Weapon of Blood (32 page)

“They saw the whole thing!  They watched,
and didn’t lift a finger to help!”  Lad’s voice dripped venom.  He took another
step forward, forcing her to back up.  “Why didn’t they
help
, Mya?  Why
didn’t they stop them from taking my daughter?”

“They didn’t help because their orders
were to watch and report, Lad.  You wanted it that way, remember?  No
interference.”  She turned to her Hunter.  “Shalla, did you recognize any of
them?”

“Yes. One of the thugs was an Enforcer.” 
She turned and called out to another Hunter just emerging from the barn. 
“Birdie!  Anything?”

The gangly youth trotted up to Mya and
nodded.  “The dead one’s a Blade.”

“You’re the cause of this, Mya,” Lad said
as he once again stepped aggressively closer.  “It’s all about
you
!”

Mya waved off Shalla and Birdie, whose
hands had dropped to their weapons.  She’d never seen Lad like this, so
emotional, so threatening.  She knew she could defend herself, but if she had
to fight Lad in front of her two Hunters, her secret would be out.  Besides,
she needed to speak to Lad alone.  Keeping her eyes on Lad, Mya issued commands
over her shoulder.

“Get back to the
Cockerel
and
spread the word; we’re at war with Horice and Youtrin, and probably the rest of
the guild.  Send secure messages to Pictor, Kara, Simi, and Vic.  They’re to
drop whatever they’re doing for the other masters and get back to headquarters
immediately
.  
Call everyone in; we’ve got to marshal our forces.  All senior journeymen are
to meet with me at the
Cockerel
in an hour.  And send a clean-up team
back with a cart for that body.”

“Yes, Miss Mya!”

The two dashed off.  The exchange,
however, hadn’t quelled Lad’s temper.

“This is about
you
, Mya!  You and
your plots and plans, always grasping for more power to keep yourself safe! 
Well, what about my family?  What did you do to keep
them
safe?”

“I didn’t know the other masters would do
this, Lad.”

“How could you
not
know?  You
think
like them.  Why wouldn’t you think about
this
, Mya?  It’s something you
would have done, isn’t it?”

Probably.
  She shrugged; there was no arguing the point.  “A
family is a weakness, Lad.  I’ve told you that a hundred times.”

“You’re wrong, Mya.  They’re my life, my
strength!”  He glanced over his shoulder at them, then turned back to glare at
her.  “Is that what this is about?  Were you so jealous of my happiness that
you let someone destroy it?”

“Jealous?”  A bark of laughter escaped
her throat before she could stop it.  A surge of anger at his accusation
dampened her caution.  She waved her hand at the group assembled on the porch. 
“Of
them
?  They don’t make you strong, Lad, they make you vulnerable. 
You think I should have known what would happen here?  What about you?  What
the hells did you
think
assassins would do?  It’s not
my
job to
keep your family safe.  It’s
yours
.”

His hand shot out.

The move was fast, but not so fast that
she couldn’t intervene.  Mya’s hand clamped down on his wrist before he could
wrap his fingers around her throat.  Surprise flashed in his eyes at the speed
of her response and the strength of her grip.  He twisted free and took a
half-step back, scrutinizing her through the curtain of rain between them.

He struck with lightning speed, an open
palm blurring through the rain toward her cheek.

Water misted in a halo as, again, she
blocked the blow.

Now an expression of disbelief masked his
face.  His hands balled into fists at his sides, and his mouth hardened into a
grim line.

“Lad, don’t.”

His attack came like an explosion,
full-speed, full-force strikes that would have crushed the skull, snapped the
spine, smashed the ribs, and pulped the heart of any normal human.

But Mya wasn’t normal.

Magic flushed through her with a wave of
heat, her runes igniting every nerve and muscle into action.  The world cleared
as if she had previously viewed it from behind a translucent veil.  Mya could
pick out every raindrop, every pore in Lad’s skin, every drop of moisture on
his lashes, and she reacted as her years of training had taught her.

