“You will do as I say.”
They stood bristling at each other like they did on the day they met. The Raker’s fists were clenched. Again he said, “No.”
“You are a student. If you are too soft to learn . . .”
The defeated student chose that moment to hoist himself up and launch himself at the Raker, which halted the conversation for the few brief moments of battle. The other student did not get up again, but the Raker still would not kill. And he kept his focus on Ladder. He said, “Call me soft if you must. I don’t care anymore.”
"You think you’ve done him a favor by keeping him alive in his shame?”
“Not my problem,” the Raker spat.
“I should have known you were hopeless by the company you keep.”
“Stone Orphan has nothing to do with this,” said the Raker.
“Not Stone Orphan. Your lover in Che Mazri.”
The Raker’s face twisted in frustration. “You goad me. It doesn’t matter. I will no longer kill for you.”
“Weakling,” Ladder snarled. “Coward.”
“Neither,” the Raker snarled back. “I restrain myself. By choice. I could have taken your place if I wanted to. Done your job better.”
“You think you are better than me?” Ladder’s voice was rough. “Is that why you’re sniveling here and I’m still starkeeper?”
“You keep a star you didn’t want, and which does not want you—”
“Sure.” Ladder grimaced. “You think you’re better? Five nights, and in the end you did not want it at all. Second-chosen or no, I have kept the Orphan Star for two thousand years. What do you think the Court of Despair is about? A big happy family? Dancing and butterflies?”
“Pluck you. Despair is one thing, but you send your assassins after old flames for sport just because you’re jealous or bored. I will not be a part of this. I will not kill so that others may devour.”
Ladder loomed closer to him, tall and broad and overpowering. “Ah. Is that it? You decided to kill for yourself, devour for yourself—is that why you are suddenly rebellious?”
“Pluck you, not this again,” the Raker said, his malice barely constrained. “What I do from now is my choice. I do not owe you or anybody else an accounting.”
“You think you’re too good for me, for this court? Too good for the world?” Ladder sneered. “Remember what you are. A criminal. Your crime festers. You cannot undo it. And if you—”
The Raker interrupted him. “All my life I was pushed out of places, exiled, kicked out. Well, not here. I quit. And I’ll take my crime with me when I go. Fix your own Bird-pecked house.”
The Raker raised his hand, and the familiar carpet wove itself out of the sand at his feet. I don’t know if Ladder would have opened the gate. The Raker’s anger flared into a towering structure of diamond, hoisting the carpet and the Raker himself up over the wall of the School of Assassins and away.
In a moment, the Headmaster turned around and his attention shifted to me. I did not see him age-change that first time because I was busy vomiting, but I saw it now. He must have been about a hundred, ancient and just slightly stooped—and absolutely murderous. “Did you learn how to slay him, Stone Orphan?” I guessed from his tone that he wanted to call me names, but this time he desisted.
I nodded. “I did.”
“Good.” His years slid off him slowly, like moss from a rock, until he appeared again middle-aged. “I cannot send you after him without a contract. We must live by the Orphan’s rules, no matter what he thinks we do here. But he has a singular talent for making enemies. Someone will have a legitimate grievance. A contract should come soon enough.”
Ulín looks slightly nauseous. “So do you think—my arrival . . .?”
“I think so, Ulín. I am sure.” I figured it out at last, the Headmaster’s plan to summon her here, his plan to set me up with this particular contract. “We were both set up, I think.” This was his shoal and he did whatever he wanted.
She is pensive. “This explains why after all those years I heard his song, and was tempted to come here.”
“Yes,” I say. “But nobody dragged you here. Your anger was all your own. Your grief, your loss, your desire to see justice done for what has been done to you, your disempowerment, your will to make this journey—all yours. This is what made it possible for Ladder’s voice to reach you and summon you. This contract is yours. Nobody can force you.” He tricked her, but she chose this moment too.
Ulín turns away from me, but her voice is bitter. “I keep thinking, you know, if he was so torn about his crime, he could have at least written me a letter.”
What can I say? Yes, Ulín, he’s a mess. You can order him killed and be done.
She seems to sense the direction of my thoughts. “You can look at my paper now.”
“No, it is not yet time,” I say, my stubbornness overriding my curiosity. “I concealed things from you, but I think you kept something back too. So tell me about Lysinar.”
