Bad Faith Page 26

  And that did work, at least in the short term, because Quirk finally let go, and she stopped crushing the ribs that Afrit suspected might well be broken, or at least badly bruised. However, looking at the worry—the naked fear—in Quirk’s eyes, Afrit was not truly convinced it would help in the long run.

  “Why?” The word seemed to emerge from Quirk against the woman’s will. She looked as if she were examining the air between them for it so she could swat it away like some intruding insect.

  For her part, Afrit was too beaten up and exhausted to be offended. So she asked, “Why what?”

  “Why,” Quirk said, the words emerging slowly, “did you attack Barph? Why did you run toward him?”

  It was Afrit’s turn to hesitate. “You think I should have run away?”

  Quirk shrugged helplessly. “We can’t beat him.”

  Afrit drew a long breath. It hurt. She suspected everything was going to hurt for a week or two. “I charged because …” She tried to track back to the moment. A lot of recent history was fuzzy around the edges. “Okay,” she said, “I don’t think these are going to sound like good reasons, now that we know how everything turned out.

  “I fought because of everything we’ve seen. Because of all the hatred and heartache Barph’s poured into the world. Because of how offended I am by everything that he stands for, and by everything he’s done. I fought because of how very fucking angry I am. Because of how horrified I am. Because I’m scared for this world, and because I’m tired of being scared. Because being defiant was being better than being cowed. Because I hoped. And it was stupid hope. But gods … everyone else in that moment hoped. We all hoped together. And it was huge, and it was bigger than me, and I was part of it. I thought … maybe. Just maybe.”

  She sighed. Her chest and throat hurt now. Too many words. “It turns out that it was a pretty stupid idea.”

  “No,” Quirk said, and put a hand on Afrit’s shoulder. Afrit tried not to wince. A lot of the skin was missing from that shoulder. “It doesn’t sound stupid.”

  “Can you let go of me again?” Afrit was forced to ask. It wasn’t often that the requests went that way round.

  “Sorry.” Quirk winced. She licked her lips. They were chapped, Afrit saw. Quirk’s eyes were red, her skin raw. Her attack on Barph had, it seemed, not been without its cost. Afrit had never seen Quirk lose control with that degree of ferocity before. It scared her a little.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Quirk shook her head. “No. I thought you were dead, Afrit. I thought you were dead again. I thought there was no way back this time. I thought everything was over.” She bit her lip. “It …” She paused, looked around. “It hurt so much. And last time … last time … that’s what it took for me to realize how I felt, what you are to me. It took you dying for me to realize I can actually feel love. But now I do. Now I love you. And last time, that realization, it hurt, but there was something beautiful in it too. That revelation that I wasn’t totally broken, that you had healed that part of me, or found a way to dig it out. But this time …” She shook her head, seemed to fold in on herself, as if something were collapsing, or … as if she were being punched in slow motion. “This time it was just over. It was just pain.” She took a long, ragged breath. There were tears in her eyes. “Last time I could hate. That was how I could cope. I could tear the whole world down. But this time … this time Barph was right there. And I could fling myself at him. But all I was really trying to do was die. Because it wasn’t worth it. Life wasn’t worth it. Because nothing I did stopped it from hurting. And I can’t … I can’t lose you again. I can’t take that hurt again. I can’t. I can’t.” She sat there, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

  And there were tears in Afrit’s eyes too now, and not just because of the pressure Quirk was putting on her raw palms. Because the beauty she had always seen in Quirk was so close to the surface now. The tender, fragile part of her that she kept so guarded from the world.

  And because she knew that she would almost certainly hurt her just this way again.

  She pulled her hands free of Quirk’s grasp, took her love’s head in her hands, and kissed her forehead over and over.

  “I will always fight to stay with you,” she said. “Everything I can do, I’ll do it. For you.”

  Quirk looked away from her. “Will you?” she asked. “Because …” And then she trailed off.

  And Afrit knew where this was going, had known since before they entered Tamar that this moment was coming, had known it since perhaps before Quirk had. But still she wished they hadn’t arrived here.

  “Because perhaps we should quit?” she asked.

  And gods, she wished she could pretend she hadn’t seen the hope flare in Quirk’s eyes.

  “I—” Afrit started. But before she was done, Quirk held up a hand.

  She licked her lips. “This world,” she said, “has so much wrong with it. And everything you are about to say about what Barph has done to it is true. He’s destroyed so much that I loved.” She finally looked Afrit in the eye again. “But it has you in it. And for me, if it is a world with you in it, then it is still a world with beauty in it. I cannot hate a world that has you in it. And I would rather live in this world with you than lose you in a fight for a better one.”

  She smiled at Afrit, even though she was still crying. “I choose you over everything, Afrit. Over my old dreams. Over my old values. I choose you. And if you say no, then I’ll choose that with you too. I just …” She choked off, unable to finish.

  “No,” Afrit said.

  Quirk was very quiet for a very long time.

  “I can’t,” Afrit said, because she had to in the end. She had to explain. This was, in the end, love. “I can’t be someone who sacrifices the world for themselves. I can’t. That will not be me.”

