Hands of Flame (19 page)

Protests rose around her, but outrage had Margrit in its grip thoroughly enough that she couldn't hear their words, only that they spoke. Her head felt as though it would fly apart with every breath, adding insult to her indignation.

The remaining tribunal members gathered around her and Eldred, wings half spread to make both a private area and, some primitive part of Margrit's brain recognized, to threaten her with their size. She was small, they large; she should retreat, not fight. Her anger burned through any sense of menace and she continued shouting at Eldred, confusing her circle of jailers enough that they fell back a little.

“You do not understand our ways,” Eldred said
below her invective. Margrit threw her hands up, sheer exasperation.

“Of course I do! You and goddamned Alban, determined to stick with the rules against anything even vaguely resembling sense! God, you all deserve one another! All right, fine, you want to play it your way? I'll play it your way. I demand another trial to determine Biali's proper place within your society.” Red spiked through Margrit's vision as she shouted, and she wished she had a gauntlet to throw down; the gesture would be wildly satisfying.

The gargoyles surrounding her fell back farther, astonishment driving them apart. Eldred gaped, then tilted his head back and laughed, a warm, rich sound of genuine amazement. “Who do you challenge, Margrit Knight?”

“You,” Margrit snapped. “All of you. Anybody. Whoever I have to, as many times as I have to. This is a
stupid
law, and I'm not going to stand for it.”

“Do I get any say in the matter?” Biali asked from somewhere behind her, voice as dry as desert sands.

“No. You're causing all these problems. You can just be quiet while I save your big, broad ass. Chelsea!” Margrit elbowed the gangly gargoyle out of her way and emerged from their circle to glare at Chelsea. “That serpent, you said he's basically the truth at the heart of everything, right? And I'm about as favored as it gets in his eyes right now?”

Chelsea's feather-thin eyebrows rose. “I did, and you are.”

“Hah!” Margrit turned back to the gargoyles, heat rushing through her veins in buoyant triumph and passion. She could ride it through the pain, especially if she tried
not to breathe too deeply. “So if we're reducing those journeys to platitudes and clichés, then Biali's got
love conquers all
and I've got
the truth will out.
I'm
right,
and right now I've got the serpent at the heart of the world watching over me. You really want to go up against me with that kind of linebacker on my side? Because if you do, I'm ready and willing.”

Silent gargoyles exchanged glances before Eldred surprised Margrit by turning to Chelsea. The tiny woman cocked an eyebrow again, as if disavowing responsibility. Eldred looked toward Biali, then lifted his voice. “Alban, what say you?”

Biali's scarred face contorted and Margrit remembered abruptly that he had more than once expressed disdain for the mercy Alban had shown him in battle. Alban's answer was a long time in coming, and left its mark on Biali's face, as well. “I have no need or desire to see another of our kind exiled. I hold no grudge, nor any lasting damage. Let him belong.” Far more softly, he added, “It is what Hajnal would have wanted.”

Eldred's nod of acceptance was stiff. Margrit flung herself into one of the chess-table chairs, skidding across the floor in triumph. The action jarred her skull and a pained blush heated her face, but for the moment, she didn't care.

“Margrit.” Though she hadn't noticed his retreat, Janx spoke from the door, where Daisani stood at his side. “I think Stoneheart would not answer this, but you've proved wonderfully indiscreet. What of Sarah, Margrit? What of Sarah Hopkins?”

Margrit turned her head, hearing stiff muscles in her neck creak. “It's been three hundred and fifty years, dragonlord. I'm sorry.”

Janx hesitated a long moment, then nodded. It was, for once, Daisani who sketched a brief and acknowledging bow, and then the two rivals exited together, bound by one more ancient grief.

One by one the tribunal shifted forms, becoming human, and Grace guided them out. The door banged shut behind them, leaving a hunch-shouldered Biali in Margrit's line of sight. “What'd you do that for?”

