift their father from where he’d bled out into the dirt, and heave him into the blazing conflagration that had been their home only moments ago, pause for—

Gods almighty, Joori had thought, dazed, he’s painting the prayers in Father’s own blood.

Morin had been disgusted, horrified, because he was Morin, and Jacin could have descended from the heavens on Wolf’s own chariot and Morin

would still hate him. Caidi had been so deep in shock Joori had worried she might never find her way back.

Wordless, expressionless, Jacin had picked Caidi up, held her against his blood-soaked tunic, drawn them all in tight about him, and covered them in shadows. “Stay close,” was all he’d said, and he got them out. Walked them right past the small company of the Doujou who’d come running and then right past the rest of them clustered at the gate, speculating on what might have happened to cause such a stir on a routine snatch. They’d stood there for a few minutes, listening—Jacin told Joori later he was waiting to see if one of the guards might mention the name of the one who’d gotten away with their mother—but when Caidi started to whimper softly, they’d fled.

The days following, though, would have been almost idyllic, were it not for the circumstances that had necessitated the strange reunion. Tiny and filthy, the little hovel to which Jacin had brought them, but Caidi had taken charge of directing her brothers in the cleaning of it. They let her—even Morin—because it was so much better than the blank shock that had held her for all of that first night and almost half of the next day. Jacin had spent a great deal of the following night out gathering supplies for them, but once they were fed and had bedding, even a change of clothes, he’d sat up with Joori for hours—talking. Well, Joori talked, mostly. Lying on their mats, faces only inches apart so they could hear each other’s whispering voices, while Caidi and Morin slept on either side of them. Like it used to be. Almost.

Joori didn’t have very much to tell Jacin. He’d taken over most of the running of the farm from their father last year. He’d been thinking of approaching Sere Basi to ask for a binding with his daughter, Cali, because Cali loved him, had moaned so prettily when he’d bedded her, and had a sweet manner, like their mother. He hadn’t worked himself ’round to it yet, though. Afraid to pass his Blood on, afraid to risk another child to a life of fear of Disappearing. He didn’t tell Jacin that last part, though.

Jacin told him next to nothing about Asai, but told him in such a way that Joori had caught his breath, bitten his tongue, before, Oh, hell, Jacin, you fell in love with him, didn’t you? slipped out. Joori hadn’t been able to hide his surprise when Jacin had asked if he’d been getting any letters, and when Joori had told him no, Jacin had frowned and looked away for several moments, eyes too bright and bloodshot when he’d finally looked back. With a calm, dead voice, he’d told Joori how he’d learned his skills with the knives, and why. And then he told him what he intended to do with them.

Joori had approved. Joori had encouraged. Joori wished he could do it himself.

Ghost

So, when Jacin started disappearing for days, Joori kept his mouth shut.

Because Jacin always came back, arms full, and with a story to tell. No vengeance for their mother, not yet, though Joori was sure Jacin would find it, but vengeance nonetheless—for their people, if not for themselves.

Changed, though, Joori’s gentle brother. Harder. Angrier. Quieter.

Joori didn’t care. Well, he did, but… he had his brother back, his other Self, and if this was Jacin now, this was the Jacin he would love. The other was still in there, the foundations upon which this new one had been built, and if the hardness, the seeming coldness, was how Jacin kept himself from getting lost in the Ancestors, Joori would love the hardness too.

The knob of the crooked door turned almost soundlessly. Joori started a little, then quickly scraped the match in his hand against the rough floor, and set it to the candle’s wick. He sat back again and peered levelly at the door.

Jacin was blinking, eyes adjusting to the sudden light, holding a bulky sack to his chest like a shield. He stared at Joori, sitting calmly against the wall, fully dressed, waiting patiently for his brother.

“You look like shit,” Joori said quietly. “Have you slept at all?”

Jacin only stared for a while. Joori thought perhaps he was debating just turning around and leaving again without a word, and the fact that it seemed like a very real possibility almost broke Joori’s heart.

“I didn’t think you’d be awake,” Jacin finally said, voice unusually subdued.

Joori merely gave him a twist of a smile. “Yeah, I figured.”

Jacin frowned, looked down. It was the first time Joori had seen Jacin looking uncertain since they’d been reunited. “How did you—?”

“I didn’t.” Joori shrugged. “But our supplies were getting low, and there’s been nothing ‘magically’ appearing in three mornings. If not tonight, it would’ve been tomorrow.” He paused, narrowed his eyes. “Is that blood on your face?” And then he peered more closely. “For pity’s sake, Jacin, you’re covered in it.” He’d been out again. Hunting. Joori’s heart pattered a little faster—fear for Jacin and selfish hope for himself. Joori leaned to the side, dug through the pile of shirts Jacin had brought him, and threw over a black tunic that was a little too big in the shoulders for Joori. Jacin had filled out quite a lot in the time they’d been apart. “Did you get them?”

Jacin didn’t answer for quite a while, just dropped the sack by his filthy boots and started to change his shirt in silence, staring at the floor. “You shouldn’t have waited for me. You shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t what? Shouldn’t want to see my brother? Shouldn’t feel shunned when my brother doesn’t want to see me? Shouldn’t—” Joori’s small tirade died in mid-question. His eyes went wide. “For fuck’s sake, Jacin, what’ve you done to yourself?”

Jacin didn’t even acknowledge the question, didn’t pause, only slipped the clean tunic over his head then torso, covering old scars and new gashes all up and down his upper body, some of them deep and still oozing. A disturbing band of silver nearly ringed his upper arm, one scar on top of the other. They certainly hadn’t been there before Asai had taken him. How had Joori not seen it before? He thought back, couldn’t bring to mind a single instance when he’d seen Jacin even partially unclothed over the past weeks of almost togetherness. Joori didn’t know why, but the fact that he hadn’t seen them—
that Jacin had seemingly deliberately not let him see them—infuriated him more than the presence of the marks.

Joori started to rise. “Some of those are fresh. You need to be band—”

“It isn’t that I don’t want to see you,” Jacin said over him; his voice was still quiet, almost diffident, but still, it stopped Joori and made him sink back down. “You know that, Joori.” He pulled the sleeves down over the knives strapped to wrists and forearms then tucked the shirt’s tails beneath the belts crisscrossing his hips.

“Do I?” There were tears in Joori’s eyes—damn it, he’d wanted to be calm and adult about this, but the distance, the absences, what Jacin was risking during them, all the knives and those fucking scars. It all rose up, choked him, and he locked his jaw tight against it. “What am I to think, Jacin?

You come and go like the ghost they name you, only you leave the offerings instead of taking them. You wait ’til we’re all asleep, sneak in here in the dead of night and don’t even wake me— me, Jacin—don’t leave so much as a note or even a fucking footprint, just food and clothes and blankets, like having those things is better than having you. And in between, I don’t even know if you’re alive! Look at yourself—it looks like you’ve been to war!”

He stopped, shut his eyes tight, trying to slow his breathing, collect himself. His voice had grown steadily louder as he’d gone on, first stirring then waking Morin and Caidi, who sat up on their mats and blinked blearily between them. Morin stared at Jacin with contempt and a curled lip, but Caidi’s pretty face opened in delighted surprise as she leapt up from her blankets, instantly awake.

“I knew you’d come back! Joori was worried, but I wasn’t.” She hopped over Morin, darting at Jacin with a child’s ingenuous glee. “Morin, Jacin-rei’s here!”

Ghost

“Jacin,” Joori snapped as Caidi’s arms wound about Jacin’s waist then jerked back like she’d been burned. Her hazel eyes were wide, her face gone abruptly from pleasure to dejection. Damn it, why’d she have to look so like their mother? A hot twist went through Joori’s chest, and he melted—any man would. “I’m sorry, Caidi, I didn’t mean to… you didn’t do….” And then he gave up, slumped against the wall, shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He peered up at Jacin, who hadn’t so much as lifted a hand toward Caidi when she’d dived at him, hadn’t even looked at anything but the floor, that sack once again held between him and everyone else like some crack-brained security blanket. “I’m sorry, Jacin. It’s only… I’ve missed you. And I do worry.” Stopped there, like that said it all, and perhaps it did.

The silence stretched, long and uncomfortable, too many things hanging in the air all about them, heavy.

“What’d you bring?” Morin broke the silence with a very obvious sneer to his tone.

Jacin stirred from his frozen stance, hugged the sack reflexively before jerking it away from his chest. Eyes still on the floor, he swept a soft touch to Caidi’s hair then stepped slowly over to the long board fastened to the wall—
their “table.” A dwindling pile of foodstuffs was sorted in one corner. Jacin began unloading his sack.

Morin was watching it all with hostile eyes. “You didn’t get that rubbish from any market,” he scoffed as he caught Joori’s eye and jerked his chin.

“Look at it—he’s been stealing from the shrines again, he’s going to get caught.” He swiveled the glare at Jacin’s back. “Why don’t you just—?”

“It isn’t stealing,” Joori grated through his teeth. “It’s what they’re for, you bloody troll. And I’ve not seen you refuse it. Your belly’s full, isn’t it, you little puke.”

Jacin kept his back turned, kept piling the things he’d brought onto the board, smacking a packet of dried plums that were obviously not from any shrine down with enough force to threaten the flimsy support of the board. “I was delayed tonight.” Amazingly, his voice was still quiet and even. “The markets were all shut up by the time—” A quick shake of his head. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back.”

“You shouldn’t be coming back at all,” Morin sniped.

Bloody Morin. Whether he loved or hated Jacin, he was relatively safe, fed, dressed in much better than rags, and had clean bedding on which to sleep—and Jacin had provided every scrap of it. Apparently, the concept of

“gratitude” was completely alien to Morin.

“Are those plums?” Caidi asked, voice small and hopeful.

Jacin’s entire stance softened as he peered at their little sister over his shoulder, and a faint smile Joori thought might make him cry finally curled softly at his brother’s mouth. Save him, for a while there, Joori’d thought perhaps Jacin had forgotten how.

Without a word, Jacin took up the small packet and tossed it gently to land in Caidi’s lap. She beamed at him, caroled, “Thank you, Jacin,” with a smug look at Morin, and she pried the packet open.

Joori stood, gave Caidi an approving grin and glared evilly at the troll, then paced the few steps over to Jacin. He stopped abruptly when Jacin’s shoulders stiffened. “Jacin.” He felt helpless, at a loss as to what to say, how to say it—how to get through. “I don’t mean to… to sound greedy, but… I know you—”

“Things are not… not in my control at the moment.” That one had come from between clenched teeth. Jacin’s back was still rigid, his posture wound tight, and everything about him vibrated tension in the close little hut. “I don’t have….” He paused, tightened his jaw. “I lost the shadow charm. It’s harder getting supplies without it.”

“You lost it?” Morin put in, sneering. “How could you bloody lose—”

“Shut up, Morin,” Joori snarled, glared until Morin knew he meant it and sat back on his mat with a scowl. Fucking troll.

“Yeah, shut up, Moooooorin,” Caidi echoed, smacking her lips around her sticky treat and pulling faces at Morin.

“I’ll come as often as I can,” Jacin went on more quietly, head down, staring at the food still in his hands. “I swear to you, you won’t starve, I won’t just leave you here. Only….” He turned, looked at Joori, his face and stance both relaxing just a little, his voice a gentler tone than Joori had yet heard it.

“A little more time, Joori. I’m trying to arrange a safer place for you, but I don't… I just can’t tell yet if the people are to be trusted. If nothing else, there’s a caravan that leaves for Heldesan mid-month. I’ve almost enough koin to buy your way onto it, but I can’t… the drover won’t take partial payment, and I need one more—” He stopped abruptly, stared at Joori, and then looked away. “Give me… perhaps a few days. Maybe a little more. One way or another, I’ll have two hundred tomorrow and then another two hundred next week. It’ll be enough. I won’t fail you.”

“Jacin….” Again, it almost made Joori weep. “When have you ever failed at anything?”

Ghost

Jacin didn’t answer, only shut his eyes tight and clamped his jaw. When he looked up again, his face was almost completely blank. “I’ve another name.”

“Another name.” Joori tilted his head, his eyes hardening. “You think…

maybe…?”

Jacin only shrugged. “I always think maybe. I thought tonight, but….”

The silence fell again. Caidi had burrowed back into her blankets, sitting beside Morin the troll, both of them watching their brothers calmly discuss assassinating the one responsible for the destruction of their already difficult lives. The troll was still sneering, obviously wanting to snark his way into the conversation but not quite daring. Caidi was watching Jacin with shining eyes, a strange awe Joori wouldn’t have credited before she’d watched Jacin emerge from the ruin of their home, flames at his back and blood on his knives.

With a determined set to his jaw, bracing himself, Joori reached out, laid a firm hand to Jacin’s arm. He expected the flinch but was somehow still dismayed when he got it.

“Jacin… you keep talking like you plan to bundle us into wagons and wave us goodbye.” Joori’s hand tightened. “You said you’d think about it.

You said you’d—”

“I can’t have this conversation right now,” Jacin broke in, voice the hard, even tone Joori was only just beginning to recognize as part and parcel of this new Jacin. He pushed off Joori’s grip, stepped back, and crouched down to give Caidi a quick hug and a kiss to the top of her head, but peeled her off again before she was ready to let go. “We’ll talk again,” he murmured to Joori. As though that ended the conversation, he turned and walked to the door.

“When?” Joori wanted to know, following after him, but Jacin was already out and swishing his way through scrub and weed and vine. “When will we talk, Jacin?” Joori yelled at Jacin’s back, those damnable, unwanted tears quavering his voice. “When you’re watching the back of me?”

“Keep your voice down!” Jacin hissed, but he didn’t stop, just kept walking away, leaving Joori behind like it didn’t matter.

Joori blinked after him, watched him until his shape disappeared into the trees, before he allowed his face to crumple in anger and dismay. Heedless, he shouted, “I’m the one, Jacin! She said so! No laws, remember?” He listened, but heard nothing but Jacin’s footsteps slowly getting less and less audible with each swift step. Slumping when he got no answer, Joori stared out into the yard for a long moment, breathing hard, trying not to weep. “You’re

supposed to be the one too,” he whispered, dropped his chin to his chest and leaned into the ancient, splintered wood of the doorjamb.

“Let him go,” Morin said, petulant. “You can’t keep expecting him to—”

“Don’t,” Joori seethed, low and deep, and he meant every bit of threat inside it. He turned slowly, leveled a glare at his brother, keeping the rumble in his chest under control by nothing more than will and the insidious knowledge that if he allowed so much as a tremor beneath his feet, it would likely take hold of everything seething in his chest and open up the ground from here to Subie. And then they’d really be fucked. “One more time, Morin,” he said with a pointed, dark glower. “One more fucking word, and we’ll just see who’s the bloody ghost in the family. Won’t we?”

Somehow, when Morin paled a little and looked away, Joori wasn’t nearly as satisfied as he should have been.

SLEEP wouldn’t come for Samin, and for no good reason. He wasn’t particularly worried about anything, and all was well as far as he knew. Fen and Malick had been late, but they’d made it home, Samin had heard them come in—Fen first, then Malick about half an hour later—so it wasn’t that.

It wasn’t the job tonight. That had actually been sort of fun, despite the fact that Samin knew Malick had been right to be well and truly pissed. Still, those weren’t the sorts of things with which Samin ever concerned himself.

They’d gone, they’d done the job, they’d made a bit of a mess, but they’d all walked away without injury as far as Samin knew, though he didn’t know if Malick or Fen had had any trouble at Sonji-onna’s; if they had, Samin figured he would’ve heard Umeia shrilling by now. And the fact that Fen was up on the roof as usual rather implied they were both fine. So, it couldn’t be that.

It was a little early for Samin to be abed, maybe, but Fen had been wearing him out for several days now, plus the mess of a job tonight, and it was beginning to catch up with him. He was bone-weary. And still, no matter how heavy Samin’s eyelids got, sleep eluded him. He could blame it on the noise from downstairs, he supposed, but he’d gotten used to that years ago, so it wasn’t a good excuse. And it was perhaps a little warm for the time of year, but a cool breeze was sliding pleasantly into the room from his open window, so that wasn’t it, either.

The light, rhythmic thudding from above, that was it. Had to be. Another thing that had quickly become a routine when Fen arrived, and it hadn’t bothered Samin the past few nights, but this time…. Not Fen’s fault—Samin reminded himself sternly of that. If Samin hadn’t been listening for it, he

Ghost
never would have heard it. Fen was obviously a night person—come to think of it, Samin had no idea if Fen slept at all—and what else was there for him to do but use up whatever excess energy he had by sparring shadows on the roof? He couldn’t go traipsing about the city, not without Shig or Malick, and somehow Samin didn’t think the idea of dragging Shig around back alleys in the middle of the night would even occur to Fen. And he certainly wouldn’t ask Malick. So he’d taken to sparring shadows on the roof. And tonight, for whatever reason, it was bothering Samin. Actually, this morning, now that Samin looked at the set of the moons out the window.

Grumbling, he flung the sheets back, bullied his way into the trousers he’d left in a heap on the floor by the bed, and stomped out of the room, heading for the stairs. To do what, he had no idea. He couldn’t exactly send Fen to bed, could he? But it was either this or go find himself some company downstairs, and if it was this late—early—all the good ones would be otherwise occupied. Malick had probably already dug in with one of the girls, Samin thought sourly. Or one of the boys, more likely—Malick had been tending toward pretty dark-haired lads these days more often than not. Which made Samin smirk, and not terribly kindly.

Except Malick apparently wasn’t getting busy with one of the lads—he was standing at the top of the roof stairs, hugging the open door like Samin had done that first night, utterly still and silent. Samin didn’t know whether to snort or scowl. Fuck, but Malick was gone on Fen already, and he didn’t even know it. The lust was bad enough—if Samin had to watch Malick watch Fen eat an oblate one more time—but the fascination was getting entirely out of control. And all the snapping and snarling in the world from Fen wasn’t going to dampen it. In fact, it seemed to do exactly the opposite. Samin had never thought the words “Malick” and “idiot” at the same time so often in his life as he had over the past week. And the really sad part about it was that it wasn’t exactly one-sided. The little Ghost wanted too—he just didn’t want to let himself want.

Everything was proceeding exactly as Samin had been afraid it would.

Except somehow, he’d actually come to like Fen, which just pissed Samin off more. And if Samin ended up having to kill Fen, he’d have both Malick and Shig pissed off at him.

With a sigh, Samin plodded up the steps, a little more quietly than usual, since he was barefoot. Malick heard him immediately, turned when Samin hit the third step, and silently placed a finger to his lips. Samin nodded and kept coming, angled himself behind Malick and peered over his shoulder. Spin, lunge, feint, attack—just as he’d known. Samin shook his head and sighed again.

“Did you take care of things with Sonji-onna?” he whispered.

Malick nodded, eyes on Fen. “Not nearly as many guards. Must’ve given them all to Pon. And Fen got a name out of her. He was… something to watch. Fucking ruthless.” A low snort, and he shook his head. “After he thought I’d gone, he went back and raided her larder. Can you imagine?”

Samin thought about that for a minute but decided it was just too…

bizarre for comment. “Will the Mage be… upset?”

A loose shrug, unconcerned. “We took care of the full-Blood. If he’s upset, he’s not someone I want to work for.” He bobbed a nod toward Fen.

“D’you know he makes pyres for them, sends them to the gods?”

“Uh… no.” Samin’s eyebrows twisted. He didn’t necessarily care, really, but he did wonder why it impressed Malick enough that he’d make the comment. “So, it wasn’t his mother, then?”

Malick shook his head again. Too damn bad. Samin thought maybe these all-night sparring sessions might drop off a little, if they could find the lad’s mother for him and put her soul to rest.

“He went for another walk tonight, after,” Malick whispered after a moment. “I followed him again.”

Samin frowned. “Another?” He hadn’t known Fen had been for any

“walks.” He hadn’t thought Malick would allow it.

“Same place he went that first night.” Malick leaned more heavily into the door. “I almost let him see me, almost let him know I knew, but….”

Samin waited, but when Malick didn’t go on, he asked, “Knew what?”

“That thing you were talking about before—routines. D’you know he even has them for that?” Malick whiffled a small grim laugh, vague and bemused. “Over the Gate, stand up there and watch the moons for a while, jump down, stare at the bodies—even the ones still weeping for rescue, or just twitching away the last of themselves—then shudder, go on his way…. And then he stares again on his way back through.” He shook his head. “Morbid, our little Ghost. He doesn’t even need his shadows, really. He’s so bloody quiet, they never even know he’s there. He climbs the Gate twenty paces away from them, and they never even look. Like he really is a ghost.”

Malick paused, narrowing his eyes a little when Fen stopped and tilted his head to the side. “I think he’ll tell us soon enough,” he went on. “I was coming at it all wrong before. I almost made it worse. Too edgy. It’s bubbling up in him, and I don’t think he can keep it back for long. Too much pressure.

Everything about tonight made it worse. I’ve always had shit timing.” He sighed a little sadly. “It must kill him to see them. He weeps every time. Just stops where he’s standing for… maybe ten seconds, that’s it, and then he

Ghost
just….” Malick turned his head, stared at Samin, thoughtful. “Ten seconds can’t be enough for anyone. Can’t get rid of it in ten seconds, can you?” His hand waved about before he slipped it into his pocket then turned back to watch Fen. “Failure—that’s what it is, y’know. Fear of failure.”

It made Samin’s teeth clench. The roundabout twists made him feel like he was talking to Shig. “Malick, what the fuck are you on about?”

Malick eyed Samin through the moonlit dark, smiled at him in a way that almost made Samin want to deck him—all soft and faraway—before he turned back and set his distant gaze once again on Fen. “His name’s Jacin-rei, but he doesn’t like it. That was a mistake, too, calling him that. Those people he considers ‘his’, you said—they call him Jacin.”

How the fuck d’you know? Samin wanted to snap, And who the fuck cares, anyway? but instead, he ventured, “I didn’t know he had a name,” because he really hadn’t, hadn’t even thought about it. Fen had told Samin to call him Fen, and that was as far as Samin had ever thought to consider. A man says,

“Call me Fen,” and you have the courtesy to call him Fen. Why complicate it?

“That….” It was like Malick hadn’t heard him, staring as Fen went down on one knee and dropped one of his knives with a clatter. “That doesn’t look right,” Malick said.

“It never looks right,” Samin retorted irritably. “Damn disconcerting, it is.

Yori was worried it would happen during a job. What’s he doing, anyway?”

Malick flashed Samin a short glare over his shoulder, then turned back to watch as Fen’s empty hand came up, took hold of his braid, and yanked.

Hard.

“Listening, I think, but….” Malick’s hand loosened from the door, and his body leaned forward, head cocked just like Fen’s. “D’you hear it?”

Samin frowned, leaned in too. He wouldn’t have noticed it, unless Malick had pointed it out, but now that he had… yes. Whispering. Fen was whispering to himself in a steady stream, low hisses through his teeth, then heavy bursts of breath, like he was having a hard time getting a good one.

“That isn’t right,” Malick said, not even trying to be quiet anymore, speaking with authority, like he knew. Samin supposed perhaps he did—no one watched Fen with as much rapt attention as Malick did. He abandoned Samin at the door and headed toward Fen.

“He’s still got a knife,” Samin warned, and he trotted along after Malick, wishing he’d thought to bring one too. He’d meant what he’d told Malick before: Fen was dangerous, and would only be more so if his mind finally went. He might’ve dropped one knife, but he still had another, and even if he didn’t, Samin thought Fen could probably kill a man with his teeth if he

thought he had to. And who knew what a man in the grip of… whatever this was might think he had to do? “Malick, watch—”

“I know, Samin,” Malick snapped, approaching Fen’s hunched figure cautiously enough, but still in a hurry. “If all you’re going to do is nag, then go back downstairs. I’ll take care of this.”

Yeah? Well, fuck you, too, then, Take care of what, exactly? were the only coherent things that came to Samin’s mind, so he shut his mouth, watching, covering Malick’s back because Malick was being too stupid right now to know he needed it.

“…back to Zero,” Fen was whispering, “start again,” and something else about Raven and Wolf Samin couldn’t make out. Clutching at his hair like he wanted to yank it right out of his head, eyes shut tight and teeth clenched, a bright trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, glistening black in the moonlight. “Shifts, shifts, rumbling and quaking,” he breathed, “the ground trembles and shifts to Null,” then he gasped, like he was in pain.

Malick lurched forward, yelped, “Fucking shit!” He lunged down to a crouch in front of Fen and reached out, but he was a second too late.

Before Samin could even blink or move or shout his own warning, the knife arced up, glittered for a half second, then swept down in a bow of silver and slashed a stripe to Fen’s thigh.

It took a second for what Samin was seeing to travel from his eyes to his brain, another for his brain to talk him into believing it. A neat, precise line of cut fabric and seeping blood, and Fen gasping again when Malick’s hand landed over his, covered the fist holding the knife and kept it still.

“Shh, little Ghost,” Malick crooned, real concern on his face, and compassion shining so bright in his eyes it nearly made Samin wince. “How about you don’t slash yourself to bits, and we can—”

“Are you the Null?” Fen took hold of Malick’s shirt with his free hand and dragged him in, voice quiet and raspy and with an edge of desperation that hadn’t even been there that night in the alley. “Are you the Null?” A snarl this time, louder, but no less fraught.

Samin stood back, watching, waiting himself for an answer, because he had no idea what Fen was talking about. Since the moment Samin had run into Malick on the stairs, it was like everyone had gone and switched languages on him and he was the only one left who wasn’t speaking in tongues. What the fuck was a “null” and… and why was Malick bloody nodding?

“Yeah,” Malick said to Fen, voice quiet and calm. “Some call me so.”

Ghost

Fen’s mouth worked, but for a long, uncomfortable moment, nothing came out of it. He just kept staring at Malick, the closest to open emotion on his face as Samin had ever seen, and yet Samin still couldn’t tell what it was.

Anger was easy, but this was… different. Despair? Disbelief? Confusion? All of it? Then, finally: “I think….” Fen clenched his teeth, peered down at the long stripe carved into his thigh, steadily leaking blood into the surrounding fabric of his trousers and pattering, quietly but with a sound too distinct, onto the smooth clay of the roof. “I think it’s supposed to be you.” He looked up, stared at Malick, misery laced with blatant distrust. “You’ve hidden people before.”

There was a slight curve at the corner of Malick’s mouth, like he’d been expecting this and it made perfect sense to him. “I have.”

“How much?”

Malick’s eyebrows rose. “How much?”

Fen growled a little, let go of Malick’s shirt, but didn’t try to get his other hand free. “Three of them. I’ve got koin. I can get more. How much?”

Malick sat back, eyeing Fen levelly, but Samin had known Malick a long time, could see the calculating grin beneath the bland expression, the victory.

“Let’s talk about exactly what you want first,” Malick answered evenly.

“Then we’ll talk price.” He turned to Samin. “Go get Umeia. Tell her to come quick, Fen’s hurt himself.”

“I’m fine,” Fen wheezed.

Malick let loose a small snort and dragged his thumb through the thin line of blood runneling down Fen’s chin in a way so tender it almost made Samin embarrassed to witness it. “‘Fine’ doesn’t bleed, does it?” he murmured to Fen, then shifted his glance back up to Samin. “And scare us up a bottle while you’re down there. We’ll be in my rooms.” He turned back, gave Fen a small smile. “Make it two. I’m thinking it’s going to be a long night.”

Change-month, Year 1316, Cycle of the Wolf

Dearest J—

Beishin tells me you are all well, that you managed a good harvest this year, despite the blight, and that you have grown into a fine young man, a pleasing tribute to the gods. He tells me this each week, when I give him a new letter, nothing more and nothing less, but for the occasional promise that I might get to

see you again, if I can perfect this form or complete that step without faltering, or….

It doesn’t matter, because I never do. I’m sorry. Perfection is a noble goal for which to strive, but I fear I shall never attain it, and so I fear I shall never see you again, like I promised.

Then again, perhaps you don’t want to see me, in which case, I suppose, it’s doubly for nothing, though I can’t make myself believe that. Beishin has a plan for me, says I am to be more than a mad Ghost, and I should be grateful for that alone, and yet… I can’t help myself wanting more.

I want to see you again. I miss you. Every day I think of you and wish you were here, wish you could share in what I’ve been given. I would give it all back for another day with my family.

I had pinned all hope to our birthday, but have failed the task to which I was set to earn it. I begin to think…. No, I won’t malign Beishin, not even to you. It was my failure, and only mine, and I’ve no one to blame but myself.

I wanted, you see. I dared to take. And I liked it.

He was beautiful, J—you would have thought so too, though I know you would scold me for going soppy over an Adan boy.

Still, though, you would have seen. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have dared. He’s gone now. Beishin says it’s for the best.

A purer thing, I think that’s what Beishin wants. Love without the sordid urges of the body. He’s done so much for me, saved me, saved you, and still I want for things he doesn’t wish for me to have. Won’t give me. And oh, I’ve tried. Humiliated myself, and will do so again. Asking without words, because the asking can be forgiven, but I don’t think the words would be. So I ask without them, even when I try not to. I can’t help it. I’m not perfect. Beishin embodies it. And I want it. I don’t think I shall ever have, though.

He’s taught me control. Given me a will for it I never would have credited in myself, and it’s kept me mostly from madness, though I do still have my… moments. Bad days were many when I first came to Beishin. In truth, I don’t remember all that much.

I shudder to imagine the things I might have written to you then, for Beishin tells me I did write. I’m sorry for that, sorry if I worried you. At least I still could write, eh?

Sorry, not funny.

I think it was Bless-month before I started tracking days again, but then I must have told you that already. I’m still

Ghost
working on remembering things from one day to the next, one week to the next. I’m getting better. Control, Beishin tells me.

Control of Self, perfection of body. These are the things that will carry me to my purpose, and remove forever the need for these letters. So I practice control and strive for perfection. Beishin says I can be more than I am, more than I was doomed to be, and I hold to that, and the thought of all of you.

There is another here, though, who helps also, keeps my nature and the reality of what I am ever in my mind, yet helped me understand how to think around it—through it. He says that if all like me were simply guided and shown the same, perhaps we’d be more than what we’ve become; perhaps our purpose would be served. He doesn’t say, but I think he believes Beishin borders on heresy, believes he is wrong to have taken me as he did, though it doesn’t stop him from helping me. We’ll call him V. V keeps the traditions ever in my mind, teaches me things about our people Father probably doesn’t even know, and would deny if he did. Teaches me our history.

Better, he helps me find ways to keep sanity. A messy place, my mind, but I’ve learned to neaten it up a bit, pay attention to one muddle at a time, tidy it up some and wade deeper into the disorder. The disarray will always be with me, I think, and will always prevent me from reaching that perfect state Beishin wants of me, but… I keep the hope it will not prevent me from fulfilling the destiny he has seen for me.

I want what Beishin wants. For him, for you, for myself, for all of those we love. With all my heart. And, I suppose, if I must be punished for my lack of perfection in order to achieve that, I shall have to try harder.

He wants what we want, J. I want to help him get it.

I cannot fail. I won’t .

You have been and will always be the one. I’m trying so hard to be the same for you.

I will see you again, J. Perhaps I’ll even be perfect by then.

Yours,

J.

Asai sat back, caught between a heavy sigh and a satisfied smile. The boy was coming along exactly as he had foreseen in most ways. In other ways…

he couldn’t decide. He hadn’t planned for nor expected to be the object of adolescent lust or—dare he think or believe it?—honest young love. Though

since he’d become aware of it, he thought his own lack of vision rather absurd. Even without Sight, he should have seen this coming. He had, after all, rescued a young, suggestible boy on the verge of madness, pulled him back from both it and the choking life of a Jin camp, and dropped him into the middle of luxury and purpose.

And the boy was tempting.

No. Out of the question. For the moment, at least. Asai had grown fond of the boy, cared more than he’d thought he would, which might well make things difficult later, but that was later and he’d deal with it then. He’d made greater sacrifices, after all. But actually allowing what Jacin-rei wanted right now could be disastrous. Asai had made that mistake before, and it still haunted him. Nothing was more unpredictable than young love.

Damn it all. It wasn’t bad enough Asai had the Ancestors to contend with, but he was forced to deal with raging hormones, as well. He’d forgotten how unsettled young boys could be.

The balancing act was exhausting.

Still, Asai had handled the situation with that trainer rather badly. He should have allowed Jacin-rei to keep him. Young boys did have their needs, after all. And Dani had been pliable. Asai wasn’t going to find another so skilled who would be willing to remain confined to the estate for the length of his engagement, nor one who could disappear so easily afterward. Certainly, Asai could handle Jacin-rei’s training himself, but he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to, and he couldn’t risk sparring with him. Too many opportunities for…

nearness. Temptation. As Dani had proven so definitively.

A shame, really. And annoying that he hadn’t foreseen that, either, but it was so hard to see anything clearly where Jacin-rei was involved. Then again, Dani had served his purpose, had trained Jacin-rei in all the basics of what he needed, and even exceeded Asai’s expectations in the time he’d been with them. Asai would take it from here, and Jacin-rei would be ready.

I would give it all back for another day with my family.

That was… disturbing. No—it was unacceptable.

The strength of the attachment had bothered Asai from the beginning.

Some attachment was necessary, of course—fond memories and a tragic view of their separation would have been more than enough—but Jacin-rei’s near-obsessive reliance on the memory of his brother, his constant questioning of Asai as to his family’s well-being, the fact that there was no better incentive for the boy to achieve than the promise that success might bring him a visit from his brother…. It had the feel of a situation that might slip out of Asai’s

Ghost
control, if he didn’t handle it exactly right. And control of the brother would be essential, eventually.

Perhaps Asai should fulfill his next promise, instead of finding excuses not to. Perhaps allowing the boys an afternoon together might dull the sharp edge of Jacin-rei’s fixation. Asai could arrange it easily. Simply request the boy specifically for a work detail. He could even quietly buy him and bring him here to live, though Asai could never use those words to Jacin-rei—the brother would likely understand; he seemed the more practical of the two, despite his hysterics the night Asai had gone to collect Jacin-rei.

