“Pah,” Grace said, suddenly cheerful. “I’ll have to, won’t I, or I’ll be listening to you crash around in the dark all night. This way, lawyer. Let’s go.” She tilted her head and struck off down a tunnel, leaving Margrit to catch up.
Familiar voices warned her that they’d found their way, but as she drew breath to thank Grace, the vigilante shrugged and disappeared. Margrit’s jaw flapped before she pulled it up into a smile and shook her head at the theatrics she was becoming accustomed to.
Janx, somewhere in the near distance, was speaking with his usual insufferable self-satisfaction. Margrit’s smile turned to a grin as she recognized his tale of the tapestries that softened the walls of his chamber. She wondered what stories had taken father and daughter and sister through the remaining night and all of the day, if he was only just now telling them of the tapestries and the windows that had been made in their likeness.
“The last of the arachne made the tapestries,” he was saying. “The youngest, as it happened. There were only ever three, and fate turned its hand against crone and mother.”
“There couldn’t possibly be only three,” Kate said tartly. “They must’ve had parents.”
Janx made a sound remarkably like a snorting dragon, though from the depth and clarity of his voice it was clear he was in his human form. “If you know so much, you tell the tale.”
Kate’s muttered, “Ow” suggested an elbow in the ribs, and Margrit’s grin broadened.
Janx, satisfied, continued, “As it happens, you’re presumably correct, and in retrospect, I wonder if they weren’t chimeras, as well. I’ve no idea what race mothered them, if that’s the case, but perhaps the crone’s age was honestly come by.”
“Harpies,” Ursula said distantly. “I think if the sisters of fate were born of man and the Old Races, that their mothers must have been harpies. We should ask Alban.”
“I’m beginning to doubt the gargoyle histories are as complete as we’ve all believed,” Janx said. “It seems a number of important details have been left out. You, for example.”
“But you made sure we wouldn’t be forgotten,” Kate pointed out. “Alban kept your secret about our mother, but he knew we existed. If he’d died, the memories would’ve gone back into the histories. We’d have never been forgotten the way the selkies let themselves be. Or maybe the way the arachne chose to be.”
Silence swept out of the room, tickling Margrit with its depth. Janx and Daisani had perhaps known of Sarah’s pregnancy, but not her survival; the secret Alban had kept, as far as they’d known, was that they’d loved a mortal woman, and told her about the Old Races, an exiling offense in and of itself. The half-blood children— chimeras, Janx had just called them—were a more complex confidence than that.
But the dragonlord let it go, as Margrit imagined he might. “Perhaps. But I was trying to tell you about the tapestries,” he said petulantly.
Kate put on a patient child’s tone: “Yes, Father.”
Margrit could all but hear Janx twitch. “I’m not sure I can become accustomed to that name. It sets firesnaps against my skin each time you say it.”
“Fatherfatherfatherfatherfather,” Kate chanted, and Janx laughed over the sound of Ursula’s impatient sigh.
“What about the windows? Who made the windows?”
Janx, with all the nonchalance in the world, said, “The newspapers say they’re Tiffany originals.”
“This is where you get it from,” Ursula muttered, and Kate’s laughter broke, an alto echo of Janx’s tenor. “You wouldn’t have brought them up if they were Tiffany windows,” Ursula went on accusingly.
Margrit’s eyebrows lifted in surprise as Janx made a smug confession: “I made them.
“Oh, well, all right,” he said half a moment later. “Not by myself. Tariq and I, actually.” And his voice darkened as he mentioned the djinn. “Over a century past, now. Desert sand to liquid glass, shaped by wind and dragonfire. Things were different, then.”
“We remember,” Ursula said dryly.
Margrit could imagine Janx refocusing on her, surprise coming into his voice. “I suppose you would, although you’d remember different things than I.”
