Chương 16: 1.15. Pretending You're My Mother

"You." Seth's finger trembled upward to the center of the grinning, gory Verdugo. Anna cocked an eyebrow.

"You are a fucking asshole," Seth said. Her eyebrow winched back down into place.

"You broke the lantern."" Scout ahead? I was bait." Seth kicked the lantern in question onto its side, cracking it further.

"Wasn't I?" She shrugged.

"I can't believe you." He raked his shaking hands through his hair.

"This was not what we agreed to. You lied to me."

"I didn't tell you, because if I'd told you, you'd have tried to worm out of it." Anna scowled.

"Wouldn't you?"

"You don't know that. You barely fucking know me." Seth looked around the chamber at the great dead beast—the final grisly trophy in a cavern full of them.

"I'd have wanted a conversation, at least."

"A conversation." Anna scoffed.

"You're fine, aren't you?"

"I'm fine because I had the Fox. If I didn't—""You had the Fox. That's what it's for. That's why I hired you."

"If I didn't," Seth repeated, "I'd be a fucking corpse right now."

"You want to talk about corpses?" Anna's ghostly pupils flared.

"How about the family she obliterated this morning? Wanna find all their pieces, see if we can put them back together? I did what I had—""Bullshit," he snapped. Her mouth hung open.

"I saw it already, I don't want to hear it from you, and I don't need a fucking guilt trip. If this is the way you're gonna use me then I need to renegotiate. This was fucked up." He barked a laugh and shoved past her; she was too stunned to react.

"That won't pay much at first? Yeah, we're revisiting that. We're revisiting this whole arrangement." He stormed to the entrance of the cave and climbed to its lip. He caught his breath there, gulped the crisp daytime air, and felt another nauseous wave that nearly tilted him back into the cavern from whence he'd climbed. Get out of here. Take the horse back to the carriage before she comes up here to stop you, get your stuff, and take a hike. Laramme will be fine.

They need cooks in Laramme, and if not they need cutpurses. His fist was on Demetrius' bridle before he forced himself to pause. And do what with the kids? Tiago's exhausted, maybe, but Ofelia might try to stop you. And he wanted to hear from Annalise before he put this mistaken alliance behind him. Wanted—what? An apology? Would that keep him here? He scooped a red handful of this anger, bottled it inside himself, and made a promise it wouldn't.

The second chance he'd pictured did not include dangling himself out as seraph bait. It just didn't. Especially not for someone as ungrateful as the murani-headed woman pulling herself out of the earth behind him. She'd left the spear down in the dark and brought the broken lantern with her. She placed it, without comment, into Demetrius' soft leather saddlebag.

"Nothing to say?" Seth asked.

"We'll just ride back and you act like nothing's the matter?"

"Fucking saints," Anna snarled, and the saddlebag dropped carelessly to the ground as she wheeled round. The lantern inside chimed as it broke further.

"You sound like a mopey teenager. Don't know why we thought we needed another one. Fucking Annalise picking up strays."

"You said you are Annalise."

"I'm the smart part of Annalise." She picked the saddlebag back up out of the dust and lashed it to Demetrius, who bore her anger-packing with stoic grace.

"If I was the whole thing, I'd have left you with that pukestain Rohan, or ended you when you stole from me."

"Let me talk to the whole thing. Let me talk to Annalise."

"Can't," she said.

"Then you'd better—""Her head is back at the carriage. I can't." She clambered atop her horse.

"So how about you shut up until we're back, and save your complaining for her. Or I'll ride home alone and you can walk, if you can't help yourself."

"Good idea," he said.

"Go on. I need a moment alone anyway." She blinked, momentarily confused, it seemed, by his refusal. Then she shook her head.

"Don't be stupid. Not letting you out of my sight."

"You just said—""You owe me a head, boy." She leaned down her saddle and sneered.

"Remember? That's your sentence. If you want to revisit it, we can. But you got very, very lucky last time. You want to push your luck again?" And Seth was back in Rohan's office. Back before the firing squad. This great white hope that had ebulliently strode into his life was all a lie, he saw. Just another collar trying to lock itself around his neck. Fuck that.

"All right, Anna," he muttered, as he climbed aboard.

"All right." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. He spent the rest of the ride back in silence, figuring out how he'd escape this latest cage. The shadows had grown short and lengthened again by the time they sighted the carriage. Anna slowed Demetrius to a canter and then a stop, and swung from her saddle without a word. Ofelia hurried to the reins she'd abandoned and tied Demetrius to the edge of the carriage while Seth slipped from him.

Seth looked past her daughter to the Verdugo, just in time to watch her yank her head from her shoulders. The scowling pixie-cutted face he'd rode home with melted. The hair and skin and then the flesh ran in drizzling, blackening rivulets down the skull and sublimated into coal-dark vapor before it hit the ground. The headless Verdugo climbed into the carriage, naked skull tucked under her arm. Ofelia dug a carrot from her bag and held it out to Demetrius' doleful inspection.

"You appear as though you've been Anna'd," she said.

"Yeah." Seth was in no mood to humor any of the al Ydrises.

"Where's Tiago?"

"Sleeping his Darkness off." A muffled voice with a familiar Orwinese brogue sounded from the carriage. Annalise's bobbed head, now reattached to the rest of her, poked out from the opening door.

"Heya." He put his hands on his hips.

"We should talk." She chewed her lip—whatever magic powered her Darkness had already applied her black gloss to it.

"We should, yeah." Ofelia looked warily from the thief to the Verdugo.

"Shall I find a place to be?"

"Nah. Stick around here. We don't wanna wake the sleeping prince." Annalise set out from the carriage's clearing.

