darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,33

between us. “You brought me a Siri! Which means I’m not allowed to be mad at you for at least a day and a night.”

“Is that binding?” I asked.

“Of course, why do you even mention it?”

“Because of what else I brought you.”

“You can’t mean Faran. She’s a delight.” She put out her other hand and dragged Faran in for a hug as well. “And don’t think I didn’t notice the swords on your back, girl. I’m going to want the whole story on that. So . . .” She turned back to me. “What else did you bring me?”

I decided there was no way to sweeten it.

“Kelos.”

7

Hate looked at me out of eyes that once held love. All that I had said was a name, but it was enough to transform the smile on an old lover’s face into the merciless stare of an angry killer. The warm raucous sounds of reunion went utterly cold and silent.

“The whole, living, breathing Kelos, you mean? Not just his head or his heart?” Jax’s tone was quiet, almost joking, but I didn’t for an instant make the mistake of thinking she was anything but furious. “I presume that’s what you mean from the way you said it, but it seems so unlikely that you’d let him live. . . .”

“It’s not really Aral’s fault,” said Siri.

“Yours?” Jax turned hard eyes on Siri.

Siri held up her one hand. “No. Nor Faran’s either. You should know that Kelos is always and only ever Kelos’s own damn fault.”

“That, yes.” Jax nodded. “It’s the allowing him to live thing I’m having trouble with. . . .”

“Well, I wanted to kill him,” mumbled Faran. “But nobody would let me.”

“That’s not strictly true either,” said the shadowy phoenix who now formed herself from the shadows at Faran’s feet. “Aral said very clearly that he wasn’t going to stop you ever again.”

Jax reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can see this ugly little story is going to require time for the telling. We’d better take this inside, where the Shades can talk out of the light and I can get a nice cup of efik.”

For the first time in ages, I heard the name of the drug without twitching. That felt almost unspeakably good.

I nodded to Jax. “You might want to brew up a whole pot. It gets worse.”

“Worse than Kelos? I don’t even . . .”

“Well, more in addition to than worse exactly,” I said, “but yeah. Inside is good.”

Jax took a deep breath. “Come on then, Javan’s waiting in the council room with Inaya and Xin, and they’ll want to hear this as well.”

Along with Maryam and Roric, Javan, Inaya, and Xin were the seniormost of the surviving journeymen from the temple. The first three I knew well from the abbey raid where Jax, Faran, and I freed them from the Hand. The latter two had been left in charge of the castle while all that was going on, and I had only had minor dealings with them in the time I had been here between the abbey and my previous visit to the Son of Heaven. Together, the five made up the council Jax and Loris had formed to help them run their school and refuge. With Loris dead, their influence had only increased.

“How’s Javan’s leg?” Faran asked Jax as we headed across the stone mosaic floor that centered the castle’s entrance—a hunting scene with turbaned lancers surrounding a wounded chimera. Javan had lost the leg from the knee down during that same abbey raid.

Jax sighed. “The flesh has healed well enough, but he’s still trying to come up with a peg that doesn’t thump when he walks or a magical construct that won’t shine through his shroud. I don’t think he’ll ever be able to do proper fieldwork again.”

“Has he tried the Durkoth?” asked Faran.

Jax raised an eyebrow. “There’s a thought. They don’t come cheap, but the Durkoth can do some very fancy things with locks and toys. They might be able to do a working foot as well. So”—she turned back to me as we passed down a short hall lined with tapestries depicting a variety of scenes from the history of Dalridia—“did you bring me any good news?”

“Besides Siri and Faran? Isn’t that a little greedy?” Before she could answer, I held up my hands. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. But, actually, I have. Maybe. It depends on how things work out with Faran’s swords and . . . dammit, there’s so