After Maglan, meeting the archer again was easy. All I had to do was to not kill him.
Someone had healed his wrist. I hadn’t expected that. Why make it easier for the prisoner to cause mischief? At the same time it was the humane thing to do, and while magical healers weren’t exactly common, from what I knew — Kira did decent business upstairs — it only stood to reason that the prison would have at least one on hand. It was probably the whole ancient-medieval level of everything that threw me off and made me expect prisoners to be treated like dirt.
Kalder arrived with his prisoner through the cellar door. He made us promise not to kill or seriously harm the man, then left him with us, going around the outside to enter the inn through the front door. That left Mak, Val, Ardek, and myself facing the prisoner, whom we’d tied, seated, to one of the supports holding up the common room’s floor.
I skipped the pleasantries. “So. You wanted to see me. Here I am. Talk.”
“Would it help if I start with an apology?” he asked, in excellent if heavily accented Karakani, his vowels long and his consonants soft. And Mercies have mercy, the man’s voice was captivating. It was in the higher range for a man, and clear and musical in a way that made me want to hear him sing. Nine words was all it took for some of my spite to give way to a soft whisper of a desire to make him mine.
“Unlikely, but you can always try,” I managed. I hadn’t been prepared for this. I’d only heard him scream before. Now… asking him to sing for me would be weird, but at least I could make him talk.
“Then I would like to do so. I, Avjilan of Faltha, ask your forgiveness for my repeated attempts on your life. Whether or not you can give it, my conscience demands that I express my regret and explain my actions.”
Gods, he was so earnest. There was such contrition in his eyes that I couldn’t help but believe him. I nodded, and settled in to listen. “Go on.”
“I came to Karakan to hunt monsters: monstrous animals, trolls and the like. When the bounty for a single wyvern reached one and a half dragons, it was suggested to me that I try to claim it. When the Adventurers’ guild matched that bounty, I began to hunt. I should have ceased my attempts once it became clear that there was no wyvern, that you were a dragon and were in fact intelligent, but I convinced myself that I was too invested. For this, I offer my humble apologies. I have no excuse.”
“The man is polite when he is not trying to kill me, I will give him that,” I told Mak in Tekereteki.
“He also understands what you are saying,” Mak said. I couldn’t tell what she’d seen, but Avjilan nodded.
“I do understand some,” he admitted in the same language. His pronunciation was careful. Considering how he rounded all the consonants in Karakani, his Tekereteki might have been completely incomprehensible otherwise. “But do not speak much.”
“Well, shit,” I muttered in English. “So much for our secret language.”
Mak’s face screwed up in concentration, and I could see her lips move, mouthing the words I’d just said. A grin flashed across her face, gone as soon as it had come as she schooled herself and said, “It doesn’t matter. You said you’d tell us how you tracked Draka if we let you speak with her. Well?”
“I did say that. And I suppose it does no harm to tell you now, since I have neither opportunity nor intention to use it. It was magic, as you may have guessed, an Advancement which has helped me immensely in my career. I had a piece of you, lady dragon. As long as I had that, I could find you. I quickly learned that you spent much time here, in this inn, and at a certain mountain. Then it was only a matter of following you, or moving fast enough to lie in wait between those places.”
“You would have had to cover a lot of distance,” I pointed out.
He shrugged. “I can move quickly. The magic also gives me some insight into how my prey might move. It made you fairly predictable. I only needed to keep in a general area and then adjust as you got closer.”
“Wait, back up!” Mak’s voice was full of outrage. “What do you mean you had a piece of her?”
I’d completely ignored that, being too focused on the sound of Avjilan’s voice, but when Mak pointed it out a chill went up my spine. I remembered Herald’s words back on the road, when we were going to clear out the trolls from Piter’s Clearing. She’d kept the chunk of my scalp that I’d lost after nearly getting brained by a gremlin’s axe. But she’d lost it.
“What exactly did you have?” I asked, and he answered, confirming my suspicion.
“Some dried skin, scale, and horn. I bought it cheap from a girl in a tavern. She had no idea what creature it came from, of course, but I thought it must be a fairly large one, with scale and horns, which pointed to a wyvern. And then the magic took hold, so I knew the creature it came from must still be alive. Of course—” He flared his elbows, indicating his bound arms. “It might have been better for me if I’d never bought the thing.”
Of all the things that could have possibly come back to haunt me… “Where is it now?” I asked. I felt a powerful need to destroy it, or at least get it back. If this guy could use it to track me, so could someone else. Hell, he might even know where my hoard was! “Tell me!”
“I would happily return it to you, but you will have to ask the man who arrested me,” he said with admirable calm. “I was stripped of all my possessions when we returned to the city. I imagine it’s in the Palace, or somewhere similar.”
“Mak,” I said, turning to her, but she already knew what I wanted.
