Hands of Flame

“Margrit, this is Sam. The opening statements for the Davison trial have been moved up to this afternoon.”

“They were supposed to be Friday!” Margrit overrode the receptionist’s apologies with her own. “Sorry, it’s not your fault they moved it. Look, Jim’s prepared to take the case on alone. I’ll come in as cocounselor, but this is his as of Monday anyway.” She glanced at her watch again, promising she’d be at the courthouse as soon as possible, then closed the phone with a snap and shot a second glare at the Daisani building.

The single best reason to work for the business mogul was that when Old Races complications cropped up in her life, she could at least explain the situation without causing impossible difficulties. Biting back a curse, she hailed a taxi and returned, with a growing degree of reluctance, to what she still thought of as her real life.

FIVE

SUNSET CAME WITH a blinding burst of pain.

Alban flung himself away from agony, a howl ripping from his throat. He heard stone tear, deep wrenching sound, and a woman’s startled curse, but neither stopped him from snarling and savaging his way forward. Taloned feet dug into the floor, muscle straining with fury. Iron squealed, tearing without breaking. He howled again, reverberating sound so deep plaster crumbled. There was no escape: iron bound him hand and throat and ankle, making walls distant and red with pain. He couldn’t move his hands more than a few inches from his head, chains limiting his range of motion.

Panicked instinct drove him to try transforming, anything to escape the bone-deep fire of iron. Fresh pain spasmed through him, denying him the human form he’d become so accustomed to wearing. Tenterhooks curled into his muscles, ripping with an eye to deliberate, debilitating anguish. Every time, it shattered through him, and yet he could not stop trying.

Somehow he had never imagined it would hurt so badly, not even with Hajnal’s memories of captivity fresh in his mind. Perhaps he’d mistaken the pain of iron bound to flesh and stone for the pain of her injuries, or perhaps the passage of time had muted the outrage. It was possible that the filtering of so many minds experiencing the barbaric sting of slavery had, over the millennia, dulled its edge. If that was so, the gargoyles had lost something even more precious than Alban’s freedom. They were losing the history of their people, of all the Old Races, to the inexorable wear of time. It could be their diminishing numbers as their own range of experience became so limited that they couldn’t fully appreciate, and therefore fully recall, the passions and pains of history.

Three and a half centuries had passed since Alban had last joined in the overmind and shared his experiences with the rest of his people. It happened from time to time; a promise was made to remember, but not to make the memory open to all. They were made for finite periods, until some crux had passed.

Alban, friends with two men of other races, had made a promise to stand a lifetime alone to protect their secrets, and in the thirty and more decades since then he had never seriously considered breaking his word. His people called him the Breach, for selfishly holding back the memories of the last of his family, the Korund line, from the whole; he compounded it now with Hajnal’s family memories buried within him.

Now, bound in chains, his blood recoiling and sending shards of pain through him at each encounter with the metal, it seemed he had something worth breaking his promise for. He could feel the metal’s weight inside him, demanding obedience, and doubted he would be able to stand against any command Biali might give. That, too, was a warning his intellect spoke of: the distant recollection that gargoyles bound by iron could be made an army unable to refuse orders. It wasn’t a worry that had ever haunted him, but now Alban feared blunted memory did his people and all the Old Races no good. If agony shared could sear open the depths of history his people could recall, it might yet be worth betraying onetime friends.

And perhaps the secret he carried for them could alter the status quo the Old Races had lived with for so long. Perhaps that alternation could awaken the Old Races to the possibilities of the future, as a fresh introduction of pained captivity might awaken the gargoyles to their neglected histories.

For shame, Korund. Such brief captivity, leading so easily to thoughts of betrayal. Margrit would say a little forced perspective was good for him.

Margrit. She had been in danger.

Pain surged through him again, inadvertent attempt at transformation, as though wearing a human form might somehow free him from his bonds.

Humanoid. A gargoyle’s natural form was humanoid, unlike the other surviving Old Races. Dragons were sinuous reptiles; selkies, seals in their first-born form; the djinn barely held shape at all, their thoughts made of whirling winds and sand, and the vampires, well: no one saw a vampire’s natural form and lived to speak of it. But gargoyles walked on two legs, stood upright, saw with binocular vision, as much like a man as a member of the Old Races could be.

Gargoyles did not leap and snarl like a dog in chains.

Alban ground taloned toes into the stone floor and surged forward. Rattling chain scraped again, pulling him up short and choking his breath away. He roared fury, words lost to him.

“Sorry, love.”

A woman’s voice again, so unexpected it brought Alban up as short as the chains had, distracting him from pain and rage. Focus swam over him, the words giving him something other than himself to think about. “… Grace?”

“Ah, and so now he comes to his senses.” In the blur of his anger he hadn’t scented her, hadn’t seen her, though a whisper of memory now told him he’d heard her alarmed squeak as he’d awakened so violently. She stood across the room from him, one foot propped against the wall, her arms folded under her breasts. This was her territory, the tunnels beneath the city; she ran a halfway house for teens down here, and had for some months provided sanctuary for Alban himself. His mind was still too muddled to make sense of his awakening there, and she gave him no chance to ask questions. “Sorry for the accommodations, Stoneheart. Biali won’t release you, and I’ll not be risking you tearing down the walls in a fit of temper. I can unfasten the locks that hold you to the floor, but only if you’ll control yourself.”

Alban lowered his head, panting, and even to him, the minutes seemed long before he lifted his gaze again. “I am controlled.”

“Sure and you are,” Grace muttered. “Like a tempest in a teacup. All right, it’s only my own neck then, isn’t it?” She came forward with a key, crouching as Alban relaxed and let slack into his chains.

