RECKONING #2
Seth scrutinized him. “If I cover you physically, how many can you handle?”
“One.” Jacen grimaced. “Maybe two, as long as the rest are distracted. I’m not at my best; I’m sor—”
“If you apologize to me one more time, I really am going to leave you here.” Seth let out a nervous chuckle. “At least this won’t be boring.”
Jacen pointed out the dead guards. “You handed those three well enough.”
“No, you didn’t see; that was a mess. I’ve been losing my edge. I was worried I wouldn’t fit into my armor.” But Seth squared his shoulders, drew his sword, and opened the door to scope out the corridor beyond.
Jacen reached out with his mind to aid Seth’s efforts—though only far enough to detect anyone in their immediate vicinity. If a fellow telepath sensed him searching with too much advance warning, this could end very badly.
They reached the funicular and found it absent. From far above, the cage creaked toward them, swathed in darkness as it descended from the depths of the White Cathedral.
“Someone’s on it,” Nines said urgently.
“Can you tell who?” Jacen concentrated, trying to sense what she could. He couldn’t find a blasted thing. “I think your range is quite a bit better than mine.”
It was an understatement, but once again, Nines seemed embarrassed. “It’s a telepath.” She swallowed hard. “I can’t tell. They’re masking their presence.”
They hid in an alcove to ambush the new arrival.
Jacen concealed their presence to the best of his ability.
He braced for a different sort of battle, in which Seth would be worse than useless.
Was he equipped for this—fighting his own Brother or Sister of the Church?
In his weakened state, would he be strong enough? Did he have the resolve?
First, he glimpsed black robes. Then, a white sash. Brother Lev—still in his Chief Exorcist’s robes, albeit more unkempt than usual—disembarked the funicular. A sick, insidious fear seeped off Nines like fog.
From Lev . . . Jacen sensed a vicious rage. Lev had come to hurt someone and hurt them badly.
Jacen put a hand in front of Seth—a silent command for him to stand back.
When he laid eyes on Jacen, Lev betrayed no surprise. “Akkani was worried you’d do something stupid.” He appeared almost pleased. “You humiliated me in the Archives. Before they execute you, I’m going to make you suffer for it.”
“Go ahead,” Jacen said to Seth and Nines. “I’ll handle this.” Seth said, “Are you insane?”
Lev chuckled. “He might be.” He raised a hand and pointed two fingers at Seth, who dropped his sword. He fell to his knees with a scream. Nines shrank back, petrified.
The attack was not a powerful one, merely the best of which Lev was capable.
Jacen knew the technique—the agony was a harmless illusion.
But something inside him snapped. He shredded through Lev’s mental defenses with the subtlety of a hatchet.
Drove him screaming to his knees like Lev had done to Seth.
Lev fought back, forcing Jacen out of his head.
With a cry, Lev pulled a knife from his sash and slashed upward.
Reflexively, Jacen blocked with his hands.
Steel sliced his palm. It caught on the filthy bandages of his right hand, but he managed to drive Lev’s knife down.
The blade screeched against stone. Jacen plunged deeper into his mind, rending his focus like taking a hammer to a spiderweb.
As his psychic offensive crumbled, Lev seized the front of Jacen’s robe and wrenched him forward.
Jacen groped for his dagger, fingers too slippery with blood to grasp the hilt.
The next moments blurred into a haze of metal and shadow. Somehow, they both ended up on the ground. Finally, Jacen located a pressure point, a mental fulcrum he could strike and force Lev to stop.
The despair and helpless fury of the last few days—the last thirty years—boiled over.
Jacen got hold of his dagger and scrambled to his knees, behind Lev.
He sawed into the inert Chief Exorcist’s throat until the blade scraped bone.
He held the wound open as a fountain of red gushed out.
He had not expected so much blood. The smell of iron choked the air.
It had all probably taken less than ten seconds.
Jacen knelt on the ground, heart thudding, staring at Brother Lev as he died suffocating on his own fluids.
A few feet away, Seth stirred and groaned.
Nines had crawled backward on her hands and heels until she was pressed against the wall, eyes enormous, red staining her white hair.
It took Jacen several tries to speak. “Are you all right?” She nodded. He didn’t believe her. He reached out, bloody palm open, but she recoiled. Pressed herself closer to the wall as though she hoped it would swallow her.
Jacen pulled back and said quietly, “It’s over.” He glanced at Seth—shaken but back on his feet. “We’re leaving this place.”
Nines was speechless for so long, Jacen worried she’d gone catatonic from shock.
“The funicular’s about to go,” Seth warned. He nudged Lev’s body with his boot. “We can drop him on the tracks about halfway so the cart gets stuck on the way back down. It’ll buy us some time.”
He hefted the corpse over his shoulder and boarded the funicular, but Jacen hesitated.
Then he said to Nines, “Syl Inissa.” Her true name, which he’d found in the archives.
As he spoke, he invoked the trigger placed in her mind long ago. Embers of recognition flickered to life, shining on the surface of her consciousness. Breaking through the fear and the pain like the sun beyond its eclipse.
If Nines followed him, Jacen feared she was doomed. What was he capable of teaching her other than what the Church had taught him? What was he capable of showing her other than misery and horror?
But he could give her this—this one thing he never had: her real name. Her history. Something to shape her that was so much more than the nothingness into which the rest of them had been made.
“Your name is Syl Inissa,” he repeated, firmer, “and your friend’s name was Daru.
You’re from a place called Kasoa. You have a name, and you might still have a family somewhere.
It may have been taken from you, but you have always been worthy of it.
You have always been more than this. We all were. ”
Even Lev. As Jacen looked at his Brother’s corpse, he felt a sudden, unexpected surge of grief. He’d become a vile man in this life, but in another, given the chance, might he have been capable of better? He would never find out.
But Nines might.
Jacen held out his hand. This time, she took it.