The Chaos Crystal (47 page)

'That's what I'm trying to figure out.'

'Then stop worrying about it,' he assured her, taking her gloved hand in his. He raised it to his lips and smiled. 'You know I hate Elyssa. I was just trying to convince her I thought she was as beautiful as you.'

'Why? Because you need her to help you die?'

'Tides, there's not another reason on Amyrantha I'd have anything to do with her otherwise.'

'And she's just going along with it? This plan of yours to kill yourself using the Chaos Crystal?'

'Well, I did have to promise her my body first,' he said with a faint grin, hoping to get a smile out of her that wasn't tinged with ridicule or contempt.

He achieved quite the opposite. Arkady scowled at him. 'I'm starting to wonder if you've promised her
mine.'

He shrugged, deliberately misunderstanding her. 'Elyssa's not that way inclined. So stop worrying about it. I'll deal with Her Royal Pain-in-the-Backside and do whatever I have to do to keep her happy until the Tide peaks. You just hold on to that crystal skull like your life depends on it. Which it does, I feel compelled to warn you. Where is it, by the way?'

'I tossed it overboard,' she informed him with a perfectly straight face.

Cayal stared at her for a long moment. 'That's not funny, you know.'

'Or even remotely likely,' Arkady pointed out, amused now that she'd been able to rattle him, even a little. 'Don't you think you'd have noticed something by now if we were pulling away from the crystal?'

'Where is it?'

'Under the pillow on my bunk.'

'Shouldn't you be keeping a better eye on it? Elyssa
will
kill you, Arkady — very slowly and painfully — if you lose it.'

'Who's going to steal it, Cayal?' she asked. 'We're on a boat staffed entirely by your magically-compelled, tiresomely loyal Crasii, not to mention a trio of Tide Lords willing to go to any lengths to protect it. Who
exactly
am I supposed to be protecting your precious Chaos Crystal from?'

Cayal hated Arkady when she was in this mood — all cold logic and acerbic wit. He preferred the other Arkady. The one who was passionate and defiant. The one who made love to him like it was a voyage of discovery. The one who
wanted
to make love to him. This Arkady was much less fun. This was the Arkady who'd first walked into Recidivists' Row to prove he wasn't immortal; the Arkady who brought out the worst in him. Before he could stop himself, he said, 'Your old boyfriend — the one who just happens to be immortal now — might be interested in getting his hands on it. And I'm not convinced you wouldn't betray me in a heartbeat, if
he
asked you to.'

She looked at him oddly. 'Do you mean Declan?'

Cayal nodded. 'How many other old boyfriends who just happen to be immortal do you have?'

Arkady ignored the jibe, more intent on the information he'd let slip regarding the whereabouts of the former Glaeban spymaster. 'Declan is here? In Glaeba?'

'I have no idea where he is,' Cayal told her, honestly enough.

'You're lying, Cayal,' she said, able to read him far too easily for comfort. 'Is he here?'

Cayal looked around. 'Not that I can see.'

'Does anybody actually think you're funny, Cayal?'

He sighed. 'All right, he
was
here. At least he travelled with Kentravyon and me from Jelidia. He bailed on us about the time we decided to break the ice. I haven't seen him since the night of the battle in Cycrane.' And then he added, hand on his heart, 'I swear that's the truth, Arkady. May the Tide strike me down if I'm lying.'

The Tide, of course, did no such thing. Even then, despite such definite evidence of his honesty, Arkady still studied him with intense suspicion. 'Why would Declan come back to Glaeba?'

He was amazed she had to ask. 'Looking for you, of course. Why does that fool do anything?'

'And you didn't feel the need to mention this minor detail before now?'

He shrugged. 'I wasn't hiding anything from you, Arkady. You, well
...
you didn't ask.'

In typical Arkady fashion, she let that comment pass, worrying at the threads of the rest of his story like a dog chewing at a blanket until it unravelled. 'Why did he leave?'

