KNITE:

Illora trembled. As a daughter of House Lorail, she had little to no talent in the ways of a Duros or Zephyr. Standing for as long as she had without the assistance of sensus was a difficult task. And so she trembled.

“Granduncle,” Illora said, “how long will you have me stand here?”

I looked up from the reports I’d been reading. “Are you no longer able? It has only been a day and a half.”

“In my limited wisdom, I fail to understand why you wish me to. My attendance at the Academy was expected this morning. This… exercise has delayed me some.”

I placed the reports down. “Tell me, why do you think I’ve had you wait?”

She bowed before she spoke. I appreciated her offer of respect more than the respect itself. “The reason—or reasons—seem beyond my ability to understand.”

“And if you had to hazard a guess?”

“In all likelihood, I would invoke the hazard of being wrong.”

I smiled. “You present a sharper mind than your mother and, save one, a more likable disposition than any relative of yours I’ve had the displeasure of meeting.”

Illora frowned. “If I may be so bold, I’d prefer you not speak ill of my family in my presence.”

“Else?” I asked, still smiling.

She bowed again. “Empty threats would insult us both. I merely ventured to express my distaste for hearing my family insulted, deserved or not.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Then I shall refrain from doing so as ardently as my motives allow.”

Illora bowed a third time, much of the stiffness of her previous attempts gone.

“Do you love your mother?” I asked. Her eyes flew open. Only a fraction, and only for a moment, but enough to tell me the question had shaken her.

“She has always been good to me,” she said.

“And?”

“And I should love her even if I do not.”

I shook my head in amusement. “The more we speak, the more I like you, my dear Grandniece. However, I’d prefer it if you did not construct your answers in ways that appease yet consist of no true substance with which to appease. Do you love your mother?”

Illora’s eyes and lips narrowed ever so slightly. I’d seen the very same look on many a wordsmith. It came upon them when their subversive tricks came to light, and they were trying to formulate a way out. It was a look her grandmother had taught me to spot by letting me know when I was guilty of committing it. I found it ironic to be doing the same for her grandchild.

“I understand having a complicated relationship with the woman who raised you,” I said. “Believe me, I do, but in the end, it always comes down to a simple yes or no.”

“Then yes, I love my mother.”

“And you will keep the secrets that could ruin her soul?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” I said, walking back to my seat. “You may leave.”

Illora hesitated. “But…”

I resumed my reading of the reports. She lingered, unwilling to leave things standing as they were.

“Granduncle,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Excuse my rudeness, but may I ask a question?”

“Since you stand there unpunished, you should assume you may.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why have you had me stand here for almost two days?”

I shrugged. “To see if you would.”

A tic, a faint line between her brows, there one moment and gone the next, smothered by her will. I appreciated that. I always appreciated self-control. Probably because my promises had taught me how difficult controlling oneself could be.

“You are being civil?” Illora asked.

“I see no reason not to be.”

Another tic. “And trusting me with a secret that could unravel your plans?”

“Because I know I can.”

And another.

I chuckled. “At least I offered you more substance than you did.”

Illora smiled. It was an odd sight. Lira smiled too, just never this… genuinely. It's strange to see lips you’ve known for centuries do things you never imagined they would or could.

“Is that to say you will not expound on your answers?” Illora asked.

I waved to the seat across the desk from me. “Come. Sit. Let us converse and see what I’m willing to disclose.”

Illora sat, her posture immaculate.

“So,” I began, “let us pay heed to your first question. What do you think you waiting two days before uttering a single word told me?”

Illora shrugged. “A great deal, or very little, or somewhere in between. Such is the problem with making assumptions.”

“Presumptions,” I corrected. “So please, humor me.”

“It might've called me patient, fearful, intimidated, or respectful. It might've been I was calculating scenarios, gauging your reaction to my obedience, plotting some scheme, or simply frozen in dumbfounded disbelief at the sequence of events that has led to these rather unpredictable circumstances I find myself in. I could name more, but—”

“No. Your answer served my purpose. Now, considering who I am, what I can do, and all I can see, what say you then?”

“I wasn’t sure the tales of your soulsight were true.”

“Some are, some aren’t. Yes, I can see the evil in any soul. Yes, I see emotions. No, I cannot read thoughts as Lorail can.”

“I see,” she said. “Then I suspect you know exactly why I waited until I did.”

“I do,” I said. The concern for her mother had not left her. To me, fear for another is to fear for yourself what the sour of old is to the sweet of fresh; I did not much like the smell of it. “I take it you have your answer?”

Illora nodded. “‘The longer you let fear simmer, the softer the will.’ It’s one of my mother's favorite sayings.”

No wonder, I thought. It’s Lorail’s, too.

“Why did you expect me to be uncivil?” I asked.

“I was led to believe you were a savage who ignored the charm of civility.”

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“Then the answer to why I’d chosen to conduct myself in the manner I have rests entirely on your misguided preconceptions of who you expected me to be.”

Her eyes came back to mine and regarded me for a quiet moment. “Perhaps.”