Exasperation bubbled up so strongly Margrit hissed through her teeth. The impulse to stamp her feet and fling her hands around in a tantrum of frustration, was barely alleviated by the steam-engine eruption of sound. “Because it's a stupid law. Because you did a stupid thing, maybe even a lot of stupid things, but insofar as there's a right reason to do stupid things, you did them for the right reasons. You did them because people you loved died, and that hurt got twisted around with justice and turned into vengeance, but you're not evil and you don't deserve to be shut away from your people. And there are only a few hundred of your people
left
, and if you all want to survive, they need you, as much as you need them.” All the passion drained out of her, leaving her slumped in the chair and a bit wry. “Besides, why go for a partial victory when you can take the full sweep?”

Biali grunted, Margrit recognizing the sound as something as close to a thanks as she would probably ever get. Then he looked beyond her. “Korund.”

“Biali.” Alban's voice sounded unusually soft in the empty chamber. After a long moment Biali nodded and stumped out of the room, leaving Margrit alone with Alban.

MARGRIT PUT HER
elbows on the chess table and slid her fingers into her hair, massaging her head. “Sorry. I shouldn't have gone off about Sarah, but they weren't going to let it go with no answers, Alban. I thought it'd be easier if I broke your promise for you. God, my head hurts.”

“Are you so certain I wouldn't have spoken?” Mild amusement filled the gargoyle's voice.

Margrit lifted her gaze, still rubbing her temples. “I could tell you wanted to, but you take your promises seriously.” She stood, taking a deep breath, and wiped her hands against her jeans. “How angry at me are you?”

“Angry?” Alban spread his hands helplessly. “You're the most principled, bravest, foolish woman I've ever met. You just challenged an entire host of gargoyles to combat.” Laughter shook his shoulders and he extended his hands toward her. “Thank you, Margrit. Thank you for my place among my people, for breaking promises I no longer wished to hold, for risking your life for mine. For ours.”

“Oh, stop it.” Margrit lurched from the chair and took the few steps to him in a clumsy run, crashing against his
wide chest. He was warm, like well-sunned stone, the sour scent of iron fading from his skin. “I'm not the principled one,” she mumbled. “You stick to your guns even when you're wrong. I make compromises and wheel and deal. We're hardly birds of a feather.”

Alban flared his wings, chamber lights glowing through the translucent membrane. “I have no feathers at all. Margrit, you've paid a high price for what's transpired tonight.”

“What I've paid isn't anything like what's coming.” She tilted her head up, twinging again at the movement, and saw concern come into the gargoyle's pale eyes. “I'm okay,” she promised. “My head's been throbbing since Eldred took my hands.”

“It was the bruises that concerned me.” Alban traced taloned fingertips just above her skin, outlining bruises that she hadn't noticed until he followed their shape. Even then they were merely uncomfortable, nothing compared to the still-shouting static in her head.

“They'll be gone soon. I meant it when I said Grace couldn't beat me. I was healing during the fight. I could feel it. Alban—” Margrit broke off, wanting to say so many things they tangled her tongue. “Your chains are gone,” she finally said, awkward with not knowing where else to begin. “I didn't think Biali'd let you go before the trial.”

“He didn't.” Alban shook his head as Margrit's eyebrows drew down with confusion. “Grace freed me.”

Fresh static burst in Margrit's skull, whitening her vision. “Grace? How?”

“I don't know.” He hesitated, a gentle touch against her cheek felt before Margrit could see clearly again. “She touched me—touched the chains—and there was a
terrible coldness and a great deal of pain, and then I was free. My people will want to know how, once they're made aware. We haven't often been enslaved, it's happened, and someone who can free us…”

“You didn't ask?” Margrit's voice shot high. “I thought she was human. I thought—”

“I did ask,” Alban said. “But she didn't want to tell me, and given that I was in her debt, I chose not to press her.”

“And you can just live with that? You can just live with—with not knowing how she did something impossible and took iron that had bonded with your flesh out of your body? You can just live with the vampires saying they're not from this world at all, and you can just live with whatever the hell it is that makes you all jump when Chelsea Huo says to? Alban, do you have
any
answers?” Margrit pulled her voice down from a shout, half aware she was trying to drown out the white noise within her own mind. “How can you live with not knowing?”

