He hated him.
It was a fact everyone knew about Basta, and it was certainly true, as true as his superstition, another well-known fact.
Basta hated Dustfinger, and had vowed many times to kill him with his knife – not just any knife, but the knife that the fire-eater had stolen from him, stolen along with Basta's good-luck charm on that day in the woods of the other world.
That knife, or the other knife he'd stolen, not long after, when he had locked Basta inside the prison made of the home of dead men, and left him there, alone but for women who hated him.
Basta hated Dustfinger. And no other would dare to kill Dustfinger, because that was Basta's job and his alone.
That was why he had done it. So that he could be the one to kill the man, to see the fear in his eyes, and then the death, after Basta's reclaimed knifes carved him into pieces. That was the only reason.
It had nothing to do with the feelings.
The feelings. That was all Basta would call them, even within his own head, for anything more would be too much.
The feelings were subliminal, evil thoughts that stole into his head late at night. They were memories of a scarred face pressed against a wall, trapped by Basta himself, memories of a throat swallowing nervously, of a body tensing and eyes shining in fear.
Memories that shifted into dreams where Basta still pressed the man against a wall, but his knife was no longer at Dustfinger's throat, and it wasn't fear shining from those eyes, and Basta's fingers tracing the scars his own knife had made, and then it was his mouth –
It had nothing to do with that.
Nothing to do with the strange longings that took hold of him whenever he saw the cursed man, that made him grit his teeth to hold back words he would never allow himself to utter, and react in anger rather than feelings he could never allow himself to feel. Nothing to do with the urges that drove him to destroy the others in Dustfinger's life – to try to steal away the maid and the minstrel girl, to want to kill the boy and the girl, and the man, Silvertongue, and his stupid friends, the whole group that allied with Basta's enemy.
Because he was only an enemy.
Basta knew Dustfinger saw him that way. As an enemy. Just an enemy – the same way Basta saw him. Neither of them would do a thing to help the other, and the only reason Dustfinger hadn't killed him several times was simply the fact that he had no stomach for killing much of anything. Basta would have killed the fire-eater, but Capricorn had forbidden him.
So why had he saved his life?
Deep in his heart, Basta knew. He knew why he had saved the other man's life, why he was sitting here in this dark hut, watching him and waiting for him to wake. And it had everything to do with the feelings, and with the reason he hated Dustfinger.
Because the other man would never feel the way he did, and Basta hated him for that.