“Is love pure?” I asked. Another widening of her eyes told me I’d surprised her again. After her initial tremor of surprise, she stewed, contemplating the question.

“Rarely, if ever,” she said. “Rare enough I’ve never seen it.”

“I think you speak of infatuation or some other such pervertible attraction. I agree; those do not signify a degree of virtue.”

“Love does not require virtue.”

“Well, to love another, you must have a measure of virtue, however small or separate or suffocated it may be.”

“My grandmother has no goodness, yet I’m sure she holds some love for me.”

I shook my head, remembering this girl had not yet reached her twentieth cycle. “I pity you if you believe she does. Lorail loves your potential and all it may accomplish for her, not you, hence departing from the meaning I’m ascribing to the word.”

Illora looked at me like I was some strange creature she’d not yet encountered or heard of. “You are far from what I’d expected.”

“And what was it you expected.”

“A god more severe, less affable, and altogether more intimidating than you are.”

“And the slaughter of house Tarneel did not portray me as such?”

“No. Don’t get me wrong, you and your guards were impressive, but only that. Impressive. I’ve seen the matriarch do far worse, at least in the field of intimidation. Have you ever touched the mind of someone who’d suffered her entertainment?” Illora shook her head in disgust. “The pain she’s capable of is far worse than the display you had me observe.”

“Illora, Illora! My dear Illora! Your every word makes me wonder how you came to be, descended from—” I cut myself off. “In spite of your upbringing, you are an honest soul.”

Illora raised an eyebrow in bashful amusement. “Were you resisting the urge to insult my mother? I think you might've failed. As tacit as you were attempting to be, you did, by implication, call her a liar.”

I slammed a hand to the table. Illora flinched back before my laughter had a chance to ease her concerns. I roared with it, tickled by the fearless humor of this brave girl who seemed a bright light of salvation in a family I’d conscripted to doom.

“I did say I’d only go so far as not to impede my motives,” I said. “Moreover, I do not think Lorail would consider my words an insult.”

Illora gave me a rueful smile of an age she hadn't reached. “I suppose lies are my House’s trade.”

No, souls are, I thought, but said nothing of it. “Tell me,” I said instead, “are you willing to do me a favor? I will offer you a promise of equal if not greater value in turn.”

“It would depend.”

“On?”

“How the favor and promise weigh on my scales,” she said. “We may not attach the same value to them.” I almost chortled at that.

“Say you return to The Academy, and say you play at being my eyes and ears and hands for a time, would a promise to keep your mother alive suit as payment?”

“And I’ll have to keep your return a secret?” she asked.

I shrugged. “That’s a given.”

“You said a favor for a promise. Seems to me you are asking for two.”

“Ah, well, I thought my keeping you alive was implied.”

A shiver of fear for herself passed through her for the first time. I resisted its inviting scent.

“I had thought you did not kill innocents,” she said.

I was too good at hiding my modest emotions to let my surprise show, masking my jolt of surprise into a move to lean forward. “My subordinates will take it upon themselves to solve that problem for me. Without my explicit instruction, you’d die the moment you left this room. To my guards, your very existence is reason enough to cut you down.”

“And if I’d chosen to leave after you’d dismissed me?”

I shrugged. There was no need for her to know one way or the other.

Illora pouted, again reminding me of her age. “You are far more like my grandmother than you’d care to admit,” she said. My eyes narrowed. “This whole conversation was a manipulation, every word and action designed to pave a road for me to walk, which, like a clueless Mud, I did.”

I leaned back, the tension of coiled violence dissipating. “I had almost thought you foolish enough to accuse me of lying.”

She stood, huffing like a child who’d lost a game. “I know you don’t lie, merely employ sophitry. That verity only highlights my negligence. Grandmother would scold me to no end if she ever knew.”

“Sit down and calm yourself, child. I’ve been playing this game for far too long for you to feel unjustly outmatched. And remember, while I am not as supreme as Lorail in the Art of reading and manipulating thoughts, I am, when the need strikes me, rather accomplished at molding emotions to my liking.”

Illora flushed, embarrassed she’d let her composure slip. “Am I to understand you’ll compel me to seal this agreement with a bond?”

“It wouldn't do for me to unknowingly uphold an agreement you’ve already broken, would it? But no, not a bond as such.”

“If not a bond, then—”

“A promise.”

“Of words?” she asked.

I laughed.

“Of souls then. How am I to know you aren't swindling me by some means I’m unable to decipher.”

“As you know,” I said, “I never lie.”

“But you don’t always tell the truth,” she countered.

Another smile broke onto my lips. “Remember, child, I have the skill and strength to force you into a greater bond without the need for trickery.” Again, she did not need to know my promises would never allow it.

She sighed. “Very well.”

***

Half an hour later, I stood in Lira’s crypt, facing the cage Crowol had locked herself in, its door now open. She was unconscious, her lips cracked, skin dry, hair a wild mess of wiry threads. Sensus deprivation had stripped her of her beauty. With little to no talent in the Zephyr or Golem Arts, she was wholly susceptible to the skeleton cage. I’d known this. Yet her state surprised me. With all the implied talk of her being able to survive a week within the cage, I’d expected her to be in better condition.