Asai considered the idea—buying the brother. Surely the father could be persuaded again. A weak man, and weak men were easy to… convince. It might even help Jacin-rei with his concentration. Asai rather thought Jacin-rei might think to ask it of him in due course.

No. Impossible. It would put too many possibilities into play, and things were already chancy as a result of the involvement of an Untouchable.

Anyway, how would the brother’s eventual fate be explained or excused, if Asai brought him here to live? It was entirely too impractical.

Asai thought he’d do well to begin considering solid reasons he might give the boy sooner, rather than later—have his answers ready before Jacin-rei put the question to him. Everything had to be exactly right, or as right as Asai could make it, and the strength of Jacin-rei’s love for his brother, and his brother’s love for him, made them both less predictable than Asai would like.

Then again, no future was truly set, only as set as he could make it.

Everything was changeable, whether Asai liked it or not, and all he could do was try and trim away possibilities. Thus far, things were still on course. As long as he kept Jacin-rei’s fundamental framework in mind, and used it accordingly, things should work out as he’d seen. Feed the despair with subtle reminders of what he was and what he would have been by now had it not been for his beishin. Nurture the guilt with an almost free run of luxury, while the family he loved still dwelt in destitute misery. Maintain the loneliness with the deprivation of the company he most wanted.

Harden him. Mold him. Perfect him.

Give him a purpose and make him believe it was his own.

Dangle his fear of failure in front of his nose, and make him believe the only way around it was through Asai himself.

Maintain the adolescent love but keep it unrequited, and yet not without hope. Keep him biddable.

Give him just the right balance between strength and tragedy. The perfect allure to the right eyes.

It should work.

I cannot fail. I won’t.

Yes. It should work beautifully.

Asai peered down at the letter again. He didn’t like that V keeps the traditions ever in my mind part. Nor the part where “V” speculated on Asai’s supposed heresy—he snorted—and the apparent “instruction” of the boy on what he was supposed to be. It was neither Vonshi’s place, nor his concern, and Asai intended to have words with the old man about it. Thinking it was one thing, but to say it to a boy as impressionable as Jacin-rei? There was no excuse. If Vonshi hadn’t managed to make himself so damnably essential over the years….

No. Never mind. He’d had enough drama with staff over the past months.

And Vonshi’s guidance was necessary, though it galled Asai to admit it, but this he’d foreseen clearly, so he had no choice. He needed Vonshi.

Asai stood, stepped softly over to the hearth, and tossed the letter onto the fire. Stood there until every scrap and corner was ash. It wouldn’t do for the boy to find the remnants. Platitudes, assurances and uncertainty would keep him manageable for now.

He found the boy in the kitchen, seated at the table with a fine-haired brush clutched in his hand, Vonshi leaning over his shoulder and watching his efforts bear fruit on paper. Asai had a peek too, and raised his eyebrows.

Vonshi shot him a look out the corner of his eye, at which Asai merely rolled his eyes and made for the wine rack. Vonshi ignored him. A little irritating, but Jacin-rei liked the old man, enjoyed their “lessons” together, and they did help his concentration. And Asai had given his permission. Still, he had a perfectly good steward and here he was, getting his own wine. He was too good to the help sometimes.

“You’re losing it, lad,” Vonshi said softly, a bony hand light on Jacin-rei’s shoulder. “Focus on the graze of ink on the paper. Concentrate on the hairs of the brush, how they bend as you sweep it along the curve. Bring that and only that to the front of your mind.”

Jacin-rei paused, hunching over the table, and took a long, deep breath.

“It’s getting too loud,” he told Vonshi quietly, voice admirably controlled but with a slight quaver beneath it. Asai would have to work on that with him. He still gave too much away with his voice and his eyes.

Ghost

“That’s because you’re putting it in the wrong part of your mind,” Vonshi said, all kindness and reassurance.

“It crowds out all else sometimes. They… demand.”

Vonshi patted the boy’s shoulder. “I’m afraid that is the point, lad. But there is no reason why you can’t listen while you concentrate on something else.”

“But—”

“I’ll hear no ‘buts’, lad.” Vonshi’s craggy voice had gone stern. “I can polish Beishin’s silver while cooking his supper, baking tea squares, and singing. Surely you can manage to listen whilst you draw a simple circle.”

“A perfect circle,” Jacin-rei muttered irritably. Getting near the edge; the boy always got snarly when his control was teetering.

“Beishin demands perfection,” Vonshi said, unmoved, “and perfection demands concentration.”

Jacin-rei went quiet again and resumed his task. Asai poured his wine then stepped lightly over to the table and had another look over the boy’s shoulder. He’d never thought about it, but… it was clever. Drawing a perfect circle? Without tracing it from a bowl or dinner plate or something? Asai wouldn’t be able to do it, and if he tried, he’d certainly need all his concentration for it. Was drawing a perfect circle even possible?

The side of his mouth curled up and he took a sip of his wine as he peered at Vonshi.

Of course it wasn’t possible. That had to be the point of the exercise. Set the boy to an impossible task that required all his concentration and control, convince him it was possible, and when he failed, set him to it again. And again. And again. He’d never complete a perfect circle, but he’d achieve Asai’s goals nicely.

Perhaps Asai was being too hard on Vonshi. He certainly wished he’d thought of the perfect circle exercise.

Flattening his small smile to a frown, Asai sighed, said, “Hardly perfect, is it, Jacin-rei?”

The effect was predictable: the boy jumped, as though Asai had just touched him with a hot branding rod, brush scrawling a smeary trail across the paper, where dapples of at least two-score approximations of very near to perfect circles stood in dark relief. Jacin-rei lurched from the table so fast his chair went over with a hard clatter. “Beishin,” he wheezed, panting and trying not to. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Mm,” Asai hummed, lips thin in disapproval as Jacin-rei mumbled anxious apologies and righted the chair. Asai looked pointedly at the smeared paper and sighed. “Perhaps if your emotions did not… interfere….” He let it hang there. No sense in taxing himself searching for the harsher implication.

Jacin-rei would invent that all by himself.

Already, the boy had paled, his jaw was tightening, and the brush would be nothing more than blots of ink and splinters in his clenched fist soon. He dipped his head, stammered, “Yes, seyh, I… I’m sorry, I—”

“May I have a word with you, Beishin?” Vonshi put in softly, his hand going once again to the boy’s shoulder, a calm, respectful smile on his wizened face. “In private, seyh, if I may.”

Asai regarded the bony hand with narrowed eyes. The way its presence seemed to calm the quivering. An odd little cramp tweaked in his chest, and for some unfathomable reason, Dani rose to mind. Asai frowned and shook it away.

He nodded. “Carry on, Jacin-rei,” he said as he turned away.

He led Vonshi to his sitting room. Vonshi took the time to pull the double doors shut behind him before he got to it.

“Forgive me, seyh,” he began, hands tucked behind his back, chin up. “I do not mean to overstep, but I cannot complete the boy’s lessons if you…

interfere.” He paused, mouth pursed. “May I be blunt, seyh?”

Asai’s eyebrows went up. It was all he could do not to snort. “Is it possible for you to be any other way, Vonshi?”

Vonshi’s thin lips lifted in a small, conciliatory smile, and he bowed his head again. “And you are gracious and generous to allow me, Beishin,” he admitted. “The boy has begun cutting himself, seyh. With knives. You’ve seen the bandages?”

“On his arm.” Asai nodded.

“Since Dani… left, seyh,” Vonshi put in quietly, with another subservient dip of his head. He was very good at not seeing Asai’s little flashes of anger.

“I fear—”

“You will leave it, Vonshi.” Asai had rather been expecting this, but sometimes Vonshi bordered on insolence. Asai believed in allowing his people their own opinions, but not when they tried to interfere with his.

Vonshi’s head came up. “Seyh?”

“You will leave it,” Asai repeated, firm and unchangeable. “He must be allowed to find his own ways to cope. We will not always be at his side to help him through his more difficult moments.”

Ghost

“But, seyh, the concentration exercises—”

“—should help him to learn to utilize an alternative. In time. Then, perhaps, he will no longer need other coping methods.” Asai paused, lifted an eyebrow. “If you teach him well, yes?”

Vonshi’s stance had gone rigid, and his gaze pointed straight ahead. An acknowledgement, even more so than his verbal affirmation: “Yes, Beishin.”

Asai nodded, satisfied. “Your heart is a credit to you, Vonshi. And Jacin-rei was indeed blessed when the gods led me to you.” He sighed. “There will come a day when he will not need such drastic measures. But that day is not yet. Until then….” Asai shook his head. It wasn’t as though he liked to see the boy hurt. “If we take this away from him, we take away his mind. He must be allowed to cope on his own. You know as well as I do how important he is to your people. If we allow him to slip inside the voices—or worse, allow him to allow himself—our chance will be lost. So very much depends on him.”

“Yes, Beishin,” Vonshi agreed.

Too quick, and he still wasn’t looking at Asai. But Asai had made his point, even if he hadn’t quite convinced Vonshi to agree with it. And Vonshi—for all his impertinence—obeyed all of Asai’s orders with admirably strict attention, even if he too obviously didn’t agree with them. It would have to do.

“Go,” Asai sighed. “Continue your lessons. Spoil the boy with sweets when he draws you a circle, and….” He paused and gave Vonshi his warmest smile. “Treat yourself to a glass of wine.” He held up his own, swirling it so the light flared ruby facets out from the base. “Very dry, as you like it.”

Vonshi conceded a small smile of his own, bent his neck low, and placed a fist over his breastbone. “Thank you, Beishin,” he said then turned and made his silent way from the room.

Asai sighed—probably for the fiftieth time this evening—and rubbed at his brow. He swirled his wine and peered down into its rich depths. “Jacin-rei,” he murmured, shaking his head, “one day, you will thank me.” A small, weary smile tilted at his mouth, and he lifted his glass, toasted his little Catalyst. “They will all thank me, but yours… yours will mean something.”

And then, perhaps, if they both lived, if the boy didn’t hate him when it was all through, perhaps then there might be time for requiting.

Asai tipped the glass back and drank deeply.

Storm-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf

“I THOUGHT Samin said no one got hurt tonight.” Umeia eyed the gaping slice through the wide-torn hole in Fen’s trouser leg then the still-blooded knife on the tea table beside her. What she could see of Fen’s thigh was already so scarred up, she didn’t know if stitches would even take, and the depth of the wound was going to make them necessary. Her eyebrows rose imperiously, and she tilted a stern look over at Malick, standing behind Fen’s chair. Umeia’s gaze went a little narrow at Malick’s hand, still set lightly to Fen’s shoulder as it had been since Samin had chivvied her through the door.

“And how did you say this happened, again?”

She watched as Malick looked at the wound, bent a little to have a look at Fen’s face, and then lifted his eyebrows, expectant. When Fen didn’t look up, didn’t speak, barely breathed, Malick only straightened, shrugged. “I didn’t.”

Umeia clenched her teeth, tore at the thick, blood-soaked fabric a little too viciously to widen it still more, not necessarily caring that she was likely inflicting more pain. And anyway, it wasn’t like Fen was about to moan or whimper or even react. He’d been sitting still as stone since she’d walked in, a half glass of uzin sloshing in his hand.

She shook her head, disgusted. “You’ll have to take them off,” she snapped, patience having been left behind altogether in her warm, comfortable bed, out of which she’d been dragged for the third time this week, and all three times, one way or another, the result of this man’s presence in her house.

“No.”

Low and even; flat. Umeia narrowed her eyes first at the top of Fen’s bowed head, then up at Malick’s badly concealed snort and smirk.

Calmly, she slapped a thick cloth over what was too obviously a deliberate slash, withdrew her now bloody hands, careful to keep them away from her robe, and sat back on her perch on the tea table in front of Fen. “I

Ghost
can’t treat and bandage it properly unless you take off the trousers,” she told him reasonably.

“Then don’t.”

This time, Umeia’s jaw clenched so tight she accidentally scraped her molars together. She winced at the grating sound inside her head and fisted her hands, grimacing at the sticky feel between her fingers. “Listen, Trouble, I don’t think you—”

“Umeia,” Malick said, quietly chiding, too calm, his light-brown eyes watching it all with unruffled tolerance.

“He’s leaking all over the chair,” Umeia protested, then she paused, because, really, a few bloodstains would hardly make that chair worse, then resorted to, “and it’ll never come out of the floorboards,” then she stopped altogether, because this was Malick’s room, where disarray, old food, and discolored blotches were merely part of the ambiance. Instead, she shifted to an argument she knew Malick might hear: “It needs to be cleaned and sutured.

Otherwise, it’s likely to get infected, and he could lose the leg. Ada law says I’m not even supposed to do that much for an Untouchable—accept my generosity now, because it won’t be on offer very long.”

Fen didn’t seem to care much, just sat slumped in the chair with Malick’s hand on his shoulder, staring down into his uzin. Malick, on the other hand, shot her a narrow look, said, “Wolf’s law says different, doesn’t it?” but he nodded nonetheless. “He’s got a few along his ribs need looking at too.” He moved to bend over the back of the chair, to get Fen’s attention, perhaps, or at least try, but stopped when Fen’s head tilted a little.

Fen angled a suspicious gaze up at Malick through his fringe—ugh, he had blood clotted in his hair, too, now that Umeia looked—eyes going slitted, the most expression Umeia had seen since she’d walked in. “How would you know that?” he asked, soft and dangerous.

Malick ignored him, turning instead to Umeia. “Fen’s asked our price for harboring refugees, Umeia. Three of them.” His gaze burned into hers, though what he was trying to relay, Umeia had no idea, and he was keeping his veil too damned tight for her to get a hint. Considering the way she’d flubbed it when Fen had approached her earlier in the week, Umeia thought perhaps Malick was trying to tell her to shut the fuck up and let him handle it. “I told him we’d need to know exactly who, and why, before we could give him an answer.”

All fine and reasonable, except Umeia still had no idea what Malick was expecting from her. If he’d just lighten his veil for a second…. He didn’t. So Umeia merely did what she would have done otherwise: she turned to Fen,

reached out and took his chin, ignoring the reflexive jerk back and the low growl, and maintained the pressure until Fen looked her in the eye. “Who?”

Fen’s jaw was already tight. Now it quivered slightly, and a distinct flicker of anxiety and distrust moved through his gaze. He angled his head until she let go of his chin, then he lifted it. “Fugitives from the east camp,” he told her.

She shook her head, leaned in. “Who?” she asked again, keeping her gaze level and as free of any kind of judgment or suspicion as she could.

Fen stared back at her, anger and uncertainty clashing together in his gray eyes with an almost audible rattle. Trying to maintain the rage, trying to still the reaction of Malick’s hand on him, trying not to give anything away, when he knew he had to risk giving it all. Tears misted his eyes, and Umeia couldn’t help but be moved by the useless struggle.

Then, barely audible: “My… my brothers and sister.”

It seemed like it sucked everything out of him, the one simple sentence that wasn’t simple at all, the mere speaking of it dragging his soul out from inside him and throwing it to the ground, stomping on it. All the breath went out of him, and seemingly all the strength—he swayed. The only thing holding him upright and in the chair was Malick’s relentless grip on his shoulder. His head bowed again, tangled fringe hanging down over his face, though what Umeia could still see of it had gone deathly pale.

She sat back, eyeing Fen critically. He really did look terrible. Blood loss couldn’t be helping. She didn’t know how long ago he’d gotten hurt, but he’d been bleeding pretty steadily since she’d gotten here at least fifteen minutes ago, and Malick had said there were more wounds under his tunic. Dried splotches of blood were scattered irregularly through his hair, brown smudges and smears of it on his face and neck, where he’d missed a few places when he’d apparently wiped the bulk of it off. His hands looked filthy, but she rather suspected that was the effect of dried blood embedded in the crevices of his skin and the whorls of his fingertips.

It must’ve been a hell of a night.

Umeia softened. Because she knew what Fen was risking, knew he had to be doing it out of desperation, knew he didn’t quite trust them yet, and here he was, risking that trust for people—children, from what Malick had said—
apparently quite precious to him. A Jin Untouchable with Jin runaway siblings, and really—whom could they trust?

Was this why the Mage had bid them take him?

Umeia nodded, shot a quick, decisive look up at Malick—a warning, because she was going to do this, whether it was what he wanted or not—then

Ghost
leaned in. She almost laid a hand to Fen’s knee, but reached and set it atop the lump of linen soaking up the blood from his thigh instead.

“I don’t give oaths lightly,” she said softly, not even having to try to put sincerity into her tone, because she meant what she was about to say,

“because I am bound by the oaths I grant.” Umeia dipped her head, waited until Fen met her gaze. “Bound, Fen—do you understand? I cannot go back on an oath, or I risk the suns.”

“Umeia,” Malick put in, light warning, “you’ve not yet even heard—”

“Shut up, Kamen,” she told him quietly, eyes still locked to Fen’s. “I don’t need to hear it all. I’ve already made up my mind. Did you doubt it?”

This was what she did, how she honored Wolf in their self-imposed exile, and moreover, it was what she was. Malick knew that, of course. It was why he’d brought each of them here eventually—Samin first, then Yori and Shig, and now Fen—to sit before Umeia and hear words they didn’t fully understand and meant very different things to them than they did to her. And she and Malick both knew it was why Malick had pulled her from her bed now. Malick was direction and action; Umeia was protection.

No answer from Malick, but he went silent, fingers tightening on Fen’s shoulder.

Fen stared at her, exhausted eyes resigned to… she couldn’t tell…

rejection, maybe, because he really didn’t look like he expected to get what he needed here. It should have pissed Umeia off—what did he think she was, after all?—but it wouldn’t come. What had she done or said to Fen since he’d been here to make him think she might be willing to hand him an oath that would be an obvious risk to her life, and a very real risk to her soul? Why should he even believe her if she did? He had every right to his disbelief.

Because, in truth, she wasn’t about to hand Fen anything at all.

“I don’t tell you this to impress you,” Umeia went on, holding Fen’s gaze steadily. “I tell you this so you’ll know you’ve not chosen wrongly. As long as you consent to entrusting them to my care, my oath is yours.” She placed her fist over her heart and dipped her head low, an echo of the formal bow Fen had given her only days ago when he’d tested his trust against her heart and she’d failed. She lifted her head and looked again into his eyes. “By my heart, by my body, by my breath and spirit, I pledge my oath to—” She paused, frowned. “What are their names?”

Fen was still staring at her—not awe, exactly, but… astonishment, perhaps? Had she been that hostile to him?

“Joori,” he said softly, as though tranced, “and Morin and Caidi.”

Umeia nodded. “I pledge my oath of shelter and protection to Fen Joori, Fen Morin, Fen Caidi, ’til the day they dwell no longer beneath my sight.

Should my life be required in bond for their mortal safety, I pledge it willingly, by forfeit—”

“—by forfeit of my….” Fen’s eyes had gone wide, the hand about his glass so lax that Malick gently retrieved it before Fen could drop it. “By forfeit of my soul—”

“—by forfeit of my soul should I fail,” Umeia finished, peering a little nervously up at Malick, but he looked calm and assured, like he’d expected exactly this, and Umeia supposed he had. Still, the way Fen recited the latter part of the ancient oath along with her gave her pause.

“The oath of the Temshiel,” Fen said, voice strained, gaze drawn inward.

“Why would you… what…?”

Jaw tightening, he shook off Malick’s hand for the first time since Umeia had come in. Immediately, Fen’s back went straight and his head tilted to the side, eyes shut tight this time, and brow scrunched down in concentration.

Listening. Straining to hear. Umeia gave Malick another quick glance, but he just kept looking at Fen from his place behind and to Fen’s right, calm and cool, completely unaffected or worried. A small growl made Umeia drag her gaze back to Fen in time to see a vicious sneer curl at his mouth, hands fisting and coming together to press brutally into the wound on his thigh as he shook his head.

“Nothing, they say nothing.” He shot up from the chair, bloody lump of linen splatting to the floor. He nearly teetered over Umeia as he backed away from both of them, wild-eyed, careful to stay out of Malick’s reach as he swayed a little dizzily. “Who are you?!” Fen shouted. “How d’you… how can you…?” He looked at Umeia, all lost and hovering over some mental brink, then back again to Malick, shocky gaze tightening down to anger then winding back up to shock again. “Please.” A whisper this time. “Please. What do you want, why have you… why me, what…?” Fen shook his head, hand going once again to his thigh, fingers actually dipping inside the wound, pressing so hard it made Umeia wince, and her stomach flipped a bit. “What are you?”

Malick had been watching it all from his place behind Fen’s chair, hadn’t moved at all, not once—only kept watching with worry and compassion, and something so deep in his eyes Umeia knew he’d deny it if she ever told him it was there. An hour ago, it would have made her wish for Fen’s name on a scrap of paper in the crock at the end of the bar downstairs. Now, it only made her somewhat sad for the little brother who would hear no oath from her, but

Ghost
never seemed to understand that not speaking it aloud didn’t mean she hadn’t given it.

The smile Malick gave Fen was so soft, it actually made Fen choke on a raspy little moan. “We’re the ones who are going to help you,” Malick said gently, “starting with getting you sewn up and bathed. Tomorrow, we help you by getting your brothers and sister for you, and bringing them here safely.” Malick’s smile widened a bit, but remained just as soft as he leaned down, retrieved the bottle of uzin from the table, and shook it a little so it sloshed sweetly against the glass. “Right now, I’m just the man who’s going to get you pleasantly drunk, so the sewing part won’t hurt so much.”

HE’D poured four shots down Fen’s throat before Umeia had gotten to the stitching, and then another two while she was doing it. Fen accepted each one without argument, without reaction, without expression or so much as a harsh breath as they went down. Malick had no idea if Fen generally drank, besides his watered beer at supper, or if he did, what his limits might be, so Malick stopped at six. It didn’t seem to matter, at any rate—there wasn’t so much as a twitch or creasing of Fen’s brow as Umeia’s hooked needle dug in and out of his skin. Either he was too used to pain for it to matter, or the liquor was doing its job. Or he was too deep inside himself for any of it to register.

He seemed all right going down the stairs, though, hobbling along with his torn trouser leg flapping down over his knee and bouncing against the top of his boot. He’d refused to let Umeia get him out of the trousers, no matter how reasonably or snappishly she’d insisted. Malick figured it was because Fen wouldn’t have been able to do it without help, and he didn’t want to show himself so vulnerable. Malick understood this for two reasons: one, because he was male, and grasped fully the idiotic things testosterone could do to the logical part of a brain; and two, because he’d learned more about Fen tonight than he had all week. Malick had been somewhat impressed that Fen had stood his ground with Umeia and prevailed. It was such a rare thing where she was concerned. Then again, no one had apparently filled her in on Fen’s stunt at Pon’s tonight, or she might’ve raked him over the coals until he was nothing but a quivering mass of apology—sutures or no sutures; siblings or no siblings.

…Right. Probably not. This was Fen, after all, who was looking like a pretty fair match to Umeia, much to her apparent chagrin.

Malick kept a good eye on him as they descended, but Fen had yet to seriously stumble. Slight wobbles now and then, which Fen handled by

pointedly gripping the banister instead of Malick’s offered arm, but he didn’t go headfirst, so Malick let it pass. No banister on the stairway down to the baths, though. Fen paused at the top of them, seemed to measure his chances of getting down them unaided, then looked down at his boots, at the stone stairs, at his boots, at the stairs….

With a grunt, he abruptly sat down on the top riser, right leg held out stiffly, bobbed a little nod to himself, then yanked his left leg up by the knee and dragged off his boot. Then his stocking, toes unconsciously giving a brief wriggle of freedom that, for whatever reason, made Malick smile. It figured Fen would have pretty feet too. Without even looking, Fen merely tossed both boot and stocking over his shoulder and bent to do the same to the right.

Malick stopped him much the same way he’d stopped the knife from doing further damage: he crouched down on the top step and laid his hand firmly over Fen’s. Tightened his grip when Fen tensed and tried to wrench himself away.

“Put a strain on it, and you’ll tear the sutures,” Malick said calmly, quietly, “and then Umeia will have to do it again, and I don’t think she’ll be happy with us if we try to get her out of bed this time.”

Fen’s head was bowed, but his whole body was rigid, his breath coming fast and shallow. Malick waited until the hand beneath his loosened, uncurling slowly from its fist, and Fen’s shoulders went just the slightest bit slack.

Without a word, Fen jerked a tiny nod and slowly pulled his hand from Malick’s. The message was all too clear: Don’t touch unless you absolutely have to. So Malick tried to touch as little as possible, gripping the back of Fen’s knee only briefly so he didn’t yank him down the steps on his ass as he pulled the boot off by the heel. The wool of the stocking stretched as Malick dragged it free and tossed it and the boot to lay with the others. And then he let go, stood on the step below Fen, and waited. Fen peered at him steadily out the corner of his eye through the messy clumps of chestnut clotted over his brow—not quite suspicious, but not trusting, either.

Ah, well. Uzin could only do so much.

It didn’t matter. Malick had found patience tonight, hadn’t even had to dig for it, but found it just lying there at the top of his chest, waiting. Stirred to life when he’d watched Fen with his brother, watched the non-reactions and complete lack of expression when they’d spoken, then watched everything Fen had been holding back fly across his face, bash around inside his eyes, when he’d left his brother behind.

Malick hadn’t quite understood it before, and he didn’t altogether now, but he understood it a lot better than he had. He’d seen it all in the brother’s

Ghost
eyes, seen Fen beating back its twin in his own. Not only did Fen love, but he was loved in return, and more deeply than he could apparently bear. Malick had known there was passion down there beneath all that ice. He’d seen it in the way Fen had driven into those guards at Pon’s with such grim abandon.

He just hadn’t understood entirely.

Hopelessness. Guilt. Loneliness. All of it seething inside Fen, bubbling up like a boiling-over pot, and Fen was practically throwing himself over the lid to keep it all in.

I’m the one, Jacin! Fen’s brother had called, and Malick hadn’t really understood what it meant, but he got the gist as he’d watched Fen keep walking then flinch a little when the rattle of wood hitting frame reached him, watched him stop and close his eyes and take a deep breath. Malick stood watching from the scraggy yard, thinking for a moment that Fen might turn back, but he only paused long enough to slam down his control again, give his head a quick jerk, and head off east. Back toward the city. Back toward the Girou, where Fen had been ordered to make his home, toward people who called themselves “family” and yet had wrenched him all unknowing—
uncaring—from those who truly were. From everything he had left. Allowed him to hang on to only his hunt for a corpse and his revenge.

Malick had felt… a little bit despicable as he’d stood there and watched the candle’s light vanish from the empty window, watched Fen’s back as he stepped purposefully along, not pausing once to look back. Perhaps “craven”

was a better word. Base. Low.

And then had felt things writhing, hot and tight in his chest, when Fen had finally stopped and given in to the inevitability of the pounding pressure, gone down to his knees beneath the weight of it.

Insight too long in coming had hit Malick then with a slow, spreading ache.

Fen loved, Fen felt. And the passion with which he was loved back…

antisocial little pricks just didn’t get that kind of devotion.

Malick had looked long and hard as Fen had broken down, alone in the dark, had marked every single miniscule emotion that had cried out from inside a soul that refused to cry out at all. Understood.

Fen was a prick because Fen was in pain. Fen believed—perhaps had been taught—that any emotion besides anger made him weak, so he showed nothing but the rage and the grief to anyone but the moons. Fen felt too much, so he pretended to feel nothing, only letting anything real out in short bursts that merely added to the grinding strain. Building layer upon layer of icy perfection and control between him and everything else, so that any who tried

to reach beyond it were frozen out, butting up against a solid stratum of anger and loathing until they’d been bitten too deep by the frost. Retreated.

Malick wouldn’t retreat. He had been going about it all wrong before, adding to the pressure because he’d thought it would be fun, had been intrigued and challenged. Now, he’d seen at least the murky outlines of what lay beneath the ice, and found himself wanting to see it all, wanting Fen to show it to him—wanting to be the sort of person Fen could trust enough to let him see.

He paced slowly down the stone steps, braced and ready to be a buttress if necessary for Fen—limping and wobbling behind him—should he slip. He didn’t. Fen made it to the bottom of the stairway, still silent, blinking a bit myopically at the closed door, until Malick dug the key out of his pocket and let him through. Empty, all business tonight having been concluded and the evidence cleaned away for a fresh start tomorrow. They were alone, as they’d been that first night—full circle. Strange, how things had changed in so short a time.

“You can leave now.” Fen’s quiet voice rang against the silence as his bare feet padded toward the shower-boxes, the stone of the walls snapping up the aggressive tone and bouncing it between them. “I don’t need your help.”

He hadn’t let Umeia have a look under his shirt; now Malick had himself a good one as Fen clumsily shed it behind him on the floor. Malick marked the length and depth of the cuts and slices down Fen’s ribs and across his torso, judged them bad but not serious, and so let it pass. Already dried and beginning to scab over—a good cleaning could be nothing but beneficial. And Malick hadn’t even asked Fen tonight if he’d been hurt, like he asked every one of the others after each job, and without fail.

“No?” Malick said quietly as he turned up two of the low lamps and strode slowly after Fen, but kept a bit of distance; close enough to catch if Fen fell, but not close enough to unnerve, like he would’ve done before. “How d’you think you’re going to get those trousers off, then?”

Fen paused with his hand on the reed screen, muscles tensing, head down.

Malick could almost see the angry scowl darkening Fen’s face as he realized his quandary. A week ago, this small fissure in the ice, this tiny show of weakness, would have had Malick driving in for the kill. It was intensely arousing, that suspense in posture, strangely erotic—and forlornly dangerous.

The fact that Fen was leaving his boots and clothes behind him in a messy trail told Malick that Fen was… off, not himself, control still slipping steadily, and the uzin had to be adding to it all. Now, the fact that Fen sighed miserably, shoulders slumping as he leaned into both the screen and—

Ghost
thankfully—the stone around it for balance, nodding acquiescence, told Malick this was not the time for taking advantage.

With another sigh and a shake of his head, Fen slouched into the wall, face pressed to his arm, shoulders vibrating with strange, silent little chuckles.

“You never told me how much, but I think…. You don’t want my koin, do you?” He snorted, words muffled and slightly slurred. “I suppose it hardly matters now.” He pushed himself up, turned unsteadily, and let himself fall back against the wall, peering at Malick through his fringe with a small smile-that-wasn’t. Moving probably less elegantly than Malick had ever seen him, Fen pulled the braid over his shoulder, fingers clumsy as he loosened the bit of leather that held the tail of the queue in place. He wagged it at Malick like a mother would wag her finger at a child, almost brushed it along the tip of Malick’s nose, but missed. “Not supposed to see it undone,” Fen said, low and… fuck, please don’t let that be seduction. “But you’ve been wanting to.”

The strange little smile turned sly, and Fen’s voice went deep and hoarse.

“Haven’t you?”

More than anything. Wanting to see Fen undone, but now….

Long fingers untangled the leather, slipped into the seams of the plait and began unthreading them, strands of chestnut, crimped by the braid and catching the lamplight in gleaming folds of gold with flashes of deep-set russet. Malick couldn’t take his eyes away.

“Fen,” he said quietly, forcing himself to take a breath, “there is no payment for my help.” Bloody damn—Malick could barely credit the things that had been tripping out his mouth lately. Could barely credit that he actually meant them. He dragged his eyes away from the hair and the fingers entwined in it and locked them onto Fen’s. “You need to get cleaned up.”

Fen paused, eyes narrowing, then the not-smile came back, and he nodded, fingers once again unwinding yards and yards of braid into a satiny stream of wavy silk fanning out over his thigh as it unfolded. “Yes,” he agreed, “cleaned up.” His eyes misted up, and for a second, an awful mix of grief and shame flashed over his face. “Lots of blood tonight,” he whispered.

Then he shook his head, set his face back into the lines of seduction, and turned his mouth back up into that not-smile again. “You don’t care, though, do you?” His hand came up, fingers reaching, tracing lightly over the shape of Malick’s lips. “It doesn’t matter what you are. You’re just as foul as I am.”

“Is that what you think you are?” Malick asked softly, fighting the very real temptation to slide out his tongue, catch the tip of Fen’s finger with it.

“You think what you do makes you… sullied?”

Fen snorted, took his hand away, and went back to loosening the braid, eyes cast down, dark lashes splashed long and full over high cheekbones. “I think what I did tonight… makes it not matter what I think.”

He’d been ruthless tonight, a dervish of death, and Malick had watched it all with lust and admiration. They’d slashed their way through men who likely had nothing to do with what their Lady and her lover had been up to, and done it with no more thought than that which went into the strategy of it all, such as it was. They’d worn Blood-amulets; that was all Fen saw, all he cared about.

He’d gotten a name and more out of Sonji-onna, and hadn’t flinched once at what he’d had to do to get it. And what he’d had to do had been… messy.

Malick had kept silent as he’d watched, hadn’t even cared that the name that had finally come from Sonji-onna had been the one he’d been dreading.

He probably would have slit Yakuli’s throat right there, and the gods and their orders be damned, if Fen had asked him to. Nothing and no one had mattered but Fen, with his tragic eyes and his blood-streaked face, twisted into a strange mix of fury and hate and shame and relief.

“You want to know what I am,” Malick said, slipping his fingers over Fen’s jawline, noting abstractly that there was no flinch or gasp at the touch anymore—Fen had gotten used to these moments of silence, or he’d simply stopped reacting to them. “I’m the man who is telling you… there is no foul, there is no clean. There is no good or bad—there’s only better and worse.

Sometimes we’re better, sometimes we’re worse. Tonight, I think we were a bit of both, but… Fen—you’re exquisite. You’re Wolf’s own treasure, he stole you right out from under Raven, and he watches you with a smile on his face. I know.” Because he really did. “Look at me, Fen.” He waited until Fen did, a slow lift of those thick lashes, a slight shimmer to gilt-gray eyes.

“D’you believe me?”

Fen only stared at him for a long while, steady and thoughtful, then: “Do you honestly believe,” he answered, low and soft, “I give even the slightest fuck?”

