Chapter 4
No Harm
Father and Jake were late returning, but he didn’t mind. When they finally showed Erik was deep in shadow at the end of the hall, and didn’t step free until Ignatius nodded.
You learned not to move until necessary, as a Son.
Erik saluted, then stood at ease. “She’s stopped breaking things.
” He pitched the words low and soft, even though the door at the far end glowed to sorcerous Sight with a unidirectional baffle.
No sound outside could penetrate the small suite with its infinitely precious, infinitely fragile occupant.
“But not swearing anymore,” he offered judiciously, just in case Ignatius wanted a full report.
“Modern women. She will hate one of us.” Ignatius shook his head. “Easiest if it’s me.”
“If she was sealed—” Jake began.
“Your brother was right to refrain,” Father continued, inflexibly, almost as if their Younger hadn’t spoken. “We follow the times, my sons; they do not follow us. Come.”
Jake glanced at Erik, his sandy eyebrows raised, and was clearly about one short second away from saying some bullshit Father would not find appropriate at all. Erik shook his head slightly, just the tiniest fraction.
Ignatius paused, his black-clad back to both his Sons. There was a painful, glass-crunching clatter from the smaller liraim—she was trying the windows, again. Hopefully she hadn’t managed to rip any of the glass free, and hadn’t noticed how the damage sealed itself up, slowly but thoroughly.
Or maybe she had noticed, just now, and that was what triggered the return of soft but pungent cursing from behind the door. Erik almost winced—Ignatius didn’t like bad language.
But she was lirai. She could say whatever she liked, and do almost anything except escape her protectors. The trick would be showing her the new shape of the world in a way that didn’t end up with her getting… well, even more terrified than she already was.
Ignatius paused before the door. The baffle folded aside, spent energy sinking into stone walls, wooden floor, the fabric of the door itself.
The Mad God—Ymre was not his true name, but you never wanted to say that out loud—had granted his chosen hands great dominion over sorcery and shadowbeast, and their physicality was supposed to give him a foothold.
Now, of course, they had the best of both worlds, physical being plus invisible power.
The mark on Erik’s wrist gave a sharp twinge under the leather band used to hide its more…
unappetizing movements, and Jake stiffened slightly.
He felt it too. If there was any chance they were mistaken, it was gone now. Not that Erik could be wrong about something like this, but still, it was comforting to know he hadn’t kidnapped a complete civilian.
Well, all lirai were civilians to begin with, but still.
Ignatius turned the knob and swept the door open. Erik moved for entry but Jake, disregarding the protocol they’d followed a thousand times before, got through before him.
As a result, he was the one to get attacked first.
The girl had a great deal of time to work up some emotional pressure, and that was dangerous. It was a good thing she was merely a potential instead of fully awakened, or the blast of uncoordinated power might have given Jake some trouble.
As it was, Erik’s Younger caught the weapon as it descended—looked like she’d torn the clothes rod out of the wardrobe, smart girl—and twisted it free with almost no effort.
If she’d been anything other than a lirai, he would have moved reflexively in to gut her; for a moment, Erik’s skin was cold and loose.
He almost, almost twitched a knife free and sank it into his little brother’s back.
Shit. The protectiveness was natural; unforgiving iron training hammered it home. The first priority in any situation was to keep a Dreamer safe.
Everything else was a distant second.
“Hi,” Jake said, letting the rod drop. It clattered against hardwood floor, and she backed up barefoot.
She’d torn the nightgown at about knee level, presumably for freedom of movement, and the room looked like a bomb had hit it.
A loose fabric coil lay near one of the windows—strips torn from the sheets, braided together and knotted at intervals.
She’d been busy. The windows were all cracked, some of the metal mullions bent, and it looked like she’d tried to take apart the bedstead too.
Huh. “Careful.” Erik couldn’t help saying it. “Glass on the floor.”
She looked at him directly the first time, and he found out her eyes were actually dark blue, like summer twilight. “Three of you.” Her voice shook, but her chin lifted and her hands were fists. “Great.”
“We mean you no harm,” Ignatius said, spreading his hands; his signet glittered. She barely glanced at him, all her attention taken up with Jake, who moved in on her with spooky, darting speed.
Don’t, you idiot. Erik winced as she stumbled back, her heels hitting hardwood with hurtful, bruising sounds. His left wrist burned—if he was feeling it, how much more was Ignatius? Age meant experience, both meant power, and all three responded to lirai with exponential sensitivity.
She was heading right for scattered arcs of broken glass. There were even marks on slivers worked free of the uprights.
Wet smears, crimson as the throbbing not-tattoo on Erik’s wrist.
“Miss Stellack.” Ignatius’s tone said he was used to being obeyed, but Erik didn’t think the lirai cared. “We do not wish to harm you in any way.”
“But you’ll do it if I don’t cooperate, right? That’s how these things work.” She was backing for the bathroom. Not a bad choice.
“Father.” Erik heard his own voice, soft and exact. Funny, it didn’t match the tension gathering in him. “She’s bleeding.”
