Wall of Shiuan

“Come,” Roh urged him, and Vanye came, knowing himself mad even to have come this far, alone with this qujal in man’s guise. He reached the edge and looked down, dizzied at the view down the tower walls to the stones below; he caught at the solidity of the battlement with one hand and at the sword’s hilt with the other.

If Roh meant to destroy him, he thought, there was ample means for that. He ignored Roh for an instant, cast a look at all the country round about, the glint of moonlight on black floodwaters that wove a spider’s web about the drowning hills. Through those hills lanced the road that he could not reach, subtle torment.

Roh’s hand touched his shoulder, drawing his attention back. His other hand described the circuit of the land, the hold itself.

“I wanted you to see this,” Roh said above the howl of wind. “I wanted you to know the compass of this place. And she will finish it, end all hope for them. That is what she has come to do.”

He turned a hard look on Roh, leaned against the stonework, for he had begun to shiver convulsively in the wind. “It is impossible for you to persuade me,” he said, and held up his scarred hand to the moonlight “Roh or Liell, you should remember what I am, at least.”

“You doubt me,” said Roh.

“I doubt everything about you.”

Roh’s face, hair torn by the wind, assumed a pained earnestness. “I knew that she would hunt me. She was always our enemy. But from you, Nhi Vanye i Chya, I hoped for better. You took shelter from me. You slept at my hearth. Is that nothing to you?”

Vanye flexed his fingers on the corded hilt of the sword, for they were growing numb with cold. “You are supposing,” he said hoarsely, “what passed between Roh and me—what was surely common knowledge throughout Chya—and I do not doubt you had your spies. If you want me to believe you, then tell me again what Roh told me last in Ra-koris, when there was none to hear.”

Roh hesitated. “To come back,” he said, “free of her.”

It was truth. The unexpectedness of it numbed him. He leaned against the stonework, ceasing even to shiver, and abruptly turned his face from Roh. “And it might be that Roh counseled with others before saying that to me.”

Roh pulled him about by the shoulder, grimacing into the wind.

“So you could say, Vanye, for any other thing you might devise to try me. You cannot be sure, and you know it.”

“There is one thing you cannot answer,” Vanye said. “You cannot tell me why you are here in this land. Roh would not have fled the road we took; he had no reason to—but Liell had every reason. Liell would have run for his life; and Roh had no reason to.”

“He is here,” Roh said, a hand upon his heart. “Here. So also am I. My memories—all are Roh’s—they are both.”

“No,” he said. “No. Morgaine said that would not happen; and I would rather take her word than yours—in any matter.”

“I am your cousin. I could have taken your life; but I am your cousin. You have the sword. There is no witness here to say it was no fair fight—if the Shiua lords cared. You are already known for a kinslayer many times over. Use it. Or listen to me.”

He flung off Roh’s hand, blind as a turn of his head brought his own shorn hair into his eyes. He shook it free, stalked off across the battlements, stood staring down into the squalor of that courtyard, the wind pushing at his back, fit to tear him from the edge and cast him over.

“Nhi Vanye!” Roh called him. He turned and looked, saw Roh had followed him. He stubbornly turned his head toward the view downward, toward the paving and the poor shelters huddled against the keep walls. He felt the breaking of the force of the wind as Roh stepped between it and him.

“If you are kinsman to me,” Vanye said, “free me from this place. Then I will believe your kinship.”

“Me? And care you nothing for that child that came with you?”

He looked back, stung, unable to argue. He affected a shrug. “Jhirun? Here is where she wanted to be, in Shiuan, in Ohtij-in. This is the land she wished for. What is she to me?”

“I had thought better of you,” Roh said after a moment “So, surely, had she.”

“I am ilin. Nothing else. There are human folk here, men, and so she can survive. They have.”

“There are men,” said Roh, and pointed at the squalid court, where beasts and men shared neighboring quarters. ‘That is the lot of men in Ohtij-in. That is their life, from birth to death. Men now. Tomorrow the rest that survives in this land will live in that poverty, and the qujal–lords know it. Of their charity, of their charity, Nhi Vanye, these lords have let men shelter within their walls; of their charity they have fed them and clothed them. They owed them nothing; but they have let them live within their gates. You—you are not so charitable—you would let them die, that girl and all the rest. That is what you would do to me. The sword’s edge is kinder, cousin, than what is waiting for all this land. Murder—is kinder.”

“I have nothing to do with what is happening to these people. I cannot help them or harm them.”