Dying of the Light

Stepping backward lightly, detouring around Janacek's damp shirt, Dirk paused in the door frame, leveled his rifle, and shouted. 'Garse!'

Janacek did not stir. Dirk repeated his shout. This time the volume of snoring declined appreciably. Encouraged, Dirk stooped and picked up the nearest object at hand-a glowstone-and lofted it through the air at the Kavalar. It hit Janacek on the cheek.

He sat up slowly, blinking. He saw Dirk and scowled at him.

'Get up,' Dirk said. He waved his laser.

Janacek rose shakily to his feet, looked around for his own weapon.

'You won't find it,' Dirk told him. 'I've got it here.'

Janacek's eyes were blurred and weary, but he had slept off most of his drunkenness. 'Why are you here, t'Larien?' he said slowly, in a voice tinged more by exhaustion than by wine. 'Have you come to mock me?'

Dirk shook his head. 'No. I'm sorry for you.'

Janacek glared. 'Sorry for me?'

'You don't think you deserve pity? Look around you!'

'Careful,' Janacek told him. 'Jape me too much, t'Larien, and I will discover if you have steel enough to fire that laser you hold so awkwardly.'

'Don't, Garse,' Dirk said. 'Please. I need your help.'

Janacek laughed, throwing back his head and roaring.

When he had stopped, Dirk told him everything that had happened since Vikary killed Myrik Braith in Challenge. Janacek stood very stiffly as he listened, his arms crossed tightly across his bare, scarred chest. He laughed one more time-when Dirk told him his conclusions about Ruark. 'The manipulators of Kimdiss,' Janacek muttered. Dirk let him mutter, then finished his story.

'So?' Janacek demanded when he had concluded. 'Why do you think any of this is any matter to me?'

'I guess I didn't think you'd let the Braiths hunt Jaan down like an animal,' Dirk said.

'He has made himself an animal.'

'By Braith lights, I suppose,' Dirk replied. 'Are you a Braith?'

'I am a Kavalar.'

'Are all Kavalars the same now?' He gestured toward the stone head of the gargoyle sitting in the fireplace. 'I see you take trophies now, just like Lorimaar.'

Janacek said nothing. His eyes were very hard.

'Maybe I was wrong,' Dirk said. 'But when I came in here and saw all this, it made me think. It made me think that maybe you did have some human feeling for the man who used to be your teyn. It reminded me that once you told me that you and Jaan had a bond stronger than any I had ever known. I guess that was a lie, though.'

'It was truth. Jaan Vikary broke that bond.'

'Gwen broke all the bonds between us years ago,' Dirk said. 'But I came when she needed me. Oh, it turned out that she didn't really need me, and I came for a lot of selfish reasons. But I came. You can't rob me of that. Garse. I kept my promise.' He paused. 'And I would not let anyone hunt her, if I could stop them. It appears that we were bonded by something a lot stronger than your Kavalar iron-and-fire.'

'Say what you want, t'Larien. Your words change nothing. The idea of you keeping promises is ludicrous. What of your promises to Jaan and myself?'

'I betrayed them,' Dirk said quickly. 'I know that. So you and I are even, Garse.'

'I have betrayed no one.'

'You are abandoning those who stood closest to ' you. Gwen, who was your cro-betheyn, who slept with you and loved you and hated you ail at once. And Jaan. Your precious teyn.'

'I have never betrayed them,' Janacek said hotly. 'Gwen betrayed both myself and the jade-and-silver she wore from the day she joined us. Jaan deserted all that was decent in the way he slew Myrik. He ignored me, ignored the duties of iron-and-fire. I owe neither of them.'

'You don't, do you?' Beneath his shirt Dirk could feel the whisperjewel hard against his skin, flooding him with words and memories, with a sense of the man he had once been. He was very angry. 'And that says it all, right? You don't owe them, so who cares? All your damn Kavalar bonds are, after all, are debt and obligation. Traditions, old holdfast wisdom, like the code duello and mockman hunting. Don't think about them, just follow them. Ruark was right about one thing-there is no love in any of you, except maybe Jaan, and I'm not so sure about him. What the hell was he going to do if Gwen hadn't been wearing his bracelet?'

