by Anne Bishop
“And rats,” Jaenelle said cheerfully as she called in a list and handed it to Marian. “I took notes when I was talking to the boys.”
Those weren’t boys, Marian thought darkly as she studied the list. Those were maggot-brained little beasts. “We can’t have rats.”
“Not real rats,” Jaenelle conceded. “But we can create a skittering noise so it sounds like there are rats in the walls.” She looked around, considering, then frowned as they both heard a skitter skitter.
Marian closed her eyes for a moment. They’d bring some of the kindred wolves with them the next time to deal with the rats already in residence.
“So these”—maggot-brained beasts—“boys think the Blood live in moldy rooms with creaking doors and squeaking floors and furniture that hasn’t been dusted in a decade, and we eat in rooms that have cobwebs in the corners and rats in the walls.”
Jaenelle smiled brightly. “Yes. Exactly.”
Marian walked around the table that clogged the center of the room. What would it take to clean that thing? Maybe a chisel. Or a sledgehammer. She stopped at the serving board and stared at the silver serving tray set just off center enough to make her grit her teeth.
At least, she thought it was silver under all that tarnish.
Seeing it made something in her brain fizzle. She turned and marched to the closest door, baring her teeth in a silent snarl as she turned the grimy doorknob. It took some muscle to open the stuck door, but when she finally succeeded, she discovered it wasn’t a way out of the room. It was a storage cupboard with shelves that had more blackened silver and bug-infested linen. And she couldn’t take any more.
“Why not a rotting corpse?” Marian said in a voice so snippy she didn’t recognize it as her own. “Wouldn’t we lock our enemies in a cupboard and let them starve to death while they watch us dine?”
“Well…,” Jaenelle began.
“You said you were thinking of ghostly narrators. So just tell the” —maggot-brained beasts—“boys not to open that door. If they’re anything like Daemonar, they’ll open the door as soon as they can just to find out why they’re not supposed to.”
“But these aren’t little children Daemonar’s age,” Jaenelle protested. “These children will be old enough to have gone through the Birthright Ceremony—or would be if they were Blood. A child that age is not going to open a door after he’s been told not to.”
“Then have an illusion of a boy the right age. Have him be the one who opens the door. In fact, don’t even have a knob on the door until the ghost boy appears. Then a ghostly knob will appear that only he can turn.”
“He’d been told not to open the door, but he did—and the knob came off in his hand, breaking the locking spell on the door,” Jaenelle said. “The ghost boy will back away, and visitors will hear a malevolent laugh as the door slowly opens.”
“And that’s when they’ll see the skeleton of the boy who had been told not to open that door and had disobeyed.”
And, apparently, would still be disobedient even as a ghost.
“The skeleton,” Jaenelle said softly. “Yes. A boy’s skeleton. With just enough scalp left to hold a little hair, but otherwise ragged clothing over clean bones.”
“Isn’t that what we all have in the closet that holds the tablecloths and napkins?”
Silence filled the room. Then…
“Marian,” Jaenelle breathed, “that’s brilliant. We’ll have to figure out why he wasn’t supposed to open the door, but…It’s brilliant.”
That would teach her to try to be bitchy. Obviously she didn’t have the temper for it.
“Come on,” Jaenelle said, heading for the hallway. “Let’s see what sort of nonsense we can come up with for the upstairs rooms.”
Marian stared at the empty doorway and considered what would be upstairs. Bedrooms. Bathrooms. Closets. And above that, the attic.
As she reached the doorway, she heard the loud creak of the old stairs. Heard Jaenelle’s delighted laugh. She looked at the list Jaenelle had made based on how landen boys thought the Blood lived.
May the Darkness have mercy.
Daemon carefully leaned back against the large blackwood table that provided a work space for the scholars who were permitted to use the material in this part of the Keep’s library. A sore muscle in his back. Nothing more than that. All things considered, he’d gotten off lightly.
Damn cat.
“What brings you to the Keep today?”
