“Only remnants left over from an old, nearly forgotten war. As your pet warriors saw, I destroyed them, as my first act of good faith.”
“Is it good faith to threaten me with whatever that is?” She waved her hand at the talisman.
He quit fiddling with it. “Ahh, a nervous habit.” Neither his voice nor his face betrayed any hint of nervousness. “My deepest apologies for making you uncomfortable.”
“You still existing makes me uncomfortable,” Kreya said. “You with a talisman makes me feel like slitting your throat and being done with it.” Especially a talisman she didn’t recognize. She wished Zera had come with her—she could have identified it.
With a smile, Eklor tucked it into one of his pockets. “Better?”
“Not entirely. You’re here. How are you even alive?”
He wiggled his fingers. “Magic.”
“Fuck you. How did you do it?”
“What did your lover tell the crowd? It was a miraculous recovery.”
Kreya stood. “I’m not playing your games. If you won’t answer my questions, we’re done here.”
He held up a hand. “No more games. Ask me another question. A different one. Those moments when I lay near death... they’re painful for me to remember.”
Fine. She had plenty of other questions. They could come back to that rather important one. Sitting again, she asked, “Is it true about your wife and child? Were you trying to bring them back?” She had long wondered why he had ventured down this line of forbidden research. And why he’d abandoned it. “We had been told you sought revenge because of a cable car accident.”
He flinched, but his voice was still smooth and steady. “There was indeed an accident, but I reclaimed the bodies and was seeking to restore my loved ones. I was on the verge of success when my experimentation was discovered by the guild. I had been... less careful about concealing the source of my supplies than I thought I had been.”
“Your murders were discovered.” It was a guess, but knowing what she knew about him, she felt confident it was correct. He hadn’t obtained bones the way she had, from the naturally dead. He’d sped the process along himself. “You’re responsible for many deaths, Eklor. Grand Master Lorn might be grateful to you for his son’s life, but that won’t erase the crimes you’ve committed.”
“I don’t seek to avoid punishment,” Eklor said. “But I do seekto redeem my soul before I face the great silence. I have done grievous harm, and if I can pay back even a fraction of what I owe to the people of Vos, then I have to try.”
“How noble.” She lifted the teacup to her lips, pretended to sip, and lowered it. If he was going to pretend they were having an earnest, honest conversation, she’d play along. “And what brought about this change of heart?”
“Time,” he said simply. “My wife and daughter died in an accident, and I did the unthinkable in a bid to bring them back. When their bodies were destroyed by the guild before I could revive them, all I had left was hate and anger.”
“Are you expecting me to feel sorry for you?”
“No. But I am expecting you to understand me.”
The trouble was shedid. He had done the unthinkable.But so did I,Kreya thought. After Jentt had been killed, she’d abandoned her friends in order to avenge him. And then later, she may not have murdered anyone to save Jentt, but she had broken the law again and again.
“You killed innocent people,” Kreya said.
“Yes. But you crossed a line as well,” Eklor said. “And you’ve been flouting the proof of that, bringing Jentt here to the city with you, allowing him to be seen in public. You don’t believe you did anything wrong, and you don’t regret what you did.”
“You crossed a much more serious line. Mine was a taboo; yours was awarcrime.”
“Yes, I know.” A hint of irritation colored his voice. He took a deep breath. Calmer, he said, “Let me spell this out for you. I committed horrible acts. I will die for them. But before I die, I want to do as much good as I can. It won’t erase what I’ve done. I know that. But I feel I owe it to the world to try.”
He sounded so earnest. Kreya looked into his eyes, the eyesof the man who had killed her husband, and didn’t know what to believe or what to feel. “You feelguilt?”
“Guilt and remorse.”
“When?”
He blinked, confused. “What?”
“When did you start to feel guilt and remorse? Was it after the twentieth death? Or the hundredth? Was it after you were killed? After you’d finally faced the consequences of your actions? Or was it even later than that? You rebuilt your army, whether you deny that fact or not—so it must have been later. What did it?”
He didn’t answer at first. Instead, he placed his teacup in his saucer, rose, and crossed to the window.My exit,she thought. She glanced at the silver door. With the speed talisman, she thought she could make it to the door while he was at the window, if she needed to.