'The same thing!'

'Really? And what about you? Would you have challenged Myrik just because he hurt Gwen? Or was it because he damaged your jade-and-silver?' Dirk snorted. 'Maybe Jaan would have done the same thing, but not you, Janacek. You're as Kavalar as Lorimaar himself, as stiff as Chell or Bretan. Jaan wanted to make his folk better, but I guess you were only along for a ride and didn't believe any of it for a minute.' He yanked Janacek's laser out of his belt and flung it across the room with his free hand. 'Here,' he shouted, lowering his rifle. 'Go hunt a mockman!'

Janacek, startled, snapped the weapon out of the air almost by reflex. He stood holding it clumsily and frowned. 'I could kill you now, t'Larien,' he said.

'Do that or do nothing,' Dirk said. 'It's all the same. If you had ever really loved Jaan-'

'I do not love Jaan,' Janacek snapped, his face flushed. 'He is my teyn!'

Dirk let the Kavalar's words hang in the air for a long minute. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'Is?' he said. 'You mean Jaan was your teyn, don't you?'

Janacek's flush faded as suddenly as it had come. Beneath his beard one corner of his mouth twitched in a manner that reminded Dirk of Bretan. His eyes shifted, almost furtively, half ashamed, to the heavy iron bracelet that still hung about his bloodied forearm.

'You never did get all the glowstones out, did you?' Dirk said gently.

'No,' Janacek said. His voice was oddly soft. 'No, I did not. It means little, of course. The physical iron is nothing when the other iron is gone.'

'But it's not gone, Garse,' Dirk said. 'Jaan spoke of you when we were together in Kryne Lamiya. I know. Maybe he feels himself iron-bound to Gwen too, and maybe that is wrong. Don't ask me. All I know is that for Jaan the other iron is still there. He wore his iron-and-fire bracelet in Kryne Lamiya. He'll be wearing it when the Braith hounds tear him down, I imagine.'

Janacek shook his head. 'T'Larien,' he said, 'your mother comes from Kimdiss, I would vow. Yet I cannot resist you. You manipulate too well.' He grinned; it was the old grin, the one he had flashed that morning when he aimed his laser at Dirk and asked if it alarmed him. 'Jaan Vikary is my teyn,' he said. 'What do you want me to do?'

Janacek's conversion, however reluctant, was thorough enough. The Kavalar took charge almost immediately. Dirk thought they should leave at once and discuss their plans en route, but Janacek insisted that they take time to shower and dress. 'If Jaan is still alive, he will be safe enough until dawn. The hounds have poor night sight, and the Braiths will not be eager to go blundering into a dark choker-wood. No, t'Larien, they will camp and wait. A man alone and on foot cannot get far. So we have time enough to meet them like Ironjades.'

By the time they were ready to depart, Janacek had removed almost every trace of his drunken rage. He was slim and immaculate in a suit of fur-lined chameleon cloth, his beard cleaned and trimmed, his dark red hair combed carefully back from his eyes. Only his right arm-scrubbed and carefully bandaged, but still conspicuous-gave evidence against him. But the scratches did not seem to have impaired him much; he looked graceful and fluid as he charged and checked his laser and slid it into his belt. In addition to the pistol, Janacek was also carrying a long double-bladed knife and a rifle like Dirk's. He grinned gleefully as he took it up.

Dirk had washed and shaved while waiting, and had also taken the opportunity to eat his first full meal in days. He was feeling almost energetic when they set off for the roof.

The interior of Janacek's huge square aircar was every bit as cramped as that of the tiny derelict Dirk had flown from Kryne Lamiya, although Janacek's machine did have four small seats instead of only two. 'The armor,'