Black Dog (36 page)

A grieving black dog ought to be left alone – but the Master of Dimilioc was too important to be left alone, because sometimes great grief and loss led a black dog into a terrible dark from which he never emerged. Somebody needed to make sure that didn't happen to Grayson. Natividad knew perfectly well that, of them all, she would least put herself at risk by going through that door.

Even so, it was hard to touch the doorknob. To turn it. Harder to swing the door open. Harder still to step through.

Natividad shut the door gently behind herself and leaned against it, her hands resting on the doorknob for a kind of covert reassurance – the smooth brass under her fingers a tactile reminder that she could run out again if she needed to. She knew she wouldn't retreat, but even so she didn't want to let go of the knob.

And yet, once she was in the room with the Dimilioc Master, she found to her own surprise that she was glad she had come. Grayson sat in his customary chair. He faced the window, but he was not looking out at the buses parked on the rutted snow or past them at the bleak winter forest. His elbows rested on the arms of his chair. His head was bowed. His forehead rested on his steepled hands. His eyes were closed. He did not seem to be aware of Natividad at all. He looked so alone...
was
so alone. She felt suddenly ashamed that she had not thought of coming here herself, that she had been ready to leave him so alone in the lowering dark of the evening.

Crossing the room quietly, Natividad sat down on the floor beside Grayson's chair. She didn't touch him or speak, didn't trace a pentagram on the window or the floor or even in the air. She didn't even look at him, though she was more intensely aware of him, of his physical presence, than she had ever been. His power might be leashed and hidden, but it was as obvious to her as the heat of a banked fire. She ought to be afraid of him, but now she found she wasn't. She grieved for him, for his solitude, for the wife he had lost last year, for the crippling of Dimilioc in the war and for the brother and friend he had lost today. She sat beside him, her arms wrapped around her knees, and waited.

After a while, Grayson said without looking up, “James was right. There is nothing left of Dimilioc. The thing we now call by that name is something else. If it survives at all, it will be nothing Dimilioc ever was.”

Natividad let a respectful silence stretch out for a minute or so. Then, still not looking at Grayson, she said, “
Te ayudaría si pudiera
. I would help you if I could. I'm so sorry for your loss. I know it's presumptuous to say so because Zachariah was your friend and Harrison was your brother and who am I to say I miss them? But I do. I only knew them for such a short time, but I liked them both.” She paused.

Grayson did not respond visibly. He didn't look at her. But hadn't there been a very slight catch in his breathing? She thought he was listening. She was less sure she was saying anything right. But how could she stop now? She said, “Black dogs aren't usually kind, but Zachariah was kind to me. I liked him. His shadow was so strong, but he controlled it so well you could hardly tell. He loved you, and he loved Dimilioc. Anybody could see how hard he worked to support Dimilioc and you. He gave up his chance to be Master because of you, and self-sacrifice is so hard for black dogs.”

No black dog would show weakness to another, or to an ordinary human, but Natividad was neither. Grayson made a wordless sound and pressed his hands hard across his eyes.

Carefully not looking at him, Natividad said gently, “And I admired Harrison. He was your brother. He was your
older
brother, and that's special. He always supported you and helped you. He didn't like what you were doing, bringing black dogs into Dimilioc, but he never said so in public, did he? But he argued with you in private, because he was never afraid of you. He loved you, and even when he thought you were wrong, he supported you because really he trusted you to be right. And trust is another thing that's hard for black dogs, isn't it?”

Grayson didn't move or make a sound.

“James was wrong,” Natividad said. “Zachariah and Harrison, and Benedict, too – they fought for Dimilioc. They died so that Dimilioc would live. And it does. Grief and loss are part of life, but
you
are the heart of Dimilioc. Both Zachariah and Harrison would have agreed with that, wouldn't they? As long as you live, Dimilioc's future will be tied to its past, because its past is in you.”

