Beyond the Shadows

“So why are you changing now? And what into?”

“I’ll look like a fifty-year-old, rather affable Waeddryner count, who appears to have a small Talent that he’s never tapped. Because the reason I’m leaving the woman I love behind and going with you to the Chantry—not my favorite place—is that I want to meet my daughter. In fact, I’d appreciate your help getting the disguise right. I’d like her to look at me and say, ‘oh, I have his eyes.’”

But Kylar wasn’t interested in that yet. He paused. “Master? What does it mean? The Wolf called me Nameless. If I learn to do what you do, I’ll be faceless, too. If we can be anyone, who are we?”

Durzo smirked, and even in another face, that bemused smirk was Durzo Blint through and through. “The Wolf doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. I had a delusion once that every new life I started was new. Our gift doesn’t give us so much freedom—or terror. What we are is Night Angels, of an order ancient when I joined it. What it means to be a Night Angel is a harder question. Why do we see the coranti?” At Kylar’s questioning look, Durzo said, “The unclean. And seeing them isn’t a compulsion, it’s a sensitivity. There was a time when I could see a lie, but in the year before the black abandoned me, I could barely see a murderer. What does it mean? Why was I chosen?

“Jorsin sometimes had the gift of prophecy. He told me I needed to take the black. ‘All history rests in your hands, my friend,’ he told me. I believed him. I would have walked through a wall of flame for that man. But a hundred years later, all my friends were dead, the world descended into a dark age, and no one was even pursuing me. Maybe my grand place in history, my whole purpose, was to keep the ka’kari safe for seven hundred years until I could give it to you. You’ll forgive me if that doesn’t seem entirely satisfying. Imagine rallying an army: ‘Come on, men! Let’s get together and . . .  wait!’ But then again if reality is hard and flat and unjust, then it’s better to adjust to what really is than to complain that it isn’t what you wish. That was what made me lose faith in prophecies, in purpose, even in life, I guess. But having lost it, soon I doubted my lack of faith. There were niggling hints of meaning everywhere. At the end of the day, you choose what you believe and you live with the consequences.”

“So that’s it?”

“That’s what?”

“‘Choose what you believe and live with the consequences’ is all you’ve learned after seven hundred years? We’re fucking immortal, and that’s all you’re going to tell me of why?”

Faster than Kylar remembered his master could move, Durzo’s hand lashed out. His backhand cracked across Kylar’s cheek and jaw. It stunned Kylar. A backhand hurt the person who delivered it nearly as much as the person who received it, so the only reason Durzo would choose a backhand was for the contempt implicit in it.

They stood looking at each other, silent. Mixed with Durzo’s frustration, Kylar could see regret, but Durzo didn’t apologize. Apologizing was one skill Acaelus Thorne hadn’t mastered in seven centuries.

“Kid, every place I’ve turned left, you’ve turned right, and now you want me to tell you your destiny? Would it mean anything to you if I told you?”

Kylar said, “It would tell me where to turn right.”

Despite himself, Durzo grinned. But it wasn’t enough to bridge the sudden gap. Kylar could see now that his rejection of the lessons Durzo had tried to pass on had cut Durzo deeply—even if Durzo now agreed some of those lessons had been wrong. At the same time, Durzo was saying the same thing that the Wolf had told Kylar long ago. Kylar had never accepted other people’s answers: not Durzo’s bitter practicality, not Momma K’s cynicism, not Count Drake’s piety, and not Elene’s idealism. Durzo was right about choosing what you believe and living with the consequences.

“I just . . .” Kylar trailed off. “We’re immortal. We’re Night Angels. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know why we’re this way, or what we’re supposed to do with it. Sometimes I feel like a god, and other times I don’t feel like I change anything. If I’m going to live forever, I want it to be for something. I mean, you can’t tell me that your destiny has been to hold the ka’kari for seven hundred years until I came along. That’s ridiculous. Terrible. It’s not good enough. You’re a great man, not a lockbox.” Kylar scowled. Gods, he’d just given Durzo a backhanded compliment—exactly how Durzo gave compliments to him.

Durzo’s little grin told him he’d noticed, but he could also tell that the compliment meant a lot to the man. In all the times Kylar had been irritated that his master never properly appreciated how well Kylar did, he’d never really thought that Durzo might want to be appreciated too. Kylar hadn’t bothered to tell Durzo how excellent he thought he was; he figured it was obvious. Maybe that was another knife that cut both ways.

“Being a lockbox wasn’t the destiny I chose,” Durzo said. “Right or wrong—or right or left—I’ve chosen to seek the ka’kari, take them, and scatter them so those who would use them for evil can’t. I don’t know if that’s what Jorsin foresaw, but it’s what I’ve chosen. Has it been meaningful and satisfying? Sometimes. I’ve had some good lives and some that were just damn awful. Now that you bear the black, I can lay my burden and my destiny down. Now I get different choices. So I’ll train you until spring and see my daughter as much as I can. Then there’s a woman I have to ask to love a man who doesn’t deserve it. Your choices? Well, that’s your shit.” He smirked, acknowledging he was being a bastard.

Kylar sighed. He loved Durzo, but the man sure was a pain in the ass.

62

From an older brother, the compulsion weave is weak, Your Holiness,” Hopper said. “It won’t hold a determined aetheling for long.”

“I know. I was the son who was able to break it when my father used it on me,” Dorian said. He’d had another dream last night, and again couldn’t remember it, but it had left him with a headache again. His Talent for prophecy was healing faster than he’d expected, but for the time being, it was useless to him. He couldn’t remember his dreams, and the only thing that banished the pain was using the vir. It put him in a foul mood.

“I’m sorry, Your Holiness. I’d forgotten.”

The plan had come together with frightening ease. Dorian was his father’s son. He’d spent days thinking about what he might have missed, and had found no flaw. “The oath is a distraction. You tell them that their reward for swearing loyalty will be choosing a concubine to marry. That will sound like a very southron thing to do, very weak. It will give the aethelings hope. Hope—and lust—will keep them from organizing a defense. After each chooses, I want him led out by that concubine past his brothers, who will be waiting in line. The women should be dressed beautifully—and of course, they should know nothing except that they are to lead the aetheling to one of the empty upper apartments. Each aetheling should be very lightly guarded, but heavily watched. You understand? These are my brothers; they’re not stupid. On the way, kill them. If you have a handful of soldiers and three or four Vürdmeisters you know we can trust, that should be enough to take care of all of them—at least with the compulsion spell in place. Their faces are not to be destroyed. I will require a precise accounting and viewing of the bodies. When you’re done, isolate any of the Godking’s seed who are too young to show whether they are wytchborn. Kill them. Induce abortions on the pregnant concubines. Letting any grow up to see who’s wytchborn will give my enemies chances to smuggle them out.”