Gavin spooled out the rope in his hand gingerly so as not to drop even the rope’s own small weight onto the blade balanced above. He released the rope slowly, hand hovering in case it dropped suddenly.
But it stayed.
“What is that sword to you, Guile?” Orholam asked.
“It’s my hope,” Gavin said. “Be a pal and don’t throw it into the abyss, would ya?”
“Guile.” Orholam shook his head, reproving. “You know better. If it falls, it will be from your ineptitude, not my intervention. Orholam lets men choose; how could I do otherwise?”
Gavin took a deep breath. No point in delay. Delay would only give the winds time to nudge the blade toward the edge. Besides, he knew exactly where to place his feet to take the correct number of steps, and which type of jump was most likely to carry him across the chasm.
“Goodbye, old man,” he said. “May we never see each other again.”
“I think that unlikely,” Orholam said. “But go now. Go find your answers, if you dare.”
Gavin wiped the soles of his feet clean, rubbed his hands together, and breathed, breathed. He said, “A lack of daring has never been my problem.”
Then he sprinted toward the gap.
And he leapt.
And he, Gavin Guile, who had fallen so far, only to climb so high; Gavin Guile the indomitable, the dauntless; Gavin Down but Never Defeated; Gavin Guile soared through the air as the winds plucked at him and tried to turn him from his purpose—and he landed safely on the other side, rolling once and then coming to his feet.
He stood and whooped, recklessly baring his teeth at the gate so few had even seen.
It was simple gold, adorned in a spare Ptarsu style, latched but not locked. There were no boon stones here for having made the jump. Perhaps finishing the pilgrimage was supposed to be reward enough. Orholam lay beyond, supposedly.
Gavin pulled the gate open.
A membrane hovered in the air between him and the last stair: the lock to which Grinwoody had claimed only Gavin himself could be the key. The test only Gavin himself could pass.
Without hesitating, Gavin pushed into it. It bubbled and clung and gripped, seeming to catch on the fragments of his dead power like splinters catching on a wool tunic, but he pushed through, and soon stood gasping on the other side.
Then, grinning his fierce broken-toothed grin, victorious, he sprinted up the stairs two at a time to his destiny. Or his doom. Whichever.
Chapter 71
~Andross the Red~
18 years ago. (Age 48.)
Felia says, “The grammar here can be parsed half a dozen ways, as usual with the Scriptivist’s prophecies, and that’s without what was redacted. Worse, I’ve seen translations of it before. ‘Breaking a great rock, the black fires of hell, on earth once more unleashed / did unleash / shall unleash / unleashes the . . .’ ”
“Does it help us?”
“I would have said no, if I’d known what it would cost us for you to get it from that girl . . .” And suddenly, she is blinking back tears. Her jaw is tight and she looks away. But then she is suddenly fierce. “Tell me. You never told me. Three weeks you were on a ship, coming home, and I can’t stop smelling you, as if her scent would linger so long.”
What is this? “You gave me permission. Explicitly.”
“I didn’t know it would feel like this!”
Felia is better than this. Next she’ll be asking for information she doesn’t want to know.
She hits my chest with an overhand blow that must hurt her more than it hurts me. “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, Andy! Don’t you dare!”
I go flat, a calm to her storm. I drop the paper on the table. I wave a hand to the slaves attending us in the open garden to begone, and a look to Grinwoody to let him know to tell them that if the others eavesdrop, they’ll be beaten and sold to the galleys or the mines. Then I turn my attention back to my love.
“Ask what you will,” I say. “But ask only what you want answered.”
“Did you fuck her?”
“Yes,” I answer immediately. I had thought that was implicit.
She swallows. “Damn you.” She takes a few breaths, but I can’t read whether she’s regained herself. On her head be it. She will get only the truth of me, as I have sworn.
“Did you have to?”
“That was our deal,” I say.
“I know what our deal was. I’m asking you to say it.”
“I deemed it the best course.”
“And how hard was it to convince you, Andy? I know you had many lovers before our marriage. Are you bored with me? I know that since Sevastian died I’ve not been the eager lover I once—”
“Stop! This had nothing to do with you, or that.” I take a breath. There were deeper wells of suffering here than I was aware of. But her anger triggers something at my core, burning and furious.
I beat down the flames. As I so often do.
“Flirtation wasn’t enough,” I say. “I gently floated bribery, but her family is wealthy and she loved her position at the library. There was nothing I could give her. And she was so young and innocent, there was nothing to use as blackmail. I didn’t have the time to hire agents to put pressures on those she loved, or the security that I could do so without her simply reporting it. So I seduced her.”
“Did you enjoy it?” she practically spits.
I go cold. “It had been more than a month since I last shared your bed, and that had been a perfunctory goodbye, not the desperate lovemaking of a woman likely to be driven mad by jealousy, my dear. Yes, I enjoyed the release.”
“ ‘Release,’ ” she says. I used the word to imply that the sex had been a mere physical process, but somehow she turns it into an indictment of our whole marriage. As if I want to be released from her. From my vows.
But I’ve already said more than I would’ve, were I fully in control. “Anything else?” I growl.
“Did she enjoy it? How was it? For her. For you.” Felia has retreated into cold bitch.
I take a deep breath, and then another, until the red recedes, until I can see her with compassion again. My Felia. She has been so alone, and everything she loves has been threatened. First Sevastian taken. Then Gavin’s growing distance. Now this thing we must do with Dazen. And now me.
Felia is afraid she’ll lose me, too.
“Did I give her the first orgasms of her life? Did I turn her into a wanton who craved my cock like the desert-parched crave water? Did she wake me in the morning with her mouth hot on me? Did she beg me for acts that you’ve avoided since soon after we wed? Did she pursue me as you have not in years? Is that what you want to ask? Why don’t you ask this question, instead, and ask it of yourself: in the pursuit of my goals, was I ever a man to take half measures?”
“Never,” she breathes, unblinking, but her hands have gone to her stomach, like a man with a gut wound in war, wanting to know how bad it is, needing to know, but not daring to find out.
“Why don’t you ask what you really want to know? Did I hold her afterward? Did I let her sleep with her head on my shoulder in your place?” All the questions slip from my grasp like hounds eager for the hunt. I can’t bear for her to be dishonest in this. Felia doesn’t care about the mechanics of the thing, where we’d fornicated or how many times I’d brought the girl to the storms and the rain. She wants to know if she can be replaced.