The Time Weaver

slipped back into the shadows of the box hedges behind them. Zane waited until she was gone.

'You are mad,' he said. 'I wouldn't, even if I could. Which I can't.'

'If you don't, I will execute Amalia. Without delay.'

'Honor—'

'No,' the woman interrupted. 'I'm Rez now. Pray call me that.'

He paused to breathe, to truly take her in. He'd seen all manner of wickedness before. It had been the meat and bread of his entire life, really, starting from his very first memories, that cutpurse gang of urchins who'd plied him with gin and taught him to sob on demand; Dirty Clem, the picklock who'd fed and tutored him and then stabbed him near to death. The streets of London held iniquity aplenty for a child with no protection but his own wits. Zane could full tell when a bloke was confident enough to play at being vicious and when he was cold enough to be sincere.

Rez, with her stylish tall wig draped with feathers and pearls, her embroidered gown of salmon-pink with curling mint leaves, her withered shoulders and her straight blue gaze ... Rez was sincere.

'Why?' he asked, blunt.

'Because.' She tasted the wine.

'That's a bloody big venture, just for 'because.''

She shrugged.

'Why don't you have your hired hacks do it?' he demanded, reckless. 'All those poor bastards who think they're doing God's work, ripping out the hearts of your kind. Sanf inimicus,' he sneered. 'Did you make that up or just dead steal it from history?'

Rez spread open her fan, peering down the table. 'Wherever do you suppose Louis is? Probably diddling about with his horse. I do wish he'd hurry, don't you? I'm quite famished.'

A great wave of emotion swept over him then: hatred, mingled with nauseated desperation. Zane made himself very still until it passed. He picked up his absinthe, set it down again. The light from the fountain flashed and flashed in his head.

The old woman sighed, tapping the lace fan against her mouth. 'All right. I had a plan like that, if you must know, not too long ago. It didn't work out. A great many of my hired hacks, as you say, perished underground, all thanks to a single dragon. Imagine it—one dragon, forty-five hand-picked assassins destroyed. Such a pity. It's taken longer than I thought to rebuild their ranks. I find I grow impatient. I find that . time is short.'

He closed his eyes against the light.

'You are the only living being who knows the shire of Darkfrith as well as any drakon. I daresay you know it better than I. Plus, you have all those useful years of surviving as a criminal. I can't Weave back there undetected. I can't even walk to its borders. I'm ninety-one years old, Vicomte. I don't desire to walk. That makes you the ideal candidate for my proposition.'

He shook his head. 'How long have you been planning this?'

She sighed again, a quavering sound. 'Questions regarding time are always so tricky. Allow me merely to say, since I was a much younger woman. Since long before I realized it was you who has been stalking me these past few years, the wild-eyed Englishman everyone spoke of, who already knew about dragons, who could control them with his magical spells.' Now she laughed; he heard the young girl in it, the girl he knew. 'You used your ring, didn't you? You used those fragments of Draumr you once used upon me. But now your ring is gone. Yes, I took it. Are you surprised? It was never meant to belong to an Other, you know. I promise you I've made good use of it.'

'Bloody hell, Rez. If you have Draumr, why not just use it to have them destroy themselves? Set them to fighting?'

'I do wonder if you're attempting to be devious or are merely that ignorant. Surely you realize that the chips from the ring work most effectively on one dragon at a time, perchance two. Had I the whole stone, unbroken, perhaps it would be feasible to take on the entire tribe. But as things are . no. Believe me, I've considered it.'

'Go back in time. Steal it before it's broken.'

'I've tried. Apparently as a whole it's untouchable. A few things are. The Weaves won't take me to it.'

Zane twisted in his seat to address her squarely. The curls of his wig slid heavily along his shoulders. 'I can't kill them all. It's not possible.'

'No. You mean that you won't. I confess myself disappointed. I really rather thought you loved your wife.'

Blood rushed to his cheeks; he struggled to keep his voice in check. 'Damn you. I can't kill them because there's no clear way about it! They're fortified in there, they've an array of defenses. There've got to be close to a thousand—at least!—who can Turn, and that's just the males! Think about it. And in any case, there's—'

'What?'

Rue, he'd nearly said. Rue, amazing Rue. The one who'd begun this whole wretched, remarkable game that amounted to his new found life. Rue, who had saved him from those London gutters as a lad, and taken him in, and eventually had had the grace to give birth to the woman he would wed.

'Langford,' Zane said. 'The marquess. He's a wily old bugger, believe you me, even if he has given over the title of Alpha to his eldest son. I've dealt with that son of a bitch since I was a child.'

'Ah,' said Rez softly. 'Ah, yes. You have in mind the marchioness, of course. Rue Langford. I'd heard you loved her. And not just as the mother of your wife.'

'Shut up,' Zane snarled.

'It's not really my concern. The Marquess and Marchioness of Langford abandoned the shire years ago.'

'That's a lie.'

'It's not. I swear. What have I to gain with a lie? You'll go there, you'll find out for yourself anyway. I suppose you truly haven't been in touch with any of the English, or you'd know. They left, oh, around eight years ago. In your time.'

To say that he was staggered would have been a pitiful underestimation. Rue leaving the shire, fleeing with her husband, that by-the-book stickler of a leader with all his rules—

'Off in search of their youngest daughter,' continued Rez evenly. 'Who, apparently, they've never found. So all that's left in Darkfrith are those you don't love. Those you've hidden Lia from, who would harm her still if they could.' She spread her palms, reasonable. 'They're the ones I want.'

One of the smaller acrobats ended a flip just in front of them, a boy in tight clothing and a sweaty, panting face. Rez and the rubied marauise offered a smattering of applause.

'Envision it,' she said under her breath. 'No more hiding, no more threats. Just you and she, free to live as you wish, where you wish. You have my word that I'll leave you both alone forever. But I need your help first, Father. I need your cunning, and your knowledge of the shire.'

He picked up the absinthe, drained the glass in one shot. 'I'm not a lunatic.'

'I am,' she said, simple. 'I didn't choose this path, but here I am on it. Consequences of my Gift, consequences of my very birth. And I'll tell you something else, something I think you already know: Love is a demon that destroys your soul. It eats and eats inside you, it hollows you out, and you'll do anything to keep feeding it. That's all I'm doing.'

'Hon—Rez. I've no notion what you're talking about.'

'Don't you?' she said, smiling her old lady's smile.

From the other end of the garden came a flicker of silver and blue: royal bunting on poles, followed by a blare of trumpets. Louis had arrived.

Everyone at the table began to stir, but Zane never looked away from Honor's face.

'You do love,' she whispered, nodding. 'And if you wish her to live, you'll do as I request. The one thing I ever understood about you, Zane, was that you would be ruthless in the protection of your heart. Your heart is Lia. I merely expect,' her smile grew wider, wrinkled, old and young, 'you to be ruthless. It's what you're best at, after all.'

She leaned over, gave his sleeve a motherly pat.