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The only question I could ask, the one I'd been trying to ask all along, bubbled up. "Eve?"
He was quiet for a long few moments as the hover began a long slow descent. "That is not her Name."
I don't care. "But she… is she Doreen's? Is she?" I have to know. I don't care about anything else.
"She is Vardimal's Androgyne." The words were heavy. "You do not understand."
I wanted to set my jaw and shove down the sudden flare of anger. It flared anyway, the shout bursting past my lips. "Whose fault is it if I don't understand? You won't tell me anything!"
He actually flinched. I don't blame him. My voice rattled everything not bolted down and the hover shook like a nervous cat. The injustice boiled over, and I lashed out at the closest thing, the thing I could be sure of providing a good target.
"You keep lying to me! All of it, lies! Youwon't tell me what I am, you won't tell me what's going on, you just keep lying, lying, lying!"
"Yes." His voice sliced through mine.
Whatever I'd expected, it hadn't been simple agreement. It managed to shut me up so he could get a word in edgewise.
His eyes slid away from me, stared across the small cabin. Outside the porthole, faint dappled gray danced — clouds. Wherever we were, it was now cloudy, and still night. "I will lie to keep you safe. I will lie to save you pain. I will lie to ease your mind, and I will lie so you may be certain of me. Answer me this, my curious — if I, evenI will lie to you, what might another demon who does not cherish you do?"
I think I have an idea. More than an idea, in fact. My new rig lay tangled at the end of the bed. My sword was propped against the nightstand, but Japhrimel was between me and its comforting slender length.
"Is she still alive?" The last thing I remembered was Japh's fingers in its throat. Her throat. Which was the true face — the echo of Doreen with my faint iron-clad smile, or the demon with her clotted-ice hair and blue, blue eyes? I wanted, needed to know.
"She is more useful to us alive. She is chained, and watched. The human is also alive, a gift for my hedaira. Does that please you?"
I'm all aglow, Japh. Why, that's just marvy. Sarcasm smoked inside my head and I restrained myself with an effort that left me shaking, my hands clasping together and biting down. "What did you do?" I barely recognized the raw, shocked whisper as my own.
"What have I not done? I set my trap and baited it, I played the Prince of Hell for a fool and lured him into showing his hand too soon. Today I have cost him a great deal, in pride, in Power, and in peace. The knowledge that he no longer has possession of the one weapon that could kill him has reached Hell, for I made certain of it when I invited him to meet me in the White-Walled City."
"You did what?" Open-mouthed shock was apparently the order of the day. The hover's nose tilted down a little more sharply. We were descending, and quickly.
"One of the Prince's marks of favor for his assassin was a certain item. When used, it strips the disguise from a demon, forcing him to take his true form. We are a tricksome species, and sometimes the veil of seeming must be torn. We have different weaknesses. If you know the form of a demon, you may fight him." A single, elegant shrug. "Using the Glaive, unfortunately, creates a disturbance that can be felt in Hell, especially in a place where the walls between our world and yours are so thin. All of Hell knows the Glaive was triggered in the city. The Prince could not afford to stay away, as that is the agreed-upon resting place for one of the decoys."
"Decoys." Keep talking, Japh. This is the most you've ever given me, and what do you know? It's too goddamn late. I was ashamed as soon as I thought it.
He rose like a dark wave, the mattress creaking slightly as he did. I tasted dust and bitterness, added to the thick spice of his blood. The room was narrow and curved, squeezed under the hull and bare of anything that might be considered a personal possession — that is, if I didn't count my new rig. My sword. And my bag, now suddenly visible on a table bolted to the wall near the porthole.
Japhrimel crossed to the porthole and looked out. His back was perfectly straight, his shoulders drawn up. Dust streaked along the curves of his coat, revealing subtle dips and creases of musculature hidden in the liquid black. "You must understand, Dante. I have served the Prince for so long. Obedience became its own kind of trap, and I buried the rebellion in my heart. I was not free to act until you freed me. But still… I had dreams."
"Dreams?" I didn't mean to sound like an idiot. I just couldn't seem to say anything applicable or even intelligent. "The Prince was younger then, too; I was able to hide the fact that I had only recovered half the Knife. He told me what he wished — that the Anhelikos would hold the Knife, for they care little who rules Hell as long as their nests are not tampered with. That if a demon without the proper signs and signals came to fetch it, they would send it along a route known only to Lucifer and myself, each Anhelikos theoretically knowing only the next stage of the route. I was to create two decoy routes as well. It was my only disobedience in longer than you can imagine, to make all three routes empty games and hide the half of the Knife we possessed… elsewhere. Even today I do not know why I did so."
"So you…. Is that why you helped Santino escape Hell, with the Egg? Because you were being disobedient?" Don't interrupt him, Da
"No. I was ordered to do so, by Lucifer himself." Each word was clipped and short. "I bless the day he did, Dante. It brought me to you." He turned away from the window, approached the table with two long steps, and opened my stained canvas messenger bag. The tough cloth made a whispering sound against his fingers.
I scrambled up out of bed, my legs finally obeying me, a hot knot of liquid warmth behind my breastbone. "Leave that alone!"
It was too late. He held up the book, its cover with leather too fine-grained to be animal skin shocking against the golde
I came to a halt less than five steps away from him, my hands curled into fists and shaking. "You should have told me." Quiet venom dripped from each word. "I don't care what you thought you were saving me from."
"Told you what? How could I have explained what I feared, to you? How could I burden you with this?" He tossed the book at me. It was a passionlessly accurate throw, and it landed on my feet with a tiny thud before it slid off to the side, spine-up and open, its pages pressed into the flooring.
We faced each other over a small space of crackling, pulled-tense air. I struggled to contain the rising tide of anguish and red fire inside me.
"Look at what I have done to you." It was his turn to whisper. "No wonder you hate me."
Sheer maddening frustration rivaled the bitterness of dust in my mouth. "I don't hate you." The words felt foreign against my lips. "I can't hate you. That's my goddamn problem." Or at least one of them. I've got so many others now this one seems like a walk in the holopark.
It was hard work to bend down, keeping my eyes on him, and pick the book up. The feel of the cover against my fingers was enough to make my gorge rise. I was getting so used to nauseated disgust, I wondered if I'd ever eat again. "Nobody gave me any information with this at all. Selene only knew it was a book on the Fallen. Eve never told me what was in it. Sephrimel showed me one picture and… gods, Japhrimel, if you're so fucking worried what I'll think of it, why didn't you just tell me yourself? I could have tried understanding, you know."