“So would we all.” Alban’s voice broke in, coming from the other direction, beyond the curve Margrit stood behind. She startled, not expecting him, then smiled and leaned against the wall to listen a moment longer. She’d never had a chance to listen to the Old Races talk apparently unobserved, and had gained one insight already: Janx was far more willing to tell secrets to his chimera daughter than to the fully human Margrit. It was a soft disappointment, one she could expect and accept, but it reminded her again that she wasn’t truly part of their world. That there might yet be time to escape, if she wished.
“Janx,” Alban went on in a rumble. “I’ve been sent to ask why you’re not packing your bags.”
“Because Margrit wouldn’t expect me to leave these hallowed halls until she has accomplished the task I’ve set her,” Janx said easily, then lifted his voice: “Would you, my dear?”
Guilt spasmed Margrit’s skin and ended in a sheepish laugh as she crept around the corner to peer into Janx’s chambers. The dragonlord was draped across his chaise lounge, indolent and clearly terribly pleased with himself. The twins were curled up in armchairs, both of them peeking back at Margrit as if they were children rather than hundreds of years her elders. Alban stood just within the doorway, wry humor curving his mouth. “I’m afraid you’re less sneaky than you thought.”
“I wasn’t trying to be,” Margrit protested. “I just stopped to listen. I forgot you could smell me.”
“And hear your breathing,” Kate offered.
“And your heartbeat,” Ursula finished.
Margrit put a hand over her face. “Remind me of my inadequacies, why don’t you.”
“Hardly.” Janx unwound from his couch and came to stand before her at his full height, a gambit that would have been more imposing had Alban, slightly taller and considerably broader, not been a few feet away. Margrit crooked a smile at the dragonlord, whose expression was mixed with challenge and curiosity. “Have you set the wheels in motion already, my dear? I would so dearly love to admire your alacrity.”
“I’m not here to talk about that.”
Janx’s lips thinned and he turned to Alban. “She’s gotten very bold, hasn’t she. I don’t think we frighten her anymore.”
“I’ve been dead,” Margrit muttered. “You can’t trump that.”
“An excellent point.” Good humor restored, Janx fluttered an extravagant bow and gestured Margrit toward seating. Alban, looking dour at not having been invited himself, followed, then shot Margrit a sly wink as he took over the lounge Janx had abandoned. Grinning, she settled down against him and deliberately pulled his arm over her shoulder to snuggle comfortably before looking up to see Janx’s mercurial features gone duck-lipped with exasperation.
“Forgive me,” Alban said with enormous innocence. “The other chairs are less well suited to my build.”
“I am losing all control.” Janx pulled another chair up to the chess table and flung himself in it with the abandon of a tantrum-throwing two-year-old.
Margrit, unable to stop herself, applauded in the same lazy fashion she’d seen him do in the past. Janx, knowing himself out-played, laughed and spread his hands in defeat. “Very well. What are you here to discuss, Margrit Knight, if not my oldest rival’s downfall?”
Alban shifted behind Margrit, the tiny motion somehow conveying dismay. Janx’s smile lit up. “Oh, you didn’t know. Really, Alban, you might have guessed. I could hardly let Detective Pulcella go for anything less.” By the end of his speech, his smile had fallen away, leaving reptilian coolness in his jade eyes.
“I might have,” Alban murmured, “and yet I hadn’t. Must it go like this, Janx?”
“It always has.” An unexpected flash of injury darkened his gaze. “And Eliseo, this time, has taken it upon himself to stand on honor, and not let certain unfortunate events be forgotten.”
“That’s not his fault.” Margrit was surprised to hear her own voice, as though Alban and Janx had been carrying on a conversation and she, like the twins, had been left to listen in silence a long time. “Or—Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to be furious either way. Might as well leave it alone.” She set her teeth together deliberately, trying to stop talking.
Janx, eyebrows elevated as high as they could reach, said, “You can’t possibly expect me to let that go now, Margrit.”
Exasperated with herself, Margrit sighed. “No, I can’t. The djinn made a deal with Daisani, Janx. I don’t know when. After the quorum. It had to be after the quorum, maybe when Malik died. That gave them something
