Part 18 (2/2)
”Jit paka'ka chi,” he said deliberately, in the old tongue of the meres. ”You gave me my tomorrow. My life.”
She stared at him for a moment. Then threw her head back and laughed. The sound was harsh; and Ruka, crouched on a spur of rock to the left, snarled in response. Wren's eyes flickered. If he saw the faint outline of the cougar pressed against the stone, he said nothing.
”That's rich, Wren,” she said finally, choking on her bitterness as the rain drove itself into her mouth. ”Jit paka 'ka chi.”
”Tsia-”
”Tsia?” she cut in. ”Feather?” She spat. ”You can't say it, can you? You can obligate me with your life, but you can't say you trust me. All these years, and you can't even call me 'avya.' Not friend, not trusted one. Nothing.”
He regarded her coldly from his sharp-chinned mask. ”Are those the words you need to hear?”
”Everyone needs words, Wren.”
”Those words?”
”Words of importance. Words of...”
”Love?” His voice was rich with derision.
Tsia clenched her hands at her sides.
Wren was silent for a moment, but the sense of his biofield was cold and hard. ”Do you look for love in
me or seek it in yourself?”
Tsia stared at him. ”Did you hear Kurvan? He thinks I deliberately pushed you down in the swamp. He thinks I tried to drown you.”
”Something pushed me down,” he returned. ”It wasn't the hand that held me.”
Tsia cursed violently. ”If it wasn't, you didn't say anything to them to defend me. Doetzier and Kurvan- even Bowdie thinks I'm responsible for the whole thing.”
He shrugged.
”The antigrav-is that it? I checked it just before it went out, so you don't trust that I didn't push you
down. Jit paka'ka chi,” she said bitterly, as if it was a curse.”Do your actions change what you are?” he asked softly.”Dammit, Wren-””You're a guide, Tsia.””That doesn't mean I'm not human.””Doesn't it? You're as alien as an Ixia, and that will always be between us.””Why?” she cried out.He studied her for a moment. ”You don't even know who you are-what you'll do for yourself-let alone what you can do for others.”
She stared at him. ”So I can expect no trust. No love or loyalty. Is that what you have to say?”
”Trust, love, loyalty-what are they?” he snapped back harshly. ”There's never been any love in this life,
Feather. You lose too much to love anything but yourself. Or you love too much to give any one thing meaning. Do you need the words? Then here, I name you avya. Friends.h.i.+p, loyalty-you have whatever I can give.”
”Avya,” she snarled. ”How many bonds do you mock with that term?”
”I mock nothing but the thing between us which you force me to name.”
She shook her head mutely.
”There is no trust, Tsia-guide. No such thing at all. There's only knowledge in this life. And that knowledge is that you'll lose something important when the one you trust has failed. Perhaps it will be your hand or leg. Maybe your credit or control. And maybe it's your life. Knowing that is fatalism, not trust.” He stepped forward and gripped her arm, jerking her wrist up to the rain. His scarred, brutal hand looked like a club next to her bruised, slender fingers.
She twisted against his strength, but he gripped her more tightly. His thin lips looked cruel. ”Look at me. Look at you. You know this hand-it's yours. Look at it,” he snapped as she glared up at him. ”Do / know how much strength is in your flesh? No,” he answered his own question.
Violently, she wrenched her hand away, but he yanked her back and forced it up so that she had to stare at her own clawlike fingers. On the stone behind her, Ruka leaped to the rain-flattened gra.s.s and slunk closer, behind a shrub.
”Do I know at which point the hand or will in you will break?” he demanded. ”I can't know that. Striker can't. Kur-van can't-not until you do break. And the breakpoint is something only you can know. If you find out where that breakpoint is, it means you've gone to the limit of yourself and found the edge of your fear and determination. You've found the edge of your will. It means you've shattered your illusions and ideals and all your rigid walls, and shot out into the void of Truth. That you've pulled yourself back for the first time in your life to see yourself clearly. And it means that, for that truth, someone else has probably paid the price.”
