Page 49 of Fate of the Argosi

‘You stay out of this,’ I told him.

The spire goat took one of those heaving, gut-expanding breaths that precede him knocking me unconscious, then thought better of it and plopped down on a rug to go back to sleep.

‘The goat’s got it right, Rat Girl. You’re not nearly tough enough, not in the way I am or Chedran is. We can be stabbed, beaten, locked up, but that’s all anyone can do to us. We don’t have . . .’ She started to turn, then stopped herself as if she needed to keep staring into the shadows, drawing strength from them for what was to come. ‘It’s your spirit they’ll destroy first.’

Funny choice of words, because my spirit was precisely what I was trying to protect. ‘I can’t walk my path if I’m carrying around unpaid debts. That’s not the Argosi wa—’

‘You’ve paid your debt to the Mahdek three times over. You freed Chedran from Soul’s Grave, rescued those runaways and returned them to the safety of this enclave. You even brought the council of elders a chance of finding a bright and sunny new homeland.’ She turned to face me at last. There was no mirth hiding in the corners of her mouth, no mischief in her eyes, only a hurt both raw and dangerous. ‘You’re done, Rat Girl. Time to hit the road.’

I crossed the hexagonal room, desperately searching my arta loquit for the right words. I chose poorly. ‘I can’t abandon them. They’re my people.’

Yeah, it didn’t sound right to my ears either. Arissa grabbed on to that fact with both hands, just as she grabbed hold of my wrists. ‘No, Rat Girl, the Mahdekaren’tyour people.’ She yanked up my left arm, placed her palm against mine. ‘This.Thisis what’s real. You find someone you trust, someone you . . .’ She shook her head, refusing to say the rest out loud because it would’ve blunted the blow she’d had planned for me all this time.

When it came, I stumbled back from her, punch-drunk. I’d expected some kind of physical attack. Both of us knew a whole bunch of ways to knock a person unconscious. I’d been ready for those. Instead Arissa had taken me out with nothing but her words.

‘I wish someone else had found me in that Berabesq prison.’

She always could surprise me with how quickly she took to weapons of all different kinds. Turned out she was just getting started.

Holding up the disharmony card I’d made of her, she asked, ‘Why’d you paint this?’

‘Because .?.?.’ I couldn’t speak. I was having trouble breathing, still reeling from that hammer blow.‘I wish someone else had found me.’‘I painted that card because I owed you a debt,’ I stammered. ‘You’d saved me a dozen times over and I—’

The flash of her hand whipping past my face was all I saw before I felt the first cut on the edge of my jaw. Disharmony cards aren’t sharp, but she’d struck so fast she’d broken the skin. ‘Bullshit.’ I’d never heard her swear that way before, devoid of any humour or joy, spitting out the word like it was a bad taste in her mouth. ‘You have plenty more of these cards. Why come for me? Why not somebody else?’

I kept trying to regain my balance, awaken my arta forteize, but I couldn’t. ‘Luck of the draw. Your card happened to be the one I pulled from the deck.’

‘Thisdeck?’ She was holding the rest of my disharmonies now, which meant she’d lifted them from my pocket when she’d snapped the other card across my jaw. She fanned out the deck with a flick of her wrist. ‘You just happened to draw my card out of all these other folks who we both know are more deserving of your Argosi pity?’

‘It wasn’t pity. I told you, it was just chance.’

‘Liar.’

With the deck fanned out, she sliced at me again. Even a regular card can cut deep if you strike at just the right angle with enough speed and force. I was ready this time though, and a split second later the cards were drifting down all around us like falling leaves. All except for the card depicting Arissa, which I was holding in my hand.

‘Don’t ever try to hurt me again. You’re not the only one who’s quick on the draw, Arissa, and I know a whole lot more card tricks than you do.’

She smiled, cold and joyless. ‘You figure maybe one of those tricks is where you fool yourself into believing you picked a card at random when in fact you drew the exact one you wanted all along?’

I could’ve lied. I’m not great at it, but my arta valar is enough to fool most people. Would’ve been better for the both of us if I had lied. My mistake was that when I’d snatched the card depicting Arissa out of the air after knocking the deck from her hand, I’d caught it with the painted side facing me. Now I was staring both at the girl I remembered from years ago, captured in brushstrokes and dabs of paint and more longing than I’d ever admitted to myself, and the woman she’d become, who was seeing right through me.

‘I was alone,’ I confessed at last. ‘My head . . . it’s full of these damned Scarlet Verses. They whisper things to me, Arissa. Awful, awful things. I kept dancing around them, but I wasn’t sure I could hold them back much longer. I needed . . .’

You know what I wonder sometimes? Why does anyone ever say goodbye anyway? What comes of giving voice to grief?

‘Say it,’ Arissa demanded.

My arta tuco failed me next. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t see any way to avoid the calamity coming on faster and faster, a boulder picking up speed as it tumbles down the mountain. I could see it plain as day, but my feet couldn’t seem to get me out of its way.

I stared at the card, at the smirk that seemed to rise up all the way from her lips to her eyes. ‘I neededyou, Arissa. I needed your stupid grin and your wild, reckless spirit that always makes me feel like there’s no trap the world’s ever devised that you can’t escape.’

The card went flying from my hand. ‘So you busted me out of Soul’s Grave only to lock me with you in a prison of your own making?’ I’d been staring at her painting so hard that I hadn’t noticed her cheeks were now dripping with tears held back far too long. Only someone whose notion of being free is so absolute, so uncompromising that even bonds of affection are just another kind of shackle, would’ve hurled so much fury into what she said next. ‘You had no business making me fall for you, Ferius Parfax!’

And there it was at last. The blow I couldn’t take. Too sharp. Too bitter. It cut far, far too deep. ‘Don’t you dare pretend you love me,’ I said, the words coming out like gravel soaked in venom. ‘Not that way. Not the way I—’

She shoved me away, only to catch right back up with me, shouting in my face, her outrage burning bright as mine. ‘How the hells am I supposed to knowhowI feel? You think because I haven’t bedded a girl before it means I couldn’t . . . that I’d never want to . . .’ She shook her head, like someone who’s downed too much liquor too fast, and now is trying to keep from passing out. ‘I don’t know how I feel about you, Ferius.’ She stilled, and her eyes rose to meet mine. ‘You should’ve given us both the chance to find out.’

A candle flame of possibility flickered inside me, so faint that only a fool would’ve followed it into unexplored territory. But maybe chasing hope into the darkness is an inevitable part of these performances, these rituals.

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