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A hedaira seeking to protect the Kinslayer. The thing’s voice burrowed into my head, the bell-like tone suddenly gone brittle. Surely the time of reckoning is upon us now.
I wasn’t trying to protect him. I was going to kill you if you drew, goddammit. I couldn’t make my mouth shape the words.
“It makes no difference.” As Japhrimel drew me back, I didn’t look away from the creature. Its hand dropped from the swordhilt, wings smoothing as we retreated, step by careful step. The mark on my shoulder pulsed with soft, oiled Power. “If others of my kind come, you may tell them what you like. Only be sure to add this: as long as the Prince endures, my hedaira enjoys his protection. That means I am disposed to consider his… requests… most kindly.”
My knees almost gave out on me again as I realized what I’d just done. The candle flames hissed. Japh dragged me out the door, the night air sparkling clean after the cloying interior of the temple. He somehow bent to retrieve the scabbard on the way out, too, though his hand never left my shoulder. He handed it to me as we stood on the top of the steps, the wooden door closing behind us. I heard another hissing, chuckling sound from inside as a wave of thick sweet clotted perfume belched out through the rapidly narrowing crack between the door and the jamb.
The Prince will not allow a hedaira to live, Kinslayer. Especially not your hedaira. You would do well to remember the White-Walled City and the screams of the Fallen—
The door clicked shut. The garden rustled, leaves rubbing against each other with the sibilant sound of feathers rasping. I coughed, the smell of dry feathers and bread coating the back of my throat. My eyes watered, but I could still resheathe my blade; the action was habitual enough not to need sight.
Japhrimel pushed me down the steps. I stumbled and he held me up. His arm came over my shoulders, but I didn’t care. I simply wanted to get out of this place as soon as possible. My boots echoed on the flagstone path, Japh’s were silent.
What was the White-Walled City? The roof of the world? This thing was holding a stash of something and now it’s gone. What’s Japh looking for? Goddammit. Frustration rose, fighting with the way my arms and legs tingled numbly, clumsy. “Gods.” I coughed again, wanted to spit to clear my throat, didn’t. “What the…” I couldn’t get enough breath to finish the sentence. Little bits of plant life touched me—leaves, branches; they all felt like tiny grasping fingers.
“Anhelikos.” Japhrimel’s tone was even and thoughtful. “They feed on anger. And hatred. You are perhaps the first human to have seen one in almost five hundred years.” He pushed open the narrow wooden gate, the heat of him cleaner than the thick clotted scent left behind us. I shivered galvanically as we passed through the diaphanous shielding laid over the high wall. His arm tightened, drawing me into his side, and my sword bumped my leg as it dangled in my nerveless left hand. “You are perhaps the only living creature to survive drawing steel inside one’s nest. That was ill-advised.”
“Sorry.” I didn’t sound sorry, wanted to shake his arm away, couldn’t. My legs felt like I’d just run a thousand-mile marathon, and my head throbbed unevenly. “I feel sick.”
“It is a thing inimical to you. The feeling will pass.” He glanced at the wall, where McKinley suddenly reappeared.
“Any news?” The Hellesvront agent’s black eyes flicked over me, I hoped I wasn’t shaking visibly.
It feeds on anger, that’s why I felt so drained. Gods. What is that thing? I don’t care, I never want to see it again. Gods above.
“Some,” Japh replied. “It has been moved, I expected as much. Someone came to fetch it, failed, and triggered the game.” He stopped, glanced back over his shoulder at the high, smooth concrete wall. Then he looked down at me. “Did you think to protect me, Dante?”
No. I wanted to kill it before it drew. “It was about to draw, Japh.”
“Unlikely.” He paused. “I told you there was no danger.”
I don’t care what you fucking told me. “I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.” I don’t even know why I did that. I hate you. I can’t hate you. I wish I’d never met you.
No, I don’t. Gods. I was too confused and shaken to think straight. Stepping in front of him had just happened. I’d tried to protect Doreen, I’d tried like hell to protect Jace—but they’d been human. Like me.
Japhrimel probably didn’t need me at all.
That thought hurt more than anything else.
“So it seems.” He studied me for a few moments.
Sekhmet sa’es. I gave up. Leaned into his side, blinking as I stared at the pavement at my feet. My boot-toes seemed strangely far away. “Fine.” My quads and hamstrings were starting to tremble, something I hadn’t felt since before Rio. I felt about three seconds away from collapsing. “Whatever. Can I sit down somewhere?”
The silence stretched on for a good thirty seconds. I couldn’t tell if they were looking at me or each other, didn’t care. Finally, Japhrimel spoke. “The weakness will pass. Come.”
He set off down the cracked and uneven pavement, I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.
Once again, I don’t see how things could get any worse. I winced as I thought it. You’d think I would have learned by now not to say that, even to myself.
This being a nonhuman Freetown, the hotel was run by swanhild.
Swanhild, with their ruffs of white feathers and delicate long-fingered hands, are weak when compared to Nichtvren or werecain or even kobolding. But their flesh is extremely poisonous to most carnivorous paranormal species, and a variant of touch-telepathy means that a ’cain or a Nichtvren that kills a swanhild suffers a kind of psychic death in return. It’s unpleasant to say the least, and as a result the ’hilds are the paranormal equivalent of Free Territorie Suisse. They function as message carriers and bankers, as well as several other kinds of service providers, for paranormal communities.
Swanhild don’t like humans. Something about a pre-Merican Era prince who had trapped one, tried to marry her, and ended up killing her and committing suicide, I think. There used to be a very old ballai about it, but the swanhild campaigned so effectively it’s hard to even get bootleg holos of old performances. Modern ballai companies won’t perform it for audiences, either.
The hotel was a kobolding-restored building, with the characteristic fluid stone decorations carved into its facade. Inside, the lighting was dim, the windows UV-screened, and a collage of paranormals hung out in the hotel bar while McKinley checked us in. I saw—for the first time outside a textbook—a batlike Fumadrin, its snout buried in a bowl of what looked like whiskey but was probably paint thi
Japhrimel kept his arm over my shoulders, his thumb stroking my upper arm every so often. I kept looking down at the floor, though I was feeling a lot better. The languid, drained feeling had faded within a couple blocks of the Anhelikos’s temple. I wasn’t feeling a hundred watts, but I was all right. Except for the way my chest hurt, especially the rubbed-raw little spot under the diagonal leather strap of my rig.