Wolf's-own: Koan Read online

  Bloody fucking hell. She had to be talking about Morin, what Wolf had planned for him. Which was likely going to be harder for Fen to take than the whole Incendiary thing, and for which Fen would probably end up outright killing Malick, unless everything happened in exactly the order Malick intended. Incendiary first; Morin... sometime after that. A long time after that, probably. It all depended on Fen.

  Imara was watching him carefully, though Malick was sure nothing was showing on his face. Still, she smirked and leaned into him, pressing her small breast up against him like lover. “If you make me,” she whispered, all sly and seductive, “I'll just go directly to his brother and start there. I doubt ‘your’ Incendiary will thank you for it, but it might be fun to watch."

  That was it. Malick was done with this conversation. If he stayed here any longer, he really was going to kill her on the temple steps. “Fuck off, Imara,” he grated. With a growl, he shoved Imara away and stalked off in the other direction. “If I need your damned interference, I'll jostle your web. Until then, just stay the hell away from anyone named Fen. Don't make me kill you."

  He didn't even look back to see if she was listening. Snarling, Malick barreled through the temple's gate and headed back to the inn.

  * * * *

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  Chapter Two

  The absolute nothing of the suns, Jacin thought, really couldn't be worse than existing in the penury of life without meaning. Couldn't be. Not that he'd be finding out anytime soon. They all still watched him to make sure he didn't drown himself in the washbasin or go at his wrists with a rice paddle or something. They hadn't left him alone the whole voyage here, and he supposed he was only alone now because they thought Malick was watching him. He could tell them they needn't bother, he was just a little too cowardly for that, but they wouldn't believe him, so he didn't. Dying in battle, for a purpose, that was one thing, but... well, he'd been told living was his sacrifice, and the gods had already fucked him over, so he didn't want to chance being reborn into a life even worse than the one he had. He had just enough courage to try to start again, but not enough to do it as someone else.

  Now, if he could just get someone to show him how to start again...

  You need your beishin to see to you, Jacin-rei. You always have done.

  Perhaps, but Jacin didn't say so. If he answered, Beishin would only get more insistent, so Jacin tried to ignore him. He took a drink instead.

  The liquor left a pleasant tingle in the back of his throat, warm and rough, but it didn't dull like he would have wished, which rather pissed him off. Not enough to stop drinking it to spite himself, but still. He watched the ember at the tip of his smoke flare and spark a little as he dragged on it, held the breath in his lungs as he drew it away and gave it tiny little tug-jerks. Circles, but not perfect. He looked every time, though, just to check. The rings flittered and drifted in the chill whorls through the cracks in the panes as he watched them skim toward the ceiling; he let them expand and ripple outward into almost nothing before gusting the smoke out his mouth, obliterating the imperfection. Shig could blow smoke rings, pink lips puckered in a supple O-shape and a crack of her jaw. Jacin tried, but he just got vaguely circular clouds and blobs, and then he got annoyed, so he didn't try anymore. At least not in front of Shig.

  They were moving on—all of them—starting again, and all Jacin could do was watch them and wonder why he couldn't seem to. It had been almost three months, and yet all it took was one careless moment of allowing remembrance, and body-memory kicked in and set him tense, adrenaline swamped him and shortened his breath, pounded through his heart, and then he was there, watching himself do it all over again.

  Betrayal and failure and fear and more betrayal and grasping at treacherous hope and death all around him—

  Your fault, little Ghost

  His teeth clamped tight and he shut his eyes, forcing encroaching memory away. He held his breath and waited for his heart to stop pounding in his throat. Physical pain was one thing, he could live with that, seek it, even, those bright little sparks of controlled sensation that focused his mind and told him he was real, they were the ghosts. This, though, this... pain of the mind, of the heart, of the soul... he had no idea what to do with it. And no one seemed to want to tell him. Not even Malick.

  He pushed the last of the smoke through his nostrils as he took another sip of the liquor, flicked the ash onto the saucer that had been under the teabowl, and shoved his shoulders more firmly into the mattress. The teabowl had held tea when the inn's maid had brought it. Jacin was sick of tea. There'd been a mostly full bottle of something dark and strong-smelling sitting on the washstand, so he'd dumped the tea in the basin and replaced it with... whatever this stuff was. He accepted the faint buzz as a good sign.

