Mzatal took a sip, then set his glass aside and stood, hands behind back, as he took a deep breath and released it slowly. “They are so beautiful,” he murmured, looking out at the stars. He wouldn’t get any argument from me. With practically no ambient light to impede viewing, the sky seemed utterly packed with stars. The only time I’d ever seen the sky like that was the day after Hurricane Katrina blew through, and most of south Louisiana had been without power. I’d seen the Milky Way for the first time. And the last time? I wondered. No. I’d get back home. I’d work and study my ass off and do whatever I had to do.
Still, I couldn’t hold back the wistful sigh. “I don’t recognize any of the constellations.”
“Nothing of Earth here,” he said. He looked at me then back at the sky. “I never tire of them.” He gave a small shake of his head. “At times it feels as though I could simply move through them if I chose to.” He pointed to a cluster of stars a handspan above the horizon. “There, the bellowing reyza.” He traced it in a pale light for me to see, then extinguished it.
I smiled a bit. “What others?”
“Many constellations named by the demons seem to have no relevance to their names.” A whisper of amusement touched his eyes. “I will show you some that do. There—the summoner, and the portal, and kzak’s bane,” he said, pointing and lighting each one in turn for me to see.
“I had an encounter with a kzak once,” I remarked, looking up at the constellation. “Still don’t know if it was sent after me or Ryan.”
He looked over at me. “When? What were the circumstances?”
“Not long before I was sworn to—” I grimaced. “Before I was marked. Ryan and I were eating lunch at a kinda shitty restaurant, and a kzak came in and attacked us. We managed to wound it, and then Zack finished it off.”
Mzatal turned to face me. “You. It would have been sent after you. None who could send a kzak would send it after…the other one. It would be futile.”
Sighing, I set my glass down and leaned my forearms on the balcony railing. I looked out toward the grove and let the calm peace of it touch me for a few minutes before I spoke again.
“You should have told me about Rhyzkahl,” I said quietly, controlling the emotion as much as I could. When Mzatal healed me, he’d said he planned to tell me after he removed the mark. Too little, too late. “Even if I hadn’t believed you—which, I admit, I probably wouldn’t have—there was stuff that happened there that I might have questioned, that might have made me suspect.”
He turned to look back out at the stars and remained silent.
Exhaling, I ran my hands through my hair. “Look, if we’re going to work together, I need to know that you’ll share information with me whether you think I’ll believe it or not, whether you think I’ll like it or not, or whether you think it’ll hurt my feelings or not.” I straightened and regarded his profile. “I’m used to building cases based on separate pieces of evidence,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “I might not believe you about something, but if I’m faced with a similar bit of evidence elsewhere, then yeah, I’m more likely to take a harder look.”
Mzatal lowered his head. “It was a tragic error on my part,” he said, surprising me with the admission. “Once he made the demand for your return, telling you would have better served both of us.”
“Promise me that you won’t do that again,” I said. “Please.”
He lifted his head. I watched as his gaze focused on the stars. “That which relates to you, I will tell.”
I nodded, throat tight. “Thank you for getting me back. And for not keeping me prisoner.”
He turned to me again and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Kara, I could no more keep you prisoner now than cage the lightning or bottle the surging sea. It is not my desire.”
I blinked, nonplussed. I had a brief impulse to say something snarky or silly to break the sudden, strange mood, but at the same time I didn’t want to do that to this moment. Yet I had no idea what to say.
Fortunately he spoke first. “I am truly pleased that you are here,” he said. He dropped his hands from my shoulders and clasped them behind his back again. “And that the formalities of the agreement are behind us.”
I frowned up at him. “You’ve confused the shit out of me, you know. You summoned, imprisoned, terrified, and threatened me.” My eyes narrowed. “Now you’re pleased that I’m here. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful as hell to be here rather with Rhyzkahl, but what’s the fucking deal?”
“When you were first summoned,” he said without hesitation, “many—most—of my actions and your circumstances served as carefully calculated assessment tools. I had but a short time in which to weigh grave risk against enormous benefit.”
That required a moment of mulling. “The risk that I could fuck up your world versus the chance I could be of use to you later,” I said. “It was all a bunch of mind games and extreme bullshit so you could determine whether to kill me or keep me.” It’d been pretty clear at times, but this admission gave me a broader perspective.
“That is a simplistic, though adequately accurate statement.” He paused. “By the time I sought to remove the mark, I knew I wanted to work with you, and that it would be mutually beneficial. And then,” he said with a shake of his head, “you were gone.”
A flush of anger washed through me. “I can’t even begin to tell you how fucked up all of that is. I mean…” I trailed off. Yeah it was a total ethical catastrophe, but I couldn’t get past the fact that, despite his willful domination and abuse of power, he’d pulled my ass away from Rhyzkahl and been more than accommodating since then.
I took a settling breath and shifted to a more in-the-moment question. “You played at everything from being a totally scary motherfucker to halfway decent to get what you wanted from me,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him. “Is ‘Mr. Nice Lord’ another carefully calculated tool to get what you want now?”
He stood silent for a moment, and I had the feeling the question disturbed him. “I cannot deny that everything I do is to get what I want,” he said quietly. “What I want from you is your dedication to becoming the best summoner you can be. That serves your best interests and mine, and will serve to thwart Rhyzkahl and others.”
It didn’t exactly answer my question, but was probably the best I’d get from him. Rhyzkahl. I gave Mzatal a sharp look. “Are you sure—absolutely sure—that Rhyzkahl doesn’t have any way to recall me? No more implants or anything like that?”
“I checked you thoroughly before, during, and after the healing,” he said. “There is a streak of arrogance in Rhyzkahl. Once he had you, he did not think he could lose you.”
Goosebumps skimmed over me that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air. “I’d rather not depend on his arrogance,” I said, rubbing my arms. “You were able to hide a recall from him.”
“We did a full purification ritual on you while you slept,” he said. “and found nothing noteworthy.”
A frown tugged at my mouth. “Rhyzkahl found an implant of yours and removed it,” I said. “He told me you’d triggered it to kill me.”
“He lied,” Mzatal said without hesitation. “When you were with Pyrenth at Rhyzkahl’s grove, I sought to activate my primary recall implant, here.” Mzatal lightly touched the center of my chest. “Unfortunately, it failed and unraveled. There was nothing in it to kill you.”
I nodded slowly as I processed his answer. “So you had two implants on me. How—” I couldn’t control the slight shiver that ran through me. “How did you put them in me?”
He exhaled. “The first—the one that failed—I implanted during the purification ritual upon your arrival.”