C.E. Mutphy - Hands of Flame

Regret rose in Margrit, a physical thing clogging her breath. She put her hand out and Tony caught it, holding on hard as they met eyes. Margrit found herself looking at the life she might have led, if she’d chosen to trust Tony with the impossible. It was more comfortable, no doubt, than her relationship with Alban would prove to be; there would have been no awkward hours, no carefully kept secrets from the world; not, at least, about each other. It would have been a human life, as ordinary and extraordinary as that, and for a moment it shone brilliantly. “I underestimated you. I’m sorry.”

Tony nodded. “So’m I.”

Something physical popped inside her as he spoke, the release of one dream for the pursuit of another. Margrit caught her breath, feeling its loss, and released Tony’s hand. He crooked a smile that said he, too, knew their moment had passed in a more final way than emotional breakups framed. “Guess this is the part where we promise to stay friends, huh?”

“You told me not to say that,” Margrit reminded him.

“You’re not. I am. You’re gonna need friends, Margrit. You’re going to need people who get why you go off fighting dragons.”

“In four years of us dating you never understood that, Tony. I mean, it’s what running through the park was, pretty much. That’s always been my way of fighting dragons.”

“Yeah, but that was before I knew they really existed.” He held up a hand, smiling wryly. “I know it doesn’t make sense. Don’t ask.”

“It makes a kind of sense.”

“Grace told me about these favors you’ve exchanged with Janx,” Tony said abruptly. “Is that my fault?”

Margrit blinked, but shook her head. “It really isn’t. You put his name in my ear, but someone else pointed me at him to talk to about the Old Races. I made my own noose there. Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t help worrying. I know what kind of guy he is.” Exasperation flitted across Tony’s face. “Except I don’t.”

“No, you do. Just because he’s a dragon doesn’t mean he’s not also a criminal. It just gets complicated when you start looking at it in terms of human justice.”

“No kidding.” Slow realization dawned on Tony’s face. “Shit, Margrit. Tell me you didn’t tip him off the night we raided the House of Cards.”

Margrit’s game face fell into place far too late, a too-honest wince creasing her features long before she could school them into courtroom calm. Tony stared at her, then in genuine dismay, said, “Margrit!”

She winced again. “That sounded way too much like my mother. I’m sorry, Tony. I really am, but I just can’t see him in one of our jails. It’s like caging a lion for hunting.”

“We shoot lions that hunt people!”

Margrit opened her mouth and shut it again on her argument. “All right, good point. Still, I just…I had to warn him. I just…”

Tony leaned back, arms folded across his chest as he glared at her. “Looks like the mighty have fallen.”

“I fell and then I started digging a pit. I don’t know, maybe this is one of the reasons I agreed to go work for Daisani. I always knew that most of the time I was defending bad guys, but I could live with that. It was how our legal system worked. But it’s our legal system, and I got myself neck-deep in a whole world that doesn’t quite follow our rules. It’s easy to stop toeing the line, Tony. I never knew how easy it was. If I’m not at Legal Aid anymore I’m not in the position of making these decisions, of splitting these hairs. I don’t have to decide if I put Janx away or let him walk.”

“That’s for a jury to decide, not you, Grit.”

“Where are you going to find a jury of Janx’s peers?”

Uncertainty crossed Tony’s face before he looked away with a new frown. “He lives in our world. He should be judged by it.”

“If you can really believe that,” Margrit said softly, “you’re doing one better than me.”

He looked back at her, lips thinned. “I gotta believe it.”

Margrit nodded, then sighed. “Would it do any good to ask you not to pursue him now? Because he’s already chafing at having to promise not to eviscerate you. If you push it…”

“You think he’ll go back on his word? I thought you trusted him.”

“I think he might decide you’re crunchy and good with ketchup now and be terribly, terribly sorry later.” Margrit widened her eyes in her best imitation of the dragonlord’s mockery of innocence. “I’d rather you didn’t risk it.”

“That’s quite a mouthful coming from you, at this point.”

“I know.” Margrit got to her feet, wrapping the blanket around her as a barrier against the cool room. “So maybe you’ll take that into consideration. Did Grace bring me any clothes, by any chance?”

“I went to your apartment and got you some.” Tony got up to pull a duffel bag around the end of the bed. “What’re you going to do, Grit?”

“First I’m going to get dressed.” Margrit began rifling through the bag, pulling out a favorite T-shirt, a sports bra and well-loved jogging pants. She shot a smile of recognition and thanks at Tony, who shrugged a shoulder in acknowledgment.

“First I’m going to get dressed,” she repeated, mostly to herself, then glanced at Tony again. “And then I’m going to topple an empire.”

It had sounded good, she thought later, though the reality was that she slipped out of Grace’s tunnels with very little battle plan in place. Cutting the legs from under Daisani’s world-spanning corporation took more insider knowledge than she had access to.

Margrit crushed her hand into a fist. No: not more than she had access to, not if she utilized all the resources at her command. But far more than she wanted to use, if there was any potential way to avoid it.

She was running without knowing when she’d started, running for the first time in days, trying to outpace the only solid idea she had. She put on speed, not caring if she pushed herself too far: she needed the release, and the clarity that came with her feet striking the pavement in rhythmic slaps.

Janx and Daisani were symbiotic, always working as a pair. Both Chelsea and Tariq had said that when one failed in a location, the other soon moved on. Margrit told herself it wasn’t betrayal to push Daisani toward that end, but rather helping nature take its usual course.

Disbelieving laughter tore her lungs. Even if she could make herself believe that—and while she was a good liar, she didn’t think she was that good—even if she could, Daisani would never believe it. She already had a very black mark against her on his record. Pulling strings to cut his financial empire’s throat would be setting herself a noose and offering to adjust its fit.

Ir rah shun al, whispered the back of her mind. She sprinted ahead of it, trying to run faster than thought. It leapt ahead of her, taunting: if she failed Janx, his hands would be freed. Daisani losing everything seemed a fair trade for Tony’s life. The vampire, after all, could start again. Tony wouldn’t have a second chance.

Someday, she would be able to look back and pinpoint the moment at which she ceased recognizing herself. Maybe it had been when she’d gone with instinct and admitted to Alban that she trusted him. Maybe it had been later than that; maybe it had been when Ausra had died and Margrit had passed beyond normal human law into being part judge, jury and executioner herself. Maybe all of it had simply crept up, weighting her with incremental changes until she was suddenly, simply, no longer as she had been.

The woman she’d been wouldn’t have seriously considered how to ruin vast financial holdings, much less found herself grimly intending to do so.

Fresh humor, more of the bitter stuff that had followed her lately rather than the previous night’s joyfulness of being alive, surged through her. The truth was the woman she’d been before the Old Races could never have encountered the questions and problems that were now part and parcel of her life. In the same extraordinary circumstances, faced with what she now faced, the woman she’d been would make the same decisions. Had to make them, for the sake of people she loved. Daisani could start again, and at the end of the day, his welfare wasn’t as important to her as Tony’s.