Meek

Chapter 34: Her First Choice

Eli said, "Uh ..."

"I know about the report."

"The report?"

"The one requested by an obscure office in Leotide City, about the old financial treaties."

Eli shifted on the couch. Holy Dreamers. He'd babbled about that?

"I know how the marquis responded, Eli. I know about the Head Clerk and ..." She touched his calf. "And about the keep, what they did to you in that cell."

"Oh," he said.

"I know about the trolls. The cave witch--I can't pronounce her name, you kept saying it in Trollish, it's like ..." She gargled. "And the little ones."

A wave of dizziness touched Eli. He felt overheated again, even without any poison in his veins. He felt ... he felt stripped bare in front of this girl, absolutely vulnerable while she--oh. That's why she'd put herself at his feet. To make herself vulnerable, too.

"I know about your blood," she continued, after a about. "About your healing. How you fought the ... lizard-dogs?"

"Clisters."

"And Eli? I know about the pantry."

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah."

"I know about your plans, too. You stabbed the marquis in the clinic, and you're going to try again. I know about the root cellar and the sparks and--wait!" She lifted her hands to her shoulders in surrender, even though he wasn't aware that he'd reacted to her words. "Please, listen. Right now you're thinking that I'm a threat to you. That I know too much. But what I know most of all is, I'm not a threat."

"You--"

"I will never betray you," she said, and she looked so earnest and vulnerable that he wanted to believe her.

She looked like ... he didn't know what. Like hope? Like a path that led from the darkness of a dungeon, or a cave, from from pain and sorrow, and into a place with light and ease. Yet only yesterday she'd poisoned him, bludgeoned him, and tried to chop his head off.

Of course, she could've killed him, overnight. Easily. Either with her own hands, or by informing the militia. So clearly, she wanted him alive--but he didn't understand why.

"You don't know me, Eli, but I know you. You see me as a liar, a poisoner. A backstabber and a ..." She took a shaky breath and blinked back tears. "You saw me at my worst but I heard you at your ... well, not your 'best.' At your everything. You told me all of you. That's why I was surprised that I felt even a little scared. You don't know me, but I know you. And yes, you owe me--shush, you do!--but I also owe you. Not for saving your life! I owe you because what you shared with me is precious. And ... and stolen? I stole all those secrets from you, all those confidences, all that raw, terrible truth. I'm sorry. I was afraid to leave you alone, I didn't understand how you were healing, but ... but look at me. Please."

He looked at her.

"I will never betray you."

"That's not a promise you can make," he told. "That's not a promise any of us can make."

"I'm a dryn. Do you know what that means?"

"You're good at climbing trees."

"When we make vow, if we vow on the roots and the branches, on the leaves and seeds, if I vow to you on the Mother Glade, and on all my failures and my broken places, on the--on all the things that I let him make me do ..."

He didn't speak after she trailed off.

"If we vow on our Mother," she continued, after a moment, "we will die before we break that vow. Because there is still honor--a little--in that death. But to break a vow freely made is more than unthinkable. For a dryn, it's impossible."

"That's why you threw yourself in front of the sword. That's why you tried to save Chivat Lo."

"Yes."

"You didn't even think about it."

"No."

"You just moved."

She toyed with the strings around her ankle as she looked up at him. "I gave my word."

"Yeah, that's ... " He shook his head. "That's a lot."

And if she was telling the truth, maybe he could trust her. But if he didn't trust her, he couldn't know if she was telling the truth. So despite the painful earnestness in her eyes, in her face and voice, what did the words really mean?

"I vowed to serve Chivat Lo for as long as we both lived. I vowed to ..." She took another shaky breath. "To belong to him. To put his life above my own. So I did. But now that's done. Now I'm free. Thanks to you."

"What did I sell for a few coppers?" he asked.

"I don't know what you mean."

"After I left the clinic."

"Oh! Um, peppercorns you took from the kitchen with the boning knife."

"Blessdamn," he said.

"You told me everything."

"What are 'sparks?'" he asked, as one watched the stairwell while the other continued to drift through the apartment.

She gestured to the air. "I can't see them, but they can see me. There's two of them. They shouldn't exist. Either someone becomes a mage or they don't, there's no third option, there's no middle path." She raised her palm to the ceiling. "Uh ... touch me with one?"

"No," he said. "Why did give yourself to a man like Chivat Lo?"

"I don't want to tell you."

"I didn't want to tell you anything, either."

She glared at him. "To save my family."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"And what were you burning?" He pointed his chin at the hearth. "Just now."

"Chivat Lo's notebooks and ingredients. His poisons and recipes. He was a, a gifted alchemist but that stuff--we use poison. Dryns do, I mean. A painless paralytic. Not like ... what he did."

Everything he asked, the memory seemed to hurt her, but he couldn't tell if she was playacting or ... or really hurt. Maybe both? He needed to buy himself time to wrap his mind around what was happening. And to decide how to respond.

"And, uh, what was that about 'fumes?'" he asked. "When I was in the stairway?"

"My master--" she paused. "Chivat Lo developed smoke that made people ... jumpy. Just a little. He thought--I'm not sure if he was right, but he thought he could tell if someone was trained, was a threat, by how they reacted, or if they reacted."

"And he covered the smell with durinberries."

"Yeah. He doesn't--didn't--like them any more than you do."

He frowned at her. So he'd told her about that, too. Even the most trivial facts.

"I can't make you trust me," she said. "Not like this. Sitting here talking. You ... you need to see the choices I make."

"Yeah," he said, then stood.

He paced for a minute, as if he were thinking. But actually he was just getting close enough to the exit to send the spark in the stairwell under the door to the girl's bedroom. Which wasn't much more than a closet: a nest of blankets for sleeping, dozens of twigs dangling from threads on the walls, a pile of clothing waiting for mending. The only seat was a stool, but it wasn't at the crate-table. It was under the single window in the room, a small window, too close to the ceiling to offer a view.

The spark was already at the very edge of Eli's range. It couldn't enter farther than a handspan. But when he brought it high, he realized that the window looked past the city toward the forest in the far distance. The girl must've stood onto her tiptoes on the stool to look out at the woods. So maybe she was telling the truth.

Still, he was ten minutes from locking her in that room for a week--for however long it took him to finish this. He didn't see another option. He wasn't going to kill her. She was right about that. He couldn't, not unless she came at him with a sword again.

But he needed to keep her quiet until he killed the marquis--and then he needed to implicate her in the crime. He'd give her a chance to run, and a reason to keep her mouth shut forever.

"And my first choice," she continued, "is to tell you this: the marquis is coming here to meet Chivat Lo, and I'm going to help you kill him."

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