darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,111

that it could all be undone, but I don’t know that I had ever heard him express anything quite like what I was feeling then. No surprise either way, given that I had spent the first few years after the fall refusing to talk about the temple and trying to drown my memories in Aveni whiskey.

For the first time in over a year, I didn’t think I’d have been able to put the bottle aside if I had one available . . . and I had to sleep here. Of course, I couldn’t tell Triss that. He was so damned proud of me for staying dry this long.

Just homesickness, my friend, I sent. I haven’t been in a room like this since the temple days.

Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. He sounded genuinely puzzled. It hardly seems like the temple at all to me. The polish of the walls makes them shine much brighter to my senses, and the furniture is more highly finished, too. All that reflection makes it feel very close and tight in here to me, hardly like the temple at all.

Somehow, I found that enormously reassuring. It freed me enough to step away from the door and pull off my sword rig. I wasn’t ready to hang it up yet, but I found that I could almost breathe again. That’s when Triss punched me in the gut.

Do you think Zass is still alive . . . ? And Devin? Or do you think that Chomarr’s betrayal means they’ve been killed?

He didn’t intend it as a gut punch, but there it was. If Devin was dead, it was due to my first major failure as the head of my order. Mind you, I had no love left for Devin. But I no longer hated him so much as I had when I’d first learned of his betrayal either. How could I?

Devin’s fundamental flaw was that he had no spine, no center. If I couldn’t bring myself to pass final justice on Kelos, how much harder would it have been for Devin to resist him when he was first approached about betraying the goddess?

Nor was Devin a long thinker. Kelos’s arguments about the underlying flaws in the way we went about producing justice, and about the inherent unfairness of government by a noble few, were quite compelling. Enough so that I had yet to find it in me to say that he was simply wrong. The system was unfair, and nearly a millennia of action by my order under the direction of Namara hadn’t fundamentally changed that.

How easy would it be to succumb to the idea that you had the opportunity to do what even justice’s goddess couldn’t achieve? Hell, it was only by repeatedly reminding myself of the human costs of such a massive revolution that I could keep my perspective on the thing. Devin might well have seen this as his chance, finally, to become one of the great names among the champions of justice. I believed that history would judge him very harshly. But might he not have believed just the opposite?

Faran would say that I was being soft and a fool to excuse him like that, and she might well be right. But Devin had been like my brother once, and if my recent failure had caused his death it would be another heavy burden placed on my heart, however much he might have earned such a fate.

Aral, have I upset you further?

No, Triss. It’s not you. It’s this place and what we’ve come to do, and Devin and, well, everything. I should never have agreed to become First Blade. I have enough trouble living with the weight of my own actions.

Should you . . . resign?

I don’t know, maybe, but all of Siri’s arguments still hold true. I didn’t see how I could refuse the office then, and I don’t see how I can step away from it now. There isn’t anyone else.

But you’re in so much pain. What if it’s killing you?

I didn’t answer him. I’m sure it will all look better tomorrow, and we can talk about it then. I began to take off the rest of my gear. For now, what I really need is sleep.

But I lay awake a long time in the darkness after that.

20

“Can’t we cut the tip off or something?” asked Faran. “That thing is really gross.”

I looked at the finger in its box on the floor, and shook my head. “I don’t think we should,