“You’re a bloody fool, Walker. I’ve always known that you were so much more than you ever said, and I always suspected you were hiding your real power. Why keep it from me?”
After so long hiding it all away from her I found it difficult to voice. “I didn’t want to scare you.”
“Did it never occur to you that if I didn’t trust you with my life then we wouldn’t be friends at all?” she said. “You of all people should know that I don’t trust easily. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you will.”
My head lifted. She looked exhausted, worn paper-thin. She patted me on the arm. “You always seemed to live without a care, drinking too much, getting into stupid scrapes and dangerous schemes. It was hard for anybody to see you as anything other than an unreliable, weak-willed, piece of shit on a mission of self-destruction. But that was all just for show, wasn’t it? A grand con. But then you always were good at fooling people.”
She was mostly right. But there was a large and twisted part of me with a scurrilous tongue that constantly urged me to dive headfirst into danger, to endanger my life for no good reason.
“You think I didn’t do some digging after you ran away?” she said. “Lynas’ lips might as well have been nailed shut.” She looked at me funny, as if pondering for a second if maybe he couldn’t have said anything; but no, Lynas was just Lynas, he’d have taken a secret to the grave if asked to.
A moment of pain as part of me reminded myself that he did take them to his grave.
“I knew that other magi distrusted you, thought you were scum barely worth noticing,” Charra continued. “But in truth you are a really nasty piece of work, aren’t you, Walker? Given what you did to Aconia and Layla I’d wager you are far more powerful than anybody ever suspected.” She locked gazes with me. “No tricks, Walker. Cards on the table now – tell me everything.”
Unable to meet her gaze, I studied my hands, wondering if I really knew that myself. “Have you ever heard the old stories of the tyrants who ruled the tribes of man long before the empire of Escharr arose?” I said.
“The enslaver-kings?” she replied, using the old Ahramish name.
I met her gaze, nodded, pointed a finger at myself. “In Kaladon they just called us tyrants.”
It took her a moment. “You?” She snorted. “As if.”
I didn’t say anything more, didn’t need to as my sincerity filtered through.
She swallowed. “That’s what you did to Aconia, and what you were doing to Layla?”
“Exactly. That’s why the grand deception. That’s why I’ve always downplayed what I can do. I told them I could only use my power through touch, but that was also a lie I told for good reasons. The magi don’t hate me, Charra, they fear me. Not because of what I am, but for what I might become.”
She squeezed my hand. “Don’t be a fool. You will never be like that. However much of an annoying prick you are.”
I offered a half-hearted smile. “Uh, thanks. I guess.”
“If you were that way inclined then you wouldn’t have spent half your life penniless and puking in a gutter – you’d be off in some marble palace somewhere living like a lord and drinking yourself blind on fine wine. You wouldn’t be slumming it with a godsdamned lady of sheets to find out who killed an old friend.”
“Charra–”
She waved a dismissive hand. “I own the words, Walker. They can’t hurt me. Other people won’t forget what I was, so neither should I. And I meant every word.”
“Thank you,” I said, looking up at the grey sky as a soft drizzle started falling. Don’t let her see you tearing up like a wee babe. It was such a relief to hear her say that. I had always been adamant that I would never become crazed with power like everybody expected me to, but the lure of magic was so subtle that sometimes I woke in a cold sweat wondering if I’d changed and just didn’t know it, or if some creeping doom was gradually overtaking me. Would I even notice? It was never far from my mind. My first physical changes had been so gradual that it had taken me a year to realize I had developed senses keen beyond normal human ability.
I grinned at her. “Hah, I guess as long as you’re around there is nothing to fear. You wouldn’t be slow in telling me I’m in the wrong.”
She looked away. “True, I wouldn’t.” She seemed to crumple into herself. The whole thing with Layla must have finally sunk in. She cleared her throat and looked me in the eye with a gaze as cold as winter and with just about as much life. “Just so we are clear,” she said. “If you ever do that to my daughter again, I will kill you.” And she meant it.
I swallowed. “Noted.”
She looked me in the eye. “Thank you for finally telling me what you really are. I know it couldn’t have been pleasant.”
“Since we are exchanging secrets,” I said, “how about you tell me what you really are? You’re no lady of sheets and you never have been. You’ve always been too self-assured and much too handy with a knife. We’ve been dancing around secrets all our lives. Let’s be done with it. What does it matter now?”
She smiled coldly, gazing up at the sky. “We both wear masks, it seems. I was six, I think, when my parents died from the Grey Pox.”
I winced, remembering that disease running rampant through the Warrens and the grey seeping lesions that had consumed my aunts and uncles, my cousins and my friends. It was not a swift death.
“A group of alchemic dealers took me in off the streets. There were too many starving orphans after the pox struck for anybody to care about one or two going missing. They trained me to kill. A child assassin can reach places, can cater to certain tastes that adults can’t. I lost count of the lives I took to hide their activities.” When she looked back at me some of that old, wild Charra reappeared in her eyes, a hint of desperation as I now recognized.
“They kept me like a pet. I was sick of watching people living their lives, laughing and playing with friends and family. And then ending them. You have no idea what that does to a child.” She tapped her chest, “I was empty in here. All I had were my kills and serving their so-called grand purpose.”
I swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged. “I’m just glad I got out. One night our leader Anders staggered in from the tavern with a girl on his arm. He was so drunk he couldn’t get it up. The girl laughed, laughed in our glorious leader’s face!” She glanced at me, meeting my eyes for a moment before her gaze jerked skyward again. “You need to understand that I’d never dreamed anybody would dare such a thing. Anders snapped her neck and dumped the body in an alley. It wasn’t for any grand purpose, it was just murder. It hit me then, young as I was – it was all just murder. That’s all it had ever been. I think I went a little mad.”
She cleared her throat. “They would never let their property leave, so I waited for them to fall asleep, then cut my way out and made a run for it. I met Lynas and you a few days later and I had thought about covering my tracks afterwards, but I’m very glad I didn’t.”
“Me too,” I said softly. We’d had no idea we were so close to getting our throats slit. She didn’t need sympathy and she didn’t want forgiveness, she just wanted me to finally know what she had gone through. No wonder she had dedicated her life to ridding the streets of alchemic dealers and to helping the lords and ladies of sheets escape the gutters.
She sighed. “I figured that claiming to be a lady of sheets sounded much more wholesome than admitting I cut throats for alchemic dealers. It’s certainly a more honest profession.”
She paused, a hand covering her mouth as she coughed and cleared her throat. I suspected she was struggling not to throw up. “It would seem that the apple does not fall far from the tree,” she said through gritted teeth. “She betrayed everything I went through, but I blame myself for hiring the best fighting masters gold can buy. I’ve been a blind fool not to think that one or two might have been scouting for such a rare talent.” Her eyes met mine again, now filled with rage. “They seduced my daughter right in my own home!”