He released her hand. She refused to rub the circulation back in. Instead, with hatred in her eyes, she reveled in the ache that flooded back with her blood. His cold gaze narrowed. The wind whipped her face to a white blur, and the rain dripped from the claw marks on her cheek.
”Is that what you would call trust, Feather? Avya?” he said deliberately. ”Blind belief in a will you cannot judge? Dumb acceptance of a strength you cannot test?” He snorted. ”You can't build trust. You can't earn it, and you can't force it to occur. It doesn't exist where you seek it. Do you understand? Why did you help me? Do you know? What you search for in us, what you sought with the risk you took for me, is something that doesn't even exist outside yourself.”
Her fingernails curled into her palms. ”I didn't do it for trust, Wren. I didn't dive in just to gain your respect. Nor to fulfill a contract, or because it was expected.” Her voice was low, shaking with anger, shaking with emotions that filled her body and trembled against the walls of bone and flesh that held them in.
He raised his thick, scarred hand to her face and touched the claw marks that ran from temple to jaw. ”Avya, I know.”
Hands clenched at her sides, she said harshly, ”There was no choice in it for me. I could not let you die.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then, deliberately, slapped her so hard that she spun half around and staggered against the tree. Ruka leaped from the brush. Wren threw out his hand and roared. Tsia's gate seemed frozen. It was not her, she thought blindly. It was not her who turned to stone in fear. It was the cat, caught in a moment in which the prey turned and the predator became the game. She could feel Ruka's heartbeat. Hard, fast against her ribs. She could feel the thick fingers of Wren's hand against her cheek-the marks glowed red, then faded to a white more pale than the scars on her chilled skin.
A sound half snarl, half cry escaped her throat. She was still caught like the cat, crouched against the bole of the tree. Wren glared at her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, some odd, objective part of her brain noted that it was the first time she had ever seen him angry.
”You gave me my life,” he snarled coldly, ”and you expect grat.i.tude-and a trust that does not exist. A loyalty that you mistake. You pxpect me to be other than I am. Are you blind? Can't you see clearly- feel the violence in my hands? Can't you smell the blood on my skin? You ask me to trust you- when I know your past? I look at you and see myself instead-like mirrors lined up in my skull. In that violence, we are bound, Feather-guide; in that blood, we are lovers. Look at you. Look at your crouch. Your eyes. The way your hands curl like the claws of the cat that even now is afraid to face me. Your mind is filled with the edge of life. With the blood that pounds in your head and clouds your thoughts so that my words are like birds beating against your face. Trust? Bah. It's a heart that you seek. Perhaps the one that you lost.” He made a savage gesture. ”Don't look for love here, Feather. I bring you no such gifts.”
She stared at him. Her throat seemed torn open all the way down to her gut. Her stomach clenched. Her voice, when she spoke, was as harsh as his. ”I hear you, Wren.” She shoved herself away from the tree. ”I believe you.” She focused on her gate and forced Ruka to slink back through the shrubs. The unblinking gaze of the cat never wavered, and she had to shake her head to see Wren through her own cold eyes.
He smiled without humor, and the expression pulled his face into lines as sharp as a knife. ”Illusions are far more dangerous than hate,” he said softly. ”The one can be mistaken; the other can only be seen for what it is.”
”You trust no one, not even me.”
”No”
”You need it, Wren-the love, the trust. Hide it behind whatever words you want; but you need it just as much as me.”
”The need to trust is not important to me,” he said flatly.
”It is to me.” Her voice broke on the last words.
Wren's eyes seemed to flatten-to lose the last vestiges of expression they had held before. It was as if a mask of gla.s.s slid down over his gaze. His anger was gone. His rage might never have existed. She stared at him and reached out through her gate. His bioenergy was almost nonexistent; his voice was distant as the gray-black tops of the mountains. ”I know you, Feather-Tsia-of Ciordan. Guide of the mere guild. Dance-fighter from the desert where I first saw you walk the flames of your trade. I know you,” he repeated. ”I don't have to trust you.”
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