The Blood Debt Part 45

*I do,' said Marmion, *and you know it's more than just a threat. I will accept nothing less than an immediate release from custody. In return, we will forget what's been said here and move on. You won't hear from us again. Your dirty secret will remain just that.'

The Magister took in those seated before her. s.h.i.+lly could tell what she was thinking - or imagined that she could. The Magister could silence Marmion, but there was nothing she could do about everyone else. They were too many to get rid of entirely, not without bringing down further accusations upon her. She was trapped like a scorpion in a corner. And she knew it.

Somehow, against all the odds, Marmion had turned the tables on her.

*Get out of my sight,' she said. *All of you.'

*Does this mean -?' Marmion started to ask.

*It means that I have heard everything I need to hear. Now I must deliberate. You will be advised of my judgment in due course.'

The Magister descended from the podium and walked haughtily from the hall. The tapping of her cane was inaudible over the voices rising up from the gathering. s.h.i.+lly watched her go, thinking that, for all her stubborn dignity, she looked like nothing so much as an old, tired woman. Mortality hung heavy around her, thicker than her black and red ceremonial robes. No stick could support her under such a weight.

s.h.i.+lly almost felt sorry for the Magister, then. Almost. She saw in the old woman a glimpse of her own future: isolated, outcast, forced to extreme lengths to survive in an obscure borderland few people acknowledged. She couldn't forgive the Magister, though, for keeping them waiting for her decision. It was one final, feeble arrow fired from battlements that had already fallen. It wouldn't change a thing in the end. s.h.i.+lly would bet her good leg on it.

Porters steered the accused outside, to the waiting vehicles. The Laureans found themselves released into house arrest along with the visitors. Chu, Gwil Flintham and the quartermaster settled into the hostel with relish. Their previous habitation had been less than comfortable. Too close to something called the boneyard, apparently.

The group split into subsections as soon as they arrived. The quartermaster and Abi Van Haasteren sequestered themselves in a booth under the stairs to catch up on old times. Tom and Banner pored over Engineering diagrams in the first-floor sunroom. Sal and Highson talked soberly over coffee in a quiet corner while Chu and Skender chatted with Kemp in the bar, even though Urtagh wouldn't serve them drinks until their financial status was confirmed.' s.h.i.+lly noted the way Skender's attention kept coming back to Chu, whether she was talking or not.

s.h.i.+lly found herself watching the disgraced Sky Warden Shorn Behenna playing a dice game with Mawson. Torchlight flickered off his black, partially tattooed scalp as he rolled and counted. The tallies grew quickly, with Behenna casting the dice for Mawson since the man'kin had no hands or arms to do it himself. It quickly became apparent that Behenna stood no chance of winning at all.

*What are you?' she asked him. *A glutton for punishment?'

He glanced at her, and seemed to seriously consider ignoring her. In the end, good manners or something else won the day.

*It's always like this,' he said. They were the first words Behenna had said to her - perhaps anyone - since his rescue from the Aad. *Man'kin are unbeatable at games of chance. They have some means of influencing the dice that I can't detect.'

*This is untrue,' the man'kin defended himself. *A dice may roll many ways, but it stops just once. I cannot change the way it stops. All I can do is choose which way it stops.'

*That's the same thing, isn't it?' s.h.i.+lly asked.

*I a.s.sure you it is not.'

Behenna watched her, not Mawson, and didn't take any joy at her confusion. *I've been studying this for years, now. Man'kin see a very different picture of the world from us. In some ways it's bigger, broader; in others it's frighteningly constricted. Their lives are fixed in ways we can't imagine, with life and death set for them, and every point in between, too. But they can choose among a variety of lives at any moment. That, I think, is how they can make the dice fall the way they want them to.'

*I am not making the dice do anything they haven't already done,' Mawson insisted.

*It just looks that way to us.'

s.h.i.+lly thought hard to get around the concept. *Like a fork in the road. Each path is a different number on the dice. The man'kin go along them all at once, and we go along just one of them. Mawson can choose which one he's on now, with us, so it looks like he's made us take that path, somehow.'

Behenna nodded. *Maybe.'

*Can Mawson make other things happen, then? Could he have picked a world where the flood didn't occur?' She hesitated before adding, *Where you and Abi Van Haasteren weren't captured?'

His wince was fleeting, but there. *No. They can only manipulate small, happenstance things, as far as I've seen. It's an interesting thought, though.'

That was an understatement. The possibility that man'kin were pulling the strings of fate to make the world go the way they wanted it to was frightening. Just because Behenna couldn't see them doing it didn't mean that he wasn't being shown only what they wanted him to see ...

No. The idea was ridiculous, she told herself. If man'kin could choose the future, why would so many have died in the flood?

*Roll me a six,' she told Mawson, shaking the dice in her hand and setting it free.

