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. . . Her mouth twitches despite itself, then flattens back out. "I could have a teacher tomorrow. Today, if I walked in. Probably. That's if I lied about my temperament. If I could stop doing this-" she gestures at herself, at the room, at the entire fact of standing it uninvited. "And every year I'd get a little less like myself and a little more like - like some shape they'd poured into the mold. I've seen it happen to people. I've Seen it happen to people who haven't done it yet." Her voice has gone thin. "I'd still be alive. I just wouldn't be ALIVE." I don't offer comfort. It's not really in my skillset, and she wouldn't want it anyway - she'd flinch from it the same way she flinches from the idea of joining something bigger than herself. Instead I say, flatly: "Nobody's putting you in a mold. Sit down, or don't. Either way, tell me about this other interested party." It works better than sympathy would have. Her shoulders come down half an inch. She still doesn't sit. She sighs. "An older man. I didn't really get a face. Just a sort of sense of old money, old grudges. He wants your guy dead in a way that points at you. Specifically you though. Now that I think back, maybe it wasn't so much about the mark afterall. I think he would substitute any target, as long as you're going down for the hit." Old money... Old grudges... A man who doesn't care about the mark, only about me going down for it? Yeah. I know exactly who that is. "Ren?" Kes is watching me. She's good at reading people, comes with the trade I suppose. "You went somewhere." "I'm still here." I set the blade down, carefully, pretending my hands don't have opinions about throwing it. "Describe him again." "Old, entitled, like the whole world owes him a debt just for being born." She frowns. "Why? You know him?" "Trained under him." Three words. That's as much as I'm giving him tonight. Eight years he had me. Had me throwing knives before I could hold a fork properly, taking punches and kicks til I learned to block and dodge them. The whole architecture of what I am now was built on his foundation, whether I like it or not. And then /that/ job, and I walked. Never even went back to collect my things, let alone explain myself. Wouldn't have mattered, there was no explanation he'd have accepted anyway. He thinks those years make me his, like I'm some blade he forged and never got to keep. He doesn't get it. I guess one of these days I'll have to resolve that particular loose end in my life. Guess it looks like sooner rather than later. "Yeah, he doesn't want my guy dead," I say. " Doesn't want me caught, either. He wants me forced to come back to him. Wants me on the hook for it, so he can point at the wreckage and say "See I told you, you can't do this without me. I told you, you can't just leave." "Leave what?" I don't answer that. Some things I manage to keep hidden, even from her Past stuff, mostly. "He's wrong," I say instead, and my voice comes out flatter than I mean it to, which, you know, is really saying something. "I don't belong to him. I never did. He just hasn't finished losing that argument yet." Kes is quiet for a moment, turning that over in her mind, looking for the meaning behind the meaning. "You're not going to walk away from this one." . . . | |