"Blood and souls," shouted Jarah, "what are you doing here?"
"Don't swear around me," said Honu, who heaved the cumbersome weapon in her arms and pointed it at the remaining guards. "And how many of you want to get what he just received?" she asked, jerking her head toward the smoldering, bleeding corpse of Scar. One gritted his teeth. A couple of others shifted nervously. The rest remained stoic. "Were you expecting them to run?" asked Jarah as she got to her feet, picking up the closest butterfly sword as she did so. "I was hoping for that, yeah," said Honu. She ratcheted the grip on the weapon, and Jarah saw a new bolt of ammo drop into the barrel. "This thing hurts my shoulder." She pulled the lever and the gunbow thrummed. Whatever fired was faster than Jarah could see as one guard's head disappeared with an explosive sound. The remaining guards decided to run at that point. Jarah sagged in relief as she watched them go. Then she straightened and spun toward her. "You betrayed us." "Excuse me?" asked Honu, her expression one of complete surprise. "I would think a thank you would be better response to what I just did than accusations." "Tenhaim was already there when we arrived! He knew where we would go. You disappear, then the man who's hunting me shows up exactly where you knew I would be. Of course you betrayed us!" Honu made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. "My girl, that is entirely unbecoming of you. Tenhaim got the map and the legend when he raided my home. That's how he knew where you'd be." Rihn had been wrong, then? Well, so had Jarah; the explanation they'd invented had made sense at the time. But it didn't make sense that Honu would betray Jarah, Rihn, and Kimhan to their enemy only to rescue Jarah from the same. Jarah bit back the anger she felt at seeing Honu, resisting the feeling that she had been wronged somehow. "Oh. Well…" She paused, confusion returning. "Wait. How in the name of my ancestor's blood did you get here, then?" "I told you to stop swearing around me. And the answer is simple: I walked." "Where have you been?" Honu shrugged as she slung the gunbow over her shoulder. She had abandoned her earlier clothing, wearing now something more pragmatic--boots, leather pants, a tunic, and a vest, off of which dangled what Jarah could only assume were extra pieces of ammo for "After you abandoned me in the Underground--" "We had no idea where you were!" "--I made it to another safehouse. I kept this," and Honu patted the gunbow's stock affectionately, "that I, uh, borrowed from one of Tenhaim's men. Then I waited, watching the compound for when you'd return." "You knew we'd come back here?" Honu nodded. "The Blade was in the north, wasn't it?" Jarah gritted her teeth. "Yes. But it didn't quite go as smoothly as we had hoped." "Well, I realized after we had gone our separate ways that the map was telling me one additional thing." "Oh?" Honu pointed down. "This place." "What about it?" "It's where we can heal the Breaking of the World, Jarah." Jarah frowned. "Here?" "Come," said Honu, gesturing. "We need to find Kimhan. That's why you're here, I assume?" Jarah nodded, surprised at the woman's astute reading of the situation. "Good. We just need to get to Tenhaim's inner sanctum." Jarah rolled her eyes as she scooped up the remaining weapon she'd dropped and sheathed them both with an easy movement. "He would have a place he called his 'inner sanctum'. The guy's pretentious as--" Shouts from behind them cut her off. "Blood and souls," swore Jarah. "They went for reinforcements." "Let's go," said Honu, echoing Jarah's own thoughts. The fighters who had guarded this area had put themselves between the hallway and a narrow staircase. Without discussion, the two women descended the stairs as quickly as they could. Jarah kept her balance with her left hand on the tightly spiraling wall; Honu followed immediately after. "The Breaking of the World happened far to the north," said Honu by way of explanation. "Yeah, I'm aware of that," said Jarah, her breath sharper than she'd expected thanks to the ache in her side. "We established that." "The Breaking tore a rift in the world, much of which has healed over time. One place, however, it hasn't." "Let me guess," said Jarah as they reached the bottom of the stairwell. "That place is in Tenhaim's compound." "Precisely." "Convenient." "Purposeful. He built this place specifically so that he would be able to keep the world broken." The foot of the stairs led to a straightforward hallway, though this one was hewn from the living stone itself. Sconces lit this area, too, which Jarah thought fortuitous. The two women proceeded down the hallway side by side, their footsteps echoing. "So how do we fix the world?" "First," said Honu, her breath heavier from the exertion, "we need the Blade." "Tenhaim has it." Honu's lips tightened. "Okay, well…we also need Kimhan." "She's down here somewhere, under Tenhaim's guard." "And we need this place," finished Honu. "Which is underneath Tenhaim's compound. So I don't need you as much as I need Tenhaim, apparently." The hallway curved and turned, thoroughly confusing Jarah as they jogged. Soon she didn't know which way she was headed. Her only option was to continue forward and hope for the best. It was, she reflected, one of the worst plans she'd ever had to follow. Voices filtered toward them, ghostly in the echoes of the stone hallway. Jarah put her hand out and a finger to her lips. The two of them prowled forward, Honu making more noise than Jarah and eliciting more than one sharp glare from the