Unbinding

by Eileen Wilks

  Benedict didn’t cry out. He simply fell as the ground opened beneath him in a hole perfectly sized to swallow the lupus and leave Nathan standing on its edge.

  Nathan dropped to his knees to peer into the hole—which glowed all the way down, so he could see Benedict’s furious, upturned face some twenty feet below. He could also see how the hole narrowed. Benedict was pinned in placed by smooth walls of glowing dirt. “Please,” Nathan said very, very softly to the angry man below, “do not speak yet. Let me deal with him.”

  Dyffaya sauntered up to the other side of the hole and cocked his head to one side. He clucked his tongue. “Nathan, Nathan. You really should have explained civilized behavior to Benedict instead of comparing your childhood—or puppyhood?—experiences of illness.”

  Nathan murmured a phrase in High Elfin which, in English, meant something along the lines of, “Who would doubt what you say?” He used the third form of the phrase, which conceded nothing while implying that the person addressed was of such high state that only the crudest of souls could find fault with his words, never mind what their relationship to reality might be. High Elfin did have its uses. It was so curlicued with courtesy that it took real determination to use it rudely—or to convey much of anything in less than a couple thousand words, which was why it was seldom used outside of court. Even the elves found it cumbersome; most Low Sidhe never learned it. He switched back to English. “I wonder if you will bring him back up here so I may amend my omission.”

  “It has been a long time,” Dyffaya said wistfully, “since I heard the beautiful tongue. But there’s time, isn’t there? Time and time and more time we’ll have for that.” He flashed Nathan a brilliant smile. “And of course I shall bring him back up. He’ll do me little good in a hole. The question is: when? Perhaps . . .” He stopped, his expression smoothing out to a blankness as complete as a doll’s. “How disappointing.” The face he turned toward Nathan remained eerily blank, though his voice was light and chipper. “You’ll be pleased to learn that your lover won’t be joining us here, after all.”

  Nathan gave another little half-bow, that seeming the safest response. His heart sang. Kai was safe, safe, safe . . .

  Between one second and the next, Dell was crouched in the exact spot where Nathan had first appeared, and Cullen Seabourne lay prone on the ground at the far side of the clearing. He blinked, winced, and said, “Aw, shit.” The chameleon’s ears flattened. Her lips drew back in a snarl as she looked around, her tail lashing. And she launched herself at Dyffaya.

  “No!” Nathan threw himself at Dell. She dodged, but he managed to snag one foot, jerking her around. She hissed and nearly got him with one clawed foot before he danced back. “He’ll kill you. You can’t kill him. You can’t hurt him. He’ll kill you before you even draw blood.”

  She glared at him, tail lashing—but after a moment she put her back to him so she could glare at Dyffaya.

  Nathan fought not to sound desperate as he turned to face the god. Three thousand years ago, most elves had still held stubbornly to the old understanding of sentience. It had caused trouble back then, but now—if the god thought that way, if he took Dell for a beast . . . Nathan offered a deep bow. “I apologize on Dell’s behalf. She isn’t capable of understanding the need for courtesy.”

  “Of course not. No one capable of creating a familiar bond could be stupid enough to impose it on a sentient—who might have a different notion of who is to be master, and who servant, in the relationship.”

  Nathan didn’t know what Dell’s relationship had been with the mage who created the bond, but Dell was no servant, nor did she wish to be master. She and Kai had a partnership, satisfying to them both. Dyffaya would not understand that.

  “Or perhaps you thought I didn’t know what a chameleon is.” The boy’s lip curled in regal scorn. “Are you among those of your kind who believe any kind of thinking qualifies as sentience? You may rest easy. I know better. Chameleons lack the capacity for language. Clearly, they are not sentient.”

  “Hey!” Cullen’s voice was weak, yet full of indignation. “Dell knows lots of words!”

  Dyffaya turned to face the sorcerer. “How interesting. He chooses to challenge my statement.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to instruct Cullen about courtesy yet,” Nathan said quickly. Was Cullen being really smart or really dumb?

  The black eyes narrowed to slits. “He should know better. Even without instruction, he should know better than to contradict Me.”