It came down on four.

*What went wrong?' she asked.

*Nothing,'' Mawson said with a bored tilt to his head. *I grow weary of your attempts to explain the perfectly obvious.'

She patted him on the stony shoulder. *Good for you. You're not a toy, and I shouldn't treat you as one. I apologise.'

Mawson nodded. *Thank you. And now, you see, I am exactly where I want to be.'

s.h.i.+lly laughed for the first time in what felt like days.

Word came from the Magister as the sun was setting. Delivered through an official spokesperson, it was brief and to the point.

*Magister Considine has considered your position and made her decision. Your liberty has been restored to you. All charges are dismissed and all privileges restored. You are free to do as you will in the city of Laure.'

Applause greeted the announcement. Chu whooped in delight. s.h.i.+lly turned to Sal, unable to believe it had all gone so smoothly. They embraced.

There was a sting in the tail, of course. *You will be presented with a bill for damages and services accrued during your stay. The Magister insists that this be paid before your departure. Noncompliance will incur the most serious of consequences.'

*I understand,' said Marmion from his makes.h.i.+ft bed in the common area. He looked weak and very tired, but his mind was alert. There was no mistaking his satisfaction with the outcome. *Please convey my - our - grat.i.tude to the Magister. We'll be out of here as soon as is humanly possible.'

The spokesperson bowed and left.

*What now?' asked Skender, addressing the room in general.

*We celebrate, of course!' Chu snapped her fingers at Urtagh. *A round of araq, double time. Our credit's good. Hurrah!'

Marmion looked for a moment as though he might veto the order, but stayed his hand. Immediately unctuous, Urtagh pa.s.sed small shot gla.s.ses around the room, and followed with a bottle of milky, foul-smelling liquid. The bar soon filled with the sound of coughing and expletives.

s.h.i.+lly put her gla.s.s aside, untouched, as Marmion called Gwil Flintham and Warden Banner to him. They helped him stand and led him from the room. Following an instinct, s.h.i.+lly slipped her hand from Sal's and trailed Marmion up the stairs.

*Can I talk with you?'

The injured warden didn't turn to look at her. He just kept climbing slowly and painfully, one step at a time. *About what?'

*About us.'

*Can it wait until morning?'

*I'd rather clear the air now,' she said. *It won't take long.'

He acquiesced, and wearily waved her into his room after him. The low-ceilinged chamber smelled of herbs and buzzed with the Change. The proximity of water made possible many advanced healing techniques used by the Sky Wardens. Young Rosevear couldn't grow back Marmion's hand, but he could keep the wound from infection and encourage it to heal more quickly than it would otherwise.

Marmion lay down on the bed and dismissed Banner and Gwil. The round-faced Engineer squeezed s.h.i.+lly's hand briefly as she went by, perhaps in encouragement.

*We'll be outside the door if you need us,' said Gwil to Marmion. The former city gatekeeper looked uncertain about her being there.

*Are you his keeper now?' she asked him.

*I'm still responsible for him,' Gwil said. *I don't want the Magister or the Alcaide accusing me of s.h.i.+rking my duty.'

She raised her new stick. *You can't possibly think I'm here to finish him off. Can you?'

Gwil reddened and backed out of the room, his lank blond hair shaking as he went.

*That was in poor taste, s.h.i.+lly.' Marmion waved with his good hand at a selection of chairs along the Wall. *Sit. Talk.'

She sat, nervous now the moment she had been half-dreading, half-hoping for had arrived. It wasn't just that Marmion looked so sick, although there was no denying that. His head eased back onto a pillow as soon as he lay down; his eyes closed. His skin still had a waxy sheen to it. She didn't want to add to his burdens.

But she could still hear Skender saying, You're in charge, on top of the Wall during the man'kin *invasion'. Maybe he had been joking; maybe he had said it just to stop her from getting into the harness. Either way, it had rung true. Was being in charge really what she wanted? Making decisions was easy when the right one was obvious. But what about when those decisions might cost the lives of people around her? What if her judgment was wrong? What if the Wall had come down, and they had all died?

She certainly didn't feel in charge at that moment, of herself let alone anything or anyone else.

*I can't work you out, Eisak Marmion,' she said. *You can be such a b.a.s.t.a.r.d at times, and it would be easiest to accept you as just that. But I keep glimpsing something else behind that front, and I'm beginning to realise what it might be.'

*Oh, really? Do tell'

*It's fear.' She hesitated. *I didn't see it at first. Highson spotted it before I did.'

*So Highson put this in your head? And you believed him, naturally, after all the nonsense he told us.'

*It's not nonsense. You know that as well as I do. He told us the truth - and he saved your life when he could just as easily have let the Homunculus kill you. A little faith isn't too much to ask, I think.'

