and a blow about to fall. His pulse beat like a drum inside his skull, and he waited for the pain of whatever reprisal was coming—
“Oh yes,” said their visitor mildly from somewhere behind him. “That would have been very clever of me, Jean Tannen. Leaving myself at the mercy of a strong man and his grudges.”
Jean turned slowly, and saw that the woman was now standing about six feet to his left, by the window where the linens table had once been.
“I hold your true name like a caged bird,” she said. “Your hands and eyes will deceive you if you try to harm me.”
“Gods,” said Jean, suddenly overcome by a vast sense of weary frustration. “Must you play with your food?” He sat down on the edge of Locke’s bed and threw his knife at the floor, where it stuck quivering in the wood. “Just kill me like a fucking normal person. I won’t be your toy.”
“What will you be?”
“I’ll stand still and be boring. Get it over with.”
“Why do you keep assuming I’m here to kill you?”
“If not kill, then something worse.”
“I have no intention of murdering either of you. Ever.” The woman folded her hands in front of her chest. “What more proof do you need than the fact that you’re still alive? Could you have stopped me?”
“You’re not gods,” said Locke, weakly. “You might have us at your mercy, but we’ve had one of you at ours before.”
“Is that meant to be some poor cousin to a threat? A reminder that you just happened to be present when the Falconer’s terrible judgment finally got the best of him?”
“How is dear Falconer these days?” asked Locke.
“Well kept. In Karthain.” The woman sighed. “As he was when agents of Camorr brought him home. Witless and comatose.”
“He didn’t seem to react well to pain,” said Jean.
“And you imagine it was your torture that drove him mad?”
“Can’t have been our conversation,” said Locke.
“His real problem is self-inflicted. You see, we can deaden our minds to any suffering of the flesh. But that art requires caution. It’s extremely dangerous to use it in haste.”
“I’m delighted to hear that,” said Locke. “You’re saying that when he tried to escape the pain—”
“His mind jailed itself, in a haze of his own making,” said the woman. “And so we’ve been unable to correct his condition.”
“Marvelous,” said Locke. “I don’t really care how or why it happened, I’m still glad that it did. In fact I encourage the rest of you to use that power in haste.”
“You do many of us an injustice,” said the woman.
“Bitch, if I had the power I’d pull your heart out of your chest and use it for a handball,” said Locke, coughing. “I’d do it to all of you. You people kill anyone you like and fuck with the lives of those that treat you fairly for it.”
“Despising us must be rather like staring into a mirror, then.”
“I despise you,” said Locke, straining to heave himself up, “for Calo and Galdo, and for Bug, and for Nazca and Ezri, and for all the time we … wasted in … Tal Verrar.” Red-faced and shuddering, he fell back to the empty bed.
“You’re murderers and thieves,” said the woman. “You leave a trail of confusion and outrage wherever you go. You’ve brought down at least one government, and prevented the destruction of another for sentimental reasons. Can you really keep a straight face when you damn us for doing as we please?”
“We can,” said Jean. “And I can take the matter of Ezri very personally.”
“Would you even have met the woman if we hadn’t intervened in your affairs? Would you have gone to sea?”
“That’s not for any of us to say—”
“So we own your misfortunes entirely, yet receive no credit for happier accidents.”
“I—”
“We’ve interfered here and there, Jean, but you’re flattering yourself if you imagine that we’ve drawn such an intricate design around you. The woman died in battle, and we had nothing to do with that. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Are you
The woman came toward Jean, reaching out with her left hand, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to fling himself away. He rose to his feet and stared fiercely down at her as she set warm fingers gently against his cheek.
“Time is precious,” she said. “I lift my ban upon you, Jean Tannen. This is my real flesh against yours. I
Jean shook; the urge to take her at her word, to smash her down, was rising hot and red within him. He would have to strike as fast as he ever had in his life, as hard as muscle and sinew could allow. Break her skull, throttle her, bear her down beneath his full weight, and pray to the gods he did enough damage to postpone whatever word or gesture she would utter in return.
They stood there for a long, tense moment, perfectly still, with her dark eyes meeting his unblinkingly. Then his right hand darted up and closed around her left wrist, savagely tight. He could feel thin bones under thin skin, and he knew that one good sharp twist—
The woman flinched. Real fear shone out from the depths of those eyes, the briefest flash before her vast self-possession rolled in again like resurging waters to drown her human weakness. But it had been there, genuine as the flesh beneath his fingers. Jean loosened his grip, closed his eyes, and exhaled slowly.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I don’t think you’re lying.”
“This is very important,” she whispered.
Jean kept his right hand where it was, and reached up with his left to push back the silver lace that sprouted from her jacket cuff. Black rings were tattooed around her wrist, precise lines on pale skin.
“Five rings,” said Locke. “All I ever heard was that more is better. Just how many can one of you people have, anyway?”
“This many,” said the woman with a hint of a smirk.
Jean released her arm and took a step back. She held her left hand up beside her head and stroked the tattoos gently with the fingers of her other hand. The blackness became silver, rippling silver, as though she wore bracelets of liquid moonlight.
As he stared at the eerie glow, Jean felt a cold itch behind his eyes, and a hard pressure against the fingertips of his right hand. Reeling, he saw images flash in his mind—fold upon fold of pale silk, needles punching in and out of delicate lace, the rough edge of a cloth unraveling into threads—the pressure on his fingers was an actual needle, moving up and down, in an endless steady dance across the cloth.…
“Oh,” he muttered, putting a hand to his forehead as the sensations receded. “What the hell was that?”
“Me,” said the woman. “In a manner of speaking. Have you ever recalled someone by the scent of their tobacco, or a perfume, or the feel of their skin? Deep memories without words?”
“Yeah,” said Locke, massaging his temples. Jean guessed that he’d somehow shared the brief vision.
“In my society, we speak mind to mind. We … announce ourselves using such impressions. We construct images of certain memories or passions. We call them
“What the hell are you?” said Jean.
“There are four of us,” said the woman. “In an ideal world, the wisest and most powerful of the fifth- circles. If nothing else, we do get to live in the biggest houses.”
“You rule the Bondsmagi,” said Locke, incredulously.
