The Assassins of Consequence, page 32
“Normally I would play with you gents,” Veranix said. “But you have used up all my patience.”
“You think you get to decide?”
“I think you’re an idiot, Cuse,” Veranix said, drawing in as much numina as he could manage in the moment, as much as the cloak would let him, hard and fast. “All your brilliant concoctions, your knack for making magically fueled chemicals, and what do you do with them?”
“Use them to get my revenge?”
“No, you fool, you keep them on your belt,” Veranix said. “While fighting a goddamned mage!”
He unleashed most of that numina, pure raw power, not shaped into anything, aimed at Cuse’s waist.
“No, no!” Cuse said, scrambling at the buckle, but it was too late. Ice and smoke and fire and stone and who even knew what else bubbled out of the pouches, and Cuse screamed—an agonizing scream—as all those things rose up over his body, burning and roiling as they interacted with each other, and then, with one horrible, final sound, became one twisted thing with Cuse inside.
Veranix didn’t stand around to watch that, and shaped the last of the magic into power into his legs, and leaped up to a fifth-floor window with the last drop of magic he could manage. He was about to crash through the glass when his leg exploded with pain, and then he fell into the window, tumbling across the floor.
One of Enzin’s arrows was in his leg. Veranix struggled to get off his belt so he could stem the bleeding enough to get it out. He wrapped the belt around his leg and pulled it as tight as he dared.
“You won’t get far, Thorn!” Enzin hollered from outside.
“He’s got that right.”
Veranix looked up to the speaker, looming over him in dance veils and holding two shining blades.
The Revanche.
Veranix held his hands up as the Revanche crouched in front of him, bringing her razor-sharp dektha to his neck.
“Clearly, you think I’ve wronged you,” he said. He didn’t have any strength left to draw in numina, let alone hold her off. She could easily kill him with a flick of the wrist.
“Are you going to deny it, Thorn?” she asked.
“I’ve wronged many people, so I can’t deny it out of hand,” he said. “But you could at least tell me which wrong you intend to kill me for.”
“I was told you had a smart mouth,” she said. “It won’t save you.”
“If I really wronged you, fine,” he said. “But I’ll demand a boon for the dead.”
“You dare claim that custom?” she asked.
“Kill me if you have to, but save my mother. Verona Aylixi. She doesn’t deserve to pay for my crimes.”
“Did you give my sister a boon when you killed her?”
“Who do you think I killed?” he asked. “Who the blazes are you?”
Keeping the blade at his throat, she pulled off the dance veils, revealing a face with Racquin complexion that looked eerily familiar.
“My name is Xiala Quope, and my sister—”
“Emilia,” he said quietly.
“So you do know her.”
“I didn’t kill her,” he said.
“They told me the Thorn killed her, do you deny that?”
“I believe you were told that, but I didn’t. But the man who did is right outside.”
“Do you think me a fool?”
“I swear by my dead and yours,” he said, evoking an old Racquin oath. “She died while saving me. And I can prove it.”
“How?”
“I’m going to call out, and if you don’t like what you hear, slice away.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded.
“Hey, Enzin!” he shouted to the window. “I thought you were supposed to be dangerous! Did you really kill those Deadly Birds?”
“I’m coming to kill you just like I killed them!” Enzin called back, and he definitely sounded closer than the ground. He must be climbing up the building.
That was enough for Xiala to pull away a little, her brow furrowing.
“I don’t know, the rumor was I killed Blackbird. You sure you did it?”
“I killed that rotten slan right in front of you, and when I’m done with you, I’m going to finish off the rest of them!”
Veranix looked to Xiala. “Proof enough?”
She stepped back. “If she was saving your life, it would dishonor her to take it.” She offered her hand to pull him up.
“Thank you,” he said as he took it. He was barely able to put any weight on his leg.
Enzin pulled himself up through the window. “Well, well,” he said. “Looks like you found another Bird for me.”
“Bastard!” Xiala shouted, hurling one dektha at him. It sliced his side, but he barely flinched. “Blackbird was my sister!”
He came at her, swinging enormous fists. “And she killed mine!”
Xiala blocked one punch with another dektha, slicing his hand, but Enzin’s other hand grabbed her throat and lifted her off the ground. She hammered on his arm with her blade, and despite the bloody cuts she was making, he didn’t relent.
“Go,” she said. “Take your boon.”
Veranix pulled the arrow out of his leg. Just one arrow, all he had left. No rope, no staff, and no strength left for any magic. He could barely even walk. As he limped toward his mother’s ward, nocked the arrow and hoped it would be enough.
Two ward nurses were cowering behind the floor desk as Veranix came through. They seemed to be the only ones here, besides the patients. The poor women looked terrified, and with the raging battle between Xiala and Enzin behind him, and him surely looking like a deranged maniac, he couldn’t blame them.
“Stay down,” he told them. “Did he come through here? An older man?”
One of them nodded and pointed toward the wardroom where his mother was usually kept. So many times, he had watched her through the window. So many times, he wished to come in and see her, hold her. This was the first time he had ever gone in.
