House of Cards n-2

by C. E. Murphy

  "Malik is not exiled among his own people."

  "That was a lot more diplomatic than I would’ve been," Margrit said beneath her breath. Malik, silent throughout the proceedings, bared his teeth at her as if he were a dragon or a vampire, not a djinn at all.

  "Three days hence," Daisani said with finality. "It’s enough time for Malik and Alban to establish themselves or find other proxies before we gather and decide the fate of the selkies. Margrit, you’ll be our moderator." Delight warmed his thin face, making him almost handsome. "Our token human." His smile faded and he rose to his feet. "Now. If you have a moment, Margrit, I’d like to speak with you."

  At her side, Alban exhaled as though defeated, and when she looked at him he was moving away, the others following suit. She clenched her teeth and waited for the room to clear before falling in step with Daisani, who remained silent until they left the building. "You lied to me, Margrit."

  Margrit locked her knees against collapse, and nodded, wishing Daisani had chosen a stretch of ground nearer the ice rink to confront her. She didn’t trust her legs to hold her, and the chance to lean against the railing would have been welcome. Alban walked several feet ahead of them, less a pillar of support than she might wish. "Only a little." Her voice was scratchy and she cleared her throat, managing a smile. "I was sort of impressed with myself."

  Daisani’s expression wiped her smile away. "How much of this were you aware of?"

  "Kaimana wouldn’t tell me what he was planning. He wanted to talk to you and Janx, but I didn’t know he was going to have an army of loyal followers show up. He thought if I knew what was going to happen, you’d consider it a betrayal." She laughed. "And that that would be bad for me."

  "He’s right. How do I know you’re telling me the truth now? You’ve successfully lied to me once already."

  "I really didn’t. I just didn’t tell you everything, and you weren’t expecting that. I wouldn’t dare try again. Scout’s honor." She held up three fingers, then folded them down again, hand trembling. "You were still fastest off the mark. Accepting their legitimacy. Offering yourself as an ally." Her voice steadied as she spoke, edge of hysteria fading from it. "Or a leader."

  "Not at all." Daisani shook his head once, then abruptly turned and walked away. Margrit cast one wild glance at Alban, then ran a few steps to catch up with the vampire. "Our peoples don’t accept leaders from other groups. At best I might be a power behind the throne."

  "I’d think that would suit you just fine. Either way, the economic potential is-"

  "Staggering." Daisani’s typical front of good cheer re-emerged. "Oh, not within the context of human society, perhaps, not really. But as a position of power within the Old Races, for accomplishing anything I might want done…"

  "Like what?" Margrit demanded, boldness overruling wisdom. "What do you want, Mr. Daisani?"

  He stopped and peered the scant distance down at her. "Even if I were inclined to answer that, my dear Miss Knight, I wouldn’t do so with your gargoyle lover hanging about. I trust we’re not going to have a repetition of today’s fatuous behavior in the future, are we?"

  Margrit swallowed down a panic-induced apology, hoping understatement would prove more effective-and dignified-than gibbering promises. "No."

  "Very well." He nodded as if satisfied, then gave her a brief smile. "Do pass on my regards to your housemates, Margrit. Lovely girl, that Cameron Dugan. Strong and vital." He strode across the plaza, covering distance rapidly for a man his size, and didn’t look back.

  Margrit stared after him, alone for a handful of seconds before Alban joined her, lines etched deep around his mouth. She transferred her gaze to him, then jerked it back to Daisani. "Did he just threaten to eat Cameron?"

  "I doubt he’d put it that way," Alban said, but grimaced when Margrit shot an accusing glare at him. "Yes."

  "How do you kill a vampire?"

  "What?" Alban lost his usual aplomb and gaped at her.

  "How do you kill a vampire?" Her voice came out high and thready, but full of anger. "Is it really holy water and wooden stakes? Garlic? Silver crosses?"

  "Margrit, can you think of anything that wouldn’t die if you thrust a stake through its heart?" A hint of humor colored the question, but faded quickly. "Wood isn’t the important part. I don’t know if you’ve seen how fast he can move."

