“What do you mean, no one would hire you?”
“They sit down to talk to me. They start to tell me their grievances, start to name the mark they want assassinated, start to tell me where to find him… and, little by little, they dry up. Not just once. It happened five times, ten. I don’t know. I lost count.”
“What happens?” Iridal urged gently.
“They go on and on about the mark and how much they hate him and how they want him to die and how he should suffer like he made their daughter suffer or their father or whoever. But the more they tell me this, the more nervous they get. They look at me and then look away, then sneak a look back, and look away again. And their voices drop, they get mixed up in what they’ve said. They stammer and cough and then usually, without a word, they get up and run. You’d think,” he added grimly, “they’d stabbed their mark themselves and were caught with the bloody knife in their hands.”
“But they did, in their hearts,” said Iridal.
“So? Guilt never plagued any of my patrons before. Why now? What’s changed?”
“You’ve changed, Hugh. Before, you were like the coralite, soaking up their evil, absorbing it, taking it into yourself, freeing them of the responsibility. But now, you’ve become like the crystals of the Firmament. They look at you, and they see their own evil reflected back to them. You have become our conscience.”
“Hell of a note for an assassin,” he said, sneering. “Makes it damn hard to find work!” He stared unseeing at the wine bottle, nudged it with his foot, sent it rolling around in circles on the floor. His blurred gaze shifted to her. “I don’t do that to you.”
“Yes, you do. That’s how I know.” Iridal sighed. “I look at you, and I see my folly, my blindness, my stupidity, my weakness. I married a man I knew to be heartless and evil out of some romantic notion that I could change him. By the time I understood the truth, I was hopelessly entangled in Sinistrad’s snares. Worse, I’d given birth to an innocent child, allowed him to become tangled in the same web.
“I could have stopped my husband, but I was frightened. And it was easy to tell myself that he would change, that it would all get better. And then you came, and brought my son to me, and, at last, I saw the bitter fruit of my folly. I saw what I had done to Bane, what I’d made him through my weakness. I saw it then. I see it now, looking at you.”
“I thought it was them,” said Hugh, as if he hadn’t heard her. “I thought the world had gone mad. Then I began to realize it was me. The dreams…” He shuddered, shook his head. “No, I won’t talk about the dreams.”
“Why did you come here?”
He shrugged, voice bitter. “I was desperate, out of money. Where else could I go? The monks said I would return, you know. They always said I’d be back.” He glanced around with a haunted look, then shook himself, shook off the memories.
“Anyway, the Abbot told me what was wrong. He took one look at me and told me what had happened. I had died. I’d left this life… and been dragged back. Resurrected.” Hugh gave the bottle a sudden, vicious kick, sent it spinning across the floor.
“You… don’t remember?” Iridal faltered.
He regarded her in silence, dark, glowering. “The dreams remember. The dreams remember a place beautiful beyond words, beyond… dreams. Understanding, compassion…” He fell silent, swallowed, coughed, and cleared his throat. “But the journey to reach that place is terrible. The pain. The guilt. The knowledge of my crimes. My soul wrenched from my body. And now I can’t go back. I tried.”
Iridal stared at him, horrified. “Suicide… ?”
He smiled, a terrible smile. “I failed. Both times. Too damn scared.”
“It takes courage to live, not to die,” said Iridal.
“How the hell would you know, Lady?” Hugh sneered.
Iridal looked away, stared at her hands twisting in her lap.