Wild Card (26 page)

The image ran through a lot of Athanate art. The shape of the eagle was used as a motif running across the edges of the fireplace. Even the artwork that Adept Emerson stood beside was an echo of that piece in the hall. In the same way Correia had described the linkage of associations as a tree’s root systems, the thinking behind the Hidden Path crept deeply into everything about the Athanate, hidden until you thought about it.

I suddenly realized the sheer scope of Skylur’s task—not just to remove that fundamental belief from the Athanate, but to
reverse
it. No wonder his position in the Assembly had caused such a disturbance on both sides. No wonder the reception seemed so fragmented.

And I felt Skylur wasn’t happy with Correia’s direction now. In taking the Hidden Path as her emblem, she was going to tap into the unconscious roots of the Athanate psyche.

He picked up the bowl of walnuts and offered one to her.

She refused to even see the bowl. She was staring directly into his eyes.

“You know that I’ve always been a follower of art,” she said.

Naryn and Bian tensed again, responding to Skylur. I caught up shakily. I didn’t think it was coming to fighting, but I couldn’t tamp it down.

“Hmm?” Skylur selected a walnut and replaced the bowl on the side table.

“In exchange for House Tarez, I will take Ptolomeus’ statue from your entrance hall.”

I could feel the shock reverberate through Naryn and Bian.

The walnut cracked in Skylur’s hand. A neat, precise sound.

“Done,” he said.

Chapter 27

The deal was concluded with startling speed.

A neutral venue for the exchange was agreed and House Correia ushered out by some secret passageway to prevent anyone else knowing they’d even been here.

If Altau genuinely wanted me to review their security, I was going to have to know about passages like that. It was a measure of how much control I’d managed to establish that I was able to think that mundane thought.

Skylur took one long look at me before turning on his heel, apparently satisfied I wasn’t going to go rogue in the next couple of minutes. “Naryn, Bian, a moment in the planning room.” He marched out the door with them behind him.

“Well, that was amusing.” Adept Emerson took Skylur’s seat, and motioned me to Correia’s.

“How does it work?” I said, proud that my voice was steady. “You say something like that that clearly isn’t true, but isn’t supposed to be believed. What would another Truth Sensor feel?”

She laughed. “The truth. Always the truth, as perceived by the teller.”

I sat in Correia’s seat. It wasn’t infected, even if it did have a lingering scent of her marque, overlaid with a hint of triumph. She thought she’d gotten the better end of this deal. Maybe she had.

“Why are you here, Adept Emerson?”

“Three questions in one! Why am I here in Haven? Why was I in this meeting? Why am I still in this room?” She leaned back, aping Skylur’s mannerisms and making a steeple of her fingers. “I’m here in Haven because there are no Warders anymore, and Altau offered. I was here in this room to make sure Correia didn’t lie outright. And Skylur left me here to talk to you, to calm you down if you needed it.”

“He pulled off a trick with Basilikos?”

She nodded confirmation.

“What if Correia had gone for it? Agreed to take my Blood in exchange?”

“Gone for what, Amber? Skylur didn’t offer anything. She thought he did, but she was wrong. He was running that conversation from the start.”

“Well, what about the statue? Skylur was shaken when she chose that.”

“He
looked
shaken, I’ll agree. He knew it would cost something like that, but by choosing it, she’s revealed her own weakness. Basilikos is as fragmented as Skylur designed it to be, and she hopes that this symbol will unite it. It’s a powerful symbol, the original statue of the Hidden Path. It will speak powerfully to the subconscious of older Athanate. It’s true, there has been a heavy cost to this, but I think Skylur believes it’s bearable and justifiable.”

I let myself relax a little more. Skylur was one step ahead of everyone. If he never intended to offer my Blood—I felt uneasy again just at the thought of Correia biting me—then what had his intention been when he’d said I would obey? He’d made me angry. I’d used that anger to recover. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was the quickest way to help me without compromising anything else. Yeah, make that several steps ahead of me.

And in the meantime, I had an Adept to question and about a thousand questions to ask that were closer to home than why Skylur offered a sanctuary to Adepts and what an Adept might get from it.

