Quince smiled lazily. “Speak for yourself, my dear lady. I’ve had dinner with this one, actually. He’s not a great talker, but I’m sure you can find something to say between the soup and the fish.”
She sat down, at a complete loss as to where to begin seeking common reality. Quince finally took pity. “My lady, it’s like this. Tal Diamond is an Outsider whom Adrian picked up at a trade stop. He’s a product of engineered Elaphite/Human mating, an illegal being in the Republic and Empire. Under sentence of death, at least if Republic authorities discover him—you can see why he’d find life in the Cities more comfortable.”
Iolanthe blinked, but she was taking it in; her first remark was to the point. “Why does that make him a demon?”
Quince answered as one would answer a mathematical query. “Because he’s a soulless being with no sense of right or wrong. Because he has eyes that are yellow or gray, as classical demons should. Because no true companionship can exist with him, as with any creature of hell.” He smiled again. “Because the Lord Cardinal says so.”
“I don’t understand why he’s under sentence of death from the Outside.”
Quince said patiently, “Because Elaphite/Human mating is forbidden. Marriage is allowed, but never children.”
“Why?”
“Because it produces demons. Haven’t you been listening? They don’t call them demons, they call them sociopaths, but it comes to the same thing. ‘Children who never learn to socialize properly.’ I’ve been reading up on the subject—what a lot of words Outsiders take to get to the point.”
She hesitated, not sure she wanted to know. “What do Outsiders mean by not socializing properly?”
He smiled charmingly. “One six-year-old drowned another child who’d taken a stuffed horse from him. Another pushed a female caretaker into a compacter in order to steal her wallet and run away. Acquisitive little buggers, aren’t they? He was actually on another planet when they found him, I gather. And that was just in the first half-dozen demons who were born before the laws went into effect. In fact, there are many other stories—”
She swallowed, hoping she didn’t look pale, and tried to rally. “He’s not a child, though. How old is he?”
“Ah, there you have me. There are four things all Apheans—that’s what they call these Elaphite/Human products, by the way—have in common. Genius IQs, the inability to socialize normally, and a theoretical lifespan that goes on for miles. This one seems about your age; but who knows?”
Iolanthe looked at him with forced coolness; she was nothing if not thorough in her scholarship. “That’s three things. You said four.”
“So I did. The fourth thing is that none of them ever manages to turn theory into practice in the lifespan department. Every one of the little criminals listed in my research managed to get executed by the state or just plain killed by some outraged person before their fortieth birthday—a fair number while still in adolescence, in fact. Makes you wonder what they were like as toddlers, doesn’t it? Talk about hiding the kitchen knives.”
Io had a sudden, horrifying thought. “You’re not making all this up, are you?”
He seemed amused rather than offended. “My lady, may I ask what prompts this paranoia?”
“Well, you don’t seem very … serious about this. You’re telling me about a creature of hell.”
“Oh, a bit of hell here, a bit of hell there.” He shrugged cheerfully. “One gets used to it.” This left her feeling more alarmed than ever, and it must have showed, because he chuckled and said, “It’s just my way, lady. Pay it no mind.”
To cover her embarrassment, she said, “Well, why should we be troubled by a demon anyway, even if the Diamond Protector did invite him? Why doesn’t the Lord Cardinal notify the Empire, or somebody, at the next stop to come and take him away?”
“Invite Outside troops onto Three Cities territory? Are you out of your mind? My dear lady—”
There had followed a long discourse on the inadvisability of setting any precedents that gave over sovereign power, especially for so petty a reason as the wish to annoy Adrian by throwing out his demon. Annoying Adrian had not been one of Iolanthe’s aims at all; she’d been thinking solely from a moral point of view. The weather of adulthood was going to be choppy indeed if Hartley Quince was anything to judge by.
Well, at least her bodyguard had finally shown up, this very morning, with an order currently dated; so he wasn’t, technically, late. Sergeant William Stockton, said his ID; City Guard. “Sorry if you were expecting me earlier, my lady. I was reassigned here pretty suddenly. Maybe they had somebody else in mind, and it didn’t work out.” Io held out her hand so she could practice being gracious with him. Tall, dark, and striking, if not classically handsome—this was far better than Hartley Quince, who was like extra-sweetened tea in a china cup. And here the heroic-looking fellow was, escorting her to some other man, like the stuff of legend. If this was a book, she and the sergeant would fall irrevocably in love and be doomed together to some awful fate.
“Mind if I look over your quarters, m’lady?” The prosaic request made her grin suddenly. So much for Tristan and Iseult.
“Please feel free, Sergeant. Someone will be coming to tutor me in a few minutes, though—that won’t be a problem, will it?”
“No,” he said abstractedly, opening the door to her bedroom and stepping inside. “Just go on with everything as though I’m not here.”
Even with her sheltered life, Io knew that this would not be quite possible. However, they could pretend. At ten o’clock she admitted Hartley Quince for their daily lesson, wondering when her mother would sweep in with hospitable suggestions for the officer’s comfort. Fortunately it took Vivian at least two hours each morning to get her hair put up to her satisfaction; without that, these sessions would not have been productive at all. “Good
