Читать книгу Blood from Stone - Laura Anne Gilman - Страница 13

He still has trouble saying it, trouble going back to that moment. And so, over and over again, they return to it.

“She almost died then. Worse.”

“Worse?”

“There’s worse than dying, and she was there, right on the edge….”

“What happened? What put her there, on the edge?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? What happened. He knows the why, and they’ve figured out, mostly, the how, but…I don’t know. Not the details. But it was bad. It was…

It was hell. The memory played out behind his eyes whenever he was too tired to hold it back: Wren splayed on the ground, her body too still, too cold; her eyes bloodshot and staring, drained of all the vitality that normally filled her body. She had gone in after the FocAs, the Talent who had been trained and turned against their own people. The Lost, they were called now. Lost, and then Retrieved.

“But that wasn’t where it began. That wasn’t where the damage was done. All that came before, and then…She never told me what happened, but I know when…when they attacked her. Those men, those…”

“Take a breath. Hold, and now let it out, easy, the way we talked about. She’s all right.”

She is all right. Except she isn’t. His Wrenlet isn’t a killer. He is. He wants to be a killer again, even though they were long-dead already.

At his Zhenchenka’s hands.

“The men who attacked her, who pushed her up onto the razor’s edge. They deserved to die?” No condemnation, no offer of expiation, just the question.

“Yes.” He has no doubt on that subject. “But her magic should never have been used to murder.”

“You feel that you failed her.”

“I did fail her. And—” The bitterness, here, and nowhere else “—she let me fail her.” He still doesn’t know how to deal with that.