House of Cards

CHAPTER 13

"Margrit." Alban stood a mere handful of steps beyond the office door, his white hair colored to neon blue and surprise clear in his voice. For a moment Margrit saw him as an outsider might: in his human form, his broad shoulders and alabaster skin were as discreet as they could be within the casino’s walls. Even so, he looked dangerous in the manner of a big man-dangerous because anyone so well dressed and well coiffed in Janx’s House of Cards was an employee. Mortals not privy to Janx’s true nature still knew him for what he was in the human world: a crimelord, able to buy and sell people and their dreams as easily as others might buy and discard a newspaper. A man of Alban’s physical stature and quiet grace was the sort who would be sent after bad debts and old loans. Even his coloring was a beacon of warning to the human mind, for no one so pale could be entirely natural. Human nature dictated two options when presented with something new and potentially alarming: retreat or explore.

Margrit reared back as if she’d retreat, then scowled at the door behind her. Janx’s office provided nothing like a safe haven, and returning would lose her what little autonomy she’d just earned. Jaw set, she looked back at Alban, whose expression hadn’t yet cleared. "Margrit, why are you here?"

"What does it matter?" Abrasiveness did nothing to keep emotion away. She wanted to dart forward and crash into the solidness of Alban’s body, to find shelter in his arms, and wanting that angered her. "I got involved in your world, Alban. I can’t get away from it now just because you make a couple of sweeping statements." She twisted to the side as she passed the gargoyle, trying not to brush his clothes.

"Margrit." Alban’s voice arrested her. "It matters because Janx should have released you from your vow to protect Malik."

"Know what?" Margrit turned to face him, hands knotted at her sides. "Believe it or not, I got that covered, Alban. I dealt with it, so you went and broke your vaunted neutrality for absolutely nothing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had an incredibly bad day, and I need Biali to take me home before my friends start to worry."

"Biali?"

An unkind pulse of gladness swept her at Alban’s tone. Out of everyone she might have admitted to relying on, Biali would cut the deepest, and Margrit knew it. She’d shared memories with Alban, giving her a sense of the female gargoyle both he and Biali had loved, and over whom they’d fought. It was petty to lash out with Biali’s name as a weapon, but Margrit had a greater sense of injury than justice.

"I’m here, lawyer." The other gargoyle appeared at the end of the hall, arms folded against his thick chest as he leaned against the wall. Alban’s eyes darkened and a nasty mix of smugness and guilt sizzled through Margrit, the latter suddenly turning to a kind of hopeful desperation.

"What do you want from me, Alban?" She lowered her voice. "My life got turned upside down when I met you. Straightening it out is killing me, because I don’t really want it to go back to the way it was. I don’t want you to walk away from me. If I haven’t made that clear, maybe it’s because I don’t know how the hell to make this work, either. What do you want me to do?"

"Carry on." Alban’s gravelly voice scraped along her spine. "You seem to be doing well enough on your own." He stalked into Janx’s office, the door crashing shut behind him. Margrit, fists clenched and eyes downcast, admitted she’d deserved that.

"Come on, lawyer." The acid usually present in Biali’s voice was gone, replaced with a sympathetic note he seemed uncomfortable with. "He’s not worth it."

Instead of saying Hajnal thought he was, Margrit held her tongue and let Biali take her home.

Janx turned with raised eyebrows and an expression of bemusement as the door slammed behind Alban. "Stoneheart."

"What’s she doing here, Janx?" Alban made no pretense at calm, knowing himself for a bad liar at the best of times. "We had a bargain."

"Which I’m keeping. So, in fact, is she. Your word on Malik’s safety in the darkness, hers in the daylight, and I’m impressed, if dismayed, at the hand she’s played. Alban, my old friend, I do believe you’re in a temper. I didn’t even know you had one." Janx put a finger over his lips in an exaggerated gesture. "No, wait, of course you do. It was you who shattered Biali’s face, wasn’t it. How careless of me to forget."

Alban curled a fist against an invasive image of Margrit’s dark warmth clasped in Biali’s thick arms. Of all the thing he’d imagined when he’d turned away from her, that she might go to his rival had never occurred to him. Biali didn’t like the human lawyer, and Alban had thought the feeling mutual. To find himself wrong seemed to turn the blood in his veins to slurry, making each heartbeat thick and painful. "I want her out of this, Janx."