'Pardon?'

'You said he bailed on you. Why? Why would he travel all this way with you and then leave?' 'I don't know.'

'Yes you do,' she accused, hugging her arms against her body. Even through the furs she could feel the icy chill of the wind as they sped south on the water. 'Declan wouldn't have anything to do with your plans to break the ice and kill all those Crasii, would he?'

Not much got past this woman, damn her. 'He wasn't fond of the plan, no.'

'So where did he go?'

Cayal was getting very tired of this conversation. He took her by the arms and turned her to face him, hoping to convince Arkady of his sincerity so they could move on. He was, by now, thoroughly fed up with all discussion relating to the noble intentions of

one Declan Bloody Hawkes. 'I swear, Arkady, I really don't know where Hawkes went. Maybe he's off contemplating the meaning of life in a cave somewhere. More likely he's off trying to explain how he wound up immortal to all his fanatical old pals in the Cabal.'

Arkady's eyes widened in surprise. 'What do you know about the Cabal?'

Cayal smiled at her question. 'A damn sight more than the Cabal would like me to, I'd wager.' He laughed then, at her shocked expression. 'Tides, Arkady, do you think we're complete fools? Lukys has been a member of their inner council for years. That's one of the many ways he kept tabs on the progress of his son.'

'I have to go to him.' She pulled away, trying to shake free of him, but Cayal held her fast.

'Why?' he asked, drawing her even closer, his lips all but touching hers. 'The last time you saw Hawkes, you promised to hate him for the rest of your life.'

'He came looking for me, Cayal.'

'So what? I'm the one who found you.'

She wasn't impressed by his argument. 'Purely by accident. You'd not lose a moment's sleep over my fate if I wasn't standing right in front of you.'

Cayal loosened his grip on her arms and smiled, gently brushing away a windblown strand of hair that had escaped from under her fur hat and was whipping around her face. 'He thinks you're dead, Arkady. He knows you were out on the ice at the start of the battle. One of the reasons he wouldn't have anything to do with destroying it was his
fear
of something happening to you. Wherever he is now, he's already grieving your loss. And you have no way of finding him. You will, however, be dead in a heartbeat if you give Elyssa the slightest reason to suspect you're thinking of reneging on our deal.'

Arkady nodded reluctantly, seeing the logic of his explanation, although she was clearly unhappy with it.

'But he came looking for me, Cayal. I can't just leave here, with Declan thinking I'm dead.'

'You'll see him again in Jelidia,' Cayal promised. 'He's sworn to help me die, remember? Even if he's devastated by grief over your demise, he won't pass up an opportunity to see an end to me.'
At least he'd
better keep his word,
Cayal added silently to himself,
because that smug little bastard promised to help and
even with Elyssa's power, I'm not sure we'll have enough to open the rift without him.

Arkady didn't seem completely convinced, but it seemed she'd run out of arguments. Cayal took her in his arms again and held her comfortingly, wise enough not to try kissing her. She was still too conflicted for him to try that yet. He was immortal, after all, with the patience of an immortal. And it was a long way to Jelidia. There would be time.

Or perhaps not,
he thought, when he glanced aft and spied Elyssa standing by the wheelhouse door, staring at Cayal and the mortal woman in his arms with a murderous gleam in her eye.

Tides,
he told himself unhappily, pushing Arkady away in a futile attempt to make it look as if he'd merely been comforting her, not making a move on her.
Now I'm going to have to kiss Elyssa again.

CHAPTER 44

Declan Hawkes called a meeting of all the Scards in Hidden Valley the night after he arrived. There proved to be depressingly few in number by the time he had spoken to most of the inhabitants of the valley and tested their status as either true Scards or just hopefuls. Genuine Scards — Scards who were not magically compelled to obey the immortals, as opposed to those who had simply defied their human masters — were a rare breed indeed. Warlock was surprised to see how many families in Hidden Valley were now fractured like his. He and Boots were far from being the only Scard parents in Hidden Valley to discover they had pure Crasii offspring.

