“How long do you think you can hold me, Nicci?” In frustration, Richard ran his fingers back through his wet hair. “It isn’t going to work, whatever it is you want. How long until you tire of this absurd sham?”
Her eyes narrowed, studying his profound innocence, if not ignorance.
“My dear boy, I was born into this wretched world one hundred and eighty-one years past. You know that. Do you suppose I have not learned a great deal of patience, in all that time? Though our bodies may look about the same age, and in many ways I am no older than you, I have lived near to seven of your lifetimes. Do you honestly believe that you would have patience to exceed mine? Do you think me some young foolish girl for you to outwit or outwait?”
His demeanor cooled. “Nicci, I—”
“And don’t think to make friends with me, or win me over. I am not Denna, or Verna, or Warren, or even Pasha, for that matter. I’m not interested in friends.”
He turned a little and ran a hand over the stallion’s shoulder when the horse snorted and stamped a hoof at the smell of the woodsmoke curling out from the upper limbs of the shelter tree.
“I want to know what vile thing you did to that poor woman to make her tell you about Denna.”
“The Mord-Sith told me in return for a favor.”
Frowning his incredulity, he turned to her once more. “What favor could you possibly do for a Mord-Sith?”
“I cut her throat.”
Richard closed his eyes as his head sank with grief for this unknown woman who had died because of him. He clenched her weapon in his fist to his heart.
His voice lost its fire. “I don’t suppose you know her name?”
It was this, his empathy for others, even others he didn’t know, that not only made him the man he was, but shackled him. His concern for others would also be the thing that eventually brought him to understand the virtue in what she was doing. He, too, would then willingly work for the righteous cause of the Order.
“I do,” Nicci said. “Hania.”
“Hania.” He looked heartsick. “I didn’t even know her.”
“Richard.” With a finger under his chin, Nicci gently brought his face up. “I want you to know that I did not torture her. I found her being tortured. I was not happy about what I saw. I killed the man who did it. Hania was beyond any help. I offered her release from her pain, a quick end, if she would tell me about you. I never asked her to betray you in any way that the Order would want. I asked only about your past, about your first captivity. I wanted to understand what you said that first day at the Palace of the Prophets, that’s all.”
Richard didn’t look relieved, as she had intended.
“You withheld that quick release, as you call it, until she had given you what you wanted. That makes you a party to her torture.”
In the gloom, Nicci looked away in pain and anguish at the memory of that bloody deed. It had long since lost its ability to make her feel anything more than a ghost of emotions.
There were so many needing release from their suffering—so many old and sick, so many wailing children, so many destitute and hopeless and poor. This woman had merely been another of life’s victims needing release. It was for the best.
Nicci had renounced the Creator in order to do His work, and sworn her soul to the Keeper of the underworld. She had to; only one as evil as she would fail to feel any fitting feelings, any proper compassion, for all the suffering and desperate need. It was grim irony—faithfully serving the needy in such a way.
“Perhaps you see it that way, Richard,” Nicci said in a hoarse voice as she stared into the numb nightmare of memories. “I did not. Neither did Hania. Before I cut her throat for her, she thanked me for what I was about to do.”
Richard’s eyes offered no mercy. “And why did you make her tell you about me—about Denna?”
Nicci snugged her cloak tighter on her shoulders. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“You couldn’t possibly make the same mistake Denna made. You aren’t the woman she was, Nicci.”
She was tired. The first night, he had not slept, she knew. She had felt his eyes on her back. She knew how much he hurt. Turned away from him, she had wept silently at the hate his eyes held, at the burden of being the one to have to do what was best. The world was such an evil place.
“Perhaps, Richard,” she said in a soft voice, “you will someday teach me the difference.”
She was so very tired. The night before, when he had succumbed to his weariness, and turned away from her to sleep, Nicci had in turn stayed awake all night, watching him in his sound sleep as she felt the connection of magic to the Mother Confessor. The connection brought Nicci great empathy for her, as well.
It was all for the best.
“For now,” Nicci said, “let’s get inside out of this foul weather. I’m cold and I’m hungry. We need to get some rest, too. And as I’ve told you, we have things to discuss, first.”
