“So now I’m not man enough?” he snapped. He wasn’t crying now. He’d always been brave, fierce. It was one of the things she loved about him. He would have died to save her from this. He’d never realized he would have died and then she’d have had to do this anyway.
“They hurt me,” she said.
“How many?” His voice was hard, brittle.
“I don’t know.” Part of her knew that he was like a dog crazed with pain, snapping at its master. But the disgust on his face was too much. She was disgusting. She surrendered to the deadness and despair. “A lot. Nine or ten a day.”
His face twisted and he turned away.
“Tomman, don’t leave me. Please.”
He stopped, but he didn’t turn. Then he walked out.
As the door swung gently shut, she began keening. The other girls went to her, their hearts broken anew as her grief mirrored theirs. Knowing she would not be comforted, they went to her because she had no one else who would, and neither did they.
56
Momma K stepped into the physickers’ shop as Kylar swept the sword up into his hand, but she was too late to stop him.
Vi didn’t move. She knelt motionless, her shiny red hair pulled out of the sword’s path to her neck. The sword descended—and bounced off. The shock of the collision rang the sword like a bell. The sword whisked out of Kylar’s nerveless grip.
“You will not do murder in my shop,” Drissa Nile said. Her voice carried such power, and her eyes such fire, that her diminutive frame might as well have been a giant’s. Even though Kylar had to look down to meet her eyes, he was intimidated. “We’ve accomplished an excellent piece of healing with this woman, and I’ll not have you spoil it,” Drissa said.
“You healed her?” Kylar asked.
Vi still hadn’t moved. She faced the floor.
“From compulsion,” Momma K said. “Am I right?”
“How did you know that?” Tevor asked.
“If it happens in my city, I know,” Momma K said. She turned to Kylar. “The Godking bound her with a magic that forced her to obey direct orders.”
“How convenient,” Kylar said. His face contorted as he crushed the tears that were rising. “I don’t care. She killed Jarl. I mopped up his blood. I buried him.”
Momma K touched Kylar’s arm. “Kylar, Vi and Jarl practically grew up together. Jarl protected her. They were friends, Kylar. The kind of friends that never forget. I don’t believe anything less than magic could have compelled her to hurt him. Isn’t that right, Vi?” Momma K put her hand under Vi’s chin and brought her face up.
Tears streamed down Vi’s face in mute testimony.
“What did Durzo teach you, Kylar?” Momma K asked. “A wetboy is a knife. Is the guilt the knife’s or the hand’s?”
“Both, and damn Durzo for his lies.”
There was a knife on Kylar’s belt, but he’d already tested its edge. Sister Drissa had blunted it, as he had guessed she might. But she didn’t know about the blades up his sleeves. Nor could she stop the weapons that were his hands.
Vi saw the look in his eyes. She was a wetboy. She knew. He could get a knife out and across her throat in the time it took Drissa to blink. Let the healer try to cure death. Vi’s eyes were black with guilt, a mishmash of dark images he couldn’t comprehend. A short rush of black figures passed through his mind’s eye. Her victims?
~She’s murdered fewer people than you have.~
The thought hit him like a shot in the solar plexus. Some guilt. Some judge.
And the look on her face was all readiness above the tears. There was no self-pity, no avoidance of responsibility. Her eyes spoke for her: I killed Jarl; I deserve to die. If you kill me, I won’t blame you.
“Before you decide, you have to know there’s more,” Vi said. “You were a secondary target. After. . . . After Jarl, I couldn’t do it—”
“Well, that’s commendable,” Momma K said.
“—so I kidnapped Uly, to make sure you’d follow me.”
“You what?” Kylar said.
“I figured you’d follow me back to Cenaria. The Godking wants you alive. But Sister Ariel captured me and Uly. When we found you, I thought you were dead. I thought I was free, so I escaped Sister Ariel and came here.”
“Where’s Uly?”
“On her way to the Chantry. Uly’s Talented. She’s going to be a maja.”