"You should have thought of that before you revealed yourself to her. You know as well as I do that there’s no easy turning back once they’re part of our world." Janx flicked a careless hand. "Oh, perhaps if she gathered her wits about her and ran far and long, but I don’t think Margrit’s the sort. Be done with her, Alban, and tell me what I want to know. We have," he added pointedly, "a bargain."

"I’m not your creature, Janx. Don’t test me." Despite that warning, Alban drew a deep breath, then inclined his head. Janx had satisfied the rituals of asking that the memories be searched, and to do so and refuse an answer was outside of Alban’s scope, outside his comprehension. "The selkies are gone. I have no other answer for you."

A shadow contorted Janx’s features. "That’s not possible."

"The last memory we gargoyles have of the selkies is their retreat into the sea, centuries ago. If you don’t believe me, ask Biali."

"I have." Janx spat the admission, his face twisting when he saw Alban’s surprise. "I know what I said. I didn’t want to taint your answers. You’re the less likely to amend your responses to thwart a rival, but I had to be sure. It’s possible memories have been kept apart. Kept private."

Alban’s broad shoulders moved in a dismissive shrug. "It is our custom to preserve specific personal memories from the whole, when asked. You know that better than most. But this last memory is one the selkies clearly intended to share. What’s driving this, Janx? Not Margrit’s selkie girl."

"She’s only a harbinger." Janx stalked to his table and flung a folder across it. Alban stopped it with a fingertip and regarded the dragonlord for a long steady moment. Janx glanced away, as much apology for or admission of rudeness as he was likely to offer, and Alban opened the file.

Photo after photo showed human bodies lying in graphic displays of gruesome death, shredded and torn as though they’d been flailed. He turned the photographs over one at a time, studying each briefly before going on to the next. Four men, none of them familiar to him, but linked together by the manner of their deaths, if nothing else. Memory rose unbidden, whispering to him that one people among the Old Races used this method of killing. And yet it wasn’t that race Alban put a name to, asking instead, "Eliseo?"

"You have grown suspicious, Stoneheart. How admirable. And yes, obviously, using the selkie girl’s appearance as a cover." Janx leaned over the table and planted a finger on the pile of photos. "But why then would he agree to Margrit’s terms?"

"Margrit’s terms," Alban repeated heavily, certain he didn’t want to hear what they were, yet just as sure he should.

Janx looked up from the photographs of his men. "Oh, of course. Sleeping Beauty knows nothing of what passes while she slumbers. Margrit’s gone to work for Daisani, Alban. How nicely your court is divided-thee for me, and she for he."

Stone’s unyielding aspect rolled the words over his skin, refusing to absorb them. Alban had warned her more than once against accepting gifts from Daisani, against making bargains with Janx. It struck him that Margrit, too, could harden like stone, and let all the wisdom in the world slough off her. His eventual answer was half a question, and all weary regret: "For Malik’s safety."

Janx flashed a smile. "As you say. It was clever on her part, annoyingly clever. And Daisani’s agreed to her little plot, so I put it to you again. Why would he, if he were doing this?" He gestured at the photos.

Alban didn’t spare them another glance, still working to comprehend the magnitude of Margrit’s choice. He couldn’t: what it meant for her to work with Daisani was beyond his ability to fathom, except that no matter what he did, she would never be free of the Old Races.

Complex emotion rose in him, cracking stone and leaving the flavor of rock dust in his mind. Relief. Dismay. Chagrin and admiration. He might have called her an enigma, but for the fact she wore her heart on her sleeve and revealed her intentions so clearly.

It occurred to Alban with slow clarity that he was, perhaps, a fool. A fool for pushing her away, and all the more of one for succumbing so swiftly to the most profound of those emotions climbing in him: hope. He shouldn’t allow himself hope when it was he who’d broken off with her so deliberately, and yet. And yet.

He barely knew his own voice as he made an answer to Janx’s question. "Revenge is said to be a dish best served cold. Perhaps having Margrit in his court-out of yours-is worth more to him than Malik’s timely demise."

Janx darted a lizard-quick look at him. "Not a statement I would expect from you, Korund. Has she changed your worldview so dramatically, so quickly? I thought stone did not alter when it alteration found."

