The Time Weaver

made him look a bit more exotically unhinged, just the sort of chap who would arrange a meeting like the one that was—surely—about to begin.

He didn't mind the heavy damask coat and waistcoat embroidered with so much silver thread he positively glittered, or the high Italian heels that pinched his feet, or the ridiculously ornamental grip of the rapier slung to his hip, which of course he'd made certain was as lethal as a plain one.

He didn't even mind the waiting.

He minded the damned food.

All his years he'd been starving. He'd been born into starvation, he'd nursed from its teat, and the constant, dull ache in his stomach was such an eternal companion to him now it was more friend than not. It reminded him that no matter what else, he was alive, when so many others he'd bumped shoulders with were not.

Aye, hunger was good. Hunger kept him keen.

He ignored the foie gras with a mixture of envy and disdain, and sipped instead the sugary green absinthe, which he despised so it never got him drunk.

The empty chair at his side remained that way, its tapestry cushions showing every knot and tuft of silk under the unrelenting sun.

He'd previously observed the head of the sanf inimicus only once. It had been in Lyons, years past, and the fellow had been hooded and cloaked and surrounded by his minions. He'd been leaving a tavern, stepping up into a carriage before heading off to God knew where next. He'd never noticed Zane. Yet just that single encounter had been enough to chill Zane's blood.

He was not a superstitious man. He could not afford to be. But he would've sworn there was an air of what he could only describe asmalevolence about that hooded figure, even without seeing his face.

Zane toyed with the stem of his absinthe glass, watching the acrobats through slitted eyes.

It had taken him years to reach this table, this moment. The sanf weren't a group known precisely for either their cohesion or their sense of trust. He'd been a loyal crony, had wormed his way in and in with absolute patience, and every time he wished to slam his fist through the face of one of these unwashed Frenchmen who thought they knew the secret heart of dragons, who thought they were so extraordinary because they believed in the myth, they believed they'd been chosen by God or the devil or some ruddy peasant out in the provinces casting runes and mumbling over chicken guts—every time he reached that point of smiling and unleashing his fury and blowing it all to hell, Zane thought of Amalia.

Of She Who Always Expected Him Home Again, however far he roamed.

Amalia, who was actual myth transformed. Who could soar and scrape the heavens with wings and who still could have been the better Helen, commanding armies to the fore with just her jaw-dropping, staggering beauty.

And who had used her quiet magic to peer past the famished child who still rattled inside Zane and seen something else, something Zane himself had never even guessed was there: a man who could love.

She loved him.

All the world could be scorched and ashed. Lia Langford loved him. She had no armies, his enchanted wife. She had him.

He sat in this chair, in this garden, awaiting the one who wanted her dead, because of that.

A pair of footmen approached from behind. He did not stiffen at their arrival, only managed a casual, upward glance at the closest one, his right hand not on the hilt of the rapier but instead the hidden dirk at his waist.

'Pardonnez-moi, monsieur.'The footman was pulling back the empty chair, shifting again to guide closer the person Zane had not yet seen, the person who shuffled slowly forward between both men.

It was a woman. An old woman, at that. He felt a harsh burn of disappointment, also skillfully hidden, as she eased with her wide, quilted skirts into the chair. The footmen were angling her carefully nearer the table; Zane glimpsed a withered forearm poking out from a pink-embroidered sleeve, frail, spotted hands gripping the wooden arms for support.

The servants backed away, bowing. The woman lifted a hand to ensure her wig had not slipped awry, then turned her head and smiled at Zane.

His body went to ice. With a peculiar sense of inner shrinkage, of horror, he was aware that for the first time in his adult life he couldn't move at all, not even to save himself.

'Hello, Father,' the old woman said.

Every guest of the king's feast had a personal attendant to serve them, with a beverage maid for every three and a carver for every seven. But damned Jerome had taken ill not ten minutes past; no doubt he'd been nipping from the cognac cart again. He'd fallen unconscious and was snoring behind the statue of Aphrodite in the labyrinth nearby.

'Fucking asshole,' grumbled monsieur le maitre d'hotel, eyeing Dimitri balefully, as if it were somehow his fault. 'There's no help of it, boy. You'll have to serve both Madame and the Hungarian vicomte until we can get someone else in his livery.'

'Yes, sir.'

From their hidden vantage point behind the hedges, they viewed together the unlikely couple, who faced each other without speaking. The sparkling fountain beyond them forced tears to Dimitri's eyes.

'God grant His Majesty comes soon,' muttered the maitre d'hotel. 'That Hungarian looks greener than Jerome.'

One word engulfed him. One word, the only one that now mattered. Lia.

Oh God, and he'd left her alone with this creature, left her alone in Spain with her, the younger her—

'You'll be thinking of Mother, I expect,' said the woman, nodding. She leaned back in the chair and crooked a finger for the attendant, who bobbed forward in an instant. 'Un verre de vin blanc.'

'Oui, madame.'

She glanced back at Zane. The same eyes, dragon-blue, in a face so fine and wrinkled he might have walked past her a hundred times and not noticed the truth.

Honor. Honor in this elderly thing before him, a shadow of Honor's unnatural splendor still apparent in the cheekbones, in the lips.

Honor Carlisle, that skinny blasted snip of a drakon child, that girl Lia had dreamed about and fished from the shire to save—she was sanf—she was the sodding lead of the snake —and no sodding wonder the tribe wanted her dead and he'd left them alone —

Zane shoved back from the table. He stood and the inebriated marauise ceased her tittering, and the footmen behind him surged forward, murmuring concern.

'Please,' the elderly woman said, staring straight ahead. 'I could Weave to Barcelona in an instant and kill her. You must realize that.'

He glared down at her, frantic, his jaw clenched so tight he was unable to speak.

'I won't,' she said gently, and sent him a sidelong look. 'And I'll tell you why I won't. But first, I'd very much appreciate your help with a riddle. Do sit,' she added, when Zane didn't move, not even when the king's men had resettled his chair, urging him back to the table.

'Don't you want to hear my mystery, Vicomte? It's to your advantage, I promise you that.' Everyone was staring. And she could leave in a blink of an eye anyway, he knew that. Zane resumed his seat.

'I want you to know,' said Honor quietly, in her unfamiliar, elderly voice, 'that I never despised you, or your wife. Even now, I can appreciate the risks you both took to save my life. So understand that what I say next is not motivated by any sort of intimate passion. I want you to help me to find a way to destroy the English drakon . All of them, save your wife.'

He couldn't help it; a huffing choke of laughter escaped him. 'You must be mad.'

She gazed at him flatly. A serving maid in powder and an apron and gray-frizzed wig brought the wine, then