  “Shit. You’re right.” Cullen’s voice dripped with contrition. “I’ve lost a lot of blood, but that’s no excuse. I apologize, sir, uh . . . I’m afraid I don’t know the proper way to address you. Or even if it’s okay to address you, but I’m really sorry I spoke so disrespectfully.”

  Okay, he was being smart. Horribly reckless, but smart, encouraging Dyffaya’s conviction that Dell was nonsentient by claiming to think the opposite. Though he was laying on the humility pretty thick.

  Not that Dyffaya seemed to mind. “I suppose I shouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “I don’t,” Cullen said humbly. “I thought sentience was the product of language. Dell knows words, so . . .” He shrugged. “I made the wrong assumption?”

  Dyffaya sniffed. “You barely grasp the concept of sentience yourself, so how would you know? The Hound should, however.” He began to stroll in a wide circle around Dell. “The chameleon may have absorbed some understanding of some words through the familiar bond, but she lacks the ability to think in them. Therefore, she lacks the ability to think conceptually, which is the mark of sentience. Though it should be enough to know that she’s a familiar to realize she can’t be sentient.” He paused, studying Dell, who watched him slit-eyed. “What shall I do with her?”

  Politely Nathan suggested, “As you have said, even an uninvited guest may be welcome.”

  “Oh, Dell is here by invitation. It’s the sorcerer who was dumped on me by chance. She was not, however, my first choice. That was your lover, who evaded me again. Instead, I ended up with her familiar. Do I keep her, kill her, or return her?” He slid Nathan a sly smile. “You offer no opinion?”

  “I fear that expressing my desires might not have the effect I wish.”

  Dyffaya snorted. “You aren’t stupid. I won’t return her, of course. The whole point is to separate your lady from her familiar, who is far too good at body magic. No, it’s either keep her or kill her, and I believe . . .” He stopped and posed, tapping one finger against his chin. “Yes, I will keep her for now. On one condition.” He paused, clearly wanting to be prompted.

  Nathan did. “Yes?”

  “That you accept responsibility for her. If she behaves badly, I will either kill her or punish you. That will be my choice, but you must accept responsibility or I kill her now.”

  “I accept responsibility for Dell’s actions.” He looked at her and spoke firmly. “Hiding form, Dell.” And prayed she’d figure out what he meant: Pretend you’re a beast. Pretend you obey me. Help me fool him.

  She gave him a long look over her shoulder. The skin on her back twitched . . . and slowly she began her transformation.

  He kept his relief to himself . . . and lied. “She takes on some aspects of the form she wears. I can’t control her well in her original form. When in a human shape, she obeys better.”

  From his hole in the ground, Benedict said, “I would speak with Dyffaya.”

  Cullen jolted and almost managed to sit up. “Benedict?”

  Dyffaya’s eyebrows rose. He sauntered back to the hole and dropped into a crouch, knees splayed like a Beduin. He lacked the Beduin’s concealing robes, however, and the schenti was short. He had a boy’s penis and scrotum, small and hairless. “I will hear you, Benedict. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Benedict answered slowly and carefully. “I mistook your status. I spoke to you as I
might to a lone wolf of my people. This was a mistake. I should have spoken as I would to the Rho of another clan—a Rho who might be an enemy, but is accorded respect.”

  Dyffaya was still for several heartbeats before saying sternly, “That was not an apology.” Then he bounced to his feet and dusted his hands—and Benedict began to rise. He rose more slowly than he’d fallen, but he did rise. “Still, he did acknowledge his mistake. That’s a start. You will further instruct him, Nathan?”

  “I will.”

  “I would prefer not to kill him.”

  “That is my preference as well.”

  That made the mad god giggle, then break into full-throated laughter. “Oh, yes! Yes, of course. This is going to be fun. More fun for me than for you, but then, your comfort and pleasure are not my primary goals.”

  The tall black tree nearest Nathan bent like it was made out of rubber. Instinctively, Nathan leaped to one side—and the branch from another tree impaled him from behind. Agony screamed hot and hoarse through his blood, though not a sound escaped his gaping mouth.

