The Malykant Mysteries

Epilogue

Epilogue

Irinanda was still asleep when Konrad returned to the house-on-stilts high among the trees. He swung himself up through the trapdoor with slow care, unwilling to disturb her. She didn’t wake as he moved about the room, cleaning the blood from his hands and replacing his blood-spattered clothes.

But when he moved to the bedside and stood looking down at her sleeping face, she woke almost immediately. Her pale eyes opened slowly and she stared up at him, her face white and drawn within the tangled nest of her white-blonde hair.

‘Are you well?’ he asked after a moment. She looked healthier than she had when he left; she was at least lucid, and her breathing was regular. But she remained so white and weak.

‘I should be dead,’ she said flatly. ‘Or worse.’ She moved to sit up, but he held her down.

‘Stay,’ he murmured. ‘You still need rest.’

‘I’m fine,’ she snapped. But Konrad wouldn’t relax his grip. At last she sank back into the pillows with a harassed sigh.

‘I should be dead,’ she repeated. ‘But I’m not. What did you do?’

Konrad said nothing. Nanda knew he wouldn’t - couldn’t - answer that question.

If she knew that, she didn’t accept it. He saw contempt in her eyes at his silence, and his soul shrivelled a little further.

‘Where have you been?’ she said then.

He sighed and lifted his eyes to the ceiling. He couldn’t answer that either; not that he needed to. She knew where he had been.

‘Nanda,’ he said seriously. ‘Your help was… truly important. Thank you.’

He received nothing but a stiff nod in answer to that.

‘And… I am sorry that you were endangered by it.’

Some of her frigidity softened at that. ‘I was the one who insisted, as I recall.’

There were a number of possible responses he could have made to that. He didn’t need to have given in to her questions and guesses. He hadn’t been obliged to give her a task, and he shouldn’t have sent her after a man who was obviously dangerous. But the slight thaw in her manner was pleasant and he didn’t want to risk ruining it with these uncomfortable truths.

‘What’s next?’ she said, her eyes searching his face.

She’d find no hint of a clue there, he knew, as his face was as impassive as always. ‘I will take care of you, until you are well. Then I will go back to the city.’

‘Back to being a gentleman,’ she said with faint scorn. ‘Until?’

‘Well. Until next time.’

‘What’s it like?’

The question took him by surprise. He was still more surprised to realise that he wanted to answer it. He badly wanted to talk to someone about the strange double life he lived.

But he couldn’t, not really. Not even when it was Nanda.

‘It is a purpose,’ he said finally.

He expected another surge of anger from her at this vague response, but if anything she looked rather sad.

‘Someday you’ll tell me more,’ she told him. ‘I am determined.’

Konrad inclined his head, permitting himself a small smile. He felt a brief flush of warmth at those words. “Someday” meant they were still friends; that she expected to remain friends for some time yet. If she wasn’t already repulsed by the things he did as the Malykant, then maybe there was hope for them after all. Maybe he wouldn’t lose the only friend he had.

‘Maybe I will,’ he replied. ‘Someday.’