Law of the Broken Earth(81)

She was smiling, an expression that expressed nothing human. She looked happy, even joyful, but hers was a dangerous joy that held nothing of ordinary affection or gentleness. She said, “Jos!” and came to take his hands.

Jos was absurdly flattered that she would speak to him first, that she would come to greet him before she even acknowledged Kairaithin, much less Bertaud. Though he knew she spoke to him first partly as a deliberate slight against Kairaithin, though he knew she had her griffin iskarianere now and never thought of him, he could not help but find the pleasure in her voice flattering. But he stepped backward as she came toward him. He could not help but step back, for the fire that filled Kes, unleashed as it was now, would burn him to the bone and she had plainly forgotten this.

She realized this an instant after he did, and stopped. The white fire that burned so bright in her did not exactly fade, but it ebbed lower and lower, until standing near her was not quite so much like standing near an oven. She reached out to him again, and this time Jos let her take his hands. Her fingers did not seem exactly human in his; they were slender and graceful, exactly as he remembered, but holding her hands was like holding the hands of an alabaster lamp shaped like a woman. She said again, not gently or cheerfully, but with a kind of pleased possessiveness, “Jos.”

He knew perfectly well that she spoke to him and ignored Kairaithin in this pointed way in order to deliver a subtle affront. He knew this. But it did not stop his heart from coming into his throat in the most foolish and childish way. He said, “Kes,” and found he could not say anything else.

“Why do you wish to break the Wall?” Lord Bertaud asked her, very simply and directly, when Kairaithin did not speak.

Kes released Jos’s hands, turning to gaze at the Feierabianden lord. Her smile had grown somehow both more brilliant and sharper-edged. She was wilder than a griffin, less fierce but more capricious, less high-tempered and passionate but more whimsical. Or so she seemed to Jos, who had known her when she was a human girl and then while she had been made from a creature of earth to one of fire and then afterward, when the fire had taken her completely. She said, “Why should any such constraint be allowed to stand? It is an offense against all the country of fire. Besides, Taipiikiu Tastairiane Apailika wishes the Wall to be broken, and why should I not please him if I can, now it has been cracked through?”

“Tastairiane?” said Bertaud, as though even saying the name hurt him.

“You recall Tastairiane Apailika? He is my iskarianere now,” said Kes. She spoke with pleased amusement, but the edge to her humor was sharp enough to cut to the bone.

“Yes,” said Bertaud in a low tone. “I had heard so.”

“Had you? Well, one would never predict what word might be carried on some errant wind,” Kes said, and laughed.

It was a cruel laugh, like no sound she would ever have made when she was human. Jos winced from it. He knew, none better, how pitiless the griffins were by nature, but pitilessness was not the same as cruelty, and it hurt him to hear that note in her voice.

Bertaud said, not as though he expected Kes to understand or believe him but as though he felt driven to speak despite this, “If griffins turn once-for-all against men, if it should come to true battle, Kes, I promise you, no one will win. Least of all the People of Fire and Air.” He hesitated and then added, “Even you, swift as you are to heal the injured, even you cannot bring a griffin back to life after he has been killed.”

Kes only laughed, shaking her head in dismissal of this warning. “Oh, no. You’re mistaken. You’re entirely mistaken. If I’m swift enough, no injury need be mortal.”

“You cannot be so swift, not when thousands upon thousands of men draw together to face a mere few hundreds of griffins—”

“I can be as swift and attentive as I must be,” Kes answered with perfect confidence. She reached out to lay her hand on the Wall. Fire ran up along the great blocks, playing over her wrist and hand. The flames were ruddy where they rose from the red sands, but white where they crossed her hand. She smiled.

“Kes,” said Kairaithin. “Keskainiane Raikaisipiike.”

“Siipikaile,” said Kes, turning to face him directly for the first time. Teacher, that was. But she pronounced the word with a mocking edge, and met his powerful black gaze without the slightest flinch. Her eyes were filled with fire, black and gold and paler gold, set in a face that might have been carved of porcelain. Jos remembered when Kes had had eyes of a pale grayed blue, like water. He tried to remember when they had turned to fire. Not at once, he thought. Not in those early years, when they had built his cottage and kindled the fire that burned within it. There had still been a touch of humanity about her in those days. But the last of it had burned away a long time ago.