  "I have. So it’s managing a kill shot that’s important, rather than the specific tool used?" Margrit set her jaw, watching Daisani, little more than a silhouette in the distance, climb into his chauffeured Town Car. "That’s good to know."

  "Margrit, you’re not going to-"

  "Like I could. I’m not kidding myself. Still, I’d rather know he’s got a vulnerability than be completely unarmed if I need the information." She folded her arms around her ribs, scowling at the gargoyle. "So you’re talking to me now."

  His expression grew wary. "Janx told me how you’d solved your dilemma with Malik. Margrit, I’d intended-"

  "It doesn’t matter." She pressed her lips together until they hurt. "It doesn’t make any difference, Alban. I did what I had to."

  "What you thought you had to."

  She shrugged. "There’s no difference."

  He caught his breath and held it a moment, then exhaled deeply. "Perhaps not. And you’re now more embroiled with our people than ever before."

  "I’ve been telling you all along that there was no way out. I wasn’t even looking for a way out. That was all you. It’d be easier if I’d never met you, but I did, and now I know the things I do, and there’s no going back." Margrit thinned her mouth again. "Like I said, you guys aren’t much of a fairy tale. You can’t undo me knowing about you."

  "But the life you had…. I am saying this poorly." Alban’s voice deepened. "Perhaps I made mistakes in trying to protect you the way I did. But I found there was hope in me, when Janx told me of your decision. I…do not want you to leave my life."

  A sharp combination of relief and annoyance danced through her. "Fine way you have of showing it." She knotted her arms around herself more thoroughly, staring up at the gargoyle as guilt and apology appeared on his features. Her acid faded and she stepped forward to put her arms around him instead of herself.

  The cool scent of stone enveloped her as he closed his arms around her shoulders, carefully. His heartbeat, slow and steady, sounded like the pulse of the world, never-ending and reassuring. The tightness of tears congregated in Margrit’s chest, making it hard to breathe. It was easy to remember sensuality when she thought of Alban’s touch, but his solid presence brought safety, as well. For a few moments she felt as though she was shut away from the world, left in a warm dark cocoon where exhausted emotion could rest a while. Alban, it seemed, could stand there forever, holding her safe against all comers, and she had never been so glad for refuge.

  "Tell me." His low voice tickled her ear where it was pressed against his chest. "Tell me what’s happened that I’ve missed, Margrit. Tell me why…" He hesitated, then murmured, "Tell me why your detective has left you."

  Margrit muffled a rough sound against Alban’s suit jacket. "My boss is dead. Russell Lomax. He was murdered yesterday morning, and Janx probably had it done, because Russell used to put Janx’s men away on Daisani’s say-so." The words, once started, flowed freely, her speech almost too quick with misery for even Margrit to follow. "And there’s no obvious connection between Janx and Daisani except the tiny, tiny detail that they’re Old Races and ancient rivals, which I can’t exactly tell Tony. So he’s furious with me, and I can’t blame him. Even if I could, how the hell do you put people like them in jail? Not only is it probably physically impossible, they’re not human. Applying our justice system to them is facetious."

  Alban set her back a few inches, his hands on her shoulders as he studied her. "Even when they commit crimes in the human world?"

  "I don’t have a good answer for that. There ought to be some kind of balance, some kind of price, but knowing what I know, I can�
��t see throwing them in one of our prisons and tossing out the key. It’d be like slapping handcuffs on a shark for eating a surfer."

  "Sharks aren’t rational, thinking creatures capable of making moral decisions."

  Margrit gave another sharp laugh. "Haven’t you been trying to impress on me that your people have different sets of morals from humans? That you don’t actually think like we do?"

  "And haven’t you been trying to convince me that the only way for us to survive is to become more like you?"

  Margrit dropped her head forward, thumping it against his chest. "I think if you want to survive as a people you’re going to have to do something as drastic as the selkies have done. I don’t know if that means becoming us. It shouldn’t. They seem to have kept their sense of selves and their way of thinking. There’s got to be a point in between. A place where…" Her shoulders dropped with defeat. "A place where it’s not impossible for you and I to try being together."

