From what Kylar could see, Durzo’s choice had never stopped haunting him. The man was a shell. He was a legendary wetboy, but he’d sacrificed everything to that god. Kylar had always wanted to be Durzo, had always held his skills in awe. Durzo was the best, but where was the man beneath the legend?
“So my Crucible was Elene.” Kylar chuckled on the hollowness inside him. “There’s no way you’ll fight with me, against them?”
“And let Roth torture and kill my daughter? Here’s my choices, kid: You die or my daughter dies.” Durzo pulled a gold gunder from a pouch. “Crowns Roth wins, castles I lose.”
He flipped the coin. It bounced on the table and, impossibly, landed on edge.
“There’s always another choice,” Kylar said, slowly releasing his Talent. Damn, it actually worked.
Blint centered and re-centered his empty mug on the table. “I worked for almost fifteen years to get the Globe of Edges, Kylar. I didn’t know where it was. I didn’t know if it was bonded to someone. I didn’t know what kind of magical defenses protected it. I knew people like you were supposed to call the ka’kari, and that your need for it would make the call stronger. That’s why I took you on jobs in every corner of the city. How could I have known King Gunder had it and thought it was just jewelry? No one talked about it because no one knew it was special. No one cared. And I thought maybe I was wrong, that you just had a block. That if I pushed you enough, you’d use your Talent. After working for fifteen years, you think it’d be easy to just hand it over? You think it’s easy to give away fifteen years of your life?”
“But you were going to.” Kylar was amazed.
“Hell no. Once I had it, I’d never have given it away,” Durzo said. But Kylar didn’t believe him. Blint had been planning to give him the ka’kari all along—until Roth.
“Master, work with me. Together we can take Roth.”
Durzo was silent for a few moments. “You know, I used to be like you, kid. For a long time. You should have known me back then. You would’ve liked me. We might have been friends.”
I do like you, master. I’d like to be your friend, Kylar said, but only in his mind. Somehow those words wouldn’t force their way past his lips. Maybe it didn’t matter. Durzo wouldn’t believe him anyway.
“Roth’s a Khalidoran prince, kid. He’s got a Vürdmeister. Soon he’ll have more wytches than all the southlands have mages and an army to boot. He owns the Sa’kagé. There’s no hope. There’s no way to oppose him now. The Night Angels themselves wouldn’t try it.”
Kylar threw up his hands, fed up with Blint’s fatalism and his superstitions. “Here I thought they were invincible.”
“They’re immortal. It’s not the same thing.” Blint popped a garlic clove. “You can take what you need from my place. I wouldn’t want you to die just because I’ve got better gear.”
“I won’t fight you, master.”
“You’ll fight. You’ll die. And I’ll miss you.”
“Master Blint?” he said, remembering something Dorian had said. “What does my name mean?”
“‘Kylar’? You know the word cleave?”
“To cut, right?” Kylar asked. “Like a meat cleaver.”
“Yes, but it has another meaning, too. In old wedding ceremonies, a husband and wife were commanded to cleave together.”
“Like cleavage?”
Blint smirked, but the dark cloud over him didn’t shift. “Right. Cleave means both ‘to come together’ and ‘to split apart.’ Two opposite meanings. Your name’s like that. It means one who kills and one who is killed.”
“I don’t understand,” Kylar said.
“You will. May the Night Angels watch over you, kid. Remember, they have three faces.”
“What?”
“Vengeance, Justice, and Mercy. They always know which to show. And remember the difference between vengeance and revenge. Now get out of here.”
Kylar stood and stashed his weapons expertly. His hip brushed the table as he stood and the balanced coin wobbled and fell before he could reach out with his Talent again and stop it. He ignored it, refused to see it as an omen. “Master Blint,” he said, looking his master in the eye and bowing, “kariamu lodoc. Thank you. For everything.”
“Thank you?” Master Blint snorted. He picked up the coin. It was castles. Castles I lose. “Thank you? You always were the damnedest kid.”
50
Kylar had an hour before Durzo came after him. He knew that because he’d watched Durzo drink a full mug of stout, and Durzo Blint wouldn’t work when he had alcohol in him.
It was the perfect time to go to Master Blint’s safe house. He might get lucky and be able to figure out how Master Blint intended to kill him from what tools were missing.
To be careful, he used the back alleys to get to the safe house. In short order, Kylar disarmed the trap on the lock, then searched for the second trap. If he’d been fully visible, he would have felt exposed, but his Talent obeyed him this time and covered him with shadows. He still had no idea how well he was concealed, but in the heavily shadowed and rarely traveled street, he felt comfortable taking his time. The second trap was embedded in the doorframe opposite the latch. Kylar shook his head. And Blint said he was no good at traps. Setting a trap which used the release of pressure from the bolt itself for a trigger was no easy feat.
Having disarmed that trap, Kylar started picking the lock. Blint had always told him that setting more than two traps on a door was a waste of time. You should get someone with the first trap, but if it was set so poorly that it made them overconfident, you might get them with a perfectly placed second trap. After that, only an idiot wouldn’t check the door over so carefully that they’d find anything you could hide.
Kylar didn’t have to fumble with the rake. He’d practiced on this door for years, so he pressed the tumbler in place almost instantly. Then he felt something wrong. He threw his fingers apart and dropped the rake just as the spring released. A black needle darted out between his spread fingers, grazing his knuckle and almost breaking the skin.
“Whew.” The black compound on the needle was henbane and kinderperil. It wouldn’t have been fatal, but it would make a person ill for days, and he wouldn’t have had time to get far before the poison did its work on him. It was a nasty bit of business—and its presence meant that Master Blint was still testing him. “Only an idiot wouldn’t check the door over carefully after two traps.” Gods.
Kylar stepped inside carefully. This safe house wasn’t as spacious as the one where he’d spent his first months with Master Blint, and with the animals in it, it had been terribly noisy, smelly, and dirty.
Now the animals were gone. Kylar scowled. A cursory examination told him they’d been here this morning.
Moving further in, Kylar saw a letter sitting on Durzo’s desk. He drew a knife in each hand and opened the letter without touching it. He doubted Durzo would use a contact poison in the paper, but he hadn’t thought the wetboy would put a third trap on the door, either.
“Kylar,” it read in Durzo’s tight, controlled script:
“Relax. Killing you with contact poison would be terribly unsatisfying. I’m glad the third trap didn’t get you, but if you had used what you thought you knew about me instead of checking, you’d have deserved it.
“I’ll miss you. You’re the closest to family I’ll ever have. I’m sorry I brought you into this life. Momma K and I did everything we could to make you a wetboy. I suppose it’s to your credit that we failed. You mean more to me than I ever thought another person could.”