Oh, bloody hell, and why did that land in Malick’s groin like a ball of fire?

Yeah, I do. I think you give more of a fuck than is good for anyone.

He’d leaned in, without even realizing it, fingers sliding into softest silk, lips almost brushing Fen’s, and fuck, Fen was letting him, Fen was tilting his chin up, Fen was looking him in the eye with… desire, yes, it was there, but not the right kind. Acknowledgement, resignation to some kind of compensation he’d invented from words and not their meaning. Words Malick himself had spoken, but he’d never meant them like this.

Ghost

Malick drew back, watched Fen’s brow twist in thwarted confusion, and shoved himself away.

With a will he didn’t know he had, Malick coerced his legs to move and take him across to the cupboard. Keeping his eyes on his own hands, he collected two buckets and a bathsheet, thought better and snagged another, along with soap and a clump of sponge. Turned back to find Fen’s eyes on him, no smile this time, loose waves draped over his shoulder and swathing down the whole right side of his body, all the way down to his shins. As Malick watched, Fen slowly lifted his hands, undid his belt.

“Going to help me with these?” All smoke and sex.

Oh, fucking hell. This was Malick’s own bloody fault. He deserved every agonizing twitch in his trousers, every sharp ache of want grinding in his groin. He’d been prowling around Fen’s edges since he’d laid eyes on him, and now that an actual invitation was being handed to him, he couldn’t take it.

Wouldn’t. Not like this, not… not when it would make him something he’d been convinced he was but abruptly and too sharply realized he didn’t want to be.

Malick took a long, deep breath, snatched his gaze away from Fen’s, and firmed his shoulders. With a groan he hoped was only internal, he threw the bathsheets over his shoulder and stepped over to the pool, dipped the buckets in and carried them over, then squeezed past Fen to set them on the floor of the shower-box. Without letting himself think even a little bit about what he was doing, Malick roughly opened Fen’s trousers the rest of the way, stopped himself before he yanked them down and ruined all Umeia’s work, and slid them carefully from Fen’s hips, dragging the linens along with them, and oh, bloody fuckfuckfuckfuck fuck, Fen was half-hard, Fen was… Fen was….

No. Not like this.

Firmly willing his hands not to shake, Malick dropped down to one knee, eyes steadfastly on his own hands and nothing else. He tapped lightly at the back of Fen’s left calf until Fen lifted his foot, then his right, and slipped the trousers from him completely. Bared, hair unbound, aroused, waiting, expectant….

Malick didn’t know what he wanted to touch more.

He thought he might’ve blacked out for a few seconds, because the next thing he knew, he was standing, arm locked at the elbow and propped to the wall, supporting him, while his other hand prodded at Fen, pushing him into the shower-box and sliding the screen shut. And all Malick could do was stand there, breathing as quietly as he could. Eyes shut tight, listening to the splish of water, trying not to imagine it runneling down all those mouth-

watering dips and angles, while he dangled the soap and sponge over the top of the screen until wet fingers took them from his hand. With the very last of his self-control, Malick draped the bathsheets over the screen and dragged himself over to the door, then leaned his back to the wall and rubbed roughly at his face.

“Try not to get the stitches wet,” he managed to shove out between his teeth, then he let his head fall back and stared at the uneven curve of the stone ceiling. Cursing silently, he clenched his hands into fists and pounded them to the wall behind him. Again. Listened to the sporadic splash and trickle of water and really, really tried not to let the mental pictures take hold. Tried—
though he knew he’d fail—to talk himself out of the pounding arousal knocking all through him, making every sense he owned more acute, honed.

The mineral scent of the water, the flicker and flare of the lamplight, the bloody sounds coming from behind that screen, and knowing— knowing—that if he threw it back, stepped in, Fen would let him.

The slide of the screen against the stone floor made Malick wince, and he shut his eyes until Fen’s soft voice came at him, all uncertainty and diffidence: “I need more water.”

Malick blinked, blew out a thin breath when he peered over to see Fen leaning demurely around the screen, body sheltered behind it, arm extended and bucket swinging by its rope from his hand.

“Would you mind?” Fen asked quietly.

A jerky bit of a nod was all Malick managed, but he did get his legs to move again, angling himself around the pool, eyes focused on the bucket as he approached. Except when he took hold of it, gave it a tug, Fen didn’t let go.

Instead, he yanked it and shoved the screen aside at the same time, drew back and punched Malick square on the jaw. There was no leverage problem this time, no awkward angle. It came straight from the shoulder and knocked Malick down on his ass. Huh. Seemed that if you got hit hard enough, you really did see stars. Malick’s ears were ringing, and painpainpain radiated from the point of impact and out through his head, right down his spine.

“…the fuck?” He blinked up to see Fen standing over him—gah, still naked, and wet now too—bucket still clenched tight in a white-knuckled fist, all that hair hanging heavy and sticking to him everywhere, the ragged fringe dripping down into his eyes. For whatever reason, Malick’s gaze caught on the chunky, ugly tracks of the sutures in strange fascination as he watched the scarred skin shift over the thick-hewn thigh muscles.

Ghost

“I’ve just been thinking,” Fen said, amazingly calm and cool as he stared down at Malick. “You’ve been mocking me since the moment I met you. I don’t like it.”

Malick cradled his jaw with a careful hand, blinked some more.

“Mocking.” He shook his head. Augh, bad idea.

“Not as much fun when it’s offered freely?” Fen wanted to know, a little bit of fire blooming in his hard gaze.

Malick sat up, indignant. “It wathn’t off—” Damn it, had he lost a tooth?

He stuck a finger in his mouth, gingerly poked around… no, all still accounted for, but it seemed he’d bitten his tongue rather smartly. Damn Fen and his… his… whatever the fuck this was. “It wasn’t offered freely,” Malick snapped. “It was offered in payment. There’s a difference, and I’d prefer to keep on this side of it.”

Fen frowned, eyes narrowed. “This side.”

Frustrated, Malick waved his hands. “Yeah, this side… the better side, the, the… the not-disgusting side.” And then he remembered how that might sound to Fen’s ears, so he clarified: “The side that doesn’t make me feel like I’m demanding sex in payment for doing someone I like a good turn. The side that doesn’t make me feel like some sick deviant for getting what I want. You know— that side.”

Fen only stared at him, thoughtful, for a long, long moment before he shook his head. He shrugged. “It wasn’t in payment. It would’ve been, if you’d demanded it. But it wasn’t.”

Malick’s mouth flapped, brow twisting. “No?” Could a person die of confusion?

“No.” Apparently, that was all the answer Fen was going to give, because he merely turned—all that hair covering the good bits, naturally—and limped back into the shower-box, pulling the screen shut behind him. “I still need more water.”

Malick… stared. Rubbed at his jaw again, and then ran a hand through his hair. What he needed was to make it a point to meet and begin associating with not-crazy people. The novelty alone should keep him entertained for…

all right, probably minutes. But still.

Growling, he hauled himself up from the floor and found the bucket that Fen had apparently dropped while Malick had been admiring the stars grinding up from his jaw and bursting behind his eyes. He dipped it into the pool, pausing briefly when all the blood rushed to his head and settled, hot

and pounding, at the base of his teeth. Fucking Fen. Malick hoped he’d at least bruised his knuckles good.

“It was the other things,” Fen said as Malick set the bucket just outside the shower-box.

Malick straightened, squinting at the screen, like he could gauge Fen’s expression through it. “All right, it’s in the right language and all the words make sense.”

The screen rattled aside again. Malick couldn’t help the bit of a flinch backward, but Fen merely cut him a wary look as he leaned around it and pulled the bucket through before sliding it closed. Contained splashing again, the sound of the sponge being wrung out, then: “The other things you said. I was trying to pretend you meant them. And it’s been a while, so… I wanted to.”

Quiet. Subdued. Said to the floor, Malick could tell just by the way the stone nearly absorbed the words before they reached his ears.

He was afraid to guess at what things he’d said that might’ve meant enough to Fen that he’d wanted to—

Gah, he’d wanted to, and Malick had….

Fuck. Fucking fuck fuckitty fuck.

“Fen—”

“I understand.”

Yeah? Well, maybe he could explain it Malick, then, because shit, he’d had the best intentions he could recall having in a very long time, and Fen had wanted to, and… and then this.

“Understand what, Fen?”

One of the bathsheets slipped from over the top of the screen. Half a moment later, Fen slid the screen aside again, water dripping over his shoulders, down his chest, and into the fold of the sheet knotted about his hips. He reached for the other, pulling all that hair over his shoulder, and began working excess water from the base of his skull and down. His face was blank, his movements all unconscious reflex, and his gaze divided its time between the hair and the floor.

“I haven’t any clothes.”

Damn it, Malick hadn’t even thought of that. And didn’t much care now.

“No one’s up,” he said, troubled by the statement he did care about. “Fen—
understand what?”

Ghost

Fen sighed, shut his eyes. “You think I’m too distracted. You think I don’t see anything.” A shrug, and he opened his eyes, but he still wouldn’t look at Malick. “You didn’t want it—you wanted me to want it. You win.” He opened his mouth, like he meant to go on, but then just shut it and went back to squeezing water from his hair. “I think I might need help with the stairs.”

Malick couldn’t do a single thing but stare as Fen turned and slowly limped toward the door. What was that—four sentences? five?—and inside them, an entire lifetime of rejection, and calm acceptance of it, like he didn’t expect anything else. Bloody hell, if that was what Fen thought Malick had been doing, it was amazing he’d gotten away with only a sore jaw.

“Was that how it was with Asai?” Malick asked softly.

Fen stopped dead, every muscle in his back and shoulders tightening. His head turned slightly to the side, dipped down, but still, he wouldn’t look at Malick. “I’ll take the stairs myself,” he said, and started hobbling off again.

And Malick couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand anything about it. That Fen loved that son of a bitch enough that Malick could still hurt him with only a name. That Fen thought Malick would do what Fen thought he’d been doing.

That Malick’s own behavior since he’d met Fen had probably made it all too believable.

He stood there like an idiot, gaping, until Fen was three shuffling steps away from the door, then stalked over, shoved it back the two inches Fen had gotten it open, then spun Fen’s back into it, and pressed in. Fen’s fists were clenched just as stiffly as his jaw, but they didn’t come at Malick this time, just locked in tight to his sides, body rigid, the damp warmth of the bathsheet seeping all down the front of Malick and heating him through. Words were not Malick’s friends tonight, and Fen was never good at them, so Malick avoided them, just leaned in and kissed him.

Not as hard as Malick’s flaring temper would have had him think, but deep and sweeping, aggressive and immediately intense. Fen kissed like he fought—all-in and no backing down, driving in and taking Malick over absolutely. There was a directness to it, the strange candor of wanting in the harsh breaths through his nose, the soft, demanding moans rumbling at the back of his throat, and the way his hands came up and sank into Malick’s hair, closed into fists, held him still.

This is what I want, it said. Give it to me.

Simple; much more clear and unguarded than anything else about Fen.

His hair—the scent of almonds came from Fen’s hair, winding right through the blander smell of the pine soap he’d used to wash it. Malick could

smell it so clearly as he took a handful of it in his fist, let his fingers curl through the chill-wet of it, like he’d been wanting to do since the first time he’d seen Fen out on the floor of the Girou.

Panting, aroused almost beyond rational thought, Malick pulled back, trailed his lips along Fen’s jawline, slipped a little nip to his earlobe. “D’you still love him?” He hadn’t known he was going to ask it, almost appalled that it had come out his mouth, and now, but it was suddenly imperative that Malick knew. Even more imperative than the aching arousal at his groin, Fen’s answer to it jutting against Malick’s hip. “Does he love you? Does he even pretend to?” Fen pulled in a tight breath, and Malick… smiled. There it was— there was the way in. The right one, the one that would stick. Malick slipped a kiss to Fen’s temple. “Would you like me to pretend for you? I’m fucking brilliant at it.”

Fen tensed a little at the question, still distracted enough by Malick’s mouth at his throat and ear that he didn’t shove him away. “Please.”

“Please” what? Please don’t ask me that? Please keep doing what you’re doing? Please just shut up and fuck me stupid and let me pretend this is whatever I need it to be to keep my fucked-up head from exploding into a million tiny pieces?

“‘Please’ what, Fen?” Malick pressed, he couldn’t help it, and he soothed it just a little with a quick snap of his hips, crushing his erection into Fen’s until Fen gasped and pushed back. “D’you want to close your eyes and pretend I’m him?” He ran his hands over Fen’s arms, his shoulders, swept one hand in until it rested lightly about Fen’s throat. Traced the other down the silky swells of chest and torso, fingers just brushing the drape of damp hair that swathed the whole left side of Fen’s body. “Take from me what your beishin wouldn’t give you and scream his name when you come?”

“Fuck you,” Fen breathed, tilting his head to the side obligingly when Malick sank in to run his tongue over the cords of Fen’s throat. Malick’s hand pressed in just a little to settle firm around the side of Fen’s neck, thumb brushing the small jutting bumps of the trachea. Fen’s own hands had curled around Malick’s back, fingers digging in to the thick muscles just below the shoulder blades, real pressure, jabbing almost right through the skin when Malick’s hand settled over Fen’s erection through the bathsheet.

“Tell me, Fen,” Malick whispered, pressing in tight as he took hold, letting Fen rock into his hand a few times before he squeezed, stones and throat both, tight enough to still all movement. “Say it so I’ll know. Who are you going to see tonight while I’m fucking you?”

He didn’t think he really wanted an answer, but he had to have one, had to know. And even if Fen said it, said the name that could raise such pain in his

Ghost
heart that it completely stilled his body—a body that he controlled so completely otherwise—Malick thought he still might not be able to walk away, still might not be able to stop himself from giving Fen exactly what he wanted.

Fen’s eyes were squeezed shut, his head resting back against the smooth cedar of the door. Panting. Trembling with need. Hips swaying little stutter-stops, both fighting Malick’s grip and rocking into it. His hands had bunched in Malick’s shirt, knuckles digging into his backbone.

Fuck, he was beautiful. Color high and swathing his cheeks with warmth; muscles tense and quivering, scars and gashes and cuts standing out in soft relief against their lines and curves; dark hair contrasted like a splash of ink down his entire body; face pulled into wanton lines of unthinking expression, silently shouting his need and hunger. One thing Fen couldn’t hide, one thing he couldn’t blank from his face and pretend to be unaffected—the effect was vibrating in Malick’s hands, in the fluttering pulse at Fen’s throat, the undeniable heat and solidity at his groin.

Not from his eyes, either, Malick thought, dazed, as Fen slid them open slowly, looked right at Malick, swallowed so his throat bobbed against Malick’s thumb, and pushed his hips in hard to Malick’s hand. Eyes still locked to Malick’s, Fen tipped his head back, bared his throat—submission; deliberate and cognizant—and Malick sucked in a sharp breath, hands reflexively tightening the tiniest bit.

“I am the ghost,” Fen said, hoarse and low, “I don’t see them,” then he leaned in and brushed his lips over Malick’s—

—took him by the shoulders and spun him, shoved his back into the door before Malick even realized he’d lost the leverage advantage. Turnabout.

Oh, yeah. That’ll teach me.

Malick grinned, his arousal redoubling so fast it almost made his knees give. It made him wonder exactly who would be topping whom. Somehow that half-inch Fen had on Malick was looking like a lot more right now.

Smug, Fen swept his hands down over the breadth of Malick’s chest, stirring warm little shudders, then tipped in, nipped at his throat.

“Dumbass. Help me upstairs.”

THEY argued over whose room. Well, Malick argued. After he’d cleared the last step of the three flights up—four, if one counted the steps from the bath—

Fen just shoved Malick off, no longer needing his help to limp down the

hallway, said he needed to braid his hair, and ignored Malick’s argument that his bed was bigger and his room not right next to Samin’s. And anyway, Malick had pointed out—well, all right, whined—he wanted Fen to leave all that hair down, wanted to see what it looked like all spread out beneath him, wanted Fen above him and to see what it was like to have it all fall around them, close them inside a living curtain.

He didn’t say all of that, of course, but Fen probably knew. Definitely didn’t care. Braided, because it was the law, and because it would knot and tangle if he didn’t, and anyway, “D’you want to do this or not?”

Oh, fuck, yes, but Malick kept a little bit of self-respect and merely rolled his eyes, followed Fen into his room, and shut the door.

Almond oil—that was where the scent of Fen came from: almond oil combed through his hair to make it easier to untangle, easier to weave into the long, smooth plait. Malick watched the process for a little while, lounging back, propped on one elbow on Fen’s bed. Fen was perched on the other side, hair over his shoulder and streaming down to the floor over the edge of the mattress as he combed it through. Malick watched it until he couldn’t help touching, running his fingers all through it. Smooth and satiny, everything he’d imagined. Malick leaned in and dipped his mouth to Fen’s shoulder, hand catching on Fen’s through the thick curtain of silk and pushing it away, taking the comb from his fingers and guiding him to his back on the sheets.

Fen let him, arched up into him and pulled him in, demanding.

It shouldn’t have been so good. Malick had built it up in his mind so heavily that the reality shouldn’t have even come close. But oh, save him, the reality of Fen bending to Malick’s hand, Fen curling his body up and in to meet Malick’s, the reality of Fen’s impatience as he pushed away Malick’s shirt and yanked at his belt until Malick half snorted and had to draw away for ten seconds. Ten seconds during which Fen growled in annoyance and whipped the bottle of almond oil at his head, snapped, “Come on, then,” and yanked Malick back down before he’d even gotten his trousers kicked completely from his feet.

The topping from the bottom sort, Fen. Definitely. And almost no patience at all for foreplay.

“You said you’d pretend,” he wheezed as Malick pressed him down, voice shaky, like he didn’t want to say the words but couldn’t help himself.

“Pretend you… you meant….”

Malick had to chuckle. “No pretending about this, love.”

Fen arched like a wanton cat when Malick entered him. Impatience appeased, the jagged edges of want smoothed down by the press of bodies, the slick-slide of sweated skin, and the slow rock and push-drag-push of erotic

Ghost
rhythm. The light of the moons shattered silver-red through the window, fracturing over lean muscle, shadowing each dip and pulling every shift of breath into individual relief. Delicate filigree on angled planes, veiling the dense power straining beneath not-quite-olive skin.

Malick had expected to spend all his time on the hair, running his fingers through it, winding it about limbs, fanning it out on the sheets, just to see what it looked like. He found himself not half as obsessed as he’d thought he was. Just another part of Fen, another one of his fascinating edges, and deserving of attention, certainly, but not at the expense of ignoring the rest of him—the feel of him, the scent of him, the sound of his raspy breaths and whispered demands through his teeth.

Bloody damn, though, that hair did get everywhere, winding about sweated limbs like clinging ivy. Maybe it would get annoying after a thousand years, but now?

Responsive. Grinding himself into Malick’s every move and reacting to it with his entire body. Crying out like he was starving for it. The fucking sounds he made were enough to make Malick wonder when was the last time it had been this good.

“Exquisite, Fen,” Malick breathed, dragging his mouth over brow and temple and sharp cheekbone. He firmed his grip on the blade of Fen’s hip and rocked, quick and blunt, until a jagged little cry tore loose from Fen’s throat.

Fen twisted, gray eyes glazed and shameless, expression lax in abandon. He reached, touched, arched, and met every move with equal force and more passion. All of it, every facet that made up Fen, every single move and sound and sight—it drove into the heat down deep in the core of Malick, churned it hotter, and sent it in a coiling squall through his limbs, through his chest, through his mind. “I meant it, every fucking word.”

Fen’s brow creased a little then immediately smoothed out again as Malick took him in hand, momentary bemusement forgotten, abandoned, as Malick shifted the angle. Kisses, because Malick couldn’t seem to stop, and Fen couldn’t seem to, either, all long and deep then shallow and importunate, going from languid to frantic and back to languid again. Drawing it out, making it last, because now that Malick had it, he never wanted it to end. His every breath was put into making it good, giving pleasure, thigh muscles burning with the strain of keeping his strokes long and slow and deep and forceful. He shifted again and gave a little pushpushpush that had Fen cursing and grinding helplessly up into it.

Malick watched, hazed and lust-foggy, as Fen arced up into him, mouth seeking, latching on to the first bit of skin it met, sucking at Malick’s throat.

Small, white teeth sinking in, wheezy little breaths slurring muddled words into Malick’s skin:

“Faster, damn it, can’t you— ah, fuck yeah, like that.”

Strap-sinewed arms curling about Malick’s nape, keeping him close, so all he could smell was almonds and salty sweat, all he could feel was the defined ripple of lean muscle and the coiled heat of Fen’s body, all he could see was ambered gray ringed by indigo.

His heart stopped—actually stopped, he was sure of it—when Fen’s head dropped back, throat a smooth, arced stretch of vulnerable skin beneath Malick’s mouth as he shoved out a sharp cry and writhed a shudder against Malick, face blank with desire, open and unguarded—fucking beautiful—as he came. Powerless to pleasure, shaking and sweating and climaxing in Malick’s arms. Shattering. Malick followed, he had no choice, just the sight, the feel of Fen’s body seizing around him, pushing him down into a spiral of grinding pleasure, taking him under, mind and body and soul swathed entirely in blank-white bliss.

Fen fell asleep directly after, returned a kiss sluggishly with eyes closed, and then just didn’t open them again. Passed out, maybe, Malick supposed. It had been a long, difficult day and night, and there’d been the uzin too. He shoved Fen into a more comfortable position, reminded about the stitches only when he saw them as he arranged Fen’s legs, guilt assuaged by the fact that none of them had torn. Malick padded to his own room for the bandages Umeia had left, and wrapped a good several coils around Fen’s thigh before climbing in beside him and pulling the sheet and quilt up over them both.

Dragged and prodded until he had Fen curled into his chest, warm skin all along the side of his body.

He half considered combing out and braiding Fen’s hair for him—it did look a little tangled, and would likely be more so in the morning—but instead settled for running his fingers through as much of it as he could reach and gently unknotting whatever snags they ran into. Anyway, he hadn’t the first clue how to braid hair. Maybe Fen would show him how.

“Tomorrow,” Malick whispered, then he set a light kiss to the crown of Fen’s head, breathing in almonds as his fingers gently unraveled a particularly stubborn snarl. “Tonight,” he amended after a glance out the window as he took hold of Fen’s hand and dragged his arm to rest across Malick’s torso.

“We’ll go and get them for you tonight. And then we’ll find her and put her soul to rest. And perhaps unlock yours while we’re at it.”

He didn’t care anymore what he was going to have to do to get Fen’s mother back for him, didn’t care about the laws he was going to have to

Ghost
break, or the risk he took in doing it. Fen was Wolf’s, and it was Malick’s job to save him if he could.

Because Malick might be a bit of a romantic, but he wasn’t stupid—one night of permitting a semi-thaw wasn’t going to solve all of Fen’s problems, wasn’t going to appease all his demons. For a man who was known to the world about him as a Ghost, he had more haunting him than any man should have to bear. There was a blinding passion beneath all that icy exterior, Malick had known it from the beginning—save him, he’d seen it tonight, felt it, wanted to drown in it—but it belonged to Jacin; not Jacin-rei, not Fen.

Jacin-rei used that passion to hate and threaten a man he’d loved, perhaps still loved, used it to break himself free from whatever had held him to Asai, used it to carve slices into himself to keep his sanity. Fen used it to kill, to seek out those who would take from him and bleed them, stare blank-faced at them while they screamed.

Jacin didn’t use all that passion; Jacin invested it, allowed it to possess him through his love for his family, through the twist and curl of his body against Malick’s. Jacin had had too much taken from him, and one night with the Almighty Cock wasn’t going to give it all back. Perhaps nothing could.

But Malick figured that giving Fen his brothers and sister back would be a good place to start. And saving his mother’s soul would be the next logical stepping stone. After that….

Well, after that, they’d have to see. It might just turn out that Fen was the answer to long-withheld justice, and if Malick had to use Fen to get it… well, maybe Fen wouldn’t actually mind it too much. He might have to be used to be saved, and Malick was beginning to think he knew now where to start. Fen was a paladin searching for a lord to lead him. Asai had lost his hold on him and now that hold was, quite literally, at Malick’s fingertips. All he had to do was tighten his grip.

He’d start with real wooing. He hadn’t done that in… he didn’t think he’d ever actually wooed anyone. Gifts—you were supposed to give gifts, right?

He’d have to ask Umeia. Gifts and compliments and… no, not flowers. Fen would probably beat him over the head with them. Or make him eat them. Or shove them up—

Right. Ow. No flowers.

Small kindnesses. That sounded less soppy. Affection, if he’d take it. And Malick actually wanted to give it. He might not be able to stop himself.

Because, along with all the other revelations Malick had discovered tonight, he understood now that he didn’t merely want Fen—he wanted Fen and Jacin-rei and Jacin. And Jacin was the core—the heart—of the trinity.

Malick had seen unintended glimpses of Jacin. Now, he wanted Fen to introduce him to him.

With a small groan, Malick stretched his aching legs and pulled Fen in until he was lying half-across Malick’s chest, snugged himself down into the mattress and pillows and closed his eyes. Poked cautiously at his sore jaw. He smiled a little.

Sleep now, woo later.

Today was going to be another long one.

Festival-month, Year 1319, Cycle of the Wolf ASAI was waiting for him on the straight-backed chair in Jacin’s room when Jacin shimmied his way back in through the window. A small burst of fear and shame wrenched through his gut when he met his beishin’s eyes over the sill, but the heat of still fresh anger kept it from blooming. He stared for a long moment, bold, before pulling himself up and over to land, light and silent, on the floorboards. Kept the stare as he straightened, tucked his hands to the small of his back, and lifted his chin.

Asai was silent, watching him, dark eyes furious, but a thin, scornful smile curled at his mouth. Any other time, it would have made heat bloom on Jacin’s cheeks, risen helpless, stuttered apologies from him. Not tonight.

Tonight, he held onto the anger. Tonight, he kept his mouth shut and his chin up. Defiant.

Asai’s mouth twisted, and he sucked in a long breath. “You have added flying to you skills, Ghost?”

Meant to hurt, because he knew, Jacin had let him see, let him know.

Mistakes. One after another since he’d come here.

He shrugged, indifferent. “Merely landing, Beishin.”

It had been a chancy thing, and he hadn’t been sure he could do it. It was two stories from the porch roof beneath his window down to the ground, after all. But with a bit of lift, and some calculated twisting before he hit the ground, he’d managed it with minimal damage to ankles and shins. He’d have to make adjustments for the next time. Because there would be next times.

The real worry had been climbing back up, but he hadn’t thought of that until he’d gotten back and the lack of handholds registered. Drainpipes were wonderful things.

Ghost

Asai was still staring at him, expectant—waiting for Jacin to break down, no doubt, waiting for the blubbering apologies to start leaking from him. He could keep waiting. Jacin could stand here all night, and he doubted Asai had the patience to watch him do it.

It only took another few minutes: Asai’s mouth set in a thin line, and he stood, paced slowly over to Jacin, dark eyes piercing as always, but Jacin would not allow the gaze to fuzz his mind as it so often did. Not this time. He kept his own gaze locked to the angry one staring back at him and stood straight and unflinching as Asai advanced. Trying to tower, when he really didn’t anymore. Jacin had noticed his own height slowly creeping past Asai’s only this past summer. He wondered if Asai had noticed the same yet. If he had, he gave no indication that it mattered.

“Where did you go, Jacin-rei?” Asai asked evenly.

Jacin let his mouth turn up just slightly at the corner. “Why, Beishin, I didn’t know you cared.”

A hard slap to his cheek made his head rock to the side and his ears ring for a second or two. Jacin only let the smirk twist wider, turned his head back, and met Asai’s gaze again.

“I care that if you get yourself caught, I face death in the Courts for having harbored you. I care that the amulet you stole for whatever illicit jaunt you took tonight damns me without question if you’re found with it. I care that insolence and stupidity can ruin all we’ve worked for with one careless step by a Ghost who can’t—”

“And what about my damnation, Beishin?” Jacin put in, oh so quiet and calm. “Oh, that’s right—I’m only a Ghost and already damned. What’s one more to the tally?”

Asai threw up his hands. “Where do you get such ideas, Jacin-rei? What have I ever—?”

“Interesting, the things a Ghost can learn when even his master thinks he’s deaf and blind and stupid.” Jacin stepped in right up close, kept Asai’s gaze and glared back into it. “I heard you, Beishin. Were you trying to impress her? Did it work? Did she let you spirit her upstairs in the middle of your gathering and fuck her on your bed? Or maybe she couldn’t wait, and let you have at her in the kitchen. She looked like she was gagging for it.”

Understanding unfurled over Asai’s face, and again, it might have made Jacin bow his head and look away in shame before, but Asai didn’t understand, not at all. Years, Jacin had spent in this house, learning and trying to please an unpleasable man, striving for perfection, killing himself reaching

for control, training for a purpose he wasn’t allowed to know, trusting and believing. Years, he’d spent pretending he didn’t exist to anyone but Asai and Vonshi, hiding behind shadows, being a damned ghost, because he’d been told it was necessary, believed it. Even the guards weren’t allowed to know he existed. And then… tonight. One charming smile from that… that tart, one subtle promise in the form of innuendo, and stark betrayal had come wearing his beishin’s pleasant smile.

“Ah,” said Asai, smiling a little, infuriating relief inside it. “Jacin-rei,” he said, softer now, sympathetic, “I have told you before. Sometimes one must say things that—”

“No.” It was all Jacin could do to keep his own tone quiet and collected.

“‘Pitiable, wretched animals,’ isn’t that what you said? ‘Damned by arrogant demigods, poor things, they should all be put out of their misery.’” He leaned in, satisfied when Asai took an involuntary step back. “‘As doomed as the people who have made them outcasts,’” he recited, voice low now and taking on a feral edge. “‘The Jin wasted all they had so foolishly—they cannot be trusted with magic. Perhaps wiping them out altogether would be best all around.’” His hands were fisted behind his back now, and he was glad, because he didn’t think he wanted to know if they were actually trembling.

Asai was shaking his head, the smile condescending now. “You have heard me say such things before,” he said reasonably. “You know I must keep some semblance of cooperation to outside eyes, Jacin-rei, you know how—”

“Not about this,” Jacin snarled, then he took another step in and watched as Asai retreated again. “Not about….” Not about me. He trailed off, unable to make himself say it, because he’d shown Asai the things inside him before, let him see, and this was what Asai had chosen to do with it all. “You knew I was there,” Jacin said instead. “You said those things because you knew I was there.”

“In the middle of a Festival gathering where the man who saved you would have been arrested, tortured, and killed, if you’d been found out.”

Asai’s face had hardened. “Your emotions make you weak and foolish, little Ghost. A lesson was necessary.”

“And your eyes needed to be glued to her cleavage while you taught it?”

Jacin clamped his jaw shut. Shit.

That superior smile was back again. Jacin had to clench his hands together behind his back to keep from clouting it off.

“And jealousy is the basest of emotions,” Asai stated, almost smug.

Ghost

“What about anger?” Jacin wanted to know. “What about betrayal?” He stepped in again, but Asai didn’t back away this time. “What do you believe of the Jin, Beishin? What do you believe at all? You speak to me of the gods and their laws, and yet you thwart them by hiding a ‘pitiable wretched animal’, teaching him to fight, to kill. You tell me the withering of Jin magic is what keeps the Ancestors shrieking in my head, yet you entertain judges and prefects and lords in your home, men who steal that very magic, and yet here I sit— your weapon—idle and watching you leer at the wife of a man who would happily bleed my brother dry. You seduce her by maligning me and my people, and yet you still want me to believe that whatever plan you have for me will save the people you speak of as foolish dupes who would be best got off the world.”

“Your belief is not entirely necessary,” Asai said softly. “But it would be… beneficial.”

This time, he couldn’t help it: Jacin’s hands came out from behind his back and shoved Asai into the wall. Surprise flushed Asai’s face, made those dark eyes go wide as Jacin stepped in close again.

“You would dare—”

“I would dare so much more than this, Beishin.” Scornful, or as close to it as Jacin could come. “I would dare to demand to know what it is you want with me, what you’ve seen, why you’ve risked so much, invested so much to make me believe, if my belief is unnecessary.” He leaned in until he was directly in Asai’s face, Asai forced to strain his neck back so he could keep Jacin’s gaze. The thought of sliding out one of his knives, waving it threateningly, came fleetingly to mind, but only fleetingly. Even with all of the fury and hurt writhing inside him, Jacin couldn’t bring himself to actually threaten the life of his beishin. It did not mean, however, that he had to let Asai know it. He blanked his face into nothing but hostile lines, let his gaze go dangerous. “What is my purpose, Beishin?”

Asai was silent for long moments, eyes narrow and intense, trying to see inside, perhaps, or trying to see at all. “Your purpose,” he said slowly, “is to be that which I have foreseen for you. My purpose is to save your people—
yours is to trust. If you cannot….” He paused, raised an eyebrow, supercilious, despite their positions. “If you cannot, then your purpose is lost and you will fail. Fail your brother, fail your mother, and the Jin as a whole.”

Asai’s head tilted to the side, curious. “How difficult would it be, do you think, my angry little Ghost, to keep your mind your own, should you fail so spectacularly? Can you accept the responsibility for the horrible fates of those you love when you yourself allow that failure?”

“Stop it,” Jacin hissed through his teeth. “You will not manipulate me so easily, not anymore. You won’t use me to—”

“To save those you love?” Asai shook his head. Despite himself, the disappointment in his beishin’s eyes cut Jacin right to the heart. “To save me?”

It made Jacin suck in a sharp breath, too telling, but he couldn’t help it.

Asai was nodding now. “Ah, my boy, my own, I would not have burdened you with it, but… I understand your anger and your doubt. I had merely hoped….” He paused, gaze going sad and slipping away from Jacin’s.

