CHAPTER

37

Nemi had warned Purna that he was bad, had gone over things with her half a dozen times on the long hike to his chambers in the Winter Palace, so she had been prepared for the extent of his injuries. She had even been prepared to see him dying, because she’d been around the block enough times to pick up what Nemi kept putting down. What she hadn’t been ready for was to see Maroto looking so old.

That was what choked her up as soon as the screen closed behind her, Best good enough to wait outside with Nemi for now. Part of it was the bed, sure, because everyone looks as ancient as a Tothan witch-priest bundled up on one of those big Immaculate stone beds, but that wasn’t it, not by half. His hair might’ve been the worst of it, that once dark and regal flattop gone, replaced with snowy hair chopped so far down he’d lost some skin in the bargain. It made him look like his hairline had receded all the way back overnight, he’d grown the scraggly beard of a beggar, and in between these bad extremes was a dark bandage covering half his face. Then the ashy skin and new crop of wrinkles weren’t doing him any favors, either, the poor old bastard looking like he’d been brined with the pickles and then tossed out to bleach in the sun …

“Yeah, I’m crying, too,” he said, sitting up on his pillow. “You just can’t tell ’cause it’s only from the one eye, and I left it somewhere on the other side of Othean.”

That right there was what really busted Purna’s pipes, because as changed as he looked, as diminished, that voice was the same, and she flew to his side so fast her tears must have stained the screens on the windows. Nemi had warned her against holding him too tight, against touching him at all, if she could help it, but Maroto wasn’t having any of that nonsense. He dragged her onto the bed with him and hugged her so tight she thought he’d break something of hers, instead of the other way round.

And there they stayed for a very, very long time, neither of them saying a word. Neither being capable of it. Neither needing to.

When he finally let her go, she saw he’d apparently gotten his eyes mixed up, because the one he still had was red and dripping, half her damn hair soaked from it. She looked into his tired, battered face, and took his shaking, callused hand in hers … and then they laughed at their own tears, as only the best of friends can.

“I thought I looked bad …” Maroto finally managed, which just set them both off again. That was how it went, deep into the day, bad jokes culturing worse ones, and when the tales were told they grew all the sillier in the telling, because everyone knows laughter is the only thing that can keep Old Black at bay, when she comes to guide you down … Horned Wolves are overly serious like that, have been from the very beginning.

“Oh shit!” Purna immediately lowered her voice and leaned in close. “Speaking of, your sister is right outside. She wants to see you.”

“Ah shit, really?” Maroto rolled his eye. “You are trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

“You’ve gotta see her, man,” said Purna. “She’s family … and she’s cool.”

“You’ve always had a sick sense of humor,” said Maroto. “We both know I’m the only cool one in my family.”

“Hey, Sullen’s good, too!” said Purna, and then hesitated, realizing she hadn’t gotten more than the barest of bones from Nemi. “I mean, are you guys good? I haven’t seen him since back in the Haunted Forest, but Nemi said he’s been visiting you a lot so I thought maybe you two …”

“Oh yeah, we’re good.” Maroto smiled, mostly to himself, it seemed. “And yeah, he’s in and out of here like crazy. Says he’s making me and his girlfriend matching eye patches, if you can believe it. So we’ve made up for a lot of lost time, and my nephew’s definitely good … but good’s not the same as cool.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t,” Purna agreed. “I … I hope you don’t mind, I made him a Moocher, while we were on the road looking for you. I mean, don’t worry—he earned it!”

“Oh shiiiit!” Maroto tried sitting up but had a coughing fit. When it subsided with the help of some spiked barley tea, he said, “Moochers. My Maroto fucking Moochers. They had to have told you who else turned up with Ji-hyeon, didn’t they?”

“First of all, the only one of us who’s a Maroto-fucker is you, and second, I literally just got off the stinky monster boat, so nobody’s told me shit except I needed to get to you with the quickness, since you could croak any minute …” Purna swallowed. “It’s not true, is it? Nemi can fix anything … can’t she?”

“You miiiiight be surprised as to who else around here is a Maroto-fucker,” he said, wagging his eyebrow. That painful and painfully false dodge did not bode well, but he just carried on, trying to change the subject the way he always did when he wasn’t up for Hard Truth Theater. “And regarding that other matter, well, if nobody else spoiled Ji-hyeon’s surprise I won’t do it, either. You’re in for one hell of a shock when you see who—”

“Tell me,” she said, not able to play along anymore. “Tell me, Maroto. I can handle it.”

