Haplo glanced around again, frowned. “I’ve seen some place like this before... but I can’t remember...”
His gaze flicked over to Marit, held. He’d caught her staring at him. Too late to try to pretend she was asleep. She stiffened, looked away. She was aware suddenly of her dagger, lying in the middle of the floor, lying between them.
“Don’t worry,” Hugh the Hand grunted, following Haplo’s gaze. “Between the dog and me and Alfred, we haven’t let her get close to you.” Haplo propped himself up on one elbow. He was weak, far too weak for a Patryn who had been through the healing sleep. The wound on the heart-rune. Such a wound would have doomed him in the Labyrinth.
“She saved my life,” he said.
Marit could feel his eyes on her. She wished there was someplace to hide in this damn room, some way to escape. She might even try the door, but she’d look a fool if she couldn’t break out. Gritting her teeth, keeping a tight hold on herself, she sat up and pretended to be absorbed in lacing her boot. After all, what Haplo had just said was going to work to her advantage. The assassin grunted. Removing the pipe from his mouth, he knocked the bowl against the wall, dumped ashes on the floor.
Haplo’s attention shifted back to the human.
“Did you say Alfred?”
“Yeah. I said Alfred. He’s here. Off somewhere, getting food.” He jerked a thumb at the door.
Haplo took in his surroundings. “Alfred. Now I remember what this place reminds me of—the mausoleum, on Arianus.”
Marit, recalling Xar’s command, listened carefully. The words meant nothing to her, but she felt a chill go over her. Mausoleum. It reminded her of Abarrach—a world that was a mausoleum.
“Did Alfred say where we are?”
Hugh smiled—a terrible smile that tightened his lips, darkened his eyes.
“Alfred hasn’t had much to say to me. In fact, he’s been avoiding me.”
“I’m not surprised.”
Haplo sat up straight, looked down at his hand—the hand that had picked up the cursed Sartan knife. It had been black, the flesh burned off. Now the arm was whole, uninjured. He looked over at her.
Marit knew what he was thinking as well as if he’d said it aloud. She was still close to him, and that irritated her.
“You track my thoughts like a wolfen tracks a wounded man,” he’d said once, teasing her.
What she had never told him was how closely he’d been able to track hers. At first she’d hungered for such closeness, one reason that she’d stayed with him so long, longer than any other man she’d ever been with before. But then she’d found herself liking him too much, counting on him, becoming dependent on him. And it was then she’d realized she was going to have his child. It was then she’d left.
Bad enough knowing she’d lose him to the Labyrinth; to have to face losing the child, too...
Be the one who leaves. Don’t be the one left. It had become her credo. She looked at him and knew exactly what he was thinking. Someone has healed me. Someone has closed the circle of my being. He looked at her, wanting it to be her. Why? Why couldn’t he realize it was over?
“The Sartan healed you,” she said to him. “Not me.” Slowly and deliberately, she turned away again.
Which was all very well and all very dignified, but sometime soon she was going to have to explain that she wasn’t out to kill him anymore. Marit wove the runes, hoping to snare her dagger, which was still lying in the center of the floor. Her magic fizzled, petered out; the damn Sartan magic in this dreadful room was unraveling her spells.
“Tell me what happened.” Haplo had turned his attention back to Hugh the Hand.
“How did we get here?”
The human sucked on his pipe, which had gone out. The dog lay at Haplo’s side, crowding as close as it could get, its eyes gazing anxiously into its master’s face. Haplo gave it a reassuring pat, and it sighed and nestled even closer.
“I don’t remember much,” the Hand was saying. “Red eyes and giant serpents and you with your hand on fire. And terror. Being more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life. Or death.”
The assassin smiled wryly. “The ship burst apart. Water filled my mouth and my lungs and then the next thing I knew I was in this room, on my hands and knees, heaving up my guts. And you were lying next to me, with your hand and arm like charred wood. And that woman was standing over you with her dagger and the dog was about to go for her throat, and then Alfred came bumbling through the door.
“He said something to her in that strange language you people talk and she seemed about to answer him when she toppled over. She was out cold.
“Alfred looked at you and shook his head; then he looked at her and shook his head again. The dog had shut up by this time, and I’d managed to get onto my feet.
“I said, ‘Alfred!’ and walked toward him, only I couldn’t walk very well. It was more of a lurch.”
The Hand’s smile was grim. “He turned around and saw me and gave a kind of croak and then he toppled over and he was out cold. And then I must have passed out, because that’s the last thing I remember.”
“And when you came to?” Haplo asked.
Hugh shrugged. “I found myself here. Alfred was fussing over you and that woman was sitting over there, watching, and she wasn’t saying anything and neither was Alfred. And I stood up and went over to Alfred. This time I made sure I didn’t scare him.
“But before I could open my mouth, he was up like a startled gazelle and took off through that door, muttering something about food and I was to keep watch until you came around. And that was a while ago and I haven’t seen him since. She’s been here the whole time.”
“Her name is Marit,” said Haplo quietly. He was staring at the floor, running his finger around—but not touching—a Sartan sigil.
“Her name’s Death, my friend, and you’re the mark.” Marit drew a deep, shivering breath. Might as well get it over.
“Not any longer,” she said.
Rising to her feet, she walked over, picked up her dagger from the stone floor.
The dog leapt up, stood over its master protectively, growling. Hugh the Hand rose, too, his body supple, his movement swift. He said nothing, just stood there, watching her through narrowed eyes.
Ignoring them both, Marit carried the dagger to Haplo. Kneeling down, she offered the dagger to him—hilt first.
“You saved my life,” she said, cold, grudging. “By Patryn law, that must settle any quarrel between us in your favor.”
“But you saved my life,” Haplo countered, looking at her with a strange intensity that made her extremely uncomfortable. “That makes us even.”
“I didn’t.” Marit spoke with scorn. “It was your Sartan friend who saved you.”
“What’s she saying?” Hugh the Hand demanded. She had spoken in the Patryn language.
Haplo translated, adding, “According to the law of our people, because I saved her life, any dispute between us is settled in my favor.”
“I hardly call trying to murder you a ‘dispute,’” Hugh said dryly, sucking on the pipe and eyeing Marit distrustfully. “This is a ruse. Don’t believe her.”
“Stay out of this, mensch!” Marit told him. “What do worms such as you know of honor?” She turned back to Haplo. She was still holding the dagger out to him.
“Well, will you take it?”
“Won’t this put you in disfavor with Lord Xar?” he asked, still looking at her with that penetrating intensity.
She forced herself to keep her eyes on his. “That’s my concern. I cannot in honor kill you. Just take the damn dagger!”
Haplo took it slowly. He looked at it, turning it around and around in his hand as if he’d never seen anything like it before in his life. It wasn’t the dagger he was examining. It was her. Her motives.
Yes, whatever had once been between them was over.
Turning around, she started to walk away.
“Marit.”
She glanced back.