C.E. Mutphy - Hands of Flame

“That was ingenious, by the by. It came to a rather horrific end, but I have to applaud your means.” Janx actually did, sitting back to bring his hands together in staccato claps as she, cringing again, kept her eyes on the chess game. “They’re saved, as I understand it, from materializing inside things by two objects inherently not desiring to share the same space. A safety buffer of sorts. But there’s an infinitesimal window in which it’s too late, and if you can slip into that window—” He lifted the cane and brandished it like the sword it held. “I wasn’t Malik’s first rite-of-passage challenge. He lost the other one, too, and his rival destroyed his knee and his place in the tribes.”

“So he came to work for you,” Margrit said, fairly certain of her guess. Janx nodded and she sighed. “How long ago was that?”

“Longer ago than Vanessa joined Eliseo,” he said after a few seconds. “Unlike Vanessa, he wasn’t always at my side. He didn’t like cold climates. But, yes, it was…some decades longer than Eliseo’s association with poor Vanessa Gray. There are moments when I miss his sour face. And then I remember he tried to kill me.”

Margrit moved her knight forward and let her focus drift, watching ivory pieces swim with a life of their own. “If they don’t accept the offer I made them, they’re planning on retaliating for his death. I think that’s part of what was happening at the warehouse today. Although you were a bit excessive, Janx.”

“Excessive?” His eyebrows rose and he folded his hand above a chess piece, more interested in conversation than playing. “My dear young lady, they took everything from me. I intend to have it back or leave them with nothing. Is that excessive?”

“Listen to yourself. It’s Wagnerian. There’s a certain panache to it, but it’s completely over the top. Do you really want to have a hand in starting a race war?”

“If such a war is to be had, I fear I’ve already done my part. As have you.”

“Maybe, but I’m trying to mitigate it, not compound it. Look, how long can you and Daisani keep this up, anyway? He’s been in New York thirty years. People gossip about who his plastic surgeon is. This is the modern world. You can’t stay in one place much longer than this. Why not take this one on the chin and move on?”

“And what of you, Margrit, if we do? What of your lust for us—” Janx broke off with a laugh as a horrified noise burst from her throat, then finally moved a chess piece as he went on. “Perhaps not for me personally, to my everlasting chagrin, I assure you, but for what we are? A piece of magic brought into your world. Would you send Alban away, as well? Would you come away with us yourself, Thomas the Rhymer caught in our schemes?”

“Alban hasn’t lived the kind of public life you have.” The sly glance Janx gave her warned that he knew she hadn’t answered the question, but Margrit continued regardless. “You’d still be out there. Even if you weren’t charging in and blowing up my life, I’d know you were still out there. Alive, undiscovered, more or less safe.”

“Caged by our comparative safety. You, of all people, should understand what it is to resent that.”

Margrit moved another chess piece, looking for an opening to let her rook move freely, as if sending it on a run through the park. “Is that why you go to the dark side? Because playing with the underworld feels less constrained? I understand, but me getting caught on one of my adventures wouldn’t end up with me on a dissecting table. I’d rather see all of you, even Alban, gone from New York if it meant you’d all stepped back from the edge of a genocidal war. I don’t think it matters if you don’t manage to wipe each other out. I’m afraid that kind of activity will get you noticed, and you know how dangerous that is.”

“Would you come with us?” The air turned heavier with warmth as Janx transferred all his attention to Margrit, making her remember his true form.

She looked away. “I don’t know. My whole life is here.”

“As are all of ours, and yet you have no compunction against advising us to move on.”

“No.” Margrit’s gaze sharpened as she returned it to the dragonlord. “This epoch in your life is here, not your whole life. I don’t have any idea how old you are, but no matter what you do, there’s only a limited window you can stay in any one human population if you’re in any kind of visible position. You have to change your skin every once in a while. Your whole life isn’t here. Just this go-around.”

“So you would have us retreat.”

“I would have you live, dragonlord. Grow stronger. Fight another day.” Margrit closed her eyes, muttering, “I really am starting to sound like you,” before refocusing on Janx. “Whatever it takes. You must’ve done it before. Why object now?”

“You’re assuming I went gently into that good night in previous years, my dear. Does anything about me suggest that I might have done so?”

Margrit opened her mouth and shut it over an escaping bubble of laughter. “No.” Then, seriousness overtaking her, she added, “But when was the last time, Janx? This century?” She flicked her fingers, trusting Janx to understand what she meant even if her words weren’t literally accurate. “The world’s population has doubled in the last hundred years, and I don’t even have words to describe the difference in media from even fifty years ago to today. If you let this play out, you’re no better than Aus—” Chagrin bit the word off too late.

Interest lit Janx’s eyes. “Ausra?”

Margrit sighed. “She was so determined that Alban should pay for Hajnal’s death that she couldn’t see what her actions were doing. She was willing to expose all of you to the modern world in her quest for vengeance. Your survival as a whole is much more important than any individual grievance. You’ve got to be able to see that.”

“And you will fight passionately to make certain we do, without quite being able to commit yourself completely to our world. Margrit, I do not mean this for a threat, but this is not a line upon which you will forever be permitted to balance. There are no half measures, something Alban has come to be reminded of, of late. In the end, you will choose your own world or ours. Don’t,” he added to her indrawn breath. “You’re about to tell me you have, but you haven’t. You believe you’ve chosen us because you’ve lied and sacrificed and put our needs above your own, but there’s a martyr in that, and it is not a choice. You’re still bedazzled, though not as badly as you were before you watched three of us fight and one of us die. There will be a moment, Margrit Knight, when you will make your choice, and that moment will be unmistakable. Don’t cheapen it by thinking you’ve already made it.”

Margrit’s hands had curled into fists as he spoke, nails cutting into her palms. Color burned her cheeks until her eyes were hot with tears and her breath felt harsh and cold in her throat. “You think the last three months have been a game for me? Russell, my boss, my boss for the last three years at Legal Aid, is dead, Janx. My boyfriend dumped me. I’ve been nearly killed more than once and today I went to try to stop your people from getting into a war instead of doing my own job. You think I’m kidding around?”

“No,” Janx said, unexpectedly sympathetic. “I think you underestimate the point at which you can walk away. You still can, and until that threshold is crossed, you should remember that you have a way out. I didn’t mean to anger you or belittle what you’ve done for us. Or to us,” he added more wryly. “But the truth is that if you had chosen our world, you would without hesitation join us if we left this city. Not without regrets, perhaps, but without hesitation. It’s the cost of our friendships. It always has been.”