by Becca Mills
He inclined his head. “As you please, Miss Hanson. Far be it from me to press a guest.”
He gave his horse a squeeze and trotted up to the front of the party.
I took a deep, shaky breath.
I’d saved myself at the last minute by showing some backbone and, therefore, managing to be just a tiny bit interesting. I was pretty sure the bar would be higher next time.
A lot higher, as it turned out. Two days later, we arrived at Negus’s palatial replica of an English country house, and before we could even dismount, he invited us to join him for dinner. His servants could provide appropriate attire, if we needed it.
Dinner with a god. It was hard to think of something I wanted to do less, but there was no getting out of it.
Nor could I get out of the dolling-up process.
“Ida, could you hand me that comb?” Mizzy waved Ida’s offering away. “No, that one.” She made an invisible adjustment to my hair, then walked around in front of me to check the effect.
I looked in the mirror.
As usual when dressed up, I found myself unrecognizable. My hair was gathered in an elaborate up-do and strewn with pearls. The gems’ paleness made my hair — usually a run-of-the-mill shade of brown — look smoky and mysterious. I was wearing so much dark eye make-up that my irises looked weirdly light and reflective, like stainless steel.
At least my dress gave me pretty good coverage, albeit in fabric that walked the line between translucent and transparent. The naughty bits were made decent by strategic thickening in the detailing of tiny pearls. The shape of my body was on display in a way that made me uncomfortable, but covered was covered. Less exposed skin meant less chance for someone to touch me and get a read on my capacity.
Mizzy nodded to herself and went back to giving me advice. “Just remember, people have been trying to hold his interest for thousands of years.”
I grimaced. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”
“I’m sorry.”
Mizzy stood there awkwardly, twisting the comb in her hands, until I smiled and motioned her to continue.
“What I meant is, don’t try to ‘be interesting.’ Everything you could possibly come up with has been used on him a million times. Instead, just be yourself. You’re fundamentally interesting.”
I glanced over at Williams, who was holding our silence barrier. He looked dubious. For once, I agreed with him — I was the most ordinary person I knew.
“Even if that were true, I can’t be myself. There’s too much I can’t say.”
Mizzy stepped back and, lifting her skirts carefully, sat down on the dresser facing me.
“Beth … ”
She looked torn.
I grimaced. “Just spit it out.”
She glanced at Williams apprehensively.
“In my opinion,” she said carefully, “there’s very little you can’t say because there’s very little he doesn’t know.”
I tried to tamp down the panic. “What do you mean? How would he know anything about me?”
She sighed. “Look, the minute he touches you, he’ll know what you are, and he’ll probably know a lot more precisely than any of us could. And even if he doesn’t touch you, the working I’m wearing has your essence signature mixed in with mine. Any tracker could tell him you powered it, and he’ll know what that means. He’s also aware of who Lord Cordus is and what —”
Williams staggered to the side, catching himself against the wall.
“Keeping secrets from me in my own house?” Negus said from the doorway. “I rather think not.”
Mizzy curtsied impeccably. “There are conversations women are more comfortable having just between themselves, my lord.”
Negus ignored her. He was looking at Williams.
Well, the see-through dress might be distracting.
I stood up and walked toward the power, choosing a path that put me between him and Williams.
Negus looked surprised. Then, for just a moment, he looked intrigued.
“Miss Hanson. You are quite lovely.”
He held out his arm, and I placed my fingers lightly on his sleeve.
He led me out into the hallway and through the house, down to the dining room. Or one of the dining rooms, at any rate — a place this big had to have several. This one was probably considered intimate — a candlelit stone room with dark tapestries on the walls and a table for fourteen at the center.
Negus seated me to his left, but not directly. The person between us was Sargon, one of the visiting powers. He was a short, thick-set, bearded man who looked to be in his forties. He had an olive complexion and short black hair. He glanced at me when I sat down and immediately dismissed me.
On my other side was the other visiting power, Shuxian. She was one of the odder-looking humanoids I’d seen. She reminded me of Limu, the power who shaped himself as a walking lava-man, but she’d chosen water instead of magma. Her form was female — explicitly so — but it was made of still, greenish water, from hair to toenails. She smelled like a stagnant pond in August.
She greeted me in a polite but vague sort of way, then turned her attention back to the person on her other side.
I looked down, searching for my napkin, and found myself staring at Shuxian’s forearm. The white tablecloth beneath it remained dry, but that was to be expected from a water-working power. What caught my eye were the movements under her watery surface — little crustaceans, bugs, tiny fish. I glanced at her upper arm and saw a tadpole wriggling around.
What appetite I’d had withered.
It was a bad sign that Negus had seated me between his most important visitors. He should’ve seated one of them on his left and the other on his right, with me — at best a visiting vassal, at worst a Nolander — at the foot of the table, where he’d placed Ida, Mizzy, and Williams.
In fact, it was weird that my friends and I were even joining these people for a meal.
Mizzy was right. He suspected I was something other than what I seemed to be.
And why shouldn’t he suspect? I thought. Cordus had paraded me around several times at his court in New York. Word could certainly have traveled this far. Seconds were as fond of gossip as anyone else.
