“Please, Gresh.” She leaned against the edge of the worktable; her blouse front brushed the coronet. “Not now.”
“Nari. Listen to me.” He came up behind her and took her by the shoulders, turning her to face him. “You’re like family to me, you know that? And when family gets hurt, it hurts me, too.”
She was looking away, refusing to face him; he caught up her chin in his and and gently turned her back to him. “He’s good-looking. He’s rich. He’s got charm that most men would kill for. And he’s got problems, Nari. Real problems. Did you see the look on his face when he saw his reflection? Did you?”
“I saw,” she whispered.
“I don’t know what’s going on with that boy, but I’d bet this shop it isn’t healthy. Haven’t you had enough of that kind? Don’t you deserve something better?”
“I saw,” she whispered. Fingering the delicate silverwork. He had touched it, too, and his hand had trembled. Why?
Yes, I saw him. I saw eyes wide with the kind of terror most men never know. Looking into those eyes was like looking into a mirror. Like being back in the Forest again, running from the unknown. Alone, so alone. Yes, I know that look.
“Nari—”
“I’m not a child,” she snapped. Pulling away from him. “Not anymore. I can take care of myself.”
And he would accept that, she knew it. That was the marvel of their relationship. Even though he was concerned for her, even though he thought she was dead wrong, even though he was sure she was heading for disaster. That was the difference between Gresham Alder and her parents. He had seen the change in her, when she returned from the Forest, and he had accepted it. Her parents couldn’t. They still wanted to baby her, to shield her from all the evils of the world, and no matter what she said or did, they would never change in that orientation. How could she explain to them that she had already faced the greatest evil of all, the well of terror in her own soul? How could she explain the way in which that confrontation had transformed her, smothering the helpless child who so needed protection, giving birth to someone older and stronger and far more adaptable. What did the petty evils of this world amount to, when compared to the Hunter’s Forest? Abusive men were an annoyance, nothing more. Even rapists were a finite terror. And as for men who wore the Hunter’s face, whose haunted eyes hinted at wounds so vast that no mere words could set them to healing——
I can handle it, she told herself. Running her fingers over the sterling figures, imagining that she could feel Andrys Tarrant’s warmth through the metal. Drawn to his pain, even as powerfully as she was drawn to his person. And I want to.
“I’ll be careful,” she told him. “I promise.”
"His Holiness will be with you shortly.”
Damien nodded a distracted acknowledgment as the acolyte left him. He had been left to wait in the antechamber to the Patriarch’s formal audience chamber, which didn’t bode at all well for his upcoming interview. It was a space designed to impress, perhaps intimidate, and it did so with marked aesthetic efficiency. The high, vaulted ceiling was of dark polished stone, unwarmed by paint or plaster; the numarble walls were sleek and minimally decorated. The furniture was stiff and formal, and after sitting in a high-backed chair for several seconds he decided he would much rather pace. All in all it was a markedly uncomfortable place, and. Damien guessed that the room beyond, where the Patriarch meant to receive him, was much the same. Maybe worse. Not the kind of atmosphere he’d hoped for, that was certain.
What the hell did you expect? ‘Come into my parlor for tee, and oh, by the way, would you mind filling me in on your recent activities?’ Fat chance, Vryce. You’ll be lucky if he listens to you at all, and doesn’t just throw you out before you get a chance to open your mouth in your own defense.
There was a small mirror on the far wall, a minimal concession to visitors who might wish to see if they looked as uncomfortable as they felt. He paused in his pacing to look in it, to see what manner of man the Patriarch would be confronting. The priest who gazed back at him was not the same man who’d left Jaggonath two years earlier, that was sure. Limited rations at sea had thinned his stocky frame until he looked almost trim, an unfamiliar somatype. With a weathered hand he stroked the short beard that now marked his jawline, and wondered if he shouldn’t have shaved it off. His skin was markedly darker than it had been two years ago, a tawny brown that spoke eloquently of long months beneath an equatorial sun. There was gray in his hair now, a few strands at the temples and scattered bits of it in his beard. Gray! It was an affront to everything he perceived himself to be, the first hint of decay in a life too full of challenges to slow down for anything as mundane as aging. He had almost pulled the hairs out when they first appeared-back when there were fewer than a dozen-but the sheer vanity of such an act reminded him of Tarrant, and so he’d let the damn things stay.
You could use the fae to maintain youth, he told himself. Others have done it. Ciani did it. At times, now, he could see how tempting that path might become, as age continued its inexorable assault on his flesh. But the Patriarch’s words, voiced so long ago, came back to him at such moments. When the time comes to die, as it comes to all men, will you bow down to the patterns of Earth-life that are the core of our very existence? Or submit to the temptations of this alien magic, and sell your soul for another few years of life? The acceptance of such natural processes was central to Damien’s faith, and dying at his appointed time would be his ultimate service to his God. Sure, it would be hard. Many things in this world were hard. That’s what gave them power.
“Reverend Vryce?” It was the Patriarch’s secretary, a young man Damien dimly remembered from two years back. “Please come in.”
To his surprise the man did not lead him into the audience chamber, but opened the heavy mahogova doors for him and stepped aside for him to enter alone.
It was a large room, formal like the antechamber but more impressive in size and proportion. It reminded him somewhat of Gerald Tarrant’s own audience chamber in his keep in the Forest. He stiffened as the memory of that tense meeting (so long ago that it might have been in another world, so real that it seemed hardly yesterday) came back to him. Back then one friend had been dying, another kidnapped, and the Hunter was his enemy. Now ... he felt something tighten inside his gut as he walked toward the arbiter of his faith. Now he was .. . what? The Hunter’s ally?
The Patriarch’s expression was stonelike, unreadable, but a cold rage burned in his eyes. Such was the chill of it that Damien could feel his skin tighten in physical response. In two years’ time he had managed to forget the power the Holy Father wielded: not simply the force of a unique personality, but the faeborn aggression of a man who molded the currents to his will without even knowing it. Now, standing against the force of that rage was like trying to keep his footing in a riptide.
If only you could learn to wield that power consciously, Damien thought, no man could stand against you. But the Patriarch never would. Sorcery was anathema to him, and so he had blocked all knowledge of his own natural skills, and lived an illusion of flesh-bound helplessness. God alone knows what would happen to you if you ever learned the truth.
“I’ve received your reports,” the Patriarch said acidly. He gestured briefly to a table by his side, and the manuscripts that lay-upon it. Damien saw the coarse sheets of his first report, shipped home from Faraday, and the thinner package of notes and drawings he had delivered himself to the Cathedral two days ago. At the time it had seemed like a good idea, letting the Patriarch see the nature of the war they were fighting in the hope he would be more forgiving about how the battle had been waged. But the ribbon which sealed the second package was still unbroken. He began to protest, then stopped himself. The Holy Father had deliberately chosen not to read his work in advance of their meeting as a gesture of his condemnation. To protest such a move would only bring that rage crashing down upon his head.