latter. The hallway spilled out into a large cavern, the roof of which stretched up into a darkness that Jarah couldn't penetrate. A large pool took up a fair portion of the cavern, glowing an unsettling blue color and providing the only illumination. Yet it was enough to see that, in one sense, at least, Rihn had been right: Everything that Tenhaim needed was there in the compound. Rhin lay in a heap near the lip of the pool. Kimhan, bound tightly and gagged, was under guard by two of Tenhaim's fighters--a woman and a man, each of about equal size, both armed with qiang that they held level to her throat--and stared at the pool with naked terror on her face. And Tenhaim sat on a stone, his back to the women, casually tossing the sheathed Blade into the air and catching it by the handle. "You ladies took your time, you know," he said softly as he tossed the Blade again. He stood slowly, tucking the blade into the sash that ran across his expansive gut. He wore no shirt, the thickness of his arms and coarse carpet of hair on his chest easily visible. His boots, scuffed and worn, scraped the stone floor as he turned about to face Jarah and Honu. "When my guards let me know that you were here, that you had defeated those I'd assigned to keep this place safe…well, I knew that at the very least I had in some ways underestimated you." He stared at them. Jarah had expected a scowl or glower, some sort of menacing expression on his face. Instead, an emptiness tugged at the lines of his mouth and his entire mien was one of contemplation. For some reason, that made her even more worried than she had been upon entering the room. Fear made water of her knees and she could hardly hear for the sound of her heart pounding in her ears. Her hands, sweaty and shaking, grabbed the last two vials. With a movement more automatic than deliberate, she popped the token off the top of one, replacing it with a needle plunger, all while keeping her eyes fixed on Tenhaim. "You can do so if you wish, but remember, girl, I can siphon off whatever emotion you have." He gestured at the unconscious Rihn. "The man is a better teka than I had given him credit for. Maybe it's because he was fighting for something this time." He said this last piece more to himself than to Jarah. He returned his attention to the women, his eyes clicking over to Honu. "And I admire your resourcefulness." "Your magnanimity is touching," said Honu through a tightened jaw. "Winning does that for me," said Tenhaim, though his brow was still creased with worry. "But…well, it is hard for me to know how to feel." "We don't care about your feelings, Tenhaim," snapped Jarah. She was too far--much too far--from Kimhan. Rihn lay between the two, but the cavern was large and the distance too much for her to be able to conceive of any attack that wouldn't lead to Kimhan's immediate death. The guards could probably dispatch Rihn before Jarah got there, too. Her throwing arm was good, but not when hurling a butterfly sword. Maybe one of her throwing daggers could do some good, but, again, not from this distance. The guards were watching everything warily--any movement would be a sign that she was about to start something. It felt impossible. "Well, I suppose that doesn't surprise me," said Tenhaim lugubriously. His attitude shift made Jarah even more suspicious. She took a cautious step forward, trying to take advantage of Tenhaim's distraction. He didn't seem to notice as he said, "I have been thinking a lot about what it means to have you all here. To have finally decided what to do." He shook his head. "After so much effort, so much planning, so much pain…to have it all come to an end is…hard." Jarah shot Honu a questioning look. Honu, who had at some point unslung her gunbow and held it at the ready, shook her head: She didn't know what he was talking about either. They both took another step forward. "Maybe it is, in part, because there is still a question in my mind--many questions in my mind, really." He looked at Jarah directly as the teka closed more of the distance between them. He didn't react, so she took another. He still stared at her, almost as if his thoughts were more real than the danger he was in with a very unhappy teka and Honu coming closer. That made her worry spike. She kept glancing from Tenhaim to the guards, waiting for some agreed-upon signal to act, for the tension to break. Her spine tightened with the stress and she felt as though her shoulders would snap from the strain. "I think, Jarah, it is time that you told us what you know," said Tenhaim, his eyes focusing on her with a startling ferocity. "I'm not telling you anything," said Jarah, still unsure of what he was planning. "Yes," said Tenhaim in a voice that almost sounded…sad. "You will." In a blur of movement, he tore the Blade from its sheath on his waist and hurled it at Jarah. A sharp pain in her gut let her know that she'd been hit. Her air slipped from her lungs like a thief from a home and she sank to her knees. Nothing she did could bring back the air. "Tell us," said Tenhaim as he effortlessly dodged Honu's gunbow bolt, "how you Broke the World." The pain arced through her, making her writhe. Then, just as abruptly as if time had rewound itself, everything slid away--all of her worry, her pain, her concern, her distress--and the only thing in the world she wanted to do was remember. A tiny, almost impossible to hear part of her mind whispered, "You are back with the Blade! You may remember now." Jarah opened her mouth and began to speak.
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