‘I am not alone,’ Rance said. ‘In this body you see, I am not the sole occupant. There is someone else – we’ve never met. She walks when I sleep, and in her freedom she murders … people. Child of my own womb, men who have killed women – these are only lists. Categories. Satisfied with one, she will move to another. A new list. You need to kill me, sir.’
Sick with dread, heavy with something like disappointment – if such a bland word could be used – Wareth shook his head, as if he could deny this entire morning. He faced Prazek. ‘I understand now, sir, why you stepped around me for this.’
Prazek’s brows lifted. ‘Do you?’
‘I – I like Rance.’
‘The woman you know, you mean,’ corrected Dathenar.
‘Well, yes. Of the other, I know only the corpses she leaves in her wake – and even then, the details do not make sense.’
‘The other,’ said Dathenar, ‘is a mage.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘A wielder of sorcery,’ Prazek said. ‘A natural adept. That said, she is somewhat feral. She uses what she needs to clean up her mess. But the knife work, why, that is most mundane, wouldn’t you say?’
‘She exists,’ said Rance, ‘in a world without remorse. That, sirs, should be reason enough to see her executed. But I fear she will defend herself, and if she is as the captain says – a mage – then you must act now, while she sleeps.’
Dathenar grunted. ‘Two within you, sergeant, and between them, the one demanding punishment is the innocent one.’
‘Yet this body is the only one we possess, sir. Kill me, and the other one dies as well.’
‘The death of two for the crimes of one? ’Tis skewed scales no matter how they tilt.’
Rance made a sound of exasperation, but there was something brittle in her eyes now. ‘Then what will you do to me?’
‘The mage,’ said Dathenar, ‘we deem useful.’
‘What?’
‘If awakened to its companion, who, it seems, possesses conscience—’
‘No.’ She sat forward. ‘No. It is bad enough to know what you’ve done, but to remember it as well – no.’
In that instant, Wareth understood her. How sweeter would it be to recall nothing of Ganz’s crumpled skull? The weight of the shovel in his hands, the snap of reverberation along the wooden handle, the sound of the man’s breaking neck? Take up the shovel. Blink. Stand looking down upon his body. As if I but stepped over the moment, blessed to see only the aftermath.
Rance, the woman hiding in you took hold of your baby and drowned it. You remember nothing. The mage is not without conscience, not without mercy, all too desperate to protect her twin. I can almost hear her: ‘Not for you, my love. I will protect you, as only I can. Sleep, dear sister, and dream of nothing.’ ‘Sirs,’ said Wareth. ‘She is right. If you have some plan of somehow merging the two within Rance … please, don’t.’
‘Lieutenant,’ said Dathenar, though he held his gaze fixed upon Rance, ‘you see but one side of this – the Rance now sitting before us. She, in turn, knows only this world as well. And yet what of the one hiding behind her eyes? The one cursed to darkness, and horror?’
With his knife, Prazek tapped the side of the pewter plate before him. ‘While they continue to avoid one another, each circling the truth of the other, a single question remains, and upon that question balances the future of Rance.’ He waved the knife. ‘Perhaps yes, there is a kind of mercy, at least insofar as sits the woman before us at this moment. And perhaps indeed, we are driven – out of that most honourable mercy – to spare her.’
‘If not for that one question,’ Dathenar said. ‘They must be made to meet. Only in that moment, and all that follows, is forgiveness possible. One for the other, and back again.’
‘More to the point,’ Prazek added, ‘there is no one else capable of telling the mage to stop the killing.’
Rance was trembling, shaking her head in refusal, yet she seemed unable to speak.
Dathenar sighed. ‘We cannot execute an innocent woman.’
‘Justice must not be seen to stumble,’ said Prazek. ‘Not here, not now. The test before us will measure our own worth.’
‘The ritual must be attended by all—’
‘Ritual?’ Wareth stared at Dathenar. ‘What ritual?’
‘We sent a rider last night,’ Prazek said. ‘Southwest, to the Dog-Runners.’