Authors: Laura Resnick
But this wasn't friendship. Kiloran had no friends. Not now, not then, not ever. This was coercion. And Baran had forgotten how good Kiloran was at it.
"This thing between us will be finished someday," Kiloran said, his voice as warm as it had been in the days when Baran had trusted him. "But you and I should finish it." His fingers tightened and his voice grew stronger as he demanded, "Do really want Tansen to finish it for you?"
"No," Baran said honestly. "I don't want Tansen or anyone else to finish it for me."
"Then come home," Kiloran urged. "Join us—join me—in securing the future." He nodded. "After we have put our house in order, then we can afford to fight within the Society. But for now, we must stand united—"
"United against our enemies," Baran said. "For this is what makes us stronger than they, what makes us endure while they perish."
"Do you accept the truce?" Kiloran asked.
Baran nodded. "I accept the truce."
"Will you relinquish control of the Idalar to me?"
"Ah." Baran smiled slowly. "Perhaps if we cooperated..."
"Release it," Kiloran demanded.
"He has accepted the truce and offered to cooperate," Kariman pointed out. "That's enough."
"It's not enough," Kiloran insisted. "Shaljir must—"
"Working together," Gulstan said with obvious relish, "you can starve the city of water. Baran has said he will cooperate."
"If his friendship is secure," Dulien said to Kiloran, "why should you demand that he give up his power?"
Baran smiled innocently at Kiloran, enjoying the moment. "Shall we confirm our alliance,
siran?
"
He saw the old man struggle with his disappointment and anger. "If you betray me—"
"You'll kill me the way you killed Josarian?" Baran shrugged. "You can certainly try."
Kiloran prodded, "And you vow to help us destroy Tansen?"
"I'll even help you destroy Mirabar," Baran offered. "Although the rumor out of Zilar is that she's currently well-protected by... Now who was it again?" Baran snapped his fingers. "Oh, yes! Najdan the assassin. Now isn't that interesting?"
The other waterlords were clearly surprised by this news. So much for the quality of their informants. Kiloran's pasty face seemed to go even a little paler as his jaw worked, but he held his silence.
"So really," Baran mused, "I suppose there are actually several possible explanations for how one of your
shir
wound up buried in the, er, body of one of Wyldon's hideous sentries. Hmmm?"
"I will deal with Wyldon," Kiloran said coldly. "And also with Najdan."
"And what shall I do?"
"Go home to Belitar. Await my signal. Prepare to pull the Idalar out of Shaljir." Kiloran paused and said with a touch of malice, "I imagine you'll need to rest and save your strength."
So the old man had indeed noticed something. Baran wondered just how much he had guessed. No doubt, he would soon attempt to find out more. Fortunately, no one but Velikar knew, and she had promised not to talk. She might be a dreadful woman, but Baran felt certain she kept her promises.
"What about Tansen and Mirabar?" Baran asked.
"Yes," Kiloran said. "We must consider precisely how to eliminate them. But first..." The bucket of drinking water which rested in the shade roiled noisily in response to Kiloran's magic. A slender tendril of water arose from it and snaked through the air. "First, shall we confirm our alliance before these witnesses?"
"By all means."
Kiloran extended his arm to Baran, who took it in an elbow clasp. The old man's physical strength had ebbed and weakened over the years, but his sorcery had only grown stronger. Baran was aware of both things now as the snaking tendril of water started coiling around their clasped forearms. It flowed continuously, never resting, twining and re-twining coldly around their warm flesh as they recited their vows.
"I swear..." Kiloran began.
"I swear..." Baran echoed, caught in the web of the old man's power, drawn into the seductive beauty of the sorcery they both commanded with a skill unknown to anyone else alive.
"By the power born in me, by the cold purity of the...
"...of the element with which I rule men, women, children, even the land itself..."
"By the ancient secrets of water magic entrusted to me and by the inviolable laws of the Honored Society..."
"I swear that I will honor this truce now declared between us, until we vanquish our enemies. I will not harm you..."
"Or your friends, or the friends of your friends..."
"Until the blood of our enemies flows...
"...even as this water flows now."
Baran felt the water that twined around their joined arms grow even colder with Kiloran's sorcery, so cold that an ordinary man's arm would be damaged by it.
"If you betray me," Kiloran warned, "nothing—"
"As you once betrayed me?" Baran said, flooded anew with hatred.
The frigid watery coil tightened, squeezing hard. A man would be in agony. Even a waterlord should be uncomfortable now. But Baran was not just anyone, and the hot flood of hatred brought a return of his strength. Smiling coldly into Kiloran's dark eyes, Baran started melting the water which bound them.
"I taught you well," Kiloran observed, struggling for supremacy, holding onto the water with his will, freezing it even as Baran melted it. The water glowed and writhed in torment as they wrestled for control of it.
"You were his teacher?" Meriten blurted, reminding them of the others' presence.
"Now we know who to blame," Dulien grumbled.
Ferolen sputtered, "You—You—You made him a waterlord?
You're
the one who—"
"Made him what he is," Kiloran said with a flash of bitterness.
Baran laughed, enjoying the moment, feeling revived. "You don't really believe
you
taught me everything I know, old man?"
The comment startled Kiloran enough to distract him from the liquid shackles binding them together. Baran felt the old wizard's will fall away from the icy coil around their arms. Pleased, Baran melted the water. It dissolved into a silvery mist, freeing him from Kiloran's grasp.
"So you had another teacher," Kiloran murmured thoughtfully. "Of course. That explains a great deal that used to puzzle me."
"How I became so powerful based only on what I learned from you?" Baran suggested.