“Just relax,” Jake said. “Just relax, sweetie.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes narrowed and she bolted sideways over a glittering arc of broken window. The bigger pieces were twitching, trying to gather enough ambient energy to fly home, and her heel landed squarely on one.
Erik wasn’t conscious of moving. One moment he was a coiled spring behind Father, right where he should be.
The next, his arms were full of spitting, scratching, screaming wildcat, and she gave him a good open-handed slap across one cheek—more because she was flailing than from any real intent, but it snapped his head aside and he had to work to control the reflex that would have answered such a blow from anyone, anything else.
“Easy,” he muttered. “Easy there, ma’am. Easy.”
Looked like this girl didn’t do easy, though.
She might have taken a self-defense course or two, but her slight weight and wild motion were all but helpless against a trained Son of Ymre, one who had taken the touch of the Flame on the corrupting mark of the god and not turned away despite the agony.
Still, he tried to be as gentle as possible. And it was… pleasant, to be this close to a potential.
Very pleasant indeed. She was throwing out a lot of energy.
Tiny champagne bubbles slipped over his skin, flooding the meridians.
The mark was whittling itself deeper on his left wrist, too, but the tingles—and the relief from persistent whispering—overcame the sting.
“Easy,” he muttered into her hair, and took a deep lungful.
That might have been a mistake. The scent poured down his throat, filled his skull. She hadn’t showered, and the glossy waves were full of concentrated woman-smell right at her crown. There was the burnt tinge of anger as well, and underneath it, the yellowish tang of outright terror.
Stay focused. “Easy,” he said again. “Sh, shhh.”
She kept fighting, but her struggles were running out of steam. No wonder, she hadn’t even been fed yet.
“Erik?” A mild inquiry from Father.
He concentrated, and the coppery tang of her blood vanished under a roil of heavy incense-smoking sorcery. The slices on her fingers, and the bigger one on her heel, closed seamlessly. That’s better. “Sir?”
“Very good.” Ignatius stood right where he had been, a straight blade of a man with a shock of iron-colored hair, his uncollared cassock neatly hemmed a little shorter than an actual priest’s for freedom of movement.
That made two compliments since they’d brought the lirai home, which was not at all normal. Still, surviving long enough to become a Father meant knowing when to buck tradition and habit, or so their trio’s Father always said.
“Miss Stellack,” Ignatius continued, “we mean you absolutely no harm. You may not believe us, but it is the truth.”
“Oh yeah. Sure.” She drew the last word out and went limp, hanging in Erik’s arms. “You just kidnap people for fun, huh? That it?”
“You have not been kidnapped, young lady. You have been placed under guard. There is a difference. You are very important, and—”
“If you’re wanting a ransom, you’re barking up the wrong tree.
Nobody will pay for me, and if you rape me you’d better use a condom because I’m herpes-adjacent.
” She surged against Erik’s hold again—he had one arm around her waist, the other across her shoulders, and it probably wasn’t good that he wanted to bury his face in her hair again and just breathe that fascinating scent in over and over until he had it memorized.
“You let me go and I won’t tell the cops a thing. It’s the best offer you’ll get.”
What? Erik met Ignatius’s gaze, and he could swear the flinty old man looked… amused?
“I like her,” Jake said, with his most ingratiating grin. “Girl’s got spunk.”
“Fuck you,” she spat. “And you too, you fucking priest. Aren’t you fucking ashamed of yourself?”
Erik was doing a lot of wincing internally today. That sort of language was not acceptable in a Son. At least, not in front of Ignatius.
“Every day.” Father’s slight smile did not alter, nor did his pale eyes flare with wet corpselight—the diseased light granted to a mad god’s chosen, repurposed in service to the Dreamers—or spatters of huntglow.
An observant witness would note he wore no collar, just the cassock—but she probably wasn’t thinking clearly right now.
Adrenaline was only a friend in some situations.
“It comes with the territory. Erik, take her to the larger liraim. Jake, you’ll clean up here. ”
“Yessir.” Erik didn’t move just yet, though. He wanted to be sure Ignatius didn’t have another order. Or he wanted to draw out being this close to a potential, even if only for a few seconds.
He couldn’t tell, and that was dangerous.
“Man, he gets all the fun.” Jake straightened, and his most charming smile was aimed at the lirai hanging in Erik’s grasp. “Honestly, lady, we’re not going to hurt you. Promise.”
“Promise your mother,” she snapped.
Ignatius nodded, which made it official—Erik had to move.
His first step called up a fresh spate of struggles, but she was getting tired.
He could have cut off her air temporarily, just enough to calm her down.
While no doubt the most efficient way of solving the problem, it would just create a hundred more.
So he carried her, still wildly kicking, for the doorway. She stopped when she couldn’t see Ignatius, but the way she froze told him she was braced for unpleasantness. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what kind, either.
“It’s all right,” he found himself saying. “Nice and easy, ma’am. We’re not gonna hurt you.”
“Fuck you,” she snapped again, and tried to bite him. She got exactly nowhere, and Erik’s face felt funny. He had to work to keep his expression neutral, instead of grinning like a fool.
It didn’t matter—she was lirai—but he already liked her.