“Nice speech,” Maugrim told her. He stretched further back in his chair, grinning. He fumbled for something in the pocket of his cut-down.
Amethea stared at him, daring him to speak again. He twisted a smile at her.
“Feren’s memory isn’t lost.” Redlock leaned in and said softly, “You say you’ve walked the very Halls of the Rhez. Can you torture him, healer? In vengeance? In cold blood?”
“I’ve never taken a life,” Amethea said. “The stallion asked me...” She broke off. “I’ve never taken a life.”
Road hardened, blood covered, the axeman said, “Keep it that way.”
Roderick silently clapped his shoulder.
“The stallion was loco, anyhow,” Triqueta said, nudging her elbow. “Didn’t last too long.”
Maugrim chuckled. “Poor creature, my heart breaks for it.” He was wrapping something in his hand. “Losing a pet can be heartbreaking... though you can always go down the store for another one. The herd goes on, little lady. It was my gift – not my creation. Wouldn’t fit through the tunnels, y’know?”
He stretched further still, blazing with confidence, arms behind his head.
“You still haven’t told us where they came from.” Triq eyed Maugrim’s lazy pose with contempt. “Sitting there all damned smug – we’ve got you by your short and curlies, sunshine, and you’re going to spill it. All of it. Or I’m going to show you what a woman can really do.”
Maugrim’s gaze ambled all over Triq’s lithe body. He smirked.
“No offence, sweetheart – you’re a bit long in the tooth for me.”
She spluttered. “You – !”
“Don’t bother,” Amethea told her. “He’s just prodding you, making you react. I think he finds it amusing.”
“Well, I’m going to find him amusing in a minute.” Triq crossed her arms, glared. “Who made the monsters?”
Roderick said, “What is Phylos planning?”
Maugrim laughed outright at them.
Lost by the whirl of interrogation round him, Ecko was only half listening to the exchange. His mind was stumbling, reaching, reeling, questioning, spinning like a centrifuge round one word: real.
It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be – like a true believer who’d lost his faith, he was searching for meaning in a sudden vacuum, the vacuum in which Eliza and her program had lived. He was responsible for his own choices, had been all along: he wasn’t being manipulated or tricked, wasn’t following a pattern...
But –
This had so been done to him! He’d jumped, out into the freezing wind from Grey’s rooftop, out into Eliza’s program and the fight against the corruption of his mind.
Or had he jumped into the certainty of his own death?
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The explanations were the same, inside and outside reflections of one another. This was fucking insane!
Pain in his fingertips told him he had Lugan’s lighter in his hand. This is the Bike Lodge, mate...
Was he dreaming? Was he dead? Was he plugged into a shit-hole console after all? Up until now, he’d been playing some elaborate game – suddenly, he was dealing with the enormity of the impossible.
Real.
Maugrim was speaking again, his voice soft, insidious.
“You people, you’re all suffering – and I was told how to help you.”
He sat forward, and there was a chain in his hand, a flickering multicoloured light that danced back and forth.
“You should trust me, place your faith in me. I listen, I heed your pain and I heal.”
The chain swung gently.
“You misunderstand, don’t you? Yes, you know you do. The fire touches you – all of you. You, warrior, hate drives you, it burns in you and it’s made you strong. You, Amethea, you crave love, the love of the family you never had – and you’ll take that love, no matter how it’s offered. You, lady of the Banned, you’re all about desire – instant gratification, flesh, comfort, wealth. Karine, Sera, you’re outcasts that seek only family. And you, Bard with no memory, you poor deluded fool. You have such might – and you won’t use it; such strength – and you have no idea what it is. You’re a creature of fear, hiding behind the hoarding of knowledge so you don’t have to act. Rhan is gone – your greatest ally. You’ll never know how you failed him.”
Back and forth, enticing, compelling.
“There is love and forgiveness in Vahl’s heart – he’ll welcome you, all of you, and you can be free from the pain. You can belong.
“All you have to do is trust me.”
Triqueta said, voice low, “We trust you. What can we do?”
“And Ecko, Tam, lost and alone, striving for understanding. Lugan carries loyalty like a flag, he’d never abandon you, you know that. This has to be real, what else makes sense? Ecko, little daemon, Vahl Zaxaar knows you above all, he has a special place for you – you’re the darkness in which his fire burns brightest. It’s a place that’ll make all things make sense.
“Just trust me. I know you, all of you. And I can make you whole.”
Flickering, dancing light. Forgiveness and warmth radiated back from the walls as though Maugrim had tapped into the tavern’s lenslike focus, its welcome and sense of home. They stretched their hands to it, needing it like a warm bed on a cold night.
The table was still, captivated. Maugrim could do anything he wanted with them.
Except Kale.
In the freeze-frame, in the centre of the tableau, the cook came out of his seat, hands on the table. His voice was a concentrated husk of withheld fury as he said, “And what about me?” His grin was widening as though his mouth were full of knives. “What welcome do you have for me?”
The swing of the light paused.
Kale’s hands clenched on the tabletop. With a splintering of wood, there were claws embedded in its surface, dragging savage chunks out of its solidity. He was trembling, crouching, hair rippling across his skin – slowly, so slowly.
Maugrim stared. “You...” he said. “You’re new here. I don’t know you...”
“You will.”
And the beast was over the table in a scatter of mugs, a scrabble of talons, a bubbling snarl of pure hate. Burning, asymmetrical green eyes fixed on the light; claws ripped it from Maugrim’s gasp. Startled, the Elementalist held his hands up to shield his face and his chair went over backwards, crashing to the floor. In a moment, the beast pounced after him, lashing tail, dripping teeth, slavering death.
Roderick shouted, “Kale, no!”
Around him, the others were shaking themselves to consciousness, questions, shock. What had he done to them?
Sera bellowed, “Redlock! He fears white-metal!”
Snarling and struggling came from under the table. Maugrim was swearing.
“Get your bloody animal off me!”
“Don’t hurt him!” Karine cried. “Not if you can help it!”
In the midst of the commotion, Ecko hadn’t moved.
Redlock skidded round the table’s end, grabbed the beast by the scruff and dragged it back from worrying at Maugrim’s bloodied throat. As it growled and thrashed, tail sending scattered mugs in all directions, he held one axe right under its nose.
“Kale. I don’t want to hurt you. Back off.”
The beast turned to him and snarled.
“Back off!” He thumped its nose with the back of the axe. It slashed randomly at him, rear claws raking the floor. “Now!”
“Kale.” The Bard’s voice was steady, strong. “You have never hurt a guest. Please – not even this one. His blood is not worth your soul.”