Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
It was a few days later, and Lara and Freydis arrived at midnight.
Bear had given the men on the door the night off.
Freydis and Bear took up guard positions on the door, the great hall was lit by only a glowing chemical light at each doorway, and I led Lara quickly and quietly through the shadows down to the lower level of the castle, down to the lower hallway where my living quarters were, and where the entrance to the lab waited open.
Lara was dressed down for the evening. Close-fitting jeans, a white sweater, both of which looked excellent.
Her hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, and when she took off the sunglasses, her eyes glittered bright and pale with motes of silver flickering through circles of pale, pale grey.
It was like seeing the eyes of a big cat—beautiful and predatory and dangerous. I had to drag my gaze off them.
I’d dressed down, too. Jeans and a black tank top that read Yes You Can in big aggressive letters. And it showed off my shoulders and arms, which were very, very defined at this point. That thought only occurred to me when I saw Lara’s pale eyes glitter as she glanced at them.
“I met with Etri,” she said. “Throwback party last night.”
“A whatback party?”
“The host picks a historic protocol from at least a century ago and hosts a party to it exclusively for those old enough to have experienced it in its time.”
“Ageist much?” I asked.
She snorted. “You’ll understand as you get older. It is sometimes…well. Relaxing, not to have the very young teeming about. Throwing insults and threats at other guests, that kind of thing.”
“Hah,” I said. “What was this one?”
“Northern post–Civil War celebration,” she said.
I stopped and blinked down at her. “Huh.”
“What?”
“You were there for the Civil War,” I mused. “I mean. You just don’t come off like someone that old.”
Lara smiled. “Well. I do interact with the youth regularly.”
“What did Etri say?”
Lara shrugged a shoulder. “He said if I was willing to openly offer an apology for the incident, surrender Thomas to the custody of a neutral third party, return to the process of judgment via an Accorded emissary, with sentencing to follow if his guilt is demonstrated, that he will be willing to consider not setting Svartalfheim into a state of cold war with the White Court.”
“Huh,” I said. “And how much of that are you willing to do?”
She pressed her lips together. “I can’t do any of it, and he knows it. If I admit that the White Court was involved in removing Thomas from custody, it will weaken our stance among the Accorded nations significantly, which would in turn have consequences inside the Court.”
“Like what?”
“Challenges would become likely. Most of my people don’t mind if one lies, cheats, swindles, and betrays, but they have very firm opinions on the concept of being caught doing it.
It’s a sign of weakness. That’s why the Court would be weakened—I’d be forced to spend time, attention, and resources on maintaining my position.
It would limit the sorts of influences and negotiations I could manage with any of the other nations. ”
“Which Etri can figure out, too,” I said.
“I would expect that, yes.”
“How’d he seem when he said it?” I asked.
Lara waved a hand. “You know the svartalves,” she said. “They show little.”
I stopped at the door down to the lab and gave her a look. “Come on. I’m not that dumb.”
She gave me a look of consideration and then inclined her head toward me as though I had scored a touch she hadn’t expected me to be able to make.
“I am fairly sure he spoke with regret.” She smiled faintly.
“Though I suppose I might have been projecting. Economic and diplomatic pressure from Svartalfheim could prove a heavy burden to bear while maintaining Raith against the other Houses of my Court.”
I grunted. “Etri seems a fairly decent sort.”
“I would call him perhaps overly direct, but an excellent executor for his people, who are orderly and reasonable.”
“That’s what I mean,” I said. “Wars that could have been avoided aren’t reasonable. Etri has got to know you can’t deal with this directly and cooperatively. It’s going to be easier and safer for you to actually go to war with him than to come out in the open and admit everything.”
Lara spread her hands. “I’d expect him to realize that, yes.”
“Then why back you into that corner?” I asked. “What’s it get him other than a conflict? The svartalves can fight. Doesn’t mean they want to.”
“If they drop it without extraordinary acts of contrition on my part,” Lara said, “then they invite more of the same disrespect from Accorded nations and non-Accorded powers alike.”
Hell’s bells, that could be true enough. “He can’t bend. And he’s got to be very clear and aboveboard with everything in this. And because you did sneaky stuff, that’s the one place you can’t go to meet him. He knows it. So why ask for it?”
