Chapter 23: The Gift

Frankie

The room where I had arrived was waiting for me.

The circle in the floor and the carved stones hadn’t changed. Neither had the smell of old dust and something that should never have been left indoors.

They’d polished the chains for my welcome.

Azrath stood beneath a suspended globe of dark glass. Light moved inside it, slow and red, like a heart viewed through closed eyelids. Silver lines ran from its frame into the floor and out through the walls.

I recognized the pattern from Brannik’s map. Every road led here.

“You remember this chamber,” the Boss said.

“Hard to forget the decorating.”

He laughed. The sound hung around after his mouth stopped moving.

On a stone table lay a set of ceremonial robes, a silver cup, and a knife too clean to have an honest purpose.

“Liora would hate those,” I said.

“Liora hates nearly everything. It is one of her distinguishing talents.”

He sounded like a man discussing difficult relatives before a wedding.

Maybe that was what he thought this was.

“I need to know the price.”

“You have already earned—”

“Not what I paid. What everybody else pays.”

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he led me to the glass.

He called it the heartglass and tried explaining what it contained. It wasn’t his heart or quite his soul, but whatever it was, you had to kill it to make the rest stay dead.

That part I understood.

“The body may be destroyed,” he said. “The pattern survives. Given substance, it returns.”

“And the substance?”

He touched one of the silver lines.

The glass cleared.

I saw the valley.

I saw roads and houses as though I stood among them all at once. The square gave way to the tavern kitchen, where Rosella was kneading dough while Benny pretended not to steal pieces.

Threads of pale light connected the buildings to the markers.

More threads connected the people.

I found Mara without trying.

She stood beside the garden wall talking to Della. One hand rested on the unfinished timber bed.

The thread at her chest shone as brightly as any other.

“No,” I said.

Azrath hadn’t finished explaining.

I didn’t need him to.

“An immortal existence cannot be maintained by a mortal allotment,” he said. “It must be endowed with sufficient life to stand outside the common cycle.”

“The town.”

“The district. A distributed contribution. You have made it exceptionally healthy.”

All that food going into the winter stores. All the wagons I’d helped bring to town. I looked at the threads.

“They die.”

“Their brief lives become something enduring.”

“They die.”

“Yes, but in death they serve a greater purpose. Your ascension.”

He finally gave me a straight answer.

I’d given him plenty of chances to say something else.

He’d taken every one.

“All of them?”

“Enough.”

He began explaining numbers. Efficiency. How the preparations reduced waste. There would be lives left outside the marked region. New settlers. New markets. In fifty years, the valley would flourish again under the rule of two men who remembered what it had taken to build it.

He had planned canals, schools, a road through the mountains. My ideas. I’d told him we needed those, and he’d listened.

Just hadn’t figured on the same people using them.

“You see the possibilities,” he said.

I did.

That made me want to be sick.

“Cancel it.”

Azrath looked at me.

“You are afraid.”

“Yeah.”

“That is natural.”

“Afraid you ain’t hearing me. I said no.”

The light in the heartglass brightened.

The patience went out of his voice.

“I have labored for this gift. I have spent resources you cannot comprehend. I have judged you worthy of standing beside me when kingdoms now unborn have become dust.”

“I didn’t ask you to kill my town.”

“You ask for things you do not yet understand how to obtain.”

“Then don’t give ’em to me.”

He turned toward the image of Mara.

His voice softened again.

“It is the girl.”

I stopped looking at the glass.

“Careful.”

“Francesco. You will love other women.”

He said it kindly.

Like a father telling a boy the pain would pass.

“She is precious to you now. I understand. I once believed the world could not continue after a particular pair of eyes ceased to look upon it. But time is generous. There will be other companions. Other servants. Other faces at your table.”

I looked at the woman in the glass.

She was laughing at something Della had said.

Other women. Like I’d misplaced a hat.

Mara tucked her hair behind her ear. There was dirt on her cheek. She didn’t know we were looking.

