Havemercy (34 page)

“Magritte or Isobel,” I said, “I didn’t think you pillow-biters noticed that sort of thing.”

He looked at me then, eyes green even in the dark and spitting-mad, like he wanted to hit me but was too smart to go through with it. Whatever I’d got into my head just now concerning the professor hit me real sweet and real deep, the way a particular drop did a number on my belly when I was riding Havemercy, but I wasn’t averse to hitting him back—and harder.

Being a Mollyrat, he was too smart to hit someone bigger than he was, and better at fighting to boot. Dirty fucking sneak—just like the rest of them.

“Wrong, huh?” I guessed. “You must have had your eye on one of them, then.” I wasn’t getting right in his face, just reminding him that I could. “Which was it then? The blonde? ’Cause she screams like you wouldn’t believe, only it’s the dark one’s got this trick she does with her tongue, like—”

“Don’t,” he said, eyes bright, jaw as hard as he could make it. “Spare me the sordid details. No one cares as much as you think.”

“As much as I think? Here’s what I think.” I changed tack swift as if he’d flicked a switch, pushing forward like you had to in a raid ’cause once you’d touched off from the ground there wasn’t no going back. “I think you don’t have any idea who I’m talking about, that I could name them all and you still wouldn’t know, because you weren’t looking at a one of them no matter how much tit they were showing.”

“I’d be surprised if you could name one of them, either,” he said, “considering your embarrassing display earlier.”

“She didn’t seem to mind,” I pointed out. The whole thing reminded me a little of that first night when I’d put him to the wall. The professor got like a wildcat when he was cornered, and it wasn’t like I’d forgot the fact but more like I had to remember it a bit every time it happened. “Why, do you?”

“Actually,” the professor faltered, “I think that this whole little performance was for my benefit, that you didn’t care one way or another about being with that girl. You only cared about my seeing it and what my reaction would be.”

Something sparked in his eyes like metal scraping metal.

“Do you?” I asked, soft and dangerous.

I leaned in close and his face changed, disgust and confusion and fear in his eyes. His lips parted halfway like he was going to protest or scream or something, and I felt a hot spike of victory hit me low in the belly.

It was better than a dive.

Swift as changing direction to find the right current, I knew exactly how I was going to play this one out. He was no different from anybody else I knew, and, given enough time, everyone saw reason.

“What kind of a brainless fucking idiot would say something like that?” I snapped. “You think you’re so smart, better than every man-fucking-jack of us, but I can see right through you. A Mollyrat’s always a Mollyrat, no matter how far he runs.”

His eyes flew open again, as though whatever he’d been expecting, it definitely hadn’t been that. I smiled, ’cause I had him now exactly where I wanted him, and for all his cleverness I didn’t think he’d figured it out yet.

“Yeah,” I said, like I’d been planning on it all along. Let him wonder how long I’d known his little secret for, ’cause the look on his face told me I was right, no matter what he said after. “That’s right. You’re that fucking easy for me to read. Don’t think all of them in there wouldn’t know it if I let it slip, that it would be so hard to fucking believe with the way you walk, all nervous and small. You stink of it.”

“I don’t care if they know,” he began.

I grinned, too certain now to stop. “Liar,” I said, rolling the word fat and sweet off my tongue.

It caught him by surprise, and for a moment his mouth was as weak and soft as a woman’s. Then, he must have remembered who I was—where he was—and his jaw hardened, chin tilting up in useless, stupid defiance.

“So what if I am,” he snapped right back, that suicide streak in him showing itself, and not for the first time. It was a miracle he survived Molly, acting so proud as all that. “You’re a ’rat yourself.”

“And I’m an airman,” I said, feeling dangerous. “What medals do you have? What lives have you saved? Speaking fifteen useless languages and being able to argue your way out of a paper bag—real fucking special.”

His cheeks were bright red now and his eyes sparking bright, like I’d lit up a fire inside him. “Well, we can’t all be upstanding citizens and heroes like you. Some of us weren’t so lucky.”