"‘Nor bend with the remover to remove,’" Alban murmured. There was too much appropriate to the sonnet just then, and he closed his throat on more, saying instead, "You remember. Somehow that surprises me."

"We all remember," Janx said sharply, before his voice returned to its usual teasing lilt. "You fail to finish the stanza, my friend. Why is that?"

"My worth is not unknown, Janx, nor has it been for three and a half centuries." Interaction with humans changed everything. That was the reason for staying apart; it was how and why those Old Races who survived kept their identities, both individually and racially. Alban had clung to that belief for two hundred years, holding himself apart, uncorrupted, untouched by the human world.

And all around him, the Old Races had adapted, leaving him behind as a relic of a long-gone way of survival. A life outside the shadows had seemed an impossibility for someone such as himself, and he had been content to live in the darkness. This wanting, this desiring something more-gargoyles did not find themselves in such a position. Alban sighed, turning his attention back to Janx. "She said she met a selkie a few nights ago."

"Kaimana Kaaiai. A philanthropist," Janx said distastefully. "He’s helping the city turn our speakeasy into a tourist showcase. Too rich to be tempted by much Eliseo could offer, and presumably not stupid enough to start hunting my men in traditional selkie fashion. It’s not impossible, but I’d consider it improbable. And his visit’s been planned for weeks. Daisani’s had time to set it up."

"You’ve proven it only takes a few hours to set a trap, if the stakes are high enough." Alban moved to the windows, watching the casino below.

Janx’s chuckle followed him. "When opportunity knocks it shouldn’t go unanswered. If it’s Daisani, why wouldn’t Kaaiai put a stop to it? Is he willing to risk making an enemy of me?"

"Maybe you’re less alarming than Eliseo." Alban heard Janx’s huff of indignation and smiled. "Maybe he doesn’t know. Do the news stories say, ‘The victim was employed by the notorious House of Cards, an illegal gambling establishment run by a man known only as Janx?’ Is the method of murder being reported in the papers?"

"Stoneheart." Janx’s tone turned sour. "Of course not. I wouldn’t allow the one, and the police wouldn’t allow the other. They don’t want copycats."

"So it’s sheer arrogance on your part to assume that Kaaiai has even the slightest idea your men are dying." Alban put a hand against the glass, idly testing its strength. It flexed slightly, enough to tell him how little effort it would take for him to shatter it. "You forget, Janx, that not all of us are caught up in the game you and Eliseo play."

"You say that as though you aren’t."

"No." Alban curved his fingers against the glass, nails slicking over it where talons would scrape, then turned back to Janx. "No, I think that’s a mistake I’ll never make again. Where is Malik, dragonlord? I have a duty to render."

"You don’t trust Eliseo’s word?"

"I won’t risk Margrit’s life on it. Solve this riddle, Janx. Loosen us all from these ties that bind us."

"It’s a Gordian knot, old friend. One loop loosened draws another one in." Janx fell silent, leaving his last thoughts unvoiced and still ringing too clearly in Alban’s ears: that Margrit Knight was the thing drawn inexorably closer, no matter how he might try to free her.

Malik curled a lip and dissipated when Alban approached, highlighting the difficulty of both protecting and damaging a djinn. Setting watch over any of the Old Races seemed an exercise in futility; part of the reason they’d survived despite small populations was they were simply not easy to kill.

Still, the djinn hadn’t gone far, the white corundum he carried a flare in Alban’s mind if he chose to follow it. Only one other stone within the city was as easy to locate, but the egg-shaped star sapphire he’d once gifted Hajnal with lay belowground, safe with his own belongings in Grace’s hideaway. Other pieces of corundum, less significant, itched at him when he put effort into sensing Malik’s stone, but none of them had the same pull. Alban crouched on the warehouse roof, waiting patiently for Malik to move far enough away from the casino to be worthy of concern. It was a far cry from the vigilance Alban showed in watching over Margrit, but her speed, strength and size were only human.

Her wit, however, was beyond him. Alban made a fist and pressed his knuckles against the rooftop, balancing himself on three points. Had he imagined she might turn to Eliseo Daisani when he refused to involve himself more deeply in her life, he might have chosen differently. Bad enough for her to have bargained with Janx. Adding a debt of any sort to Eliseo on top of that made her safe exit from his world virtually impossible.

