The reverberation of Juns prophecy was like a rock thrown into black water in the tower. It was not the words, but the weight of them, the pushing against of her scars, that had nothing to do with the fight. Her rhythm stuttered. Only a beat of the heart.
Malik had no more need.
Ninth Scar Scripture: Ruin Break, flamed through all the openings the Bone Saint had cut in his flesh. His scars flushed dark red, then white hot, the pain changed to pure, explosive force. He did not pick her up by the throat to strangle her, but to get a hold on and changed places in an act of violence.
The cracking glass floor couldn't take it.
They plunged through.
Darkness swallowed them. The submerged rooms of the old hotel faded away behind the smashed windows, the water-soaked wall-paper, the now and then white face of a drowned corpse against the glass, looking on them with indifferent, milky eyes. The body of Shou twisted in his hands, and her leg snagged at a ragged edge, with the sound of kindling being snapped together. She didn't scream. Maybe she couldn't anymore.
The chain that Malik was on snared a support beam. The blow was pulling his shoulder, old scar tissue tearing somewhere deep, yet he held. Swung. They plunged on a maintenance platform slightly above the rusted grating of the water line, emergency lights flickering their dying amber light.
Shou was broken over the metal.
Below the knee her leg was crossed the wrong way, the angle thereof telling of ruptured ligaments and broken bone. That was a mask of blood and cuts that was her perfect face, with the gold capped tooth still shining through the red. The silk robe was in shreds revealing all that the scars, the piercings, the body she had made a weapon and a canvas and a prison.
She continued to smile. However, it was now pushed to the limit, the act tearing at the seams.
You... You... I coughed, with a bubble of blood at the corner of my lips. "You actually..."
I do not like this, said Malik.
Shou laughed wet, gurgling, true, like a stage laugh had never been. That is what is so frightening about you, you kill as though it were a business. No style, no enjoyment. Just.... Another cough. "...necessity." Her fox gold eyes saw his, keen even today. That Jaro will dislike of you. I wish I could see what his face would be.
Her hand reached up and caught hold of his collar. Not to attack she had nothing left for that. She drew him close, so close as to sniff the blood and the perfume and the salt of tears she had not yet shed.
And she kissed him.
Bloody. Desperate. His lips were running along her pierced tongue, trying to find something absolution, connection, one last performance that would be remembered. Malik didn't stop her. Didn't kiss back. Well, just allow her to get what she had to have out of the last man she would ever see.
She slammed it, forehead against his, breath heaving.
Before I die, tell me a truth. Her voice was now little more than a whisper. "Did you ever feel anything? Even for a second?"
Malik's hand came up. Brushed her cheek softly, nearly tenderly the way she had done with him what seemed like a lifetime ago.
I was sorry about you. The language was simple, plain. You have made survival a performance. You have forgotten that you are to survive something.
The smile of Shou broke.
The blood on her cheeks made neat cuts as tears ran down. Once, twice and then she was crying ugly and real and nothing like the beautiful death she had always dreamed of. I know, I know, choked out the lady. I knew long before.
She closed her eyes.
"Finish it. Make it beautiful. It's all I have left.
Malik didn't make it beautiful. He made it quick.
Palm To her heart, Span Breaker. One, correct, blow that made her arrhythmic beat cease. She sank a little, uttered a little involuntary, startled note and ceased.
He laid her tenderly on the platform. Closed her eyes. Laid the rags of her robe to wrap what pride was left. His hand reached to the Red Balcony Thread and grabbed her sash, her prize, her heritage and yanked it out.
Proof of passage. Evidence that the Smiling Champion had finally realized someone that was not going to play her game.
Returning up was torture.
Hand over hand. Chain over chain. Every foot was bleeding with the Ninth Scar, and his hands shook, and he could hardly squeeze his fingers, and his eyes were blurred at the edges. his old wounds along the side of his ribs had been ripped somewhere in the fall, and his wraps were filled with warm blood.
But he climbed.
Jun was up there. Nari. Jina. The children. People, who wanted him to be more than a dead body when he would see the top.
Toma was waiting.
He sat on the broken arena floor, hanging by his legs over the gulf, and looked as Malik pulled himself up, with the nonchalance of a man who is watching a sunset. His amber eyes followed the blood, the tremors, the pure obstinacy to die.
"You killed her." He nodded approvingly. "Good. She was getting boring."
He gave Malik a helping hand.
Malik grabbed it and headbutted Toma. Their skulls broke against each other as old wood splitting. Toma turned back, and with his nose bleeding laughed.
"There he is." The smile was broad and bloody and nearly good-natured. "There's my brother."
Gorei, at your convoy. Toma pulled back the blood on his lip with his hand. Jina is holding him off, but she is an old woman, she will break.
Then I will put him to a stop.
You can hardly stand.
I have no need to rise to kill.
Toma studied him really studied him, the way he used to in the dojo when Malik pulled off a technique he shouldn't have been able to land. There was a change in those amber eyes. Not softness. But there is something nearer to respect.
You really think so. You would give your life to those folks.
"Yes."
"...Why?"
Since someone has to. This was an absolute, exhausted voice of Malik. "And you stopped being someone a long time ago."
The silence stretched.
Then Toma rose, and stretched lazily, and his joints ached. Gorei is yours. I will leave it to you. It is a present a offering to our dead sister.
He looked into the shadows in the corner of the arena. Paused.
But it is a mine of Jaro, Malik. When you get to the refinery I will meet you. And I will not spare.
He disappeared into the dark, and all that remained were the dull echo of his steps and the smell of old blood.
Malik drew himself up on to the roof.
In the distance, across a swaying rope bridge, he saw them Old Jina facing down the tall, emaciated form of Abbot Gorei. Her chain hook had not been taken down yet, her Rust Lung still had its exhaust pumping to the cold air.
But she was bleeding. Badly. A slash on her shoulder, another on her thigh, and she is not moving as fast as she ought. The executioner was long-suffering, systematic, wearing her out by a prayer at a time.
Malik started walking.
The executioner was forbearing.
But so was the rust.