  "It’s not impossible." Alban lowered his voice further and touched Margrit’s chin, lifting her gaze to his. "If you can forgive my foolishness, Margrit…"

  "Alban." Janx’s voice cut across the distance. "I do hate to disturb your little lovers’ chat, but my liegeman has disappeared again, and I’d like you to find him."

  CHAPTER 19

  An unaccustomed pulse of tension throbbed through Alban’s temple. It took a moment before he trusted himself to move; a moment of examining unfamiliar irritation welling within himself. Two centuries of solitude had not prepared him to rejoin the world. Memory seemed briefly faulty, unable to tell him whether small daily annoyances had once pricked his temper as easily as they did now. He thought not; it went against everything he imagined himself to be.

  Biali’s shattered visage shot through his mind’s eye, a painful reminder that at least once, he’d been moved to violence. More than once, he recalled, as Ausra’s delicate amber features replaced Biali’s rougher face in Alban’s memory. What he was, and what he thought he was, lay further apart than he could have once imagined.

  When he did move, it was to step back from Margrit, letting his hands fall from her shoulders. Denied hope slid across her face and she glanced away, making frustration leap anew in Alban’s chest. The space between them was hardly an insurmountable obstacle for a creature born to flight, and yet he’d insisted on furthering it. He was abruptly uncertain whether it was Margrit he’d tried to protect by doing so, or himself. His hand made a fist of its own accord and he turned toward Janx with a scowl.

  "Temper, temper, Stoneheart." Janx clucked his tongue, eyes merry with scolding. Beneath the veneer of good humor, though, lay a note of strain that almost no one would recognize. Daisani would see it, and Alban, and perhaps a handful of others not in this city. A surprising flash of sympathy scored Alban’s heart. He, too, was learning what it was to lose control, and liked it no better than Janx did.

  The dragonlord shook his head, mocking solemnity in the motion. "You were always so steady, old friend. Time’s left a deeper mark than you’d like to think."

  "On all of us," he growled. Janx would be no more pleased with a show of compassion than Alban would be offering it. He had always thought of Janx and Daisani as alike, and himself the outside third to their complicated friendship. In many ways it was true-the dragon and vampire’s relationship stretched back centuries before Alban’s birth. But for the first time in decades he recalled-let himself recall-that they had once, the three of them, shared a friendship that had set him on a path none of his brethren had ever taken. He most often let himself remember that with a kind of blame assigned to the others, but in truth, no one forced a gargoyle to a road he didn’t want to walk. Time had left its marks, indeed.

  Alban wrenched his thoughts away from the past, bringing his attention back to the too-tense dragonlord. "Would you have me chasing Malik across half the city like a frantic parent watching a fledgling spread its wings?"

  Janx pursed his lips, eyes wide as he considered the question, then spread his hands and smiled beatifically. "Yes."

  Another growl erupted deep in Alban’s throat, precursor to argument. Janx’s smile grew broader and more pointed, his love of bartering washing away some of his stress. "I can set Margrit to it, if you like."

  "Go ahead." Margrit’s voice broke into the conversation with cool strength. "You’re wasting everybody’s time keeping Alban on him anyway. Anyone who goes after Malik is going to have you and Eliseo to deal with. Somebody that dumb deserves what he gets." Sotto voce but clearly aware she’d be overheard, she added, "I should know."

  "Out of the wide variety of adjectives I’d use to describe you, my dear, ‘dumb’ is not one of them. Rash. Impetuous. Bold. Foolish. Dauntless. Audaci -"

  "You can stop now." Margrit’s glare earned a full laugh from Janx that sent a sizzle of envy through Alban. It was worsened as she struggled to maintain her glower, then lost the battle, her own mouth twitching with humor. They made each other laugh easily, and while nothing logical suggested Margrit-a lawyer and a principled woman-would find romancing a crimelord appealing, logic failed in the face of her amusement.

  And if that unlikely love affair should come to pass, Alban would have no one to blame but himself. He gathered himself, searching for shadows where he could transform and leave behind the complications of the world for the silence of the sky. Margrit stalked past him as if he wasn’t there and folded her arms as she drew breath to argue with Janx.

