k_a_webb | The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 87th continuation) (Reply)

Of course, the further back in the assassin’s mind Peric got the more his pity for her returned, because he saw why she’d made such bad choices… but that was also true. She had made bad choices, she had revelled in being one of the best assassins in Quiar, and having an awful childhood didn’t excuse what she had done – to Bertram or to any of her other victims. A few had deserved what had happened, that he was grateful for, while the rest had been targeted by someone who hated them and had enough money to pay for an assassin to get rid of them, even though their loss didn’t make the world a better place.

With pity tempering the rage he still felt Peric wondered if there had been another way of getting the information that he needed and that was when he did something he later realised was very stupid. He realised it was stupid when he did it, but it wasn’t until he was out of her mind, free of who she had been, that he became himself once again, so he could see that some of the decisions he’d been made in her head had been affected by the choices she would have made in the same position. If he didn’t hate what he could do he might even have experimented more, to learn how to stop it from happening, because, really, he shouldn’t have let her guide him in any way. She wanted him to hate her.

From the assassin’s perspective Peric witnessed at attack on Lucille and Bertram, he felt what she was feeling, and knew the very moment she realised that something was wrong. It almost made him smile. A smile he knew, technically, belonged to the rage he was feeling at the assassin, because she was feeling an emotion that she’d never felt before – terror. Their retreat was something they’d never had to do before, they’d never lost a fight, but Lucille had beaten them, preparation being the key to their defeat. Luck had a little to do with it as well, as if Lucille hadn’t been taken to meet Kaito they never would have known that he was a Moonjumper and that his home magic had an effect on the magic he could use on Quiar.

It was then, after he’d procrastinated as long as possible, that Peric went hunting for the information he needed. Who had hired her? Where was the counterfeit ring? He didn’t think she would know that much about them – she was a hired hand. They’d only wanted her for one job, but she didn’t seem to be the sort of person to simply accept what she’d been told. She would want to know more, so she’d go hunting for more, to learn more about who had hired her and why they had, the same way she’d done before, although she’d never once cared if the person she was killing might deserve to live. Lucille did and the assassins actually saw that, had talked about the good she’d done, about how different she was to what she expected a Council Moonjumper to be. Unfortunately it hadn’t stopped them as they’d been paid to do the job and that was what they were going to do.

At first there was nothing usual. Death threats were to be expected, considering what they’d done, so Peric didn’t find that as worrying as he probably would have done before they started hunting for the counterfeiters. He hated to think how much it had changed him, and Bertram, but at the same time he was glad they’d done something, rather than sitting around waiting for someone else to. The local boss was a goanna, another of the Theasian hame, which made sense, otherwise he wouldn’t have hired platypi to assassinate Lucille and Bertram, but then… Peric shivered. He didn’t want to believe it was true. According to the goanna, who seemed prone to bragging, he was working with, although the assassins knew that to mean for, a wildebeest, which meant there was a connection to Fasachi. If he hadn’t been determined to find out more about the link finding that out might have made him leave her mind before he had everything he needed.

To the assassins it seemed like the goanna and the wildebeest were near the bottom of the chain when it came to the ring. They were hired hands too, sent to what appeared to be the last places in Quiar to be flooded with the counterfeits, while others worked on something more important. Neither of them had been able to find out who the wildebeest worked for, but there were rumours, and learning that there was a wildebeest involved made Peric look back at everything they had learnt before, to understand it better, even though it really wasn’t the time or place to be doing that. Finally, certain that he had everything he could get, he slipped out of the assassin’s mind and looked at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking hold of her hand, because he could tell from her eyes that there was nothing left of her. If the counterfeiters had wanted to kill her they should have done it before… unless they wanted Peric to have that information that would send him to Fasachi. As he tried not to think of what their next step had to be he led the platypus towards the Sleeping Chimera, hoping that his companions would take pity on her, even though he wouldn’t have done, no matter how she looked. “You would never have told me what I needed to know, we both accept that as the truth, and now that I do… I wish I didn’t. Fasachi. The one place I have never wanted to go, but it seems that’s where we have to go. How do I tell them about this? How do I prove what I know?” He bit his lip, before realising what he was doing and stopping himself. “Would Hereward believe me if I told him? Or Durai?

“They know me and I think they trust me, but if I go to them and tell them that I’ve found a connection to Fasachi by ransacking your mind are they going to accept that what I’ve found is true. Maybe they’ll think that you manage to create a false memory that I found. I don’t know if something like that is possible and by making the choice to search your mind for the truth I’ve realised how little I know about my own abilities, I guess because I’m scared of them. Finding out what I can do might make me less scared, might make me better at doing things like this, and yet is it really what I want to be doing?

“Would that change me or the way people view me?” Peric sighed. “I wish there had been another choice. Rummaging through your memories like that is something I never really wanted to do, but it was what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it? Well, it would have been if you’d have known what I could do, because at least like this you aren’t feeling any pain. You don’t remember that your brother is dead, or that there are people who want you dead, or that I’m now taking you to a place that’s full of your enemies. Will they still kill you? Have I made them more likely to by taking your memories the way I have, because I’ve learnt more for you than they wanted me to?”

Peric saw the bed and breakfast in the distance. Everyone in there was in danger from the counterfeit ring, but that was something they already knew. Lucille had known she was in danger from the moment she stepped through the door to Quiar, because of what she was, although she had no idea then what was coming. Would she have still travelled to Quiar if she’d known in advance about the counterfeit ring? If he’d been in the same position that she was, knowing what he knew after spending so much time on the case, he would have walked away. She wasn’t him, fortunately, and she had stayed no matter how hard things had been, because she cared.

When he reached the door he wasn’t certain that he wanted to step through it, but then it opened. “Come in, Peric,” Lucille said, glancing at the assassin. “We need to talk about what you found out and where we go from here.” She smiled at him. “Quiar told me what you were doing, so Merry has got a pot of tea in the dining room he said should settle your mind and a room ready for her, at least until we decide what we’re going to do. I have heard of someone who might be able to put her back together, although she won’t be the same, but that can only happen if Bertram agrees that’s what he wants to do as well.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.