"Will you come with me, Seth?" Silently he fell into step with her. She gave him a sickly smile. Her shoulders were drooped, he saw, and there was a sheen of sweat on her forehead. How much of that was the exertion that came with her second use of her Darkness, and how much of it was guilt? He decided it didn't matter—it didn't change his plans.

Once they'd waded out enough into the plain that the carriage was out of earshot, Annalise found a brake of limestone high enough to sit atop and perched heavily on it, elbows on her knees. She took a deep breath, head in her hands.

"Hang on a sec. Two changes in two hours. Bit knackered." He folded his hands behind his back.

"Sure." She caught her breath and looked up from the stone. The dark bags beneath her eyes were heavier than usual.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I know," he said.

"I'm really sorry, Seth. Really I am." She sighed.

"When I'm Anna I can be a…" She lapsed into silence.

"An asshole?" he offered." Cunt, I was going to say." His lips quirked upward. He forced them back down.

"Is that really how you see me? A coward and a stray?"" No, Seth." She shook her head so rapidly he wondered if this one would fall off too.

"Saints, no. I just… you know how sometimes when you're hungry, or tired, or real anxious, everyone seems like a dickhead until you've eaten or slept? Even people you think are grand?" Seth, who'd been hungry, tired, and anxious for most of his life, gave this a shallow nod.

"That's sort of how it is with Anna. That's how her donor was in life, so it's me filtered through her. I forgot how she can get with new people. I didn't think she'd have the reaction she did to you."

"So a piece of you does," he said.

"See me like that, I mean. If what you've been telling me is true."

"I don't—It—" Annalise sighed again.

"Yes. All right, yes. A piece of me. But it's like I told you. You're… scruffy. You know you are. You've had a life where nobody's taken care of you right, and you've got some scratches to buff out."

"You lied to me." He folded his arms.

"I didn't lie to you."

"I know you didn't," she said.

"But you took something really important from me—" She held up her hand as he started to respond.

"Just let me for a second, okay? You took my head, and I'm fretting about it, 'cause I don't know who wanted it, or why they'd want it. I'm trying not to make a big thing out of it, because that's no help, and I know it was a mistake, and you're helping to fix it. Anna has trouble with that and the rest of me doesn't. That's all this was. Not your fault. I thought I was over it, and I am, really, when I'm in my right mind."

"Why didn't you take the time to talk to me before you switched heads?" he asked.

"To warn me?"

"I should have. I know. It's—It was the kids, okay? Not mine. The dead ones." She saw his reply forming and gestured again for an uninterrupted moment.

"This isn't a guilt trip. Right? You don't need that; you told me and I believe you. It's just… it's my stuff. My problem. I told you I'd take care of you, and I meant it. But I fucked up. I heard she'd taken a family and I—" She laughed sheepishly.

"I lost my head. And when I'm upset enough that Annalise is keyed up, Anna's surely a fecking nightmare about it. All she really cares about is killing seraphs. You were put in the way, and I'm sorry."

"Well," he said. His heart closed its fist around that anger he'd squirreled away; he expressly forbade himself an I forgive you.

"All right," he managed, instead, which didn't count, and when Annalise gave it a weak grin he tried very hard not to be gladdened by the sight and mostly succeeded.

"All right," she echoed, still trying valiantly for a smile.

"If this ever happens again—if Anna tries to take you on a seraph hunt—don't let her. Not until she's turned back to me and I've given it the okay. I'll tell Tiago and Feeli the same thing; they'll back you up."

"Fine."

"And I'll figure out how to make it up to you, yeah? Just give me time."

"Money would help," he said.

"Money's something, sure. I travel pretty light, I'm afraid, but as soon as I have any to spare, we'll get you an advance on that bonus I promised you." Her smile went strange around the edges, then, and she wrung her hands.

"Meantime, though. Uh—I had an idea. While we're away from the kids. Would you let me give you a haircut? Just a trim, I mean? I know that's a funny turn coming from a Verdugo, but, uh… yeah. Just a trim." This threw him into sudden self-consciousness. He wished he didn't care what this woman thought of him anymore.

"A haircut? Why?" She sucked in air through her teeth.

"So when I change heads, they turn into skulls. Right?"

"Right."

"My hair all falls out of 'em. You saw."

"I've had it replay a few times in my head, yeah." She laughed, an abashed and huffy little thing far from the warm chuckle he was accustomed to.

"Sorry about that. Uh—but what I'm saying. That night we shared a tent."

"Yeah?" Annalise chose her words painstakingly.

"I noticed when I changed heads that there were… some nits on my Annalise skull. Lice." Seth's stomach hollowed out. His hands balled into fists.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of." Annalise hurried to soften the blow.

"All right? When you travel the countryside you deal with 'em all the time. I have some stuff. Some gunk I got from an apothecary. If you'd let me, I'd like to help." His face burned. He turned from her in a belated effort to hide the color he knew was rising in his cheeks.

"I don't have to cut it," she said.

"Just a comb, maybe."

"No."

"I want—" Her voice thickened. He heard her swallow.

"I want to make it up to you. I want you to feel safe. What can I do?"

"How about you just stay away from me," he said.

"And stop pretending you're my mother." In the silence that followed, he could hear the shallow saw of her breath, drawn slowly in and out. Then she said, "I'm sorry, Seth," and he heard the rustle of her clothes and the squeaking of her boots as she stood and walked away. He waited until he couldn't hear her anymore before he moved, and then he waited a while longer, and watched the ribbons of bowing grass as the wind wended its way through the plain.

When he finally turned back, the stone upon which Annalise had sat now bore a fine-tooth comb, a coarse terrycloth, and a stoppered glass bottle full of something amber that smelled like apple cider vinegar and spearmint. Seth went down to the river and scrubbed his head until his scalp was raw.