Kai rode down the mountain with Claude. The cable car was clean, well lit, and empty but for them. Reflections chased her from the glass. She did not speak, and neither did Claude. He watched her, not the reflections or the slope. His hands rested on his knees. He rarely crossed his legs, or his arms, or his beliefs. His fingers drummed against his thighs. He saw her looking, and stopped.
They slid past a stanchion. Pulleys and rollers realigned. The car swayed, and continued down into the canopy of trees.
Claude followed her out of the empty station. Cable cars didn’t generally run this late. Jace must have started them again for her. Another allowance. She ran her hand over a painted rail, descended three steps to the vacant street, and walked along the sidewalk from the puddle of one streetlamp’s light to the next.
Claude kept pace three meters back, his steps slower than hers to account for his longer legs. Her faithful follower, backup, and minder. The Zurish gods Dread Koschei had supplanted, those lords of gold and raven hair who once ruled the steppe, they used to send priests (she had read) to accompany every warrior and diplomat, tradesman and spy and scholar who traveled abroad. Theological officers, the priests called themselves, haunting those they escorted, noting their every failure.
She wasn’t being fair to him. Gods and rarely priests are fair, and seldom right. Screw that.
“Why are you walking so far back?” she said, and stopped.
“Jace sent word through the Penitents that they needed someone to escort a priest home. He didn’t say why.” She stood at the edge of one streetlight circle, staring out into shadow; he stood at the circle’s other pole, staring in, at her. His gaze burned her neck. “He didn’t say you.”
“Or you wouldn’t have come.”
“Of course not. You don’t want to see me. It was hard to accept for a while. Still is hard. But this is for the best, for both of us.”
“Then why walk so far back?”
“I like the view.” He heard how that sounded. “No, that’s not. I mean. It’s hard to walk next to you.”
“When have we ever done things the easy way?” She glanced over her shoulder. Streetlight blanched him, and made him seem small. “Come on. Walk with me at least. We don’t need to talk. But you freak me out, trailing back there like a Dhisthran bride.”
“I won’t jump onto your pyre,” he said, approaching slowly, as if she were a scared monkey.
“That’s a weight off my shoulders.” Being with him was easy. They knew each other’s jokes, even the bad ones, and the weak points in their walls. That was why their fights were so harsh.
They walked together, neither looking at the other. “Why did they need someone to come get you?” he asked after a while.
“Off-limits. Sorry.”
“You can tell me.”
“I can’t,” she said, “actually. Rules.”
“Okay.”
They continued down.
“Jace asked if I minded that it was you,” she said. “He offered to send you home.”
“And you said no.”
“We’re adults.”
“We’re sort of adults,” he agreed. “It’s like we’re tied together. I mean.” He fell silent.
“Bound in promissory chains,” she said. The words floated up from the pit of her mind, from Margot swaying on the stage.
“What’s that?”
“A poem.”
“Poetry,” he said, as if that one word encapsulated everything unsatisfactory in the world. Dry fallen fronds scraped together behind them. Pebbles rolled on the road. But there was no wind, and the road was empty. “You ever go back to the Rest?”
“Sometimes.”
“You’re limping.”
“Busy night,” she said.
“Do you want a shoulder?”
“I have two.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. The answer’s no.”
“Okay,” he said. In the silence, she took inventory of her wounds. Bones broken and harshly healed, flesh welded back to flesh, nerves rewired, soul rebuilt. All the physical traces of her fall.
They reached her house ten minutes later. She opened the front gate. He followed her up the footpath to the porch. He had to duck beneath the vines that trailed from the overhang. Loose dead ivy leaves stuck in his hair. He waited, quiet, eyes averted, hands in pockets. Muscles stood out on either side of his clenched jaw, like they did when he had something to say and was trying not to say it.
Kai searched her purse for her keys, found them, kept searching. She closed her eyes and leaned against the door.
She thought of the red notebook in her bag, but all she felt was tired. One more conspiracy, one more chance to jump in and try to save the world. Always throwing herself at other people’s problems. Sickening, and a sign of sickness. Stand aside. Let go. Accept.
“Are you okay?”
She took the key from her purse, slid it into the lock, turned the knob sharply as if breaking a kitten’s neck. The house received her, warm and empty, walls and furniture and the drug dealers’ bad shag carpet. She should get a pet. A dog, maybe. A big, noble dog. One of those with floppy ears. Strong across the shoulders. Happy to see her.
“Would you like to come inside,” she said. It wasn’t a question. For a sentence to be a question, you had to care about the other person’s answer.
He stood at uneasy equilibrium, not quite balanced, not quite falling. She prepared for him to ask—are you sure. Is this what you really want. You’re upset. Whatever happened to you tonight, it set you off, and it wouldn’t be right of me to take advantage. Prescient, telepathic, she saw him form all those answers, all those ways to say no and make her feel a fool for asking.
She dreaded his voice. Even if he said yes, she thought, she’d close the door in his face.
He stepped inside. He took her in his arms. They kissed like crashing rocks. Their teeth touched. He smelled of sweat and scorn and so did she. They broke, separated, saw each other: her dead eyes reflected in his own. She closed the door. The latch clicked. She left her cane propped against the wall and with the wall’s help walked to the stairs, pulling him behind her, up to the bedroom they had last shared months ago, the bedroom hung with charcoal drawings and dark curtains. A spider crawled across her down comforter. She swept it away with the back of her hand.
His jacket fell to the floor behind him. As she watched he pulled his polo shirt off over his head. She hadn’t turned the lights on, and he did not, either. Scars crossed his chest and arms, where the Penitents once and forever broke him.
They seldom talked about his crime: he was a tough poor kid, and he ran with a dangerous crowd, and one day a fight turned bad, and a boy died. He wasn’t part of the fight, but he didn’t stop his friends, either. Only watched. The court judged him old enough to serve, and threw him into a Penitent. When he emerged, his body was a molded weapon, his mind a made thing. When they met again at the Rest three years back, she barely recognized the boy she’d known. He barely recognized her.
He’d gained weight since she last saw him naked. Muscle, mostly. She bit her lip, hard, and clenched her hands into fists. Nails dug half moons into her palms. Blood tasted copper. He stepped forward. She hadn’t yet removed her jacket.
Her life was bounded by mistakes. Trying to save the idol was not her first, and she’d made others since. So Jace told her, and Mara, and even Gavin by his eyes and his hesitation. This was a mistake, she knew. He had always been a mistake, her greatest.
She let her jacket fall, and made him.