"Yes."
"At least," Ferolen said to Kiloran, "you evidently had the sense to stop teaching him when you realized what a madma—"
"No, that's not what happened," Baran said, the steel in his voice making Ferolen look at him with surprise.
"Who else taught you?" Kiloran asked, curious enough to betray his interest.
"Good question," Ferolen said. "Who in all of Sileria would be fool enough—"
"Perhaps it was someone tired of teaching mediocre half-wits, Ferolen." Baran smiled sweetly and added, "For example."
"Keep in mind," Ferolen warned, "that
I
have not sworn a truce with you."
"If you had the guts to attack me, you'd have done it years ago," Baran said dismissively.
"I've never known who taught you, Baran," Gulstan remarked, raising his voice a little to be heard above Ferolen's sputtering. "And I've always wondered."
"Come to think of it," Kariman added, "I've never known either."
"I always assumed he killed whoever taught him," Dulien muttered.
"And now we know he's tried," Meriten said with a pointed glance at Kiloran. "So maybe he did kill his next teacher."
"I do so enjoy being a man of mystery," Baran said, delighting in Kiloran's scrutiny.
The old wizard shrugged with feigned indifference. "Well, it doesn't matter."
"And there are so many things in a man's past," Baran murmured. "Are there not,
siran?
"
"So many things best left in the past where they always belonged," Kiloran said with deceptive gentleness.
Baran felt it again, as Kiloran meant him to—the hot sorrow of his loss, the futile rage of his helplessness, the murderous frustration inspired by Kiloran's casual indifference to all that he had destroyed.
"And there are so many things yet to avenge," Baran whispered, his voice choked with wild fury.
The threat hovered in the air between them. Kiloran did not deign to reply. His flat eyes merely gazed back at Baran, cold and hard. Snake eyes. Dragonfish eyes. The eyes of a man born without a heart, without a soul. A man who could hurt without regret, betray without shame, destroy without compassion.
The man I've become, too.
The man Baran had made of himself, because it was the only way he could become strong enough to destroy the man he now faced.
The other waterlords stared at the two of them in fascinated silence. A breeze swept through the village of Emeldar, stirring Baran's hair, carrying the scents of the mountains to him. The scents of his youth—of everyone's youth.
He lowered his gaze, wracked with sorrow.
"Dare I point out," Meriten said, his voice unusually nasty, "that you've just declared a truce and made your vows before witnesses?"
The tension in the air exhausted Baran. The illness riddling his body consumed his strength. The taste of his life was like ashes in his dry mouth.
"Then our business here is concluded, isn't it?" Baran said. "Much as I regret it, I find I must tear myself away from the pleasures of your company and return to Belitar." He smiled whimsically and added, "Tansen's delightful messenger is still waiting around for my answer to his offer of friendship."
"Ah," Kiloran said, showing some interest. "Then you have sent no answer yet?"
"Didn't I just say so, old man? Do try to keep up."
Ferolen snapped, "Must you be such a—"
"Leave it," Kiloran advised Ferolen. He glanced at Baran and added, "He knows what to do now."
Baran arched one brow. "I know what
you
would do."
"Exactly."
"Ah." Baran considered this. "I am to be the poisoned goat?"
"The what?" Kariman said.
"The poisoned goat?" Meriten repeated.
Baran glanced their way. "In the jungles south of Kinto, when villages are troubled by a man-eating tiger, they leave a poisoned goat tethered to a tree at sunset."
"And what the tiger takes for an easy meal," Kariman guessed, "is really his death in disguise?"
"Yes."
"You've been to the Kintish Kingdoms?" Gulstan asked.
"One of or two of them," he replied with a shrug.
"Then you did come from a merchant family, as some say?" Gulstan persisted. "Traveled and traded?"
Baran ignored the waterlord's interest in his past and said to Kiloran, "So I am to make Tansen lower his guard. And then what? Kill him?"
"When the time comes, I'll deal with Tansen myself."
"Ah. Then it's true." Baran smiled and pretended a malicious pleasure he was too weary to feel now. "It's personal. What did he do to you, I wonder?"
Kiloran ignored this, of course. "You will deal with Mirabar."
"A great sorceress like that? You flatter me,
siran
."
"No, I don't think I do," Kiloran said dryly.
"And regardless of who survives, Mirabar or me, you'll have solved at least one problem when it's done."
Kiloran shrugged. "Of course, if you really feel you're not up to it..."
"Oh, that's good," Baran said. "Very good."
"Well?"
Baran caught Vinn's eye and nodded. "The sooner I return home, the sooner we can kill Mirabar, starve Shaljir of water, and bring down Tansen." As his assassin came to his side, he said to the six waterlords before him, "I can't tell you all what a pleasure this has been."
"I know that I shan't soon forget it," Kariman replied.
"Nor do I hope to repeat it," Gulstan added.
"Until we meet again," Baran said to Kiloran. "Which, I sincerely hope, will be when I kill you, old man."
"May the wind be at your back," Kiloran murmured.
A blessing of the sea-born.
Baran's breath stopped. He thought his heart must have stopped. Rage misted his vision. His stomach churned and his throat knotted.
He stared at the grizzled old waterlord in speechless fury for a long, hot moment. Then a traditional
shallah
blessing he hadn't heard—let alone used—in many years came to his lips. "May your son bring you honor and... Oops!" he said cheerfully. "Too late for that, isn't it?"
Baran heard someone—he didn't see who—gasp in shock over this callous reference to Srijan's death. He smiled in bitter triumph as Kiloran's dead eyes revealed more emotion than he had ever before seen in them.