Asai sighed. “I had hoped that you might trust me enough, dare I think… love me enough, to keep your faith, your belief.” His eyes drifted back to Jacin’s, real sorrow in their dark depths, and that same disappointment that cut Jacin in an entirely different way this time. Asai’s hand came up and stroked Jacin’s cheek gently where he’d slapped it before. “To touch the Untouchable. Love the unlovable. None would dare love the Ghost, but I am… weak.” He hesitated then shut his eyes, leaned in. “You think I scorn what you would give.”

Damn it, there were tears crowding Jacin’s eyes, blurring his vision. He had no answer, or at least not one he could give without choking. And what did it matter?—Asai knew.

“Never,” Asai whispered, fingers gliding up, pushing messy tangles from out of Jacin’s eyes. “You cannot know how difficult….” His hand fisted, and he jerked it away, shutting his eyes. “I would not have what you would give from gratitude, Jacin.”

Jacin. Jacin. Had Asai ever called him that before?

Stunned, every emotion that had been boiling in his chest all night now turned on its head. Jacin was lost—completely and utterly—without the anger to hold, couldn’t even remember what had driven him from Asai’s house hours ago, fury so tight in his throat his breath had almost whistled through it.

“Not….” Jacin shook his head, dazed, took hold of Asai’s hand and pressed it to his cheek. “It was never… no, Beishin.”

Without thinking, without allowing a single thing to rise to the front of his mind, Jacin leaned in, slow and careful. Asai watched him all the way, let him, and when Jacin’s mouth hovered only a breath from his beishin’s, Asai tipped in.

It was… Jacin had no words. Words wouldn’t do. It just was. So long wanting it, so long wishing for it. Desire spiraled up, took him, slid through every bit of reason and knowledge and throttled it.

Ghost

Asai’s mouth was softer than Jacin had thought it would be, moist and full and responsive—not at all the stern thing that reminded Jacin constantly of his imperfections, not the laughing thing that curled up in mild, disenchanted disdain when Jacin failed a task to which he’d been set. Giving, willing, a sharpness of fervency about its edges.

Sensation was a live thing, curling over Jacin’s skin, stirring it to sentience, waking an urgency he’d kept throttled down deep because he’d had no choice. Now, Asai’s warm hands were cupping Jacin’s face, fingers sliding into the wispy hairs at his temples, thumbs stroking over his cheekbones as Asai’s mouth took his. Receiving Jacin’s clumsy enthusiasm and guiding it into breathless passion. Taking awkward jerks and tugs and sliding them languid.

Real. All of it, real. All this time, all that want and longing, and now….

Had Asai wanted too? Had he refused Jacin because he’d thought offered love mere indebted gratitude?

Jacin almost laughed, giddy and dizzy with lust. A seer, and Asai couldn’t see this?

He pressed in, the lines of his body fitting easily against Asai’s, the deep-down awesome joy of finally having what he wanted in his grasp overriding any doubt or anger that had brought him to it. Asai was hard against Jacin’s hip, panting against his mouth. Boldly, Jacin rocked into him, almost came in his trousers when Asai gasped in response.

“Jacin,” Asai breathed, then he pulled away, but allowed Jacin to draw him back again with a trail of kisses down his throat, then another, deeper and more insistent, to his mouth.

Fuck, Asai smelled of… jasmine, like he always did, and clean linen and a little bit of wine, but over it all, her perfume had oozed into his clothes, her scent had bled all over him. Jacin wanted to wipe it out, obliterate it, smear himself all over Asai and lay his own scent over him, make him—

“Jacin.” A push this time, firm and purposeful. Asai’s hands had gripped Jacin’s shoulders, holding him away. Save him, but Asai was beautiful like this, flushed skin and gaze a little vague and burning, lips red and damp and wantonly plumped. Even as Jacin stared at them, Asai pulled them into a thin line, shaking his head. “My boy… we cannot… I cannot.” He caught Jacin before he could push himself back in, firmed his grip on Jacin’s shoulders and shook his head again. “Everything we have worked for, everything I have seen—I cannot risk it all, not even for you.”

Jacin could have cried. In fact, he just might. His chest had gone tight again, and there was an aching burn behind his brow. “There is no risk,” he

protested, almost frantic. “I will do whatever you want, everything you want, you don’t have to—”

“Then this is payment?” Asai asked quietly.

Jacin hadn’t seen the neat lines of the trap, not until he’d barreled right into them. “That isn’t… no, Asai, you don’t understand. It’s nothing to do with—”

“My boy,” Asai put in gently as he slipped his hand to Jacin’s cheek again, stroked it. “My Ghost, my gentle mercenary. If we do this, we place all at risk. We will both fail in the things we want, but this failure will be mine.”

He shook his head, leaned in, and laid a gentle kiss to Jacin’s brow. “I would not be your brother’s doom.” A pause, and he peered at Jacin, soft and sad.

“Would you?”

Unfair. Un-fucking- fair.

“No, but—”

“If you love me, you must trust me.” Asai’s voice was soft, kind, and beseeching. He pressed himself forward again, the surprise and the overwhelming need making Jacin gasp. “You see now that you are not alone in your… wish. It has been no easy thing to bury my desire all these years, but bury it I must, and you must.” Asai’s fingers tightened yet more on Jacin’s shoulders, dug into tendon and muscle. “Jacin, I cannot tell you what you wish to know. The future is a chancy thing, and sometimes, the mere speaking of it can change it in ways I cannot allow. If I were to tell you right now that I foresaw you skulking down to the kitchen tonight to filch a biscuit, would you still do it? Or would you refuse, merely to assert your control over your own actions? Or would I have indeed planted the idea by voicing the prediction, and thus have altered the future myself by my carelessness?”

There was sense in there somewhere, Jacin knew there was, but he couldn’t quite follow it, not now, and he didn’t want to see it. He shook his head. “If you told me what I must do, I would do it. My future is what you make of it.”

“So, I should either risk the future and our goals, along with your mother and your brother, or I should command you to love me—to make love to me—because you would do it, if I said you must.”

“No! That isn’t what I meant, you’re twisting—”

“Jacin-rei.” Stern now, the voice of Beishin, hard and unyielding, where Asai’s had been sad and tender only a second ago. Resolute, Asai pushed Jacin back, shook him a little. “Would you be the doom of your brother?

Would you fail your mother?”

Ghost

Jacin shook his head, the tears burning hotter now, crowding his eyes.

“No, I—”

“And do you trust me, Jacin-rei? Do you believe?”

Jacin didn’t want to answer, because he knew exactly where this was going, knew exactly what answer he had to give and the request that would follow it.

“Yes,” Jacin whispered. Because he was Beishin. And Jacin believed.

Most of the time. Sometimes. Fuck, he just didn’t know anymore.

Asai nodded, sucking in a long, shaky breath. “Then trust me in this, Jacin-rei: we cannot do this. It is not for us. At least… not now.”

Jacin was going to cry. He was going to start leaking all these humiliating tears that were cramming against the backs of his eyes, and then it wouldn’t matter, because Asai wouldn’t want a simpering weakling anyway. Control.

Control. But, damn it, he’d had it, right in his hands, Asai wanted him, perhaps had wanted him as long as Jacin had wanted back, and none of this was bloody fair.

“Tell me where you went tonight, Jacin-rei. I must know if there is even a small chance someone saw you.”

“No one saw me,” Jacin whispered. Head down, staring at the floor, unable to bring his gaze up to Asai’s, not wanting to fall into the dark depths of them again, because he could drown in there, and Asai wouldn’t save him.

“I went to the camp. I went to see them.”

“Did you?” Asai sighed. “And…?”

“And….” Jacin shrugged, turned, and walked slowly over to his bed, sank down and propped his elbows to his knees, head hanging. “And I didn’t let them see me.”

He’d stood outside the house that was once his home, and watched the people who were once his family carry on without him. Like he really was a ghost, hovering at their edges. Strange, how he’d not ever quite considered that before, that their lives would go on, unaware of the shadows standing out in the chill early winter, watching. His father, with his hard views soured further; his mother, gentle and half-mad, but still smiling; Morin tormenting little Caidi, but with more good-natured teasing inside it than Jacin had ever seen; and Joori….

Joori, who wasn’t a half of anyone, but his own man, now. Grown strong and assertive, the head of the household in truth, if not in name. The mirror image of Jacin himself, but somehow more substantial, more real, more…

there. Lounging in their sleeping room, too early for bed, but apparently the

end of a long day, because Joori had looked tired, but content, with a book on his lap—old and yellowed, its pages almost disintegrating in his careful, callused hands—reading quietly as the others gathered in the kitchen. No empty mat beside him, waiting, nor one curled up against the wall, out of the way. Not a twin anymore, his own man, whole and complete, his Self intact, and certainly not missing another half.

“I didn’t let them see me,” Jacin repeated, softly and to the floor. “I thought it best.”

Asai sighed again, paced over to Jacin’s side, and laid a hand to his shoulder. “It is best you don’t see them at all, Jacin-rei.” A squeeze. “This too, you must trust.”

Jacin nodded automatically, but he couldn’t help the frown, the slight tilt of his head. “Does he never write to me, Beishin?” he asked quietly.

Silence, thick and heavy for a while, then Asai’s hand slipped away from Jacin’s shoulder, and he stepped over to the window, peered out. “Do you believe, Jacin-rei, that I would not give them to you, if he did?”

Sometimes, Jacin almost said, but he’d already humiliated himself enough tonight. Instead, he shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll be going back.” Because it had hurt far more than he’d thought it would. Hurt even more because he hadn’t once been tempted to reveal himself, even when his mother had sensed him, spoken to him, hidden inside his shadows.

Asai merely nodded, turned from the window, and walked to the door.

“Then I shall not need to ask for the amulet back,” he said. He laid a hand to the doorknob and paused. “Jacin-rei—”

“I will be what you want, Beishin,” Jacin cut in, because it was true, and he meant it, but mostly because he really didn’t want to hear whatever sympathetic platitudes Asai might offer in an attempt to placate the lovesick Ghost. “I will be ready.”

Asai merely nodded then let himself through the door without looking back.

Jacin sat there for a long time, staring at the floor, thinking of very little, just letting the sadness take him, dwelling inside it one last time, because it was the last time he intended to let it through. Asai was right, in this, at least: it was weakness. All of it. The profound, soul-killing futility of it all. It made him a pawn, a biddable puppet, willing to sell his soul to the first person who answered to the simpering little fool who crouched down at the bottom of his heart. Selling himself into slavery for a kind touch, selling his own fate for an obsessive love that would never be anyway.

Ghost

He was done with it. Done with sentiment, done with bloody Asai and his deep-dark eyes, done with pining like an idiot, because it fucking hurt, and almost having it hurt even more, and he was just… just done. Perhaps Asai really did love him, and perhaps he’d just told Jacin the things he thought his Untouchable wanted to hear, the things that would make him stay—and oh, yes, Jacin had buckled to that quite quickly, hadn’t he?—the things that would keep him Asai’s Ghost, his obedient Catalyst. It didn’t matter. Spurned, no matter which way he looked at it, because even if Asai loved him, he didn’t love him enough.

All right, then. Better that he knew. This, he knew what to do with.

Save his brother, save his mother, all by saving the Jin, if he could. He would use Asai as Asai was using him, and in the end, he would walk away with his sanity and the safety of his family. Not a bad trade for his heart.

He would be ready. Whether he believed in Asai or not, he would be ready, and he would take the chance when it came. If it happened to coincide with Asai’s purpose for him, all well and good. Perhaps he was a pawn, but he was a pawn with a mind and a will of his own, and he’d allow himself to be used, but only if it suited his ends, as well.

“You’re not perfect, Beishin,” he whispered.

A perfect man didn’t need to invest and risk so much to get a Ghost to kill for him, no matter the stakes. And a perfect man certainly wouldn’t love, or even lust after one. Funny, how that was only just now occurring to him.

Jacin sucked in a long breath, then blew it out slowly. Nodded.

He didn’t take his frustrations to bed with him, didn’t build fantasies out of them featuring dark eyes and a handsome face with a shark’s smile split across it, didn’t build it all up beneath his own hand and drag relief from inside the tension. Instead, he belted his long knives around his hips, padded down to the exercise room in the dark, and curled his body through his forms, one after another, dredged up the ghost of Dani and his handsome grin and sparred with it.

Perfection Beishin wanted, perfection Beishin would get.

And once Jacin’s family was safe….

Beishin could go fuck himself.

Storm-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf

SAMIN couldn’t help it—he stared at Fen when he sat down at the table in the common room, just as Fen had done every morning at breakfast for the past week. And just like every other morning for the past week, Fen was fully dressed, his hair was braided neat and straight, and his face was… completely blank. No soft, private little smile, no soppy love-struck gaze, no quiet sighs as he dished out his rice. Fen greeted Samin and the girls with his usual silent nod and poured his tea, only giving the slightest of second glances to the new green streaks in Shig’s hair to go with the red and blue.

Huh. He didn’t seem like he was absurdly smitten, nor had he apparently needed to be peeled off Malick, and in fact seemed fully able to function without him. And Samin knew they’d been at it last night. The walls weren’t thin but they weren’t soundproof, either, and Fen’s room was right next to his….

Interesting. Maybe Samin had been wrong. Because if ever there was a man ready to shatter, it was Fen as he’d been last night on the roof, and Samin had been sure that what Fen and Malick had been up to after would push Fen further along. Instead, he was just as prickly and borderline hostile as he’d ever been—his own version of normal. Samin had to wonder, though, if Fen had yet seen those very distinctive marks on his neck just beneath his ear, and if he had, whether Malick wasn’t up yet because Fen had killed him for them.

“How’s the leg?” Samin ventured casually, watching with careful observation the tiny pause in motion as Fen reached for a slice of bread.

But Fen only shifted a small shrug, answered, “It’s fine.” He dribbled some honey onto the bread then reached for his tea and said, “Thank you,”

like he’d almost forgotten to add it.

“What’s wrong with your leg?” Shig wanted to know.

Fen shot a quick glance across the table, opened his mouth like he might actually answer, but then merely shook his head and took a sip of tea.

Ghost

“A nasty slice to his thigh last night,” Samin answered for him, still watching Fen, but all Fen did was tighten his mouth a little. Samin wondered what Fen would do if he told the girls exactly how nasty the slice was and exactly how nasty the circumstances under which Fen had gotten it had been, but he wasn’t going to. It seemed a private thing, something to which Samin himself shouldn’t have been witness, and since it was sheer accident of circumstance that he had been, he kept that bit to himself. “Umeia sewed him up,” was all he said. Let the girls assume what they wanted. There’d been plenty of opportunity last night for nasty slices, after all.

“‘Sewed him up’?” Yori blinked between Fen and Samin, eyebrows raised. “How many stitches?”

Fen’s hand about the teabowl tightened. “I wasn’t counting.”

“Well, how bad is it?” Yori’s tone was somewhere between anger and concern. She turned her glance to Samin. “Will it take him out if we get a job?” And then back to Fen. “You didn’t look like you were limping.”

He hadn’t, now that Samin thought about it. Which was certainly odd, considering the length and depth of that cut. “I expect,” said Samin, snatching up a couple of dumplings before Shig got them all, “that we’ll figure that out if and when we get a job.”

“It won’t.” Fen’s tone was cool and hard.

“Did it happen at Sonji-onna’s?” Yori pressed.

Again, Samin turned his glance to watch Fen, real interest in how he’d answer. If he’d answer. There were still things about Fen that were unpredictable, and downright incomprehensible—take last night, for a good example—but Samin liked to think he’d gotten rather adept at interpreting him.

As Samin had rather thought, Fen simply chose not to answer, just kept sipping his tea, eyes on the table, completely uncaring that the expectant silence that fell around him grew more sticky and heavy with each passing second. He hadn’t touched his breakfast yet, and it didn’t look like he was going to, which was telling in itself: breaking routine, on edge still, and trying not to be. Not the backlash Samin had expected after Malick finally got his way, but… Fen too obviously wasn’t all right, either.

“What happened at Sonji-onna’s?”

Shig’s soft voice was slightly accusing, miffed. It broke some of the tension that had built itself into the silence, loosened something in Samin’s chest that had wound up with it. Samin tucked his snort back into his throat and sank his teeth into his grilled fish.

“She gave us a name,” Fen replied. Yori and Shig were obviously waiting for him to go on, but Fen didn’t seem to notice, just kept sipping at his tea and staring at the table.

“And…?” Yori demanded.

Fen peered at Yori over the rim of his bowl and raised his eyebrows.

“And I’m going to kill him.” Like it was completely obvious and he couldn’t understand why she’d even asked the question.

Shig’s fist pounding into the tabletop made them all jump a little. “You don’t get to do this one by yourself too!” She looked at Samin, appealing.

“It’s not fair.”

Samin gave her what he hoped was a soothing smile, still trying to choke back the snort as he turned his gaze to Fen. “Shig was a little… unhappy that—”

“Pissed,” Shig interjected, frowning at Fen with a sharp nod. “I was pissed.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Yori growled and made a great show of noisily slapping a helping of seasoned kelp into her bowl. “Shig, honestly, if I have to hear this one more time—”

“It isn’t my fault you always listen when I talk,” Shig snapped back. “All you have to do is not listen. I hardly ever listen to you.”

“Yeah, like when I tell you to stop bloody moaning about last night before my head explodes.”

Samin had to clear his throat this time but he managed to give Shig a nod in acknowledgement, and was quite proud of himself for not laughing outright at Fen’s expression of utter bewilderment. “Shig was pissed that you and Malick went off without her last night,” he told Fen with all tact and courtesy.

“The thing at Pon’s was a fluke,” Shig put in, earnest green gaze centered on Fen. “I usually do a lot more than that, but they were all charmed, which never happens, and they were full-Blood charms, so I couldn’t—”

“You don’t need to justify yourself,” Yori chided her sister. “Fen knows all that. Don’t you, Fen?”

She pointed an expectant, meaningful look at Fen, who was still staring between the two sisters with his bowl of tea poised at his mouth, almost frozen. Honestly, Samin was going to burst something important if he couldn’t let the chuckles loose pretty soon.

“I wasn’t justifying myself,” Shig groused irritably, “I was just explaining to Fen that last night—”

Ghost

“That last night was unusual, and you’ll be sure to impress him next time?” Yori’s voice and expression had both turned sweet, which would normally be unnerving, but right now was just fucking hilarious. “Honestly, Shig, get in line behind Malick, why don’t you. I won’t be able to stand watching the both of you preening like slutty cats.”

Shig mimicked her sister’s sugary smile, all teeth and dimples and wide, blinking eyes. “You mean like you do with Umeia?”

“I don’t want to sleep with Umeia,” Yori retorted.

“I don’t want to sleep with Fen, either!” Shig turned to Fen, sweetly earnest. “I would, you’re very cute, but you’re very noisy, too, and Malick sort of called dibs, so it’s only fair.” She paused, eyebrows lifting. “Unless you really want to? You don’t want to, right?”

Fen’s mouth had dropped open, gaze blank and a little dazed as he peered back at Shig. His lack of an answer didn’t seem to have anything to do with surliness this time—it looked like he was just plain scunnered. It was pretty fucking funny, in a painful sort of way. The socially clumsy not quite propositioning the socially useless.

“Ha!” Yori still wore that scary smile, but now her eyes had gone a bit narrow. “Even Fen’s not that clueless. You keep looking at him like you want to sprinkle him with honey and tuck in. Like we can’t tell exactly what you—

”

“And you, sister dear,” Shig cut in, “have got sex-on-the-brain so bad you think everyone else’s mind is right down in the gutter with yours. Why don’t you just go down and buy one of the boys tonight and give us all a rest?

Umeia will be happy to find you one who doesn’t mind getting topped by a woman.”

Yori’s face turned pink and her eyes took on a malicious glitter. She kept the syrupy smile as she opened her mouth to retort—something vicious and cutting, no doubt; the sisters could really go at it sometimes. Samin was denied the spectacle, because it all seemed too much for Fen—he jerked up from his chair and set his tea carefully on the table.

“I beg your pardon,” he told Shig with a pointed bow of his head. “It was not my intention to…” He frowned, searching. “…to exclude you.”

“Exclude who from what?” Malick wanted to know, sauntering into the common room with a bright grin and far too much satisfaction behind his eyes. His gaze lit immediately on Fen, and his grin grew wider as he leaned his shoulder into the wall, all lazy good humor. “G’ morning everyone.”

“Mal, you’re up!” Yori blurted, face going brighter, likely wondering exactly how much of that last exchange Malick had heard, and hoping for none of it.

“Yeah, and not in a fun way.” Malick’s tone had dipped slightly accusing as he stared at Fen, probably put out he hadn’t gotten a morning cuddle or another go. He slipped a mollifying wink at Yori as he ambled up beside Fen and threw an arm over his shoulders. “Sleep well?” he asked with a knowing half smirk. Clearly possessive. Clearly an announcement— mine.

It only took a half a second for Fen to shrug Malick’s arm off. Samin had no idea why he was so pleased to see the familiar little snarl, but he was. It had no effect on Malick, and if it did, it wasn’t the one Samin was sure Fen intended: Malick merely grinned wider, swung his arm back up, and held on tighter this time.

Fen growled and jammed his elbow into Malick’s ribs hard enough to make him puff a sharp little gasp and let go. “What are we, boyfriends now?”

Fen snapped.

“Ooh!” Shig clapped her hands with a happy grin. “Are you?”

Samin’s eyebrows shot up, and those snorts he’d been trying to hold back before redoubled to nearly choke him.

“No!” Fen barked then muttered something irritable about “fucking dibs!”

under his breath.

“Where’d you get that bruise?” Shig asked Malick.

Samin hadn’t noticed it before she’d said it, but now that he did—ow. Just about Fen’s-knuckles-sized. Samin’s mouth twisted a little, and he shot a sideways glance at Shig. Her smile was sly, so Samin figured she knew where Malick had got the bruise just as well as he did.

Predictably, “Fen clocked me,” Malick answered cheerfully enough, then he reached out and mussed at the already mussed fringe hanging over Fen’s eyes.

Just as predictably, Fen’s jaw locked tight and he knocked Malick’s hand away. “Leave off, or I’ll match it on the other side for you.”

Oh, yeah, Samin didn’t say with the proper amount of sarcasm, that’ll teach him.

Naturally, Malick didn’t seem the least put out or surprised. Because he was Malick. But he did chuckle as he rubbed at his jaw and politely refrained from mauling Fen at the table. Instead, he dipped his head in acceptance and gestured to Fen’s chair. “Sit back down, would you, please? We should fill them all in on the job tonight.”

Ghost

Fen glared, mouth tightening and ticcing, but he stopped the snarling, seemed to think about the request for a long moment, then did as Malick had asked. Sullenly. Wound up tighter than he’d been before. Obviously not reacting the way Samin had been sure he would after Malick finally had him, but this… was no less troublesome. Mostly because Samin didn’t know what to make of it. Malick was the one who was acting all handsy and chipper, and Fen was the one who seemed like he’d got what he wanted and was done now, thank you. It was really quite funny, when Samin thought about it, and with two different people, he might’ve gotten enough entertainment out of the ludicrous situation to last him for months. Except there was a new tension about Fen that Samin didn’t like at all, a strange knowing light in Malick’s eyes, and a curious patience that Samin had never seen before.

“Another job?” Yori asked. “Tonight?” She was frowning at Malick as he took his seat between her and Shig, right across from Fen. “We’ve never had two in a week.”

“Then this will be new,” Malick answered as he helped himself to fish and bread and casually planted an oblate beside Fen’s bowl. “You didn’t tell them, Fen?” He said it with an innocuous lift of his eyebrows that didn’t even convince Shig. And then he merely shrugged and snapped up the last dumpling. It took a moment, but Fen eventually, slowly, took the oblate and began working at its rind. Malick didn’t even look smug. “It should be fairly easy. It’s a personal commission. Your bonuses will be coming from the House till, not the Mage. We’re going to get Fen’s brothers and sister and bring them back here.” As though it hadn’t been a bolt from the blue, Malick turned his glance to Yori. “Is there anything that could pass for furniture in that room next to yours? We’ll need someplace to put them.”

Samin likely looked as shocked as the girls did, and he’d been there last night, he’d heard Fen’s question about the refugees. Yet still, he somehow hadn’t even considered this.

“Is this another snatch from one of the camps?” Not that Samin objected, but they were risky, and Malick and Shig both had to use a lot of magic to pull the last one off. And with the hunters always watching, using magic, no matter how skilled one was, it was always dangerous. Samin should know.

Somehow, though it made every bit of sense when he thought about it, Samin was still surprised when Fen was the one to answer.

“No,” he said quietly, eyes on his fingers as he slowly peeled his oblate.

“They’re… elsewhere. And they don’t need to be ‘snatched’, only….” He trailed off, frowning at the sticky, ruby fruit in his hands.

“Rescued,” Malick put in, tone weirdly gentle, and eyes….

Oh, save the bloody idiot, he was completely gone. Samin only just kept himself from groaning in near-despair. How had he gotten it all so completely backward? This was so much worse than how he’d thought it was going to go.

How, after all, did Malick ever expect someone like Fen to deal with something as chancy and incomprehensible as another’s heart? Samin had thought before that it could all go horribly wrong. He’d had no idea.

That was it—Samin was done. He just wasn’t smart enough for this, and guessing was making his brain all hurty. They were both grown men, after all, though granted, they were both ‘off’ in too many ways for anything at all between them to be anything like healthy or safe. But Samin was done with it.

If Fen ended up crazy—crazi er—and Malick ended up gutted, well, then…

Samin would just have to keep himself and the girls out of collateral-damage range.

Maybe it was time for him to cultivate a handy drinking problem.

“Rescued,” Fen echoed softly, laying the oblate on the table next to his untouched breakfast. “Yes. Thank you.” He sucked in a long breath and twitched his shoulders straight. “If you’ve a map, I can show you where. It won’t take long. Though we might need….” He shot a quick glance at Malick and then let his gaze settle on Shig. “I thought… if you….” It was like he was having a hard time coming up with the words. With a frustrated sigh and a clench of his teeth, Fen shook his head and tried again. “I’d like to buy a small dray. My….” His eyes flicked to every one of them, gauging. “My sister…

she’s only little. The walk might be difficult for her.” He looked at Shig again.

“Will you help?”

Shig actually beamed. “Of course!” she caroled happily with a smug look at Malick. “After breakfast, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Fen agreed, his voice very nearly a hoarse whisper as he flushed a little and went back to mangling his oblate. “Thank you.”

Making amends for having “excluded” Shig last night?

Damn it, all of it, it was just too… too touching. Why did almost everything wrung from this man’s mouth have to poke at Samin’s soft spots?

And now there was a little sister. Apparently, a little little sister.

Oh, just fuck it. Fuck it all. Samin was already neck-deep in sop; he might as well go under with the rest of them.

He cleared his throat. “No worries, if you can’t find one,” he said gruffly.

“We’ll take your sister pig-a-back if we have to.”

“No!” Shig’s scowl was a mix of offense and petulance. “I want to go buy a dray with Fen.”

Ghost

Malick snorted, nearly choking on a chunk of fish as he shook his head.

“Yer killin’ me, Shig.”

“Yeah?” That made Shig brighten up a little. “Can I have your room, then?”

ASAI stood on the porch overlooking the pond, fingers idly combing the thick fur between the ken-ken’s ears, and watched the storm gather. The month’s turning hardly lived up to its name in obvious terms, but metaphorically….

The news of Pon had not been unexpected, but was still disturbing. The news of his Lady-whore was… well, Asai had mixed feelings about that one.

He had foreseen Pon in time to give warning, but the idiot had delayed to pack, of all things, so he rather deserved his fate. Sonji-onna he hadn’t foreseen at all, and considering the news of the fire that had leveled half of her house to cinder and the charred bones found within, he rather thought he knew why. Between the blank spot of Jacin-rei and Pon’s impulsive, unthinking nature—what the hell had he thought he was doing, hiding the full-Blood there, of all places?—last night had been little more than a blur of faces and possibilities in Asai’s sight. Neither of the two were any great loss, Sonji-onna least of all, but Pon’s lack might complicate things in the Courts. Asai would have to find another go-between to Yakuli. Not terribly difficult, there were plenty to choose from, but still disappointing. He’d spent a lot of years cultivating Pon. All of his time and work wasted now, and all for Sonji’s slut.

His fault. He saw that now. He should have set Jacin-rei loose sooner, should have pointed all the wrath Asai had carefully cultivated in him at those variables whose idiocy was now carving shapes in Fate’s construct that could very well ripple to the core, if he didn’t step in. Now, he could only see the aftermath of the boy’s course, and though most of those Jacin-rei had executed thus far had been those to whom Asai would have eventually directed him anyway, some had still been unexpected. And the veil obscuring every individual fated to intersect with his Ghost was… damned annoying. A very good sign, but altogether too early in the game.

Faint flashes of lightning flickered in the distant clouds, the faces of the suns still burning through the gathering gloom and dulling the brewing storm’s threatening brilliance. The ken-ken piped a little whine in its throat, leaned harder into Asai’s leg. Asai merely sighed and turned his absent scratching into long, soothing strokes.

“Only a storm,” he told the dog with a gentle pat. “Nothing so tumultuous as what might be coming in its wake.” A bleak little chuckle whiffled from his throat, and he shook his head. Too many possibilities, too many opportunities for everything to go wrong. Too many futures ran somewhat parallel to the right one, but only one course would set it firm, and now the timing had been thrown into disarray.

He’d needed Jacin-rei to find him the Temshiel, and it appeared Jacin-rei had done so, but Asai had counted on having control over the boy when it happened, guiding him to the right conclusions, channeling his rage onto the paths for the proper outcome. No magic—not even Temshiel magic—could touch an Untouchable, but Jacin-rei was still susceptible to influence, Asai had built him that way, but he’d built him to be susceptible to Asai’s influence, damn it. And Asai absolutely could not, no matter how he railed and bashed himself against it, penetrate even a little bit the veil that had been cast over the Untouchable and those that intersected his future. He’d expected it eventually, but not yet, damn it—later, when the future was set irrevocably, when Asai could merely sit back and watch all his work come to glorious reality. Now, the only thing keeping Asai from tearing through the city to find his disobedient Ghost was the blank spot where the brother should be.

Another mistake. He’d wavered on the brother from year to year, month to month, sometimes even day to day, and he was only just now able to see how it should have gone. He should have had the midwife twist the boy’s neck fresh from his mother’s womb, like she’d done the year before. That future had been so clear, so easily seen: fated to save the brother he loved, the one he refused to call “Ghost,” and in the process, tear the fabric of the Balance into unforeseeable scraps, sever his people from their very source—

Asai couldn’t have that. And yet, that very love, and its answer in Jacin-rei’s core, was the only thing that could have provoked Jacin-rei onto the course Asai had set for him, the only thing that could have rooted the rage so deep, turned the need for vengeance into blind obedience. The mother wouldn’t have been enough, still wasn’t enough. Only vengeance in the brother’s name would turn the Ghost into Fate’s true Catalyst. A grievous sacrifice, to be sure—Asai truly didn’t like to see Jacin-rei hurt—but a necessary one, and now that the brother had gone from a set piece to a variable, the proper fate of the Jin had been neatly bisected into two murky possibilities, one of which Asai had thought he’d tidily stamped out in a muddy Jin camp more than twenty years ago when he’d bargained for a Ghost.

Damn the boy for his inconvenient rescue, damn him for his stubborn secrecy, and damn him, damn him, for taking vengeance into his own hands, slaughtering men whose fortunes had not yet been realized to Fate’s

Ghost
satisfaction. And damn him to the suns and back for finding the Temshiel before his course was irrevocable.

Thunder rumbled inside the bruises on the horizon, as if in answer to the anger growling in Asai’s own chest. The dog whimpered another complaint, and made several close orbits around Asai’s legs before settling again at his side, leaning its head to his knee. Vicious man-eater, indeed. Asai snorted.

Then sighed.

It wasn’t irretrievable, not yet. The right fate was still in futures-possible, and still brighter, clearer than the others. Asai hadn’t supposed Jacin-rei’s distrust of him could possibly work to his advantage, but it seemed as though it might still be a useful tool. He’d allowed the boy, after all, to bear witness to Asai’s stacking of the Courts, and with Jacin-rei’s trail of kills leading him directly to the heart of the nest, perhaps believing Asai had put them all there for different reasons would still lead to the same conclusion. Asai had manipulated the Courts with the intention of eventual exposure, eventual summary execution—cut off the head, and the body will follow—and the ultimate restructuring of the entire system, with the Jin finally moved to a bloody reclaiming of what had once been theirs. The outrage of the Adan alone at the discovery of what their lawmakers had been up to would cut any will for resistance in half. It was easy for a people to be complacent about the slaughter of the helpless until they weren’t so helpless anymore. The tide of Adan opinion would turn dramatically and quickly, and throw wide the path back to Jin dominance.

If the earth-bound died before standing witness to his Untouchable brother’s fall. If the brother’s resulting and fate-shattering paroxysm of grief and anger was stopped before it could take hold. If Jacin-rei led the Temshiel to Asai and helped him do what must be done to prevent it all. If it all happened in the proper order.

Asai’s mouth set tight. He hated the word “if.” And if he could just get Fate to realign itself into its proper shapes, he’d never have to employ it again.

Because he’d know.

Annoyed, he watched the darkening veil of the clouds put out the suns, watched the swell of lightning burble inside them, watched it all churn together into a threatening soup of mindless intensity. Storm-month had come, in all ways possible. All he could do was ride it out, rely on all the work he’d done to get here, and guide it all along as he could.

Find the brother—that was the first task. The younger two were inconsequential, but the twin was vital. Find him and perhaps even take him, allow Jacin-rei to know he’d taken him, and then… use him as leverage?

Asai paused, focused on the stratum of the building storm, let his gaze roam inward on the thread of this new possibility. Smiled. Yes. Find the brother, take his power out of the equation entirely, and watch Jacin-rei’s new

“purpose” fall apart, lead him to a new one by pulling all the boy’s hatred onto Asai himself. Bargain away the brother for the Temshiel, because if Asai had that, the brother’s fate would be nulled, his power inconvenient, at worst.

