“I thought you were dead,” said Ruban, trying – with dubious success – to force his voice into some semblance of nonchalance. To dislodge the knot that had formed at the base of his throat.
Ashwin blinked, rubbed at his eyes. Then he blinked again, looking up at the Hunter in confusion as, with some difficulty, he pushed himself up into a sitting position. His braid had come undone sometime during the past hour and a cascade of messy black hair now framed his dirt-smudged face, their ends brushing the floor around his butt. He looked like he had just woken up from an unusually long nap. Ruban didn’t think most humans had ever looked more human.
And then, of course, there were the wings.
“Mighty stupid thing you did back there,” Ruban continued, gathering his supplies. There was the can of kerosene he had scavenged from the kitchen as well as a half-empty matchbox and some rags he had found lying around in various rooms of the house, concluding his morbid treasure hunt. “It’s a miracle you didn’t end up as dead as your mother.”
Ashwin grinned, then swayed momentarily on his ass, looking ready to keel over at the brush of a feather. “So, she really is dead, huh? Unbelievable, isn’t it? For a moment there, I almost doubted if she was capable of it. Dying, I mean.”
“I was rather sure she wasn’t. But then, I suppose a back-full of enhanced sif is enough to try anybody’s stamina. Even hers. Which brings us back to the fact that that was an incredibly stupid thing to do, what you did there.”
Ashwin shrugged. “Oh, I’d say I have some tough competition on that front.”
Ruban frowned. “You could be dead. Hell, for a few minutes I thought you actually were.”
“There are worse things in the universe than death, you know.”
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“I have a feeling your sister would see things differently.”
“Oh, so that’s what had you worried, is it? You wound me, my friend.”
“Not half so much as she’d have wounded me when I told her I got you killed,” Ruban grunted, spreading an old, tattered rug over Tauheen’s corpse. “That is not a conversation I want to have. Ever.”
Ashwin scowled. “My demise in the process of offing my own mother – while infinitely awkward – would in no way have been your fault. But never mind that for now,” he cocked his head to the side. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Preparing a funeral pyre,” Ruban informed him tersely, setting the matchbox and the can of kerosene on the floor next to the rug.
Ashwin’s eyes widened. “A what?”
“A funeral pyre. If anything on earth can bring itself back to life after you’ve killed it, it’d be your mother. I’m just making sure that doesn’t happen.”
After a moment of stunned silence, Ashwin laughed. “You’re not serious.”
Ruban shrugged. “I’m a superstitious man. Besides, I’d rather not start an international incident over her feathers. I’m sure every government has some claim to them. And all of them would overestimate their own while downplaying everyone else’s. I’d say the world has bigger things to worry about right now than who gets the shiniest plume.” He snorted, “Like the fact that all of Tauheen’s followers are now adrift, leaderless. With both Reivaa and your mother dead, they’d either scatter and go into hiding, which would make them that much harder to apprehend; or, worse still, find themselves a new boss. The last thing we need to add to this tinderbox of a situation is a bunch of politicians squabbling on primetime TV about which country’s freedom fighters had fought the most bravely six hundred years ago.”
Ashwin nodded, grave. “Humans are odd creatures.”
That got him a smirk. “Says the guy who just tried a kamikaze attack on his own mother.”
“Point taken. Want some help?” Ashwin had pushed himself to his feet, teetering momentarily on unsteady legs before bracing himself against a sofa.
“Want to do the honours?” Ruban asked, holding out the matchbox to the Aeriel. Tauheen’s rug-wrapped body lay temptingly in the middle of the decimated entrance hall, doused in kerosene.
Ashwin looked at the proffered item for a second, then shook his head, smiling wryly. “Nah. Your claim clearly outweighs mine in this particular matter.”