C.E. Murphy - House of Cards

Margrit made a protest, her voice nothing more than a croak as her mother hurried away. It seemed impossible that she could do so, impossible that she wouldn’t stand and face Daisani, or even Margrit herself. Loneliness rose up again. Every hope of sharing the incredible world she’d discovered seemed to be swept away with her mother’s departure.

"Forgive me." Daisani spoke from beside her, his approach too quick or too quiet for her to have noticed. "Forgive me, Margrit. I said I would protect her. I’d hoped danger wouldn’t come so close. Forgive me for my carelessness."

"Why?" Margrit clenched her fists, turning miserable eyes on Daisani. Janx stood a few feet behind him, his own hands knotted loosely and his head turned to the side, gaze cast downward. Only the djinn, who’d fallen silent after his first shout of protest, looked pleased. "Why does she do that? Why does she leave without answers? Why-?"

Profound regret slid across Daisani’s thin face. "Because she prefers not to know them, my dear. You are very like your mother, but not in this regard. I like to imagine she refuses answers because she prefers the world to have mystery in it."

"Not my mom. Not-"

"Shh." Daisani echoed the gesture Rebecca had used with him, fingertips not quite touching Margrit’s lips. "Be so kind as to leave me my illusions, Margrit. Let me imagine that mysteries are sweeter unsolved, rather than know that I’m too fearsome to be investigated."

Margrit swallowed, trying to make room for words in her throat. "So we do matter," she said hoarsely. "I mean, I knew Vanessa did-of course she mattered. But the rest of us. We’re here and then gone again so quickly. I wondered if you even noticed, if you made friends, or mourned us when we’re gone. Do you have to decide who’s worth it and who isn’t in the space of an instant, because taking time to decide will waste all the years of our lives?" Her heart beat slowly and tears stung at the back of her eyes, high emotion brought by the audacity of her questions and the weight of their answers. Humans wanted to live forever. Only in asking did she realize that immortality was a dangerously lonely business.

Daisani met her gaze evenly a long time, then lowered his eyes a moment before lifting them again with all the grace of age. Behind him, Janx looked toward her even more steadily. Unable to bear the answers in their silence, Margrit nodded jerkily and turned toward the djinn, making a rough, human gesture intended to bring the men back to the topic at hand.

The djinn spat as their attention turned back to him. "You can do nothing to me. I have no answers for you."

"Perhaps not." Alban’s voice cut across the nearly empty courtyard, stony with assurance. "But I think I do."

"Alban!" Margrit ran across the courtyard to him, aware as she crashed against him that his embrace was gentle, whereas hers used all the fragile strength she had to command. He coiled his arms around her and buried his nose in her hair, murmuring a sound of reassurance. After a few trembling seconds she loosened her grip enough to look up at him. "What’re you doing here?"

"Indeed," Janx said, far more dryly. "What are you doing here, Korund? I set you a task."

"Malik is settled," Alban replied without rancor. "What did you give him, Janx, to give to Kaimana?"

The dragonlord’s eyebrows drew into a dark line and he sent Margrit a glance that hovered between knowing and accusing. "Nothing. There’s no profit to me in sending a lackey to negotiate."

"Then what," Alban asked, "has Malik delivered to him that you would not want Kaimana, in turn, to give to Tony Pulcella?"

Margrit drew in a sharp, quiet breath. "Tony? Oh God." She turned toward Janx in time to catch a snarl ripple over his face. "They took Al Capone down for tax evasion, Janx."

"Don’t be concerned, glassmaker." The djinn spat. "By the time the police arrive there’ll be nothing of yours left to claim. The selkies will have helped us take it all."

"The selkies?" The astonishment in her own voice would have embarrassed Margrit had it not been echoed so wholeheartedly by the other three who stood outside the bloody circle. Then she found herself speaking, putting pieces together aloud.

"There are more of you than anybody else. More djinn, more selkies. But you’re enemies. Kaimana didn’t risk it all on the quorum, did he. He came to you first. He offered you something you wanted in exchange for your support. He offered you…" Her gaze flickered to Daisani and Janx, then back again, as she guessed, "Economic power, outside of your deserts? He told you there was strength in numbers and offered you-oh, the smooth son of a bitch." She turned away from the djinn, from all the Old Races, and pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead as she paced and spoke.

"He offered you a chance to get back at us, didn’t he. Us. Humans. For destroying your habitats, your peoples, for not knowing you were there. God, has he got Biali on his side, too?" She swung back around to face the djinn, suddenly moving with a predator’s confidence. A churchyard was nothing, and everything, like a courtroom, and she was fearless there, even as she turned guesswork into statements.

"And the best way to get back at us, in a really violent way, is through Janx’s organization. He’s already the underbelly. Daisani’s up there at the top, and besides, Kaimana’s already got money. If he wants to he can take Daisani on in the boardrooms. But somebody’s got to run the seedy underside, and I bet he sleeps better if it’s not him. So he offered it to you, didn’t he. Because nobody’d expect it, and your people have the greatest numbers after his. God, it’s a great idea. He’d hand Janx’s world over to you if you’d support his people within the Old Races."

"And Malik’s place is this?" Janx hissed the question, sending hair-raised alarm over Margrit’s arms.

The djinn smiled, sharp and vicious, the kind of expression Margrit expected from Daisani, but rarely saw. "Remains to be seen. He declared rite of passage to stand at the quorum, claimed a challenge that has not yet been fulfilled."

"Against Janx," Margrit whispered.

The djinn folded his hands together, index fingers extended, to point first at Janx, then Daisani. "Blood-taker to glassmaker, old rivals, ready to fight. So easy to manipulate, so easy to sow dissent. A few of the glassmaker’s men, a few of the algul’s people, destabilizing and setting you at odds. Should one be defeated the other always moves along soon after. Yes." His gaze, brown with irritation, landed on Margrit again. "Against the glassmaker. Should Malik win, his place in this is an investigator, a visionary. Should he lose, he will walk alone amongst the sands for a lifetime. It is, as you say, all or nothing."

"Everything is with you." Margrit’s voice stayed low. "But someone went after him yesterday morning. Who?"

The djinn shrugged, fluid and airy despite his prison. "It was necessary. Including him as a target removed any hint of his complicity with our plans, and had he not survived, we would have known he was unworthy to be one of our leaders. As it is, he refused in the matter of your mother. Feared the algul who haunted her steps too much to make the attempt."

"That," Daisani murmured, "was wise."

Coldness rose in Margrit like a tide. "So you thought you’d cap off the week by murdering her yourself? In front of us all?"

Anger flashed through his eyes as he glanced down. "We didn’t know an algul’s blood made cages."

Margrit laughed, a crack of anger. "Wouldn’t have risked it if you’d known, would you?"

The djinn snarled again, but Daisani brushed off his anger with a gesture. "The blood is drying."