Touch of the Demon

A frown touched his mouth at my counter-offer, but I had a feeling he’d deliberately asked for a larger amount of time, knowing I’d bargain it down. “Consideration at six months or beyond only on the condition that you have passed the shikvihr initiation.”

Shikvihr. I frowned. Where had I heard that before?

From Rayst, I suddenly remembered. “How far along is she in the shikvihr?” he’d asked Rhyzkahl. That ritual foundation thing.

“I can’t agree to that when I have no idea how long that typically takes to master.” I leaned back and folded my arms. “For all I know you could be placing this condition on a skill that takes decades to learn.” Helori said I could trust him at his word. He hadn’t said a damn thing about the part that came before actually swearing the oath.

“Calvus Atilia passed the shikvihr initiation in seven months. The longest any has taken to pass it is eighteen months.”

Well, eighteen months sucked. So I’ll study my ass off, I told myself. “Very well. I also want to be able to send and receive messages from home, via whatever agents you might have in place on Earth or by my own means.”

“It can be arranged,” he said, eyes on mine. “Through me.”

I pursed my lips. “Will you respect my privacy?”

Mzatal inclined his head. “As you will be in agreement to act only in my best interests, yes.”

I steeled myself for the next point I wanted to raise. Rhyzkahl had sworn not to harm me—on Earth, which hadn’t done me a fat lot of good. “I—” My voice cracked. I took a deep breath and tried again. “I want to discuss what would happen in the event that I were to fall into the hands of another lord.” I met his eyes. “I don’t want to become anyone’s thrall.”

He leaned forward. “First, I will do all within my ability to keep that circumstance from arising,” he said. “There are possibilities of implants for recall and such, though there is always the chance of those being detected.” He paused. “There are other, more drastic options.”

I spoke as quietly and calmly as possible, though my voice still had a slight quaver. “I expect you to do all in your ability to keep such a situation from arising and to extricate me should precautions and safeguards fail. I expect you to do me no harm at any time during our agreement, regardless of location, realm, dimension, or other locale, with the sole exception of a scenario where, in your best and most honorable discretion, you believe that I would prefer death, or a scenario in which the lives or fates of innocents would be spared by harming or killing me.”

Mzatal listened carefully. “Define harm.”

“Shit that hurts that I don’t want done to me!” I snapped, then winced at my outburst. “Sorry. I…I mean physical injury or maiming as well as any sort of arcane torture. And no mental harm either. Or memory stripping.” Damn it, I knew I was missing stuff. What good would this agreement do me if I fucked it up? I dropped my hands into my lap and clutched the fabric of my shirt beneath the table.

“There must be conditions,” Mzatal replied calmly, “otherwise training will be impossible. One would be to do you no willful or nonconsensual harm. Accidents can occur in training, as well as times when harm may be a part of the process.” His expression was reassuring. “In other ways, I will not seek to harm you.”

“R-right. Yeah. No willful or nonconsensual harm.”

There was more after that, though nothing anywhere near as unnerving or fraught; details and fine tuning concerning training and protocols, that sort of thing. Nothing leaped out at me as being onerous or untenable, and after what was probably a couple of hours, the sun set and papers were drawn up in English and demon, with Ilana and Helori verifying that the translation was precise. We signed in ordinary ink and then swore to it, with about as much drama as the times I’d been sworn in to testify in court. Yet I had no doubt that the oath was just as binding as if we’d chanted naked and signed in blood. Probably far more so, actually.

With the agreement signed and sworn on, I felt oddly at loose ends, though relieved to have the details out of the way. I pushed down the niggling fear that I’d missed some loophole that Mzatal could use to take advantage of me, and held onto Helori’s assurance that Mzatal was true to his word.

“So what now?” I asked.

“First, the balcony.” Mzatal stood and picked up a wine bottle and glasses from the side table. I followed him out into the pleasantly cool night. He exhaled softly, appearing to relax as soon as he was in the open air. It didn’t seem as if he disliked the indoors, but more as if he craved something that could only be found in wide open spaces. Even sitting behind the glass of the solarium seemed to confine him. Or maybe I was reading far too much into it.

He poured a glass and passed it to me. I took a long drink and looked up at the stars. A sliver of moon shone high overhead with a cluster of stars twinkling near it, looking as if they’d been poured out of the crescent. A thin cloud drifted before the moon, set briefly aglow before it passed on.

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.”