Celia Friedman - When True Night Falls

He was about halfway down when a hand grasped his shoulder from behind. Startled, he turned around as fast as he could. Instinct said go for your weapon, but instinct also said don’t drop the tray! and the result was that in his panic he nearly dropped them both.

“No need to be startled,” a cool voice assured him. The hand fell from his shoulder; his flesh was faintly chilled where it had grasped him.

The foreign Neocount. That’s who it was. For a minute his testicles drew up in cold dread, because he’d heard what the man was and what he could do. Then he remembered what the captain had told him: that there were at least a thousand wards in the palace all fixed on this man, all waiting for the first time he used his power against the Prince. Let him mutter even the first word of a Knowing, the rakh had assured him, and those wards will fry him to a cinder. Which meant that he was safe, didn’t it? Didn’t hurting one of the palace guards count as hurting the Prince?

Then the smooth, perfectly manicured hands closed about the sides of the tray and he could feel its woven surface grow cool in his hands. For a moment he held onto it, thinking that the captain would give him hell if he let go—and then he looked into those eyes, those bottomless silver cold-as-ice eyes, and his hands lost all their strength.

“I’ll deliver it,” the Neocount told him. “You can go back up.”

He almost started to protest, but his voice failed him. At last, realizing that he was outgunned and outclassed and not about to start an argument with a sorcerer in a dark place like this where no one could hear him yell, he nodded his acquiescence. The Neocount’s gaze released him and he shivered as the tall, cold figure passed him in the stairwell.

Oh, well, he thought. I didn’t want to climb the damned stairs anyway, right?

Shaking, he went back up to tell his captain that the food had been delivered.

The light was dim, and in order to read by it Damien and Jenseny had to sit with their backs to the bars. Thus they were positioned now, with various piles of coins and cards and miscellaneous small items spread out between them. They were filthy, worn and bruised, and their attention was clearly fixed on the cards in their hands. Neither of them noticed Tarrant as he approached.

“Two,” the girl said, and she took two cards from her hand and put them on the floor. “Give me two.”

The priest counted two cards off the deck and gave them to her. Evidently he had heard Tarrant move then, for after that he turned around-

And stared. Just long enough for Jenseny to turn around and see Tarrant and gasp. Just long enough for the Hunter to read the venom in his gaze. Then he turned back to the pile of items before him and picked up a coin. With studied disdain he cast it through the bars to the Hunter’s feet; it rolled to a stop against his boot.

“You can leave it by the bars,” he said shortly. “We’ll get to it when we’re done.”

He turned his back on the man then, and counted three cards for himself off the deck.

“Jen?”

“Two coins,” she said. She pushed them to the pile between them, where two other coins already lay.

He considered his cards, then added two coins of his own. “I’ll see you that, and raise you . . . a piece of chalk.”

“I’m out of chalk.” She dug a grimy hand down into her pocket, searching for any miniscule tidbits that previous searches had not revealed. At last she came up clutching something. She held it up into the light and asked, “What is it?”

He studied the small bits of dark rock and rendered judgment. “Lava.”

“What’s it worth?”

He considered. “Half a chalk each.”

Tarrant came forward as she counted off two pieces and added them to the pile of wagers. He put the tray down on the floor, right by the bars. “I thought you would want to know what happened,” he said.

“I vulking well know what happened,” Damien muttered through gritted teeth. Then to the girl, “What have you got?”

“Three Matrias.”

“Damn. Pair of sevens.” He watched as she pulled the booty over to her side, then cast another coin down between them. “Your deal.”

“I thought you should understand—”

“I understand, all right!” He got to his feet in one sudden motion and turned to face the man; he felt as taut as a watchspring that had been overwound, about to snap. “I understand that I fed you for five vulking months so you could get here and sell us out to the man we came to kill, that’s what I understand! What did he offer you, anyway? A house of your own with some nifty crystal architecture, maybe a few girls to run around and bleed for you? What?”

“Immortality,” the Hunter said.

Stunned, Damien couldn’t find his voice.

“The real thing.”

“God,” he whispered. He shut his eyes. “No. I can’t outbid that. Good God.”

“We didn’t have a chance,” the Hunter told him. “Not with a Iezu involved. I couldn’t get within ten feet of the Prince without half a dozen wards attacking, and you . . . you wouldn’t last a minute. The first time you even hinted at a threatening gesture your senses would be so warped by Iezu sorcery that you couldn’t tell dream from reality, and then it would all be over. No contest at all.”

“Then you could have told me that!” he spat. “When I asked you in Esperanova, you should have told me that. God damn it! I trusted you.”

“And I warned you not to,” the Hunter reminded him. “Several times.”

“You could have told me!”

“I did. I told you there was almost no hope. I told you your only chance lay with one wild element—and it didn’t come through, did it? That’s hardly my fault.”

Damien’s hands had clenched into fists by his sides; his knuckles were white with rage. “Damn you,” he whispered hoarsely. “Damn your infernal honesty!”

“I gave you the odds. You made your decision. Isn’t it a little hypocritical to play the martyr now, priest?”

He might have answered—if he could have gotten words out past the rage boiling up in his throat—but at that moment another person entered the chamber, and her presence startled him so much that words abandoned him.

She was slender. She was dark. She was beautiful, in the way that the Hunter preferred beauty: fragile, delicate, vulnerable. It was clear from the way she looked at Tarrant that she feared him, feared him terribly, and yet she approached him, drawn to his presence in the way a mesmerized skerrel might be drawn to a hungry snake. Every instinct in Damien’s soul cried out for him to go to her, to help her, to shelter her from the Hunter’s cruelty, but the chain binding his legs and the thick iron bars before him made any such movement impossible. Whatever Tarrant might do to this woman, Damien could do no more than stand and watch.

She looked at the priest, then at the Hunter, then quickly away. Her hand on the wall was trembling, and her voice shook slightly when she spoke. “His Highness says to please come see him when you’re finished here, he has some business he needs to discuss with you.” A bare whisper of a voice, so fraught with fear that Damien’s heart ached to hear it. And for good reason, he thought; he could almost feel the Hunter’s hunger reaching out to her, caressing her, savoring her terror-

“Leave her alone!” he choked out. Powerless words, futile sounds. There was nothing he could do if the Hunter chose to harm her. Nothing but watch, and hate.

Tarrant moved to where the woman stood. Though she drew back from him in terror, she made no move to get away. He lifted a long, slender hand to her hair, then stroked it; his finger passed down along the line of her throat, pausing gently to test the heat of her pulse. She moaned softly, but made no move to escape him. Her dark eyes glittered with fear.