darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,37

come to me for aid in regaining her legacy. Well, nearly everything. There were a number of secrets I wasn’t yet ready to share.

You are wiser, I think, sent Tris, and you have stopped drinking. But you are a harder man now and a colder one. You have always been capable of great good. Now I think you are also capable of great harm, and that concerns me.

I wouldn’t worry too much. I have you to advise me.

That is part of what concerns me. I think that I understand your people better than most of my kind, but I am not of you. I attempt to live mercy because it is—or was—important to you and to Namara, but it is a learned thing. Darkness does not know restraint. It is all devouring and without pity, and, as much as I am bound to you and, through you, to humanity, I am still an elemental creature of darkness. In my mind, I may share your ideals, but in my soul . . . I look at what Thiussus was like and I wonder how easy it would be for me to become her.

I thought back to what I had seen of Nuriko’s mad Shade familiar . . . I can’t see it. I simply couldn’t imagine Triss ever acting like she did. You’re better than that. Sane, for starters.

I thank you for that, and I hope that you are right, but still, I worry.

But then I was coming to my first encounter with Devin after the fall of the temple—a particularly dense section of the story I was telling aloud—and I had to drop the conversation with Triss to give my full attention to the details.

Hours later, after I had passed through the revolution in Zhan, the events that had cost Jax half her hand, and the rising of the buried gods, I finally wound down to the last few weeks, the death of the most recent Signet, and what she had told me. I elided some of the details about the powers Siri had gained through her forced connection to the Smoldering Flame—that was her story to tell, if she chose, and not mine.

When I was done, there was a long silence, into which the growling of Faran’s stomach made an especially loud interjection—it had been a long march on tight rations. Taking that as a sign, and because I wanted to give all the information time to sink in before we started arguing about Kelos and Chomarr, we adjourned for a late lunch.

In another place it would have been supper, but much of a Blade’s training and life happened at night, and Jax ran the place on the same timeline as the temple, which meant four meals. First breakfast came shortly after dawn, for the convenience of those who had to operate on the sun’s time for one reason or another. The shepherds who maintained the flocks that fed the castle for example. Blade’s breakfast happened at midday and provided lunch to the grooms and other morning folk. Dinner, or Blade’s lunch was served around sunset, and supper happened at midnight.

Dalridian cuisine was heavy on frying, sausage of the unidentifiable bits variety, and other foods that could be stored for a long time without spoiling. It reminded me strongly of the things my family had eaten back in Varya before the temple took me, and not in a good way. There was some nostalgia value to it, but after years of eating spicy Zhani noodle dishes and Sylvani curries, it sat very heavy on the stomach.

Not that I faulted Jax for that. The castle stood in a remote village in the mountains in a country that was cut off from the rest of the world for half the year, and the fancier sorts of culinary preservation magics were extraordinarily expensive. One of the things I was going to have to do sooner rather than later if I wanted to properly reestablish the order was figure out some way to get in better food and some really good cooks. If I didn’t, the next generation of Blades was going to be terrible with poisons. You have to know how to cook and how to season if you want to successfully dose a meal or drink.

“So.” Jax leaned in close as she finished her food. “Now that we’re done stalling, can we talk about Kelos, and whether or not we should leave him out in the rain to rot with his