I felt a chill go through me. Here in her shadow realm, Vihaela held all the cards. If she decided to stop being civilised, things could get very nasty, very fast . . . but the number one rule for dealing with Dark mages is that you don’t show fear. “Did he?”
“Yes.”
“Did he really?” I said. “Or did he just imply that she’d be coming, and let you hear what you wanted to hear?”
Vihaela kept frowning. I wanted to hold my breath but didn’t. Then suddenly Vihaela’s brow cleared and a smile flashed across her face. “Oh well,” she said. “I’ll just have to make do with you.”
I sat. “So did he behave himself?” Vihaela asked.
For a moment I didn’t understand what Vihaela was asking, then she nodded behind me at where Luke was standing. “Sure,” I said.
“Really? Nothing you’d like to add?”
“Not really.”
Vihaela looked at Luke. The boy had been very still throughout the conversation, stiff and tense. “Well, Luke?” Her voice was suddenly kindly. “Anything you’d like to tell me?”
Luke hesitated. “Go on,” Vihaela said.
Luke opened his mouth, licked his lips. “No, Mistress Vihaela.” His voice wobbled.
Vihaela kept looking at him. Luke hunched over. “That’s odd,” Vihaela said. Her eyes lingered on Luke. “It seems to me you took a very long time getting here.”
Luke froze and Vihaela leant back in her chair, studying him. “Do you have a reason?”
I could already tell that Luke wasn’t going to answer. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I didn’t like it. “The reason was that I was doing some sightseeing,” I said.
Vihaela’s attention switched back to me. “You went off the stairs?”
“I went straight from the entry room to here, with some pauses at the windows,” I said. “You have some interesting views.”
Vihaela stared at me. I tried very hard not to tense up. “I suppose that does explain it,” she said at last. She sounded disappointed.
I let out a breath.
“However . . .” Vihaela looked at Luke. “Do you remember my instructions? I told you to bring Verus up here promptly. You can go. We’ll discuss this later.”
I saw Luke’s face go white. He swayed, then turned and scuttled away. Vihaela watched him disappear down the stairs.
“Was that necessary?” I asked Vihaela tightly.
“You seem angry.” Vihaela cocked her head. “You’re not one of those white-knight types, are you?”
“I have a problem with seeing people hurt for no reason,” I said. I was angry, and all of a sudden I didn’t care very much about offending her. “Did you set that up just to have a reason to punish him? As a demonstration?”
“Morden told me you had tendencies that way,” Vihaela said. “Ruthless but sentimental. I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, but come to think of it, that was when you first crossed my path, wasn’t it? When the Council went after White Rose. I thought you were just a contractor, but maybe you took it personally?” Vihaela smiled suddenly. “So is it anyone you don’t like seeing hurt? Or only children?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Whether it was necessary?” Vihaela shrugged. “Not really.”
“Then why?”
“Because he’s getting boring,” Vihaela said. “They always do, once they stop putting up a fight.”
A bolt of anger spiked through me. Vihaela saw it and smiled. “Well, well. Maybe Morden was telling the truth after all. Tell me, if I brought him up here and tortured him in front of you, would you try to rescue him?”
I looked at Vihaela, sitting in her garden chair with her chin resting in one hand, relaxed and interested, and felt an instant of pure hatred. The threat was bad enough, but that she could be so casual about it made it worse. I’ve met a lot of Dark mages in my life, and a lot of the time I think Light mages exaggerate how bad they are, but there’s a minority of Dark mages that are exactly as evil as the stories make them out to be, and Vihaela is one of them. All of a sudden I wanted to hurt her, to have her suffer the same way as her victims did . . .
. . . except that there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t match Vihaela in a fight. If I tried, I’d lose. I wasn’t willing to fight when I knew I couldn’t beat her, and a part of me was ashamed at that.
“I think you actually would,” Vihaela said. She’d sensed my anger, but not my thoughts. “How on earth did you manage as Richard’s apprentice? Actually, don’t bother answering, I can guess.” Vihaela studied me. “It wouldn’t work, by the way.”
“What?”
Vihaela crossed her legs, leaning back. “If I brought that boy up here and offered him the opportunity to leave with you, right now, do you know what he’d do? He’d refuse. And if I asked, he would tell me that it’s my right to hurt him or to reward him, whenever I please, for no other reason than that it’s what I desire. He’d mean it too.”
I looked back at Vihaela. I would have liked to believe she was bluffing, but I had an ugly feeling she wasn’t. “Part of it is his age, obviously,” Vihaela went on. From her tone, she might have been discussing the weather. “But I’ve found that boys are more easily broken than girls. Girls will bend, but it’s very hard to stamp out that last little spark. Boys are more like eggs. Once you break the shell . . .” She shrugged. “Someone at White Rose once brought me a boy who’d tried to escape. He was quite popular and one of their higher earners, but he’d managed to injure a guard, and so Marannis insisted I make an example of him. So I made him beg for me to amputate his body parts, one at a time. Toes first, then fingers. Then his left foot, then his right, then what was left of his hands, then his genitals. Once there wasn’t anything left of the arms or legs I started on the face. It’s really quite a challenge keeping a body alive when the mind wants so desperately to die. I made him plead quite creatively before agreeing to remove the eyes. I saved the tongue for last, but he didn’t really have much to say by then in any case. Once I was done, they brought the other children out to watch and had what was left thrown to the sniffers. You wouldn’t believe the sounds it made.”
I looked at Vihaela. She met my gaze, her eyes calm. “I don’t understand you,” I said. “Why do you do this?”
“Why not?” Vihaela said. “I decide how I live. Not the Council, not any other mages. Just me. I can do whatever I like, and this”—she opened her hands out, palms up—“is what I like.” She smiled. “Would you be surprised to know that a good number of Light mages envy me? Especially the girls. They’re given a taste of all that power, then they have to spend their time bowing and scraping to that old boys’ club above. Then they see me walk into a room and they see the Light mages flinch, and a part of them wishes that that could be them. They don’t have the courage to actually do it, of course, or they wouldn’t be Light mages in the first place, but they want it, even if they’re too scared to say it out loud. I can always tell when someone’s afraid of me.” Vihaela looked at me and the smile stayed on her face. “Always.”
I let out a breath, feeling a chill go through me. Inside me, anger was fighting with fear and losing. I wanted to put up a fight, to do something, but I’ve fought enough battles to know when I’m losing. “What do you want?”
“Maybe I’m just enjoying talking to you.”
“I don’t get the impression that you care about me that much.”
“Well, that’s true enough.” Vihaela stretched and rose to her feet. She walked to my right, towards a tree, so that I had to turn my head to keep her in view. “I would have much preferred Anne. Just as I would have rather pursued my own projects than made that little example for Marannis. But one has to make the best of what one gets.”