  Your emotions make you weak and foolish, little Ghost, Asai told him. And the Temshiel knows it. Why do you suppose he's so afraid to tell you what you are? What you've always been? Great things await you, my gentle mercenary, but you have not the greatness in you to reach them. Your Temshiel knows it. I can help you rise above what you are. I can help you truly become Fate's hand.

  Jacin just sneered and took another drink, said, “Fuck you, Beishin,” to the ceiling and set the smoke at an angle between his lips.

  You were so much more to me than that, Beishin offered. His voice sounded sad, but Jacin remembered that tone very clearly, and he knew the eyes that went with it were watchful and calculating, looking for weakness, even if he couldn't see them. I would have given you everything. Your sister did not have to die, Jacin-rei. That was not my doing, but yours. You have refused to be what you are, you refuse it still, you refuse perfection. Can you not see the failure you have allowed yourself to become?

  He shouldn't have answered, shouldn't have acknowledged, he'd opened the floodgate and now he had to deal with the deluge. “No, I see.” Jacin shoved the smoke out through his teeth and shut his eyes. “I didn't kill you quick enough."

  Beishin laughed, a warm, kind thing that still, even after everything, curled a sick knot in Jacin's gut that spiked his chest with regret. He clenched his teeth so hard he bit off the end of the smoke. With a curse, he took it from his mouth and spat the loose paper and leaf into the saucer. He stubbed the smoke out, hauled himself up, and lit another.

  Perhaps, little Ghost, Beishin put in, you should ask your Temshiel what you are. A soft chuckle, mockery slinking about its edges. See if he will tell you. Then you can know what you really are to the gods. What you are to treacherous Wolf. What you are to his own. Beishin tsked. Jacin could almost see the disappointment in dark eyes, the slow, sorrowful shake of the head. He doesn't love you. Why do you go on lying to yourself, Jacin-rei? Why do you go on letting them lie to you?

  Jacin tightened his jaw and shut his eyes again. “Because I can't care enough not to."

  And he didn't want to know, damn it. Why couldn't Beishin see that, if he thought he saw so much? And why couldn't he just shut the fuck up about it?

  You can't care enough about anything. It's why all of your trying amounts to nothing more than a lake of blood on the dirty cobbles of an alley behind a whorehouse.

  Which was true, except that it wasn't really, and it made sense, except that it didn't, but Jacin was more or less used to that.

  You need your beishin to show you what you want, little Ghost. Only I can love the unlovable. Your Temshiel pretends at it, all the while hiding from you what you are, keeping perfection from your grasp, because it suits his god, because he wishes to keep for himself what—

  "Why do you listen to them, Jacin?"

  Jacin didn't jump. He was used to Caidi showing up abruptly. He even guiltily hoped for it sometimes. Caidi always chased Beishin away when she came.

  "They're not real, you know."

  Her voice was quiet, kind. Jacin kept waiting for it to turn accusing, but it hadn't yet.

  "Neither are you,” he told her.

  "How d'you know I'm
not?"

  Jacin flicked ash into the saucer, thought about trying a few more smoke rings, but what was the point? He lifted the bowl in an ironic toast to Caidi, sitting primly on the windowsill, just staring at him, sunlight sparking through the panes and glinting off her hair. Jacin looked away and took a drink. Sometimes he liked to sit and stare at her for hours, and sometimes he didn't want to look at all.

  "Because if you were real,” he answered evenly, “you'd know how you died. And you wouldn't be here."

  "I know how I died."

  Jacin sighed and emptied the bowl, waiting until the burn at the back of his throat ebbed into pleasant warmth and the fire in his gullet tamped to a steady tingle. “You'd know why."

  "I know that too."

