The Silenced Tale, стр. 104

“Last sec’rt,” Elgar says, grinning now, mischievousness warring in his eyes with the pain. He takes a deep, bubbling breath, gathers his strength to speak clearly. “Viceroy has no love in him. His mother, she lov’d ’im, but . . . m’be ’cause I nev’r unnersood what’s mys’lf.”

“No . . .” Pip says. “Elgar, no, don’t say that.”

The healer dumps out another phial, but it is diluted in the blood. It’s not working. Nothing’s happening. It’s like the liquid is still just a prop. It’s infuriatingly ineffectual and each uncorked phial smashes what little hope we are clinging to just that much more.

“Fans . . . people I pa-pay—a-agents, PAs, but . . . but not real love. Not . . . not fam . . . family.”

“You’re our family,” Pip says fiercely, grabbing his hand alongside mine. “We love you.”

“Do . . . you?” Elgar asks, a dribble of blood appearing at the lower corner of his mouth. “All ’f you?” He tries to roll his head to the side to see Kintyre.

“Absolutely,” Bevel says, and there are tears on his cheeks now, too, fat and rolling, and I can’t recall ever having seen my brother-in-law cry before. Not even when I stepped into the Overrealm for the first time, when I thought I’d never see them again. “Always.”

“Oh,” Elgar says, and it is a great gusting woosh. Blood splatters his lips. “Tha’s nice. No . . . na nice . . . copacetic.”

He exhales then, long and slow. It goes on forever, for an age, for an eon. Silence rings through the hall. Even Ahbni’s struggles have stilled. We watch, each of us, eyes wide and breaths caught in our whole, unharmed lungs. We wait.

But his chest doesn’t rise again.

Bevel is uttering Words of Healing, Words of Comfort, Words of Reversal, over, and over, and over, the first prayer I have ever seen anyone offer up to our creator. Pip’s eyes flare violet with each Word, whites showing all around.

“I hear them,” she whispers, licking her lips. “Forsyth, I hear—”

And then, like a tap being shut, the flow of Bevel’s Words cuts off. He sits back on his heels, lowers his head, heaves a wrenching groan, and howls.

“Oh god, no,” Pip blurts, tears and snot mingling and bubbling on her lips. Her voice is like a crack of thunder; it shatters the moment, the stillness. She turns into my arms, thumps her forehead painfully against my sternum, presses her mouth to my jerkin, and screams. Her hands fist in my sleeves, and she cries: “Stay! Stay! Oh god, don’t go, don’t go!”

“I’m here,” I assure her, my own hands coming up to cradle the back of her head with no concern for the blood I’m smearing on her skin, her clothes, into her hair, into the dips and valleys of her scars. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I’m not sure if it’s the truth, though. My extremities have begun to tingle. My breath feels shallower, less real. Like I’m not getting enough oxygen from the air. My ears have begun to ring with a high, tinny whine. And under that, I think I hear . . . I hear a voice, calling out.

“Wyndam,” Kintyre breathes, and his eyes are glassy, his posture loose. Bevel looks the same. Dazed and staring at his fingers, he licks his lips over and over again, chasing sensation.

“Don’t fade,” she moans. “I couldn’t stand it if—”

“Bao bei,” I choke, panic rising hard and fast, burning in my throat. “Alis!” I scrabble at Pip’s shoulders, trying to force my fingers to curl, to grasp, to hold on, but they are dead weights at the end of my wrists. My skin washes cold, and hot, prickling and sweating, and no, Writer, no, I don’t—I don’t want to—I don’t—

“I don’t want to go!”

“I forbid it!” Pip shouts, and she grabs my face in her bloody hands, holding hard and tight. It should hurt, but I can barely feel it. She looks up, eyes flaring violet again, lashes spiked with tears. “You stay! You all stay!”

The command hits me behind the heart hard enough that I sway on the spot. I hear Kintyre and Bevel grunt. Feeling returns to my body like a stone dropping through my stomach. I gag and gasp, light-headed and nauseous. Kintyre flops back onto his arse with an ungodly belch, and Bevel covers his mouth with his hand, pressing the other against his stomach and swallowing hard.

“What did you—?” Kintyre tries to say, and has to stop halfway through to gulp and gasp. “Pip, how did—?”

In the periphery of my vision, the healer jerks back into motion. His face is still covered by his hood, but he is focused on the blood on his hands. He too retches, but it must be from the gore.

“Did we almost . . . ?” Bevel asks, and his voice quavers. “Are we going to vanish?”

“No,” I whisper over the top of my wife’s head. “Not anymore.”

Relieved, Bevel drops the blood-soaked short-robe and wraps his arms around his trothed. Kintyre is white-faced and shaking, eyes wide and shocky. Bevel pulls Kintyre down, arms around his head, hiding his trothed’s face against his own neck. Kintyre heaves a massive sob and clings to Bevel like a drowning man. I stand. Or try to. My knees wobble; my spine cannot seem to unbow. There is nothing nearby for me to clutch to stay upright. I sway.

Splayed on the floor, hateful and obscene, Elgar is still and breathless.

His eyes, blue and frightened, still stare up at the ceiling. His hands are lax at his sides, his legs flopped akimbo. His stomach and chest are bare and splashed with red. The hole in his back seeps blood like a spring in a glade, still, and it is too much. It is disrespectful.

I lean down, shaking, wobbling, and gently, respectfully, lower his eyelids for him. My fingers don’t seem to want to work, and it takes me much longer than