18. Chapter 18
Crowe
I’ve spent the better part of a century being the man nobody remembers. That’s the work. You come into a room, and nothing about you sticks. People talk in front of you. There’s nothing there worth talking carefully around.
It stopped working last night.
I stand at the back of Aurora’s hall with a glass I’m not drinking from. The room is thick with shifters. Wet wool and wolf near the doors. Bear at the long table. Two dry, scorched patches of air by the fire that are dragons, and a third behind me that I’d found before I turned around.
Every third person who passes me looks at me twice.
A young wolf near the door has been working out how to come over here for twenty minutes. I can smell his nerves from thirty feet away, sharp and sour under the woodsmoke. He hasn’t moved yet. The two dragons by the fire stopped talking when I walked past them.
Nobody’s afraid of me. It’s worse than that. They’re interested.
I’m the vampire who killed a Vex.
I put the glass down on the nearest table and go looking for a passage with fewer people in it.
Faine finds me before I find the passage.
“Walk with me,” she says.
We go out to a gallery above the vehicle bay. Cold air comes up from below. She stands at the rail and doesn’t look at me while she talks, which is how she does anything that matters.
“You’ve caused some trouble, Crowe,” she says.
“I have.”
“You kept two of my men after I wanted them back. You burned a month of Court time and a good deal of my standing to do it, and then you killed Ilmar Vex in a bedroom in front of witnesses.”
“That’s all correct.”
“Any one of those is a problem. Together they’re something else.” She turns her glass. “The Ivory League will want something. His people will want something else. I don’t yet know what either of those things is, and I don’t like not knowing.”
“Then hand me over.”
“Don’t be tedious.”
“I’m being practical. You didn’t officially sanction any of it. Nobody on your council has to carry me.”
“No,” she says. “Nobody has to.”
She lets that sit for a moment.
“The Court will handle it,” she says.
I look at her. “Say that again.”
“The Court will handle it. Whatever comes, it comes to my table first, and it stops there. You’re not standing in front of anyone alone.”
“I’m a Turned man on a job nobody authorized.”
“You are.”
“So why?”
She thinks about her answer, which she doesn’t often bother doing.
“Because I’ve had four hundred years of men explaining to me why they couldn’t do the difficult thing,” she says. “And this week I had one who did it without asking. That’s rare enough to be worth the trouble it makes.”
“That’s not much of a reason.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.” She finishes her glass. “Take her home, Crowe. Then come back and let me shout at you properly.”
“How long have I got before it starts?”
“Before what starts?”
“Whatever the League decides to do.”
“Weeks. Possibly months. They’re old, they’re slow, and they enjoy the part where you wait.
” She sets the glass on the rail. “Two pieces of advice, then I’m finished with you tonight.
Don’t go anywhere alone that somebody else suggested you go.
And when you’re inside Aldrake territory, remember what you are.
A Turned vampire in a dragon clan’s hall. Most of them will never have seen one.”
“They’ll have opinions.”
“They’ll have a great many opinions. Say less than you want to.”
“I always say less than I want to.”
“You say almost nothing, which is a different problem. I’ve given up on it.”
Odile is waiting at the bottom of the gallery stairs, red gloves on, arms folded.
“There he is,” she says. “The talk of the building.”
“Don’t.”
“I’ve heard six versions of that story already.
In two of them you were nine feet tall. Kent has a vivid imagination.
” She falls into step beside me. “My favorite is the one where you went through a warded line to get in, and then went back through it a second time to get out. Twice in one night. Through a wall that turns off engines.”
“That one’s true.”
“I know it’s true. That’s what makes it my favorite.” She straightens her cuff. “Do you remember what I asked you in that lot in Idaho?”
“You asked me if I believed in Fate.”
“And you said no. You looked at me as though I’d offered to read your palm.” She stops walking. “One question. Then I’ll leave you alone.”
“Ask it.”
“When that door opened, and you saw her…did you know her?”
I don’t answer.
She smiles, wide and pleased. She pats my arm on her way past.
“Delightful,” she says. “Absolutely delightful. Have a safe drive.”
“I didn’t answer.”
“And that told me everything I needed to know.” She’s already walking. “Crowe. One more thing, and this one is free.”
“Go on.”
“When you get where you’re going, they will put her in a room full of her own people and start deciding things about her.” She looks back over her shoulder. “You will want to be in that room.”
“My part finishes at the gate.”
“Yes,” she says. “That’s rather what I’m getting at.”
She goes. I stay where I am and watch her cross the hall to Torbjorn, who is sitting in a chair that is too small for him and has not moved in an hour. I’ve seen men try to get a bear clan leader out of a chair. I’ve never seen one manage it.
“Come outside,” she says. “It’s stopped snowing.”
“Hmm.”
“Was that a yes?”
“It was a hmm.”
“Then I’ll take it as a yes.”
Then she just stands there. She doesn’t ask again, and she doesn’t leave. Torbjorn holds out for about ten seconds. Then he gets up and follows her out. She got him out of that chair without touching him and without raising her voice. She’s done the same thing to me twice tonight.
Bastien finds me later, in a side room with one lamp and a window looking at nothing.
“I looked for you at the hall,” he says. “You weren’t in it.”
“I’ve had enough of the hall.”
“So had I.” He sits down without asking.
