darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,53
you,” I said rather wistfully, “does it? Any more than it bothers the Shades.”
She canted her head to the side. “The killing or the reasons for it?”
“Either . . . both. I don’t know.”
“Not really, no.” Then she put her hand on my shoulder. “Which is one of the reasons I’d be terrible at your job. Somebody has to sweat those details if justice is going to be served, and I’m glad it’s somebody like you, even if you do overthink absolutely everything and cut yourself up about it afterward.”
“Today it’s me. If the order survives, it might be you someday. What then?”
“I will think very long and hard to figure out whatever necessary choice would have made you least happy if it were you stuck with the decision. Then I will go with that.”
Triss chuckled, but I shook my head. “No, really. From where I’m sitting, you’re the shining star of the younger generations. You could very easily end up as First Blade.”
“All right. Then, without the sarcasm: I will think long and hard about what you would do in the same situation and I will try to do that. You may be softer than you ought, and dither more than I’m capable of, but I have yet to see you take a life lightly or for the wrong reason.”
She gestured at the trail ahead and the rest of our little line of climbers. “We’re all of us killers, selected expressly for that purpose by the hand of a goddess now dead. Whatever else we might do, or want, or aspire to, an aptitude for death was one of the things that we had to have to make us appropriate candidates for the purposes of the goddess.”
“I have no idea where you’re going with this,” I said.
“I’ve seen you in a fight, Aral, watched you when you didn’t have time to worry about the details or when you felt the cause was unambiguously just. There is no hesitation in you then, and the joy you take in the work is obvious. You’re a killer born. But you’re also a thinker, and the lessons of the goddess sank into your bones. What you do is my model of what a Blade ought to be. How you get there is sometimes a mystery to me, but if I can choose to do what you would do simply by dint of your natural inclination, I think that I’ll be all right.”
“That’s a hell of a thing to try to live up to,” I said.
“So, don’t fuck up.” She punched me in the arm.
“That simple?”
“That simple. Now that I’ve knocked you loose of the worst of your brooding, we should probably catch up.” She broke into a slow lope, and I fell in behind her.
I don’t deserve that kind of faith, I sent to Triss.
Nope. But you’d better damn well do your best to be worthy of it.
In other words: Don’t fuck up?
Don’t fuck up.
Because I’m so very good at that. . . .
Triss didn’t answer.
* * *
The great Temple of Namara stood upon the south shore of Evinduin, the smaller of Varya’s two sacred lakes. A half mile offshore lay the isle of the goddess, a low wooded outcrop with a deep pool that was connected to the main body of the lake by an underwater arch. A series of granite flags surrounded the pool in a neat ring, with a second ring of carefully trimmed grass between the stone and the woods.
When last I visited, there was moss growing between the flags and the grass had given way to rank weeds, but right here, right now it was as it had been when the priesthood maintained it—as clean and perfect as it was on the eve of my investiture. That made no sense to me. Neither did the fact that I had no memory of how I had gotten there. But I had more important things to worry about.
On that long ago night the goddess had risen out of the depths of the pool to present me with my swords. Now she rose again, her six arms held in the classic pose of her sculptures, her heavy stone breasts bared to the night.
The top of her head stood nine feet above the surface of the water that girdled her waist. The darkness and reflections hid her lower body, though a hint of fishy scales and fins could be seen beneath the surface, suggesting that she wore her aquatic form. At other