The
White Stone
SHE WATCHED Talis over the next few
days.
She found that she
couldn’t simply return Nico to the man and let the boy go. The
voices from the stone taunted her for her concern. Fynn especially
was derisive and bitter. “You want a family?
So now the assassin is going to care about others? The murderer has
found love now that she has a bastardo in her womb?” He cackled merrily. “You’ve become a fool, woman. Look at what my family has
done to me! The child you carry will happily betray you the same
way one day. Family!” He laughed again, the others joining
in with him, a mocking chorus.
“Shut up!” she told
them all, causing people on the street around her to glance at her.
She scowled back at them. She hugged her stomach protectively,
startled—as she always was—by the swelling curve in what had once
been an athletic, flat abdomen. Already, she sensed the fluttering
of movement there: Jan’s child. Her child. “You don’t know. You
can’t know.”
When she thought of
her child, born and alive, it was always a girl but with some of
Nico’s features, too, as if they were strange siblings. “I took the
boy in when he needed someone,” she told the voices. “I’m
responsible for him now. I made that choice.”
They snorted
derision. They howled.
She had watched
Talis’ rooms since she left Nico there. She’d abandoned the rooms
she’d taken, and had rented a room above Talis’ own, though she was
careful not to let Nico see her enter or leave the building. She
had bored a hole in the floor so she could both watch and listen to
them below . And she did so, ready to act if she heard Talis
mistreating Nico in any way, ready to appear as the White Stone to
take the man’s life, furious and vengeful. But she had heard
nothing to make her fear for Nico.
Not directly,
anyway.
She already knew from
Nico that the Numetodo had been hunting Talis. She knew that he was
a Westlander and a user of their magic, and the Holdings was at war
with the Westlanders in the Hellins. That would be a danger for
Nico, all by itself. So she watched.
On the second Cénzidi
of the month, she trailed them when Nico took Talis to her old
rooms, watching from the shadows of the alley across the way as
they emerged again with Nico shaking his head in confusion, his
arms waving as he spoke to Talis. That afternoon, through the
borehole, she heard them talking below. “I don’t understand,” Nico
said. “That’s where Elle lived, Talis. Really. I was
there.”
“I believe you,
Nico,” Talis replied. “But she’s not there now.” She could hear the
concern in the man’s voice. She imagined him rubbing at the healing
cuts on his neck as he spoke. She heard the unspoken commentary
underneath: She’s dangerous. She might have
killed me.
“I liked Elle,” Nico
said. “She was nice to me.”
“I’m glad she was.
I’m glad she brought you to me. But . . .”
Whatever his
objection, he kept it to himself. She smiled at that. “But she’s mad,” the voices said. “And the madness is growing.”
She clutched at the
stone in its pouch as if she could strangle the voices with the
white pressure of her fingers.
She didn’t want to
hear any more. She would continue to watch, yes, but for now it
seemed that Nico was safe with Talis. She slipped out of her own
room quietly, hurrying down the stairs and out the rear door of the
building. She moved quickly through the streets of Oldtown, away
from the main areas and into its twisted bowels where narrow
streets curved and snarled and the buildings were dark, ancient,
and small. She listened to her own thoughts, to the voices inside
her head, to the conversation around her. “Matarh!” she heard a
child’s voice cry, and for a moment she thought it was Nico. She
turned with a smile, her arms open to embrace him.
It wasn’t Nico. It
was some other child, nearly the same age. “Matarh,” the boy cried
again, and a young woman rushed from the door of a nearby building,
gathering up the child in her arms, the boy’s feet dangling as she
hugged him.
She watched the
scene, her arms unknowingly hugging herself in sympathy. She wanted
to feel pleasure at this scene that must be common enough, but what
she felt was the hot flush of jealousy. “Yes,
that’s what you’ll never have,” Fynn crowed inside her, and
the others joined in. “You can never have
that. No one will ever love you that way. Not even the child you
carry. Never.”
“That’s not true,”
she told them, feeling tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, it’s
not true.”
“It is. It is.” A chorus of denial. “It is.”
She turned and fled
them, pursued by the voices. She walked hurriedly, not even knowing
where she was going, pushing through crowded street markets and
along half-deserted avenues, past shops and businesses. She found
herself finally on the northern bank of the A’Sele near the Pontica
Kralji. There, uncaring of the mud and the foul smell, she sat
hugging her knees to herself, trying to ignore the screaming voices
in her head as she rocked back and forth. If anyone saw her, they
thought her deranged and left her alone. She sat there for a long
time, her thoughts frayed and chaotic until pure exhaustion calmed
her and the voices receded. She sat panting, rubbing the swelling
mound of her belly and imagining the life inside.
“I will protect you.
I will keep you safe,” she whispered to her.
Somewhere across the
A’Sele, on the Isle A’Kralji, almost as if in response, there came
the sound of sudden thunder, and she saw black smoke billowing up
from somewhere among the crowded buildings of the island. Not long
after, the wind-horns of the city began to wail, though it was
already past Second Call.
She wondered what had
happened.