“I’ll say this once, and then I’ll stop, because I know what you’re like about it.
You found her when nobody else could. Serenity has her life back because you did the work.
I owe you something I can’t pay, and I’d like it said out loud before you drive off. ”
“It was the job.”
“It stopped being the job somewhere around the quarry, and we both know it.” He shrugs. “That’s all. I’m not going to make you sit through more of it.”
“Good.”
“You’re an unrewarding man to thank.”
“I’ve been told.”
He turns his glass on his knee.
“She’s angry with me,” he says. “Serenity. Have you got a minute for something foolish?”
“Go on.”
“She’s been trying to mark me.” He brings it up the same flat way another man would bring up a leaking roof.
“Her wolf wants a mate bite on me. She’s determined about it.
And every time she manages it, the skin closes over inside a minute.
Faster than that. She’ll have her teeth in my shoulder and by the time she’s sitting back it’s gone. ”
“That’s the problem with what we are.”
“It is. She takes it personally.” He almost laughs. “She wants a mark on me that stays. She’s a wolf-witch. I’m four hundred years old. Nothing about me keeps a wound. So she’s furious, and she’s decided this is a personal failing of mine.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Several unhelpful things first. That it doesn’t matter. That I don’t need a mark to know what I am to her.” He shakes his head.
“That’s fair.”
“It’s completely fair.” He turns the glass again. “Then I told her the truth, which I should have started with. She doesn’t need to put a mark on me. She put one on me months ago.”
He sets the glass down and holds out his right hand under the lamp.
A split runs across the back of it. Pale now. Closed. Still there.
“That’s a scar,” I say.
“It’s the only one I have. Four hundred years, and it’s the only one.” He turns the hand over and back. “There’s one thing on this earth that marks us and stays, and you know what it is as well as I do.”
“Sun.”
“She opened a shutter while I was asleep. The sunlight came in across my hand.” He says it as if it’s no big deal. “She got it shut before it reached anything worse. We never spoke about it.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No. I worked it out the next evening and let her keep her secret. She got there herself eventually.” He closes the hand. “So I told her she can stop trying to bite me. There’s already a mark, and she’s the one who put it there. It just isn’t the one she was aiming for.”
He says it lightly. He isn’t making any kind of point.
Every time the sun comes up, I go to sleep with the memory of a woman’s teeth in my throat. A memory of something that’s never happened.
I think of the burns on my palms from when I tried to free her from that truck. I don’t take my hands out of my pockets. I let him change the subject.
“So what happens now, Crowe?”
“Now?” I shrug. “Now, I take Kallista Ondrathe to Aldrake territory. I keep her alive until she’s inside her own borders and in her mother’s hands. Then Aurora’s obligation ends. The Court’s ends. Mine ends with both of them.”
“Then you’re done?”
“Then I’m done.”
Done. It’s a clean word. Four letters, no ambiguity in it, and it’s been the best part of every job I’ve ever taken.
“You’re sure about that?” he says.
“I’m sure,” I say.
“Good luck, my friend.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Let me know how that works out for you.” He turns and heads to his mate, leaving me staring after him.
Why must everyone speak in riddles around here?
I shake my head and stop thinking about it. I need to let Kalli know what the plans are. I find her in the passage outside the hall.
She’s standing with three people I don’t know, and she’s a different woman than the one who slept against my window. She’s answering an older dragon’s questions with short, correct sentences, and she looks completely at ease with them.
She’s royalty. She has a seat waiting for her. This is what she was raised to do. I watch her do it. For some reason, I don’t like watching it.
The older dragon says something about her mother. She gives him a nod and a phrase that seems to satisfy him.
Then she sees me over his shoulder.
Her whole face changes. Just for a second. Her shoulders come down an inch. Her mouth goes crooked, and it’s the face from the truck, the one she made when I told her I’m always this quiet.
Then it’s gone. The heir is back. She turns to the three of them.
“You’ll excuse me,” she says.
She comes over. The hallway’s noisy, and we have to raise our voices to speak to each other.
“Tell me you’re here to take me out of this building,” she says.
“We leave at nightfall. The road’s long, and I’d like to do it in one run.”
“How long?”
“Three days. More if the weather’s bad in the passes. There’s an Aurora house at the far end of the second night. We’ll lie up there through the daylight.”
“Three days.” She looks back down the hallway at the three of them waiting for her. “Three days without anybody asking me how I’m bearing up.”
“I won’t ask.”
“I know you won’t. It’s the single most restful thing about you.” She rubs her thumb over the new skin on her palm. “Everyone in that hall has been very kind to me for six hours.”
“And?”
“And I’d rather have been shouted at. Kindness has to be acknowledged. Being shouted at, you can just stand there and take it.” She glances back down the hallway. “Three days in a truck with nobody being kind to me sounds like a holiday.”
“I’ll be actively rude, if it helps.”
“Don’t overpromise.” Her mouth goes crooked again. “Nightfall, then.”
“Nightfall.”
She goes back to them. The chin comes up on the third step.
I stand there longer than I need to.
I’ve got three days of road ahead of me with her in the cab. At the end of it, I walk her through a gate, hand her to a clan that thinks she’s a ghost, and drive away.
Both my palms have healed clean. There’s nothing on either of them.
I put them in my pockets anyway.