He sighed, looking at his hands. How shaky they were. Then he looked at her with his only eye, and said, “I know you can, girl. I was never worried about you. I just … I just can’t bring myself to say it out loud? So come in real close, and I’ll whisper it in your ear.”

She did, fully expecting him to give her a wet willy or something. Hoping he would. Instead, he told her the truth.

Telling Purna was the hardest part, but now that it was done he could finally relax. He’d told her the whole truth, too, whether or not she thought he was bullshitting her: he really, truly believed they would meet again. Best friends always do, and in the weirdest places.

That would have been a far more fitting note to go out on, but a good actor could draw power from even an overwrought page. And so he went ahead and invited his sister in, after kissing Purna’s cheek and sending her off to her unwitting reunion with the inexplicably ancient Duchess Din and Count Hassan. He wasn’t kidding, he really wished he could have been there for that … but it was more than he deserved, anyway. For the man who screwed the Star to save his own butt, a painful death in a lonely sickroom was about on point.

Of course, the sickroom could’ve been lonelier. Best stalked in as if she were on hostile hunting ground, sizing him up like he was a predator that might be too long in the tooth to be worthy of her blades. It’d been many years since he’d seen his sister, but damn she looked old.

Well, if she wasn’t going to talk first, neither was he … Except after a hot minute of her just staring at him like she was trying out a new method of skinning game with just her eyes, he cleared his throat and said, “Hey, sister.”

“The tree out there, they say you climbed it?” The first thing she’d said to him in well over a decade. Typical.

“Yeah,” said Maroto, then smiled at the memory of his last misadventure. “Well, sort of. I jumped at a giant eye, but it turned into a tree? And tried to climb down, but, uh, slipped. Anyway, it’s a long story.”

For the first time in his whole damn memory of her, Best smiled. Or tried to, anyway—you could tell she didn’t come by it naturally. But she came over and stood by his bed and said, “Tell me, brother.”

Maroto considered everything that was odd about this picture. Most pictures were pretty odd, where they concerned his family. “Well, all right. But only because Purna vouches for you.”

“She does?” Her words were sharp as her eyes, but how had he never seen how vulnerable they were, too?

“Sounds like you have a song to sing me, too, but the host makes the first boast,” said Maroto, not feeling so bad about entertaining his sister anymore. Not so bad at all. Made him wonder about all the other things that might not have been so bad, if he’d had the courage to face them. All the things he’d run from, or ran out of time for … and then he stowed that shit back where it belonged, so he could sing his blood the best damn song she’d ever heard.

There would be others. Many of them. He was well-loved. And he owed a lot of money. There would be more than came to her wake, certainly, but it’s unwise to get competitive about such things. What mattered was that of all the many who would come, he wanted her to be the first.

Zosia made Choplicker wait outside. She would feed him well in the days to come, that seemed unavoidable, but he wouldn’t have a single drop of this. The screen clicked shut behind her, and she went to the stone bed.

Even looking down at him, she couldn’t believe it. She found herself feeling his limp flesh for a pulse like a frantic child. Scratching his cold skin with her fingernail, to see if this was some wax double. Acting like she had with Choplicker in the Office of Answers, as if he were some sleeping devil she could rouse if only she found the secret key. Unable to accept it, because deep down she was sure she would have felt it when he went, close as they’d been. Unable to believe that even as bad as they’d hurt each other he really would have deprived her of a chance to say goodbye. To say she was sorry.

But he had. And there, tucked into his winding sheet, was the final prick in a lifetime of fencing. A sealed letter bearing the letter Z.

She wanted to ignore it, to deny him the last words he’d denied her … but she couldn’t. Tore it open, crimson wax falling on the silver coin that covered his only eye. Read it quickly in the half-light of the evening, read it again, then crumpled it into the fist she slowly ground against his cold chest, as if even in death she could reach that stupid heart of his.

Hating him in that moment not for what he’d done, but because he’d been too scared to give her the chance to forgive him.

And hating herself for being the kind of villain who inspired that fear in her own best friend.