Bemusement crossed Alban's stony features as Margrit put her hands against her head. She closed her eyes against the gentleness of his expression, trying to gather herself, and only spoke when she thought she had control. “Sorry. My head hurts a lot.” It was another moment before she dared open her eyes to find sympathy in Alban's gaze. “I have so many questions, and nobody wants to answer any of them. Janx said I can walk away from the Old Races much later than I could ever imagine, and I can see where it might be tempting, if I'm always going to be standing here on the outside, looking in. Why does everybody kowtow to Chelsea, Alban? Why can you simply accept that Grace pulled iron out of you without wanting to know how?”

“I do want to know,” Alban said mildly. “But I said I wouldn't ask, and I'm not as bedeviled by curiosity as you are. I don't want you to walk away from us, Margrit,” he added more softly. “I don't want you to walk away from me.”

Margrit sighed and put her forehead against his broad chest. “I'm not planning on it. But don't think I haven't noticed you didn't answer any of my questions just now, either.”

Alban chuckled. “You notice everything. Most of your questions aren't mine to answer, or I
have
no answers. Even the gargoyle memories tell us nothing more about the vampires than that they claim to be not of this world. It's an affectation, but…” He trailed off, and then a smile came into his voice. “You may have noticed that we Old Races, as a rule, tend a little toward affectation.”

“No, really?” Margrit tipped her head up, mouth twisted into a smile that faded away. “Will I ever get answers? Am I always going to be the human stuck in the middle of a fairy tale?”

“You can route any comer, defend any stand, argue any case. The Old Races fall before you, and no,” Alban said with a lift of his brows, “I am not teasing you. I think you'll get your answers in time, Margrit. You may have to earn them from each of us as you go along, because we aren't prone to sharing secrets, but give us time. Give yourself time.”

“Easy for a four-hundred-year-old gargoyle to say.”

“Almost five hundred,” Alban said lightly. “Your haste has already shaped our world. You can afford a little patience. It's been barely three months since you discovered us at all.”

Margrit opened her mouth and closed it again, surprise washing out the ache in her head for a moment. “Okay. All right, you're right. I can probably stand to wait another three or four before I know everything about all of you. But I will want to know, Alban. I have to know everything I can. I'm never going to be one of you. Understanding who I'm dealing with is the only compensation I've got.”

“I rather think you might understand us better than even I do, who have stood apart for so long.”

Margrit shook her head. “You're not alone anymore. You're with me. You're part of your community again. Just—don't pick any fights with Biali.”

Alban brushed his knuckles against her cheek and a thrill of warmth suffused Margrit. Still damp, exhausted and hoarse from arguments, she was more fully at home within the circle of the gargoyle's arms than she could ever remember being elsewhere. It went beyond sensuality, beyond happiness, into something so complex and profound it seemed absurd that a single word could encompass it, yet one did.
Content.
She was content, and had never known that emotion could fill her so completely.

Seeing her smile, Alban dipped his head to touch his lips against hers, then his forehead to hers. They stood that way, both smiling, as he spoke. “As you so assiduously tried to tell me, and I so fervently refused to hear, I have not been alone since you came into my life, Margrit. I believe I will stop trying to convince myself I am, for fear you'll move whole mountain ranges to block my way when I try to leave.”

“That's more like it.” Margrit wound her arms around Alban's waist. “We should be together, and on the same side. The djinn aren't going to let Malik's death go. I'm
sorry.” She set her front teeth together delicately, lips peeled back in a show of frustration. “I've been playing both sides against the middle for two days, not letting anybody know how he died, and now—”

“You could hardly have anticipated what would happen when you offered memories to the collective.”

“A feedback loop would've been bad enough. I turned into a broadcast tower!” Margrit wrinkled her face as her own pitch made her head ring. “I blew the top off every secret I knew.”

“No,” Alban said with sudden clarity. “Not every secret. You buried one with an avalanche of others.” He glanced toward the door, and Margrit followed his gaze, knowing which two of the many who'd passed through it he was thinking of.

“Yeah. I told them everything, but I didn't tell them you'd found her again.”

 

Even with static rushing in her head, it was easier to ride memory now, as though new channels had been opened up in her mind. She knew that it was Alban's memory she recalled, but she felt very little dichotomy, no confusion of one body or another. Wings spread beneath the moonlight felt natural and strong, and wearing his broad body, meant for flying, felt natural, with no confusion as to what had happened to her own smaller form.

