Wolf's-own: Weregild (28 page)

Malick's order to collect Joori and the others turned out to be wasted breath. Joori was already hanging on Fen's doorjamb, leaning into the room, when Yori emerged back into the hallway. Caidi and Morin were still hovering at the door to their own room, eyes a little anxious, so Yori gave them both an easy smile and a little push down the hall. “What's going on?” Morin demanded as Yori planted them behind their brother outside Fen's door, laying a brief squeeze to Joori's shoulder as she pushed past him.

"Nothing bad,” Yori assured the boy, though she had no idea, in truth, and the tableau she walked in on seemed to belie her assurance all too plainly.

She was fairly surprised to see Fen standing, with only a hand braced to the back of the chair for support. He wasn't putting any weight on the bad leg, but he was still upright, which was fairly astonishing. Yori would've thought it would take at least a week or so, considering. Fen was glaring at Malick—nothing new—but Malick wasn't answering it with his usual smirk or leer; he was glaring right back.

"I'm not doing this again,” Malick was saying. “If we can still do it tonight, we will, but I'm not—"

"That's not what I was talking about, and you know it.” Fen's voice was venomous, filled with anxious anger. He shot a quick look over at the doorway, his mouth crimping a little at Joori's unabashed smirk—Yori had to roll her eyes—then he leaned in and lowered his voice. “I don't care about any bloody paradox,
or
any key. We agreed.” He reached out, took hold of Malick's sleeve, fuming and... bloody hell... why did he look so scared? “You
promised
."

Malick dipped his head, sighed heavily. “I know. I was there. And I'll deal with this when I get back."

"From
where
? What are you plotting now, and what—?"

"
I can't fucking do this now, Fen!
” Loud and strung far too tight. It stopped everyone. Malick looked at no one but Fen, who met his gaze with as much fire in it as Yori had ever seen. Gently but firmly, Malick took hold of Fen's arms and pushed him back into the chair. Fen had no choice but to buckle his good leg and make the descent as pain-free as possible, growling all the way down. “This is important,” Malick told him, still leaning over Fen, keeping his hold on his arms. “I wouldn't be going, else, damn it, you think I
want
to go?
Now
?” With an annoyed grunt, he straightened, turned to Shig and Samin, and waved at Joori in the doorway. “Whatever else Umeia's doing, she's still veiling them, and all of you. But watch. No one is to be left alone."

Odd. It sounded like Malick was warning them against trouble here at the Girou, which was... ridiculous. Obviously. And odder still, it sounded like he was warning them against Umeia.

Malick turned back to Fen, hands out, palms-up. Yori was
sure
she'd never seen him so close to begging before. “I'm not taking it back, all right? I swear. Just... give me ‘til I get back, and we'll figure it out. Please."

Fen's scowl was fierce as he waved angrily at his leg. “I haven't much choice, have I?” he snapped.

"The only thing that's gone halfway right today,” Malick muttered irritably then turned to Yori. “Let's go."

Yori jumped a little, shot her glance to Shig with a lift of her eyebrows, asking. Shig only gave her an unhappy smile and a shrug, but she nodded in reassurance. Yori breathed a tiny bit easier. Her normally calm and pleasant life seemed to be erupting into doubt and chaos with every passing moment, but Shig
knew
things, and that nod told Yori that it would work out in the end.

She let Malick take her arm and all but shove her through the door, but stopped when Joori stepped back a little, all smirks gone now. His hand came up but didn't latch on, too obviously wanting to reach out and stop her, but resisting the urge. Yori peered up at Malick, quirking an eyebrow. Malick only rolled his eyes, let go of her arm, and pushed past her.

"I'm going to get my coat,” he grumbled. “You've got thirty seconds."

Yori didn't wait for him to stomp across the hall and disappear into his room before she reached out for Joori's hand and clamped onto it.

"What's going on?” Joori asked, anxious and trying not to be scared, real caring in his gray gaze.

Yori could only shake her head. “I don't know. But it appears I'm about to find out."

And about bloody time too. She hadn't realized exactly how much had been going on just beneath her sight until now, and it wasn't like she could blame anyone else for it—she'd been smitten and enjoying herself, and letting everyone else pick up the slack. If she'd demanded answers the moment she'd realized she didn't have them all, they would have stopped and given them to her, but she hadn't. For the first time in her life, she'd had a real lover—not someone who used her body because they could, and not someone she'd paid to be nice to her for an evening and pretend she mattered. Joori liked her, wanted to be with her, and it seemed like it had made her brain go a little wobbly.