“If he’s not right in this call,” Emerson was saying thoughtfully, eyes unfocused on the empty fireplace, “then heaven help us. At best, we will become like footless, grey ghosts, forever fleeing the anger of the blind eagle.”

She shivered.

“I have so many questions, Adept Emerson.”

“I imagine you have.” Her mouth twisted, highlighting the fine wrinkles that ran across her face and gathered at the corners of her eyes; a woman fond of laughing, much like Mary. “Very few of which we’ll have time for. Call me Alice.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I bet I can predict what you’ll ask first.”

I shuffled questions in my head, just because.

“Do you have contacts with Adepts in the Empire of Heaven?”

She laughed again. “You did that quite deliberately. What on earth would you—no, no time for that. No, I don’t. Sorry.”

I leaned back in the chair. I never seemed to get the answers I needed. I tried another. “What’s a spirit guide?”

“Goodness! No time for that either. You’ll have to come back and talk to me about that.”

“What did you mean in the Assembly when you said I was thrice bound?”

“Ah. That was all three of you. Yes, you would want to know that. And we don’t have—”

“Please.”

“Very well. I wish you joy of the knowledge.” She bowed her head. “What’s binding? That which holds you to your House—the impress in your head? Or love—the impress on your heart? Or duty—the impress on your soul? None and all of these. And what must Basilikos say, who know not love? Or those that know not true duty?”

She stopped abruptly, rocking her body to and fro on her chair. “It’s difficult to speak in modern English sometimes. I don’t know how the elder Athanate manage it. Perhaps because it’s all new language to them.” She sighed. “It’s difficult to speak of binding at all. It’s too easy for Panethus to fall into seeing binding as love. Accept that as error, and ponder on what Basilikos preach to Aspirants. They talk of the opposite of love; hate. And thus they are blind too.”

“Binding is the dark sister of love and hate, the daughter of need and the mother of spirit. It is anchored in desire and obsession, fascination and passion, but it is none of these. An Athanate may be bound by their head, or their heart, or their soul. Few are bound by all three, and fewer still share bindings three ways.”

“I’m triple bound? And to both kin?”

“And they to each other, Amber. I made a joke—three bindings, three ways.”

To each other? I wish. Were we talking about the same Jen and Alex?

She tilted her head. “Do you understand?”

“The binding bit? It’s like one of those things you understand until you try to explain it,” I said. “Or you see it until you try and look at it. I’ll stop hunting it and let it sneak up on me.”

“Yes! Exactly!” She sat straight, clasping her hands in her lap. “I forget that even though you’re a child as an Athanate, you’re not as a human.”

I tried to settle my thoughts into some kind of order. “So I did this to them? I bound them to me?”

“Not precisely.” She hesitated. “I can tell you feel guilty, as if you forced something on them. Absolutely not. They bound themselves to you as much as you did. And in turn, remember, they’ve bound you.” My face must have reflected my hesitation. At loss to get through, Alice looked up at the ceiling for inspiration. “You were the architect and builder, but theirs was the material.”

I could be happy with that, once I really believed it. Maybe I needed to let that belief sneak up on me too.

“Stop overanalyzing it, Amber. Goodness, if the first cavewoman who picked up a rock to defend her children had had to sit back down and puzzle out why the rock was hard, maybe we’d still be food for lions.”

I managed a laugh at that. Yes, I’d let it sneak up on me.

“So, what was my first question supposed to be?”

She smiled tightly, the lines at the corners of her eyes gathering like a gossamer fishing net.

Bian stormed back in alone, her face set in anger.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t have much time,” Alice said, and we stood. She reached out and took my hands. “Come back and talk to me. Do not let any of the old ones get beneath your mental defenses, whatever anguish your mistakes are causing you. They might mean to help, but what you are, here,” she let go and touched the side of my forehead gently, “is like soft wax. They will leave their impression on you and destroy what is forming there.”

“But Diana—” I couldn’t walk around forever with this bedlam threatening to break out in my head at every turn. And threatening to poison my relationship with Alex.