  "Yeah?” Jacin couldn't think of anything else he wanted to say, so he didn't say anything. He could tell her everything—how it all evolved, how he'd failed her so spectacularly, how his need and his sick, impotent maybe-love-maybe-hate had made him too slow and uncertain. How she'd died because he hadn't been able to make himself believe how thoroughly he'd been betrayed until he'd watched her silent descent from the sky. But then she might go away, or start agreeing with Beishin, and Jacin didn't think he could take that.

  He set the empty bowl on the mattress beside him and stared at his fingers, running his thumb over the tips. They were losing their calluses, going soft, and somehow, it terrified him, except he didn't know why, so he stopped looking. He set his hand to his torso instead, settled his fingers over the scar from Malick's sword, and gave it a light swipe through his shirt. An almost complete absence of sensation. Scars he knew. Scars were old friends. Stripes of desensitized remembrance that blanked out feeling.

  It had taken weeks for this one to heal properly. Malick had been frustrated, cursing more than once through his teeth about magical healing and Tatsu's perceived failure to use it with the precision and motivation necessary. Jacin hadn't said anything. Malick wouldn't have wanted to hear it. Malick would have looked at him the same way Joori did, and Jacin could barely stand it from Joori. So Jacin had just kept his mouth shut and eventually stopped picking and poking at the scabs, seeking that bright pinpoint of pain whenever he needed to know if he was real or not. Anyway, Malick always seemed to show up seconds after the blood started to ooze, like he could smell it or something, so it never did Jacin much good.

  Sometimes, he thought about asking Malick for his knives back—partly to see if Malick would hand them over; partly because Jacin needed those little doses of here and real sometimes—but Jacin wouldn't be able to hide the cuts now, they all watched too closely, and he didn't want to see the way they'd all look at him if they knew. And he wasn't really sure if he'd stop once he'd started that first satisfying slice, so it was best he didn't have them. Anyway, he'd found other ways to confirm his reality, and Malick was nicely obliging.

  Jacin thought maybe Malick knew, probably even understood, and he wanted to take some twisted kind of comfort from that, but he didn't let himself. Every time he reached for something real, it was taken from him, destroyed, so he'd learned not to reach. He might not be perfect, but he wasn't stupid.

  He started a little when the ember of his smoke seared into his fingers. A low curse rumbled from his mouth as he jammed the butt into the saucer and swiped at the ashes he'd let fall to the bedding while he hadn't been paying attention.

  "You put another hole in that, and Malick will kick your ass,” Caidi told him cheerfully.

  Jacin wheezed a little snort, said, “No, he won't,” and he settled back in to stare at the ceiling. He thought about going over to the washstand for the liquor, but he had a little bit of a haze going now, and he didn't want to ruin it.

  Malick wouldn't kick his ass. Malick wouldn't do anything to him except for those things Jacin asked him to. Malick wouldn't even touch unless Jacin touched first, even when he knew Malick wanted to, because Jacin could see it, and Malick didn't bother to hide it. Still, Malick waited for permission, even when Jacin needed it all taken from his hands, needed someone to tell him, show him, lead him, make him.

  "Why d'you think he keeps me around?” he asked softly. He'd been wondering that for a while now. Jacin didn't think it was for the obvious reasons, or Malick would have found a way to lose Joori and Morin along the way. Malick was Temshiel, he didn't need a mortal with whom to pass his time, and certainly not one as unpleasant to be around as Jacin knew he was. And yet, here they were, living on Malick's koin, this little inn holding more luxury than Jacin knew his brothers had ever seen, and there was the promise of an actual house, a home, in the next day or so.

  Jacin kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, kept waiting for Malick to tell him what sort of trade was required of him this time, kept waiting to find out whose neck was next on the block—Joori's or Morin's—and he thought waiting for the betrayal was perhaps more painful than the betrayal he knew had to come.

  "I don't know what he wants with me,” he breathed, hoarse and through his teeth. “What am I to him?"

  "He's told you that.” Caidi sounded a little annoyed, but Jacin didn't look at her to confirm it. “Why can't you believe that he loves you?"

  Your Temshiel pretends at it, all the while hiding from you what you are, keeping perfection from your grasp, because it suits his god...