Plus, Cordus was part of a small group. I bet they kept tabs on each other.
Sargon had been on Yellin’s list. Shuxian had not, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a great power. Most powers guarded their capacity jealously. Someone who seemed to be a “middleweight,” as Mizzy put it, might turn out to be a whole lot stronger than you’d assumed.
Still, there couldn’t be that many of them running around. If a human power was born every hundred years, and if one in ten turned out to be a great power, only two hundred great powers would’ve been born since the advent of our species. And they’d been killing each other off for millennia.
A server placed a small bowl in front of me. It looked like tomato soup but smelled slightly of pine needles.
Why had Cordus paraded me around like that, anyway? The infant trying to hold all that territory in the first world, Negus had said. Why wasn’t he more cautious? Maybe he was some sort of idiot, and I’d just been too star-struck to notice.
At the far end of the table, Mizzy was already at work charming the person next to her. Ida was tasting the soup thoughtfully, as though trying to figure out what was in the recipe. Williams caught my eye. He looked a bit pale, but his gaze was steady. Hopefully that meant he was okay. Having a working broken is rough.
“Miss Hanson,” said a sharp-featured blond woman across the table whose name I’d already forgotten.
When I turned her way, she smiled sweetly and said, “I was surprised, when we first encountered you, to hear you voice a desire for mules.”
Several people tittered.
I felt myself flush. “I find them useful.”
“You disagree with Lady Mary of Emden, then?”
Danger. Danger.
“I am not aware of her ladyship’s positio
n on mules.”
“I once heard her call them an obscene invention of humankind.”
I put a lid on my annoyance and pressed it down. “Hybrids occur naturally, do they not?”
“I suppose.” The woman manufactured a shudder. “But to take nature’s mistakes and promote them as positive — well, it is quite disgusting.”
The lid came loose, and a little annoyed bubble popped out. “‘Disgusting’ is an awfully strong word. Mules are strong and smart. These are positive and useful traits.”
The woman’s smile took on an edge. “Strength, perhaps, but intelligence is hardly required of a beast of burden. And you must admit they are quite repellent.”
“Do you think so? I find them rather …”
I couldn’t come up with the Baasha word for “cute,” if there even was one. As I searched for an alternative, it occurred to me that something felt odd about my left hand. After a moment, I realized the feeling was wetness.
I picked my arm up and stared at the wet blotch on the tablecloth. After a second, it shrank, leaving behind dry fabric, like a movie running in reverse. It disappeared back into Shuxian’s right hand, which was resting on the table.
I looked up at the power and found her staring at me. She smiled widely and ran the tip of her water-tongue over her water-teeth.
I bet she’d just felt me up, powerwise.
“Lord Sargon,” Negus said, “did I tell you that I saw Lord Limu last month?”
My head whipped around.
Sargon grunted. “I thought he had given up on this place.”
“Indeed, he did not miss the opportunity to complain of our volcanoes. I believe he said they ‘lack passion.’”
Sargon let out a bark of laughter. On the other side of me, Shuxian giggled.
I’m being toyed with.
I looked down at my plate to hide my fear.
“At any rate,” Negus continued, “he was quite angry over a piece of thievery. Alleged thievery, I should say.”
At some point, my tomato-pine-needle soup had been replaced with a thick steak.
“Someone stole from Limu?” Sargon said. “I find that surprising. He is strong.”
“He is mad,” Shuxian said dismissively. “His hatred for the humans has warped him.”
I cut a piece of meat but couldn’t put it in my mouth. My stomach was churning.
“Not as strong as he used to be, apparently. As you could perhaps confirm, Miss Hanson.”
“I am in no position to know such things, my lord.”
Negus studied me, tilting his head. The mannerism reminded me disturbingly of Cordus.
Sargon belched, then raised his napkin and scrubbed at his bearded chin. “Did he say who stole what?”
“What did not come into the conversation,” Negus said. “As for who, he accused his own wife.”
Sargon stared at Negus for a moment, then leaned back and laughed a booming “ho, ho, ho,” like some twisted Santa Claus. “He married? Surely you jest.”
Don’t call me Shirley, a terrified-into-near-hysteria voice said in my head.
I coughed into my napkin to disguise the resulting giggle. It must’ve sounded like I was choking, because Shuxian solicitously patted me on the back.
“He did,” Shuxian said between pats. “I met her once. An odd little thing. I thought she might not be altogether well in the mind.”
“To marry, at his age,” Sargon said. “Of all the absurdities.”
Negus nodded, smirking.
Huh. Come to think of it, Limu was the only married power I’d ever heard of. Weird.
“Why don’t powers marry?” I said.
A shocked silence fell across the room.
I glanced down the table at Mizzy. She was ash-pale. More significantly, Williams was too.
Negus’s face was strangely blank, like a drawing waiting to be animated.
I grabbed my courage with both hands and raised my eyebrows expectantly. Hopefully my expression said, You’re not going to let a guest’s question go unanswered, are you? rather than, Boy do I regret saying that.