Mya met each of Lad’s attacks
reflexively.  She knew his fighting style, his dance of death, better than any
other living soul.  He’d taught it to her five years ago, and she had practiced
it every day since.

A kick lashed out at her throat like a
stroke of lighting, but she blocked, whirled, and swept aside the next blow, a
clawing sweep of his fingers that would have raked through her ribs like a
scythe through wheat.  She bent back to dodge a fist that buzzed through the
raindrops like a swarm of hornets, and spun away from his next attack, sweeping
his lashing foot aside.  Lad spun also, her mirror, her shadow, and she knew
his next move before it came.  Her open palm met the strike with a report like
a hammer on stone, a nimbus of misted water radiating out from the point of
impact in a shockwave.  Three more lighting punches, and she met each the same,
her timing flawless.  She glimpsed a fleeting opening in his defenses, feint or
real, she didn’t know, but she let it pass, pivoting and sliding out of his
reach.

Don’t kill him!
the voice of her heart screamed to her mind.  She
could heal her wounds, but Lad could not.  The force of his blows told her that
he was truly trying to kill her.  But try as he might, she would not—
could
not
—kill him.

Mya fought defensively, blocking,
twisting, and spinning out of reach time and time again, but little by little,
his superiority showed.  He was every bit as fast as she, and while she had
trained for years, he had trained his entire lifetime.  Fighting was as innate
as breathing for Lad.  She might have learned the dance, but he had
choreographed it, and what he had made, he could change.

The pattern suddenly shifted, and Lad’s
next strike caught her off guard.  Mya flung back her head to avoid the blow,
but his fist brushed her cheek, the shockwave of compressed rain lashing across
her face to blind her for an instant.  She blocked the subsequent kick with her
forearm and heard a bone crack with the impact.  Spinning low, she swept his
feet, but he used the momentum to flip in an impossible twisting flurry of
kicks.  Rain sprayed from him in a cloud, a fog of blurred motion.

Mya blocked two of the kicks with one
arm, then spun to block his sweeping fist.  It was only then that she realized
it had been
her
bone she heard cracking.  Her broken forearm met Lad’s
blow before she could pull back.  Bone splintered and lanced through her flesh,
shredding her wrappings and her shirt in a spray of blood.  She gaped for an
instant at the shards of bone, the torn meat—her bones, her flesh—but no pain.

In her split-second of inattention, the
edge of Lad’s foot caught her cheekbone, and she felt the orbit of her eye
disintegrate.  Her vision went dark on one side.

A fleeting moment of panic surged through
her.  She was
hurt
!  She should feel pain, should feel
something
! 
He’s going to kill me, and I’m not going to feel a thing!

Yet even through the haze of panic, her
training held true.  Mya caught Lad’s next kick in the crook of her unbroken
arm and twisted inside his guard, slamming her elbow into his midriff. 

Don’t kill him!

At the last instant, she pulled most of
the force of the blow.  Her elbow met with his solar plexus, but didn’t rupture
any organs or snap his spine.  The impact was, however, hard enough to stun
someone not inured to pain.  She spun away.

Lad crouched, gasping but poised, his
piercing eyes fixed on her.

Mya glanced down with her good eye at the
bloody bone sticking out through her torn sleeve, and her stomach flipped.  She
should be screaming in pain, but she felt nothing, and the lack of sensation
made her want to retch.  Unlike Lad, who had grown up with the magic blocking
his pain and healing every wound, she had not.  She knew pain, had felt bones
break, had watched her own flesh part under a knife like water before the prow
of a ship, and felt the searing agony in its wake.

This isn’t right…

She gritted her teeth against the
imagined agony and straightened her arm, pulling hard to realign the bones. 
They snapped into place, and she watched as the cracked bone smoothed and the
bloody muscles writhed together.  Her skin pulled closed and puckered into a
rapidly fading scar.  Her runic tattoos glittered across her skin before the
enchanted wrappings sealed themselves, enveloping her once again in her
secretive cocoon.

