C.E. Mutphy - Hands of Flame

“Margrit?” Daisani’s voice scraped as badly as Janx’s had a moment earlier, his astonishment even deeper than Tariq’s. “You took Malik’s life?”

“I did.” Alban interrupted as Margrit drew breath to explain. Daisani’s expression went ever more incredulous, and Margrit said, “He had help. They can’t change if they get soaked with salt water. I had a watergun.” She lifted one hand to mock squirting, then realized what she’d done with dismay. Not the confession, but the playful pull of an invisible trigger. It lacked all the formality that her exhausted headache was trying to settle on her.

“In their defense,” Janx said unexpectedly, “the thing was done in my defense. Malik was trying very hard to kill me, and very nearly succeeding.” He spun the corundum cane in a theatrical circle, apparently having forgotten the anger that had held him in its grip only moments earlier. “I know, my old friend, that you swore an oath to keep the djinn safe, and to make restitution against anyone who might breach your word. Perhaps this once we might…forgive old vows, and leave the game to continue.”

Daisani shot the briefest of glances at Tariq, who curled his lip as he looked at Janx. “Do as you will. Your vengeance is not ours.” With a twist as dramatic as the dragon’s, he whipped himself into a dervish, the other djinn following suit. In a moment they were gone, leaving nothing but a rattle of dust in the air, and then even that faded. The youthful selkie who had spoken to Margrit at the meeting that morning gave her a look of angry scorn, and with no more commentary, led his people from Grace’s audience chamber.

Margrit mumbled, “I’m going to have to talk to Tony,” and turned her attention back to Janx and Daisani.

They stood as though locked in ancient combat, both so still they seemed all but lifeless. Neither looked happy, though Janx’s face was so accustomed to wearing merriment that a hint of it lingered and marked him with a profound sorrow, as if the exaggerated lines of a comedy mask had been peeled away to show its tragic partner underneath. “Very well,” the dragon finally whispered. “If it is not so easy as that, we will make do as we must, my friend. As we always have and as we always shall.” He swept a less insolent bow than any Margrit had ever seen him perform, though it wasn’t precisely respect that marked the gesture, either. Acceptance, maybe, or resignation.

Then, as one, the two men turned to Margrit and Alban, and this time it was Daisani who murmured, “The child, Alban. Tell us of the child.”

“He can’t.” Margrit’s voice sounded light and distant to her own ears. The headache made her feel as though her skull had been stuffed with cotton. “He promised her. You must know that. He promised her that whatever happened, he would never tell either of you. If I didn’t have such a messy mind, you wouldn’t know now.”

Daisani, startlingly, bared his teeth at her. For all that they were flat and ordinary, Margrit flinched back, heart rate spiking at the show of aggression. Her headache flooded back and Daisani’s voice grated across it: “The child would be one of ours, Margrit Knight. After all you’ve done to change our people, you dare make mockery of something this important?”

“I’m not mocking.” Margrit’s pulse fluttered in her throat, bird-quick, distressing her with its vulnerable show. “I’m just saying he can’t tell you. You know how gargoyles are.”

“Margrit,” Alban murmured. She smiled, trying not to wince as moving her face redoubled the pain in her head.

“Am I wrong?”

He huffed, answer enough, and Margrit’s wince-inducing smile repeated itself as she looked back at the ancient rivals standing above her. “She lived. They lived. There were two of them, both girls. Sarah named them Kate and Ursula. They lived,” she said again, and this time her smile didn’t hurt. “Congratulations. One of you has descendants.”

Something too weak to be rue flooded through Alban as Margrit blithely, deliberately, took the onus of silence from him and shattered it with a handful of simple words. Gratitude that she would do such a thing colored with wry acceptance: nothing was sacred to Margrit Knight, no secret precious enough to be kept when it could be played as a hand. Whether that was the lawyer in her or the human amidst immortals, he was uncertain, but the why hardly mattered.

Janx and Daisani stared at the woman bundled in Alban’s arms as though she’d thrown a lifeline they were incapable of grasping. “They were born in the spring,” Margrit rattled on. “Alban was there to make sure Sarah was all right, that she had money and a home and a nurse, and then he left them. They didn’t look like much, just little and red and squalling. They were very small.” She cradled her arms, familiar gesture, but somehow conveyed Alban’s size to the newborns’, and how extraordinarily tiny and fragile they were to him. It was rare to see a gargoyle act out moments shared through memory; to see a human do so bent Alban’s mind out of shape with astonishment.

“It was too dangerous to go back.” Margrit’s voice was high and soft, words a singsong. “Sarah wanted a quiet life, one not ruled by the Old Races. The only way to give her that was to leave her alone. And when you left London and he did go back, years later, to check on her, they were gone. She was clever,” Margrit said in a voice more like her own. “I’d have a hell of a time running from you, but it wasn’t that hard in the seventeenth century, was it?”

“Margrit,” Alban murmured with a note of quiet dismay. She turned a smile edged with pain up at him.

“Sorry. Talking distracts me from my head. I don’t really understand what’s happening to me.”

“It was what you might call a feedback loop.” Eldred spoke, making Margrit startle within the compass of Alban’s arms. She peered over his biceps, fingers curled against it.

“I forgot you were here.” A moment passed and she added, with greater concern, “I forgot about the trial.” She struggled out of Alban’s arms, pushing to her feet and putting on a veneer of professionalism that belied the grayness of her skin tones. Alban, watching her, knew she was in pain, could see the lines of strain in her face, but as she relaxed into her courtroom personality he doubted what he knew. “I’m sorry,” she said far more briskly. “I didn’t mean to create this kind of disruption.”

“It was hardly your fault. None of us anticipated this.”

Margrit nodded once, still briskly, before a little of her facade crumbled. “What happened? It felt like the top of my head came off. Still does.” She touched her hair and flinched, then dropped her hand again, clearly unhappy with what she’d just given away.

“I think, in any practical terms, that’s precisely what did happen,” Eldred said ruefully. “Your susceptibility to our ability to share seems to…amplify, upon creating a true bridge between minds. And your thoughts are not patterned as ours are.”

“You took off the tops of all our heads,” Janx murmured. His gaze on Margrit was hungrier than Alban had ever seen it, sending a surge of protectiveness through the gargoyle. He pushed out of his crouch, not moving from beside the chess table or Margrit, but there was no need to. Janx and Daisani had come close enough that simply standing expressed Alban’s size in comparison to the other two. Only in his dragon shape could Janx rival Alban’s gargoyle form, and he doubted Janx would make that shift in this company.

“So the ritual opened my mind and you all rode my memory.” Margrit’s voice was strong with comprehension, though she added, “Oh, God,” much more softly as the implications of that intimacy set in. “But you have my memories of Ausra. Of what happened. What do we need to do to conclude the trial?”