And when all was said and done—when the Jin took the rightful place Asai provided, when the Adan acknowledged Asai’s wisdom, and the gods smiled down on the Balance—Jacin-rei would see, would understand, and would lay his thanks and love at Asai’s feet. And this time, Asai would not refuse it.

In the meantime, the beishin would have to allow the apprentice’s hatred, cultivate it, poke and prod it, and hopefully avoid becoming a victim of his own weapon. The one unpredictable rub in the otherwise precise pattern of this future-possible. Eventual confrontation would be unavoidable, and too many risks fanned out from that one crux—Asai’s own lack of a future prominent among them. Asai might have taught his Ghost a little too well.

Still, he was not unskilled himself. And if he could avoid actually killing the brother while still preventing him from fulfilling his most obvious fate, turn him hostage to Jacin-rei’s failure to protect him, if he could show Jacin-rei the necessity of all the machinations….

Well, then.

Every lord needed his paladin, did he not? And paladins so often made the best lovers and companions. It was, after all, what Jacin-rei had been wanting for years.

The brother could have an “accident” afterward. Asai would not appreciate being compelled to share. And helping another through their grief forged such fascinating bonds with mortals. Asai should know. His Catalyst would never question him again. And gods on their moons, wouldn’t that be a nice change.

“Tea, Beishin?” Vonshi croaked from behind him.

Asai turned. Vonshi was smiling benignly at him from the frame of the sitting room doors. One bit of foresight that had played out exactly as he’d seen—Vonshi had been extraordinarily useful over the years, always seeming to know what Asai wanted and when. Vonshi had been mentor to the Ghost almost as much as Asai had been, and his help in maintaining the boy’s sanity so he could be used appropriately had been invaluable. The gods had indeed led Asai to Vonshi’s door that night after Wolf’s long sleep had ended.

With a nod and a pleasant smile at Vonshi, Asai pulled in a long breath through his nose, sucked the heavy, earthy scent of the coming storm deep

Ghost
into his lungs, and let all its possibilities flower through him. “Thank you, Vonshi. Tea would sit very well just now.” He gave the dog one last scritch between its ears. “I need to make arrangements for a trip into the city,” he said as he followed Vonshi into the sitting room, snapping his fingers to halt the dog when it made to follow him in, and curled himself gratefully into the cushions of the couch as he watched Vonshi pour his tea. “I shall stay at the estate in the Judicial District. I foresee many private meetings.”

“Yes, Beishin,” Vonshi said as he added honey to the tea and handed the bowl to Asai. “Will you be needing my services in the city, or shall I remain and look after the estate?”

Asai considered it. He didn’t foresee a need for Vonshi, and he didn’t allow Vonshi to eavesdrop as he’d done with Jacin-rei. No good could come of Vonshi knowing more than Asai wanted to tell him, at least none that Asai could see. And travel was getting more and more difficult for Vonshi, his ancient bones going rickety and arthritic. The coming weather couldn’t help.

Still, Jacin-rei’s absence over the past several weeks had left a hole Asai wouldn’t have believed before it had been placed right in front of him. He missed his Ghost. And he could use some company.

“Yes, please,” he told Vonshi, careful to curl his smile apologetic. “I’m certain your assistance will come useful. And your cooking has always been a favorite of Judge Taru’s. Be sure to take your papers from my desk before we leave—we won’t want to be caught at the Gate without them.”

Vonshi dipped his head. “Of course, seyh.”

“Perhaps we might even devise a few useless errands for your beishin, so you might have some time to yourself in the city.” His smile curled sly.

“Perhaps we might even find something for you to do in the Giroulein District.”

Vonshi coughed and dipped his head. So predictably prudish. It never failed to amuse Asai. He certainly hadn’t approved of Jacin-rei’s disappearances and indiscretions toward the end, but Vonshi’s reactions to them had been entertaining enough to take the sting out of them for Asai.

“I serve at your will, Beishin,” Vonshi murmured, mouth set into a thin line of disapproval, but head bowed in submission.

Vonshi might be a little more free with his arguments and disagreements than any other Jin chattel Asai had seen in the homes of his peers, but he at least didn’t doubt his beishin and had faith that everything Asai did would lead to the eventual restoration of his nation and its tribes. And would follow

Asai’s orders because of it. Exactly the right mix of pride and trust the Jin would need to reassert themselves and their magic in the world.

And then, Wolf would have to accept Asai into the Cycle. How could he not?—the savior of his favored people, and the means to the end of their long oppression.

Asai smiled, dipped his head to Vonshi in acknowledgment of the unspoken, and took a sip of his tea. “I know you do, Vonshi. And I endeavor always to make that service count toward our goals.”

“Yes, Beishin,” was all Vonshi said, then he bowed himself out of the room, sliding the double doors shut behind him.

Asai sat back, smile still curling at his mouth, mind turning over all possibilities once again, following the thread of each potential into its intricate weave, watching how it intertwined with another and another, until its ultimate pattern became… not clear, precisely, but at least visible. He sighed.

It would have to do.

Find the brother and Jacin-rei would follow. If Asai had done his work properly, where Jacin-rei went, the Temshiel would have no choice but to come along. And if Fate was at all kind, the Ghost would already hold the Temshiel tethered, and all else would simply fall into place. Asai could lay everything on either outcome, with no possibility of failure. Either way, he couldn’t lose.

Asai sipped his tea absently, gaze gone cloudy as he stared out, unseeing, at the gathering squall.

A trip into the city was the most logical course right now. A call on Yakuli first. Yakuli would know where the mother was, and since a good deal of the current splitting of fates was due to his arrogance and spectacularly bad timing, he owed Asai at least that much. What horrible irony to use the spirit-bound mother to find the earth-bound son, but it couldn’t be helped. Jacin-rei would never forgive Asai, if he found out. A risk, but a necessary one. Even Jin magic couldn’t see through a veil as strong as the one blanketing everything around Jacin-rei, but couple Jin magic with a spirit-bound who was Blood-kin, and it could gnaw about the edges perhaps, narrow things down somewhat. Anyway, it was the only place Asai had to start.

Find the brother, and the Catalyst would follow. Asai had built him to have no choice.

A blat of thunder stirred him out of his thoughts, and he shook off a bit of a shiver, finishing his tea.

Ghost

Time to pack. Time to set about fixing Jacin-rei’s transgressions, setting him back onto the proper course. And perhaps, if things went well, time to give to Jacin-rei the one thing Asai had denied him, now that it could only help and not hinder. He’d needed the boy uncertain and wanting before, and it had backfired almost disastrously. Now, there might be no better way to cleave him to Asai’s side and bind him inescapably to his fate.

A slow heat coiled in Asai’s loins at the thought, and his smile curled warm and fond. Despite everything, he was actually looking forward to seeing his rebellious Ghost again.

MALICK had wanted to impose himself on Shig and Fen’s little day-trip, but stopped himself when he realized that the urge came from not wanting to let Fen out of groping distance, rather than any protective instinct for one of his people. Shig was more than capable of covering them both. There was no need for Malick to insert himself. Anyway, Shig might actually kill him if he tried.

So Malick settled for directing them to a wainwright outside the Gates and instructing them to find a place to secrete whatever they bought until they picked it up on their way through, which would make the chore of getting them all past the Gates later a little less taxing. Malick was going to have to exert a lot of magic tonight, getting them all safely in and out of Asai’s lands without letting the bastard get a whiff of them, and the less Malick had to use before the actual hard part started, the better.

It had begun to storm by the time Fen had managed to force down a little rice and half an oblate—and he had forced it, Malick could tell. Nerves, most likely, and who could blame him? After all the weeks hiding his family, nearly buckling beneath all the stress Malick had seen for himself, and now they were just going to walk in, pick them up, and bring them back. It must all seem too easy, and Fen obviously didn’t trust “easy.” He also didn’t seem to entirely trust them yet, either, but that would be put to rest tonight.

There was an initial fuss over finding Fen a suitable cover from the rain—

Shig and Yori insisting, and Fen silently refusing; most likely because he didn’t have anything, and didn’t want the fact to interfere with his intended errand—until Malick inserted himself into the mild fray and settled it. One of Malick’s own lighter, oiled dusters, which Fen accepted with a reluctance that made Malick tighten his mouth in pique at first, until he saw Fen give it a surreptitious sniff as he dragged it on. Then Malick had to consciously prevent the soppy grin from winding onto his face. Because if Fen saw it, no

amount of womanly insistence would move him to wear the thing. And then he wouldn’t be haunted by Malick’s own scent all day.

It was just too precious.

He caught Fen alone in the hallway, waiting for Shig, and couldn’t help his hand reaching, though he managed to stop it in time before his fingers actually slipped down over Fen’s cheekbone like he’d intended. Fen’s reactions to touch were still chancy things, and silence should be his choice.

Malick had forgotten that before, because he’d missed the warmth beside him when he’d woken and somehow seeing Fen at the breakfast table had wiped out all intelligent thought from his head for a moment.

Fen noted Malick’s aborted reach, however, and he didn’t glare, but his mouth turned down in an unhappy curve. “Last night….” He paused, jaw tightening, and he shook his head. Frustrated. Wordless.

Malick’s eyebrow went up, and he couldn’t help the soft little grin. Last night was mind-blowing, he wanted to say. Staggering. Wondrous. And any other adjective that meant really fucking good, but settled for, “Last night was brilliant. You were brilliant.” Because Fen needed to be pushed and poked a little sometimes, or he’d just keep working on thickening up that ice again.

A light blush crept over Fen’s cheeks, and he looked away. “It changes nothing,” he said quietly.

Right. You keep telling yourself that.

Malick shifted a casual shrug. “All right.”

“I wanted it, and I figured you’d be good at it. That’s all.”

“All right,” Malick said again. He tilted his head, stifling a grin. “And was I?”

Because you were yowling like a cat for a little bit there, so I sort of assumed….

“You are not my responsibility.”

Um. Malick almost lost his hold on “smug.” Because that one was almost panicked. And just plain weird. “Right,” was all he could come up with.

Edging on surly now, Fen set his teeth tight. “It isn’t a beginning,” he insisted, trying to sound adamant and not quite getting there, like he was trying to convince himself, which only brought Malick’s smile back.

“It doesn’t have to be an anything, Fen,” Malick told him easily. “It can be whatever you want it to be.” Tell yourself anything that makes you feel better, just as long as you keep wanting it.

Ghost

“I know what you are.” Fen’s voice was… almost small, as close to tentative as Malick had ever heard it. He paused, peered at Malick sideways.

Expectant.

There wasn’t much Malick could answer to that. Fen was an intelligent man, and Malick had done a worse job of hiding what he was from Fen in the past several days than he’d done of hiding it from the others for years. And Fen had too obviously known the words of an ancient oath he had no business knowing before Umeia had even spoken it. Malick had to wonder just what Asai had been teaching the Untouchable.

Malick only shrugged. “All right,” he said again.

It seemed to confuse Fen. He frowned and tilted his head. “Why are you—?” He jumped a little when Shig bounced out into the hall and closed her door behind her.

“C’mon, then, Mal, my turn,” she chided.

Malick gave her a smirk and a roll of his eyes, leaning in toward Fen, but not too close. “Come see me after we get your brothers and sister settled in tonight, all right? We’ll talk.”

A quick glance from beneath thick lashes, and Fen jerked a nod, pulling Malick’s coat more firmly around his shoulders as he followed after Shig. He wasn’t limping, Malick noted. Or, rather, he refused to limp when Malick knew without a doubt that thigh had to be throbbing and painful; wounds like that were always worse the second day, damaged muscles tightening and stiffening up in self-defense. He’d have to get Umeia upstairs later and have her take a look to make sure it wasn’t swelling or reddening. Fen wouldn’t like it, but his acquiescence to Umeia’s commands was slightly less snarly than his mulish balking against Malick’s, and if Malick held Fen’s consent hostage to actually going through with tonight, Fen would give in and let her look. He’d have to. Then again, Malick would probably go through with tonight if Fen’s leg was actually falling off, so perhaps he’d best not threaten something on which he had no intention of following through. His reasons for wanting Fen’s family safe were obviously markedly different than Fen’s, but no less sincere.

And he really wanted to do this for Fen. He decided not to think about all the reasons why.

He shrugged it away, along with all of the other soft, squishy things that had been curling in his chest all morning. Concentration. There was still a job tonight to prepare for, and Malick had errands of his own today. He collected Samin on his way downstairs. Malick had no doubt that the name of his destination would pique Samin’s interest.

“‘The Rutting Stallion’? Seriously?” Samin’s expression was a cross between dubious and amused. “Why not just call it ‘The Thrusting Hips’ and be done with it?”

Malick grinned and dragged the hood of his waxed cloak up over his head as they stepped out into the rain. “I expect the former has a more vivid imagery to it and thus makes a man more willing to bring his purse along for the ride.”

Samin snorted. “And you haven’t got enough of that at home lately?”

“Your smart-assedness knows no bounds, does it, Samin?”

Samin was unrepentant. “It’s why you love me.” They walked in comfortable silence for a few blocks, then: “You think Madi will mind?”

Malick’s eyebrows snapped up. “Madi? Mind what?” When Samin only gave him a what d’you think? look, Malick shook his head in genuine bemusement. “Madi might miss the extra koin, Samin. That’s all.”

Samin rolled his eyes, said, “Uh-huh,” and then he changed the subject:

“So, what’s for us at The Rutting Stallion?”

The question was inevitable, and at least this one was expected, but Malick wasn’t prepared to answer it with words. He’d rather wait and let it explain itself. “Oh, you know, a drink for luck, a virgin sacrifice. Sorry, you’re the only one who qualifies.” Samin only rolled his eyes again at Malick’s grin. “Business,” Malick said.

“The Sonji-onna business or tonight’s business?”

Malick shrugged. It was rather seeming now that they were one and the same. “Bigger business.”

Samin went quiet for a moment, then: “Want to tell me the name?”

A real question, not a sarcastic prompt. Samin’s way of pledging loyalty.

There was no way to sugarcoat it, so Malick just said it bluntly: “Yakuli.”

Samin stopped in his tracks, stared. “Mal, that’s….” He trailed off, stunned and perhaps a little fearful, which was unusual for Samin. All the better that Malick had brought him along on this trip. They would all have to know what they were getting into eventually. “A bloody Councilor, Mal.”

“I know,” Malick said, shrugged something like an apology and started walking again. As far as Samin was right now concerned, it was as simple as closing in on the inner circles of the Judiciary itself. Taking out Yakuli could have repercussions that could turn them from the hunters to the hunted. Fen had already taken out a judge—there was no way these men would miss

Ghost
connecting the dots and it was only a matter of time before they started striking back with anything they had.

It was far more complex than that, of course. Malick wasn’t quite ready to tell Samin everything, but dragging him along today would at least fill him in on what he needed to know.

Samin took another few moments, but he followed Malick in due course.

He was quieter than was his usual wont. It could have been the weather, but Malick rather suspected Samin had other things on his mind. He didn’t ask.

Anyway, there would be a lot more on Samin’s mind when they were through at the Stallion, so they might as well get it all over with at once then.

A pleasant enough walk, normally, but with the rain growing heavier, and the storm brewing steadily, the trek to the seedier reaches of the Iron District seemed longer than it should have. The closeness of the air snagged at the stench of the ironworks and neighboring tanneries, mixed itself with the fishy-salt reek of the bay and combined to a pungent miasma of decay and acidic sulfur. The cobbles beneath their feet ran with a layer of swift-moving water and bits of garbage it had picked up along the way, prisms of oily dross floating on puddles like filthy little rainbows. This quarter would have a fresh, clean look to it, however temporary, when the storm was through with it, but right now, the flavor of it all was just plain depressing.

They were cold and soaked nearly through by the time they reached the Stallion. The blazing fire in the central hearth and the aromatic smells coming from the little grills scattered around the room like small constellations curled about them in a warm, thick welcome. Malick and Samin stomped through the doors and shed their cloaks with matching relief.

Trade was light right now, more clients coming in for the food—which was surprisingly good here—and a warm, dry spot, and perhaps a bit of flirtation and tame entertainment, rather than the other services for which the Stallion was better known. More sedate and bordering on respectable at this time of day, at least for this part of the city, but at night, the Stallion had Umeia’s House beat in the darker side of the trade. Anything a body wanted could be found here, if you knew whom to ask and phrased your questions carefully. And if you were willing to pay for it. Not a place Malick frequented unless he needed information not easily gotten elsewhere—some things even a hedonist didn’t want to know, or have to look at—but the service he needed right now couldn’t be found anywhere else.

“I need to see Xari,” Malick told the great big ogre at the bar, and he slid three koins across its rutted, sticky surface. “Tell her….” He paused, peered at Samin over his shoulder, thoughtful. Last chance to spare the rest of them

from what Malick thought was coming down. Somehow, he thought Samin would be fairly pissed if he knew Malick was even considering it. He turned back to the ugly, impatient mug of the man behind the bar. “Tell her the Eremite begs audience.”

A long, solid look from the man’s black eyes, but he didn’t ask any questions, merely slid the koins across the bar and pocketed them. Without so much as a nod or a “Wait here,” he made his way out from behind the bar and through a frayed, faded curtain in the western corner.

Malick turned around, propped his elbows on the bar, and leaned back, surveying the scene. Done up more in the old Jin style, the room was dark-lit, low tables set around the central hearth, patrons reclining on plump cushions on the floor, watching the various cooks grill their lunches through aromatic smoke. Some of them had obvious doxies for company, but most of them seemed to have come for the food. Several of the doujoun were scattered about, perhaps having just finished a shift, or on their way to one. An entire table of middle-aged women giggled and flirted loudly with their assigned cook, having apparently come in out of the rain for the dual purpose of treating their eyes as well as their stomachs—their cook was young and handsome, and apparently quite willing to flatter and play along for his tips as he grilled their shrimp and onions for them—as they got pleasantly, mildly squiffy in the early-afternoon anonymity of a whorehouse’s common room.

As though what went on here after dark existed in another world entirely and had nothing to do with their own.

A perfect place for banpair, Malick reflected, though he knew Xari hated the epithet. He wondered why more of them didn't think of places like this.

There was, after all, plenty of run-off angst and avarice to suck in and keep both need and appetite sated with no call whatsoever to go and hunt it down.

Or cause it yourself. It must be like having a feast served up every single night.

Samin was peering about himself as well, taking it all in, any curiosity he might have about their purpose here, or Malick’s cryptic request, apparently willing to wait for eventual explanation when Malick wanted to give it. That was why Malick liked Samin—opinionated as hell, and fairly vocal about it when he thought he ought to be, but willing, for the most part, to wait out a situation and see if Malick actually knew what he was doing before shouldering his way in because he suspected Malick didn’t. And even though Samin sometimes came to a very wrong conclusion when he disagreed with Malick, it was always out of loyalty and his own distinct brand of cantankerous love. Samin was the sort you could count on to put you out of your misery if you were too far gone to do it yourself. The only problem was,

Ghost
he couldn’t always tell, and he might cut your throat for you out of mercy just when you were sucking in your first curative breath.

The great big ogre-bartender-probable-bouncer reemerged from behind the curtain, jerked his head at Malick, then disappeared through a door to what Malick suspected was the stairway to the place’s rooms, but he’d never ventured that far into the bowels of this place, so he couldn’t be sure. Either way, Malick didn’t worry—he was safe here, and though he’d come armed, he had no concerns that he’d have to use anything more lethal when he left than a woeful lightening of his purse. Malick nodded to Samin to come along then made his way across the dim-lit room, pushed the curtain aside for Samin, and then followed him through.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. No light here but the ethereal glow of the small amber globe in the center of the table and the tiny sparks of three sticks of incense set to smoking fragrantly on the mantel of the cold fireplace beside it. Pine and sage—honoring Wolf today. Malick’s mouth curled up at the corners on a wry little smile. Of course she’d known he was coming. She always did.

Xari sat like a bony little spider at her table, painted reed screens at her back, the dim glimmer of her stone loaning soft radiance to her pinched, weathered face. Her long, gray hair was tucked back neatly in a bun at the nape of her neck, and folds of fringed silk were draped over her thin shoulders. She appeared swathed in black, what with the dark set of the room, but Malick knew those silks were as brilliant as Shig’s hair in the light. Xari liked color almost as much as she liked the dark; the room itself was swathed in it, enough to pain the eyes, when it was lit properly.

Dipping a creaky little bow of her head, Xari slithered something at them that might have been a smile, but with Xari, you could never quite tell—it could just as easily have been a grimace. “So, the Eremite’s pilgrimage has brought him thus once again,” she croaked. She puffed a wheezy little chuckle and waved a bony hand to the chairs set to either side of her. “You have brought a novice to my table, Wolf’s-own?” There was a mild chiding tone to her crow’s caw of a voice.

Malick felt more than saw Samin stiffen beside him, and had to flatten a smile. Samin probably didn’t think himself a “novice” at anything, but in some things, he was even more naïve than… actually, Malick didn’t know anyone who was entirely naïve, now that he thought about it. The heart of Ada was a difficult place to maintain any innocence.

“And who better to initiate a novice?” Malick asked with a smile meant to both charm and flatter.

It apparently did neither. Xari merely rolled her eyes and gestured again to the chairs, more impatiently this time.

Malick smothered a grin. He gave Samin a bit of a poke in the ribs, bowed his head respectfully, and then took a seat to Xari’s right. Samin didn’t seem to like it much, but he echoed Malick’s actions then took the place to her left.

Not without a sharp look at Malick that promised lots of questions and the expectation of answers when they were through here, which was fine with Malick.

“So, tell me, my fledgling, self-styled renegade.” Xari’s left hand waved in the air in front of Samin’s nose, a deck of cards fanning out from her previously empty palm. “What bit of advice can I give you to ignore this time?”

“I’ve not come for advice,” Malick told her, ignoring the chastisement because it was unwarranted and she knew it. “I’ve come for information.”

Xari snorted, shook her head, and began dealing her cards. “And what sort of information would an old woman such as I have that one of Wolf’s-own could not get for himself?”

Samin kept admirably still and watchful, though Malick could tell he was writhing with curiosity about just what the hell was going on. Malick put him out of his mind for now. One didn’t match wits with Xari with only half of them at his disposal.

“An answer as to what one of your kind would want with a Catalyst.”

He watched Xari purse her lips in annoyance, her crooked hands pausing only minutely in the dealing of her cards, but the almost unnoticeable reaction was more telling than she’d obviously like: her glamour slipped for half a breath. Malick didn’t see her without it often, but he knew well the smooth olive skin, the silky black hair.

“I know about Asai, Xari,” he said bluntly.

“You’ve known about him since the moment you came here,” she snapped, slapping two cards facedown with force enough to rock her little stone on its perch in the center of the table. “’Twas no secret I kept from you, since you were already busy keeping it from me.”

“We both know that’s smudging the truth,” Malick answered, voice flat, just a touch of threat. “I couldn’t keep that from you any more than he could.

He’s your kind, after all. He’s your own.”

“My kind, my kind,” Xari muttered irritably, shaking her head, cards going down faster and harder now. “He’s no kind of mine, and he is no longer my own. Exiled he is, even more so than you, for you’ve always the choice of

Ghost
going back. Asai knew what he was choosing when he rocked the Balance so.

I’ve nothing to do with him, nor do any of my kind.”

“But you know what he’s up to, don’t you?” Malick leaned in and set a hand over hers, halting the flurry of cards. “He’s interfered with Wolf’s Catalyst. That’s against your laws.”

“Aye,” she spat. “So, off he flies from Raven and takes allegiance to Wolf, because it isn’t against yours, is it?— Wolf’s-own.” She swatted off Malick’s grip and went back to dealing her cards, more calmly this time.

“Catalyst,” she growled and shook her head. “The pin in the crux of the fulcrum that would shake the world.” She flipped a card over. “The Fool.”

Her eyes lifted slowly, turned up to Malick’s. “The divine breath of inspiration. All sums dividing into Zero, forever seeking substance, an inborn ache for the coherence of One. Pure potential. Neither good nor evil, but always the capability for either or both. Always with one foot hovering over the abyss. This is your Catalyst. This is Asai’s Fool.” Her head tilted to the side. “Will he be enough to drag you from your gentle rebellion, Temshiel?”

She paused, wrinkled mouth turning up in a sly little smile when Samin huffed a sharp curse under his breath that Malick ignored. “You spurn your magic, hide your light, turn your face from Wolf, and all for a lover who was not, a brother who was not, a silly-headed fool who gave his heart and scruples to pretty words and open lust. You skirt the edges of your nature, risk your own soul—all because you were denied the fortune of sullying your blade with maijin blood.”

Malick sat back in his chair, eyeing Xari narrowly. “I couldn’t prove he’d taken Skel’s Blood. The gods were silent as always, and no maijin would bear witness against him.”

“And no Temshiel may take life without just cause that it keeps the Balance. And yet, you flirt with your own laws by taking life by order of…?”

Xari waited for a moment, but when Malick only gave her a stony stare, she smirked. “’Tis fortunate for you that your Mage chooses your victims well.”

Malick ignored the jab. “I’ve asked you before who the Mage is.”

“And I’ve chosen not to answer.”

She stared at him, no expression on her cragged face, dark eyes glittering in the goblin-light glowing softly from her stone. No hint as to what she might be thinking. No indication as to whether or not she’d answer him this time.

“And what do you choose now?” he asked her evenly.

She didn’t take her eyes away as she flipped over another card, laid it crosswise atop the Fool. “The Sorcerer,” she said, just as evenly. “Only he can

take Zero and make One of him. Channel to the power of the gods and all the spirits. The will to take potential and realize it.” She paused, giving Malick a reproachful scowl. “This should be your card, mutinous Temshiel. And yet you hold stubbornly to the Eremite, force your own into her Paladin’s role, though she doom her own soul, and all for you. You have searched for your knowledge—it can only become wisdom when you’ve earned it through sacrifice. When will you step from your exile of flesh and vice and stop dimming your light beneath mortal cloaks?”

Malick sighed. He’d heard it all before. “Are you going to tell me who the Mage is or not?”

Xari growled at him, mouth pinched tight. “Seek that answer in your own House,” she snapped, then she turned to Samin with a glare. “Yes, I spoke truly, Templar of Swords, with your dual-edged justice, and now you know what your Eremite is, what you truly fight for, all unknowing. He is Temshiel, reborn to the flesh times uncounted, power unnameable, and yet dimmed and hidden while he sulks like a five-year-old.” She turned back to Malick, dark eyes blazing. “Your kind have permitted Asai this liberty, your kind have threatened the Balance, and now your Catalyst hangs over the precipice—a tool, a ready weapon. Which hand will take him up? Will it be yours that sets him toward the suns?”

Silence, thick and choking, while Malick took this in. More than she’d ever given him before, and now he almost wished she hadn’t. “Not if I can avoid it,” was all he said.

Xari snorted, thin and derisive, and she threw the rest of the deck down to the table. “And how will you do that?” she wanted to know. “Drag your veil tight about you as you’ve done? Try to pull him under with you? Watch him spiral down into the chasm and blame your Mage for not warning you?” She shook her head, held up the Sorcerer card again. “Take it up while you still can,” she warned, “for Asai seeks it for himself, and he cares not whose Blood must spill to have it so. If you would save your Catalyst and the Balance that hangs about his neck like a noose, do that which you have scorned for too long now.”

Her hand shook, the bright-painted card blurring slightly in Malick’s vision as she held it up in front of his nose. Insistent.

He took it, turned it over in his hand for a moment then, deliberately impudent, flicked it back down onto the table. It landed face up and dead center of the configuration she’d made of the rest of the deck. Malick wasn’t sure what to make of that, but Xari smirked, so it probably wasn’t good.

Ghost

Expression bland, bored, he stared back at Xari, though he obviously didn’t fool her; she looked almost smug, and far too satisfied.

She cut a sideways glance to Samin. “Breathe easy, Templar of Swords,”

she told him with a haughty smile. “There is hope yet for the Balance, and Wolf may yet smile again.”

Her expression faded into solemn dignity when she turned back to Malick. “Swear the Catalyst no oaths, Kamen Wolf’s-child, though it pierce your heart to withhold them—he will not thank you for them in the end.”

“I’ll take care of my own, Xari,” Malick said slowly, patience going threadbare and temper flaring. “Just tell me what Asai is up to.”

“And what redemption do you offer me in recompense?”

Well, that had to come eventually, Malick supposed. Xari had been punished for her silence when Asai was judged, saving him from the suns while Skel burned. Now she dwelled in exile from her god’s sight for it, reduced to banpair while she sought her redemption, while Asai was left free to seek allegiance as he willed. It wasn't fucking fair, and it still burned like acid in Malick's gut.

Malick thought about what Xari was too obviously implying, but the promise she was looking for belonged to Fen, if he wanted it. “I offer you the chance to make your own redemption. But—” He held up his hand, warning, when her sere face cracked into a smile. “It’s an opportunity, Xari, not a promise. Not a guarantee. The Catalyst is already three steps ahead of you, and you’re going to have to be damned fast to beat him to his vengeance.

Now. Tell me.” He sat back again. Waited her out.

Xari stared at him for a long while, measuring, before her hand settled over the stone, its fey light pulsing slowly through her fingers. “The Jin have always been a people easily led,” she said softly. “Like a parent who coddles a child, the Ancestors gave to them their magic and traditions, when they should have allowed them to gain such for themselves through erudition and respect for the gods. Too easily mastered, are spoilt children. And when their Voices were lost, so was the will of the Jin.” She tsked, shook her head, then peered up at Malick, intent. “Asai broke no laws when he took Temshiel Blood, for your foolish Skel gave it all too willing; thus, Asai walks free to seek Heart’s Blood, to claim the power for himself. And if their Adan masters were to let go the leash of the Jin, who better to guide them and all their magic than the demigod who saved them from their self-inflicted doom?”

“The Blood….” The card Malick had tossed to the table pulsed at the edge of his vision, as though it were giving off its own light, burning.

“Holy… fuck.” His heart had tripped over itself, everything in his chest

plummeting down to the bottom of his stomach. He stared at Xari, unselfconsciously wide-eyed, shocked right down to marrow. This was beyond even his wildest suspicions. “He means to take the power of a Temshiel and set himself up as the Jin’s master.”

Asai really did mean to “save” the Jin, only he meant to do it in such a way as to yoke them to his own will instead.

Xari only shrugged, though it looked uneasy, and her hand came away from the stone, gaze dipping down to where Malick had tossed the card she’d pushed on him. “He would think to rival even Wolf, only no moon to wait out the centuries until his Cycle for Asai.”

Malick shook his head, dazed. “The gods would—”

“The gods would do nothing,” Xari spat. “The gods would watch, as always they have done, and wait for him to cross their line, blaspheme, call himself one of their own. Then perhaps they would act; then perhaps they would set the Temshiel on him.” She paused, mouth turned down and expression gone sour. “He will dance the line, perhaps, but he will not cross it. He will not spill the Blood himself. Arrogant though he be, I have birthed no fool.”

“More’s the pity,” Malick growled. He glanced up at Samin, saw his mental gears slipping and grinding all over his granite face, and sighed. “What is the Catalyst to him?” Malick asked Xari, though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

Xari gave him another of those scathing snorts. “A better question would be: What is the Catalyst to you?” Her mouth turned up, sly. “Who better to obtain Heart’s Blood from the Temshiel than the one who holds that heart already in his hand?”

Samin sucked in a light, hissing breath at that, rumbled another nearly silent curse, but otherwise kept quiet.

“Fate’s Fool has been made Fate’s tool,” Xari went on. She pulled another card from the mess on the table. “The Contradiction, the Paradox.” Mouth going tight again, she shook her head, tapping the edge of the card to the stone. “The last child of Raven who can save or doom the first child of Wolf.

Thus hangs the Balance about the Catalyst’s neck.”

“His brother,” Malick murmured. “The twin.”

Xari shrugged, weary now. “Set the Catalyst free as he watches him die, perhaps, give him the essence of One at last, make him whole—mind and spirit. Or take mind and spirit from the Ghost forever by sacrificing himself for Wolf’s Catalyst and the brother he loves.” She shook her head,

Ghost
despondent. “Hearts are such chancy things. What gods could set the Fool and the Paradox as brothers and think themselves kind and just?”

“The same ones who judged Asai blameless generations ago,” Malick growled in disgust. “And you wonder why I retreated from their purview.”

“I never wondered,” Xari said mildly.

“You named me ‘recreant’.”

Another shrug, this one with a twitch of dry lips. “Even so.”

Malick scowled, rolled his eyes. With a look at Samin, he reached down, untied the purse from his belt, and dropped it to the table. He didn’t bother to count it. Whatever was in there, it wasn’t enough. He stood, Samin taking his cue and heaving his bulk from the too-small chair.

“Thank you, Xari,” Malick said with a bow of his head, fist lightly thumping his breastbone. “Be careful. If he’s getting close to his goals, he’ll be sending his eye out farther and deeper. As you said: you’ve birthed no fool.”

Xari dipped her head. “The veil of Kamen Malick has shielded me well these last years. I fear not.”

“Then you are the fool,” Malick retorted. “Cultivate your fear and watch your back. Never forget my veil dies with me.”

A roll of the eyes this time, and Xari gave a harsh “Feh! ” of skepticism.

“If a maijin of Raven can undo a Temshiel of Wolf, I am done with this world anyway.” She waved a bony hand. “Go. You’ve wearied me. Dare not darken my door again before my vile progeny has been brought to heel. And….” For the first time, she paused, hesitant. “Remember me to Wolf, Kamen Malick, for Dragon turned her face from me when your Skel went to the suns.”

Malick reached out and set a gentle hand to Xari’s cheek, smiling a little when her glamour wavered and his palm slid over skin smooth as satin.

“Another injustice, misin,” he told her. “If Wolf will heed my appeal, your name will be the first he hears. The sins of the scion are not the sins of the dam.”

“No, but perhaps the fault is.” She shook her head, batting his hand away.

“Go. I have other trade, and you have other matters to attend.”

