“I’m sorry, darling.”
“I’m not your darling! You stabbed me in the brain!”
I tried to sigh, but the pains in my chest and belly twisted so hard that tears came to my eyes. “I know. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Then why did you? Oh, are you going to cry about it like a little baby?”
There wasn’t a good answer to any of that. I said, “I’m happy to see that you’re free of your mother.” In life, Manon had given most of herself over to the goddess Sakaj, who was a cruel and subtle being.
“Setting me free? Is that your excuse? Whe—” Manon had been waving her arms but now stomped away, which cut her off mid-word. She shook herself and ran back to the point of my sword. “So, she took me—so what? That wasn’t the end of the world, was it, you bastard? So what if she was killing people? She and I didn’t kill hardly as many people as you have! You’re not one to criticize, are you?”
I realized that everybody around us was watching and listening, but I couldn’t much care. I smacked away the urge to tell the girl to calm down. If she didn’t have a right to be pissed off, who did? “Manon, what I did wasn’t right.”
“Oh, no?” she shouted. “Are you sure? Do you want to think about that for a while?” I didn’t know if ghosts could get winded, but Manon was huffing and her voice hit a screeching tone I remembered. I might have cried a couple of tears that I couldn’t blame on the pain.
Manon caught her insubstantial breath. “You were supposed to protect me. Not kill me!” She slapped me with the words like they were her open hand. “You know what, Father? Do you want to hear something funny? At the end, my mother wanted to kill you, but I wouldn’t let her. I protected you!”
“Manon, I’m truly sorry.” I couldn’t think of a single thing to say besides that.
My daughter crossed her arms and scowled at me, something I had seen at least twice a day when she was alive. “Do you want to say you’re sorry another million times? I know you’re sorry, and you want me to forgive you. Well, I don’t forgive you!” She pointed her finger at me. “I don’t forgive you at all!”
She turned and walked away toward the four hundred and ninety-seven other people I had killed. For the next hour, she stood with her back to me, unmoving.
TWENTY-ONE
The pain a sorcerer experiences from healing somebody usually lasts a few hours. Mine lasted nine hours after Manon finished bitching me out from beyond the grave. We assumed Leddie had regrouped and would be chasing us, so I could only rest for one of those hours, then we would need to mount and ride on.
Before we departed, I told everybody what I’d learned about Memweck. Halla didn’t look happy, but she never looked happy about anything. Bea acted like she didn’t care whether Memweck was a god or a yappy little dog. Pil appeared to be terrified, which was the proper reaction, but she tried to cover it up.
When Bea proclaimed how much demigods didn’t scare her, Whistler stared at the ground, rubbed his forehead, and grumbled, but then he nodded and trudged off to check the horses’ saddles and tack. He hadn’t shown any inclination to bury the two dozen dead soldiers scattered around. Those dead men had once ridden horses, though, and seven of the abandoned beasts allowed Halla and Pil to round them up.
I didn’t tell anybody about the people I’d be needing to kill every day. I feared they might get distracted wondering whether I’d kill them next to make quota.
Before we rode away, as I lay on the dirt like a clubbed mackerel, Pil walked up to stand over me. “Can I ask something that’s none of my business?”
“Ask ahead, I’m bored. Let’s see what you think is none of your business.”
She sat beside me and whispered, “Why don’t you take a horse and ride away from this craziness instead of struggling to get someplace where a demigod wants to tear you apart? And pick his teeth with your bones, or whatever demigods do?”
I cleared my throat and then wished I hadn’t when my entire torso throbbed. “That’s a damned incisive question, worthy of any sorcerer. I don’t leave because I’m stupid as hell.”
She frowned at me as if I were trying to sell her a blind horse.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll give you a well-considered answer. “I’m going because it would be a fine exploit. I could sneak into Memweck’s home and move all his furniture around to aggravate him. Then I could drink all his wine and steal his magical livestock.”
Pil raised a hand to hit me but stopped when I flinched. “Tell me! You didn’t cause all this trouble. From what I hear, Memweck tricked you into bargaining with him.”
“Sorcerers can’t let gods get away with tricking them, Pil. Demigods, either. It’s bad practice.”
Pil leaned toward me and whispered, “You don’t owe the people of that little town anything!”
“They don’t know that. I wouldn’t want to disillusion them.”
“If you can’t tell me why we should keep going to what sounds like an awful death, I’m going to go somewhere else, and you can go without me!”
I patted her arm. “That would make you a genius among fools.”
This time, she did hit me and called me a couple of names. Then Pil jumped up and stomped away, carrying her insane bow. I hoped she’d climb up on a horse right then and ride some direction that wasn’t north. I didn’t want to get her killed too.
Less than a minute later, a crow flew straight over us, laughing like a man. It returned and flew a circle around us, and then another, still laughing.
I possessed little breath for shouting, or even laughing, but I managed to speak out a bit.
