His head twitched and dipped to one side. His crab-like hand scraped rigidly across the surface of the table. His eyes lost their focus.
“But she’s been stolen from me,” he rasped. “I can’t find her. She is gone.”
Goedellin was regarding the na’kyrim with consternation. Talark frowned uneasily. Yes, Kanin thought, you can see if you choose to; see his madness. This is the man you would make master of your hopes, your fates? This poisoned ruin of a man, whose thoughts trickle through his own fingers like so much grain? But the moment did not last. The doubts had no time to take root.
“We should eat,” Shraeve said, and at the sound of her voice Aeglyss recovered himself.
“Yes,” he sighed, straightening in his chair, drawing his hand back to press it against his chest. “We should eat.”
The food was neither plentiful nor elegant. Bread and broth and a single haunch of mutton. They ate in silence. All save Aeglyss. He touched nothing, only watched.
A serving girl made her way around the table, pouring out wine from a clay jug. She came to Aeglyss last, and wiped the lip of the jug clean with a cloth before emptying the last of its contents into his cup. Aeglyss pushed away his plateful of neglected food. He lifted the cup to his lips and drank deeply. As he set it down again his hand gave a brief involuntary jerk, spilling wine on the table.
Kanin saw Cannek lay down a hunk of bread he had been gnawing. The Inkallim was watching Aeglyss intently. Others caught the change in mood. Conversations died.
Aeglyss’ face was white, paler even than it had been before. His eyes, the pupils dilated, were gleaming wetly. A muscle in his left cheek twitched, though his jaw was tight clenched. Otherwise, he was as motionless as a statue. Kanin looked around. Every eye was upon the halfbreed.
Still Aeglyss had not moved. His white fingernails were digging into the rough surface of the table. His eyes stared rigidly at Cannek. The Inkallim was quite calm.
“What have you done?” Shraeve said softly.
Abruptly Aeglyss retched, gripped by a convulsion that rose from deep in his midriff. He hunched forward and then straightened with a great gasp. The movement seemed to release all the tension from his body. He put one hand to his mouth and spat a small dark object into his palm. He held it out: a perfect orb of black matter the size of an eyeball, with strands of saliva still clinging to it.
“Yours, I think,” said Aeglyss thickly to Cannek. He set it down upon the table, where it rested like a dull, sodden marble a child had discarded. Cannek regarded it thoughtfully for a moment or two, his hands clasped together before him. The globule lost its form, slumping into a viscous stain.
“That’s very clever,” Cannek murmured with a smile.
“What is this?” Goedellin asked, his voice all indignant puzzlement. “Poison?”
Cannek’s hands parted, and there was a blade in one of them. Shraeve’s arm snapped up. One of her swords, still sheathed, came spinning across the table. Cannek ducked and swayed to one side, so that the sword went cartwheeling away off the side of his head. It was enough to spoil his own aim. His knife, sent darting out with a flick of his wrist, flashed past Aeglyss’ shoulder. Shraeve followed her sword, vaulting the table, pivoting on one hand to drive a straight-legged kick into Cannek’s chest. The Hunt Inkallim went crashing back with his chair, rolling and rising smoothly to a crouch.
But Shraeve was too fast even for him. In the moment it took Cannek to recover his balance, she hit him with her full weight, wrapping an arm about his neck, splaying her other hand over his eyes. She took him backwards, tumbled the pair of them across the floor. And out of that blur of movement rose a clear, long cracking.
Shraeve stood. Cannek lay, eyes and mouth open, head tilted sideways on a broken neck. Shraeve brushed dust from her knees. The assembled warriors stared in a mixture of amazement and confusion at the dead Inkallim. Only Kanin turned back at once to Aeglyss. And found the na’kyrim watching him. Aeglyss wiped the back of his hand across his lips. He was breathing fast.
“Is that what you all require?” the halfbreed said loudly, and was at once the focus of all attention once more. “That’s the kind of answer you people demand, isn’t it? There’s fate for you. There’s the choice made for you. I live.”
Kanin wondered if he was the only one to hear the contempt, the bitterness, that suffused Aeglyss’ words. Silently, he raged against the immobility of his limbs, and against the impotence of his own anger. His sword was within reach-he imagined it calling out to him-but Aeglyss, the idea of Aeglyss, filled his field of vision: out of reach, untouchable, inviolable.
“You cannot kill me, for I am not as you are,” Aeglyss said. He slammed his bony fist down on the table. “You think because I am flesh, I am weak. No, no. You must learn to think differently. You will learn. For all your hatred and your betrayals, I will raise you up. I will give you all that you want, feed all the hungers in your hearts, and those who turn against me will be cast down and ruined. There is no other way. No other truth.”
“As it is written,” Shraeve murmured as she picked up her sword and came back around the table to stand beside Hothyn. The two warriors, Inkallim and White Owl, flanked the na’kyrim. And no gaze would meet the challenge those three offered. No one could deny them the submission they demanded.
“Kill the girl who served me my wine,” Aeglyss said. “And all the rest of the servants. All of them.”
He looked up at Shraeve and she nodded.
“You’ve uttered not a word, Thane,” Aeglyss said to Kanin. “I’ve never known such silence from you. Have you nothing to say?”
“Nothing.” Kanin rose, horrified at the effort it took to turn away from Aeglyss, and at the yearning he felt to love the halfbreed and all that he offered. But his hatred provided the one, thin sheen of armour he needed to resist that call. He spared a lingering moment for a last look at Cannek lying dead on the floor, and walked out. An absurd, half-formed smile had been locked into the Inkallim’s lips by death.
Kanin waited outside, and the rest came soon after him, emerging blinking into the clear winter light. All were silent; some thoughtful, some shocked and shaken. In some faces he was sickened to see a sort of joy. This, he understood, was how it happened. There were some-many, perhaps-who found the horrors that Aeglyss embodied and offered not repellent but intoxicating. Once they caught their first scent of his corruption they wanted nothing more than to drink deep of it, to drown themselves in it.
When Goedellin appeared, Kanin stepped in front of the Lore Inkallim, forcing the old, bent man to stop.
“How many have to die, Goedellin? Before you will open your eyes to this madness?”
The Inner Servant rapped the heel of his walking stick on the ground but said nothing.
“My sister was the truest and most loyal follower of the creed, old man. Every beat of her heart was a promise of faith. Is she owed nothing for that lifetime of fidelity? Did it earn her no honour from the Lore?”
“Such matters are not straightforward, Thane,” Goedellin grumbled. He shuffled sideways, trying to pass.
Kanin blocked his path. “We had tutors when we were children,” he said quietly, insistently. “Tutors from your Inkall.”
“I know. Wain told me.”
“Did she tell you that my father wanted to send them away? After only a couple of seasons, he doubted his decision to bring them to Hakkan. She changed so quickly, you see. She devoured their teachings as if she had been starving until then, without ever knowing it. My father was disturbed by it.”
The Inner Servant of the Lore angled his head a little, looking up to meet Kanin’s gaze just for a moment.