Mya heard Lad’s gasp, and knew he’d seen
her secret, but she couldn’t pay attention to him right now.  She felt the
bones of her cheek realigning, and reached up to feel something dangling from
the void of her shattered eye socket.  Round and wet, she knew what it was. 
Swallowing a surge of nausea, a visceral swell of wrongness—
Not human…  Monster…
—she
popped her eye back into the healing socket.  By the time she blinked twice,
she could see again.

“What have you done?”  Lad’s tone
mirrored her horror.

“What?”  Mya squared her shoulders and
met his scorn with her own.  “Don’t you
dare
judge me!  All I did was
protect myself.”

“You’ve made yourself into
him
! 
You’ve made yourself into the Grandfather!”

“I saw a weapon to wield and I took it.” 
She felt a stab of conscience.  This was why she hadn’t told him.  He didn’t
understand.  He was right, but he was also wrong about her.  He didn’t know
her.  Not really.

“You murdered Vonlith,” he breathed,
“just to protect your secret.”

Mya glanced over her shoulder toward the
figures huddled on the inn’s porch.  She and Lad were far enough away for the
rain to obscure their voices.  Noticing her glance, Lad rose from his crouch
and circled until he stood between her and his family.

“Vonlith was a threat to me.  He could
suspend my magic, just like he did when you killed the Grandfather.  I ended
that threat.”

“You make it sound so simple!  So easy! 
Logical
even!”  He wiped blood from the back of his hand, and she saw the wound where
her broken bones had lacerated him.  “He saved your life, both our lives, and
you thanked him by putting a dagger in his brain!”

“How can you feel compassion for the man
who was ready to make you a slave for the Grandfather?”  She pointed to the
tattoos they both knew marked his torso.  “He would have made you a murderer
again.  He only saved us to keep my dagger out of his heart.”

“So you murdered an innocent man.”

“
Innocent?
”  She laughed a ragged
peal at his naïveté.  “
Nobody’s
innocent, Lad.  We’re all guilty of
something.  I’m an assassin; murder is my business.  But you!  Telling yourself
you’re a husband and father is just foolish!  It only makes you vulnerable and
puts
them
in danger.  Don’t deny what you truly are!”

“I am
not
like you, Mya.”  The
pain in his voice told her she’d struck a telling blow.

“You’re more like me than you are like
them!”  She shot another glance at the cowering people on the porch, reveled in
the fear on their faces. 
Damn right, you should fear me! 
“You tell
yourself you love them, but all that does is put you
and
them at risk. 
You blame assassins for taking your daughter, when it’s
you
who’s to
blame!”

“You’re
wrong
, Mya!”  His tone
changed.  His voice was fuller now, more confident, stronger.  “You think my
family makes me weak, but you’re wrong.  They make me strong.  They make me
human
. 
Without them, I’m nothing but a weapon.  Without them, I’m like you.”

He’s more human than I am. 
The thought staggered Mya, blinded her for an instant,
but she denied it.  “I’m not a weapon, Lad.  I
wield
the weapons.”

“Tell yourself the truth for
once
,
Mya.  Has not loving anyone made you safe?  Has it made you whole?”  His
scornful gaze raked her from head to foot, hurting her like no blow or blade
ever could.  “Has betraying me made you feel like a real person?”

“I
didn’t
betray you, Lad.”  He
didn’t understand her.  Or wouldn’t.  “Why would I?  I
need
you.”

He waved a hand dismissively.  “Like you
said, you’ve got your weapons.  You’re safe now.  You don’t need me.”

“I…” 
Love him?  Do I?  Can I?

Mya knew the answer, but clenched her
teeth against the words she couldn’t say, and thanked the rain for hiding her
tears.  Glancing over his shoulder, she saw his family watching Lad with fear,
pain…and love, plain on their faces.  He had more in them than she would ever
have from anyone. 
That’s what I want.  That’s what I need.
  But she
couldn’t tell him, not now.  “I need someone I can
trust
, Lad.  A
friend.”