The Silenced Tale, стр. 105
Lightly, gently, I kneel and lay the length of cloth over Elgar’s form. Clothing his nakedness. Blocking the harsh overhead glow from his face.
And then a noise from behind us grabs my attention.
At first, I think it is the Viceroy, come to finish us all while we’re distracted by death, but then I realize it is the sound of whimpering, and fabric tearing. Ahbni scrambles to her feet in my periphery. She is shaking, shocky as well, her makeup running down her face with her own tears. As if she has any right to weep when she was the one who murdered him.
“You!” I hear myself roar, and I am on my feet before I really register that I intend to stand. Then two sets of strong arms wrap around my shoulders, pressing, gripping hard, holding me back. “No!”
But they are not strong enough. They are not stronger than my rage, than my agony, than my grief. I will kill that bitch for this. I will . . . I will—
I know my brother’s fighting techniques better than he thinks I do. I’ve watched him spar. I’ve read Bevel’s scrolls.
I drop to my knees, startling both men and working against their hold. My arms slip through their hands, and I dash forward from my crouch like a sprinter.
“Forsyth!” Pip shrieks when I break free. “Stop!”
Ahbni doesn’t expect me to go for her. Perhaps she expects me to stay at Elgar’s side, perform the first aid exercises that are meant to pound life back into a body. No. I do not feel like fighting for a life already extinguished, not today. Today, I am going to revenge it.
She dives for the dagger, which Kintyre had foolishly left on the floor when he’d forced her to drop it. Overconfident arse. No matter. I am faster than a child with a weapon she does not know how to use.
Her long curtain of hair makes it hard for me to get purchase on her neck, and she slips away at first, screaming in terror when she realizes what I mean to do. That I mean to harm her. To end her. She slashes wildly, amateurishly, at me with the dagger—defiled, bloody, desecrated—and I slam my forearm against her wrist. The blade clatters away. Ahbni backs up a step, then another, hands up and shoving, slapping at me, and I don’t care. I don’t care. Let her slap and scratch all she likes.
It’s easy, Writer. It is so easy to sweep a leg out, to trip her. She falls backward, eyes wide, whites showing all around, but she doesn’t land. I fist my hand in her shirt, right above her throat. With all the force of my rage, I slam her down against the cement floor. Her head bounces, there is a loud crack, and Ahbni convulses. I crouch over her, knees pressing her arms into the ground as her hands flail uselessly, like leaves in a strong breeze on the end of a fragile twig. So easy to snap.
The skin of her neck is silky—smooth to the touch, I note absently—when I wrap my hands around it and squeeze.
“Stop him!” Pip sobs somewhere behind me. “Kin! Stop him!” And then Pip is beside me, Elgar’s blood still warm on her hands as she scrapes and scrabbles at my wrists. “Enough! Forsyth, please!”
But my vision is hazed with red, with rage, with agony, and all I can see, all I want to see is the way Ahbni’s face is turning red, and puce, her tongue growing fat in her mouth, her eyelids fluttering, those pretty false lashes flicking up and down as her eyes roll in her head and her heels keep the tempo of her death, beating on the floor.
Pip shoves hard at my shoulders, but I will not be swayed. I will not. I am the Shadow Hand of Hain. I am the Lordling of Lysse. I am the arbiter of justice, of what is right, and I say that this loveless, heartless bitch must die.
Pip sways back, and then, balling her fist, cracks me hard across the jaw. Those months of preparing Pip for a physical fight, those hours in boot camps and martial arts classes all turn against me, condensed into a single blow. I am thrown off the girl. I lose my grip on her throat. I lose my grip on wakefulness.
Black swims up and over my eyes, stars dazzling in the periphery, and I feel a hard, crunching jolt as my right elbow slams hard into the concrete floor. And, just like that, I am down, on my back. I try to rise, hands curled into talons, determined to finish—I will finish—but a blow to my stomach lays me flat, knocks all the air from me, and I flop back, gasping and hacking and trying not to choke on my own vomit. Pip stands over me, her face like a thunderstorm, hands on her hips like a conquering giant. I try to kick her ankle, feeling petulant, wronged, but she shifts out of my reach. Horrible bully. Just like my brother!
How dare she stop me?
“How dare—” I hiss and cough, but I cannot breathe.
I roll onto my side, reach again for my prey, but Pip is between us. Her back is to me now, and she has Ahbni cradled against her chest, rubbing her back and helping the bitch breathe, the Writer-be-damned traitor. Ahbni is coughing worse than I am, sucking and struggling. Pip is pressing the fabric of her shredded scarf against a gush of red on the back of Ahbni’s head.
Ha! A touch for me, then, at least!
If I could just—but Kintyre steps between us, and I snarl at him, wordless and