“Diana alone might be skillful enough to not harm you. But she is not here. Be brave. Be strong. Be patient. Come and talk to me; about workings and spirit guides and why you want to talk to the Chinese. And no aural sex.”

“No
what
?”

“Aural.” She spelled it out. “Opening your aura makes you vulnerable.”

She saw my blank look and sighed in exasperation.

“Sex, all right? It’s best at the moment to keep away from physical intimacy, basically,” she said primly. “It lowers your mental barriers. That could be dangerous.”

“Adept Emerson, Skylur wants you in the planning room,” Bian said.

Alice nodded and walked off with a last glance.

“She fill your head with her indecipherable mutterings?” Bian asked as the door closed. If she’d truly been the leopard whose spots she wore, her tail would have been lashing from side to side.

“Not indecipherable, so much as difficult to grasp.” I’d never seen Bian upset like this.

“There was probably a very good reason they threw her off the Mayflower.” Bian glowered at the door.

“Bian, what’s wrong?”

“Tell me you’re all right first.” Bian turned her glower on me. “You nearly came apart back there.”

“I…yeah, you all caught me off balance. Sorry. And Alice is right, something up here,” I tapped the side of my head, “tells me it isn’t ready to give Blood. Skylur’s trick freaked me.”

“Emerson was talking about someone getting in your head, not your jugular.”

“But something she said earlier makes me think it’s all part of one thing. When you feed, you feed on emotion as well, don’t you? Isn’t that just using telergy? When you feed, aren’t you in your kin’s head too?”

“Maybe. Anyway, the damage has been done; Naryn,
not
a fan of yours. He thinks you’re one step away from rogue. We need to get you away from here before he persuades Skylur to lock you up.”

“Who the hell is he?”

“The Diakon.”

“But—”

“Yes, I was the Altau Diakon.”

“Oh, God, Bian, is this my fault?”

“No.”

She made to move away, but I grabbed her. “Tell me what the hell happened,” I said. I switched to my bad Vietnamese. “Talk to me, little sister.”

Her eyes darkened like a night storm, but she didn’t pull away. I waited and let the anger slowly subside. Then I hugged her.

“Careful,” she breathed onto my neck. “I might get to like this.”

If I was being teased, she was better. And it was worth it, despite the instinctive cringing away from her fangs that I had to control.

“It’s not you, or me, it’s just frigging politics.” She sighed. “Naryn used to be the Altau Diakon. He’d been with Skylur forever. When Skylur started setting up sub-Houses secretly, Naryn was the obvious choice to run them and I was chosen to be the new Altau Diakon. But now we’re trying to re-integrate everyone and all those sub-Houses want the person they know. It’s not trust really, it’s…familiarity. Anyway, Naryn’s back as Diakon for the moment, and I’m tasked with local issues—the Matlal remnants, you, and so on.”

“I’m a task?” I grinned.

“A damned awkward one.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “But so tasty.”

I figured the hug had achieved its aim and let her go before she raised the stakes again.

“Naryn is a serious problem for you, Round-eye. Don’t give him the slightest excuse.”

“I can’t avoid coming here. I can’t avoid Skylur. I’ve got Larimer’s response to give him. He refused to help find the Matlal Athanate—”

“Already done. Alex told me. And about the colonel.”

I chopped down on the reflex jealousy and tried to concentrate on the important things.

“There’s an outcome from that refusal which is going to fall on you,” she went on. “Best I can offer to soften the blow is to help you with your other tasks, like getting the colonel here safely.”

“Huh?”

“Me. Tom.” Bian made an exaggerated mime. “We. Help. You. Better than standing around here like a spare part.”

The whine of Bian’s secret entrance startled us. It spun around and David stepped unsteadily off the platform.

“How the hell did you work that out?” Bian asked.

“I was watching you. Monkey see, monkey do. Amber, call from Matt. Everything’s ready back at Manassah. I think it’s time to go.”

“It is.”

Bian retrieved a slim intercom from her bra. “Tom. Meet me topside in ten, please. Full combat kit and bring mine.”