  "Because he can't,” Jacin snapped. He should've gotten that bottle after all. “Because he doesn't. Because I made him... it was part of the trade.” And Malick was still holding up his end, for some reason, and Jacin didn't think he wanted to know why. “He doesn't know what it is, he's said as much, and I don't....” Jacin trailed off. Even if Caidi was a figment of his own imagination, he didn't really want to say that part out loud. Even if he knew it was true, he didn't want to give it power by speaking it and making it true.

  "You don't deserve it?” Caidi finished.

  Jacin only shut his eyes. Figured. He couldn't even trust his own delusions to not betray him.

  "Everyone deserves it, Jacin. Even Asai deserved love once. Except he used it when he got it, because that was what he was."

  A snort he couldn't help gusted from Jacin's mouth, and he lit himself another smoke to cover it. “And Malick won't, I suppose. If I were to offer it.” He eyed the bottle again before he flopped back down to the mattress and took a long drag. Fuck it. Liquor only drove the lethargy deeper, and the temporary muffling of his thoughts never made the headache worth it. Anyway, Caidi wouldn't go away just because Jacin was muzzy. She'd been waiting for him, here in this too-luxurious room at this too-luxurious inn, when they'd arrived in Mitsu almost two weeks ago, and so far, she only seemed to go away when Malick was around. Otherwise, she just hovered about, nattering at him, making him think about things he didn't want to think about, tricking words and confessions from him he didn't even know were down there somewhere. The only good thing about Caidi not-really-haunting him was that she somehow managed to silence Beishin once she started in on Jacin, so Jacin just kept not asking her to go away.

  "Do you know why I love you?” Caidi asked. It was soft and spoken kindly, but it sent a bit of a frisson up Jacin's backbone.

  "No,” he whispered, because he'd never been able to figure it out. She'd only been a little thing when Asai had taken Jacin away—no, when Asai had bought him, bought him from his father, and that still stung like fire, but it was the truth, and dressing it up in less appalling words was worse than useless; it was gutless—but Caidi had been far too young to have formed any attachment to Jacin back then. Jacin had been surprised that she'd even remembered him when they'd been reunited. Doubly surprised that she'd latched on to him the way she'd done. Jacin had loved only a half-remembered image of a towheaded toddler, but Caidi had been a reality for which he hadn't been prepared, and so he'd been helpless to shut her out. He wanted to regret it but he couldn't. Wanted to shut her out now, because knowing she wasn't real was killing him, but he couldn't do that, either.

  "Because,” Caidi told him ev
enly, “you love so big, even when you don't want to. Because you can't help it. And because you need it back, but you don't know how to take it.” There was a pause, but when Jacin didn't fill it, Caidi went on, “You stepped in front of a sword for him, you saved his soul, but don't forget why he was risking it in the first place."

  Jacin shut his eyes.

  That was actually the one thing he'd never been able to explain away, where Malick was concerned. He almost wished that he could, so he could finally settle everything into neat lines with predictable end points, know what to expect, but that one too-big-to-ignore fact loomed over the conclusion and made one plus one equal four hundred and seventy-two. Malick had been forbidden to even touch Yakuli, and yet he'd meant to kill him. For Jacin. It was... inexplicable. Hope crouched at its edges, and Jacin shied away, because hope had never done anything but fuck him over in the end, and that was the worst kind of hurt.

  Caidi tutted a little. Jacin could hear the heels of her shoes knocking against the wall beneath the windowsill, and he thought it was a little strange that his mind would conjure something like that, but he'd learned not to analyze the things his mind came up with too deeply. He never liked what he found.

  "You think Malick doesn't know how to love, Jacin. But his problem is that he loves too much, just like you, it's why Wolf chose him, and everything he threw around so carelessly for over a century is now narrowed down on you. You have to learn how to figure out what to do with it."

  Sometimes Jacin thought maybe this really was Caidi, maybe she really was a ghost who just knew too much, because there was not a single word in what she'd just said that could possibly have come from Jacin's own mind. It threw him, clogged up whatever he might have been thinking of saying into the back of his throat where it tangled with the smoke and the remnants of the liquor and burned. His eyes teared.