Force the knife back on the one who would take your heart. Your heart belongs to those who looked past the squalor of your childhood and called you friend, who showed you your true worth, and who honor you with their love across three worlds.
I felt the maintainer’s neck crack between my legs, and with the last of my strength I forced the other one’s knife into his own belly and jerked upward until I felt the satisfying rip.
One more squeeze with the legs to make sure… one more twist of the knife to make sure… I shoved the corpse off my chest and struggled to get air into my lungs.
For a long while I lay on the stone floor of the dungeon, fighting to stay alive. Breathe, don’t think. Rest. What I wouldn’t give for my father’s healing touch! Don’t sleep. It’s death if you sleep… maybe death if you don’t. Sit up. That will ease the breathing… ah, demonfire, how can it hurt so much?
Carefully, I eased myself up until I was leaning on the flogging post. I couldn’t use my hands. They’d crushed them early on with wooden clubs until I fainted from it, until I begged them to cut them off as it wouldn’t be half so bad. But then they stomped on them instead, saying as how the impostor was plotting to destroy the Source, and they would see him stopped. Breathing was a little easier, as long as I kept it shallow.
Ought to stop all this blood. It’s going to leave me dry as an ale barrel at midsummer. But I couldn’t see where all of it was coming from. Everything was blurry.
Stay awake. Sleep just won’t do it. Not yet. Got to stay awake and get enough strength back to unlock the cell door.
But I couldn’t figure out why I had to unlock my cell. I was already out. I’d come out to fight… to save Paulo…
My sluggish mind riffled through thoughts and images as if they were pages in a crumbling book. Holy gods, what had I done?
The pain was real, the agony of each breath, the screaming fire in my hands, the dangerous dull throb in my gut. But this pain could not be mine.
I squeezed my eyes shut, afraid to see. But the darkness was too tempting. If I kept my eyes closed, I would sink into sleep just to escape the pain, and then I - whoever I was - would die. So I opened them again and saw what I was terrified to see. My legs were long, perhaps two handspans longer than they should be. And my arms were long, like a scarecrow’s I - he - had always said. But he’d never seen the strong back and shoulders that held them together. And the shirt that hung in tatters on my bleeding chest was not the blue silk the Guardian had provided me, but the rough brown kersey my friend had worn since the dwarf had acquired it for him.
If I could have shrunk from myself in horror, I would have done so. In my zeal to save Paulo’s life, I had violated every oath I had sworn since leaving Zhev’Na. I had taken possession of my friend’s body and had no idea what I had done with his soul.
CHAPTER 15
Stay awake. Breathe. Only the necessities of staying alive held horror and revulsion at bay.
How was I to get him back? When I was in Zhev’Na and had done this thing - taking another’s body for my own use, for my pleasure - I hadn’t cared what became of the soul I had displaced. The bodies died when I left them. I didn’t know why or how, only that they did, and it didn’t matter for they were Zhid or Drudges or slaves who existed to serve my need - my power. But this… I had to find Paulo, put him back, and put myself back where I belonged.
Holding one arm tight around my ribs, I eased to my feet. One step. Two. Slowly, using the flogging post, a bloodstained headsman’s block, and the implement racks to hold myself up, I staggered across to the wall where the maintainers had hung the keys to the young master’s cell - my cell - on a peg. Cold, shivering, I had never hurt so much in all my life. After every step I had to stop and rest, trying not to heave out my insides.
Forgive me, Paulo. I’ve got to keep you alive… get you back right… and I don’t know how. So I’ve got to use you while I can, make your body work even though it may make it worse for you.
It took an agonizing time for me to get the key, insert it in the cell door, and make it turn. Only two of his fingers were of any use at all, and they shook ferociously, refusing to cooperate until I was ready to scream.
“Cripes! You’ve got to do what I tell you!” I yelled, and almost turned around to see where Paulo was. But it was me, using his voice… even his words… as I’d used his very thoughts while I was wrestling with the maintainers. As I fumbled with the key, I considered what had run through my head in that time. Not just my own thoughts, not by any measure. Paulo had been there, too, with ideas and feelings I had no way to know. That I had no right to know.
I’m sorry. So sorry. Don’t be dead.
An hour it seemed until the cell door swung open, and I saw my own body lying insensible on the floor. So many bizarre things had happened to me in my life, but unshackling my own wrists and ankles, and dragging myself out of my prison cell, were truly among the strangest. At least I was breathing.
Once I had my body out of the cell, I sank to the floor beside it, waiting for the waves of pain and dizziness to recede so I could think what to do next. If Paulo was still somewhere inside this body, then maybe all I had to do was get out. I had to hurry. The Guardian could come at any time, eager to see if his will had been done. But first…
Gods and demons, my head was in a muddle, and everything hurt. The light began slipping away from me, as if the torches were falling down a deep well. I reached down the well, trying to catch them. My life depended on it… Paulo’s life… but I lost my grasp on the light, and lost my footing, and tumbled into the depths after it…
“Cripes, are you going to sleep all day? I thought I was the one busted up, but you’ve got a head like a rotten melon. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Can’t you be quiet? My head hurts.” Why was I talking to myself, when all I wanted to do was stay asleep?
“Let somebody crack a rib or three for you. Or put a boot in your gut. Make you forget your head.”
I was still leaning against the flogging post, holding myself together with my bloody, smashed hands. I looked more than half dead. But how was I able to see it? And why was the filthy stone floor pressing so brutally against my face at the same time?
I sat up quickly, ignoring the aches that were so trivial next to those I’d experienced earlier.
Paulo was leaning against the flogging post. Somewhere in the mess of his face was a particular crooked grin I’d not seen since we’d left Windham. “Got to stop traipsing after you. Man could get himself killed.”
“It’s you,” I said, gaping like a fool. “And I’m - Oh, blast it all, I must’ve been dreaming. I don’t want to go to sleep ever again.” My head felt like a mountain had fallen on it. But at least it was my own head, and my own arms and legs attached to it.
“Wasn’t no dream.” His smile had vanished, but the anger that should have displaced it didn’t follow.
Not a dream… He should be furious with me… revolted. He should feel violated, but he just sat there looking at me, waiting for an explanation. I wanted to be sick. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how I - I didn’t mean to do it. I swear.”
“Didn’t mean to? And here I thought you’d done magic just to keep my hide in one piece. Ragged, but one piece all the same.” A laugh burst out of him, though it sounded more like a hoarse whoop.
“Well, of course, I meant to help. But not that way… taking you. Never that. I didn’t know I could. Not any more. Only when I was a Lord. When I had power and did it on purpose, the person always died after. I don’t know how this happened. I just wanted to help.” It sounded so childish, such a pitiful excuse for an act so reprehensible.