  Not that he objected to screaming. He couldn’t. The damn thing had got him through the lung.

  Dyffaya walked up and looked Nathan in the eyes. Never mind how young the bones of that face might appear. The expression it wore was old, very old, the eyes as black as the void between stars. “Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  SIXTEEN

  THE rear deck was a mess. Limp cables of vine thick enough to choke a horse lay everywhere. It smelled like broccoli. Kai picked her way around chunks of monster vine until she reached the end of the deck. It was obvious where the thing had been rooted. She tipped her head, studying the hacked-up thicket, then turned to look at the pieces strewn across the deck. “Nathan was chopping at it here?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He raced over there right away and started hacking at it with that blade of his,” Abe said. “I didn’t know why at the time, but it’s obvious now. He wanted to cut it off from its roots. Must’ve been right. It sure didn’t die of what we were doing, which consisted mostly of trying to stay alive. That damn plant grew fast.”

  “It stopped growing all at once, you said. At the same instant that Nathan and Benedict vanished, the plant died.”

  “Near as I could tell. I didn’t have Nathan in sight right that second, but I saw Benedict wink out. One second he was there. The next, he wasn’t.”

  There were probably more questions she should ask. She couldn’t think of them. Her stomach churned. “Thanks.”

  “Sure thing. Okay if we burn it now?” She must have looked baffled, because he added, “That’s what Isen said to do, soon as you’d had a chance to look it over. Dig it up, haul every bit of it off, and burn it.”

  “It’s not going to burn easily.” And the man who could have crisped it to ashes with a flick of his hand was missing. Just like Nathan. And Dell. And Benedict. She rested a hand on her unhappy stomach.

  “Use enough gasoline and it’ll burn.”

  It probably would. “You might stay upwind of the smoke, just in case.”

  “You think the smoke might do something to us?”

  “I don’t know.” That was the problem. She didn’t know anything—what questions to ask, what kind of crazy plant had attacked them, what was happening right this moment to Nathan and the others. Most of all, she didn’t know how to get them back.

  Kai had called Isen when Nathan didn’t answer his phone. Isen had been telling her about the monster vine when Dell and Cullen were suddenly—gone. Just gone. Kai had felt it happen, the indescribable twisting, Dell’s rage and terror. Those sensations had faded as Dell was pulled farther and farther away. But the familiar bond hadn’t snapped. That was the most important thing. Kai couldn’t draw power from Dell, not at this distance—or whatever you wanted to call the separation—but she could sense her. Dimly. With effort, she could get a little more . . . Kai tuned out the world around her, focusing on a place that was both within her and outside her. The place where Dell was.

  Anger. She picked that up clearly. Anger and frustration and . . . but the rest was so faint Kai couldn’t tell what she touched. Not pain, though. Dell wasn’t currently in pain. Kai grabbed hold of that reassurance and clung to it as she blinked herself back into the world, sighed, and headed for the back door.

  Arjenie, Cynna, and two lupi were sitting at the big table at one end of the room. Isen was pacing as he spoke on his phone—to Rule, she guessed, from what she heard. “. . . and how does it serve Nokolai for its heir to be in danger along with its Rho when the only other potential heir has been taken?” A brief pause, then, coldly: “The Rho of Leidolf will do as he pleases, of course. But if my Lu Nuncio returns before I give permission, I will put him in chains.”

  Kai stopped, jarred by how much he reminded her of Winter. Isen had a bass so deep it seemed to rumble up from the bottom of a well, while Winter’s voice was an alto pure enough to hurt the heart . . . but that note of implacable authority. That was the same.

  For a moment her mind was taken by an image of the Winter Queen and the Nokolai Rho butting heads. Better hope that never happened, she decided. Probably best if they never met. Winter recognized that even her authority had limits, but Kai wasn’t sure the Queen was prepared to encounter those limits in the person of the leader of a small clan that was part of a small, unimportant race living in a single backwater realm.

