LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

end.”

      “He came to settle with you,” Konrad said, glaring at the tracker.

      “Settle,” the tracker echoed. “That sounds fitting.”

      But the years and pain bore down on Anna, bleeding the last of the air from her lungs. She was faintly aware of drawing a breath. Aware of murmuring beyond ringing ears, the subtle flickers of light dancing upon tempered iron. She moved closer, closer, sensing his shape looming as it had done in those damned woods, stretching up and over her until it consumed her sight, until the weight of his blade fell into her open palm and she was young once again, trapped in the memories she’d worked so feverishly to wrap in linen and tuck away in the shelves of her mind….

      Anna drove the blade through his eye.

      The tracker’s head snapped back, twisting sharply toward the light as Anna forced the iron deeper. There was the low, muffled screech of a boar, then the wet churning of sinew and membranes. Yet the tracker did not advance, nor did he lash out. His burlap visage slowly spun toward Anna, plagued by a blossoming red blot, and its living eye fell upon her with placid interest.

      What now, young one?

      Again she was weak and helpless, dully sensing the scrape of metal over bone, the familiar yet wicked pulse of hayat’s fabric, the fruitless trembling in bone-white knuckles and an aching wrist. All of her measured breaths and ascetic days meant nothing now. She craved death, she craved pain. There was no watcher behind her awareness, only an animal.

      “Never had a taste for formalities,” the tracker growled. “Passion. That was what we liked about you.”

      Hard, broken gasps. Tears winding down in tingling rivulets. Throbbing heartbeats that kicked through her sternum and up into her throat.

      “Anna,” Konrad said.

      It was the tone she’d taken with the girl—not just a girl, but Ramyi, the girl who mattered. Collected, sharp, a warning as much as a plea to reason. Something about it cut her to the bone. She tore her hand from the leather-woven grip, fighting for every scrap of air she could pull into her lungs, and stared at the tracker. Her eyes were burning, but she focused through their vinegar sting.

      “Nothing to say?” The tracker gently drew the blade from his eye. Spindle by spindle, milky tissue sealed the gaping red incision. “Not the Anna I remember.”

      She waited until her shoulders fell and her voice found cold stillness. “Because I’m not Anna.”

      “If it walks like a hound, barks like a hound…”

      “You’ve not felt my teeth.”

      The tracker studied the blade in his hand. “Spare some forgiveness if I beg to differ, girl.” A huff, a ripple of breath across his burlap. “Looks like in the end, after all those banners and bodies and the rest, you’ll be the one grinning. Bet you’ve been dreaming about this since we parted, haven’t you? Never seen eyes with that sort of fire.”

      Anna looked at Konrad. “What is he talking about?”

      “Treating me like a wisp?” the tracker asked.

      “I have nothing to say to you,” she whispered.

      “Come off it. A thousand days, a thousand runts prowling in the hills. Every cracked brain from Kowak to Dulstaka knows who slipped their leashes and gave ’em a scent.” The tracker shook his head. “Say what you like, Anna, but our silence doesn’t suit you.”

      “He’s come for the Breaking,” Konrad explained, gazing emptily at the carpet. “I trust his words.”

      “The words of a serpent,” Anna said. Many had sought the Breaking in the ashes of the war, but those who’d knelt before her had been wandering anchorites, guilt-wracked butchers on the verge of madness, victims who’d seen their lives torn away and left with a craving for cessation. And she’d been grateful to anoint them, staring down into blank eyes and blank flesh. It was more than the obliteration of their essence—it was a return to the welcoming void they’d known before the womb, long before existence thrust them into separation and ignorance.

      But the tracker was not like the others.

      He was a man who’d grown to love his cage of flesh. He’d tasted some strain of that same void, surely, but it had only fed his broken mind, sapping meaning from the world that he knew as his plaything.

      Some men were beyond redemption. Aberrations of life, vessels the gods had forgotten to imbue with a conscience.

      Killers who took refuge in honor.

      “Taking a bite into gifted gold, aren’t you?” the tracker asked. “Take what you’ve been after, girl. Open my throat, scrape out my marrow, stretch my skin out over cursed wood. Dance in the fucking blood, for all it’s worth. Grove knows how many spirits are waiting to pick me out of their teeth.”

      Konrad sighed. “He means it, Anna.”

      “What are you playing at?” she asked.

      “Death,” the tracker said.

      “Tell me the truth,” she said softly, “or we’ll carve it out of you.”

      “Hard work has its day of recompense,” he replied. “You gave Rzolka its torch. Suppose that was its last chance, all things boiled down. A few years of glory, a few whelps put under the soil, but now—now it’s all in your lap, girl. Way back when I first saw those eyes, I knew you’d wind up towering over bodies. So take your spoils and enjoy it. I’ll scream as much as you like.”

      Anna sensed the rattled edge in his voice like a faint breeze. It was subtle, nearly imperceptible, but the razor-mind caught its warbling tail and shaking timbre. Her lips widened into a thin smile. “No.”

      His right eye twitched. “No?”

      “Death belongs to the humble,” she whispered. “Surely a god has no need for it.”

      “You’ve grown sick, haven’t you? Fine. Let me squeal a bit before you open my veins.”

      “I’ll do whatever I please.”

      “I know what you want.”

      “You know nothing about me,” she said. “Not anymore. But I’m certain of what you want, because you’re a hound. A sad, starving hound. You talk about knowing my eyes, but I know yours. All you crave is control.”

      “No control in letting you gut me.”

      “You want to die on your terms,” she said, taking a step forward, drowning in his stench of marsh-rot and liquor and bile. “You let me believe I was in command, but you knew what scared me, didn’t you? Those days are gone.” Another step. “What could you possibly take away from me now? My life? Those I love? Everything burned away, but I remain. And now you’ll understand fear.”

      The tracker’s chest swelled with a spastic rhythm. “You watched Volna’s men march to the gallows. Don’t act like you’re not after blood, girl.”

      “Once I knew a girl who would’ve given anything to see you bleed,” she replied. “But she died long ago. You made sure of that.”

      Bones creaked along the tracker’s wrists. “What do you want, then?”

      “Far less than you.”

      “You can stomp us out. Right here, right now.”

      “I already have. But your death occurred in council rooms and referendums, not at the end of a blade.” She tapped the tracker’s chest with a crooked finger. “I want to know what has you running scared.”

      “Seems clear that I’ve had my time with running.”

      “You’ll never outrun living,” she said. “It’s nipping at your heels, isn’t it? It must be crushing you. Imagine how shattered your mind will be in a hundred years, a thousand…when you’ve seen

Скачать книгу