Lara frowned at me and tilted her head. “You clearly think you have an insight here. What is it?”
“What if he wants to avoid conflict just as much as we do?” I asked. “But he’s signaling that he’s unable to meet us partway under the current circumstances?”
She frowned. “I’ve considered that. I reasoned that he was simply acknowledging the fact that there wasn’t a viable diplomatic solution.”
“Well, sure. But that doesn’t really help us, does it? My way, maybe we can work toward some kind of option.”
“Like what?”
I opened my mouth and then closed it helplessly. “I don’t know. But maybe we can figure out some way to satisfy both Etri’s personal pride and his people’s need for respectful treatment that isn’t emissaries and diplomats and Accorded neutral ground.”
Lara considered that for a moment and then said, “It seems…youthfully optimistic, to me.”
“Or maybe you’re getting jaded and cynical and it’s clouding your ability to consider the full range of possibility,” I said.
“I spoke with Etri on several occasions. I hung out with his people most every day for a good long while. And everything I know about them tells me that they aren’t just going to glumly accept the inevitable.
Neither am I. And I don’t think you’re the kind to roll over for fate, either. ”
Lara’s pale eyes glowed brighter, paler, as she studied me for a silent moment.
“No,” she said very quietly. “I’m not.”
I found myself staring at the motes of silver in her eyes.
Her gaze was simply intense and beautiful.
I tore my eyes away as things began to get more intimate and instead turned from her to take down an oil lantern from a hook on a nearby wall.
I lit it with a gesture and a couple words.
Then I lifted the lantern as I descended the ladder into the lab.
When I got down, I held up the lantern to light Lara’s way down.
She closed the door behind her as she descended, shutting us into the lab together.
“I’ll consider what you have to say,” she said quietly, turning slightly away from me, looking around the lab as I lit half a dozen candles. “Perhaps there’s something to it. And, as you say, it is a course of pursuit that offers at least the possibility of a solution.”
“If we can help Thomas,” I said. “If we can’t, all of this talk about Etri is academic.”
Lara turned back to me. Candlelight did incredible things to her face, her mouth, and her eyes. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. She took a slow breath. “And why I have gone Hungry an additional two weeks while exercising my demon regularly. It has not been an insignificant strain.”
“If we’re going to try to get Thomas’s Hunger fed and reintegrated with him,” I said, “I have to know how much energy I’m going to need to pour out. I need you as close to that state as we can arrange so that I can get some kind of gauge for what I’ll need for Thomas.”
Lara nodded. “Your reasoning is sound.” Her tongue, a little paler a pink than a human could have, flicked over her lips. “But you have to understand. If I allow myself to be reduced to that kind of state, I am uncertain how it might influence my behavior.”
“Meaning what?” I asked carefully.
Her eyes drew mine again and she said, slow, lips wrapping around the words, “I’m. Very. Hungry. Harry. Any hungrier and I might…lose control. Do things to you.”
I swallowed. The sound of her voice just slithered into me and made lightning flicker up and down my spine. My heart rate and respiration went up.
“Oh,” I choked. “Yeah. I’ve…thought of…Okay, look, can you stand in the circle, please?”
Lara let out a throaty chuckle. She drew her eyes away from me only at the last moment, turning and sauntering past me with a languid roll to her step, over toward the circle.
The summoning circle in my lab had been upgraded.
Significantly.
It had been costly as hell to get what I had needed, all that had been left of one of the gym socks of diamonds. Normally, I’d have gone to the svartalves for my crafting, but that wasn’t really an option at the moment. Or ever, likely.
A second ring of silver had been placed around the copper one in the floor, and the original had been repaired to a pristine state.
I’d used paint of actual gold to lay out the new sigils of containment and warding between the two circles.
The candles of rare wax and rarer herbs that burned at five points stood ready.
I’d used more paint of gold to lay out the infinity sign in the circle’s center.
Natural clusters of semiprecious crystals were interspersed between the candles.
Building a greater circle was pricey. Like, supercar-plus-insurance pricey. And I’d gotten enough materials to make two of them.
Lara sidled into one loop of the infinity symbol and turned to look at me. “This is where you want me?”
“Ahem,” I said. “Yeah.”
“What do you want me to do?”