  Quirk still didn’t look up. Still stayed staring at the ground.

  “Quirk,” Afrit said. “You’re holding my hands.”

  Quirk didn’t look up.

  “Quirk,” Afrit said, “my skin is starting to smoke.”

  And finally Quirk looked up, and still it was a moment before she let go of Afrit’s hand.

  “I understand,” Quirk said, and her voice was very small.

  “This is who I am,” Afrit said, though she wasn’t entirely sure why she was defending herself. She was being the bigger person here. “If you love me, you love this piece of me too.”

  “I love you,” Quirk said, but her voice was still in retreat along with the rest of her emotions. And then she turned, and she almost fled. And Afrit knew that the wound she had just inflicted was as deep any other done that day, and would take just as long to heal.

  42

  Compromising Situations

  He had done it again, Lette thought.

  Will had taken the broken pieces of his army and he had fused them back together. The people around her, on the edge of breaking, of running—they were cheering now. Somehow he had turned this into a victory.

  She recognized the artifice in it all. She had heard the little lies Will wove to create the large one, but she admired him all the more for it. The end, here, justified the means. If lies were what it took to prop up these people’s hope, then they were what it took.

  She went to him as he stepped down off his improvised podium of rubble, put an arm around his waist. He seemed slightly shell-shocked, blinking in the face of all the adoration being hurled at him. People clapped them both on their shoulders as they made their way through the crowd. She clasped hands with people for him, smiled into their beaming faces.

  And seeing those faces, those gleaming eyes, she thought perhaps there had been an element of true victory in this fight. The force that stood before her now was diminished in numbers, yes, but it had also been forged into something stronger, harder, more savagely edged. And, yes, dragons lay dead, but their blood served to temper this army’s steel.

  She raised a fist to the heavens, and around her a
hundred fists lifted to the sky, and cheers echoed off the fallen walls.

  Later they managed to find some peace. Makeshift tents were thrown up, the celebrating died down, and the hard work of burying the dead began. The dragons showed no compunctions about eating their former fellows, so that lightened some of the load at least.

  Lette and Will climbed into as much privacy as a thin sheet of canvas could afford them. Will seemed to have come back to himself a little. Or as far back as he ever did these days. There was still a distracted look in his eyes—his human ones at least—as if he was seeing something beyond the rest of them. As if the here and now could never quite fully capture his attention.

  She knew he didn’t sleep anymore. She hoped he would stay the night with her, though. Sometimes he did, and she would wake in the darkness and curl against his body. She would feel his muscles soften slightly as he relaxed into her warmth, and then she would slip into sleep again.

  Other nights, she would wake and there would only be cold, empty space beside her.

  In the confines of the tent, she turned to him, pushed her hands through his hair, kissed him. He hesitated, then kissed her back. Hungry kisses, she thought at first, the sort of passion he’d shown when they first reunited. But as they progressed, she thought perhaps the word desperate was more accurate.

  They made love with that same frantic urgency. And it was beautiful and wonderful and slightly heartbreaking all at the same time. It was as if Will was clinging to her, fearful he might lose her. And she didn’t know why, and she didn’t know how to comfort him. So all she could do was hold him as tightly as he held her, meet his passion head-on, and stroke his hair when they were done.

  He lay there, panting, his head nestled against her chest, almost feverishly hot as the sweat cooled her skin.

  The silence stretched, but she could bear it. She wouldn’t be broken by a little thing like that. Still, she felt that he needed her to ask him, so finally she said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m scared, Lette.”

  She knew he was serious, but she chuckled despite her best efforts. “What could you possibly be scared of? You tried to punch a god today.”

  He fell silent again, and she regretted her words. It was a strange thing to love someone, she thought. To have your happiness tangle with theirs.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  Still he was silent, but she would wait now. He would be ready eventually.

  “I mean …,” he said finally. “Just fucking look at me.”

  And he would have to push harder than that if he wanted her to break. She had just screwed his brains out. If his looks were a barrier she would have fled screaming already.

  “You’re a little purple,” she conceded.

  “I have fucking bug eyes on my forehead, Lette!” There was something shrill in his voice. “Look at this!” he held out his arm to her. The skin near the inside of the elbow was so pale it was almost translucent, marbled with veins and purple stains. “That’s new,” he said. “It’s still happening. It’s not stopping.”

  And he really was scared. She cupped his face. “The bards talk about this sort of thing being skin-deep,” she said. It was a line that had been tried on her before, and she hadn’t bought it at the time, but Will was a romantic sort.

  And the hysterical breathing did stop at least. But everything seemed to stop. He went very still.

  “I lied to everyone earlier,” he said eventually. “I lied to them all.”

  “To be fair,” she said, picking her words as if she were picking her footsteps across a Thassalayan Whisper Floor, “that is not the first time we’ve lied to the masses.”

  “I know,” he said, “I know. But …” He shook his head, as if trying to free himself of something. “No, it wasn’t different. I was different.”

  Oh, Will. If only he could just be at peace with himself. With his own efficacy in the world.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay to be in charge. To be what these people need. To be good at being that person. It’s okay.”