Affection. Dry amusement. Love. He heard all those things in the deep voice. He turned his head to look at the man sorting the books stacked in the center of the table.
A handsome Hayllian whose thick black hair was heavily silvered at the temples. His face was beginning to show the weight of his long life, but it was the laugh lines fanning out from the golden eyes that cut the deepest in the brown skin. He was a Guardian, one of the living dead, and had walked the Realms for more than fifty thousand years.
He was Saetan Daemon SaDiablo, a Black-Jeweled Warlord Prince who was the Prince of the Darkness, the High Lord of Hell, the High Priest of the Hourglass. Formerly the Steward of the Dark Court at Ebon Askavi—and still the unofficial Steward of that same unofficial court—he was now the assistant librarian/historian at Ebon Askavi.
He had one other title, the one Daemon considered the most important: father.
They hadn’t known each other for that many years. The Birthright Ceremony, where a child acquired the Jewel that indicated the power born within that young vessel, was also the time when paternity was formally acknowledged or denied. At Daemon’s Birthright Ceremony, while he’d stood proudly holding his Red Jewel, paternity had been denied. Saetan had been stripped of all rights to his son, and they had been lost to each other—until the need to protect a powerful but fragile girl brought them back together.
Now he had a father, someone he could talk to, someone who, being the only other male who wore Black Jewels and was also a Black Widow, understood his nature better than anyone else could. Even Lucivar.
“Do I need a reason to visit you?” he asked.
“Certainly not,” Saetan replied, walking to the far end of the table and putting three books next to another stack.
Daemon shifted a little to get a better look at the stacks. Were those the books to be discarded or the ones Saetan and Geoffrey, the Keep’s historian/librarian, were trying to preserve?
Old books, from the looks of the covers. Most were so old the titles had faded and the bindings had become fragile despite the preservation spells that must have kept them intact for so long. Culling the volumes in the Keep’s vast library was an ongoing project, and every book had to be handled with care.
“I’m always delighted to see you, Daemon,” Saetan said, returning to the stacks in the center of the table. “But I recognize the difference between a casual visit and when one of you drops by because you have something on your mind.”
Caught. But he wasn’t ready to ask the question. So he lobbed a different conversational ball onto the table. “Have you heard about the spooky house?”
“The what?”
With perverse glee, Daemon told his father all about Jaenelle’s plans to create a house based on landen children’s ideas of how the Blood lived—and watched the High Lord of Hell pale.
“You’re joking,” Saetan said hoarsely.
Daemon shook his head. “Jaenelle and Marian are there right now, inspecting the property.”
“Can’t you stop this?”
“Would you like to suggest how?”
Absolute silence.
For a minute, Daemon watched his father sort books, certain the man wasn’t paying any attention to what was being placed where and would have to sort them all over again.
“Wasn’t there anything else you wanted to discuss?” Saetan asked, picking up a stack of books.
It was that tiny hint of desperation, the little undercurrent of a plea, that made it possible to ask the question. Bu
t he turned his head and stared at the wall instead of the man.
“When I was a pleasure slave in Terreille, I woke up each morning and wondered who I needed to kill that day, or what kind of vicious game I would have to play, or if I’d be the one who was killed. I lived on the knife’s edge every waking moment, and I honed my own temper on that edge. I earned being called the Sadist.”
“And now what’s the most frightening thing you face?”
“Morning sex.”
Saetan dropped the books.
Daemon cringed, hoping none of the volumes had been damaged.
Saetan fussed over the books, then stopped. Just stopped.
“I’m your father,” he said quietly. “And I am Jaenelle’s adopted father. So there are aspects of your marriage I would prefer to remain ignorant about unless necessity requires me to know about them. But I’ll ask you: Do you need a Healer?”
The question startled him. “No.”
“You’re favoring your back.”
“That’s not because of Jaenelle; that’s because of the damn cat. She yelled at him, and he got upset.”