Grayson said harshly, “I am the Master of dust and ashes. How many indispensable wolves can Dimilioc lose and yet claim to have won this war?”

Natividad met his eyes. She felt old and sad and yet somehow strong. She felt, for the first time, that she was the Master's equal. They shared grief and mourning, but it was
she
who believed there would be, eventually, a spring to follow this bitter winter. She said gently, “Grayson, no one but you is indispensable. Dimilioc will live unless you yourself decide to let it die. You won't do that. You'll think of something. No one will have died in vain.”

Grayson didn't answer.

Natividad leaned her cheek against his knee, as she had done for Alejandro when he'd been exhausted and
angustiado
with grief and anger after their parents' murder. At least then they had found their parents' bodies, at least they had been able to bury them in proper graves and pray for peace for their souls. This time, there were not even bodies. That was worse.

She turned her hands palm up and breathed quietly, long slow breaths, breathing in the rage and bitter grief that clung to Grayson, breathing out peace and acceptance of loss. She was afraid that Grayson would be angry if she sketched a pentagram in the air, if she called aloud for peace: he would not be ready to surrender the grief that is the just tribute the living pay to the dead. She understood that. So, she closed her eyes and made her wish silently to the dark behind her eyelids.

After a while, Grayson said, “Those people from Lewis…”

“Rooms, food, warnings to stay away from wolves, all taken care of.”

“Ah.” There was another silence, and then the Dimilioc Master began again, “Some of those people must be able to shoot…”

“Miguel is already figuring out which ones can hit what they aim at, and I'm sure Sheriff Pearson will help us figure out which of them can be trusted to aim at our enemies.”

“Good,” said Grayson, and was quiet once more. But now it was a quiet filled with thought as well as with grief. Natividad folded her hands in her lap and sat quietly next to his chair.

“I want Ezekiel,” Grayson said abruptly. “He'll be asleep. You had better be the one to wake him.”

Natividad, momentarily disoriented, blinked. “But... wasn't he hurt?”

“That won't matter,” Grayson said, and though he didn't look at her, she could tell it was the Dimilioc Master speaking. “I want him here. Immediately.” He put a bite to that last word.

Natividad stared at him for a second. She wanted to ask: “
Don't you care about Ezekiel at all?”
But that wasn't a question she
could
ask, and anyway she knew perfectly well that no one cared more about every Dimilioc wolf than the Master. She remembered, too late, that she shouldn't stare – but of course Grayson Lanning was
way
too powerful to worry about a girl's impudence.

Jumping to her feet, she gave the Master a slight bow to show she was obeying, backed up two steps, turned, and went to the door. She did not actually run. But she didn't stroll, either.

 

Natividad had not previously had any reason to find Ezekiel's rooms, which turned out to comprise a suite on the third floor of the main wing, above the front door. High enough, Natividad realized, to prevent any enemy from leaping to its window, but low enough that Ezekiel would be able to leap down to the balcony of the room below and from there to the open ground. If there was trouble, the kind of trouble where enemies came arrogantly to the front door, Ezekiel's sudden appearance among them must cause almost as much consternation as a vat of boiling oil.

When this thought occurred to her, Natividad concluded that life had definitely been much too exciting lately.

The problem was that she couldn't help but wonder, while studying Ezekiel's closed door, whether he might mistake anybody who woke him for one of those not-hypothetical-enough enemies.

The Dimilioc executioner
was
suffering from the lingering effects of silver injury, after all. Painful and slow to heal: exactly the sort of wound that would drive a black dog into a killing rage, and he would be embarrassed that he'd been cut, too.
Then
he had driven across Chicago, flown a plane halfway across
los Estados Unidos
, driven from Newport to Dimilioc, run eight miles across country, and then fought not only in the battle – he'd also personally fought Vonhausel. And lost.