No more.

Yori straightened when Malick slammed back out of his room, stalked past her toward the stairs, and gave her a brusque wave over his shoulder without looking back. He grunted something that sounded like, “Come on,” and kept going.

Yori gave Joori a reassuring smile, squeezed his hand tight before letting it go, then took off after Malick. “I'll see you when I get back,” she told Joori. “Don't fight with Shig while I'm gone!"

"Be careful!” Joori called, just as Yori's foot hit the second step on the stairs.

She paused, then turned around to give him a grin. She'd heard it hundreds of times from Shig, from Malick, from Samin, from Umeia, but from Joori... it just sounded different. Made affection bloom in her belly and warm her through. “Yes, seyh,” she told him, thumping her fist over her breastbone, then she took off again, taking the steps two at a time to catch up with Malick.

She had no idea whatsoever where they were going, nor what they were going to be doing once they got there, but she was with Malick, and Malick would make sure everything turned out all right. He always had. Yori leapt the last three steps down to the third-floor hallway, pushing past a few of Umeia's lads and ladies loitering outside their doors. She gave Umeia's door a brief glance as she passed it then quickened her pace and trotted after Malick.

"All right,” Malick said as she caught up to him, and they started down the stairs to the second floor. “Let's get you up to speed on what's been going on."

Joori only watched with a tight set to his jaw as Jacin hobbled from the chair over to the clothespress, because Joori had tried to help before, when Jacin had moved from the bed to the chair, and Jacin hadn't let him. “Hasn't anyone even thought to get you a crutch or something?” Joori asked with a pointed look at Shig, who merely looked back at him with a blithe little smile and no comment whatsoever. Samin turned and frowned at him, surprised and not happy about it, like he hadn't thought of a crutch and was annoyed with himself that he hadn't.

Jacin merely shrugged as he hitched up against the clothespress, breathing heavier than he apparently wanted to show, face set into stony lines, and a light scrim of sweat on his brow. “They don't want me up yet,” he said. “And I don't need a crutch."

Samin snorted a querulous little grunt, but said nothing.

A strange man, Samin. Big and blocky, and yet still strangely approachable. He looked like he could either pick you up and snap you in half or sling a thick arm over your shoulders and grin his jackal's grin, with equal ease. Predator or protector, and he slid between the two without so much as a hitch in demeanor. Edgy and on watch now, but he'd quietly and casually been helping a resentful and embarrassed Jacin into a pair of trousers when Joori had herded Morin and Caidi through the door, sliding the fabric up over the heavy bandages with a matter-of-fact gentleness that somehow didn't seem out of place. And the way he doted on Caidi was just... cute.

Joori shook his head. Had he really just put “Samin” and “cute” together in the same thought?

"I'm so
boooooored
,” Caidi moaned. She'd been sitting in the middle of the rumpled bed next to Morin, but now she threw herself facedown into the mound of sheets and blankets with a disgruntled sigh. “And I'm
huuuuuungry
."

Joori seized on it: “Yeah, isn't it past lunchtime?” He shifted significant, expectant looks between Shig and Samin, pleased when, unbidden, Caidi lifted her head and gave the room in general hopeful puppy eyes. Even Morin unintentionally cooperated, shifting his bored glance from its contemplation of the gray day through the window and letting it flick around, eyebrows raised. Joori buried a smirk when Samin's gruff face turned resigned.

Shig and Samin had been keeping them all corralled in Jacin's room since Malick had stalked off with Yori to wherever-the-hell less than half an hour ago, not leaving any of them alone for even a second, and not allowing them to even travel down the hallway to the washroom unaccompanied. With the exception of having taken turns to go back to their rooms to arm themselves—first Samin, then Shig, once he got back—they hadn't let the four of them out of their sight for even a second, Samin pacing about the room and Shig leaning with her back to the far wall, arms crossed over her chest. Joori wasn't sure if they were being protected or imprisoned, but since it prevented him from talking openly to Jacin, like he desperately needed to, it all amounted to the same thing. Time was running out all too quickly, and he was stuck just
sitting
here in limbo, waiting it out. It was making him insane.