Malick did, but he had one more question. “The Catalyst’s mother. She’s spirit-bound and Disappeared. I think Asai turned her over.” He paused when Xari’s eyes closed and her fists clenched. His tone was purposefully gentler when he went on: “Can you tell me where she is?”

She sagged, a sigh that came right up from her soul whistling out from her thin chest. Her hand crept over the Fool, resting there, while the other slipped

over the stone. She was still and silent as Malick and Samin stood there and waited. With a bit of a shudder, she slipped her bony fingers beneath the Fool’s card, flipped another over. A bright-painted grin leered up from its face, a man with both hands on the crisscrossed slats of wood from which strings dangled and snapped. Xari shook her head and opened her eyes. “The Puppet Master,” she said, low and reluctant, then she peered up at Malick, resentful. “But then perhaps this does not surprise you as it should.”

Malick could have said some choice things to her, but this was not an argument he wanted to have in front of Samin. “Where?”

Xari shut her eyes again, only for a moment this time, her hand on the stone. When she looked up at Malick again, it was with a glare. “Horses. All I see are horses.”

Not precise, but not as vague as it could have been. Not many men owned horses. And Malick knew all too well that Yakuli was one of the few. Shit.

There was no way out of it now.

Malick dipped Xari another respectful bow, then jerked a little nod at Samin. “Thank you, misin. I’ll….” He paused. What could he say? I half hope you get to kill your son and earn your way back to your god, but I’m going to help Fen beat you to it?

Xari seemed to understand his dilemma; she tipped him a small smile, shrugged. “We all do what we must,” she told him then waved him away.

“Go. I have nothing more for you.”

There was nothing for Malick to do but what she’d asked. He shot a glance at Samin and tilted his chin at the curtain. When Samin stepped through it, Malick followed.

They didn’t speak as they made their way through the common room, Samin’s mien thoughtful but calm and composed as they collected their still soggy cloaks and strode through the doors. It was more than Malick had expected, really. Then again, Fen had figured it out in a week. Maybe Samin had done so years ago and had simply never let on.

Still, Malick was fairly surprised when Samin stopped just outside the doors of the Stallion, asked, “Would you be doing this if you didn’t love him?” instead of the hundreds of other questions he must have had.

Malick blinked against the rain, pulled his hood up to stall and get his bearings, and then shook his head at Samin. “Bloody hell, Samin, I don’t love him. I’ve only—”

“Bullshit,” Samin snapped. “I see it, that crone sees it, everybody bloody sees it. That’s your problem, Malick, you love everybody, but you only love them a little bit until they start to bore you, and then you walk away. And I

Ghost
have to hand it to you—most of them walk away still adoring you and with no hard feelings. But Fen….” He paused, blew out a frustrated breath, and scrubbed a hand through his short brown hair, droplets of rain flying out from beneath his fingers. “Mal, the man isn’t right in the head. You use him like that woman says you should and you could break this one. And no matter what you tell yourself after, it’ll eat you alive. If he doesn’t gouge your heart from your chest in whatever madness you trigger, you’ll wish for the suns.”

Malick stared at Samin’s earnest face for several long moments, shoved out a heavy breath, and then started walking. “You can’t believe everything she says, Samin. She’s maijin. It’s their job to fuck things up. It’s what they do. Xari’s better than most, but only because she’s trying to buy her way back into Dragon’s good graces.” Of course, she’d take Wolf. She’d take anything that would get the yoke of Asai off her shoulders, and take away the stigma of banpair. And she’d say anything she thought might help her get it.

Love. Ha. What kind of idiot would he be if he fell in love with a cold little prick with a chip the size of Subie on his shoulder, an unnatural fondness for all things sharp and pointy, and a hard-on for bloody Asai?

“You keep telling yourself that, Mal, but I know better, and so would you, if you weren’t being so monumentally blind. And I’ll tell you something else.” Samin took hold of Malick’s arm, held on until Malick stopped and turned to look at him. “Even if he loves you back, he isn’t capable of knowing it, because yes, there actually is someone in the world more heart-stupid than you. If it comes down to a choice between you and someone he does know he loves, he’s not picking you. Asai needs a heart, and you’ve made yours awfully damned handy to the one who’s supposed to get it for him.”

Malick wondered which one Samin was talking about—the brother or Asai—and decided it didn’t matter. “He’s not as oblivious as you think he is,”

was all he answered, because he didn’t have answers to anything else. How was he supposed to argue with someone who was so sure he knew Malick’s heart better than Malick did?

Samin’s eyebrows went up, and he whiffed a cynical snort. “Have you met Fen?”

And again, Malick had nothing to say to that, because Samin wouldn’t hear any of it anyway. This was not at all what Malick had thought they’d be discussing on their way home.

“All I need from you, Samin, is to know if you’re in or out.” He shook his head when Samin flinched a little, and he laid a hand atop Samin’s bulky shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “I’m giving you a chance to walk away. That’s all. No repercussions, no hard feelings. If you want out, this is

your chance, and you might do well to take it. This is looking like it’s going to get ugly.”

“Ya think?” Samin snapped, surly and stressed. His jaw twitched and ticced, the muscles under Malick’s hand bunching into tense knots beneath the stiff, wet fabric of Samin’s cloak. Thinking. Standing in the street, rain pouring down his face, unmindful. It took less time than Malick thought it would, less time than he thought perhaps it should, before Samin growled then gave Malick a sharp glare. “Fuck you, if you think so little of me.”

Malick should have smiled, but he found he couldn’t do it. Instead, he only shook his head. “I think the world of you, Samin. It’s why I gave you the choice.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you anyway.” Samin shrugged off Malick’s hand and started walking again. Malick only stared after him for a second or two before following, watching Samin’s back as he strode down the dirty street. His broad shoulders were straight and locked tight, not even hunched in against the rain. Everything about Samin right now screamed tension and worry, but he covered it all with blunt impatience, the same way Fen covered his with rage.

“Fen needs mail,” Samin grunted as Malick caught up to him. “Something light to wear under his shirts on jobs. I know a man. You’re buying.”

Malick blinked, frowned. “I gave Xari all my money.”

Samin just rolled his eyes. “Then you’ll owe me.”

The smile that wouldn’t come before was twitching at Malick’s mouth now. He pulled the hood of his cloak in tighter. Yes, he supposed he’d owe Samin. One way or another. He just hoped Samin wouldn’t actually take it out of his hide.

“What’s your name, then?” Samin asked, low and somewhat grudgingly, it seemed.

Malick’s eyebrows went up. “Funny, I’d thought we’d met before.” Even from here, he could hear the low growl rumbling in Samin’s chest. Malick shrugged. “Kamen is the name Wolf gave me. Malick was from my mother.

I… chose not to discard it.” He wouldn’t mention why. And he didn’t mention how the two truths had come in useful now and then. It didn’t make anything any less true. Anyway, Samin already knew Malick was a manipulative bastard.

As though he’d heard, Samin flicked Malick a sideways glare. Malick really couldn’t help the grin.

Ghost

XARI sighed, slumped back into her chair, and ran the tip of a finger over the smooth, round surface of the stone, its power thrumming through her hand and all up her arm. Soothing. “He is right to be angry,” she said aloud as she rubbed tiredly at her eyes and dropped her glamour. She looked over her shoulder. “I cannot blame him for his withdrawal. Nor can his god, else he would already be damned.”

The Mage stepped from behind the screens, glamour falling from him like so much smoke, handsome face emerging from beneath its mask of wrinkles, iron-gray hair going nearly black as he paced slowly over and took a seat beside her. His hand went to her cheek, as Malick’s had done a moment ago.

“Wolf believes in allowing his children their meditations. And Kamen is ever careful to step within the bounds of the law, though he thinks himself quite corrupt and daring.” He shook his head. “His pilgrimage toward wisdom has come to its logical end. He will choose as he must.”

“He means to find you, Temshiel,” Xari said mildly. “He has handed his heart to the Catalyst. It is for him Kamen Malick will end his rebellion.”

The Mage merely shrugged with a dim little smile. “He will choose as he must.”

Xari rolled her eyes, but had to agree. “Asai….” She paused, lips pursed, simply unable to say the words: my son. “Asai threatens the Balance. Again. If he breaks it—”

“He will burn, Xari. I cannot help him. I won’t. You knew that.”

She swallowed, eyes stinging a little, but she nodded. She’d known. And she knew Asai had to be stopped. It didn’t help. She’d disowned him over a century ago, but somehow, her heart wouldn’t allow her to sever its tie to him altogether. Even though she knew Asai wouldn’t think twice about cutting her own heart out and imprisoning her soul. He’d already tried it the once, after all.

A steady hand gripped her shoulder, and she almost sobbed. “His sins are not yours, Xari,” the Mage told her softly, a heavy sigh dragging itself from his chest and stirring the cards scattered over the tabletop. “Our children are ever both joy and bane, are they not?”

Xari had to agree. And at least she still had a child over whom to fret. For now.

“You have done all you can to set his path aright, and make amends for his arrogance. There is naught to do now but wait and watch.”

Xari shook her head, staring down into her stone, watching fates and futures whirl and snarl together inside it. “No,” she sighed, weary and sad,

“there is still more to do.”

The Mage merely shrugged, opened a hand. “If that is your wish, Xari.”

It wasn’t. But she’d do it anyway. “The sins of the scion,” she muttered unhappily and set to re-stacking her cards.

Tides-month, Year 1321, Cycle of the Wolf

VONSHI pursed his lips to keep them from trembling, or perhaps curling up into a smile—he wasn’t quite sure. Anticipation. Fear. Tugging at him all day, distracting him. He sucked in a long, steadying breath as he stood at the end of the second-floor hallway, peering out over the rolling estate from the great window that overlooked the eastern sward and the surrounding trees.

Watching the guards’ steps pick up pace and their postures tighten, wary. He couldn’t hear the hoofbeats himself, but he could almost feel them. The dogs were reluctantly obeying their masters’ hushing commands, but they were all alert, vibrating, staring anxiously through the fence and straining at their leashes.

It wouldn’t do for the boy to miss it all, not when it seemed like the world was standing on the razor-edge of the beginning of the end.

Vonshi craned his neck so he could see Wolf’s leering face, tipped a little nod then pried open the window—only a little, only enough so that he could just make out the guards’ low conversation in the yard below, could be sure nothing would be missed. Then he turned, focused on the boy’s door until it slipped its latch, creaked softly open. Subtle and yet not a thing easily ignored. This all had to appear happenstance. He’d worked too long for this.

He could hear the horses now, the steady thumpthumpthump of hoofs to ground, the occasional thick grunt of protest as a beast was driven a little too hard over unknown terrain in the dark. He stared at the boy’s door, mouth going tight and fists clenching unconsciously.

Hurry.

It only took a moment that seemed far too long, but the stir of shadows beneath the door foretold the boy’s curiosity. Vonshi could see only a slash of the boy’s profile through the narrow gap, frowning, guarded as he took hold of the knob, turned it a few times experimentally, then opened the door wider,

Ghost
had a look at its mechanism in the doorframe then flashed a glance out into the hallway. Wary.

Locked in his room tonight, the window nailed shut, because Beishin was unhappy— jealous, Vonshi smirked to himself. Too many forays out on his own for the boy, too many nights spent discovering the underbelly of the city, where some could be paid to ignore the braid and lie with a Ghost, sate the penury Asai stoked but refused to mitigate. Too many nights haunting the camp and the family he wasn’t allowed to see, and he’d promised Asai he wouldn’t, but Vonshi knew he did, and he knew Asai did too.

“He’s been lying to me, Vonshi,” Asai had growled. “Me!”

As though it wasn’t a betrayal he’d earned. As though he had every right to ensnare a Catalyst, manipulate his course— lock him in his room—when he wasn’t even supposed to lay hands on the boy. It made sense, Vonshi grudgingly admitted. The Wheels would turn this night, one way or the other, and Asai would of course take every precaution to ensure the Catalyst could not interfere.

Vonshi shook his head, watched quietly as the boy peered carefully up and down the hallway, suspicious but hopeful, eyebrows raised and a small smile quirking at the corner of his mouth when he realized his fortune. Vonshi smiled too.

He’d come to quite like the boy, done everything he could to negate Asai’s influence—oh so very carefully, of course—and had watched him grow from the quivering mess he’d been when he’d arrived to a young man with a sharp mind and a good heart. And a rebellious streak that was more than Vonshi could have ever hoped for when he’d felt the tug of a soul pulled from Raven and over to Wolf.

A whisper from the gods, a command, he’d known it all those years ago, and it had been a chancy thing, planting the revelation into a seer’s own sight, leading him to that empty little cottage on that rainy night just after Wolf’s first dawning in over a century. It had been difficult to maintain the veil for all these years, but easier when Asai simply stopped looking. Secure in his own machinations. And why not? Fate was his game, people his pawns, and the boy his personal tool.

Vonshi could have told him that tools had a way of developing sharp edges, turning on the hand that wielded them. Of course, he didn’t.

They’d reached the gates now, the hailing from the guards halting the thud of hoofbeats, and the jingle of bits and halters mixed with a demand for the master wafted up through the open window. A shrill bark quickly was throttled by a sharp jerk on a leash. Vonshi almost thought the boy hadn’t

heard it, at first, so thrilled with his sudden and surreptitious freedom, mind probably already whirling toward what he might do with it. But he paused when he heard the din out in the yard, turned toward the window. Took a hesitant step.

Come on, lad. His permission or lack of it hasn’t stopped you from spying for years.

Vonshi had almost despaired for the first several months after the boy had arrived. He’d seen no rebellion at all, no indication whatsoever that the boy would ever be anything besides Asai’s besotted instrument, and that was only if he could hold onto sanity long enough. Dani had been the turning point, Vonshi thought. Or rather, Asai’s reaction to Dani. No interference from Vonshi or even Wolf himself was necessary—Asai had knotted that noose all by himself. And he still didn’t see it. It would be amusing, if the stakes weren’t so high.

“…dare to come to my home!” Asai was scolding from the front porch.

Vonshi couldn’t see him, the porch’s roof blocked his sight, but three hooded men with no heraldry on their battle gear stood on the walk, heads canted at an angle toward Asai’s voice. “Fools!” Asai snapped. “If you’re seen—”

“Then the Court will be advised in no uncertain terms,” a deep voice interjected, “that Lord Asai has been most helpful to its interests.”

It caught the boy’s attention, and he narrowed his eyes at the window, paced swiftly up beside Vonshi and peered down.

“We were not told there was an earth-bound, as well as the spirit-bound,”

the voice went on. “We’ve come for amulets.”

The boy sucked in a sharp breath, hands gripping the windowsill so tight he might rip the wood from its joints. A heartbreaking mix of fear and disbelief washed over his angular face, driven stark and deathly pale in the moonlight through the window.

“You were given them,” Asai snapped, real anger, though Vonshi rather suspected there might be some fear hidden beneath it. “They are not toys to be doled out to—”

“We were not given enough,” the other man growled. “One spirit-bound, we were told. Additional men are needed for the earth-bound.” The dark figure stepped in a little, and the voice dipped down, but was still audible when it went on, “Perhaps it was a purposeful deficiency in information on Lord Asai’s part. Perhaps Lord Asai—friend to the Courts, frequent host to Judge and Councilor alike—had meant for hidden magic to slip its traces. The

Ghost
northern camp has only just been quelled and subdued. Another riot so soon after the last might well—”

“Enough!” Asai grated. His voice lowered, but still Vonshi was able to make out, “The earth-bound is not to be taken alive,” so he was sure the boy heard it too.

The slamming of a door, heavy footsteps as Asai apparently swept to his sitting room to retrieve from behind a bed of loose mortar the hateful amulets Vonshi knew resided in the hollows beneath the stone of the fireplace. It had been all Vonshi could do over the years to let them lie where they were.

The door slammed again, and Asai’s voice barked, “Take them and go, and do not dare to breach my borders again.”

The man said not a word, only dipped an ironic bow of his head, gestured sharply to the two standing at his sides, and wheeled about, headed back to the gate and his horses.

Vonshi watched the boy watching it all, watched the horror and betrayal swath pain all over his face, watched the harsh in-and-out of near hyperventilation, before the boy collected himself, pushed all of it down into rage. Vonshi watched it blossom, watched it set the fine features into cut stone, watched it lay a dangerous glitter to eyes gone hard and sharp.

With a feral snarl, the boy shoved himself away from the window, pelted down the hallway and into his room, reemerged only seconds later with knives strapped to his hips and thighs, and the shadow charm gripped in his fist. Face set and eyes hard little coals, he raced down the steps.

Vonshi swept over to the gallery, watching as the boy very nearly plowed Asai under in his single-minded haste toward the door, the frantic attempt to catch men on horseback both pitiful and admirable.

“Jacin-rei,” Asai said, startled as he staggered a little and reached out to take hold of the boy’s arm as he barreled past him. “Jacin-rei, where are you—?”

“Fuck you, Beishin,” the boy snarled, shook off Asai’s ineffectual grip and shouldered past him. “I heard. I heard everything!”

Asai followed after, throwing himself in front of the door before the boy could open it. “Jacin-rei, I forbid you to leave this house. What you heard… it wasn’t what—”

“I know exactly what it was,” the boy said, low and through teeth bared and clenched tight. “Get out of my way— Beishin.”

He didn’t wait for Asai to move; he merely snapped up his arm and leveled Asai with a right hook to the side of his head. Then he threw open the door and bolted through it.

Vonshi took a long, deep breath, leaned into the banister that framed the gallery, and closed his eyes. He’d been right—the beginning of the end. And the gods help and keep the boy this night. He didn’t even want to imagine what scene the boy would have to greet him. Vonshi hoped he got there in time. He might. Hard to beat men on horseback, but the boy wouldn’t have the inconvenience of the necessity of riding over roads, and he was certainly inspired to speed. He did love his family so.

Asai was pulling himself up from his sprawl in front of the door, sat for a moment with his hand to his head. Likely reeling a little. Dazed.

Vonshi had to smile.

“Vonshi!” Asai called, dipping his head and pinching at the bridge of his nose. “Vonshi, I need you!”

He wasn’t through yet, there was still much to do, so he couldn’t answer that summons as he wanted to. Vonshi composed himself, set his face into its usual grim lines, and dropped his veil. He leaned over the banister. “Yes, Beishin?” he answered.

Asai snapped his glance up, relief and gratitude, shook his head and sighed. “Our Ghost has taken flight, Vonshi,” he said. “The Wheels of Fate have begun to turn.” He grimaced, waved a hand, pulling himself slowly off the floor until he was on his feet. He peered up again at Vonshi, rubbing gingerly at the side of his head. “I could do with some ice.”

Years of watching and careful, cautious preparation. Arranging the players, lending subtle influence when he was able without being detected.

Coaching the boy delicately, helping him as he could, guiding him into a close approximation of what Asai wanted of him, but with a will of his own that Asai could not break. Finding Kamen and snaring him with the lure of duty while he indulged his anger at perfidious gods.

Playing dutiful, devoted servant to the maijin who’d murdered his son.

A smile, a slow dip of the head on a respectful bow, all obedience and careful manners. “Yes, Beishin,” said the Mage.

Ghost

Storm-month, Year 1322, Cycle of the Wolf

THE reek of the bay hung heavy, briny and brackish and curling into his nostrils in a murky blur of near-tangible misery. Even the gulls were lethargic in their forlorn, warbling circuits of the rooftops. Jacin tucked down farther into the borrowed coat, concentrated on not limping, and not moving his head too much while he was at it. Fucking uzin. Off his routine, out of sorts, cold and wet and hurting. The only good thing about today was that every minute of it was another step toward getting his brothers and sister to safety.

The dray had been easy. A small wainwright’s outside the Gates, a handful of koin and mental nudges from Shig. It had been more interesting than unnerving to watch her work, and Jacin had found himself almost envying her, wondering why she didn’t use something like that to her own advantage more often. Why hadn’t she just walked onto some lord’s estate and convinced him he wanted to give it to her, or even declared herself Empress of Ada? Then again, she didn’t really seem the type—Shig used her magic for more… practical things.

Like convincing a wainwright that he really did want to sell her the little dray he’d made for someone who’d already paid in advance and would be picking it up tomorrow, and that he wanted to sell it to her for half of what it was probably worth. Sturdy enough to pull Caidi and whatever gear they wanted to tote along, but light enough that Jacin wouldn’t have to ask anyone to help him pull it. Shig had made it look so easy. The hard part had been finding a place to stash the thing where it wouldn’t be spotted and stolen, but wouldn’t be too hard to get to later. The rain was doing some good, Jacin supposed. There weren’t many passersby for Shig to “tweak.”

He wondered if his mother had been able to do the things Shig could do.

Wildly different in appearance, and somehow shrewder, too, but in some things, Shig reminded Jacin of his mother in ways that were sometimes excruciating.

“It must hurt awfully.”

Jacin peered over at Shig with a frown, more startled by the hand on his arm than by the words. He kept himself from flinching back by the simple expedient of stilling his entire body, making himself not lash out. Touch seemed to be the way of it with these people, but not with Shig—she hung all over everyone else, but actually avoided touching Jacin—so he paused to examine the anomaly before reacting to it.

They were several lengths from the Gates, just past a tiny, dilapidated solitary stall from which an old woman sold squid breaded and fried in a deep, cast-iron kettle; the smell of it was making Jacin’s stomach want to curl in on itself. The woman didn’t even look at them, nor did any of the stray travelers who made their way in and out of the city, bundled in cloaks or heavier gear against the weather. Jacin blinked rain out of his eyes, tried to take his focus from the smells and turn it to the thumping heat radiating from his right thigh.

If he ignored his stomach, perhaps he wouldn’t vomit all over the squid vendor. Or Shig. And if he ignored the hand on him, he might be able to come up with an answer to whatever she’d just said.

He carded back, ignored all the inner noise, tried to remember what it was she’d been talking about—she’d been chattering at him almost all morning, and him tracking what she was talking about didn’t seem to be a requirement to her “conversation”—and came up with what appeared to be some sort of worry for his own person. “Why?” he said, stopping just short of Why do you care? because he might not understand why people felt the need to express concern for strangers, but he did understand it was rude to snipe at them for it.

Unless they were being intrusive, which was rude in itself, and for which he felt perfectly justified in biting back. Shig didn’t seem intrusive. Shig seemed… like something he couldn’t think about right now.

“You’re quiet today,” Shig explained, a sympathetic smile through the rain, her motley braids darker with the wet, and her jade eyes somehow brighter and greener in the murk of the day. “You’re not all buzzy. I guess it shuts them up for you, yeah? The pain?”

No, not really. It shoved them back, coiled something louder than their voices, gave him something else on which to focus his attention. Nothing shut them up except a touch he loathed himself for craving, for allowing, for inviting. Selling his soul again, if there was anything left of it, and somehow, damnation wasn’t feeling as unbearable as he’d always imagined. Which was unbearable in itself, so he was fucked either way.

“No price,” Malick had told him. Even if Malick believed it himself, Jacin knew better. It was the nature of… people—beings? creatures?—like Malick.

Ghost

They weren’t normal, they didn’t value life the way mortals did. Temshiel didn’t do anything for anyone without a reason, and the penalties were usually paid by the mortals left staggering in their wakes. Funny, how Jacin wasn’t finding paying this “price” too terribly costly. He’d mollified the blood-soaked animal he’d become last night with seduction and silence, and damn if he hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed himself. His body punished him for the thought with a hot, electric charge of memory-lust. Fuck, he was pathetic.

It was the attention with which Malick pinned him, he supposed. The obsessive focus. He’d never had anything like it leveled at him, and apparently, his body couldn’t care less from which direction it came. All those years, wishing for it, burning for it, from a man he’d at least thought he’d loved, and now he had it. And he was a little too close to terrified to realize it was feeding some deep, empty place inside him he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge. Even Shig’s touch terrified him, because he liked it—the simplicity of it, the… normalness. Jacin didn’t do “terrified” very well, and the only way he knew of dealing with emotions he didn’t understand was to strike back with the one emotion he understood completely. Except the anger had only seemed to pique Malick’s interest further—boiling up, taking Jacin under, and Malick wouldn’t let up, he’d never let up—until the rage inside Jacin had turned in his hand like an ill-balanced blade.

Bloody hell, Jacin must’ve been a real son of a bitch in a previous life to have deserved this one. He hoped he’d at least enjoyed himself.

“A little.” He dragged his arm back—more gently than he might’ve done otherwise—and pulled the borrowed duster up closer about his neck, ignoring the smell of pine soap, smoke and sage, and light, musky sex. Of temptation, woven thick all about him. Fucking hell, was Malick made of lust? How else would the reek of it permeate even his clothes? With an inward sigh, Jacin willed a shiver away and started walking again. Refused to limp.

The pain was a hot, throbbing spike skewering his entire leg, especially after all the manhandling getting the dray into the culvert—during which he was pretty sure he’d blown a couple of stitches—but it at least dulled the pulse of the heavy, squishy lump of bruised fruit that was his head, the low-level churning of his gut. Too much of that liquor last night. Too much of a lot of things last night. Giving in had felt like dying for a little while, and then it had felt like living, and the sharp edge of bliss had been agonizing.

Dreamlike now, with the distance of a few hours, except for the scent that he couldn’t get away from, because he kept wrapping it more firmly around himself, without even thinking about it—the scent of another, of animal want.

But the pain was his, it was real, a reminder that he was still here, still in control, still had command over his own body and the abuse he inflicted upon

it, his own reactions to it. Except he’d cut himself much deeper than he’d meant. Damn it. And he couldn’t allow it to interfere with tonight. Couldn’t.

The one thing the Ancestors had said of which he could make sense, the one almost clear command since they’d roosted in his head like noisy grackles—
he couldn’t fail, not at this. If this Malick, this Temshiel, was the key to getting Jacin’s family to safety, perhaps even out of Ada entirely—

“So, how was Mal?”

A soft bump of Shig’s elbow into Jacin’s ribs, and a leering waggle of eyebrows. He shot her another sideways frown. “…Sorry?”

Shig snorted, shrugged. She shoved back a clump of striated braid and pushed her arm through the crook of Jacin’s, held on. Again, he almost drew away with a flinch, but didn’t.

“I hear things around the Girou all the time,” Shig told him. She gave his arm a bit of a squeeze and leaned her wet head to his wet shoulder. “A bloody good lay, Mal. At least that’s what I’ve heard. And the ones who have him always want him again, so I figured—”

“I don’t.”

Shig paused with a bit of a smirk. “Uh-huh. Sure, Fen.” Her smile was sly as she slid it up to him. “C’mon, you can say, I won’t tell.”

Tell who? he wondered, irritated, but the answer was probably everyone.

No, no, and fuck no.

These people… talked. All the time. And Malick especially. Bloody magpies, all of them, even Samin sometimes. Jacin couldn’t understand it.

Couldn’t understand how they could just… say things, give them power through the spoken words. Give him power by letting him hear them. Spilling life stories through random conversation, and they didn’t even have the slightest idea who he was, let alone what he might do with it all. Letting parts of their lives just spew out their mouths like it didn’t matter that it all gained strength with each breath.

Hemorrhaging words. All of them. Didn’t they know words were power?

They all seemed like intelligent people—didn’t they know that voicing the things inside you, letting another know, was handing that power over, betraying yourself, and if you betrayed yourself to the wrong person….

Maybe that was it—maybe none of them had ever shown another everything they had inside them and had it all turned back on them, used against them. That, he could understand. He’d been naïve once too.

“Was it quiet for you?” Shig asked softly, all amusement gone, the question sincere and hopeful.

Ghost

Her head was still on his shoulder, her arm wound through his as they strolled back in through the Gates. Traffic was lighter than usual with the weather, and those who made their way in and out, flowing around them like they were stones in a river, didn’t even seem to see them. Not even the doujoun, who checked papers and inflicted mini-interrogations on seemingly random travelers. Like the shadow magic that made Jacin shudder to think about, now that he knew what it was made of— sure, Jacin, tell yourself you didn’t know on some level all along—but he missed it all the same. This—
walking down a city street, a pretty woman willingly holding his arm, no one stopping to stare or pretend they weren’t—it was… disconcertingly comforting, though he supposed the disconcertion was merely an excuse.

He’d always been a whore for touch, a willing slave to affection. He’d just have to be careful not to actually sell himself for it this time. Perhaps he’d be all right, if he could just keep anyone else from seeing.

“Yes,” he answered, because silence didn’t work on Shig, she wouldn’t shut up, she was bloody worse than Malick, and maybe an answer would make her stop. And anyway, what could it hurt?—they all knew. He shifted a look up at the pikes and crows’ cages as they passed beneath them, and allowed his arm to tighten about Shig’s. “It was quiet.”

Not just quiet—it had been silent. Silent. Like living inside a hurricane made of fire, and then it all drops away, leaving nothing but a cool, calm breeze to soothe the conflagration of your own mind. He’d nearly wept—
would’ve done, had Malick not kept feeding him pleasure to distract him.

Jacin had never been done to before. It had been difficult enough to find the rare whore willing to thwart tradition so blatantly as to let an Untouchable touch them, but impossible to find one willing to touch. A simple kiss was sacrilege. A touch with intent was unthinkable.

Malick had kissed. Malick had touched. There had been moments last night when Jacin had actually begged, and had no idea for which he’d been begging—the silence or the intent. Like he’d spent his life teetering on a wire and then suddenly found himself standing on solid ground. Except his body kept trying to catch a balance that was abruptly crushing it, ripping away the cockeyed moorings he’d worked so hard to build, replacing what false balance he’d managed to achieve with the weight of reality and planting anchors in his feet.

He’d been expecting pain, anticipating it, and when it hadn’t come, he’d been undone. And he hadn’t even cared.

He knew now what Malick was. He knew Temshiel were not to be trusted, any more than maijin. And then Malick had kissed him, touched him, and none of it mattered but the sensation and the silence.

Would you like me to pretend for you?

Yes. Fuck , yes, yes, yes.

Malick had. Malick was a fucking master at pretending. And for a little while, it had been exactly what Jacin had needed.

Enough to rip his mind away completely, if he let it, and yet a lethal seduction inside it he couldn’t defy. He wanted it too much. Craved it like a feral beast. Burned for it. Ached for the touch that brought it. Not just a loss of control, but a willing surrender of it. Such a hazardous, alluring thing, ceding control. Giving it to another. Slipping away inside it, letting go altogether, letting another choose. Sure hands maneuvering his body, a confident, husky voice telling him what to do—genuinely considering subsuming himself to it all absolutely, letting that voice be his Voice, telling him where to go, what to do, who to kill, how to die and when.

And then taking back that control, just to be sure he could, and he had, he’d gotten it back eventually, except now he had no idea if he wanted it. If he should even have it. What the hell he was supposed to do with it.

A prisoner inside the cage of his own indecision.

He couldn’t do this on his own—couldn’t protect them, couldn’t provide for them. He was failing. Every day was a new failure, and there was too much hanging on him to allow it. His nerves were split and fraying wider, stress gnawing him ragged and edgy and just… just… fucking pathetic. No longer prisoner in a camp with the rest of the sheep, no longer willing captive to Asai. He was in the real world now, and the real world was confusing and hostile and fucking cold. He didn’t know how to do this.

All his life, he’d been told where to go, what to do, until… until he’d stopped believing. And the one thing he’d done on his own— against orders, against… morality?—he’d failed at it. Failed so spectacularly he’d been caught, put into a position of either joining a group of dubious purpose or risking them taking him out altogether. And now he’d slept with one of them.

Was strolling down the street with another like some cow-eyed suitor.

His mother hanging somewhere in the in-between of not-death, her soul doomed to wander, feeding on seeds left in scattered circles, if he didn’t find her. His brothers and sister living like hunted animals, somehow still skirting beneath the probes of Asai and anyone else who might be looking. He couldn’t just keep leaving them there merely because he didn’t know what

Ghost
else to do. They’d be found eventually. It was shocking they hadn’t been found already. Even now, the desperation shrieked at him to go there, now, make sure it hadn’t happened. The constant terror that he’d show up one night and find the mangled corpses of everyone he had left, or worse, blank spaces and the empty necessity of a new hunt, new vengeance.

His heart gave a hard jolt behind his ribs and his breath stuttered sharp—
he couldn’t help it. It had been easy last night, when he was just feeling, except now he was thinking again, and it wasn’t easy anymore, not at all.

“You know, unhappy Ghost,” Shig said softly, squeezing his arm again,

“tonight is… it’s what he does. You know what he is.”

Not a question, but still, it startled a, “Yes,” out of Jacin. He shouldn’t have been surprised; if any of them knew, it would be Shig.

Shig quaked a little shiver and pushed closer. “But did you know he’s Wolf’s?” she asked mildly. When Jacin didn’t answer, she nodded against his shoulder. “The strongest of them all, and now he’s in his own Cycle. Almost every kind of magic in him, and the skill to take it from others too.” She tilted a knowing smile up at him. “And Umeia’s gone and sworn for your family, hasn’t she?”

Something hard and hot swelled in Jacin’s throat. He couldn’t have answered if he wanted to.

“It’ll be all right,” Shig went on. She wrapped both arms about Jacin’s this time and drew in closer to his side, her curves fitting against him in a way that made him wonder if she was deliberately trying to distract him. “You don’t have to do everything by yourself, and not everyone will steal what you don’t give them, use it against you, and pretend they’re doing it for you.”

It twanged things inside Jacin he couldn’t—wouldn’t—name. He stopped short, breath coming harsh and sharp, the dull pounding in his head winding tighter and sending sick, heavy thumps of pain down to his leg with each pulse of blood to damaged muscle and tissue. Fuck, she reminded him so much of his mother that it hurt, tore something wide inside him and filled it up with saw-toothed acid. He’d wanted to be nice to her, make up for whatever insult he’d caused last night, but fuck, he couldn’t be expected to take this when he’d been avoiding her from the first to prevent it.

He shouldn’t have tried, shouldn’t have asked her along. He wasn’t good at “nice” and it just provoked people when he made the attempt; they saw it as invitation, and that was simply intolerable.