“I’m adding it as a non-negotiable part of what we want,” she said. “Unless Kalder or the lady justice is willing to just give it to you in the name of goodwill. They might.”
“Yeah.” I was doubtful. Even if Sempralia wanted to trust me, she struck me as the kind of person who’d want as many fallbacks as possible. But it couldn’t hurt to ask.
The archer waited in still silence as we spoke. I wished that I could tell what he was thinking. “Hey,” I said. “Hunter. Avjilan. I still don’t get it. Why was it so important for you to apologize? You must have known what I was after the first time you shot at me. You tried to kill me three times after that, and I doubt you would have given up if I hadn’t stopped you. So why was it so important for you to apologize now?”
“I had some time to think,” he said slowly. “First, you didn’t kill me. Then, when I realized that my career and possibly my life were over, since the one you were meeting with was a lady justice, a councilwoman of the city, I examined what led me to that dark cell they kept me in when I was not being questioned. I was forced to admit that I had not acted righteously. It is as simple as what I said when I first apologized tonight: I have wronged you greatly. I understood that you were intelligent, and I still hunted you like a beast. And I did not wish to die without expressing my regrets and admitting my guilt.”
“You expect to die, don’t you? That’s why you were comfortable making demands.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t seem worried or upset.”
“I wish it were different. But I’ve already died once. I thank the Mercies for the years I’ve been allowed to truly live since then, but I’ve been prepared for my final death ever since. And now that I’ve apologized, I can die regretting only the things I did, and not what I did not. It’s a good time to die, I think. This way I won’t have the chance to collect any new regrets.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond to that. He didn’t want to die, he just didn’t seem too concerned about it. That bastard Hardal had been the same when we fought him, but I didn't care one whit about him. This Avjilan guy, though? He’d tried to kill me four times, put my precious humans in danger, yet I didn’t want him dead. And while I couldn’t rule out some “love me” Advancement like Ardek had, I didn’t think it was that. Nor was it his voice, though it would be a shame for that to be silenced forever. No, it was just that he seemed so… sad. Pitiful, even.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
And what the hell was that about already having died once?
“Val, Ardek, stay here would you?” I said to the two men with us. “Mak, let’s talk in private.”
We went to the strongroom, and once inside with the door closed I turned to her in consternation. “I don’t know what I want,” I told her honestly.
“I can tell.”
“Before he got here I wanted him dead. I wanted to know how he was tracking me, and then I wanted him to die. Now, I don’t know. I feel kind of bad for him, I guess? I don’t have a good reason for it, though. Do you think he’s messing with my head, somehow?”
“If he is, I doubt it’s an Advancement doing it, if that’s what you’re worried about. But I know what you mean. He has a tragic air about him, doesn’t he? For a moment there I almost wanted to give him a hug.”
“Do you think that we could ask Kalder not to kill him?”
“Probably. I don’t know if they’d do that, anyway. Normally only traitors and the worst criminals are killed. But this guy? I don’t know. He might have seen you talking to Sempralia. They might not want that getting out just yet.”
“But Sempralia’s supposed to be fair, right?”
“Yeah, but we don’t know how much discretion Kalder has. And I doubt he’d have his job if he wasn’t exceedingly protective of the lady justice. But, ah, Draka? I’m getting some— I’m getting better at reading you, yeah? Do you want to keep this guy?”
“He’s got a nice voice!” I sounded defensive even to myself.
Mak sighed. “Yeah. Sure. He does have a very nice voice. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Wait, what do you mean, ‘you’ll see what you can do’?”
“I don’t know. If they let him live I might be able to secure his indenture, or something. I don’t know what he’d be good for around here, but—”
“Mak, that’s like having a slave! I can’t have a slave!”
The look that Mak gave me wasn’t scathing, I quickly became convinced that was only because she couldn’t give me scathing looks. Instead it was so very, very patient. After a few beats she asked, “Do you want him to live?”
“Well, yeah. I suppose I do.”
“He will be indentured if he lives. I can promise you that. Do you want someone else to have him?”
I sighed. “No.”
“So: I can’t promise you anything except my best efforts, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Of course.”
“By the way, Mak. What were you grinning about back there?”
“Hmm?”
“When I spoke in English, you grinned. Looked like you were repeating what I’d said, too.”
“Oh.” She got that same grin again. “I’m sure you can guess, but… I think I understood you. Not perfectly, but something about a secret?”
“Mate! That’s absolutely brilliant!” I said happily. “We’ll have to teach Herald, and then we’ll really have a secret language!”
Mak laughed. “Not so fast! I mostly understand you. That’s amazing as it is but, like I said, it’s not perfect.”
“We’ll just have to practice, yeah?” I said. The idea of being able to speak English to someone who didn’t live inside my head had me almost giddy. But I’d have to put that off for the future, and switched back to Karakani. “Come on, let’s get back to the boys.”
