She smiled a little. Just looking into his drooping eyes and listening to his weary, rasping voices made her feel tired. “No, sir. There is no secret to surviving these things. My people are the descendants of the few men and women who survived the plague long, long ago. We have no secret cure. And the great eagles and cats can only be tamed from birth. The wild ones are as deadly to us as to you.”
“Ah.” Khai nodded. “Then it hardly matters how fabulously wealthy your distant empire is, does it? Nature herself stands in our way. And who are we to defy Nature?”
Qhora shook her head. “I wouldn’t dream of it myself.”
Khai sniffed. “Zahra means well. She wants to prove herself. She wants to prove to us that she deserves her position. Oh, to be young again.” He sighed, drumming his fingers on the desk, revealing a bandaged hand with a bloody stain where his small finger should have been. Then he stood up and she saw the short sword on his belt. “Let’s take a little walk, you and I.”
She stood up and stepped back toward the door.
If I had a knife, just one knife, I could have that sword off him and force him to take me to Aker. He’s old. He’s tired. Maybe…maybe I can do it without a knife.
As the old man shuffled around the desk toward the door, she started forward to catch him as he was trapped in the narrow gap beside the desk. Instantly an iron hand wrapped around her wrist and she gasped as she felt her tiny bones grinding together in his grip. She looked up and saw there was no change in his face. Still haggard, still tired, still disappointed.
There is something horribly empty and hollow about his gaze. No anger, no fear, no passion. Nothing at all. He feels nothing at all.
She dropped her gaze, hoping he might simply release her if she didn’t seem too dangerous. Instead he kept her held tightly with his right hand as his left hand drew out his seireiken. He only exposed a few inches of the blade and instantly the entire room was ablaze with pure white light that blasted all color from the walls and books and clothing, reducing everything to pale silvery grays. Qhora shielded her eyes with her free hand, and through her squinting lashes she saw tiny electric arcs snapping and sizzling on the brilliant steel. The air hissed and she smelled a faint char on the warm breeze.
The air. The air is burning. The blade is so hot that it can scald the empty air into ash.
Indeed, a faint scattering of pale gray motes was falling steadily on the floor under the sword like snow on a quiet winter’s evening.
Then he slid the sword back into its clay-lined scabbard. “You understand our swords?”
She nodded. “They burn with the souls of all the people that they’ve killed.”
“This is a very old sword. It has claimed many lives, and many of those were at my hand. The blade would only have to touch you for a moment to burn away your flesh and draw the aether from your blood and swallow your soul for all time.”
“I understand.”
He nodded and released her wrist. Qhora stepped back and let him open the door and lead her out into the hall. Zahra and her guards had left and Qhora followed the old man down many long and deserted corridors with only the echoes of their footsteps for company.
“I lost my husband to one of your swords,” she said. Her words echoed alone down the hall.
After a moment, Khai said, “Is that why you’ve come? Revenge?”
“Yes.” She whispered the word. And then louder, “No. Not now. I don’t care about the person who killed my Enzo. I just want the sword that has his soul. I just want to take him home to our son.”
The older man grunted. “I see that life among the Espani had softened your sensibilities. From proud barbarian princess to sentimental housewife. Not that it matters. You’ll never take a seireiken from us, with or without killing its owner. You may never even leave this building, young miss.”
Qhora curled her fingers into a small bony fist. “I thought you’d already decided there was no reason to keep me here. You don’t care about the New World.”
“No, we don’t care about the New World. But we do care about outsiders infiltrating our ranks, stealing our secrets, and exposing our operations to the scrutiny of foreign governments.” Khai coughed. “I’m taking you to a room now. You’ll stay there while I discuss your future with my brothers. You may be retained here to work, or we may simply kill you. I understand that you chose to surrender to our people rather than try to fight them. That speaks well for you. Civilized people can be useful. Barbarian princesses cannot.”
A whirlwind of impulses and desires and red mists ran riot through her mind. Her hands wanted to kill this man, to tear down his temple brick by brick, to rip the head clean off Enzo’s killer, and to carry home the burning steel cage with her beloved’s soul inside it. But the sick gnawing in the pit of her stomach only wanted to run far, far away. And the cold splinter in the back of her mind was telling her that she was only one woman, alone, unarmed, unwanted, unloved, and soon to be unmissed by the world.
“I have a son.” Qhora wanted to say more, but she couldn’t imagine what maternal feeling or natural obligation this man might care about. Still she said, “He’s waiting for me. He’s only three months old. I can’t stay here.”
“If you truly valued him above all else, you wouldn’t have left him to come here. So don’t try my patience with your false sense of loyalty.”
“I was wrong.” The word left an aching knot in her throat. Wrong.
“Oh?”
“Wrong to come here. I came because that’s what I know. When attacked, I attack in kind. Blood cries out for blood. Let no trespass go unpunished. Absolute war. Death without mercy. That’s what kept me alive through…everything. Being stronger, faster, crueler. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It was only a way to survive. To keep my blood on the inside.”
“There’s nothing shameful about survival,” Khai said. “Few scholars study the philosophies, passions, and beliefs of failed nations. After all, they’re dead. What can they possibly offer the living? To simply survive in this world at all is to understand a great deal about the human body, mind, and society.”
Qhora frowned. She was certain there was something wrong in what he had just said, but she didn’t care to dwell on it. “I just meant that if I could go back to that night when my husband died, I wouldn’t have left my son to find the killer. I would have stayed at home and taken care of my boy, and let others find justice for us. I can’t save Enzo’s life. I can’t even save his soul, can I?”
“No. You can’t free a soul from a seireiken,” Khai said. “But you can see them and hear them, for whatever that is worth. Would you want to see your dead husband again?”
“Of course!”
“And a year from now? Ten years? Twenty?” The older man glanced back over his shoulder at her. “You’re a young woman with a child to raise. Surely your fortunes would be better served if you were to find a new husband to provide for you. And besides that, surely you yourself would want to find a new companion for the many long years of your life still ahead of you. Would you truly want your dead husband’s ghost trapped in your home with you, watching you live your life with another man? Or would you forego a lifetime of love and security to keep a dead man’s soul in the palm of your hand? Would you deny your son a new father, a living father, just so you can hear that same voice from beyond the grave telling you that you are beautiful and that he loves you?”
Qhora rubbed her aching forehead. “Wouldn’t you want to keep the souls of your loved ones close to you?”
Khai stopped and turned. He touched the sword at his side. “I keep the souls of countless thousands of men and women close to me. I’ve known very few of them in life. I’ve known a few more of them in death. I’ve never loved any of them, and they have never brought me any measure of joy or even satisfaction. They are less than slaves. Only tools, nothing more. But to your question, no. If I had a wife or a child die, I would not wish to have them near me. Children are meant to leave the nest. And everyone dies, sooner or later. It is the measure of a person how they cope with loss. The dead must be let go for the living to truly carry on living.”