Shadow's Edge - Brent Weeks [78]
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 fuckedup 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…”
“You dug up my master’s corpse?” Kylar demanded.
“We put it—him—back just how you’d buried him.” Jarl winced. “It was maybe a week after the invasion—”
“You dug him up while I was still in the city?”
“We couldn’t tell you beforehand, and afterward there was no reason to. Momma K said the body would be there, that Durzo had given his immortality to you, but when she saw him…. It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen, Kylar. I mean, I was practically raised by the woman and I’ve never seen her like that. Hysterical, weeping and screaming—here we are, in the middle of the cloudy night, we’d paddled out to Vos Island with oars wrapped in wool, and she starts wailing, out of her mind. I was so sure a patrol would come that I wanted to get off the island immediately, but she wouldn’t leave until he was just how you left him.”
Like Kylar cared that Durzo be left on that damned rock. If they were going to dig him up, they could have at least brought him…. Where? Home? What home did Durzo Blint ever have?
“How’d he look?” Kylar asked quietly.
“Shit. He looked like he’d been in the ground a week, what do you think?”
Of course he did. Dammit, Master Blint, why’d you give me your immortality? Were you just sick of living? Why didn’t you tell me anything? But then, maybe he had told him in the note he’d given Kylar: the note that had been soaked with blood, illegible. “You want me to break into the Hole and save Logan?”
“Do you know who the Godking keeps as his concubines? Young girls from noble families. Prefers virgins. He guesses how much humiliation and debasement each girl can take. Puts them in tower rooms with balconies where all the railings have been torn off so the jump beckons every day. It’s a game for him.”
Kylar kept his voice hard. “Get to the point.”
“He took Serah and Mags Drake. Serah killed herself in the first week. Mags is still there.”
Serah and Mags were practically Kylar’s sisters. Mags had always been his pal. Always quick with a laugh, always smiling. He’d been so self-absorbed since the coup that he’d barely thought of them.
Jarl said, “I want you to rescue Logan, and then I want you to assassinate the Godking.”
“Is that all?” Coldly amused. It was a tone Kylar had heard Durzo