Hands of Flame

Or, if it was, she had no way at the moment of making use of its importance. Janx’s admission spoke of more than simple weariness. For him to confess to overestimating himself—for him to allow her to see him at such a low ebb, rather than putting on the carefree performance she so often saw from him—he had to trust her, and that was nearly beyond Margrit’s scope of comprehension.

“You’re a very bad liar, my dear.” Janx deliberately lightened his voice, using the endearment to return their relationship to grounds she knew. He reached out to pluck the chess piece from her hand and held it aloft. “Now, don’t tell me I’ve rescued you from a difficult explanation only to have you steal my ivory knight.”

“You haven’t. At least, I don’t think so. You said we had things to discuss.” Margrit left the tapestries to drop into one of the lush chairs. Her examination of the chess table lasted barely a handful of seconds before the soft cushions reminded her she’d had no sleep recently. She let her head fall back with a groan and sank deeper into the chair.

“Margrit,” Janx said with some dismay. “You’re all sooty.”

“Oh, crap!” Margrit jolted halfway to her feet, then relaxed again, muttering, “It’s dirty now anyway. Sorry.”

“I expect it can be cleaned.” Janx folded himself down onto the chaise lounge on the other side of the chess table, looking for all the world as though he had been made to do such things. Unlike Margrit, his own clothes weren’t stained with black, though their color would help to hide it if they were. “Unexpected company you keep.”

“I’ve been keeping strange company for months. Believe me, if I’d known you were pla

“Did it work?”

Margrit passed a hand over her forehead and came away wondering if she’d just left herself streakier with soot. “I think it might have if you hadn’t made your dramatic entrance. Now?” She shrugged, palms up. “They’re angry over Malik, and they know we were there.”

“And you, Margrit?” A thump of silence passed before Janx clarified, “How are you over Malik al-Massrī’s death?”

“Not sleeping,” Margrit replied, more candid than she expected herself to be with the dragonlord. “You?”

“It was my life he was trying to end. Despite our long years of association, I find it difficult to regret that he, and not I, failed to survive the encounter.” Janx tilted his head in a semblance of a shrug. “On the other hand, it’s a new and particular sin for me, being involved in the death of one of our people. In all our centuries of rivalry, Eliseo and I have never had such dark encounters. I find I do not care for it.”

“If you were outside of it, a judge instead of a participant, would it matter to you that it was an accident? That it happened because he was trying to kill you?”

Janx leaned forward, replacing the knight on the board and idly pushing a pawn forward, letting the action make him look thoughtful. The corner of Margrit’s mouth curled, Janx’s theatrics never failing to amuse her. “No,” he finally said. “That it was an accident? No, it wouldn’t matter. That he was trying to kill me, and paid for that error with his life?” He looked up from the board. “If I were a judge, Margrit, I simply don’t think I’d believe it. Not even if three people said it was so. Not even if one of them was a gargoyle, who are not well known for telling lies. You remember Kaimana’s response at the quorum.”

“That Old Races would simply never turn on each other. Yeah. I can’t decide if it’d be nice or alarming to be that naive.” Since the game was met, Margrit moved a pawn forward, too, glad of something to do with her hands.

“There are stories that the dji

“I know. I always wondered how you hurt somebody who could dematerialize. I mean.” Margrit set her teeth together in a wince. “Assuming they don’t carry around toy pistols full of salt water.”

“That was ingenious, by the by. It came to a rather horrific end, but I have to applaud your means.” Janx actually did, sitting back to bring his hands together in staccato claps as she, cringing again, kept her eyes on the chess game. “They’re saved, as I understand it, from materializing inside things by two objects inherently not desiring to share the same space. A safety buffer of sorts. But there’s an infinitesimal window in which it’s too late, and if you can slip into that window—” He lifted the cane and brandished it like the sword it held. “I wasn’t Malik’s first rite-of-passage challenge. He lost the other one, too, and his rival destroyed his knee and his place in the tribes.”

“So he came to work for you,” Margrit said, fairly certain of her guess. Janx nodded and she sighed. “How long ago was that?”

“Longer ago than Vanessa joined Eliseo,” he said after a few seconds. “Unlike Vanessa, he wasn’t always at my side. He didn’t like cold climates. But, yes, it was…some decades longer than Eliseo’s association with poor Vanessa Gray. There are moments when I miss his sour face. And then I remember he tried to kill me.”

Margrit moved her knight forward and let her focus drift, watching ivory pieces swim with a life of their own. “If they don’t accept the offer I made them, they’re pla

“Excessive?” His eyebrows rose and he folded his hand above a chess piece, more interested in conversation than playing. “My dear young lady, they took everything from me. I intend to have it back or leave them with nothing. Is that excessive?”

“Listen to yourself. It’s Wagnerian. There’s a certain panache to it, but it’s completely over the top. Do you really want to have a hand in starting a race war?”

“If such a war is to be had, I fear I’ve already done my part. As have you.”

“Maybe, but I’m trying to mitigate it, not compound it. Look, how long can you and Daisani keep this up, anyway? He’s been in New York thirty years. People gossip about who his plastic surgeon is. This is the modern world. You can’t stay in one place much longer than this. Why not take this one on the chin and move on?”

“And what of you, Margrit, if we do? What of your lust for us—” Janx broke off with a laugh as a horrified noise burst from her throat, then finally moved a chess piece as he went on. “Perhaps not for me personally, to my everlasting chagrin, I assure you, but for what we are? A piece of magic brought into your world. Would you send Alban away, as well? Would you come away with us yourself, Thomas the Rhymer caught in our schemes?”

“Alban hasn’t lived the kind of public life you have.” The sly glance Janx gave her warned that he knew she hadn’t answered the question, but Margrit continued regardless. “You’d still be out there. Even if you weren’t charging in and blowing up my life, I’d know you were still out there. Alive, undiscovered, more or less safe.”

“Caged by our comparative safety. You, of all people, should understand what it is to resent that.”

Margrit moved another chess piece, looking for an opening to let her rook move freely, as if sending it on a run through the park. “Is that why you go to the dark side? Because playing with the underworld feels less constrained? I understand, but me getting caught on one of my adventures wouldn’t end up with me on a dissecting table. I’d rather see all of you, even Alban, gone from New York if it meant you’d all stepped back from the edge of a genocidal war. I don’t think it matters if you don’t manage to wipe each other out. I’m afraid that kind of activity will get you noticed, and you know how dangerous that is.”