I poked Crowol in the ribs with the tip of my boot. She groaned and blinked awake. Behind me, Roche, who I’d found hovering outside my new chambers, sword in hand and ready to take my grandniece's throat, snickered in delight. Behind his cheerful, sociable persona hid a damaged man whose darkness ran more profound than his humor. He’d not have been one of mine if he wasn’t broken in some manner or form.

“Greetings, Crowol,” I said. “I hear you are too valuable to discard.”

“Who?” she croaked.

“Unimportant for now,” I said. “What is important—at least to you—is that I’m having trouble with a particular decision I must make. As it so intimately relates to your fate, would you be so kind as to assist me with it?”

“You're a man,” she said, struggling to ascertain the situation.

“Definitely an asset,” Roche sneered. “A genius unmatched in observation and wit. To be able to tell a man from a woman, and then to so succinctly phrase such a grand revelation, she must be—”

Roche quietened at my cold look, reigning in his spiteful tirade. The massacre in Lira’s Hall had freed his vindictiveness from his apprehension, the belief that no godling or royal in the city could match his skill hardening his thirst for their suffering.

I turned back to Crowol. “So?”

“Where is the Mistress?” Crowol asked, having caught up a little.

I turned to my handsome subordinate. “Roche, what would you choose?”

A smile crept onto his face. If I didn’t know him better, he might’ve appeared to harbor good intentions. “I have a few I’d like to pursue. My favorite requires a dozen or so healing spikes, a box of hunger-crazed rats, some salt, and a whole lot of time. My second—”

A spark. That was it. All the warnings we got. I pushed Roche out of the cage, feeling the divine matrix etched into Crowol’s soul build in power. “Close the door! Now!”

Roche slammed the door closed, locking me and Crowol within. The skeleton cage completed its circuits. The etchings on the door aligned with those on the walls, ceiling, and floor to lock together the cluster of matrixes. The cerulean ball released by Crowol’s soul-imbedded matrix bounced off its luminous barrier just as it sprang to life.

I reached for the fist-sized globe of sensus. Already, the skeleton cage devoured its energies. My Zephyr and Golem extraction matrixes spun, suckling thin streams of sensus from the starved air and stone within the enclosure, coalescing around the sphere and pulling it to my hand.

“No!” Crowol screamed. She came for me, rage burning what little energy she had left. A crisp slap threw her into the back wall. She shook it off and came again. The cell was small. It offered little room to maneuver. I didn’t need much. A tilt of my head evaded her clawed hand, fingers of bone fashioned by her Reaper abilities sparking against the door behind me. She paid the pain, if she felt any, no mind. My hand shot out, palm open, striking one side of her face and pushing onwards until the other met the wall. Neither speck nor crumb dislodged from the stone. Not to say the force was insignificant, but to tell the sensus-molded wall was less so.

Crowol groaned. She was on the verge of fainting. Or so it appeared. I was not so unobservant to be surprised by the thin dagger she pulled from her sleeve. Calm had befallen her after my first attack, her soul shutting off her emotions. I’d seen it happen and knew her weakness was a pretense to lure me into a false sense of victory. I didn’t mind. Sometimes, the best way to avoid a trap is to fall into it.

I released my soul. In a skeleton cage almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world, an instance was safe enough.

She went breathless, frozen in the sudden pressure of a soul as old and powerful as mine. I plucked the weapon from her grasp before she acclimated herself to the smothering weight. On the brink of exhaustion, she crumpled, the fight snuffed out of her.

“I’m doomed,” she said, her voice monotone. Defeated.

“Almost certainly,” I said.

“Kill me.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to suffer life a little while longer.”

My attention returned to the ball of sensus she’d released. The protective film of sensus I’d shaped around it glowed within my grasp, flickering in strength.

“Roche,” I called.

Old hinges whimpered as the heavy door crawled open. I stepped out. Roche tortured the door closed behind me.

“So, about the method of interrogation,” he said.

“No. Her fate is Lira’s to do with as she pleases.”

“Lira!” he said, throwing his arms up. “Why? Why would you give her something I want?”

“I half promised her I would.”

“Why?”

“You’ve had several godlings fall to you days before, hundreds if not thousands more to follow in days to come. Why does this one matter?”

He frowned in defiance. “Because, in this instance, you are choosing her wants over mine.”

“Lira’s?”

“Yes! She who is sister to…” He looked away.

“A hound, unfed and stripped of its strength, is of no use to its master.”

Roche’s mind inhaled my words, the meaning he ingested measured in how deep a shade of embarrassment his skin flushed. When he understood enough, flushing scarlet despite the cold, he turned away and said, “Apologies, Master. I did not mean to be so recklessly ungrateful.”

“I understand your rage and how it blinds you.”

He inclined his head in thanks. “So, what happened.”

“Crowol is not one of Lira’s.”

“Then whose is she?”

I smiled. “Well, Elur’s, of course.”

I had to forgive him a few more times for the torrent of Tunnels and wires he threw at me.