Saetan sighed, a quiet sound full of relief. “Kaelas is a Red-Jeweled Warlord Prince who is eight hundred pounds of muscle and temper. It always amazes me that all it takes to turn him into an anxious puddle of fur is for Jaenelle to say ‘bad kitty’ and rap him on the head with her fingertips.”
“She did a bit more than that, actually. She yelled at the cat.”
“Why?”
“He woke her up.”
Another silence. “You were in bed with Witch?”
Sharp concern, Steward of the Court to Queen’s Consort. And the understanding that Jaenelle, allowed to wake up by herself, woke up grumpy. When startled awake, Witch was the side of her that woke first—and Witch woke up deadly.
“Then I’ll ask again, Prince,” the High Lord said. “Do you need a Healer?”
Daemon shook his head.
“Your back?”
He raised a hand, then let it fall to his side. “Just a bruise. I was sitting at the desk. He came in too fast. I didn’t expect Kaelas to completely lose his brains and try to climb into my lap while I was sitting in the chair!”
“You shielded?”
“Kept me from getting impaled,” Daemon replied dryly. Didn’t do him much good otherwise. Lying there on the study floor, a little stunned, getting smashed between broken chair and anxious cat, whose huge paw—with claws thankfully sheathed—patted at his head while Kaelas’s thoughts batted at him. The Lady was upset. Daemon was the Lady’s mate. Daemon would make things better.
At the time, Daemon had been a bit busy trying to breathe.
Saetan rubbed his chin. “That was a nice chair. Wasn’t meant to take that kind of weight, though.”
Neither am I, Daemon thought.
“The name of the craftsman who made it is in the household files.”
“I’ll contact him to make a replacement.”
Another silence. Then Saetan said, “What else?”
“I like my life now. I truly do. I like waking up in the morning knowing the day will be full of small challenges and pleasures, that I’ll spend part of the day tending to the family properties and finances, as well as my own business ventures, and part of the day tending to Dhemlan. And through it all, there is being with Jaenelle. There is the wonder, and the joy, of being with Jaenelle.”
“But?”
“But sometimes I wonder if I’ll lose the edge that makes me who and what I am. Sometimes I wonder, when the day comes for me to stand as defender, if I’ll have become too soft, too tame, to protect what matters most. Is that the price I’ll have to pay to have a pleasant life?”
There. He’d said it. Asked the question.
And Saetan just stood there, staring at the books, his fingertips gently brushing the topmost cover.
“You’ll never lose that edge,” Saetan said suddenly, quietly.
“Daemon, this life you have now is everything I could have wished for you, and I hope you have decades where the worst challenges you face are morning sex with your wife and dealing with an anxious cat. But I can tell you, here and now, you will never lose that edge. No matter how long who and what you are remains sheathed in that pleasant life, when the day comes for you to draw that cold blade of your temper, it will be as sharp and as honed and as deadly as it is now. Maybe even more so.”
A tension he hadn’t been aware of drained out of his muscles. This was the question he’d come to ask. This was the answer he’d hoped to hear.
“Now,” Saetan said, giving him a dry smile, “why don’t you go tend the family business and let me—”
The door opened. Lucivar walked in. Daemon felt his body freeze, felt Saetan stiffen beside him. Not because of Lucivar, because of—
“Unka Daemon! Granpapa!”
Daemonar held out his arms, little feet braced and pushing on his father’s hip, little wings flapping. A happy bundle of Eyrien boy…in a room full of priceless books.
The thought terrified Daemon.
“Hey,” Lucivar said, trying to control the squirming boy without setting off a full-scale tantrum. “Have you two heard about this spooky house Jaenelle and Marian are planning?”
Suddenly Saetan had Daemon by the arm and was hauling him toward the door with enough speed to have Lucivar backing up into the corridor.
“Yes, Daemon was just telling me about that. I think this is something the two of you should discuss, since this is something that should be dealt with by husbands rather than a father. But if I think of anything that might help, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
And somehow he was standing in the corridor, staring at a closed door, listening to the distinctive snick of a lock.