Last night she’d told me where the kitchen door ought to go.

I could still feel her mouth against mine. Still hear the certainty in her voice when she said she knew what I could become.

I’d walked into this room hoping to find a way to keep that forever.

Azrath waited for me to be sensible.

I’d waited beside a falling weight for Al to be sensible too.

“Francesco.”

I looked at him.

I had no plan for the glass or for getting past the guards if he decided I wasn’t leaving. I was afraid enough that my knees had begun to feel unreliable.

I knew what yes would make me.

“They’re my people,” I said.

“And you would let their mortality limit you?”

“I would let them live.”

He touched my shoulder.

The gesture would have been reassuring from a living man.

“You belong to more than this little valley. I saw that when you first stood before me. You were frightened and alone, and you still had the wit to make yourself useful. I gave you shelter. Authority. A place.”

I thought of Vincent buying supper for a hungry boy.

Of the chair I’d pulled out for Hobb.

Of the question I’d almost asked my crew. After everything I did for you.

I knew the next words before he said them.

“After everything I have given you,” Azrath said, “you would betray me?”

I took the ring off.

My finger had a pale mark beneath it.

“You gave me a job.”

I set it on the table.

“You gave me a chance. I won’t pretend you didn’t.”

The seal followed it.

“But you don’t get to spend their lives because you were good to me.”

His hand closed around my throat.

I didn’t see him move.

One moment I stood beside the table. The next, my feet were scraping stone and the wall pressed cold through my coat.

I couldn’t breathe.

The gun was under my arm. It might as well have been in Chicago.

Azrath’s empty face hovered inches from mine.

“You are a moment,” he said. “A brief, frightened moment with the arrogance to mistake its attachment for wisdom.”

I clawed at his wrist.

Nothing moved.

“I am offering you time to understand.”

Black spots spread at the edges of the room.

I thought of Mara’s hand against mine in the garden.

I wanted that hand again.

Couldn’t get enough air to tell him anything.

Azrath released me.

I hit the floor and dragged air into my chest.

He stood over me.

For a moment, I thought he looked ashamed.

Then he looked at the ring.

He was disappointed in me. I knew that look from men standing over somebody they’d just beaten.

“You need time,” he said.

I got one knee beneath me.

“I need you to stop.”

“The rite takes place at dawn the day after tomorrow.”

“I said no.”

“Then the gathered life will renew my own vessel. The preparation cannot be discarded because you suffer a passing failure of perspective.”

Give me the Gift, feed himself. Same people dead.

All I’d done was turn down my share.

I stood using the wall.

“Let them leave.”

“The boundary wards are already engaged.”

“Then open them.”

“Go home, Francesco. Think, my Eye. Remember what I have offered you.”

* * *

The guards let me pass.

I didn’t understand until I looked back. Azrath stood beside the heartglass with the ring in his palm.

He believed I would return.

I’d come back after Garran. Come back after Oren.

He was waiting for me to cool off.

Why wouldn’t he?

The road down to town seemed longer than it had going up. At the boundary stones, two farmers argued with soldiers. One tried to push past and dropped to his knees, gasping as the silver lines brightened beneath his feet.

The soldiers hauled him back inside.

I dismounted and helped him sit. He recognized me.

“Sir Francesco. Tell them.”

I looked at the bare place on my coat.

“I can’t order them anymore.”

His face changed.

I stayed until his breathing steadied.

Then I went home.

* * *

Mara saw my throat before she saw my hands.

She came across the room fast.

“What happened?”

I tried to answer.

My voice wouldn’t manage it properly.

She brought water. Benny closed the door. Somebody found the others.

I sat at our table.

Benny put the water within reach. Brannik moved the accounts out of the way. Hobb stayed by the door until Rosella told him to sit.

Mara pulled her chair close.

Other faces at your table.

The bastard hadn’t understood a thing.

“I quit,” I said.

For one second, nobody moved.

Then Mara took my hand.

“Tell us.”

So I did.