  "He gave his word." Janx dismissed her argument before she spoke. Frustration rumbled in Alban’s chest, but the dragonlord had the right of it. "Even if Eliseo’s been so good as to offer his protection, our dear Stoneheart’s word is-well." He widened his eyes, as though surprised at his own turn of phrase: "Solid as rock. Once given, there’s no going back."

  "Well, release him," Margrit said. "You can’t expect his word to bind him indefinitely, especially when the source of danger as you defined it has been removed."

  Janx smiled over her head at Alban. "Don’t you love it when she talks that way?" He transferred his attention back to the petite mortal woman, who rolled her head in exasperation. "I can," he said more softly. "I’ve made bargains with gargoyles before, Margrit Knight. They are binding."

  "They can’t be that binding. He walked away from keeping an eye on me."

  "Did he ever promise you in so many words that he would watch over you?"

  Alban heard only the catch of Margrit’s breath in reply, as long strides took him to the shadows. Janx’s voice, cheerful and pitched to carry, followed him into the sky: "Do you think it was something we said?"

  He never had promised her he would watch over her. The promise had been to himself, and that was hard enough to break, even with more than one warning that he would leave her to run alone at night. Then again, in accepting Malik as his responsibility, Alban protected Margrit in a different way.

  Perhaps if he told himself that often enough, he would begin to believe it. Stone didn’t take to deception easily. It had to be worn down through long exposure, the way he’d come to let himself lay blame for his own choices as Janx’s and Daisani’s feet. There was no such time to be had with Margrit; her brief span of years would end before Alban could teach himself to believe he guarded her life by watching over Malik’s.

  A familiar flash of brightness soared beneath him: Biali on the wing. Alban could feel Malik’s presence-or that of the stone he carried-ahead of him, moving the same direction Biali did. There was time enough to pursue curiosity, and Alban tucked his wings to fall into a slow dive, watching Biali cut through the city canyons.

  They rarely saw one another in the skies, but with such a grouping of Old Races as there’d been tonight, it wasn’t a surprise to find Biali in the air. The other gargoyle, though, had clearly not known of the hastily met quorum. As both the elder and the one who was in good graces with their people, he would have rightfully demanded to take Alban’s place. That Janx hadn’t insisted on calling him was a gif
t of sorts to Alban, though it would no doubt carry a price.

  So long as that price wasn’t Margrit. Alban’s wings flared, catching a draft as he followed Biali across Madison Square Park. Ahead of them both, color twisted in the air, a cyclone of light that had nothing to do with the amber lamps or offices windows around it. It gusted upward, riding wind as surely as either gargoyle did, then coalesced atop the Flatiron Building. Malik stepped forward, a figurehead on the building’s enormous prow.

  Biali back-winged, falling into a crouch a dozen feet from the djinn. The reverberations of his landing rattled, and Alban climbed higher in the sky, head cocked to catch what words the wind could bring him. Malik, throttling the neck of his cane, stepped down from the rooftop ledge and faced Biali. They both worked for Janx; choosing to meet on a downtown building top seemed curiously secretive.

  "Am I to be beleaguered by gargoyles?" Malik snapped. "What do you want? Korund couldn’t do the job and Janx sent you to nursemaid me?"

  Biali’s exasperated rumble cut through the air, as if he shared Alban’s sentiment about watching the djinn. "I’m not doing him any favors, al-Massri." He shoved out of his crouch, massive and almost clumsy as he moved. "I’ve got nothing to gain by Korund’s success. Nothing to lose by his failure, either."

  Alban turned on an updraft, mild amusement replacing curiosity. Neither of the men below seemed pleased about meeting the other; the secretiveness of it all was in his own mind. He circled again, aware he wouldn’t long go unnoticed, but more inclined to listen than interrupt. He could follow Malik from here, whether the djinn wanted him to or not.

  "Do you threaten me?" Malik asked incredulously.

  Biali stopped his pacing a step or two away from the djinn, appearing squat and ugly in comparison to Malik’s delicate form. "If I were threatening you, I wouldn’t do it with words."