34: THE ONLY WAY OUT

Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days (sort of) since Talon gave Thurvishar a magic rock

Brother Qown cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “I, uh … I don’t have good notes for the next part.”

Janel seemed surprised. “What? But you—” Then she stopped herself. “Oh.”

Kihrin raised an eyebrow. “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”

“I didn’t write down much of what happened next,” Brother Qown admitted. He opened his book. “I’ll read what I have, but then you should take back over, Janel.”

She nodded. “Of course. Whatever you need.”

Qown’s Turn. The Ice Demesne, Yor, Quur.

Brother Qown spent the first few hours after his gaeshing giving serious consideration to the benefits of killing himself.

What could they do to stop him, after all? If he disobeyed the gaesh, the pain would kill him. So to commit suicide, all he had to do was disobey. His free soul would travel to the Land of Peace and his next reincarnation. Or be plucked up by demons, but he might escape.

He’d be free. That meant Janel would be free. If he guaranteed Janel’s good behavior, then removing that guarantee was as simple as removing himself.

The gaesh meant he always held a weapon he could use upon himself. They could never take away his power to say no—or that refusal’s consequences. They could make him follow every order except one—the order not to kill himself.

But he didn’t do it.

He didn’t commit suicide because of a single word: too. Janel hadn’t planned on him ending up in Yor too.

Which meant she’d planned to end up there herself.

He couldn’t put such a thing past her. Challenging Relos Var to a duel had been foolish behavior for a young woman not normally foolish—even if she did possess a distressing tendency to reach for violent solutions to her problems. Janel had to have known that using Joratese idorrá/thudajé concepts would be meaningless against an outsider. But if she’d intended to lose from the start …

Maybe. Just maybe.

But Janel didn’t know the truth about Relos Var’s identity. She also didn’t know someone out there possessed a slice of her soul.

She didn’t know the truth, and he couldn’t tell her.

He had never in his life felt as powerless as he felt right then.

Brother Qown ignored the conversation between the two women and concentrated instead on the sun medallion he always kept on his person. They hadn’t taken it from him, and neither Relos Var nor Senera had been so sadistic as to make it the vessel for his gaesh. He still had the symbol, and he habitually polished it with his thumb. Father Zajhera was a fraud, but was the religion as well?

Was Selanol’s grace, Illumination’s truth, forever tainted by lies? Could truth still be found there? Was that truth too important to discard, even when its outcome had been twisted to serve an evil man?

He must have put on the clothing Senera had brought, but he didn’t remember doing it. One minute he wore his nightclothes, and the next, furs. It seemed an instant thing. Ever since he’d woken, he’d found himself flashing through moments of time, skipping over sections to land on new horrors.

He was in shock. He knew enough to diagnose his own condition. Zajhera’s betrayal, his gaeshing, had proved too traumatic.

Zajhera had been like a father to him. Qown had trusted him with his life.

Janel’s grandfather, the previous Count of Tolamer, had trusted the man too, trusted Zajhera with his granddaughter’s life. Zajhera had been the one who’d exorcised Xaltorath when the demon prince had proved immune to all the normal methods, including a direct order from the emperor. Zajhera had been the one who put Janel together again afterward, who had guided her back to sanity—and kept her from devolving into a festering ball of hate and malice.

Zajhera was a good man. The best of men.

Zajhera couldn’t be Relos Var.

Except he was.

Everything was too much. The betrayal was too much, the pain was too much, existence was too much.

But if he disobeyed, the pain would end.¹

He remembered vomiting and then nothing else.