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fingers in it.
“I never disagreed with that. Simply with your definition of waste.” Ezqel took the kettle from the bar
over the stove and put it on the heat.
Dane washed the rabbit down with warm milk. “Do you like having this conversation?”
“I like it when my students learn something. I keep trying until they do.” Ezqel busied himself with
finding the right jar of tea, shaking his dark red hair back in a way that made Dane briefly, disconcertingly, nostalgic.
“What if you’re wrong?” Dane picked up a front quarter of rabbit. His teeth sheared through ribs and
muscle alike as he took a bite. Hunting was forbidden in Ezqel’s forest, but the dues the forest owed its
keeper were another matter altogether. He met Ezqel’s arch expression with one of his own.
“That rarely happens.” Ezqel found the jar he wanted, full of dark, shriveled blossoms. He reached in
with a beautiful, spidery hand and drew out a dead bouquet for the pot.
“And surviving is the litmus test?” Dane snorted and took another bite. “Fu
didn’t answer, ostensibly because the kettle was boiling. “Anyone would think that was my argument.”
“You don’t seem to have much taste for survival.”
“It’s harder than it used to be.” Dane shrugged. There was no need to point out why. “Don’t mind it if
it comes, don’t mind it if it doesn’t.”
“You seemed eager enough to live two days past. You know that what I do for him, I could do for
you.” Ezqel crossed his arms over his chest, scowling outright.
“I had things still undone,” Dane said through a mouthful of rabbit. “I’ll do them as I am. I’ve lived
with it this long. Besides.” He flashed Ezqel a sharp smile full of the twist in his chest. “What’s a
punishment without a little inconvenience?”
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“I shouldn’t have bothered.” Ezqel pushed away from the counter as Taniel wandered in, too lost in a
book to be wary of the tension in the air. “I could have sent the dog to Cyrus to do your job instead of
sending him wandering out in the world. Bring the tea when you come up.” He left so quickly that he
almost knocked the little librarian into the table. Dane stifled the growl that rose at the idea of anyone taking his place, much less Jonas. Ezqel didn’t deserve the satisfaction.
Taniel stumbled and clutched his book to his chest, casting about wide-eyed. “I…me?” His question
fell on Ezqel’s absence and he turned to Dane instead.
“Me.” Dane took another bite of rabbit.
“Oh.” Taniel seemed relieved, but he wrinkled his nose. “Are you sure you didn’t want that cooked?”
“I didn’t even want it ski
as the taste. “But we can’t always have what we want, can we?” He didn’t bother to raise his voice,
knowing the house would carry it to Ezqel’s ears.
“You shouldn’t…” Taniel started to say in a small voice, then fell quiet under Dane’s glare.
“Shouldn’t what?” Izia came clumping in, her purple clogs loud on the stone floor. She took one look
at Dane’s face and answered her own question. “Ah. At it again. At least you’re entertained.”
“He started it,” Dane pointed out.
“I know.” Izia stepped around Taniel and arranged the tea tray with quick, irritated gestures. “Do you
ever wonder why?”
“I know.” Dane finished off the last bite of rabbit, drained the cup of milk, and went to wash his hands
at the old granite sink. “That doesn’t change anything.”
“Will anything?” Izia held out the tray.
“No.” Dane took the tray from her, meeting her sad expression without sympathy. Any pain he felt
was so much a part of him, like his broke
relinquish it without taking a piece of flesh in trade.
“Not even time?” She let go of the tray and stepped back.
“It’s been long enough.” Long enough and it was all still the same.
“True.” Dane left the room, but he could hear her as well as Ezqel could hear him. “None of us is
immortal. Time will change something, some day.”
Dane didn’t think about things like that. He let the animal fixation on the present wash away the
twinge in his chest. The smell of the world crept in through the cracks in the house, the smell of Lindsay
sleeping slipped downstairs to soothe him further. All he had to do was get the bu
Lindsay outgrow him, and the world would settle back into its round.
His mind tried to return to the bed where Lindsay lay sleeping, but his feet carried him on to Ezqel’s
study in the tower. It was as he had left it last except for the lingering taste of Lindsay’s distress on the air
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that raised his hackles. Lindsay hadn’t even been born when Dane had last crossed the threshold into this
room.
“Do you know what they did to him?” Time to get down to business. The taste of Lindsay’s pain
reminded Dane to keep his mind on the present, kept him from going back to dig up old bones.
“The Shackles of Tehut, or a replica thereof,” Ezqel said, not looking up from his work. Dane put the
tray on the desk and stepped back. “Not going to sit?”
Dane snorted. There was no chair in the room other than the one on which Ezqel sat, making his usual
refusal to settle irrelevant. “Old River magic. I thought it was long gone.”
“My guess is that they were a replica of the broken set found at Bam several floods ago. You
remember the ones. The pharaohs used them to control their mages, like bridling a horse.” Now Ezqel did
look up, watching Dane pace over to the mirror; Dane could see him in the reflection. “It would have been
possible to reproduce that set—the magic was still heavy on it.”
“You have that set,” Dane pointed out, trying not to snap and let Ezqel have the satisfaction of it. “I
don’t need a lecture on it. It’s supposed to be the last set.”
“I’ve only had it for a few hundred years. Someone had it before me.” Ezqel poured himself a cup of
tea, meeting Dane’s eyes in the mirror. “If I could decipher the bindings back when I was young and
foolish, who’s to say someone older and wiser did not do that and more?”
“There could be more?” Dane ran a hand over the worn place on one side of the mirror frame. He
could smell Lindsay’s misery strongly here, soaked into the wood, his vomit soaked into the stone in spite
of a good scrubbing. Adrenaline raked Dane’s nerves and he felt his claws lengthen, his spine curving
before he could stop it.
Ezqel said nothing about it, drinking his tea instead. Dane could smell the flowers, remembered their
fragrance over his head and the crushed grass under his back one hot day. “All things are possible, but I
could not find them. I searched, as did Cyrus. Their pattern is gone.”
“They could be sleeping in lead.” Dane forced himself to change to as human as he could go, even as
his skin prickled with growing hairs and his teeth nicked twin marks in his lower lip.
“I can see beyond it,” Ezqel said simply. “Cyrus has been listening, as well. We know Moore does not
have another.”
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know how it works.” Dane pulled his hand away from the mirror
before he clenched the wood and broke it in frustration.
“That’s not my concern. I only needed to know what happened to him. The shackles use magic
against itself to keep it from the mage. The more powerful the magic, the more power is given over to the
binding runes, and so it goes. He overloaded the binding and something in him broke from the force of his