The Necromancer's Stone; Killer

Thalia woke to the sound of blades being sharpened.  It wasn't actually uncommon in the nights since her parent's deaths.  Luninda was a compulsive blade sharpener, and Jaron seemed to have long given up on stopping her.  Tala had vanished as soon as they'd checked into the Hapsburg; something about needing some air.  The two Ga-Vok, on the other hand, had appointed themselves her bodyguards.  Even when she was at school they were never far.
She'd learned that Jaron had been sent by the Oracles, a council of shaman that served as an advisory council to whoever ruled the Confederacy at the time.  Realistically, that made them the true rulers of the Ga-Vok.  No one would argue their power, not even Thalia.  They never held any direct power, and their military wing consisted entirely of about forty priest-assassins known as 'the moon sought'.  And while they were, by most accounts, the most deadly covert operations force in the known universe; they simply lacked the presence to turn the Oracles into direct leadership of the confederacy.  All they really did was keep the Ga-Vok from falling apart, accelerate the end of term for less pious Alphas, and attend to the varied prophecies of the Oracles themselves.  And it was that last purpose that had lead Jaron to her.
As far as Thalia could tell, Luninda was just along for the ride.

"Why does it always seem to be windows with you?"
"Because there are always things in front of my door."  The cloaked man pulled himself through the barely open, tenth floor window into her room.  "I'm glad you came.  I was starting to worry."
"I had to see you again."  Hal pulled her up off the bed and kissed her.  "I never got to properly talk to you after our date."
"Extenuating circumstances aside, I think it went well."
"Really?  Maybe when this is all over we could do it again?"
Thalia nodded.  She was still too tired to fully make sense of her surroundings, but she was definitely glad he wasn't about to call it quits.  And after the way their relationship had gone so far, she hardly could have blamed him if he had.  It seemed like there was a swathe of death surrounding them; his previous girlfriend, her parents, the U'kown from the Opera, the gang from the bar.  A lot of it was her fault, some of it was out of their control, but she was sure he wouldn't have had to deal with any of it if she hadn't been around.
"Are you sure?  You'd probably be a lot safer without me."
"What makes you think I want to be safe?  She killed my parents too."
"I meant everything.  Most of the time I was the one who killed people; my parents were her, but everyone else was me."
He shuffled uncomfortably.  "I know.  And most of them had that coming.  Not all of them, but most of them. And if I had tried, none of them would have died.  Their blood is as much on my hands as yours."
"But you never struck the blow."
"I killed that U'kown, Cool, the one from the Opera.  And you never noticed some of the others.  Two of the boys from the TacSim team you defeated, the ones with the hammers; they tried to ambush you at the Fuzzy Librarian a week before Junsrew.  They tried to hire me, and I lead them into the alley to 'negotiate terms'.  And before that there was a Hydromancer, an immortal one.  I didn't know who you were then, but he'd hired me to track you.  When I saw you in your room," then he whispered, "having tea with your unicorns."  Thalia blushed.  If there was any secret she would have killed to hush up, it was that a villain in her late twenties still liked to have tea with her stuffed animals.  "I realized that I was working for that bad guy.  So I arranged to meet him in person, and then we fought, and I killed him."
"Do you know who he was?"
"No.  He never said his name.  I only ever knew that you'd humiliated him by disproving some kind of theorem of his.  I thought it was silly, but he made you out to be some sort of smart-alecky, loose, *^%*$."
"His name was Rucuun.  The theorem was that you could freeze time.  He could prove that you could slow it immensely, but I showed him that it could never be used to truly stop time.  I always thought he was just too upset to come back."
Then she looked him in the eyes and realized what he'd been through.  She was a villain, heartless and cold; for her killing was merely distasteful.  He wasn't.  He'd worked as a hero-for-hire, a mercenary.  He'd probably killed twice as many people as she had, but every one of them weighed on his conscience.  And not just targets, he felt bad for the minions, and the companions too.  He probably felt even worse for their deaths; most of them hadn't even known what they'd gotten into.  He did though, Hal had known what he'd gotten into.  And he'd managed to toughen up enough that he could keep going, but it didn't make him a killer.
"I'm sorry.  I didn't know."
"I didn't want you to know.  I wanted you to be safe."
"Well we can't both be safe then.  Either I protect you or you protect me, but that just puts one of us in harms way all the time."
They were quiet for a while.  Thalia had leaned up against one of the posts of her bed, facing Hal where he sat on the pillows.  The one Petra had called Rea had managed to curse him before she'd fled, and it was clear that Hal had been stricken with a few years worth of aging.  He wore them well though, and the little bit of grey in his beard made him, if anything, more attractive than ever.
"Then let us protect each other.  Your enemies will be mine."
Thalia recognized the ancient phrase.  It was the pledge of the priest and the princess, from Hilien's 'Zikat Du Junlaerd'.
"And your enemies shall be mine also.  My doors will always be open to you."
"And a place of honor will always be set for you at my table."
And between us there shall be one door, one table, and no enemies.  It sounded so much better in the original High-Nieldic, but common still conveyed the meaning.
"I think this is the part where we titter awkwardly for a while."
"I'm surprised you read poetry."
"I watch opera; why wouldn't I read poetry."
"I don't know.  Its just weird to think of a ruffian swordman like you reading Hilien or Acrival.  Do you sit out on a moor with your sword while you read it?"
Hal blushed.  Thalia had to laugh.  It was almost as bad as her having tea parties with her unicorns.  No swordsman worth his snuff would be caught dead in the middle of a plain of rolling hills, leaned against a rock, sword at his side, reading poetry.  Reading poetry in a tavern wouldn't have been fine either, but the sheer romantic quality of the image it presented just made it exceedingly un-swordsman like of him.
"Speaking of books.  I think I have one you wanted."  Hal fished into his pocket and pulled out a little leather bound book.  "I pulled it out of her pouch after I saw you try to get it."
Thalia accepted the book, and opened it to the last page, then read it.
"Holine IV Laerdsfeld, the Imperial vault on Medea, Phylactery and Body destroyed by Zink's Cleiden at seven fifty-eight in the morning and eight ten in the morning respectively, on the third day of the first month, the Twelve thousandth, One hundred and Ninety-Eighth year of the Empire in the presence of Krell Casat."
"Its a hit list."
"Its a hit list that goes nearly six thousand years into the future."
"Its MY hit list."
And they both turned to face the short, infuriated assassin.