His blank mask morphed into amused tolerance.
Score.
“Well, Miss Hanson, when one has lived a very long while, the constant company of a single person becomes rather tedious.”
“I guess I can see that, but a constant stream of new faces — that sounds unsatisfying.”
“Speak for yourself, child,” Shuxian said, her voice low and suggestive.
Negus just watched me, a slight smile curling one side of his mouth. How diverting, his expression said. Whatever will it do next?
In for a dime, in for a dollar.
I put on a musing kind of voice. “I have heard it said that powers rarely touch one another. I can see why. It must be very difficult to trust someone who could turn out to be stronger. But that means anyone you do touch has to be obviously weaker. Spending ages with someone who is little more than a servant — that would definitely become tedious.”
This time, the silence in the room was profound.
Negus himself looked surprised. Then he laughed — hard, too.
“My dear Miss Hanson,” he said, “that is quite an observation.”
“Bunch of rot,” Sargon groused.
He waved his empty wineglass over his head, and a footman rushed to fill it.
Negus put a piece of meat in his mouth and chewed it slowly, studying me.
Under the table, Shuxian put her hand on my thigh.
“Did you create all this with a working?” I said, tilting my head toward the vast formal gardens that stretched away from the rear of the house.
Negus peeled his gaze away from me and gave the gardens a lazy glance. “Certainly not. I employ a small army of gardeners.”
“Why? Given the way you worked a roadway for us on the way here, could you not just give your lands whatever form you wanted?”
His brow wrinkled. “Why would you ask such a question, Miss Ryder? I cannot imagine why little Cordus has not taught you such basic things.”
The eyebrow-raising thing worked last time, so I tried it again.
And again I got the amused smile.
“I could have worked this garden into being,” Negus said. “I could work my territory into whatever shape I wanted. But the essence of Demesnes does not want to be other than it is. To alter its essence significantly would simply generate a new stratum. I do not wish my territory to become separated from Demesnes. So yes, I made our road in coming here, but I let the essence revert to its natural form after we passed.” He pondered me for a few moments. “It may seem there are no constraints on the actions of great powers, but that is not true.”
I nodded and turned back to the garden.
For a few minutes there, I’d thought extracting myself from Shuxian’s advances would be a challenge. I’d begun to panic. If I ever had a sexual experience with a woman, I darn well wanted her to have skin.
But then Negus had swept in and invited me on a post-dinner stroll.
I’d never really grasped that cliché about going from the frying pan to the fire. I did now.
I’d been careful not to look at my friends’ faces when I left. I didn’t want to see my obituary written all over them.
The stroll had brought us to a broad stone balcony overlooking the gardens. A rectangular pool stretched out in front of us. Moonlight skipped across the wind-stirred water in little silvery cups.
So beautiful.
But beauty isn’t trustworthy.
Negus moved in closer. I felt his hand on my upper arm, warm through the thin material. His touch slid up to my shoulder, and he thumbed the neckline of my dress.
“I would like to touch you.”
“I would prefer you did not.”
He didn’t respond — just kept that thumb moving a millimeter away from my skin.
I looked up at him. “Why know something when you can guess? Guessing is much more fun.”
“Perhaps.”
He ran his fingers lightly over my pearl choker. “I will strike a bargain with you, Miss Ryder. You may keep your capacity to yourself if you tell me where you are really going, and why.”
“No deal. Go ahead and touch.”
His hand stilled, then dropped away. He laughed. “You are quite entertaining. Very well — keep your secrets.”
I smiled as though he’d done me a favor. As if. He could probably find out about my capacity from Shuxian anytime.
He watched me, and I got the feeling my thoughts were quite plain to him.
And why wouldn’t they be? He was unimaginably old — a single strand woven through the tapestry of humanity. People could hold no surprises for someone like Negus.
“Come,” he said, extending his arm. “I will escort you back to your rooms.”
“My god, Beth, are you okay?”
Mizzy looked me up and down, apparently amazed to see me with all limbs still attached.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I looked past her to Williams and Ida. “Really. He didn’t hurt me.”
“Thanks be,” Ida said, and plopped down in an armchair.
Williams was still eyeing me. “Did he touch you?”
“No. He asked to, but it didn’t happen.”
Mizzy frowned. “What —”
“But I don’t think it matters,” I said, “because Shuxian did. Oh, and Mizzy — you were right. He totally knows who I am. Once we were alone, he called me by my real name.”
“Okay,” she said, sitting down. “Spill.”
Williams pointed at me. “Quiet. You two,” he said to Mizzy and Ida, “get out.”
He ignored the angry looks they shot him as they left.
“Now,” he said, once they were gone, “talk.”
I told him about my private chat with Negus. I also told him about Shuxian.
He absorbed the information in silence.
“What do you think he wants?”
Williams shrugged. “Stimulation. Advantage, if he hasn’t grown tired of games. Many of the old ones do.”
“But not all?”
“Nope.”
I thought about it. Politics, power, ego, competition. I sure would get tired of that sort of thing as the millennia added up. Heck, I was only twenty-three, and I was sick of it already.