Dying of the Light

set things right. We've got a lot to thank you for, don't we? Jaan especially. Without your warning, there's no telling what might have happened.'

'Yes,' Ruark said. He smiled. 'Yes, truth, utter truth.'

Gwen appeared suddenly, framed in the door. 'Dirk,' she said, ignoring Ruark.

He turned to her. 'Yes?'

'I made Jaan lie down for a while. He's very tired. Come outside where we can talk.'

'Wait,' Ruark said. 'Untie me first, eh? Do that thing. My arms, Dirk, my arms…'

Dirk went outside. Jaan lay nearby, his head up against a tree, staring blindly off at the distant fire. They walked away from him, into the darkness of the chokers. Finally Gwen paused and swung around to face him. 'Jaan must never know,' she said. She brushed a loose strand of hair back from her forehead with her right hand.

Dirk stared. 'Your arm,' he said. Around her right forearm Gwen wore iron, black and empty. Her arm froze at Dirk's words. 'Yes,' she said. 'The glowstones will come later.' 'I see,' Dirk said. 'Teyn and betheyn, both.' Gwen nodded. She reached out and took Dirk's hands in her own. Her skin was cool and dry. 'Be happy for me, Dirk,' she said in a small sad voice. 'Please.'

He squeezed her hands, trying to be reassuring. 'I am,' he said, without much conviction. Between them lay a long silence and a great bitterness.

'You look like hell,' Gwen said at last, forcing a little grin. 'Scratched all over like that. The way you hold your arm. The way you walk. Are you all right?' He shrugged. 'The Braiths aren't gentle playmates,' he said. 'I'll survive.' He let go of her hands then and reached into his pocket. 'Gwen, I have something for you.'

Within his fist: two gems. The glowstone round and rough-faceted, lit faintly from within, smoldering in the hollow of his hand. And the whisperjewel, smaller, darker; dead and cold.

Gwen took them wordlessly. She rolled them in her hand for a moment, frowning. Then she pocketed the glowstone and gave the whisperjewel back to Dirk.

He accepted it. 'The last I have of Jenny,' he said as his hand closed around the echoing ice-drop and it vanished once again into his clothing.

'I know,' she said. 'Thank you for offering. But if truth be known, it doesn't talk to me anymore. I guess I've changed too much. I haven't heard a whisper La years.'

'Yeah,' he said. 'I suspected something like that. But I had to offer it to you-it and the promise. The promise is still yours, Gwen, if you ever need it. Call it my iron-and-fire. You don't want to turn me into a mockman, do you?'

'No,' she replied. 'The other one…'

'Garse saved it, when he tossed the rest away. I thought maybe you'd want to have it reset, with the new ones. Jaan will never know the difference.'

Gwen sighed. 'All right,' she said. Then: 'I find that I'm sorry about Garse, after all. Isn't that curious? All the years we passed together, there was scarcely a day when we weren't at each other's throats, with poor Jaan trapped in between, loving us both. There were times when I was almost certain that the only thing that stood between me and happiness was Garse Ironjade Janacek. Only now he's gone, and I find that very hard to believe. I keep expecting him to turn up in his aircar, armed to the teeth and grinning, ready to snap at me and put me in my place. I think that maybe when I really come to know it's true, then maybe I'll cry. Don't you think that's curious?'

'No,' said Dirk. 'No.'

'I could almost cry for Arkin too,' she said. 'Do you know what he said? When he came to me in Kryne Lamiya? After I called him a liar and hit him and broke him down-do you know what he said?'

Dirk shook his head, waiting.

'He said he loved me,' Gwen said, smiling grimly. 'He said that he had always loved me, from the moment we met on Avalon. I can't swear that he was telling the truth. Garse always said the manipulators were clever, and Arkin didn't need to be a genius to see how his revelation affected me. I almost set him free when he told me that. He seemed so small and pitiful, and he was sobbing. Instead– You saw his face?' She hesitated.

'I saw,' Dirk said. 'Ugly.'