The news did little to ease Boots's anger. And she
was
angry, more than anything else, about her pups being Crasii. It seemed so unfair to her that nature would punish them in such a cruel and arbitrary way. That others had been punished in a similar fashion did little to ease her pain.

They had gathered in the common room in order to hear Hawkes speak. The room was warm, with fires going in both stoves at either end of the wooden longhouse and the press of bodies adding to the heat. But there was a chill in the air and it had nothing to do with the weather. It had to do with fear — a fear every Scard in the room was trying to hide behind a facade of proud indifference.

Once Hawkes had finished explaining the situation, a heavy silence descended over the room as the Scards

digested everything he'd told them. As far as Warlock could tell, the former spymaster hadn't held back or tried to soften the news about the rise of the Tide and the plans the immortals had for opening a portal to another world that was likely to destroy Amyrantha.

But then he delivered the killing blow. The reason he was here in Hidden Valley; the grand plan he had for stopping the immortals from destroying the world. He wanted some of the Scards to go with him, into the very heart of the Tide Lords' stronghold, and stop them opening the rift.

'You're placing an awful lot of faith in some of the most notorious immortals to ever curse Amyrantha with their presence,' someone called out from the back of the hall. 'How do you know this brilliant plan of yours will succeed, suzerain?'

'I don't,' Hawkes told them. The immortal stench of him reached Warlock even several rows back from the table at the front of the hall where Hawkes sat with Lord Aleki Ponting. 'All I can tell you is that Lukys and Cayal are planning to open a rift that will likely tear a hole in the very fabric of reality. None but an immortal is likely to survive it, and even then it may kill a few of them. We can do nothing, if you'd prefer, but that just means you should make plans to enjoy your last few weeks in this life, because it's all going to be over once the Tide peaks.'

'But you said this rift will
kill
immortals,' Boots called out.

'Boots! No!' Warlock hissed at her, a warning she ignored.

'That's what Cayal believes,' Declan agreed, turning his gaze on Boots. 'And what Lukys and Kentravyon have both confirmed.'

'Then I don't get why you want to stop them,' his mate said, ignoring Warlock's whispered urging to be quiet and not draw attention to themselves. 'If the immortals want to die and they've found a way to kill

themselves, then
let
them kill themselves, I say. I'm not going to miss them.'

'Did you not hear the part about the rift destroying the whole planet, Tabitha Belle?' Aleki asked.

'But we don't know that for certain,' she said, a comment that evoked a number of murmured agreements and nods from the other Scards in the longhouse. 'For all you know, that's just a rumour the immortals have spread about to stop just this sort of discussion. Do you have any
proof
that opening this rift will destroy the world?'

'Not solid, documented proof, no,' Hawkes was forced to concede.

'So, based on your suspicions, the ravings of a mad immortal, and not much else that I can see,' Boots said, pushing her way to the front, despite Warlock's urging her to stay put and be quiet, 'you're going to try to prevent the very thing we've all been praying for. You have the only chance in the last ten thousand years to rid us of even one or two flanking suzerain, and you're going to try to stop them because of a rumour.'

'What if it's
not
a rumour?' Hawkes asked. 'Will you be filled with quite so much righteous indignation, Tabitha Belle, when the world blows up in your face?'

'My world blew up in my face the day I discovered my pups were Crasii,' she shot back, earning herself even more nods of agreement from the other mothers and fathers in the hall — feline and canine alike — suddenly faced with the same dilemma. 'My babies were born with the ability, no — the very
will
— to betray me. One of your kind could order my children to eat me alive, and they'd do it gladly, and then ask what more they can do to please their immortal masters, with my blood still dripping from their jowls. My world is already destroyed, Declan Hawkes. Don't you dare sit there, smelling like a suzerain, and tell me

you want to stop the people who destroyed it, from destroying themselves.'