Forty miles outside of London, in the midseventeenth century, might have been four thousand in the modern world. It was an easy night's flight, even there and back again, as long as the winds were with him. Janx and Daisani had taken the broken pieces of their hearts and left the city
that had disappointed them years since, and Alban had waited until he thought even Sarah's memory had faded before he winged north to the farmstead she'd owned.

He knew it had been abandoned before he landed. The land was unfurrowed and weeds choked those vegetables left to grow on their own. No smoke rose from the chimney, and no scent of it lingered on the air to say a fire would be banked high in the morning. There was a stillness to the house that said it was unlived in, and when he first opened the door, it was to a room stagnant with disuse.

A cradle, long since too small for the girls' use, was tucked against the wall beside the fireplace; opposite lay a straw bed molding with age. The twins would have altered their hours in the cradle and bed, one suckling while the other slept, but neither had done so for a long time.

Everything else was gone from the cottage: no pot hung over the fire, no blankets lay to rot with the bed. Even the kindling was gone, perhaps to be made use of on the road. Alban crossed to the cradle and set it to rocking, a little surprised it hadn't been broken apart to be burned, as well.

A patterned piece of fabric lay at its bottom, little more than an off-colored shadow in the moonlight from the open door. Alban lifted it, finding the pattern to be stitches, and, frowning with curiosity, he brought it into the light.

A crude shape was picked out on the fabric, a rough oval with a handful of divots breaking into its form. Near the bottom was a tiny stitched house; at the top, another. The piece's edges were ragged and frayed, as though it had once been a child's chew-thing. Bemused, Alban tucked it into his fist and carried it back to London.

Hajnal gave the scrap a bare glance and, with a look
of fond exasperation at him, said, “It's the island, Alban. England and Scotland and Wales. She's gone to live in the north.” Then amusement had sparked in her eyes and she'd added, “It's very like our way of making sure we won't lose each other, isn't it. Our promise to meet each other at the highest point we can find. Did you tell her about that?”

Alban, flummoxed, admitted he had, and Hajnal looked knowing. “The top of Scotland is as high as you can go without leaving this island. It's a clever bit of work.”

Nearly four hundred years later, Margrit felt Alban's rise again in both memory and the present, pure bewilderment as he said, “But how do you
know?
” And in memory, she thrilled at the warmth of Hajnal's responding laugh.

“I know because Sarah would leave a message only one man could read, and you're him. You'd have come to it in time.”

“Your faith is ill placed.” Alban pulled his lifemate into his arms, and memory faded into another time.

Not so very much later, but long enough. Winter, for ease of traveling through the long nights. Two gargoyles winged through cold starry skies, full of joy at living and exploring and togetherness. The northern coast of Scotland was an expansive area to search, but there was little hurry. Children grew up quickly, but not
that
quickly, and a woman alone with two young girls would eventually be found.

“She might have married,” Alban said one night, and Hajnal, warm with firelight under the stars, shook her head. Bemused all over again, Alban said, “How do you know?”

Hajnal shrugged. “Her daughters' father is one of the Old Races, and there's no telling how that will show up.
Not even the memories tell us that, Alban. Perhaps the winter slaughter will bring out a hunger and a speed and a darkness from them, or a bit of bright coin will trigger need and an impossible new form. Sarah wouldn't risk the girls being exposed to a husband.” Hajnal went silent a long time, playing with a piece of obsidian, catching flame in it and releasing it to the night again. “But that's only the pragmatic reason. Sarah Hopkins loved them both, my love. It takes an unusual woman to draw a dragon's eye, and a rarer one still to dare turn away from the love of a vampire. Perhaps I'm wrong, but if they had been the men in my life, and I had been only human, I think I would not look for anything more after them. I think the memory would be sweeter, and more bitter, than any other life I might find in their wake, and I think that I would be happier with the dream of what was than the possibility of a new future.”

“How maudlin,” Alban said with a smile, and Hajnal laughed again, protesting, “Romantic. It's romantic, not maudlin.”

But there was no husband when they found her, only Sarah and twin girls, rangy now with young women's years. They were slim and tall and quick and not alike at all, but for a sense of raw command about them both. Sarah, a dozen years older than she'd been when Alban last saw her, had weathered the time well, and watched the girls with pride.