The room had several patients in beds and rollerchairs, all of them immobile. All of them victims of Fenmere and his poison.
And there was the man himself, standing right over Mother in her chair. Saints, they had so many patients now, she didn’t even get a bed anymore.
Veranix drew back his bow. “Step away from her!”
Fenmere glanced back, and moved just enough for Veranix to see he had a knife, and it was right at his mother’s throat.
“Well, well, Mister Calbert,” Fenmere said. “Astounding you came all this way, but now you get to see this.”
“Drop the knife!” Veranix didn’t have a shot he could take, not one that would save his mother. Not unless he got Fenmere to move away somehow.
Fenmere laughed—the bastard laughed—as he slipped behind mother’s chair. “You can barely stand, son.”
Veranix still held the bow drawn. “You step away and drop the knife.”
“You’ve got nothing left,” Fenmere said as his fingers tightened around the knife. “I mean, as much as I loathe you, I am impressed you made it here. You fought so hard to stop me, to get here, through so much, and yet here I am, knife at your mother’s throat, and nothing you can do to save her.”
“You do anything to her and I will put you down.”
“Suh . . .” Mother moaned.
“And yet you haven’t, and you know why?” Fenmere asked. “Because you don’t want the consequence of that. While I want nothing but consequence. I want the consequences of your father’s choices to echo pain through you. I did this to your mother, and made him watch, and now I’ll kill her and make you watch.”
“She is literally the only thing keeping you alive right now,” Veranix said. He wanted to move closer, but he couldn’t even take a step without his aim faltering. “You think anything will hold me back if you hurt her?”
“What are you waiting for?” Fenmere asked. “You’ve got your shot, see what it gets you. Your father took his shot—”
“He didn’t kill your brother!”
“He still betrayed him! He still tried to take what wasn’t his! And it got him a life on the run. It got him his wife like this. And it got you, a sad, broken little boy who thinks he’s a hero.”
“Suh, suh, suh,” Mother said. One of her hands tried, ineffectively, to push Fenmere away. Her once powerful arms had no strength in them.
“My father,” Veranix said, his voice shaking. It was shattering to see her like this, to see this monster of a man over her. To have his father’s memory torn down in front of her. “Was a better man than either of us. And he was an incredible shot. If he were here, bow in his hand, arrow drawn, with you in his sights, this would be over. He could shoot that knife out of your hand and not shave a hair off her head.”
“I remember,” Fenmere said. “He was amazing with a bow. An artist. But you? No, you’re nowhere near that good.”
“Shuh . . . shuh . . .”
“No,” Veranix admitted. But he was still Annin Calbert’s son, and he would do right by him. No matter what ills his father did, he would, by every damned said, do that now.
“Pathetic,” Fenmere said.
Mother’s eyes found Veranix, and with power and fire they locked onto him. For just a second, he saw her, knew that she was there inside the haze of whatever horror the effitte had done to her. And in that second, she was able to force a word to her lips.
“Shoot.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
VERANIX LET THE ARROW FLY, knowing all too well what doing so meant.
Fenmere’s flicked his wrist, and the blade sliced open mother’s throat.
The arrow struck true, dead center in Fenmere’s chest.
He dropped to his knees, as mother coughed and choked, blood flowing from her neck.
Veranix rushed to her, as fast as he could manage, ignoring the pain in his leg. Nothing in his body mattered anymore, nothing it could feel was anything as shattering.
Fenmere was still twitching on the ground when Veranix got close, but seeing the monster dying meant nothing.
Veranix picked up his mother’s body from the chair, and collapsed on the ground, touching her face. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry I wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t good enough. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes found his one last time, and what might have been a smile crossed her lips. Or it might have been that last, failed attempt to breathe.
And then her light was gone.
Veranix sat on the cold stone floor of the ward, cradling his mother’s body for what felt like an eternity. He didn’t know when he started crying. He didn’t know if he could ever stop.
A hand touched his shoulder.
“If you’re here to kill me, just do it,” he said numbly.
The hand’s owner knelt beside him, holding Veranix’s head to his chest.
“I’m sorry,” Colin said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
“Not your fault,” Veranix said. “This is all on me.”
“Come on,” Colin said. “You can’t be here. Constabulary is coming, who even knows who else.”
“Doesn’t matter anymore,” Veranix said.
That got him slapped.
“Like blazes it doesn’t matter,” Colin said. “I made . . . I made . . .” He started to get choked up. “I made a promise to keep you safe, damn it. And I failed that, but, no, it’s what your father wanted. It’s what she wanted.”
“Don’t say what she wanted.”
“You know,” Colin said firmly. “You know damn well she wanted you to be in school. It’s what all of what they went through was for.”
“That’s ruined, like everything else.”
“Either way, we’re going,” Colin said, lifting her body up out of Veranix’s arms. He didn’t have any strength to stop him. He gently put her back in the chair, and wiped the blood from her face. “Go to your judgment, blessed auntie. I’m sorry I didn’t do better.”
Veranix looked back at Fenmere. Just a dead man, nothing more.