"I expect they need to be fed,” Samin said, peering at Shig with a lift of eyebrows, as though looking for agreement.

She merely shrugged. “Mm,” she said. And then just stared, blinking slowly. Apparently, she had no intention of being the one to feed them.

Samin tried to out-stare her for a moment before his mouth clamped into a sour line. “Can you at least tell me nothing's going to happen if I go down for some trays?"

"Maybe—if I were a seer."

"Damn it, Shig, this is not the time for your games!” Samin turned scary when he was pissed: his face set itself into cut granite, and his eyes went flinty and flat. “Are we all right or not?"

Shig sighed, her expression and her stance both drooping just a little. “I'm not a seer, Samin,” Shig said, almost gentle. “I can't tell you what's going to happen."

So why did Joori get the feeling that she knew anyway? And why was he the only one who seemed to notice that she hadn't actually answered the question?

Samin's mouth tightened. “Fine,” he growled. “I'll go and collect a tray or two.
You
.” He jabbed a finger at Shig. “Pay attention. Do whatever it is you do, and
watch
, understand?"

Joori was dying to ask exactly what they were supposed to be watching
for
, but didn't necessarily care. One thing was just as bad as another, he supposed, and danger was danger. Which was all the more reason to get them all the fuck
out
of here, and the removal of Samin as a blockade was something to be encouraged.

"I get it, Samin,” Shig replied, her green eyes sharper than Joori thought he'd ever seen them, no amusement in her expression, no dreamy-eyed abstraction. “Go get some lunch."

Jacin hadn't seemed to be paying much attention, instead slowly making his way over to the door, where his belts and straps and sheaths hung from hooks on the back. He threw the longer ones to dangle loose over his shoulders; the others he bunched into one hand and used his other hand to hold himself up as he carefully made his way back to the clothespress.

"I would've got those for you if you'd asked,” Joori told him. Jacin might not have even heard him, for all the reaction he offered. Joori watched him flop the belts and sheaths over the knives laid out on top of the press before he began to methodically strap them on. Jaw clamped, Joori looked away and sent a steady look at Samin, who was peering at Jacin with something soft-ish and faintly approving. Joori shook his head. “Is there anything we're supposed to do while you're gone?"

"Stay here,” Samin rumbled. “And do what Shig tells you."

Joori merely lifted an eyebrow, his mouth forming into a thin line, his skepticism over being “protected” and possibly ordered around by someone who rarely even spared the attention to follow a conversation purposely plain. Samin ignored it, spared one more dark look to Shig, flipped it over to Jacin, then quit the room with a gruff, “I'll be back anon."

Silence fell; the occasional slap-and-slide of leather and steel as Jacin armed himself was loud inside it. Joori watched him for a while, watched the sweat build up on his too-pale face, the fine tremor in his fingers, the way his jaw tightened once in a while on a thwarted wince as he tied the butt of a sheath to his thigh with a leather thong to keep it in place. Joori looked away, shaking his head. What did Jacin think he was going to be able to do if they were attacked? He couldn't even walk without limping.

Joori throttled the urge to say as much, because Jacin wouldn't listen, and it would just piss Joori off more. “What's that ring?” he asked instead. It had been bothering him since he'd spotted it—partly because he knew who had to have given it to Jacin, and what Umeia had said when she'd handed it over to Shig, but mostly because Jacin had obviously accepted it.

"Yeah,” Morin put in, head tilting to the side in curiosity. Always on the lookout for stirring trouble, Morin. “What is that? Malick give it to you?"

Predictably, Jacin didn't answer, though Joori couldn't tell if it was because he didn't want to or if he simply hadn't heard the question. He'd seemed rather removed from them all since they'd been herded in, even Caidi, and Joori had seen Jacin sink inside himself and his inner-noise before.

"Hey!” Morin said, a little louder this time. “Jacin-rei, I asked—"

"
Jacin
,” Joori snapped reflexively, probably a little sharper than he should've done, but he was on edge and not in the mood for Morin's shit right now. “Why d'you have to do that?” he wanted to know, angry at too many things, and Morin taking every opportunity to emphasize the suffix of their brother's name had been a kettle set to boil for too many years. “Father's not even here anymore, and nobody else in the world but you calls him Jacin-rei. D'you hate him that much?"