I chuckled. “Are you sure you don’t want me dead like you?”
“I’m telling the truth. I am.” Manon rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid! He wants to stab you with his own sword. Why would he send somebody to stop you before you reach him? Trust me.”
“Then, thank you, darling. I’ll include that in my tactical considerations.” I intended to forget all about it when I walked away. It sounded too obvious.
“Father, will you sit and talk with me?”
Manon and I sat on the long grass in the dark and remembered things we had done when she was alive, laughed about the foolish things I’d been doing since, and planned what she could do when she returned to life. We hadn’t had such leisure for talking when she was still alive, since destruction was always running in our tracks.
A couple of people came and spoke to me in the darkness, but I ignored them. Manon and I talked most of the night, lit by the glow of her skin. Two hours before sunrise, she was recalling how much her boots had pinched when we fled up the cliff from the city of Parhold. She disappeared in the middle of a word, along with all the others I had killed.
TWENTY-SIX
None of my teachers ever warned us not to bring people back from the dead. They did name a few other sorcerous acts that would produce catastrophe, a term they did not need to explain further. Sorcerers deal with gods and vast power, so when one says the word catastrophe, it’s understood that everybody within miles will be destroyed.
Resurrection was never said to be catastrophic. It wasn’t discussed at all. If a student mentioned the subject, the teacher pretended she didn’t hear it and started talking about woolen trousers, or frogs, or similarly dull topics.
I considered how I might bring up the idea to Harik without looking like a bouncing fool. I already owed him an unknown number of murders, and he expected me to kill two more people every day. I hadn’t yet delivered his book, either. Could I stand to pile another obligation on top of all that?
Hell, he probably already knew what I wanted. I might spend all day calling him a razor-faced, cross-eyed, jackal’s frisky dream, but he was still the God of Death.
I glanced at Halla as she rode beside me scanning the countryside. The horse trader in Paikett had warned us of bandits on the western road, which pleased me.
“Halla, those trees up on the left look suspicious. Oh, and have you ever raised somebody from the dead?”
She peered at the lush trees, swaying in the cool, wet sea wind. “No, and I have been waiting for you to ask.”
“You have not!”
Halla stared at me with no expression. “I have. I understand why you are asking. It would be unwise to try it.”
She was right, of course.
“You’re full of shit! You may be afraid to pull somebody back from wherever they go, but I’m not.” I hadn’t even decided to try resurrection, and I realized I was talking myself into it. I drew a huge breath. “All right, tell me this. If we find that your nephews have been killed, mightn’t you consider bringing them back?”
Halla’s eyelid twitched. “No.”
“What if their parents came to you weeping, in pain that can’t be measured, and asked you to help? That they might as well be dead themselves?”
Halla closed her eyes and clenched her teeth a few times. “I don’t know.” She glanced up. “Yes. I might. No.” She shrugged.
A dozen snips of her behavior made sense all at once. “Wait, wait, wait!” I said. “You don’t know, do you? You’re trying to figure out the answer you ought to give, right? I’ve been wondering why you’re so dedicated to this rescue. It sure doesn’t sound like you. But you don’t really care, do you?”
“I do!” she growled. “I should. And I do. You, you go raise your people from the dead—raise your wife and children.” Her face closed as tight as a door. “Raise all the pigs you have eaten and flowers you have stepped on too if it will keep you quiet for an hour.” She said it with what sounded like anger, but her face was almost blank.
Halla watched the road with an empty gaze for most of a minute before she kicked her horse into a gallop. The path wound through thick stands of swaying trees less than two hundred paces up from the beach. She rode out of sight in a hurry.
I now felt sure that Halla didn’t care about those boys or their lives one bit. Maybe she was fulfilling a debt to some god. Or maybe it bothered her that she didn’t care.
In the next moment, I felt the stretching, nauseating yank of a god pulling me up to trade. I hadn’t yet settled on how to open the subject of resurrection with Harik, or even whether I wanted to try. As with so many of my dealings with the gods, I would just have to pay close attention, be aggressive, and say no a lot.
“Mighty Harik, I wish I could say I’ve missed your cataclysmic stench, but I hesitate to lie to the God of Death.” I imagined drawing my sword. The place of trading appeared, and it was a clear, dewy morning in the Gods’ Realm. The sun hadn’t yet topped the nearby forest. I smiled up at the marble gazebo, but my smile fell like ice off a calving glacier.
A coarse, cutting voice said, “Don’t talk about smells, Murderer. You’re as