That last was the worst. Natividad knew all about black dog vanity. And Ezekiel was a lot more arrogant than most other black dogs. He was going to be really pissed off about losing that fight – and it would be much worse because everybody had
seen
him lose, and watched afterwards when he'd been forced to ride on top of a bus because he couldn't run the distance back from Lewis to Dimilioc.

And now Grayson said he wanted to see Ezekiel. Immediately. Right. No wonder he'd sent
Natividad
to fetch his executioner. Probably Ezekiel would tear anybody else who disturbed him into little tiny pieces. Like confetti, only messier.

He wouldn't tear Natividad into bits, though. She was pretty sure.

On the other hand, if anybody else had turned up and volunteered to go wake Ezekiel up instead, Natividad's feelings wouldn't have been hurt at all.

Sighing, Natividad put her hand on the doorknob... took a breath... rolled her eyes at her own cowardice and finally, after an embarrassingly long pause,
turned
the knob.

The door wasn't locked. Right. Who would intrude on Dimilioc's famously vicious young executioner? Natividad pushed the door open and stepped into a big room with wall-to-wall dove-gray carpeting, low couches upholstered in black leather, and simple low tables of black-painted wood. No television, no stereo system, nothing like that. No bookshelves. A single thin bud vase stood on one of the tables, its transparent glass strangely contorted as though it had once been partially melted. There was no flower in the vase, though. She supposed this was because of the barren winter, and wondered what kind of flower Ezekiel put in the vase when flowers were available. A rose? An orchid? She couldn't guess. Maybe he always left the vase empty. That sort of seemed like him, actually.

That was all there was in the room, except for one surprising painting dominating the far wall. If Natividad had thought about it, which she hadn't, she would have guessed that Ezekiel might have chosen some horrible bloody scene of hunting or war, or else something disturbing by Dali. This painting – a real painting, she was sure, not a print – was nothing like that. It was obviously Chinese or Japanese, because there were those kinds of letters across the top and a couple more at the bottom, maybe the artist's signature.

At first the painting seemed totally abstract, as though the artist had just splashed ink boldly across the lower third of a blank screen and called it good. Then shapes began to suggest themselves, first an angular tree – maybe a tree and a couple of shrubs? And maybe those triangular lines below the tree were a boat? Something little, like a rowboat. Maybe there was a person – two people? – in the boat. It was hard to be sure. Smooth pale-gray washes of ink below the tree implied water and mist. In the background, rising up through the height of the painting, tall skinny mountains were barely visible through the veils of mist. But most of the space had been left completely empty, the blank space used by the artist with as much deliberation as the grays and blacks of the ink.

It was a totally quiet, serene landscape, and it changed the whole character of the room. Without the painting, the room would have been stark and… What? Kind of soulless, maybe? Especially because there weren't any other personal touches anywhere: nothing cluttered the tables or had been tossed carelessly aside on either of the couches. But with the painting, the whole room took on a kind of serenity. It was sort of Zen, Natividad thought. Not that she had any idea what Zen was, except something Chinese. Or Japanese. Whatever. Anyway, she thought it meant something like peace, something like acceptance. Certainly nothing she would have expected from Ezekiel. Except now that she saw it, she sort of thought it fit him after all.

Two doors led out of this first room. Natividad walked across to the nearest and put a hand on its knob – it was unpainted metal, cold to the touch, and it, too, was gray. A dark gray, neither steel nor aluminum. Pewter, maybe. Did they make doorknobs out of pewter? She wondered whether the door would open into the bedroom or some kind of study or just a closet. In a way she hoped not to find Ezekiel too quickly because she was now much more curious about what else she might find in his suite, what other surprising things it might tell her about him. On the other hand, though she no longer really felt that she might be in actual danger, she was ashamed to be intruding into a privacy she was sure Ezekiel valued.

But the door turned out to open into the bedroom. The room was dim, not only because of the early-evening hour, but because, although there were windows in two of the walls, the curtains were all drawn. Natividad hesitated in the doorway, to let her eyes become accustomed to the muted lighting and also just to look for a minute.