  “No.” The shake of his head was less violent this time, but his words were just as urgent. “This cause … It’s important to people because they’re being oppressed. Because they need to be freed—”

  “And you’re doing that for them.”

  “I’m being worshipped by them.”

  “Because of what you do.” Why couldn’t he see that? “You have fought this fight harder than everyone else. When we were in the Hallows, I lost my way. I lost my hope. And you pulled me out of that. Out of the fucking Hallows, Will. You have done so many impossible things. You deserve to be worshipped.”

  “No,” he said again, his voice rising. “Don’t say that.”

  She pulled away, looked him square in the face. “You, Willett Fallows, deserve to be worshipped.”

  He put his face in his hands. He dug his fingers into his skin with an urgency that frightened her. “No,” he said again. “That’s the problem. I’m not telling them to fight for the cause because I want them to be free, or because I want to end oppression. I’m telling them that because it means they worship me, Lette.”

  He looked at her, anguished. “I’m losing my way. I’m losing my cause. The worship is becoming the thing.” He clawed at his face again, white-knuckled. “I looked out at them today and I didn’t see people. I saw fuel. And yes, I’ve lied to people before, but I’ve also known it was wrong before. Part of me has always regretted things needed to be that way. Gods, part of me has even hoped they’ll see through my bullshit. A stupid part of me perhaps, but … I can’t find that part anymore, Lette. I can’t find so many parts of myself. I’m becoming someone who looks at people and doesn’t recognize himself in them anymore.”

  He pulled his hands away from his face, and there were ten little crescent cuts in his face where his nails had scored his flesh. But even as she watched, the skin knit back together, the blood was sucked back into the disappearing wounds.

  “I’m becoming something that isn’t human, Lette.” There was absolute terror in his voice. “And it’s more than skin-hexedly deep.”

  And Will. Oh, Will. Why did he always have to give voice to the secrets she hid from herself? Why couldn’t he ever let her live with the peace of self-deception?

  She knew all this. Of course she knew. She saw him. She had always seen him. And she had always seen through him. And now she saw what lay beneath all the physical changes.

  Will was a good man. That was his steel. That was the part of him that wouldn’t bend. He would not, could not, be anything but a good man. He could be furious, but he was righteously furious. He could lie, but always in the service of a greater good. He could kill, but he would do it for a reason and with an awareness of the cost. Dragons had oppressed him from birth. Riches had offered the temptation of corruption. And still he had not bent. Still he had been exactly who he always was.

  But now … now there was corruption within. The Deep Ones’ power ate at him, rotted away at that core. And she saw it. And it was slow, barely noticeable. But it was constant. The erosion of the ocean upon rock. And eventually there would be none of Will left.

  And the question—the question she avoided, the question he was truly asking even if he didn’t realize it—was when it would be too much. When would there not be enough left of the man she loved for her to stay?

  “I need you,” he said to her. “I need you to help me. To keep me here. In myself.”

  And she knew that too. And she knew more. She knew how the crowd saw them. She knew how she was wrapped up in the mysticism and the worship of Will. She was a part of the legend. She knew that there was loyalty to her, that she was seen as a protector of the people. That if she left now, if she abandoned Will, it would be nothing short of a schism.

  More than that too, she knew that there would come a time when she wanted to leave, but when if she did she would leave the people unprotected and without a voice. Because part of Will’s magic�
��part of why she loved him—was that for the first time in her life she truly cared about the crowd. She fought not just for herself, but for them.

  Will and them and her. Love, loyalty, and desire all tangled up. Will binding them tighter and tighter together, but fraying as he did so, threatening even as he cared. And here he was looking at her, imploring her for help.

  So what else could she say but, “I know. It’s okay. I’m here. I’m fighting for you. With you. I’ll hold you together. I promise”?

  And she didn’t know if she could keep the promise, but here in the darkness, with Will curling into her body in the dark, she knew that for a while the fact that she had made the promise would be good enough.

  All she had to do was figure out a way to help him kill Barph before she broke it.

  43

  Halfway There

  Yorrax stared. So many dead. More dead than she could have imagined. Dragons laid out limp and lifeless one after the other. Their once-bright eyes gone dull. Their flames gone out. Half of all the remaining dragons in Avarra dead in one single swoop. A genocide.

  It was brilliant.

  Half of the petty, pathetic, iguana-fucking dragons who abused and derided her were gone. Half of those who stood in her way removed as obstacles.

  Yorrax took a large bite out of Netarrax’s neck. In death, as in life, he was salty and bitter.

  Heavy footfalls approached from behind. She ducked her head, and tried to sneak a look at who was coming. Pettrax walked with Rothinamax, the large brown dragon wearing an expression of anger.

  “You are not in charge,” Rothinamax snapped at Pettrax.

  “I will be if you lack foresight,” Pettrax bit back. “Look around you. Barph was defeated on the backs of our bodies. The humans did nothing but nip at his ankles. We were the ones who drove him away.”

  Pettrax looked down at Netarrax’s body, toeing at a limp wing. He seemed to notice Yorrax for the first time, and promptly kicked her out of the way.