faced and bleeding feet, and announced my presence.”
Victor shook his head, and he wiped his tears away.
“You ask why I do this? You ask what madness drives me? That is it. I want revenge against everything the guilds took from me. I had to flee my childhood home, while the beaten corpses of my parents were stripped naked, robbed of every possession, and then left to rot beside our dead horses.”
He wiped away his tears, and as he did, he chuckled.
“Do you know the worst part?” he asked. “The greatest insult? I found out Thren used our mansion as his home when he discovered it was vacant. For years he tunneled out holes and boarded up windows, and that scum lived and slept in the bed of my father. And when he left, he burned it all down, to the last brick and board. That’s when I knew. That’s when I swore to come back, to make every man bearing the colors of a guild tremble in fear of my name. Day after day I trained. My family is not the wealthiest, but I saved money like a tightfisted miser. This is my purpose. This is how I will honor the memory of my parents. Before I die, I will rid my beloved city of the rats and vultures that have done nothing but destroy.”
The Watcher stood over him, staring, thinking. Something burdened him greatly, but Victor could only guess at what.
“I understand more than you can possibly believe,” he said. “I am sorry for the loss of your parents, and your home.”
Victor closed his eyes and shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter, not anymore. What I saw out there…I am nothing to you, to your kind. I thought Veldaren full of thieves, cowards, men with daggers and poison and little else. But I was wrong. Now I see the monsters. How can I stop men who summon fire with a wave of their hand? How can I hunt down those who move faster than my eyes can follow, whose skill borders on that of gods? I’ve done nothing but throw stones into a cave, and at last I’ve woken the beasts within it. I’m a fool, Watcher, a damn fool.”
“No,” the Watcher said, kneeling down before him and grabbing his shoulders. His blue eyes pierced out from the magical darkness of his hood. “You are what we need. You can be where I cannot, you can fill the streets with a hundred men while I am but one. One man can be stopped, but a hundred? A thousand? You told me I would inspire fear from the shadows, yet you would be the light to banish all shadows. You still can. Be stronger than them. Be stronger than any of us. Prove to Veldaren that you can stand against the darkness, without mask or cloak, and live. Can you do that for me, Victor?”
Victor took a deep breath, and he thought of his mother and father, sitting opposite him in the coach as the mob surrounded them. No one should be that afraid, he decided. Not ever again.
“I will,” he said. “Forgive my moment of doubt.”
The Watcher grinned.
“Good. Continue on as you have. As for me, well…”
A change came over the Watcher, hardening those blue eyes. A chill swept through Victor as he realized he saw what others must see when the cloaked man descended from the rooftops, sabers drawn, fury in his every movement.
“I’ll handle the monsters.”
26
Zusa had no measure of time, nothing to go on but when they fed her. Twice a small boy adorned in gray robes arrived and gently spooned gruel into her mouth. As for drink, a young girl came bearing water every few hours or so. Every time it was a different girl, and Zusa looked upon them with pity. How many might soon hide their beautiful faces beneath rags and wrappings? She felt herself weakening, felt her muscles tightening and her back ache constantly. So far Vrashka had not returned, Daverik’s promise appearing true. But her time was almost up.
The door creaked open, and she stirred from her daydreams of life and freedom at the Gemcroft mansion. As if to confirm her fears, Daverik stepped inside, and he looked vaguely worried.
“Are you well?” he asked her, crossing the room.
“A cruel question to ask a woman in chains,” Zusa said.
“Perhaps. I have stretched my influence to its limits, Zusa. I can protect you no longer. What is your answer? Will you return to Karak’s bosom? Will you embrace the faith once more?”
Zusa shook her head.
“You know I won’t. What is there for me, Daverik?”
In answer, he knelt before her and brushed her face with his hand.
“There’s me,” he said. “There’s a life free of imprisonment and torture. Can that not mean something?”
“The temple’s laws will keep you from me.”
“Temple laws can be changed.”
Zusa laughed.
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
He shifted closer, leaning so close that she felt his breath on her neck. His hands brushed her arms, her sides, her breasts. His cheek pressed against hers as he whispered.
“It doesn’t matter. Come back to me, Katherine…”
She knew what he was trying to do. His lips pressed against her neck as he cupped her face. He was trying to reignite a distant flame, a flame that, perhaps for him, had never died. And while she felt it, too, it was nothing compared to the sudden flare of shame and disgust that overwhelmed her. It was one thing for him to touch her in a distant alley, a secret meeting between long lost lovers…but here? While manacles held her wrists to a wall? While her whole body ached from the imprisonment, and she sat in her own piss and shit?
“Katherine’s dead,” she said, pulling away from him best she could. “You killed her when you betrayed her to the priests, remember?”
He stood, and she saw the haunting memory in his eyes.
“I know,” he said. “I guess I’m a fool to still believe otherwise.”
Daverik walked toward the door, stopping just beside the strange flow of water falling from ceiling to floor.
“I learned this enchantment while in Mordeina, when I knew I might have to imprison you, or even one of my new Faceless,” he said, observing its flow. “It’s a marvelous thing, channeling all the powers of Karak into its water and away from its surroundings. Yet even the slightest disruption will momentarily break it. So powerful, yet so weak. Is that not how we all are, Zusa?”
He left without waiting for an answer. Zusa finally allowed herself to relax, and with his departure she damned him for hurting her so, damned him for the tears that started to flow. Hardly a minute later, the door reopened.
She expected her elderly torturer, but instead one of the Faceless entered. From what she could tell, it was not Ezra, but the other. The woman said nothing, only stepped around the stream of water falling from ceiling to floor so she might stand before Zusa with her arms crossed. She tilted her head to one side, staring, analyzing her like she might a strange animal.
“Like what you see?” Zusa asked, grinning despite her exhaustion.
The other woman slapped her, then knelt down so they might see eye to eye. Carefully she removed the thin cloth over her eyes, then pulled back the wrappings of her face, revealing her blonde hair and beautiful face. Her blue eyes stared into Zusa’s, and they held a frightening intensity.
“Who are you?” Zusa asked when her visitor still said nothing.
“Deborah,” she said.
“And who were you before you were Deborah?”
The woman shook her head.
“That name, that person, is lost and gone. I will not speak it to you.”
Zusa shrugged her shoulders best she could given the chains about her.
“If you insist.”