She couldn’t lie to him, she knew. She couldn’t tell him everything, of course, but she dared not lie to him in the things she did tell him.
The dance had begun.
Chapter 26
Richard broke up the sausage Nicci gave him from her saddlebag and tossed it in the pot with the simmering rice. The things she had told him kept shouting in his mind as he tried to fit them into their proper order.
He didn’t know how much of what she had said he dared to believe. He feared it was all true. Nicci just didn’t seem to need to lie to him—at least not about what she had told him so far. She didn’t seem as…hostile, as he thought she would have to be. If anything, she seemed melancholy, perhaps because of what she had done—although, he had trouble believing that a confessed Sister of the Dark would suffer a guilty conscience. It was probably just some bizarre part of her act, some artifice directed toward her ends.
He stirred the pot of rice with a stick he’d peeled the bark off of. “You said there were things to discuss.” He rapped the stick clean on the edge of the pot. “I assume that means there are orders you wish to issue.”
Nicci blinked, as if he’d caught her thinking about something else. She looked out of place, sitting prim and straight in a wayward pine, dressed as she was in her fine black dress. Richard would never before have ever thought of Nicci out-of-doors, much less sitting on the ground. The very idea had always seemed ludicrous to him. Her dress constantly made him think of Kahlan, not only because of it being so completely opposite that it evoked the comparison, but also because he so vividly recalled Nicci connected to Kahlan by that awful rope of magic.
That memory twisted him in agony.
“Orders?” Nicci folded her hands in her lap and met his gaze. “Oh, yes, I have a few requests I wish you to honor. First, you may not use your gift. Not at all. Not in any way. Is that clear? Since, as I recall, you have no love of the gift, this should be neither a burden nor a difficult request for you to follow, especially because there is something you do love which would not survive such a betrayal. Do you understand?”
Her cold blue eyes conveyed the threat perhaps even better than her words. Richard gave her a single nod, committing himself to what, exactly, he wasn’t entirely sure at the moment.
He poured her steaming dinner in a shallow wooden bowl and handed it to her along with a spoon. Nicci smiled her thanks. He set the pot on the ground between his legs and took a spoonful of rice, blowing on it until it was cool enough to eat. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she took a dainty taste.
Beyond her physical perfection, Nicci had a singularly expressive face. She seemed to go cold and blank when she was unhappy, or when she meant to convey anger, threat, or displeasure. She didn’t really scowl the way other people did when they felt those emotions; rather, a look of cool detachment descended on her. That look was, in its own way, far more disturbing. It was her impenetrable armor.
On the other hand, she was expressively animated when she was pleased or thankful. Even more than that, though, su
ch pleasure or gratitude appeared genuine. He remembered her as aloof, and while she still possessed a noble bearing, to some extent her air of reticence had lifted to reveal an innocent delight in any kindness, or even simple courtesy.
Richard still had bread Cara had baked for him. He hated sharing that bread with this evil woman, but it now seemed a childish consideration. He tore off a piece and offered it to Nicci. She took it with the reverence due something greater than mere bread.
“I also expect you to keep no secrets from me,” she said after another bite. “You would not like me to discover you were doing so. Husbands and wives have no need for secrets.”
Richard supposed not, but they were hardly husband and wife. Rather than say so, he said instead, “You seem to know a lot about how husbands and wives behave.”
Rather than rising to his bait, she gestured with her bread at her bowl. “This is very good, Richard. Very good indeed.”
“What is it you want, Nicci? What is the purpose of this absurd pretense?”
The firelight played across her alabaster face, and lent her hair a torrid color it didn’t in reality possess. “I took you because I need an answer which I believe you will provide.”
Richard broke a stout branch in two across his knee. “You said husbands and wives have no need for secrets.” He used half the branch to push the burning wood together before placing the branch atop the fire. “Then aren’t wives, too, supposed to be honest?”
“Of course.” Her hand with the bread lowered. She rested her wrist over her knee. “I will be honest with you, too, Richard.”
“Then what’s the question? You said you took me because you need an answer you think I can provide. What’s the question?”
Nicci stared off again, once more looking anything but the grim captor. She looked as if memories, or perhaps fears, haunted her. It was somehow more unsettling than the sneer of an armed guard outside of the bars of his cage.