Which had been her point all along. Alban sighed, half tempted to shift into his gargoyle form so he could wrap his wings about himself, a proper shroud of frustrated dismay. All his centuries of standing apart had taught him how difficult it was to remain uninvolved. Margrit could never leave the Old Races behind without leaving the city. Even then, word would spread through the network that kept them all connected. In time, no matter where she went, if any of the Old Races lived there and needed human help, they would come to her.

And he’d known that when he’d approached her two months earlier. Known it and let himself break habit and caution and speak to her anyway, with far more appalling consequences than he could have dreamed. As a youth he’d fought one of his own kind, and stayed his hand less from mercy or fear of exile-he’d been too young then to appreciate what that meant-than from an unalterable belief that no crime was as great as taking the life of one of his own people.

Biali had thought little of his choice, for all that it was his life Alban had spared. Hajnal had thought better of it, though she’d held the opinion that fighting over women was for humans, and she’d scolded Alban with a disgusted silence for a full six months before relenting. Neither of them would have thought that Alban could rise up in a protective rage and save the life of a human woman by taking a gargoyle’s.

He flinched, the memory still raw and unacceptable. Ausra had been insane, driven mad at birth when her dying mother’s memories had cascaded into an unformed mind, but reason had had very little to do with Alban’s choice that night. He had moved instinctively and placed Margrit’s life above Ausra’s, even knowing there was a slim chance the latter was his own daughter. Time and examination of her memories had told him she was not; she had been a daywalker, Hajnal’s near-impossible child by a human captor. Hajnal’s daughter, Alban’s last link to his one-time life mate, and he had taken her life.

His fist tightened against the concrete, knuckles bearing down as though to leave an impression there. Not quite his last link; memories passed from one gargoyle to another upon a death, so nothing was ever completely lost to them. The mental link they all shared made intimacy easy and deception difficult; it was why he’d stood apart as thoroughly as he could. Hajnal’s memories had passed through Ausra, shattering her infant mind and leaving her with a bewildering, meaningless array of information that she had never found a way to cope with. Alban had received them on Ausra’s death, and through painstaking meditation had sorted madness from truth, trying to fully understand the sequence of events that had led Ausra to her demise at his hands.

He blanched again, a tiny physical reaction that struck him each time he faced that truth. Emotion ran deeper than guilt, ringing closer to bafflement. Ausra’s death was a memory he kept in a box, barely able to look at, much less comprehend how it had come to be. Intellectually, he could follow the steps, but it became a disaster of rage and fear and protective impulses when he struggled to sort out his feelings. For one moment in the conflict the question had been Ausra’s life or his own, and he’d been willing to choose her over himself. It was only when Margrit’s life was endangered that he’d acted against what he believed to be his every impulse. Even that he thought he might in time come to terms with.

What made the memory unbearable was the fear that he would make the same choice again.

"You think too loud, Korund."

Alban opened his eyes, not allowing himself the luxury of another flinch. Biali stood a few feet away in his blunt human form, taking no notice of the rooftop wind that cut through his T-shirt. Never handsome, his scarred features were contorted with anger so deep it seemed to come from the bone. He held himself so still Alban could see muscle trembling with the effort, and that was unnatural for a gargoyle. "How long have you been there, Biali?"

"Long enough."

Dread and relief released themselves as a wave of exhaustion. Bad enough to be caught with a criminal’s secret, but for a gargoyle-for him-it might be worse still to go undiscovered. "Where’s Margrit?"

A smirk came into Biali’s whole being, changing his stance and the cant of his head. "Thought she’d be a screamer, but no, silent as sunrise."

Fury flashed through Alban, searing weariness away. He didn’t realize he’d moved until he was already stretched through the air in a lion’s leap better suited to his natural form. Biali laughed and stepped aside, letting Alban hit the rooftop in a roll that made his pale suit filthy and brought him to his feet yards away from the stumpy gargoyle. "There’s the man I used to know. Willing to fight when something mattered. Pity you didn’t fight for her, Korund. She might not have flown in my arms tonight." His smirk contorted into a sneer and he jerked his chin toward the perch Alban had abandoned. "Go back to playing watchdog, ‘Stoneheart.’ It suits you better than meddling with the world."