The boys had been getting along in our absence, as much as they could with one of them being bound. Avjilan had opened up completely once he’d been allowed to apologize to me, but there wasn’t much we needed to know from him. He worked alone and hadn’t told anyone anything he’d learned about me. It wouldn’t have done him any good to help the competition, after all.
The biggest problem was that he did indeed suspect where my lair was, which Instinct told me meant that he needed to die. Conscience was on the fence, for practical reasons: she preferred not to kill anyone, but if he told anyone where my hoard was, I’d have to kill anyone who came looking, not just this one guy who’d already signed his own death warrant when he took a shot at me. That left whatever soup of the two I was, and I didn’t want him dead.
The only alternative I could see was that I needed him to swear not to reveal anything. But in order for me to trust him with something like that, I needed to control him. And I only knew one way to possibly gain that control.
“Avjilan,” I said after the questioning — more of a conversation really — wound down. “For what it’s worth, I really do believe that you’re sorry.”
Then, as quickly as I could, I wrapped him in shadows and set them in place. He didn’t even have time to scream.
“Mercies, Draka,” Val said softly as the patch of shadow that was our archer thrashed weakly. “What is this?”
“This is how I make sure that I can allow him to walk out of here alive,” I told him calmly. I didn’t feel the slightest regret over what I was doing. I was doing this because I pitied him, and if it meant giving him a chance at life, redemption and perhaps even happiness I had no qualms about subjecting him to a few minutes of pants-shitting terror. Well, hopefully not literally. My nose was sharp.
“Avjilan,” I said after removing the shadows, then again when his eyes didn’t focus. He finally looked at me, his face slack, and I spoke to him without a hint of friendliness or mercy in my voice. “Before you leave, you will promise me one thing: that you will never tell another soul anything that might harm me. Do you understand?”
He only stared. He didn’t smell right, either. “Answer me!” I commanded, and when that didn’t get a response I wrapped him back up.
When I released him a minute later he smelled much more agreeable. When I asked him if he understood he immediately croaked “Yes! Yes, I understand! I swear it!”
I believed him.
“Good.” I put my hand on the side of his neck. “And you understand that if you should ever betray that promise, you should beg your jailors to execute you before I get to you?”
The look in his eyes was answer enough when his beautiful voice failed him.
I looked between the others. “I’d like to speak with Avjilan alone. Val, Ardek, Mak, please go tell Kalder that we’re done here. Mak, keep him for a while. I’d like a couple of minutes at least.”
“Right.” Ardek was on his feet in a moment, with Mak only just behind him. Val gave me a look, looked at Avjilan, then nodded at me, deciding to respect my privacy and trust that I wouldn’t do anything worse than I already had.
“I’ll knock before we come down,” Mak told me. Then they left me alone with a defenseless man who’d tried to kill me on several occasions, and who’d put people I held dear in danger. Their faith in me was touching, really.
“There was one more thing I wanted to speak to you about. I thought you might want to keep it private, but you will tell me what I want to know, and you won’t try to hold anything back or deceive me.”
“All right, yes. Anything you want,” Avjilan answered quickly. His composure was already recovering, but his voice was a little thick, his eyes a little wide. He clearly didn’t want to feel the embrace of my shadows again if a few answers were all it took to avoid it.
“You said that you’ve already died once, and it didn’t sound like you meant that metaphorically.”
“I did.”
“Well? What exactly do you mean?”
“I died. My life ended. My breath left me and my body failed. I mean no less than that.”
“Yet here you are. What happened? Did someone save you?”
“In a way,” he said slowly. He seemed reluctant now, despite everything.
“You’re holding back,” I warned him. “Go on. How were you saved? How are you still alive?”
“Magic.” His answer was almost a whisper, like he was afraid to answer but feared the consequences of silence more. “Occult and forbidden. To prolong your life at the cost of another.”
Disgust welled inside me. “You’re going to have to explain that very carefully,” I told him, making no secret of just how I felt about what he’d told me. “Did someone else die to give you your life back?” I had seen enough to not doubt that such a thing might be possible. It might even be justifiable under the right circumstances. But if he told me that some poor innocent bastard had died so that he could live…
His answer was emphatic. “No! He didn’t die! He was supposed to, he wanted to, it was his idea, but… no. He’s still alive, no less than I am. But I don’t think you will believe me even when I tell you the truth.”
“Try me.”
“Mistress dragon, tell me, please. Do you believe that a soul might leave the flesh, and not be taken by the Traveler?”
I tried to temper the excitement those words lit inside me. I failed when he continued, “Do you believe that that same soul might then take residence in another body?”
“Yes!” I hissed with the certainty of experience, and he smiled with relief.