The Silenced Tale, стр. 106

“Lay back, and do not even think of moving,” my wife threatens, craning her head around to meet my gaze. “I will not hesitate to knock you cold, Forsyth Turn. Don’t think that I won’t.”

My revenge stymied for the time being, I bare my teeth at her in a soundless threat, and lay back, hands out, belly exposed, subdued. I know very well how to play submissive to my brother, how to pretend contrition or acquiescence, how to portray one thing while plotting another. And Kintyre, thick-headed, trusting fool that he has always been, believes me.

Kintyre swings away to crouch beside Pip, the soft-hearted, softer-skulled, blasted buffoon.

“Have we not all learned our lessons about sparing the villains?” I snarl at them both, from the ground. When Kintyre makes no move to stop me, I sit up. “Have we not invited disaster enough?”

“You don’t get to say that after you tried to . . . after you . . . how could you?” Pip says, her voice harsh and graveled with her choler and disappointment.

“Pip,” I say, holding my hands out to her, wanting to pull her into my arms, to feel her warmth, to know that her heart beats and her lungs work because they are doing so right against my own flesh, where I can feel it.

“No,” she says,. “No. You don’t get to . . . not after you . . . oh my god, I am so angry with you I could . . . don’t you dare touch me right now!”

“End her, so that we may finish this!” I shout. “Come now! She is Bootknife! She is the sidekick that one must destroy to summon forth the final antagonist! Do not coddle her!”

“She’s just a confused kid who thought she was doing the right thing,” Pip insists.

“Pip, please,” I shout. “I know you want her to be good. I know you see much of yourself in her and are desperate that she be only misunderstood, but her eyes are not green! She entered into this venture of her own volition. She made this choice!”

“And so, what, you’ll kill her for it?” Pip asks.

“Of course!” I say. “Hainish justice dictates—”

“This isn’t Hain!” And her derision, her hatred is worse than a slap in the face, a punch to the gut, a crack across my jaw. My wife hates me, and it stabs, and stings, and burns. At first, I am indignant, filled with an incandescent righteousness, for how dare she judge me so harshly when all I was doing was avenging my creator, the man who would be my father, when she would do the same to anyone who harmed Martin or Mei Fan or wai po.

But the truth is, she did not. Pip did not try to harm Ahbni for hurting Elgar.

Kintyre, startled by Pip’s harsh words, stares at my wife. “She murdered Elgar Reed,” he says. “The punishment for murder is death.”

“Not in the Overrealm, it isn’t!” Pip says. “You can’t just—”

“Do you really think she’ll regret it?” I ask. “That she will meekly go to jail and become reformed? Pip, do not be a fool.”

“Overrealm justice for a crime committed in the Overrealm!” Pip insists.

“You cannot call to witness two people who do not exist!” I say, punching the air in the direction of Bevel, still guarding Elgar’s corpse. “And I will never support you in this. Let me finish what I started!”

“No!”

“Yes!” a voice howls, but it is not mine. It is not Kintyre’s, not Bevel’s, nor even Pip’s.

It comes from behind us, where the healer has stood this whole time. His white robes dissolve into black smoke, leaving nothingness in its wake. There is nothing there.

“Yes!” the healer’s voice echoes again, and I know it now. Know it for what it is. It is the Viceroy’s.

“Go on,” he says from nowhere, and everywhere. “Go on, Forsyth Turn. Kill her.”

“You want your protégé to die?” Bevel snarls, and the ray-gun is once again in his hand, aimed at the sky, waiting for the opportunity to fire it.

“My protégé?” the Viceroy sneers. “Surely not, Reader. Surely she was yours.”

Pip makes a horrible gulping sound, screwing her eyes shut and shaking her head once. A hit, for the Viceroy, and a palpable one. “She wasn’t,” Pip hisses.

“You already thought of her as such. Young, moldable, teachable. She wanted you, you know. Wanted to save you from your oafish husband, your chained existence as wife and mother.”

“I don’t need saving!” Pip snarls. “This is what I chose!”

“Is it?” the Viceroy chuckles. “Or is it where I put you? My little puppet. My little mole in the Turnish house.”

The scars on Pip’s back flare briefly, and she arches in pain, clenches her fists and jaw. “You like your little puppets, too. The trope is that the villain disposes of the sidekick the moment they stop being useful, but you held on to Bootknife for years and years. He was hot-headed and temperamental, and you kept him because you liked him.”

“Because I had put so much work into him. But her? What does she matter to me?” he challenges.

“After all the work you must have put into getting her on your side?” Pip counters, arguing for the value of a life that only she believes has any.

“Do you really think I’d need to coerce her?” the Viceroy sneers. His tone is both invasive and intimate, and so very wrong. “The people in your world are so filled with hate. I barely have to lift a finger to incite them to fury and violence. They murder each other in the streets and call it policing. They threaten and stalk and harm each other in messages, and texts, and through avenues of communication that we couldn’t even begin to fathom trapped between our covers, in our neat little worlds. Do it, Lordling. Do it.”

“No,” I say, and stand, hands deliberately flexed at my sides. Empty. “No, I shan’t.” Not if it is what the Viceroy wants.

“Do