'Instead I did that to him,' Gwen said. 'But I think I believe him now. In a sick sort of way, he did love me. And he saw what I was doing to myself; and he knew that, left to my own devices, I would never leave laan, so he decided to use you-use all the things I told him, trusted him with-and get me away from Jaan that way. I suppose he figured that you and I would lose each other again the way we did on Avalon, and then I'd turn to him. Or maybe he knew better. I don't know. He claimed that he was only thinking of me, of my happiness, that he couldn't stand seeing me in jade-and-silver. That he had no thought for himself. He says he's my friend.' She sighed hopelessly. 'My friend,' she repeated.

'Don't feel too sorry for him, Gwen,' Dirk warned. 'He would have sent me to my death, and Jaan too, without a moment's hesitation. Garse Janacek is dead, and several of the Braiths, and innocent Emereli in Challenge-and you can lay it all on friend Arkin. Can't you?'

'Now you're the one that sounds like Garse,' she said. 'What did you tell me? That I had jade eyes? Look at your own, Dirk! But I suppose you're right.'

'What do we do with him now?'

'Free him,' she said. 'For the present. Jaan must never suspect the truth of what he did. It would destroy him, Dirk. So Arkin Ruark has to be our friend again. You see?'

'Yes,' he said. The roar of the fire had diminished to a gentle crackling, Dirk noticed; it was almost quiet. Glancing back in the direction of the aircar, he saw that the inferno was guttering out. A few scattered fires still flickered weakly among the rubble, casting a shifting light over the ruined, smoking city. Most of the slim towers had fallen, and those that remained had grown entirely silent. The wind was only a wind.

'Dawn will be here soon,' Gwen said. 'We should be going.'

'Going?'

'Back to Larteyn, if Bretan hasn't destroyed that as well.'

'He has a violent way of mourning,' Dirk agreed. 'But is Larteyn safe?'

'The time for run-and-hide is over,' Gwen said to him. 'I'm not unconscious now, and I'm not a helpless betheyn who needs to be protected.' She raised her right arm; distant fires illuminated the dull iron. 'I'm teyn to Jaan Vikary, blooded even, and I've got my weapon. And you- you've changed too, Dirk. You're not korariel anymore, you know. You're a keth.

'We're together, for the moment. We're young and we're strong, and we know who are our enemies are and how to find them. And none of us can ever be Ironjades again-I'm a woman and Jaan's an outbonder and you're a mockman. Garse was the last Ironjade. Garse is dead. The rights and wrongs of High Kavalaan and the Ironjade Gathering died with him, I think, for this world at the least. There are no codes on Worlorn, remember? No Braiths and no Ironjades, only animals trying to kill each other.'

'What are you saying?' Dirk said, though he thought he knew.

'I'm saying that I'm tired of being hunted and hounded and threatened,' Gwen said. Her shadowed face was black iron; her eyes burned hot and feral. 'I'm saying that it's time we became the hunters!'

Dirk regarded her in silence for a long time. She was very beautiful, he thought, beautiful in the way that Garse Janacek had been beautiful. She was a little like the banshee, he decided, and he grieved a private grief for his Jenny, his Guinevere who never was. 'You're right,' he said heavily.

She stepped closer to him, wrapped him within the circle of her arms before he could react, and hugged him with all of her strength. His own hands came up slowly; he hugged her back, and they stood together for a good ten minutes, crushed against each other, her smooth cool cheek against his stubble. When she finally broke from him, she looked up, expecting him to kiss her, so he did. He closed his eyes; her lips felt dry and hard.

The Firefort was cold at dawn. The wind swirled around it in hammering gusts; the sky above was gray and cloudy.

On the roof of their building they found a corpse.

Jaan Vikary climbed out carefully, his laser rifle in hand, while Gwen and Dirk covered him from the relative safety of the aircar. Ruark sat silently in the back seat, terrified. They had freed him before leaving the vicinity of Kryne Lamiya, and all the way back he had been alternately sullen and ebullient, not knowing what to think.