“Lucky?” I laughed at that, sharp and barking, and he drew back again; maybe he thought I was going to hit him, or maybe the sound was just so fucking awful he thought I already had. Didn’t matter to me either way, so long as he was knocked down a peg or fifteen by someone who could make sure he stayed down. No one else had volunteered for the job, and I was only too glad to take it on.

“You get to do whatever you want,” the professor returned, shaking, but holding his ground. “You think you’re above the common laws of courtesy—decency—basic humanity. You take what you want and don’t think about anyone else—and it isn’t that you’re stupid, either. You’re like every other Mollyrat who never bothered to learn beyond the gutters. You think that because your mother raised you in the streets, you can live by their rules—”

That was when I grabbed him by the collar and threw him up against the railing. His lower back hit against it and his breath whistled sharp between his teeth, and then we stared at each other for a long time, that same metallic scraping and flashing passed between us.

“We’re not so different as you think,” he said finally, just like Have. It was like he had some kind of death wish.

“If you believe that,” I said, showing all my teeth, “then you’re stupider than you look. If you thought I was watching you and putting on a show for you—maybe you were right. But you’d better keep just as close an eye on me,” I added, tightening my grip at his throat, “if you know what’s good for you.”

“You’re no more than a common bully,” he whispered, voice trembling. I’d shaken him for good now, and it was deeper than just the physical side, my knuckles bruising his throat and his back aching for all his so-called defiance.

“I don’t care what I am, so long as you’re afraid of me,” I said, and dropped him neat as that.

He really was that easy, that touchy about where he came from. Seeing as how he was no more than a stuck-up fucking ’Versity boy, I should’ve picked up on it sooner; maybe I could’ve spared us all the trouble of having him teach us how to channel our emotions good and proper.

The one thing I could say for him was how long he lasted—but then again, being from Molly, it wasn’t any wonder he was a tenacious little bastard. People from Molly tended to hold on good and long and hard to whatever it was they had, seeing as how quick it tended to get snatched away from them once they were down past the Mollyedge, where everything was free game to them as could take it fast enough.

I took a handful of his hair right at the back of his neck and tugged his head back. Tilted up toward mine, his face was hard, like maybe I’d pushed him too far, but I could see something still struggling in his mouth, bitter and desperate like surrender.

“Yeah,” I said finally, when I could be sure he was listening. “I thought so.”

Then I turned on my heel and left him there without any warning, sagged against the balcony and limp as a forgotten pair of gloves. I needed some time to think about what had just happened, and what in bastion’s name I was going to even do about it.

ROYSTON

According to Adamo, we really were winning the war, and while I was grateful for my reprieve from country life, the facts didn’t exactly add up. There was a bad taste in my mouth about the entire business, and it wasn’t just the bloodless, bodiless white wine that seemed to have come back into fashion during my absence from the court.

“Disgusting, isn’t it,” Adamo said. “Like drinking some horse’s piss.”

“I can’t be sure if your comparison is entirely apt,” I replied as we clinked our long-stemmed flute glasses together in a toast to our similar tastes, “but I’ll take your word for it.”

“Whoreson,” Adamo said fondly. “It was a turn of phrase.”

“Oh, yes, of course it was,” I said.

Together we downed our horse piss in one great go, but I still had no better bearings on what the Esar thought he was doing. If we were winning the war, then there was no reason for him to have called me back to court because I was needed on the front. It was possible that he wanted all his forces for the last great victory, but then why was the entire city engulfed in celebration over a war we hadn’t yet exactly won? His behavior was even more baffling than usual, and I sensed some smoke screen to the entire display. The Esar himself was conspicuous by his absence for most of the night, but that in and of itself wasn’t entirely unusual, as he usually left it to the Esarina, who was very fond of fine parties, to devote her full attention toward them.

There were other faces, too—ones that I was expecting to see, a few I was expecting to have to suffer stultifying conversation with—that, though I was grateful not to be afflicted with their presence, made me more uncomfortable in their absence than the awful wine we were being served.

Something was happening this night, something very private, and as far as I could tell it pointed very much against our guaranteed victory.