  That’s how the sidhe saw Earth, anyway. Kai grimaced and veered toward the group at the table. Arjenie’s eyes were damp. Cynna looked ready to gut someone. And everyone’s thoughts were a roiling, unhappy mess. Normally that would make her want to soothe or comfort or distract, whatever helped. Right now it made her want to turn around and head in the other direction.

  She was not going to run away, dammit. That was stupid and cowardly and would not help.

  “. . . going to tell her,” Arjenie was saying when she drew near—and stopped short of her goal. A pale chalk line circled the table and those seated at it.

  The two lupi looked worried. Cynna shrugged. “I can’t stop you. Kai, I haven’t set the ward yet, so it’s okay to cross the circle. I don’t know if you’ve met Josh and Ridley?”

  “I don’t think so.” She gave the two men a nod and pulled out the chair next to Nettie and planted her butt in it. There. She had officially not run away. She did dial down her Gift, though. Seeing their distress made it hard to control her own. “What is it you don’t want Arjenie to tell me?”

  Instead of answering, everyone exchanged one of those looks. The kind that shouts “we’ve got a secret.” Josh spoke. “What do you mean?”

  She snapped, “Oh, come on. Arjenie wants to tell me something. The rest of you don’t want her to.” She didn’t have to put up with this. She could make them—

  No. Shit, no. Where had that come from? Coercion was what binders did, not mindhealers. The two Gifts might look the same, but they weren’t. She scrubbed both hands over her face. “Sorry. I’m wound tight.” She wanted to keep hiding behind her hands, which bothered her enough to make her put them on the table. “I need to call that FBI agent. Ackleford. I don’t know what the hell to tell him.”

  “Is there some reason you can’t just tell him what happened?” Arjenie asked.

  “That’s not it. Nathan’s in charge, but he’s gone. Ackleford—what can he do? I don’t know, but ‘nothing’ comes to mind. Only I don’t know what I can do, either. I’ve done stuff like this in Faerie—well, not like this because we are dealing with a frigging god, but never mind that. I’ve investigated, but always with Nathan. He calls it a hunt, but his lowercase hunts are investigations. So I’ve done that with him, but not on my own. I—”

  “Hush.” A warm hand squeezed her shoulder firmly. Isen had put away his phone and moved up behind her without her noticing, no doubt because she’d been busy babbling. “You’ll want to wait a few minutes to c
all so you can be nice and crisp when you talk to the special agent. Always be crisp with law enforcement. Otherwise they slot you into one of their boxes—‘victim’ or ‘troublemaker’ or ‘suspect’ or whatever—and never take you seriously again. And you’re right. There’s very little the FBI can do, so waiting a few minutes won’t matter.”

  “Right.” She drew a deep breath. “Right. I’m not in the habit of falling apart.”

  “That must be why you’re so bad at it. You wobbled a bit. You didn’t manage to fall.” Isen moved away and took his usual seat at the head of the table. He had a notebook in one hand, which he put on the table.

  Cynna cocked an eyebrow at him. “I take it Rule isn’t coming?”

  “No.”

  The single word was a slammed door. One Cynna ignored. “What about Lily?”

  “Lily has some sense. The anti-eavesdropping ward?”

  “I’ll close it now.” She stood and dug in her pocket, pulling out a piece of chalk.

  Kai felt it when the ward closed—a subtle twanging like the snap of a rubber band, only far fainter. That told her two things. It was a powerful ward—she wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up the spillage unless there was a lot of power involved—and it wasn’t as efficiently set as Nathan’s. That wasn’t surprising. Nathan had had a few hundred more years than Cynna to practice.

  Cynna resumed her seat and Isen turned to Kai. “I have two questions about what happened on Little Sister that I need to ask right away. I understood from your account that you could see in the chameleons’ thoughts that they were being controlled.”

  She nodded.

  “Do you see something like that in anyone present now?”

  “No, but . . .” But she hadn’t really checked. “I’ll make sure.” She dialed up her Gift and looked around the table carefully. Everyone was still upset. No one showed any signs of being under control or compulsion. “Everyone looks okay. I need to warn you, though, that I might not spot an inactive intention. A compulsion, sure, since—”