*I place my faith in what I can see and touch. The story Skender brought back from the Void is nonsense. That wasn't the first time I'd heard it, and I believed it as little from Highson's lips as anyone else. So-called Lost Minds, survivors from before the Cataclysm, some sort of bizarre afterlife - it's ridiculous! This is the only world there is, the one before us, which we touch with our hands and experience through the Change. There is no other.'

*There's the Void Beneath.'

*An emptiness for fools to get lost in. I am not a fool.'

*Then why are you so afraid?'

*Of what? Of you?'

*No. The twins, of course.'

Marmion sighed deeply. *I told you once that I don't have to justify my decisions to you. The same goes for me as a whole. You have no right to question my integrity. I can only forgive so much.'

*I'm not asking for forgiveness, and I'm not questioning your integrity. There's nothing wrong with fear; sometimes it even makes sense. I just want to understand. When I have that understanding, maybe it'll make things easier. Next time we disagree over something like this, one of us might be killed.' And it won't be me, she added silently to herself.

*I think,' he started, and then seemed to reconsider. He began again: *I think you already know the truth.'

*That you are trying to kill the twins because you're afraid of them.' He didn't deny it, so she ploughed on. *But why do they terrify you? They haven't threatened you or harmed you in any way. They aren't evil.'

*They threaten everything.' Marmion's head lifted; his eyes blazed. *The world breaks down around them. You can see it happening in the man'kin, in the Change, the flood. Things are only going to get worse. The longer they're here the more tenuous our future becomes. That's what I'm afraid of.'

She was startled by his answer. *How do you know this?'

*You listen to Tom about his dreams. He's not the only seer in the Alcaide's service. Some foresee a time beyond which they cannot see, when the world as we know it ends. That time is coming soon - and the Homunculus is at the centre of it. That's why it must die.'

Her first instinct was to disbelieve him. *Kail didn't say anything about this.'

*Why would he? It's not his place to - and besides, he doesn't know.'

*All right then, but it still doesn't make any sense. Why destroy the twins without finding out what they want or where they're going? At least hear what they have to say first. Maybe they have the answer for us, and killing them will seal our fate forever.'

*Would you do nothing as the end of the world approaches, s.h.i.+lly? I wouldn't.' He sighed again, and his head fell back onto the pillow. *Neither would the Alcaide.'

*So you have your orders, and that's enough for you. Is that all you want to be? The Alcaide's lackey?'

*All I want,' he breathed, *is for this to be over.'

s.h.i.+lly looked down at her hands. If the seers were right, then things were more serious than she had realised, but there had to be a better means of saving the world than by taking innocent lives. She couldn't accept that plan, if it was all he had to offer.

It's always too early to give up on someone, Marmion had said. A chance remains that they'll surprise you, no matter how minuscule it seems.

She cleared her throat.

*Lodo used to say: trust is cheap; respect is priceless. No matter what you think of him, he was absolutely right on that score. We may never be friends, we disagree on lots of points, and I'm pretty sure I'll never trust you completely - but I do respect your conviction, and your determination to follow through. I wanted you to know that.'

That was as far as she could go. The issue of how their differences could be resolved was better put aside for the moment. Until the Homunculus was next in their grasp, there was precious little they could do about it.

As to the rest, he obviously didn't want to take it any further, and she didn't have the energy to force him. The connection they had with Lodo and to each other was less important than the other issues surrounding them. Hard though it was, she knew she had to let it go or go crazy.

She stood, intending to leave before she changed her mind.

*s.h.i.+lly, wait.' His voice was soft, but there was a new tone to it that stopped her in her tracks. *I don't feel that I've done anything to earn your respect, but I am - grateful, I guess, that you think me worth the effort to understand. We're both trying to do what's right, and it's not simple for either of us.' He took a deep breath. *I'll try harder. I know better, now, than to dismiss you, or to cross you.'

s.h.i.+lly nodded, wis.h.i.+ng with all her heart that she could give him his hand back. She knew what it felt like to lose something fundamental in an instant - like the ability to walk properly or to grasp one hand in another.

*I also want to say,' he went on, *that I'd like you to come with us when we go looking for the source of the flood and the Homunculus. Tom seems to think they're all connected - and that we'll need you along the way.'

She thought of home and the people she'd left behind. *I'll consider it,' she said, heading for the door. Her courage was spent. Now she just wanted to get out before he asked her for anything else she couldn't refuse.

*One last thing.'

She froze, hearing nothing but the sound of her breathing.

*I'm sorry that Kail is gone,' he said softly. *He and I weren't close, but I knew his background well enough. He always wanted to meet you. I think he might even have been jealous of you, a little. You knew his uncle better than he ever did, thanks to his family. And now he'll never get the chance to make up for that.'

*Who?' s.h.i.+lly felt the gears of her thoughts seize up. *Kail - what?'