Scattered, too confused, Jacin jolted away, shaking his head as he sidestepped a few clumsy paces. He almost let his hand wander to his thigh,

poked and prodded, but he needed to be able to walk tonight. As if she knew, Shig took up his hand, her grip wet with the rain, but harder than he’d imagined, her small hands ruthless.

“He uses,” she said, her eyes bright and clear, intense in a face set firm with eldritch knowledge. “They all do. It’s their nature. And he’ll try to use you, but he won’t be able to.” Her grip tightened when Jacin tried to pull his hand away again—failed. All he managed was feeble resistance as she tried to drag him in a little closer to her. “I’m telling you what I know, unhappy Ghost, because I know him—I watch, I see. Giving his life for another means nothing to him, because he can always have more, but for you, he’ll give up his soul. Do you really want that?”

Again, Jacin tried to drag his hand away, and again, unaccountably, he failed. All he could do was shake his head. “He doesn’t even know me,” was all he could say, because it was true, and oracle or no, she was spewing absurdity like Asai spouted prophecy, except Jacin used to think Asai’s made sense, and this just didn’t.

Shig chuffed a small snort and shook her head with a sigh. “So you say.”

She leaned in close, close enough that he could see how the rain had spiked her blonde lashes, turned them to a darker ring around sharp jade eyes as she laid a soft, warm kiss to his wet cheek. “And neither does anyone else, right?”

she breathed in his ear, and even through the heat and proximity, it wasn’t the slightest bit seductive. “So, how come you’re so easily used?”

It hit something prideful inside him, spangled out hot and tight, choked him. This time, when he wrenched away from her, he managed to loosen her grip, step back. She only smiled at his glare, nodding, like they’d just agreed to something, which pissed him off, because he hadn’t agreed to any of what had just happened. And anyway—what the fuck had just happened?

“You’re going to make such a mess of things,” Shig told him with a grin and set a light pat to his cheek. “No wonder Umeia calls you ‘Trouble’.”

Jacin scowled, mouth tight, and turned back up the street. They were winding along backstreets and alleys now, and he knew how to remain unseen, even without his shadows. He didn’t need the resident cheeky spirit-bound hanging on him anymore. Make a mess—as if everything wasn’t already a mess, and he’d had precious little to do with any of it. Used, indeed.

All he wanted from these people right now was to help him get his brothers and sister then find his mother, and he might have to tolerate them in exchange, but he didn’t have to listen.

“Fen!”

Ghost

He stopped as he turned the corner that would eventually take him to the path toward the dingy alley behind the Girou . His teeth were set tight and his breath was coming more harshly than it should be doing, but he turned to look at Shig nonetheless. He had to. There was just something about her that wouldn’t let him ignore her. She was leaning with her shoulder against the outer-wall of the bathhouse two buildings down, her smile soft and kind, blinking those shrewd green eyes at him against the rain. She’d lit one of those cherry things she smoked, a substantial plume gusting from her smirk, hanging heavy in the sodden air and obscuring her face until the rain scattered it.

“Life sucks,” she told him, cupping the smoke in her hand to protect it from the rain. “But no one says you can’t have a little fun when it’s offered.

You’re not the only one who’s had a shitty time of it.” She smirked at his frown, shrugged. “We’ll go and get them for you, like we promised. And then we’ll find her for you. You drive yourself with the pain, but it’s all right to snatch the things that take it away too. They’d want you to, don’t you think?”

Blah, blah, fucking blah. Platitudes and pseudo-insight and utter shit from the mouth of a bizarre, incomprehensible walking augury. And Jacin had neither the wit nor the want to decipher it.

Shig pushed herself away from the building, ambling over to him with that same knowing smirk until she stood a mere pace away. She looked older with her bedraggled braids and sharp eyes: a wizened oracle. Her small hand came up to stroke Jacin’s cheek, but this time Jacin didn’t stop the flinch back, or the glare that shoved his brows down over his eyes and tightened his jaw. Shig’s smirk turned to a grin, and she was herself again—just a pretty young woman with a faraway look and odd hair.

“Back to Zero, love,” she told him, almost bloody twinkling at him. “He’s already started again. No worries.” She held out the smoke to him, inviting.

“Bet you never thought you’d be someone else’s redemption, did you?”

Jacin stared at it for a long moment, too close to seething, before he accepted it, took a long drag. Debating with himself over just how much he might reveal through either silence or the question that was pounding behind his brow. Redemption? “What the fuck does that mean?” he finally asked her, aggravated and edgy, and not in the mood for games.

Shig merely shrugged as she stepped beneath the curled eaves of the teahouse where Jacin had stopped, leaned her back to the wall, and lit herself another smoke. “You know what he is.”

A being who was supposed to act as sentinel for his god’s laws on mortal lands, and who was, at least at the moment, passing his time playing slut and assassin. “So?”

“So.” Shig rolled her eyes, took a drag, and blew the smoke in Jacin’s face with that same cheeky grin. “You’re so adorable when you’re pissy. No wonder Mal’s besotted.” Her grin only widened at Jacin’s angry growl. Sly, she beckoned him close, and when he complied, irritably, she leaned in until her mouth was altogether too intimate with his ear again. “You’ve a Temshiel punch-drunk over you, bloody idiot. How much clearer d’you need your portents to be?”

Jacin clenched his teeth, took a long draw of the smoke to keep himself from biting her head off, and blew out a prodigious plume slowly before crushing the thing under his boot. Control— ha. The only thing he was controlling right now was the wish to lash out and kill something. “Clearer than whatever the fuck you just said,” he told her as evenly as he could make it.

A sigh this time, near to exasperation. “He’ll try to use you, but he won’t be able to. But I’ve a feeling you’ll be able to use him.” She paused, narrowed her eyes a little, though the smile was still curving her full lips. “Think you can live with that?”

If it got him what he needed? “Yes.”

Shig threw her head back and laughed, deep and full, though still with a light girlish trill. Jacin couldn’t do anything but hurl a fiery glare at her, which she ignored. “Poor Fen,” she snorted. “Have it your way, then. Pretend you don’t hear your own voice inside the din. Pretend it’s not telling you things you don’t want to know. Pretend that your deepest, most secret wish isn’t that someone would love you like you know Malick can, if you let him.”

He was going to hit her. He wasn’t going to be able to stop himself. And then they wouldn’t help him, they wouldn’t go and get his brothers and sister.

They might even try to keep him from going himself, and he didn’t have the shadow charm to get him out anyway, if they decided he needed to be watched.

A long, deep breath, all his control—it wasn’t going to do it. With the very last of his restraint, he wheeled away from Shig and strode across the street. Fast.

A high giggle was all the warning he got before Shig thumped her palms between his shoulder blades, grabbed his arm, and flung him against the building. “Ooh, you do hate it when you have to hear, don’t you?” She grinned, all dimples and bright green eyes, like it was all some grand joke and

Ghost
she wasn’t spouting things that were driving into Jacin’s chest with the force of blows. “You hate it when someone offers help because you can’t trust that they’ll actually give it. Shit, Fen, no wonder you’re so easy to use.”

Jacin’s hands were already balled into fists to prevent them from reaching for a knife. His body was so tense he thought he might snap in half if he moved too quickly. “Stay the fuck away from me,” he grated.

Shig only shook her head, flicked her smoke out into the gutter, and gave him another grin, all sweetness and good humor. “No worries. We’re all Wolf’s, y’know—even Samin, except he doesn’t know he switched gods when he switched sides. We’ll help. All of us. Can’t get rid of us now.” A shrug and another soft pat to his cheek. “I don’t think the one you hunt has any idea what a pack of wolves can do when one of its own is threatened.”

All the anger, all the roiling confusion inside him—it stilled, just like that.

“The one I hunt?” he asked softly, stomach curling again, all of his blood rushing down from his thumping head to churn, viscous, in his gut. “Do you know who it is?”

His voice was far too small, far too tentative. Like he didn’t really want to know, except he did. Then again, if he really did want to know, why hadn’t he ever thought to ask Shig? He’d watched her enough to know she might at least have some idea.

Shig didn’t seem to notice his inner agony. She only slid her arm through his again and tugged until Jacin started walking. “I don’t,” she told him, laying her head to his shoulder again, “but you at least know where to start.”

Bile rose. Because he did. He always had. And he’d walked away from at least two opportunities to gut the man he’d known from the beginning was responsible because he couldn’t bear to believe it.

Failed. Again. Allowed his emotions to make him weak. Allowed it.

Jacin shut his eyes, let Shig lead him, pushed away the pain in his leg and his head and his heart. Tried to keep from stumbling as the noise rose, blurry static filling his head, drowning out everything, and he let it, didn’t even try to listen, just let his mind buzz and drift into the white. He’d rein it all back when they got to the Girou.

And then he’d let himself throw up.

THE first thing Malick did when they got back, after relieving Samin of his share of the load of bundles, was to arrow up the stairs, dig through his rooms

for his various stashes of koin, and pay Samin back. Samin would never have complained, would never have even mentioned it, even if Malick never reimbursed him, but it was important that these things came from Malick, every one of them.

The mail had taken a little longer than Samin had told him it would.

They’d arrived at the tiny wood-framed armorer’s to find only an apprentice on duty, and Samin had insisted on waiting for the man himself. It had turned out for the best—Malick couldn’t find a single fault with the light vest, and it would certainly prevent those slashes he’d seen on Fen last night—but it had put Malick a little behind in what he wanted to accomplish today.

They arrived back during the in-between lull that came after lunch and before supper. Shig and Yori greeted them from their comfortable puppy pile on one of the couches in the common room, though when Malick asked Shig if she’d helped Fen get what he needed, she only giggled. Malick took it as an affirmative. Fen’s door was shut, and with the rain and the stitches, Malick assumed he wasn’t sparring on the roof. Maybe resting up for tonight, or brooding over all the things that might go wrong—none of which Malick would permit—so Malick left him to it and dumped the bundles on the couch in his sitting room. He had something he needed to do before presenting his loot to Fen. He wrote the note quickly then headed downstairs.

The main floor of the Girou was nearly deserted, all the kitchen help busy preparing for the evening, and all the other help busy bathing and primping.

He had a few hours yet. Malick made his way into the kitchen, skirted the grills heating beneath the narrow window vents with one or two pauses along the way to greet the cooks and lackeys, eyes roving all the while, watching.

Carefully. Because his target was very, very good.

Warm, fragrant steam, and clanging pots. He loved the kitchens. Busy as a hive, and seemingly chaotic, but there were patterns to the traffic, logic to the flow. Those who didn’t do their jobs well and efficiently didn’t last long back here. More than one promising talent had fled weeping through the back-alley doors. Malick bent to accept a motherly kiss on the brow from Sendi as she hacked a rack of ribs into chops—wire-muscled and just on the edge of attractive, and still entirely do-able, in her middle-age—and stopped a moment to chat about her grandchildren before moving on.

He kept the slip of paper casually in his hand as he grinned and flirted his way along, stopping by the baking counter to accept a sample of the pork buns from Keki. Malick had almost suspected Keki of being his target once upon a time, but that was before he’d started really paying attention. Keki had his own secrets, but not the ones important right now. Soft-spoken, almost mousy, if one didn’t know him, but he was the only one who actually scared

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Ragi as far as Malick knew. Well, besides Umeia. Ragi didn’t know what to do with someone who answered his temper with quiet confidence and calm argument. He also didn’t like it when someone serenely pointed out the flaws in his tirades, and otherwise ignored them. Not a man who appreciated debate, Ragi. Speaking of whom….

He found Ragi at the bank of stoves against the back wall, berating the boys supervising the soups. Already, Malick could feel the heavy thump of antagonistic energy vibrating from the sinewy frame. No wonder the man gave Shig headaches. Keki he actually had to touch to feel it, but not Ragi.

Malick had suspected right from the beginning how Ragi had managed to stay hidden from both the hunters and his own kind, but it had never actually mattered before. And he’d never really wanted to know until now. Malick waited politely and with a rueful smile slanted at the boys, until Ragi’s diatribe was through.

“Bad night?” he asked when Ragi finally turned to him.

Ragi’s scowl smoothed just a little. He took a long breath, scrubbing a hand through ragged waves of brown strung through with copper. Tall and rangy, almost as tall as Malick. He might have been handsome, but ill-temper cragged his face and hardened its lines.

“Bad help,” Ragi grumbled then shook himself and dipped his head respectfully. “What can I do for you, seyh?”

“Confections,” Malick said, smiling a little at Ragi’s raised eyebrow, and waved his hand around, the note flapping in the breeze he stirred. Ragi didn’t seem to notice. “For supper tonight. I want something special. I’ll leave the selection up to you, but make it good. I’m wooing.”

Both eyebrows went up this time. “Wooing?”

“Mm.” Malick grinned. “And I’ll want the portions doubled, starting with breakfast tomorrow.”

There were a thousand questions flitting over Ragi’s dour face. He voiced none of them. Malick knew what the staff speculated about him here—an ex-lover of Umeia’s turned hanger-on; an orphaned relative she’d taken in, the first of her “ducklings”; a ne’er-do-well who’d found something incriminating in Umeia’s murky past and was using it to blackmail her, his silence in exchange for her generosity of room and board. Those who needed protecting, needed to hide their magic, knew Malick could do that for them, and that was all they knew. What they speculated was up to them. Malick didn’t care what any of them thought, so long as they acknowledged his authority—dubious though they might think it—and did what he asked of them on the rare occasions he wanted something from them. And with Ragi, it hardly mattered.

Ragi had to have known damned well what Malick was from the beginning.

Malick was pretty sure it was why Ragi was here, after all.

Ragi merely bowed his head. “Yes, seyh. Is that all?”

“No,” Malick told him. “One more thing.” He leaned in, curling his tone through with a tiny bit of menace. “I think we’ve a spy. I’ve felt… eyes on me, if you know what I mean.” Ragi’s blank face ostensibly told Malick that no, Ragi didn’t, but Malick didn’t believe it for a second. “If you notice anyone paying untoward attention to my doings, or what goes on upstairs, I want you to tell me. Immediately. Understood?”

A narrow-eyed stare this time, but that was all. Ragi dipped his head again. “Yes, seyh.”

No cracks, no twitches. He was very good, but Malick had already known that. Except Ragi didn’t seem to be wondering why Malick would seek out the kitchen supervisor, of all people, for help in ferreting out a spy.

Malick gave Ragi a bright grin—the one that usually blinded, turned gentle prey wide-eyed—and tipped a friendly nod. “Good. Thank you.” He waved the note in salute then sauntered out of the kitchen.

He took his time, ambling behind the bar, pausing to pour himself a cup of rice wine, swallowing a nip of it quicker than he should—it was the good stuff, the stuff Umeia wouldn’t let him have unless he paid for it—then topped it off and made his way down to the end. Not even bothering to look around for possible watchers, he noisily shifted the heavy lid off the crock and dropped the note in before replacing it. He took his time leaving, too, a careless saunter as he angled across the floor and to the doors that led to the stairs. Allowed his tread to fall heavily on each step as he took the first flight.

Smiling now, anticipatory, Malick stopped at the top of the stairs.

Amiable banter from one room to the next and across the hall. The occasional exchange of lacy undergarments or silks or lewd “toys” in anticipation of specific guests. Madi, half-dressed in silky drawers and wide-open velvet lace-up shirt, flittered out of his room and down the hall a few doors to murmur something to its occupant then laughed at whatever response he’d gotten and danced away again. Malick smiled a little and flattened himself into the shadows against the wall of the staircase. He’d have to stop in soon and see Madi again, just to say “hello” and see how he was doing. Madi was sweet and extraordinary at what he did, and Malick was glad Fen’s arrival had prompted him to get to know the boy a little.

When he was sure everyone was either shut into their rooms, getting ready, or too busy chattering at each other to notice, Malick veiled himself and headed back down.

Ghost

Alert but bordering probably a little too closely on smug, he leaned his back to the wall just on the other side of the bath stairway and watched.

It took almost no time at all. Ragi must have calculated—just as Malick had—that if he didn’t act now, he’d have to wait until the end of the night, and things would be too geared up in the kitchen very shortly for him to slip away. As soon as his gnarled hand lifted the note from the crock, Malick dropped his veil. Ragi’s usual stern composure abandoned him completely when he found Malick standing right behind him—he startled and spun, note clutched tight in his left hand, his right pulled back in a knuckly fist.

Malick only gave him another grin. “I’m giving you the next couple of hours off,” he said cheerfully then let the grin slide into something more dangerous. “Take me to him. Now.”

FOR a surreal moment, as Ragi fetched up in front of the sedately modest holding in the Judicial District, Malick thought he’d made a colossal blunder.

He took hold of Ragi’s arm, stopped him, resisting the urge to let the thrum beneath the man’s skin curl into his own. He narrowed his eyes, needing to know, and irritated that he was forced to show he didn’t. “The Mage is here?”

Ragi’s face cracked into what some might consider a knowing grimace, but Malick thought it was closer to Ragi’s version of a smile. “Where better?”

he said then shrugged. “He’ll be out anon. You won’t need your veil.” A low dip of his head. “Seyh,” he murmured then turned around and went back the way they’d come, disappearing down the street into the murk of rain and low-sitting fog.

Malick frowned after him, uneasy. Then frowned up at the stately façade of Asai’s city residence. He couldn’t have been this wrong. The Mage couldn’t be—

“Ah,” he breathed, “this just gets better and better,” watching the lean figure stroll out from spiral-shaped hedges lining the perimeter of the small manor’s yard. Malick was not at all relieved to have his surge of unease proven pointless. “Shit.”

“It’s looking that way,” Husao told him, small, humorless smile curling his mouth in a way so familiar Malick found it nearly painful. “It has been a long time, Kamen.”

Not long enough, Malick thought, fairly certain the sentiment showed on his face, because Husao’s smile turned sardonic. “So,” Malick sighed, annoyed now and warier than ever, “you’re this “Vonshi” who helped Fen rive reason from insanity.”

Husao dipped his head low. “I know the boy as Jacin-rei. And he knows me as this.” For a moment, the glamour of a bony, old man stood in front of Malick, iron-gray hair and face cragged and stern. And then it was gone, and Husao once again stood in front of him, jet hair framing a face that held just enough hints of his son that Malick almost had to look away. “I did what I could for the boy.”

“And now I see why,” Malick snapped. “What are you doing here?” Skel had been Bear’s, and Husao belonged to Dragon—these were matters for Wolf, and Husao had no right.

Husao shrugged. “The same as you. Watching. Waiting.” The smile once again morphed, this time sliding sly. “A great lord such as Asai has need of a trustworthy steward.”

“I’ll bet,” Malick muttered. “So, you’ve known about Fen all along.”

“Of course. One wonders why you didn’t.” Husao sighed when Malick’s hands too obviously curled into fists, and his jaw tightened. “Peace, Kamen. I have no intention of chiding you for seeking your own balance. It is the way of it with Wolf’s-own—a small catch in the wisdom of drawing to his purview those whose hearts will survive the centuries, those who still remember being mortal.”

Malick’s teeth clenched. “I’ve not come to—”

“I know why you’re here,” Husao cut in.

“Our deal was that you wouldn’t interfere,” Malick accused. “Our deal—”

“Our deal was that I would pay you very well for dispensing with men who needed dispensing, and in return for your services, I would not seek you out or interfere in any way with your life.” Husao’s hand lifted, waved about.

“I have done neither. You sought me out.”

The truth of it only pissed Malick off more. “What d’you call sending Fen to the Girou?”

“Fate, if you will.” Husao smiled again at Malick’s growl. “I did not send him, Kamen—I merely alerted you that he would come, and bid you take a skilled assassin into your fold.” His head tilted to the side. “Has he not proven… useful?”

I don’t need a pimp, Fen had sneered at Malick once. It appeared he’d had two all along. And one just as manipulative as the other.

“Oh, fuck you,” Malick snarled. “You knew exactly—”

“The maijin who doomed my son has been subtly trying to attract the attention of the Temshiel by using my son’s Blood to enslave the Jin— Wolf’s people, your people.” The rage and pain Malick had seen all those years ago,

Ghost
and found so hard to look at, was now plain on Husao’s face, in the fine tremors shivering over his lean frame. “Have you any idea how hard it’s been to watch? To help?”

Somewhat. Not entirely. Malick had thought his own wish for revenge and blood had been keen until he’d seen Fen’s. It wasn’t the same for Malick.

It wasn’t even the same for Husao. Dragon chose her own for their strict senses of justice, their remove, their indifference to mortals in the greater scheme of the Balance. When Dragon’s Cycle came ’round, Malick wouldn’t be surprised to see the Jin wiped out entirely, just for being dupes to the folly of the Ancestors, for even threatening the Balance, let alone rocking it as Asai and Skel had done. Husao’s rage came not from the loss of Skel, but from the loss of his own, from pride, from anger at having been blind to the machinations, from having failed his god. Someone like Skel—Bear’s because of his fierceness, his sometimes reckless defense of the helpless—
was altogether too ripe for the schemes of Asai.

Neither Malick’s grief at Skel’s loss, nor Husao’s, held a candle to Fen’s over the loss of his mother, the threat of the loss of the rest of his family. It was… a cleaner thing, Malick mused, regardless of the bloody way Fen went about it. More to Wolf’s liking, which…. Shit.

“Your choice, Dragon’s-own,” Malick told Husao evenly. “You would use the Catalyst just as surely as Asai intends to.”

“No,” Husao answered, that infuriating smile still curling at the corner of his mouth. “I would help him to become a true creature of Wolf, and I have done. You will wring no apologies or regrets from me for it. I was within the law. The rest….” He waved his hand again.

The rest is up to you. Malick saw it in the infuriating smirk, heard it in the heavy not-silence of the steady patter of rain.

“Skel was your friend, Kamen,” Husao said softly. “You vowed vengeance to me the last time I saw you, you raged against the gods for their refusal to step in, their denial of your wish to take justice to yourself. You still want it, I can see it clear on your brow, like a brand, so tell me, Wolf’s-own—
now that it’s within your reach, will you rebuff the tool that’s been set in your hand?” He stepped in close, dark hair plastered to his head, rain spilling down his face, into his eyes; if Malick didn’t know better, he could almost believe they looked like tears. Husao reached out, set his hand to Malick’s arm, gripped tight, but his voice remained low and soft. “He’s looking for the brother now, Kamen. And it will only be a matter of days—perhaps hours—
before he finds the mother. Two hearts to hold against the Catalyst, and all in exchange for Heart’s Blood from Wolf’s Temshiel. Which do you think the Catalyst will choose?”

Malick’s eyes narrowed. That was the second time today he’d heard the same threat. “You son of a bitch,” he growled. “You’ve got Xari bridled too.

You’re why Asai can’t see the brother anymore.” He’d known it, but knowing it was Husao was something else altogether. “You’d let him have him, too, wouldn’t you? You’d let him have them all, just to make sure Fen goes after him.”

“And you would not?” Husao merely shrugged at Malick’s indignant glare. “I would have been well pleased had the boy slit his throat on his way out the door and had done the night he watched Asai betray his family, but….” He shook his head, disdainful. “He was besotted before I laid eyes on him for the first time. Mortal hearts can be so very… inconvenient.” He narrowed his eyes at Malick, face going hard. “I like the boy,” he said, ignoring Malick’s contemptuous snort. “I would prefer it if he survived and got what he wanted. And make no mistake—he wants Asai’s heart in his fist just as much as Asai wants yours. Or….” Husao lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve no doubt Asai would settle for another Temshiel of Wolf.” He tilted his head.

“How is your sister?”

Malick hadn’t really known he was going to do it until his knuckles were aching and a smirk was winding onto his face. Husao rubbed at his mouth, smiling a little at the blood that stained the back of his hand, quickly washed away by the rain.

“Rage away at Fate and the gods, Kamen Wolf’s-own,” he chuckled.

“Hate me for seizing the opportunity to serve the Balance and avenge my son at the same time. Blame me for taking up Asai’s tools and using them against him.” His smile disappeared, and his face went hard again. “Do what you must, but take up your duty to your god. Honor the memory of your friend by guiding his replacement dupe. Your rebellion is at an end, Kamen, and you’ve no one to blame but yourself for how it came about. The Balance hangs about the Catalyst’s neck—do you want the noose in Asai’s hands or yours?”

It didn’t matter that Husao was right. It didn’t matter that what he was demanding was exactly what Fen wanted anyway, what Malick wanted, had been wanting. The manipulation and inevitability of it still flared rage and loathing in Malick’s chest, still seethed through his veins.

“You’ve left me shit choices in the matter, haven’t you?” he snarled.

“You’re no better than Asai.” And then, because he was pissed off, because he wanted to hurt, he leaned in and lowered his voice: “Xari was right, Husao—

Skel was a fool. He let Asai fuck him into stupidity, and handed him the seed that’s only now trying to bear fruit. I loved him like a brother, but if I had been the one sitting in judgment….” He paused, flexing his hand, feeling the burn in his knuckles, and watched Husao’s face set itself in stone as he stood

Ghost
in the rain and listened. “Asai deserves the suns for taking Skel’s Blood,”

Malick told him, low and through his teeth, then he spoke the words he’d known all along, but until now, could never bear to even allow to form into coherent thought: “But Skel deserved to burn along with him. He’s the one who broke the laws, he’s the one who couldn’t stand it that the Jin had used their magic against those who didn’t have it, he’s the one who taught Asai how to make the amulets.” He’d gotten right down into Husao’s face, teeth clenched so tight his jaw was aching. He drew back and shook his head. “I’m to blame. Right. Fuck you, I’m to blame. I wasn’t the one who stood back and watched it all happen and didn’t even know it until it was over.”

Husao had gone pale in the fading gray of late afternoon, his mien unflinching, cold, apparently untouched, but the curled fists and the visible trembling gave him away. He sucked in a long breath, grated, “You know your duty, Kamen. My part is almost done. You’d do well to rescue the brother before the night is through.” He slid his hand over his brow, shut his eyes for a quick moment, then smiled, peered at Malick, almost cocky. “He is unveiled now and vulnerable.”

Malick took a step toward him, fists tight again. “You son of a—”

“‘Beishin’ has guests at the moment,” Husao cut in, stepping back and gathering his glamour about him again, “but he will be sending out his eye, perhaps even reading the cards in only a matter of hours. You’d best get along. Vengeance awaits.”

It took a moment for Malick to send out his own veil, and by the time it was secure, Husao was already heading back toward the side of Asai’s house.

“I’ll get you your ‘vengeance’,” Malick called after him. “But it won’t be for Skel.”

Husao didn’t answer. Malick threw a string of profanity at his back—
venting, just to make himself feel better—but Husao never turned, and Malick was left standing there in the rain, soaked and getting more soaked, and mightily, profoundly pissed off. And even more so because, unaccountably, most of it was on Fen’s behalf.

Umeia would be so pleased.

“Fuck you, Husao,” he muttered. “And fuck you too, Skel.” If for nothing else than for being someone Malick had cared about, and then for being someone who loved too hard to see what Asai really was.

Still cursing under his breath, Malick adjusted the hood of his cloak and pulled it in tighter around his neck, turned down the street, and headed home.

THE sill was wide enough to almost fit him sideways. Jacin propped his left thigh on it, leaned his head against the thick, cool glass, and watched the rain.

The view wasn’t really a view—merely an up-close look at the dingy brick of the laundry next door—but it could’ve been much worse: it could’ve been a smelter’s with its stench of burnt oil and liquid ore, instead of lye soap and clean steam. Today, everything smelled of fish and rot and decay. He tried not to take it as an omen.

His stomach had calmed down a little, once he’d purged it. Still, a cup of tea would probably settle it a bit better, but it wasn’t time for supper yet, and he’d deliberately missed lunch. He would wait. Right now, the chill of the glass against his brow was soothing his head, though it was doing more unpleasant things to the rest of him. He hadn’t yet been able to rid himself of the clammy-damp, even after a change of clothes and an extra shirt. It was the fucking braid—it took forever to dry, and the heavy wet of it wound right through the rest of him. He pressed his cheek to the glass and tried not to let the unintended metaphor make him shiver.

He dozed, fitfully, his right foot planted to the floor, and his leg locked at the knee to support him, because he didn’t dare bend it. Not altogether comfortable, but he’d learned to catch at least shallow snatches of sleep standing or kneeling—whichever was Beishin’s pleasure that day—and meditating on whatever it was Asai had been trying to teach him that he hadn’t performed to perfection.

I don’t do this out of cruelty, Jacin-rei, but you must understand how imperative this is. Now, you will stand there and think about it, go through it in your mind, until your body can perform it to my satisfaction.

Except there was no such thing. Ever. Asai had never been satisfied. And trying meant nothing, not even if Jacin bled himself in the trying. Doing—that was the only thing that mattered. Doing. Learning. Learning to kill, and he was never allowed to know who he was supposed to kill, but it hadn’t mattered at the time—Beishin wanted it, so his obedient Ghost would do it.

Now, the desire to know was a live coal in his chest—a profound need.

Because if everything Asai had taught him to be had been a betrayal to everything he wanted, everything he thought he’d one day be called upon to fight for, what dupe had he really been meant to take his knives to? And how would that dupe’s death affect Jacin’s mother or his brothers and sister? If everything Asai had told him had been lies, if he’d betrayed Jacin’s family at the end, after he’d protected them all the years before, what other twists in his manipulations might Jacin fall prey to, if he had no idea what Asai’s true intentions were? He had to find out who it was Asai had intended for his

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“weapon” to kill, and then he had to do whatever it took to keep that person alive. Right?

There was convoluted sense in there somewhere, he could almost see it, but he was too tired and muddy-minded right now to follow it. The noise had muffled down to a sludgy wail beneath the aching of his head and his leg and the almost forgotten burn of smaller hurts along his ribs and torso, but the residue of the uzin and its morning-after repercussions were getting in the way of actual thought.

Fuck it. Focus on tonight, and let the rest wait until tomorrow. He had a name, a direction to follow toward the man who had taken his mother, and he had almost-proof that it was Asai who had, for whatever his own twisted reasons, engineered it. Get Joori and Morin and Caidi tonight, then find Yakuli and Asai and take care of them both. He’d take his time with Asai.

Make it hurt. Make him see. Make him sorry. Make—

“What’d you do, perch up there and die?”

Jacin snapped his eyes open, body going tight, hand instinctively reaching for the sheath at his hip, before Malick’s clamped down on it, stilled it. Stilled him.

“Sorry,” Malick said easily, “didn’t mean to startle you. You looked all….” His hand waved about and he shrugged. “Sorta stiff and gray.” He’d sauntered in like he had the right, munching on what looked like roasted almonds out of a little cup made of waxed paper in his palm. He offered one to Jacin, shrugging affably when Jacin merely tightened his mouth and scowled. There was no grin or smirk stretching Malick’s too handsome face, not this time, but his eyes danced, and Jacin could tell there wanted to be. “I knocked, but….” Malick trailed off, gesturing vaguely toward the closed door of Jacin’s room. His head tilted to the side, quizzical. “You all right?”

Tea. His eyes were the color of strong tea, tinged light but hung with murk, like tarnished bronze. A slight crook at the bridge of an otherwise perfect nose lent reality, mortality, to his too-striking good looks. His hair was smoky-brown, wavy, and flaring with a light curl just touching his shoulders.

Worn loose, for vanity, even when he went out to hunt, because binding it into a tail would have been too practical for someone like Malick. It looked just as soft as Jacin knew it was, because his fingers remembered how it had twined about them as he’d gripped, held on, rocking into heat with the scents of sage and sex winding all about him, absolutely nothing in his head but animal lust and the sensations rolling over—

Shit.

No, Jacin wasn’t all right. He was ridiculously entranced and pissed off about it. He snatched his hand away, but couldn’t help the shudder at the loss of contact, the loss of that stillness, the heavy chill that wobbled all through him and yet somehow flared sick heat at the same time.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

Malick only grinned, completely unaffected, hands held up in front of him, palms-out. “I wanted to warn you that Umeia will be up shortly to check your stitches. And I’ve brought you something. Several somethings, in fact.

Also, I’ve news.”

Jacin didn’t really hear any of it but the first part. It curled a hard knot of anxiety in his gut. The heat and fever and thudding pain told him what was likely under the bandage wound about his leg, and if any of them saw it….

Damn it, tonight could not be put off, he couldn’t allow it. He’d go out of his mind if they tried to stop him—last night would be nothing by comparison, and last night had been… bad. And then it had been good. And then he’d nearly lost his mind anyway.

Fuck.

“I want to go now.”

Malick looked as surprised at the statement as Jacin was himself. His eyebrows shot up and he stopped chomping on those stupid almonds. “Now?”

Jacin nodded. Now that he thought about it— “Why not?”

Malick shook his head. “Wait, go where?”

It was all Jacin could do to keep his teeth from grinding. What a stupid question. He was full of stupid questions. Go where? Who sent you? Do you still love him? Did he do it on purpose?

“I want to go get them. Now.”

“Now.” Malick still wasn’t grinning or smirking, but he was halfway to frowning. “What’s the matter?” He narrowed his eyes. “Did Shig say something?”

The question—so blunt, so… intuitive—threw Jacin. He didn’t have a single answer, so he gave none. Just stared. Angry. Because why should he have to explain?

Because you need his help, and they need his protection, even if you can’t trust his reasons.

And still, nothing would come. There was too much, all clogged somewhere in his chest, pushing behind his eyes, and if he opened his mouth, he might not be able to stem the flow once it started.

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“All right,” Malick sighed, the frown that had been working at his brow now set there in clear confusion and concern. “We don’t have to wait until the middle of the night, I suppose. It would be easier, but….” He trailed off, eyes too cogent, too aware. “Tell me why.”

It was fair. It was prudent. And Jacin still couldn’t do it.

Staring didn’t work on Malick. Glares amused him. And he’d only do something for another if there was something in it for him. He’d been watching Jacin since he’d got here, but Jacin had been watching him back. He knew what made Malick tick. What moved him.

You’ve a Temshiel punch-drunk over you….

Right, then.

