Page 88 of Bride of the Enemy Alien

Good. Let him hurt. Let me hurt. Let us both carry the cost with our eyes open instead of polishing it into noble nonsense.

Rosalind straightens. “We have terms. We have witnesses. We have a route and a stop signal. Rhazek, do you still choose this?”

I want to interrupt and speak for him. I want to say how stupid this idea is, but I don’t. The silence between the question and his answer is the narrowest path I’ve ever had to hold.

Rhazek looks at Rosalind first, because she asked. Then Visidion, Syin, Merra, Ila, Renn. Last, me.

“I choose it,” he says. “I choose to stand where the enemy reaches. I choose to let Kessa lie with the road and not with blood. I choose to stop if the agreed signal is given.”

Maybe this is what all my routes were supposed to teach me. Not how to move people like pieces until the City survives another day. I was supposed to learn how to make sure a person still gets to choose where his feet land, even when fear sharpens the word ‘necessary’ into a blade.

“And if you cannot?” Syin asks.

Rhazek’s expression does not change. “Then you stop me.”

“No,” I say.

He meets my eyes.

I step closer to the salt ring, close enough that Merra hisses through her teeth, but I don’t break it. I’m tired, not stupid. The faint green under Rhazek’s throat shifts toward me anyway, the traitorous little spark recognizing whatever the line recognized first.

“You don’t get to ask for death as the first backup plan,” I tell him. “You get ropes. Bitter-root. Salt. Bone pins. Being sat on by Visidion if necessary. Death isn’t a strategy and I don’t care that men get dramatic under pressure. That plan is denied.”

Renn makes a choking sound.

Visidion looks grave. “I can sit on him, if it is required.”

Rosalind closes her eyes. “Please do not make that plan two unless absolutely necessary.”

“It’s plan four,” I say, flashing my teeth. “Plan two is Merra cursing him unconscious.”

“I do not need him unconscious,” Merra says. “Just distracted.”

For one impossible moment, Rhazek looks amused. Then the sphere clicks three times inside its salt wrapping and every bit of warmth drains from the room.

The hook under Rhazek’s throat answers, brighter than before. Not once-pause-again. Not the old wrong rhythm. Three quick pulses. Like bone strikes. Our stop signal.

The local listener has recorded us through Arcan’s sphere.

I stare at the wrapped sphere, then at the slate, then at the faint green glow crawling down Rhazek. Of course the horrible invisible listener records civic structure too.

Rhazek’s hand flexes against his knee. Holding himself still while something inside him tries to turn consent into command. He looks at me. No apology. No plea. A choice he hates, but one he is still making.

“Then,” he says softly, “aim me.”

22

Rhazek

Kessa does not aim me as I asked.

That is her first mistake.

No. Not a mistake. Mercy. The distinction matters to her, and because it matters to her, it has begun to matter to me in ways I do not have time to confront in myself.

The chamber holds its breath after I say the words. Stone above. Stone below. Salt packed into the old cracks until the air tastes dry enough to scrape the back of my tongue. Two lamps burn low against the walls, their flames shielded behind clay covers so even light must behave. Every person in this room stands too still, but that does not mean any of them are calm.

Kessa stands three paces away with her arms folded over her chest, spine straight, mouth controlled. She looks at me as if she is trying to hold two truths in her hands without letting either one slice through her palms.