“Well,” Lucivar said, “I guess that puts us in our place.”
Lucivar’s mouth was curved in that lazy, arrogant smile that usually meant trouble, but the tone of voice was wrong.
Daemon studied his brother. Half brother, but they had never made that distinction. What made the difference obvious was that Lucivar had the dark, membranous wings that distinguished Eyriens from Hayllians and Dhemlans, the other two long-lived races. And he had all the arrogance and attitude that came naturally to an Eyrien male—especially one who was a Warlord Prince and wore Ebon-gray Jewels.
“Do you want to—?” Daemon began.
“No.” Too sharp, almost cutting, even though the smile didn’t change. “Have things to do.”
Daemon felt a sudden distance between them. Why it was there, he couldn’t begin to guess. “Could we get together for a drink this evening? I could come—”
“I’ll come to the Hall. See you then, Bastard.”
“Take care, Prick.”
“Bye-bye, Unka Daemon! Bye-bye.”
He waved bye-bye until Lucivar and Daemonar disappeared around a curve in the corridor. Then he looked back at the locked door and sighed.
He might not need to dance on the knife’s edge the way he did when he lived in Terreille, but it didn’t look like his life was going to get complacent after all.
Saetan leaned against the locked door and stared at the ceiling.
Why did I want children?
He’d been rattled by the conversation with Daemon, had reacted instead of thinking. And the look in Lucivar’s eyes just before he’d closed the door had shown him the depth of his error. He’d fix it. He would stop by the eyrie this evening, and he would fix it.
He wasn’t sure how to fix the other problem. Spooky house. The words had become a sharp bone stuck in his throat, an insult to everything he believed in. An insult inflicted by his Queen.
He had two choices. He could swallow the bone or he could cough it out. Either way, it was going to hurt. He just had to decide which choice he could live with.
Pushing away from the door, he returned to the blackwood table just as Geoffrey stepped through one of the archways that led to the stored books. The other Guardian looked sy
mpathetic and amused as he watched Saetan shuffle a few books.
Geoffrey approached the table, picked up a book, then opened it to read the title page. “How long do you think you’ll be able to keep this up?” he asked. “Sooner or later one of them is going to figure out these are new books with an illusion spell on the covers to make them look old, and you’re just using them for a prop.”
“None of them have figured it out so far,” Saetan replied, tugging the book out of Geoffrey’s hand. “If I’m occupied, they can take their time working their way around to whatever they’ve come to talk about. None of them look closely enough to notice that the condition of the paper doesn’t match the supposed age of the books.”
“And you used some of the real books to create the templates for the spell. Quite ingenious, Saetan. But from what I overheard before I retreated, you do have a problem.”
“I do.” The bone in his throat scraped a little more. “Yes, I do.”
Lucivar landed in the small courtyard outside his eyrie, shifted his grip on his bundle of boy, then turned to look at the mountain called Ebon Askavi.
He wasn’t like them. Could never be like them. His father. His brother. Two of a kind. The difference wasn’t so sharp when it was one of them or the other. But when they were together…
Educated men, with a passion for books and words and learning. He was the outsider, the one who didn’t fit.
It hurt. No matter how often he tried to shrug it aside, it still hurt. And now the hurt went deeper. Because of the boy.
He rubbed his cheek against Daemonar’s head, felt the sweet ache as little arms reached up to hug.
He knew why he’d been locked out of the library. Knew why he’d been excluded. But if he had to choose between them, he would choose the boy he held in his arms.
Giving his son a kiss, he said, “Come on, boyo. You get to play with your papa today.”
FOUR
The clatters, bangs, and curses coming from the eyrie’s kitchen were not sounds Lucivar usually associated with his darling wife. He hesitated a moment, then set Daemonar down near the side door that opened onto the part of the yard that could withstand the rough-and-tumble play of an Eyrien boy and a litter of wolf pups—and had a domed shield around the whole thing to keep boy and pups from tumbling down the mountain.