These people used touch as some sort of silent communication; Malick in particular used it as a kind of control. And to a degree that almost shamed him, Jacin allowed it. But he’d been watching, just as carefully as he’d been watched. He’d learned. He did “coy” just as well as he did “nice,” and

“seductive” was quite frankly beyond him. Best he went with “slutty and needy.” “Slutty,” at least, he knew Malick understood, and he rather seemed the sort who liked to think himself the hero in whatever drama he fancied himself playing at, so “needy” should work too.

Jacin allowed the burning behind his eyes to seep outward, allowed the fear and uncertain misery to rise, tried not to let it swallow him even as he let it show. Then he stepped forward and kissed Malick. Desperate. Clutching.

Pleading. All of it authentic, even in its calculation. Malick pulled back, just a little, asked, “Am I going to get a punch in the jaw for this?” and Jacin had no idea what the hell he was talking about, so he ignored it. Dragged him in and kissed him again.

Salt on Jacin’s lips and the taste of almonds on his tongue, rich and robust. Eyes closed and body pressed in tight. Deep and driving; heavy breaths and grasping fingers. Silence gave coherence to vague anxieties and spiked them sharper. Stillness made sense of slow arousal, gave him someplace to direct scattered passion, focus it all down to this one thing.

Yielding, surrender through overture, giving to get, and he really didn’t mind the giving part. It would terrify him later, when the touch withdrew, when all that he was once again rose inside him, crowded out the perfect, pristine sense of it all that was so clear and sharp right now he could cut himself on it, slice raw to the bone. Right now, he sank into it, let it rise right over his head, and didn’t even try to keep himself from drowning in it.

Fuck, but the man could kiss.

Jacin’s fingers had wound themselves into thick, tawny waves, clung, and his body had molded itself to hard planes and pleasing lines. He shoved his hips in hard, presenting his arousal as proof of intent, satisfied when he felt an answer burning a solid line into the top of his thigh. Firm hands took hold of Jacin’s wrists. His fingers were pried away from Malick’s hair, then his shoulders when they tried to latch on there; Jacin allowed it, allowed his hands to be guided outward then downward, curling his torso a little more, then arching back when Malick pushed Jacin’s hands behind his back, pressed them to the small of it. Kept them there. Broke the kiss, panting. Reluctant but dogged.

Malick pressed his brow to Jacin’s, just stood there and breathed for a moment, gently swollen lips curling softly over teeth as he sucked in a long breath through his nose then opened those tea-colored eyes to skewer Jacin. “I see how it is,” he whispered. He dipped in again to run his mouth slowly over Jacin’s cheekbone, gave his wrists a sharp squeeze to remind him of the position into which he’d allowed himself to be maneuvered—the position into which he’d stepped willingly. “You’ve almost got what you want, and the nearness of it is terrifying you. So you want to fuck it all away for a while.

And if giving me a tumble gets you what you want….” Right in Jacin’s ear, hot and soft and dulcet, like it wasn’t nailing pieces of him to the wall and hammering him to a quivering pulp.

There was no point in trying to fight his way loose—he’d given away his leverage. Offered it. He was stronger than this, and yet he kept getting himself into these positions. It wasn’t fair. And anyway, if he started fighting now, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop, and who knew where that could end?

What was the price for murdering a Temshiel in a fit of insane impatience?

Not that he’d be able to. No wonder Malick had laughed at Jacin’s knives that night in the alley. Jacin was more likely to end up with one through his own heart than he was to kill this man—accidentally-on-purpose or otherwise—
and there was too much at stake. Jacin couldn’t allow it all to end with a knife in his ribs in the midst of a “lovers’ quarrel,” his blood wasn’t his to spill, and he no longer had any illusions that he could kill Malick, not knowing what he was.

A light nip to his earlobe, then: “Is this what you learned at Asai’s knee?”

Jacin stilled, shut his eyes tight. The accusation spitted him, drove right through him and held him there, quivering. Because maybe it wasn’t so far off. Maybe manipulation was the sum of his choices, and yes, he knew from whom he’d learned it. After all, it had worked so well on him, hadn’t it?

His hands twitched reflexively, testing the hold on his wrists; it merely tightened again, near to painful now. With a soft chuckle that was closer to

Ghost
dark and sad than humorous, Malick pulled Jacin in tight against his chest, dipped his mouth down to the sensitive skin just below Jacin’s ear. “Tell me what he was to you, Fen. Tell me what he is.”

Jacin… couldn’t. How was he supposed to find the words? How was he supposed to voice them, give them power, give Malick power by hearing them? He was already next to powerless. He couldn’t allow what little control he had to slip away from him in his own treacherous voice.

Malick’s mouth was still ghosting over Jacin’s throat, sliding heat beneath his already burning skin. Stoking reluctant arousal and twisting it in his gut, tangling doubt with need, hesitation with the agony of craving.

“Please,” was all he managed, swallowed and rolled a shiver up from the base of his spine as Malick’s teeth sank lightly into his throat. “Please, I want….” What did he want? Why had he even started this? “I want to go—”

“I know,” Malick told him, firming the strange embrace. “And we will. I promise. I’ve already promised. But that isn’t how it’s going to be between us, Fen—you’re not going to be fucking me to get what you want unless what you want is the fucking. There are some games I won’t play.”

“I… I didn’t….”

Didn’t what? Didn’t mean to? Yes, he did. Didn’t think it would matter?

Why should it? They would both get something out of it. Didn’t think Malick would twig? He might play charmingly dim and cavalier, but the man was scary-sharp when he wanted to be, and he was obviously much better at manipulation than Jacin was.

Didn’t even consider the tacit contract might be rejected?

He shouldn’t have allowed all that emotion to rise. Meant to aid exploitation before, and now it was only serving to choke him. Familiar lust and too damned much feeling laced with the even more familiar promise of bitter disappointment. Boneless, hopeless, weak and fuzzy, his head fell forward to rest on Malick’s shoulder, and his eyes seared in their sockets with too many tears. “I don’t want Umeia to look at my leg,” he said, thick and strangled as he wilted into Malick’s hold, bone-weary all of a sudden, and sick, head thumping and stomach roiling, and heavy thuds driving up from his leg to his chest.

Malick gusted a light snort and turned his grip on Jacin’s wrists from restraint to something oddly comforting. “One day, I will learn to follow your twisty turns in conversation.”

Jacin doubted it. And he didn’t care. When was the last time someone had actually held him like this? When was the last time he’d been rejected and consoled at the same time? Why wasn’t Malick pushing him away?

“It’s gotten infected, hasn’t it?” Malick asked quietly. “You’re burning up.”

Probably the most reasonable explanation. Jacin hadn’t had the nerve to actually look. He’d made the cut countless times, but the repercussions had never been like this.

“It was deeper than I’d meant,” he answered, his voice sounding faraway and hollow, even with the silence in his head. “And I hadn’t cleaned the knife.”

Fucking idiot. He always cleaned his knives, first thing, always. Except last night, everything had been… too much. Too loud. He hadn’t been able to think, to even track his own actions. Even now, he still couldn’t remember how he’d gotten from the Gates to the roof of the Girou, or from the roof down to Malick’s rooms. Bits and snatches were all that came to him, and most of it too humiliating to be worth remembering.

“Well, you were a little out of it,” Malick answered, calm and compassionate rather than sickened and scornful.

The hold turned to a true embrace: hands releasing Jacin’s wrists and sliding comforting swipes of fingertips where they’d pinched muscle into bone; arms reeling him in more firmly, winding about him, making it hard for Jacin to breathe through the tangled mess in his chest that was clogging his throat. His own arms dangled limp at his sides—he didn’t know what to do with them.

He didn’t know what to do at all.

So he simply endured it, waited it out, until Malick gave him a gentle squeeze then pulled back, led him over to the bed and made him sit. Watched closely the whole while until Jacin remembered too late that he’d forgotten not to limp.

“All right,” Malick said, voice still somewhat gentle, but with a touch more command inside than had been present before. “I can see how it is. And before you get yourself into a twist, your brothers and sister will be here tonight.” He laid a hand to the side of Jacin’s face then shook his head with a heavy breath. “Shit.” Low and with feeling. “I don’t suppose you could be talked into staying here tonight and letting me do this for you?” He merely nodded at Jacin’s glare, like he’d expected it, then rolled his eyes. “Right.

Stay here.”

He left Jacin sitting there on the bed, staring blankly at the door for a moment as all at once the noise rose, blurring out reality. He’d come to accept it—that initial wave of sticky incoherence in the first several moments after Malick’s touch went away. It was harder to ride it out today. Harder to do

Ghost
anything today but sit and stare, or close his burning eyes and try to drift, try to listen, but the Ancestors didn’t have anything to say, nothing he could understand, and anyway, he hurt too much. It was just as well Malick had refused him. He didn’t think he would’ve been able to carry through in the end, and that would have been embarrassing, as well as detrimental to…

whatever it was he’d been trying to do at the time.

“Shifts to Null,” he muttered, wheezed a small snort and curled himself down, propped his elbows to his knees and laid his head to his hands. “Son of a bitch.” Pulled back a little and blinked muzzily at his fingers, wet with clammy sweat.

No wonder his clumsy manipulations hadn’t worked—he probably looked like shit. Who would want to see that writhing beneath them? Anyway, he’d already given in, Malick had already gotten what he wanted, he’d won, so what would be the point? He’d wanted to touch the Untouchable, and Jacin had given it to him—why come back to clean up the sloppy seconds? Hand the crazy Ghost promises instead, he’d believe them, he always did. Look at what he’d done for Asai—what he’d been willing to do—for nothing more than promises. And he’d give up the silence in exchange for the promises, because he had no choice. He had to take the chance that this time, someone—anyone—would live up to their word. And Umeia had sworn oath to Joori and Morin and Caidi, hadn’t she? She had to follow through.

Then again, Jacin himself hadn’t been included in that, had he? No one had really given him anything but promises he’d heard before.

Fuck.

He wished Malick had left him over by the window. He missed the chill of the glass against his face. Missed the touch that had shifted his focus from tangled voices to incomprehensible emotions, because he wasn’t capable right now of fretting over things he didn’t understand.

Go and get his brothers and sister, get them back here safely, then go kill Asai. That, he understood. When those things were done, there would be plenty of worry to fill up the blank spaces. Like find his mother, for one, and worry about whether he could trust these people to keep the rest of his family safe once they got here, for two. He had no intention of allowing anyone the kind of power he’d allowed Asai to have over the people he loved, never again.

Malick announced his return with a cursory knock on the door before he barged back in, a small bowl in his hand and a bulky sack slung over his shoulder. He kicked the door shut behind him as he arrowed in, and set the bowl to the little cupboard beside the bed. “I’ve put Umeia off for now. Drink that. Hangover remedy—works wonders. I know.” Jacin just bet he did. “I

threw in some feverfew. None of it’s a cure, and we really should have Umeia see to that leg now, but she’ll just try and keep you here tonight, and I think whatever you’ll get up to while trying to follow after the rest of us will end up more dangerous than just letting you come along.”

Come along. Honestly. Was there no end to the presumptions? “They’re my family,” Jacin grated.

“Yeah, yeah,” Malick said as he swung the sack around to bounce on the bed and started rooting through it. “Drink the damn potion. I’m trying to woo you here, and you’re not making it easy.”

Jacin blinked.

…What?

“Ah, here it is.” With a grin, Malick pulled out a long wooden box and set it on the mattress. “You can open it after you’ve drunk the brew.”

Suspicious—“woo”? what the fuck?—Jacin stared at the box and then shot a frown up at Malick, but Malick only raised his eyebrows and glanced pointedly at the bedside cupboard. Jacin followed his gaze, picked up the bowl, and took a cautious whiff of the dark liquor, surprised when his mouth watered a little at the thick, spicy scent of the steam. He hadn’t realized he was so thirsty. Curious now despite himself, he took several healthy gulps, scalding his mouth and throat.

“Watch it, it’s strong,” Malick cautioned. “I’ll get you another before we leave if you need it, but only the one for now. All right, open the box.”

Still wary but absurdly curious, Jacin did. Stared.

“I know very well,” Malick said, “that by rights I should’ve had you with me. It’s better to try before you buy, make sure your hand fits the grip, but I tried them, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt such perfect balance. And I thought they were quite beautiful.”

They were. Twin long knives, the steel tempered nearly blue and scored down the center with acid-etched leafy vines curling into and over themselves, winding down from just below the tip all the way to the hole above the handle just big enough for a finger grip. The edge, from tip to return, was sharpened to near silver-white. The handles were straight-grained ironwood, cut from the same block, if Jacin’s assessment was correct; the uniformity was that close.

No etchings or frivolities on the handles, only a satin-smooth finish so as not to detract, even minutely, from the individual grip.

Beautiful. A far cry from the utilitarian long knives Jacin used. Not exactly gifts from Asai—more like accessories to make his tool more useful—
but they were efficient and they served Jacin’s purposes. These were actual pieces of functional art.

Ghost

“Well, give them a try,” Malick told him.

Jacin peered up, frowned. “Why?” Jacin would never let another handle his knives—well, at least the good ones—and he saw no reason to insult these weapons by smudging them up with his sweaty fingers. They looked very expensive and were quite beautiful. In fact, there was no reason to insult them by selling them to their new apparent owner, but Jacin supposed the craftsman couldn’t be blamed for making some koin when he could. It was almost a crime that Malick had bought them. Certainly it had been for vanity’s sake—

Malick didn’t use long knives, and these belonged in the hands of someone who knew what to do with them.

“Remember we talked about wooing?” Malick rolled his eyes when Jacin flashed him an annoyed glare. He dragged out a matched set of belted snakeskin sheaths, supple-looking as they coiled about his hand, like the spirit of the snake they’d come from still possessed them. He waved at the knives.

“They’re for you, bonehead.”

Jacin gave the knives a bit of a glower. “I’m not paying for these.” Beauty and form were all well and good, but Jacin’s koin was limited, and he needed it all to get his family out of Ada. He wasn’t wasting it on admittedly beautiful knives when he already had perfectly good ones. And he certainly wasn’t about to reimburse Malick for something Jacin hadn’t asked him to buy. The fucking presumption of the man seemed endless.

“Of course you’re not paying for them,” Malick snorted. “Wouldn’t be much of a present if I made you pay for it, would it?”

What?

“A skillful assassin must have tools to match his skill.” Malick dropped a small, authoritative nod. “It’s in the rule book.”

Jacin blinked. Rule book?

“It’s a joke, Fen.” Smirking now. “There isn’t really a rule book.”

Ah. That would explain the smirk. None of it explained the knives, though.

“Present,” Jacin said.

Malick’s grin made a comeback, along with a waggle of eyebrows. “And there’s more.” He dug back into the sack, tugging out bundles of what looked like waxed wool. “I doubt your brothers and sister have raingear, and I know you don’t. Think this’ll fit your sister?” He held up a small hooded cloak, rich dark blue, with decorative carved buttons and ribbons at the throat, rather than a plain wool tie. “These, I admit, were Samin’s idea, though I paid for them.

And this.” A vest of lace-thin silvery mail chimed elegantly as Malick pulled it from the sack and held it up. It was cool and light through Jacin’s trousers

when Malick laid it over his lap. Nothing pretty or fancy about it, but close-meshed and flexible as linen.

Jacin stared. Utterly mystified. Leaned back a little, hands curled to his chest, unwilling to actually touch any of it.

“Feeling wooed yet?” Malick wanted to know.

Jacin just kept staring. The headache had receded—whatever that brew was had set right to doing its promised work—but he could feel the heat of fever flushing his cheeks, and a renewed solid pulse thumped through him, flaring heavily up his thigh. “I don’t understand,” was all he could manage.

Malick’s grin turned to something… strange. Softer. “I know you don’t,”

he said. “That’s what makes it fun. It’s not important.” His chin jerked toward the box with the knives. “Try them.”

Presents. Wooed.

Confounded, Jacin reached out, ran a fingertip over the smooth handle of one of the knives, then slipped his hand around it. The wood was like warm silk against his palm. He tested the grip as he lifted it from its bed of dark velvet, slipped his finger through the hollow in the blade and gave it an experimental twirl. “Full tang,” he murmured, watching the blade catch the light as he spun it, then flipped it to lay crosswise over his palm. “Perfectly balanced.”

“I said it was, didn’t I?” Malick’s tone was perhaps a little miffed. “I may not do a lot of knife work, but I at least know how to look for quality.”

Well… that seemed true enough. Jacin laid the knife back in the box. “I’ll pay for the cloaks,” he told Malick, because he hadn’t thought of them, and they would be necessary. “The rest—”

“The rest you’ll be needing,” Malick cut in, all smiles gone, gaze abruptly sober. “I told you I’ve news, as well.”

The sudden turn to gravity made Jacin’s eyes narrow. “Does it have to do with tonight?” he asked warily.

“It has to do with the things most precious to you, so yeah, I guess you could say it does, in a roundabout way.” Malick paused, like he was thinking about what he wanted to say and exactly how he wanted to say it, then tipped a sharp little nod, looked Jacin in the eye. “If I wanted someone completely under my control, do you know what I’d do?” He didn’t wait for Jacin to answer. “I’d find out what mattered to him, what he loved, and control that.

I’d take it and hold it hostage and make him believe that I was the only thing standing between that thing he loved and complete annihilation.”

Ghost

It had the sound of a threat, but not the feel. Still, Jacin’s stomach curled in then dropped altogether. Malick was capable of it, all of it; there was a coldness in his eyes sometimes that Jacin didn’t doubt. And Jacin had practically begged a Temshiel to “rescue” his family.

“And if I was very clever,” Malick went on, “I’d do it all in a way that made me the hero.” His eyes pierced Jacin—not hostile, but intense. “I might even persuade my target that I was everything he ever wanted, pretend I loved him, and do everything I could to make sure he loved me. I’d become his savior, and show him that I could be the savior of everything he loved.”

Just exactly how much did Malick know about Jacin’s years with Asai?

And how had he found out? Was he rubbing Jacin’s nose in his own stupidity, or was he arrogantly laying out his own plans and showing Jacin how powerless he was to stop any of it?

“Is that…?” Jacin had to pause, suck in a long breath. “Is that what you’re doing now?”

Malick only stared at him for a long moment, anger edging his gaze, then clenched his fists, unclenched them. He didn’t answer the question. “I’ve known Asai for… a long time, Fen. You might say we’ve a bit of a history.

And not a pleasant one.” He paused while Jacin took this in, then said, surprisingly gently, “You had no idea he’s maijin, did you?”

Everything… tilted. Just a little, but enough to throw off whatever balance Jacin had been maintaining between confusion, noise, and pain. He shook his head, hand shifting along his thigh, pressing just enough. “He….” He couldn’t be, was what hovered on his tongue, but… why couldn’t he be? The full-Blood ran through Jacin’s veins, but none of its magic—how would he be able to tell? Abruptly, this Temshiel’s invasive presence in his life, and his absurd interest in Jacin himself, made a little bit more sense. Jacin’s eyes narrowed. “And you’re here to balance him out.”

Because it was what they did. It was their nature. Maijin influenced mortals to make a mess of things, and Temshiel followed after, mopping up, wiping out any—even the duped mortals—who weren’t smart enough to get out of their way. All except for the maijin. Exquisitely unfair, Jacin had always thought—they could and did kill everyone but each other, waged war on each other through those they manipulated.

Malick shook his head. “No. I was here to….” A shrug, and Malick raked a hand through his hair. “Some would say ‘hide’—some have said as much—
but I prefer to call it a strategic retreat. Which is what it was. Except… well, then, you came along, and… here you are.”

“Here I am,” Jacin echoed, fear winding up into his chest, stuttering his breath. “What do you—” No, that would do no good—these people didn’t explain themselves to mortals. And Jacin had…. Had he broken any laws?

Ada laws, certainly, but it wasn’t the same as breaking the laws of the gods.

What were the laws of the gods? Everyone had their own versions. And Jacin hadn’t done anything worse than what this Temshiel had done—did that count for anything? Shig had said Malick belonged to Wolf; did Wolf give a damn about the Adan and their laws? The Jin were his favored people, or so they liked to claim—not that it seemed to have done them any good—but Wolf’s laws seemed to have more to do with….

Temshiel, children of the gods, and the Ancestors were the children of the Temshiel. Except the Ancestors had angered Wolf when they’d bound their magic to their people, changed their natures, altered the Balance, and when Wolf’s Cycle had ended, the Jin had been abandoned by their guides and their god—only the Ancestors had been left to lead the people, direct their magic.

And when the Ancestors’ long lives stretched too thin, they cast themselves into Subie, chose their Untouchables who spoke with their Voices, and lived on through them.

Oh… shit.

How many times had Jacin heard the speculation that the Adan’s quick success in subduing the Jin was overdue punishment for the Ancestors’ folly and the Jin’s continued compliance with it? They’d won the Binding War, but it had cost them their guiding Voices, driven the Ancestors mad, and the Untouchables in their wake. Left them open to that final and decisive invasion only decades ago, placed the bootheels of the Adan firmly on the necks of the Jin. And now their magic was being stamped out where possible, covertly stolen when it could be managed. Surely it must be the final retribution of an angry god? The Temshiel had been set against the Jin before—why not again?

“Please don’t hurt them.” Likely no good, either, but he had to try. Beg.

Whatever it took, even if he had to kill… everyone. Had he told Malick that Joori had magic? No, he’d kept that to himself, but was it possible to hide something like that from Temshiel? Malick had to know—why else all the interest? No wonder he was so keen to go and get them, bring them here, and Jacin was going to lead him right to them.

“Do you love him?”

The question, so seemingly random, threw Jacin. He stared, trying to make his mind move from the fear and dread of a second ago to the shame and confusion the question engendered.

“Love?”

Ghost

“Asai, Fen. Do you love Asai?”

Did he love Asai? He wanted to snarl, snap, No! What the fuck do you think I am? but indignation came from pride and honor, and Jacin didn’t think he had any of those. He wanted to say that he hated Asai—for what he’d done, for whatever it was he was planning to do—but the thick tangle in his chest felt too much like the one that had choked him since he’d seen dark eyes and a kind, handsome face reflected in the moonlight of his father’s dooryard.

Love and hate were too closely entwined as a rule, and Jacin had no idea how to tell one from the other.

“Did you sleep with him?” Malick furthered quietly.

And this answer came all too quickly, spilling out of Jacin’s mouth before he could dam it up: “He wouldn’t have me.” Humiliated, damage done, the anger spiked again, and Jacin lifted his head, glared at Malick. “I would’ve done. I wanted to.” Defiant. Strangled with years of frustration and hurt and rage, and he was more than willing to take it out on Malick, since he was handy, and the Temshiel, because he was full of fucking questions, and he had yet to address Jacin’s.

“Don’t hurt them,” he said, through his teeth now—he couldn’t help it—
but it wobbled and fell from threat to plea by the end. And he was already in it, so he might as well add, “Please,” though he had no illusions that anything he said would change a damn thing.

“I’m not going to hurt them,” Malick told him. Jacin heard it only dimly through the driving buzz, but he did hear it. “I’m going to do whatever I need to do to make sure no one gets hurt at all. Fen, look at me.”

Shit, Jacin’s eyes had clamped shut. He pried them open, dragged in a painful, heavy breath. Looked up.

“I’m not going to hurt them,” Malick repeated. “I told you, I’m going to help.”

“Why?” Jacin wanted to know, strung through with dread and despair and horrible foreboding.

Malick shrugged, careless, like everything Jacin had left wasn’t dangling from the fingers of immortal beings like the strings of helpless puppets.

“Well, for one, because Umeia’s already sworn oath to you, and she’d kill me if she ended up going to the suns because of me.”

“Umeia….” Right. Jacin had forgotten about Umeia for a minute there.

“Your… mate?”

“No. What? No!” A jagged snort, somewhere between hilarity and pained disgust. “Fuck, no. Sister.”

Huh. Jacin hadn’t known Temshiel had siblings. “She didn’t swear to me.” Jacin’s voice was too soft, wobbly and hesitant.

Malick’s gaze snapped over to him, sharp and narrowed. “Hm,” he said, like he hadn’t realized it until Jacin had pointed it out. “Nonetheless….” He trailed off, thoughtful, brow drawn and expression somewhat dark, before he shook himself and went on, “Nonetheless, she’s sworn for the rest of your family, and unless I’m willing to risk her—which I’m not—I’ll be making sure nothing happens to them.” He paused, swept the mess on the bed to the side, and sat down so his gaze was level with Jacin’s. “Fen, believe me on this—you will have your family here, safe and sound, tonight.”

All right. It made sense. Jacin was sure there were things he didn’t know, couldn’t fathom—loopholes and hidden motives—lurking beneath it all, but he hardly had a choice now, had he?

“And then what?”

“What d’you…?” Malick shook his head. “I told you that there is no price for tonight.”

“But you never said anything about after tonight.” Jacin set his jaw. He almost reached out and shook Malick, but kept the little control he still had left. “And then what?”

Malick was staring at him, a strange look of something approaching sympathy, which almost made Jacin bare his teeth, but he held it back. “Why does there have to be an ‘and then’?” Malick wanted to know.

Why? Why? Because there was a price, there was always a price, and Jacin needed to know it, know it now, so it wouldn’t creep up behind him some day and bite him on the ass. He didn’t know how to say it, not in a way that didn’t sound vicious and ungrateful, and he needed to at least sound grateful, because this Temshiel now held everything Jacin had left in his hand.

“They’re my family,” was all he could think to say. It came out thin and raw, but there was nothing he could do about that.

There was a long pause, heavy, then: “And everything has to be a fucking trade, dunnit?” It was strangely soft, and… disappointed? Not sad, surely.

Jacin cut his glance up, narrowed it, but Malick only sighed and rubbed at his chin. “Fine, then, if that’s what you need. I get your family for you, and then you return the favor.”

Jacin almost buckled. There it was. It was… bizarre relief. “How?”

“You kill Asai.”

“I was going to do that any—”

“And you do it so he stays dead.”

Ghost

“How do I—?”

“You take out his heart, Fen. You pull it from his chest and you bind his spirit to the earth.”

Jacin paused, sucked in a slow breath. Tried to picture it, and stopped himself when he found he wasn’t quite as disturbed as he ought to be, considering what Asai had been to him. Considering that Asai himself had taught Jacin how to do that very thing, except Jacin was pretty sure Asai hadn’t meant for “his Ghost” to use it on him. So, who had Asai meant for Jacin to use it on? Jacin’s eyes settled on Malick’s, hung there as vague suspicion wound its way to almost certainty.

… Oh.

The irony was both fitting and horrifying.

“There is no price for bringing them here,” Malick said, his tone low and even, like he was afraid Jacin would bolt, “but that’s not all you want. And it’s not really enough, in the end, is it?” He leaned in, right up close, eyes intense. “You want a trade, Fen, there it is. Asai for them, and I’ll give you what you want. I’ll get them out.”

Jacin narrowed his eyes. It couldn’t be that easy.

“I can’t kill him,” Malick said, soft and serious. “I’m bound by different laws than you are. But he needs killing, Fen. Besides what he’s done to your family—and I know now that it was him who betrayed them—there is much more you don’t know about.”

“Yes,” was all Jacin said, faraway and flat, hand going out unconsciously to stroke a fingertip down the edge of one of the knives. Agreement, maybe, or just final verbal acknowledgement of the truth—it didn’t matter. He’d been planning on doing it anyway. Just not… that way.

The potion Malick had given him had dulled all the aches and calmed his stomach, taken his mind back to almost as “normal” as he got. He wished he hadn’t drunk it. Near-agonizing pain and overwhelming noise seemed almost like welcome distraction now.

“I don’t know how long he’s been planning this, though I’ve my suspicions,” Malick went on, “but his machinations began in earnest when Wolf pulled you away from Raven.”

A wheezy little laugh rolled loose from Jacin’s throat. “He came to my father the night I was born.” Still soft, almost insubstantial. “Traded me on my Change for….” He paused. He’d almost mentioned Joori. “…for my mother’s safety.”

“And your brother’s,” Malick said quietly.

Fuck. Jacin’s fingers slid down the blade of the knife, wrapping lightly about the handle.

“It’s impolite to kill a man with a knife he gave you for a present,” Malick chided lightly.

Jacin’s eyes snapped up to his, searching, but for maybe the first time since he’d laid eyes on Malick, there was no mockery or amusement in the clear gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. My brother—”

“Oh, please.” Malick rolled his eyes. “You really thought I didn’t know?

Or wouldn’t find out, once he got here?”

Maybe. Thinking ahead—planning and scheming—were not exactly Jacin’s areas of aptitude. And reading people…. Hell, he’d spent his entire adolescence in love with a maijin who was all the while planning to hand over his mother and brother, and possibly have Morin and Caidi killed. What the fuck did Jacin know?

“Anyway,” Malick said, gaze pointed downward now, mien a little…

sheepish? Surely not. “I, um… I followed you that first night.” He peered up, something like apology now. “I’ve known from the start, Fen.”

How…? No, it didn’t matter. Almost every kind of magic, Shig had told him. It must have been laughably easy. And there Jacin had been—so careful, so pathetic—thinking he was doing at least that part right.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, so I’m told,” Malick agreed easily enough. “Sorry.”

Though Jacin doubted that last part was sincere.

“Did you know that little hut sits well inside Asai’s holdings?” Malick paused for only a second at Jacin’s sharp breath. “He’s got his own ways of watching what goes on in the lands he’s claimed. It’s good luck for you the Mage was watching out for you and yours.”

Jacin hadn’t known. He hadn’t had even the faintest clue. Fuck, what had he been thinking? They could have all been dead that first awful night. The horror of the possibility drained the blood from Jacin’s head, sent it driving down into his gut, twisting it.

There it is, Joori—even you’d have to see this failure for what it is.

A warm hand landed on his arm; shockingly, Jacin didn’t even flinch, and the fact that he didn’t made his face burn. And the silence was merely secondary. Comfort, and he didn’t even care from whom it came. A whore for touch, even now. Practically begging his father for it, like a cat winding about its owner’s legs, then lapping up the sparing little he’d got from Asai, and

Ghost
latching on to Vonshi’s bony grip that always seemed to slide a little bit of sanity through the mangled mess of Jacin’s mind. And now….

He couldn’t shake it off. Wouldn’t. And he couldn’t fool himself anymore that it was only the silence inside it that he craved. This was older, this need, ingrained and dangerous, and much stronger than he was.

“You said Asai never told you why he was training you.” Malick’s soft voice slid through him like a knife in the chest. “You were to use your training on me. Or whatever Temshiel came to stop him—it’s his bad luck that it happened to be me.” He paused, too obviously stifling a growl, then shook his head. “He doesn’t love you, Fen. He never did.”

Fuck, why did that cut so deeply when he'd already known it? “So what?”

It came out humiliatingly thick. “Neither do you.”

“Ah, but I can pretend. I’m fucking brilliant at it.” Malick’s tone was abruptly low, a subtle note of sex clinging to its edge as he leaned in close to murmur in Jacin’s ear. “Wouldn’t you like to believe it? Just for a little while?”

Yeah. He would. He’d probably hand over his soul to Malick right now, just to believe some one did. That someone could. That he was worthy of it.

That he wasn’t nothing.

And fucking hell, but he was pretty sure Malick knew it.

Jacin shut his eyes so they wouldn’t start leaking again. “What do you want from me?”

“Oh, baby…. ” Malick chuckled, but somehow, it didn’t feel derisive or insulting. “You don't know the half of it. So much more than this, but this’ll have to do for now.” He dipped in close again and set a soft, damp kiss to Jacin’s temple. “Just like I can’t kill him, he can’t kill me. But he wants my Blood, and you’re meant to get it for him.

“So, you have a decision to make here, Fen.” Malick pulled back, gaze intense but otherwise unreadable. He kept his hand where it was, and Jacin continued to let him. “You’re with me or against me. You’re his dog or you’re mine. There is no in-between. There is no price but what you choose. If you choose him, we go tonight, get your family if you still want us to, then you go on your way—no harm, no foul. But if you choose me, I won’t just go and get them, I’ll keep them safe. I’ll get them out.” He paused when Jacin drew in a breath. Malick nodded a little, maybe agreement or confirmation, but his expression was neither mocking nor smug. “Think about it, Fen, because there is no going back. And by that I mean: if you cross me, I’ll kill you. The Adan’s laws do not apply to me. So.”

Malick took his hand back, waited for a moment, like he knew Jacin needed him to, then stood and stepped slowly over to the window before turning back. He leveled his gaze once again with Jacin’s. “Now d’you feel wooed?”

Coming Soon

Wolf’s-own: Book Two

WEREGILD

By Carole Cummings

The amorality of gods makes it hard to tell bad from good and right from wrong. Fen Jacin-rei doesn’t care. All Fen cares about is saving his family, and he’ll sacrifice anything that gets in his way. Including his own soul.

No longer willing to wait for the machinations of the gods’ minions, Fen accepts the trade Kamen Malick offers. Together they set out to rescue Fen’s family and kill the man who betrayed them. But Fen is an Untouchable, one whose mind hosts the spirits of long-dead magicians, and with Voices of the Ancestors screaming in his head, Fen finds it harder and harder to stave off madness.

Malick has his own reasons to hand over everything Fen wants and equally compelling reasons to withhold everything Fen needs. In over his head with his timing as bad as ever, Malick must devise a way to do his god’s bidding without breaking his god’s laws—and keep Fen sane and on Malick’s side in the bargain.

About the Author

CAROLE CUMMINGS lives with her husband and family in Pennsylvania, USA, where she spends her time trying to find time to write. The recipient of various amateur writing awards, several of her short stories have been translated into Spanish, German, Chinese, and Polish.

Free shorts, sneak peeks at WIPs, and other miscellany can be found at
http://www.carolecummings.com.

Also from CAROLE CUMMINGS

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Document Outline

- Copyright
- Acknowledgments
- Glossary
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- Coming Soon
- About the Author
- Also from Carole Cummings

Table of Contents

- Copyright
- Acknowledgments
- Glossary
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- Coming Soon
- About the Author
- Also from Carole Cummings