Elene and Uly and Aunt Mea had only been gone for about thirty seconds when there was a knock on the door. Kylar put down the spatula again and walked to the door. “What’d you forget this time, Uly?” he said as he grabbed a hand towel and opened the door.
It was Jarl.
Kylar felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. He couldn’t believe his eyes. But there he was, lean, athletic, impeccably dressed, as beautiful a man as you’d ever see, his dazzling white teeth showing an uncertain smile. “Hey-ho, Azo,” he said.
Why that greeting? Was Jarl just being cute, or was he also throwing in an appeal to their history together? Definitely the latter. For a long moment, they just stood there, looking at one another. Jarl wasn’t here for a visit. Jarl didn’t visit. For the God’s sake, the man was the Shinga. A true Shinga, the leader of the most feared Sa’kagé in Midcyru.
“How in the nine hells did you find me, Jarl?” Kylar said, being cute too. It was what Jarl had expected Kylar to say the last time Jarl had shown up unexpectedly.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Please,” Kylar said. He put some ootai on and sat across from Jarl, who helped himself to a seat by the window. Silence.
“There’s this job—” Jarl began.
“Not interested.”
Jarl took that in stride. He pursed his lips and looked around the humble room quizzically. “So, uh …what is it about this that you like again?”
“Didn’t Momma K teach tact?”
“I’m serious,” Jarl said.
“So am I. You show up after I tell you I’m out of the business, and the first thing you do is insult the place I live?”
“Logan’s alive. He’s in the Hole.”
Kylar just stared at him, uncomprehending. The words collided with each other and shattered on the floor, shards sparkling with the light of truth, but the whole nothing more than splinters and points too sharp to touch.
“All the wetboys are working for Khalidor. The resisting nobles have retreated to the Gyre estates. Several of the frontier garrisons are still manned, but we have no leader who can unite us. There’s some trouble up in the Freeze that the Godking is worried about, so he hasn’t done anything to consolidate his power yet. He thinks that the noble families will tear each other apart. And if we don’t have Logan, he’s right.”
“Logan’s alive?” Kylar asked stupidly.
“The Godking has our former wetboys looking for me. It’s part of why I came here. I had to get out of Cenaria until we could get word out that Kagé himself is protecting me.”
“No,” Kylar said.
“Every day, the chances that Logan will be discovered get worse. Apparently none of the prisoners in the Hole has recognized him, but they’ve started throwing a lot of people down there. It might please you to know that Duke Vargun is one of them. Look at it as a little bonus. When you rescue Logan, you can kill that twist, too.”
“What?” Kylar said. Wheels were turning too fast for him to catch up. “Jarl,” he said. “Tenser isn’t Tenser Vargun. Don’t you see? He got himself thrown in the Hole so he can do the hardest time there is. Then they produce the real baron—alive—and Tenser is released. He comes to the Sa’kagé a month later with a grudge for his false imprisonment and all the access of a duke and what happens?”
“We take him in,” Jarl said quietly. “How could we resist?”
“And he destroys you, because he’s not Tenser Vargun,” Kylar said. “He’s Tenser Ursuul.”
Jarl sat back, stunned. After a minute, he said, “You see, Kylar? This is why I need you. Not just for your skills, for your mind. If Tenser’s there right now, he’s only going to wait long enough that his stay in the Hole is credible, and then he’ll tell his father that Logan’s in there. We have to go now. Now!”
The ring box was burning against Kylar leg. He looked through the open window as Jarl spoke, seeing the city he’d hoped would be his home for the rest of his life. He loved this city, loved the hope here, loved healing and helping, loved the simple pleasure of being praised for his potions. He loved Elene. She proved to him that he could do more good by healing than by killing. It all made sense …and yet …and yet….
“I can’t,” Kylar said. “I’m sorry. Elene would never understand.”
Jarl rocked back on two legs of the chair. “Don’t get me wrong, Azo, because I grew up with Elene too, and I love the girl. But why do you give a shit what she thinks?”
“Fuck, Jarl.”
“Hey, I’m just asking.” Then he let the question sit, his eyes never leaving Kylar’s face.
The bastard, he really had been studying under Momma K for all those years.
“I love her.”
“Sure, that’s part of it.”
Again, that I’m-waiting stare.
“She’s good, Jarl. I mean, like people aren’t good where we came from. Not good because it will get her something. Not good because people are watching. Just good. At first I thought she was just made that way, you know, like your skin is black and I’m devastatingly handsome.”
Jarl raised an eyebrow. He didn’t laugh.
“But now I’ve seen that she has to work at it. She does work at it, and she’s been working at it for as long as I’ve been working at learning to kill people.”
“So she’s a saint. Doesn’t answer my question,” Jarl said.
Kylar was silent for a full minute. He rubbed the grain of the wood table with a fingernail. “Momma K used to say that we become the masks we wear. What’s under the mask for us, Jarl? Elene knows me in a way no one else does. I’ve changed my name, changed my identity, left everything and everyone I’ve ever known. I’m all lies, Jarl, but as long as Elene knows me, maybe there is a real me. Do you know what I mean?”
“You know,” Jarl said. “I was wrong about you. When you got yourself killed saving Elene and Uly, I thought you were a hero. You’re no hero. You just fucking hate yourself.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a coward. So you’ve done bad stuff. Join the club. You know what? I’m glad you did; it made you something better than a saint.”
“A killer’s better than the saint? What sort of fucked-up Sa’kagé thinking is—”
“It made you useful. Do you know what it’s like in Cenaria right now? You wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t come here to find a killer. I came to find The Killer, the Night Angel, the man who’s more than just a wetboy because the problems we have now are bigger than any wetboy could handle. There’s only one man who can help us, Kylar, and that’s you. Believe me, you weren’t my first choice.” He stopped abruptly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jarl wouldn’t meet his eye. “I didn’t mean—”
“What were you about to say?” Kylar said in a dangerous tone.
“We had to be sure, Kylar. We were very respectful, I want you to know that. It was Momma K’s idea. He used to be immortal, we had to make sure …”