Colin looked at him as well. “And you, you right bastard. The sinners will dance on you until the moons fall from the sky.”
“I’ll face the same,” Veranix whispered.
“Come on,” Colin said, hauling him up. “Let’s get you out.”
Veranix let Colin carry him out, he was in no position to stop him. The nurses were gone when they went into the hall, and as Colin took him to the stairs, they passed Enzin and Xiala, both in heaps on the ground. Both covered in blood. He definitely seemed to be dead, but she was still breathing, if nothing else. Odds were that wouldn’t stay true for much longer.
“Look at that,” Veranix said. “That’s all vengeance is, in the end.”
Colin didn’t say anything to that, but dutifully carried Veranix down the stairs as Constabulary whistles came from all around. Veranix didn’t even notice how Colin got them out of the building or away from there, the next thing he realized was Colin cleaning off his face with a wet rag from a back alley well spigot.
“How did you even get here?” Veranix asked.
“I started coming when I heard your voice, and followed that lady’s announcement from there. Left Jutie in an abandoned Orphan flop and told him I needed to take care of this, take care of you.”
“I really don’t know if there’s anything to take care of.” He looked at Colin. “What Vessrin said in the Turnabout. That’s true. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Not rightly,” Colin said. “But my pop always danced around a few details, I knew he was hiding something about yours. Does it matter? He was still your pop.”
Veranix wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I’m not sure what matters now. Except, it’s over, now. Everything.”
“Maybe,” Colin said. “But you’re still breathing. Let’s get you home.”
“No,” Veranix said, a little bit of sense cutting through the numb, hollow feeling in his chest. “Get me to the church. The others are still there.”
“Church it is,” Colin said.
The magical shadow play of light and sound shattered when Veranix flooded Cuse with magic, and no matter how much Kaiana screamed at Delmin and Anduette, nothing they could do could get it back. The wave of numina just washed over their tracking, Delmin had said. Nothing he could latch on to anymore, not without going down to the ward himself.
“I should have just stayed with him,” Kaiana said. Delmin and Anduette were lying down on the pews, both exhausted. Mila was sitting on the floor, hand on her chest. Kaiana could only pace back and forth, no chance of sitting. “I could have stayed with him.” She knew that wasn’t what he wanted, but she should have ignored what he wanted and had his back out there.
“Same,” Mila said.
“You were in no condition,” Anduette said. “Veranix wanted us in here, because he didn’t want to have to worry about our safety.”
“Instead we just worried about his,” Kaiana said. “At what point do we leave? Go to the ward to see what happened? Or back to campus?”
“Not for a bit,” Reverend Pemmick said. He had stuck his head out of doors once the Constabulary whistles had slowed down, and had been told that the constables were calling for the streets to be cleared. A soft curfew to let everything calm down.
“And what’s next?” Delmin asked.
Pemmick sat down with them. “For you all, I suppose that depends on Veranix’s state.”
“How can you be calm?” Kaiana asked him.
“Don’t mistake my reserve for calm,” Pemmick said. “I am nothing but worried prayers for him. But there’s little else I can do. I did say Absolution over him, so if nothing else . . .” His voice choked. “If nothing else, I have done what I could to secure his judgment.”
“Guide him home, Saint Senea,” Delmin said.
“That’s your saint?” Anduette asked.
“It was his,” Mila said. “Can you give a little extra blessing to her, Rev, for his sake?”
“I will pray to every saint for him, if it would help,” Pemmick said.
Kaiana closed her eyes, wishing she knew better how to pray to Druth saints, or more about the beliefs of her mother’s people. Her father had never explained that very well, something about how everything is one spirit, and that spirit guides all beings with life. She had never understood, and she suspected he didn’t either, as he hadn’t given any mind to the Druth church either. Though maybe that would change now.
Maybe she should change now.
If any saint is still watching Veranix, she said in the center of her heart. Please guide him home.
There was a knock on the chapel door. First just a heavy pound, but then the same special knock as before. Pemmick went to answer it.
“You’re just going to trust that again?” Mila asked, getting on her feet.
“Faith, child,” he said as he opened it.
Veranix stumbled in, propped up by Colin.
Kaiana went to run to him, but Mila was already ahead of her, getting her arms around Veranix and holding him tightly.
“Thank god and every saint you’re alive,” Mila said.
“I am,” he said. He gently pushed her back, indicating that he was in a lot of pain. There was a horrible wound in his leg, barely dressed.
“Can we get the sisters to look at that?” Kaiana asked.
“I will summon them,” Pemmick said. He passed Veranix and gave him a solemn nod, and then patted Colin on the shoulder before he left.
“So what happened?” Anduette asked. “We lost our connection when you flooded magic on Cuse.”
Veranix sighed as Colin got him to a seat. “Cuse is dead. Enzin is dead, as Xiala killed him.”
“Who is Xiala, now?”
“She—the one in the Racquin veils, with the circular blades,” Veranix said. “She was after me because she thought I killed her sister, but Enzin killed her sister, so . . . there you are. She killed him, he probably killed her, too.”