For example: Both Margraves of th’Incalnion were missing. And as they were of the oldest magician blood in all of Volstov, venerated scholars in their own right and never the sort to miss a party, I was immediately suspicious. As I began to catalog the list of those missing—Barebone of Barrowright Abbey, Wildgrave Marshall from the Valence, and velikaia Antoinette were the most noticeable; I don’t believe I’d ever been to a party of the Esar’s at which any one of them was not in attendance, much less all of them absent the same night—I felt more and more uncomfortable. There was always the likelihood that Antoinette, at least, had left early as she always did. It was a possibility, however slight, that some of them had found other parties more agreeable, but it didn’t seem likely. Not all of them at once. There was something being kept from all of us, and the Esar seemed to feel that, if he put on a grand enough show, we’d be too busy drinking, dancing, gossiping, and listening to the music—not to mention watching in rapt fascination our friends and enemies disappear in odd couplings onto the balconies—that we’d none of us realize what was really happening.

“Don’t you think there’s something a little strange about all this?” I asked Adamo, turning down the truffles as they passed me by.

“What, like how we’re here and all but setting off fireworks, and nobody’s actually handed the head of the Ke-Han warlord over to th’Esar yet?” Adamo asked.

I was grateful for his straightforward manner. “Exactly.”

“Or maybe your being recalled like we’re all in desperate need of you,” Adamo added. “And—no offense, your Talent’s been real useful, so don’t take this any way toward being personal—but you’re not the only one’s been recalled, either.”

“Yes, I saw Caius,” I said. “I never thought he’d be . . . invited back. Or come back, even if the Esar paid him, for that matter.”

“And there’s Berhane, too,” Adamo added.

“Is there really?” I asked. “Bastion. Something is going on.”

“Not necessarily. Th’Esar’s the kind of man who likes things finished once and for all, and if the war’s heading in that direction, then he could just be calling back all his best and brightest for the final push,” Adamo finished. “Stop sending those truffles away.”

“My apologies.” I paused for a moment, both to think over the information as well as to summon the young man bearing the platter of truffles back to our side. Adamo plucked one off the careful arrangement of powdered sugar and lace and chewed slowly on it. I didn’t altogether agree with his logic, though what he said about the Esar made sense. He was that sort of man. “What’s your count on who’s missing?” I asked at length.

“Fifteen,” Adamo said.

“Does that number include Antoinette?”

“Sixteen,” Adamo revised. “And I’ll tell you another thing, only this is about the Ke-Han. They’re not even fighting like they used to.”

The musicians started up a cheery waltz and there was a commotion of partners being changed and fans being snapped open to flutter widely in front of flushed bosoms from which most of the powder had been worn off by perspiration. I cast an unhappy look out over the crowd, then turned my full attention back to Adamo. “I don’t see how that entirely fits in with our present collection of evidence,” I began.

“Most men about to get their tails beat in a game they’ve been fighting for over a hundred years—a game so important that losing it’s going to cost them their lives—don’t just give up fighting like all the wind’s been knocked out of them,” Adamo explained. “No, they fight like dogs. They go for the throat, the belly. They don’t just lie down in the sand and call for their mothers.”

“I take your point,” I replied. “My mistake.”

One of the members of the bastion passed too close to us then for me to be entirely comfortable with his purposes—it would have been my own fault if our conversation were overheard by all and sundry, with us discussing it in the middle of the Esar’s own ballroom—and Adamo cleared his throat, showing me he’d been thinking the same thing. This conversation was best left to another time and another place, and when we’d not been drinking so much horse piss, either.

“It’s good to see you again,” Adamo said. “And looking so healthy. For a while your letters had me thinking I needed to fly in there and pull you out myself.”

“As dashing as that would have been,” I replied dryly, “I did manage to take care of myself.”

“ ’Course you did,” Adamo said, as if he didn’t believe me for a single second. “And the new, ah, apprentice you brought with you tonight had nothing to do with it?”

“Bastion,” I swore, a little too loud for propriety. “Hal.”

“I think he was in the bathroom, last I checked, having a fascinating conversation with Raphael—he’s one of mine, flies Natalia—about third-edition gold prints,” Adamo told me. “Weirdest damn conversation I’ve ever been privy to, if you don’t mind me saying it.”