'Magic, Tiger, wears many guises.'
'Like Nihko?'
Del was silent.
I turned my head against my arm. 'Well?'
'I don't know.'
'Maybe you should take the nap.'
'I am neither tired nor cross-grained. I am, after all, younger than you.' She smiled sunnily even as I scowled. 'Besides…'
'Besides what?'
'You were dead only yesterday.'
'But alive today-and lacking a sword.' I swore. 'I hate to be without a sword. I get into trouble when I don't have a sword.'
'You get into trouble when you have a sword.'
'But I can also get myself out of it. If I have a sword.'
Del observed me. 'You are on edge.'
'Aren't you?'
'They haven't offered to harm us.'
'But they haven't told us what they intend to do with us either. I don't find that comfortable.'
'Especially when you lack a sword.'
'If I had one, we'd be gone from here already.'
'There's more to it than that.'
I sighed, conceding it. 'Something doesn't feel right.'
Del was silent.
I glanced at her. 'Well? Don't you feel it?'
She nodded.
'There. See?' I smiled triumphantly.
'All we can do,' she said, 'is wait. Watch. Be ready.'
'I'd rather be ready with a sword in my hands.'
'Well, yes.' Del's smile was crooked. 'But we have none, either of us, and until we can get them I think we'd best do what we can to preserve our energy.' She paused. 'As I said, you were dead only yesterday.'
Rather than debate it any further-I was on edge, and tired-I took a nap.
Upon awakening alone, I went off in search of Nihkolara to clear up a few matters. It took me a while to track him down, but I found him at last seated upon one of the low perimeter walls surrounding Akritara, staring off into the distance. Beyond him, the setting sun leached the blue of the sky and transmuted it to dusty purple, streaked with ribbons of orange and gold.
As if a friendly companion, I sat down upon the wall next to him and swung both legs over, perching comfortably even as the evening breeze stripped hair out of my face. (Which was one thing the shaven-headed first mate didn't have to contend with.) 'So, how did you do it?'
He made no sign he was aware of my presence, though obviously he was. I figured Nihkolara was only rarely taken by surprise.
I kept my tone light. 'It's not every man who can make another appear to be dead-'
'You were.'
'Dead?' I expelled air through my nose in sharp commentary. 'I don't think so. But I'll admit it's an effective trick.'
He continued staring into the sunset. 'Believe as you will. You are an apostate.'
'I?' I slapped a hand against my chest with a meaty thwack. 'But I am a messiah. How can I be an apostate?'
He shook his head slightly. 'You treat it all as a huge jest, Southron. Because you are afraid.'
'Afraid of what? You? That kid?'
'Afraid of the truth.' He glanced at me briefly, then looked back into the fading day. 'What you do not understand, you ridicule. Because you know there is something in the heart of it that may be dangerous.'
'I understand danger well enough.' I swung my feet briefly, thumping heels against plastered brick. 'But you're avoiding my question.'
'You appeared to be dead because you were.'
I sighed. 'Fine. For the sake of argument, let's say I was dead. How, then, did you bring me back?'
Nihko grinned into the air. 'Trickery.'
'More secrets, I take it?'
The grin faded. He looked at me now, gaze intense. 'Because I am ikepra does not mean I lack belief,' he said, 'and it is belief which rouses power. It means only that I failed in the maintenance of my oaths, in the convictions of my heart.' Something moved in his face, briefly impassioned, then was diluted beneath a careful mask. 'The body was weak.'
'Strong enough,' I commented. 'We've wrestled a little, you and I.'
'Flesh,' he said dismissively. 'I speak of the heart, the soul. But the body is a base vessel of vast impurities, and if one cannot cleanse himself of such, the vessel is soiled.'
'Ikepra?'
'Broken oaths,' he said, 'provide a weak man with weaker underpinnings. Eventually they crumble-and so does he.'
I had intended to comment, but the words died in my mouth. We were more alike than I wanted to admit, Nihkolara and I. Possibly related, though I didn't see how that would ever be settled. But certainly linked in the heart by knowledge of broken vows and shattered honor, and lives warped because of it.
'So you found Prima Rhannet, because the kind of oath she wanted was one you could serve.'
'Without doubt,' he confirmed. 'Without hesitation. It is far easier to kill other men than to kill one's soul.'
'Killing other men does kill the soul.'
He stared at me as if weighing my intent. Brow rings glinted. In clear light I could see the hint of a scab in his left eyebrow where he had cut from his flesh the ring I wore on my necklet. 'If one's soul is not already dead.'
I meant to answer, to dredge up some kind of witty remark that would diffuse the tension. But Nihkolara stood up and stepped over the wall onto the cobbles of the courtyard. I smelled the perfume of the blossoms, the acrid tang of dust lifted by wind. And the sweat of fear.
'I think,' he said, 'you have a stronger heart than I.'
'I have what –?' But he turned from me before I could complete the question and walked away with purposeful strides.
Realizing he had deflected my questions away without divulging answers beyond glib, unspecific replies and personal challenges, I stared scowling into the sunset, disgusted that I'd let him get away with it.
From here you couldn't see the actual edge of the cliff, or know that the world currently was little more than a crescent of wracked remains, but the heart sensed something. It knew the island was paramount upon the waters, and yet subject to them. I felt at once isolated, apart, humbled, despite the awareness that the earth stretched far beneath me as if I were a god.
God. Hoolies. Nihko and everyone else had me thinking like they did.
I shifted my weight then, an infinitesimal amount. A slight redistribution forward, leg muscles bunching, so that it would require very little effort on my part to spring up and turn, balanced for defense or offense. Because I knew he was there.
'You fool no one,' Herakleio announced belligerently.
I smiled into the sunset. 'Not anyone? Oh, I am irredeemably devastated.'
'You believe you are clever, claiming to want no part of us, when it's obvious you mean only to mislead us, to convince the metri that you are the son of her daughter.'
Still smiling, I said, 'You are a gloriously self-indulgent, self-centered fool, Herakleio. What makes you think I should want any part of you?'