“I wouldn’t harm you, Grace.” He spoke the promise in measured tones, reminding himself of that truth as much as reassuring her. Grace opened the chains at his ankles, letting them drop to the floor. He came to his feet, hands fisted around the chain at his throat; he was entirely helpless like this, arms folded close to his chest. Eating would be awkward, but he could spare himself that humiliation: stone had no need for regular meals. “We’re in the tunnels. But Biali and I—”

“Were making fools of yourselves on the rooftops,” Grace supplied. “I couldn’t leave you there to fight it out at sunset, now, could I? What were you thinking, Alban?” she added irritably. “You’re bright enough to stay away from that one.”

“He’d taken Margrit. Where is he? Where is she?” Alarm spiked through Alban’s chest and pain rippled over him again as he tried, fruitlessly, to transform. Grace slapped his shoulder, still annoyed.

“Stop that. It looks horrible, as if all the snakes driven from Ireland have taken up under your skin and can’t get free. He is chained up in another sealed-off room, throwing more of a tantrum than you, and I’ve no idea where your lawyer friend is. Better off without you, I’d say,” Grace said sourly. “Not that either you or she will listen to the likes of me.”

Breathless confusion pounded through Alban, counterpart to the pain the chains brought. Speaking helped: being spoken to helped. Even Grace’s clear pique helped push away the bleak, mindless rage. “I do not understand.” He kept the words measured, trusting deliberation over the higher emotions that heated his blood. “How did we come here? What are you doing? What did Biali want?”

“Grace has her tricks, and a few friends to call on when she needs to. I’m trying to stop a fight before it schisms your people,” Grace added more acerbically. “As for what Biali wants, you tell me.”

Alban breathed, “Tricks,” incredulously, then, distracted from the thought, said, “Revenge,” the word heavy and grim and requiring no need of consideration. “Revenge for Ausra.”

Grace stepped back with an air of sudden understanding, speaking under her breath. “So it wasn’t Margrit who saved herself after all. And Biali found it out.” She paced away, then stopped, hands on her hips, chin tilted up, gaze distant on a wall. “Then I’ve done what’s best, haven’t I?”

“What have you done?”

Grace turned, all leonine curves in black leather. “I’ve sent for a gargoyle jury.”

The countdown calendar was at sixteen hours, failing to take into account the after-court work Margrit returned to the office to do. She waved goodbye as coworkers slipped out, and gave the calendar a rueful glance. If she was lucky it wasn’t off by more than three or four hours.

She was alone at sunset, bent over paperwork that gave her a cramp between her shoulder blades, but it redoubled, then racked her with breath-taking shocks of pain. Semifamiliar images crashed through her mind in spasms, too brief and disconcerting for her to hold. They had the feeling of being seen through someone else’s eyes, as though she once more rode memory with Alban. Minutes after the sky went dark with twilight, concrete chambers finally came into resolution, body-wracking shudders fading away. Fingers clawed against her desk, breathing short with astonishment and dismay, Margrit struggled to recognize the rooms. Finally, sweat beaded on her forehead and hands trembling from holding her desk too hard, her own memory clarified where she’d seen them before.

Belowground, in Grace O’Malley’s complex network of tunnels under the city.

There were innumerable ways to enter those tunnels, but only one Margrit felt certain of. She stopped long enough to change shoes, then, still wearing the skirt suit she’d worn to court, left the office at a run.

Minutes later she scrambled over the fence to Trinity Church’s graveyard, all too aware that she had no good explanation if she was caught. She dropped to the ground easily, suddenly surrounded by headstones, some worn beyond readability, others as sharply etched as if they were new. Wilted flowers lay on a handful of graves, though an April breeze caught lingering scent from one bunch and carried it to her. The church itself was a dozen yards away, glowing under nighttime lights, lonely without its tourists and parishioners.

Paths brought her to an inset corner of the church near its front entrance. She glanced over her shoulder, nervous action, and mumbled an apology to the dead as she stepped over a grave and placed her palm against one of the church’s pinkish brown stones, pressing hard.

The scrape of stone against stone sounded hideously loud in the churchyard’s silence. Margrit held her breath, as if that would somehow quiet the opening door, and for a moment heard the city as it actually was, rather than simply the background noise of day-to-day life. Engines rumbled in the near distance, ubiquitous horns honking. The wind carried a voice or two, but most of the sound came from mechanical things.

The door ceased its scrape and she stepped inside it, looking guiltily around the churchyard again. If she’d designed a hidden door, she would have put it at the back of the church, not the front. She saw no one, though, and pressed the door closed again as she used her phone for a flashlight.

The light bounced off pale walls. Margrit blinked at the steep stairs that led downward, never having seen them so clearly before. The walls had been scrubbed, an inch of soot washed away, and the stairway was much brighter for it. She trotted down, curious to see what other changes had been made.

The room at the foot of the stairs was almost as she remembered it, though cleaner. Walls reaching twenty feet on a side had been washed free of their sooty blanket, and the cot settled in one corner no longer touched those walls. A small wooden table was also pulled a few inches away from the wall, its single chair pushed beneath it. Bookcases lined the walls, candles and candleholders set on them. Electric lights had been added, wires looping above the shelves. There was nowhere to cook in the room, nor any obvious ventilation. Only Alban’s books were missing, safe in his chamber in Grace’s domain.

She switched on the lights and tucked her phone back in her pocket before moving Alban’s cot to reveal the flagstone they’d escaped through. It was two feet on a side. Margrit sat down on the cot, dismay rising anew. She’d forgotten its size, and the incredible strength necessary to move it. Even in his human form, Alban was disproportionately strong. Margrit could barely conceive of his gargoyle-form’s strength limitations. Certainly her own weight was inconsequential to him. Half-welcome recollection flooded and warmed her, the memory of his hands, strong and gentle, holding her, guiding her, seeking out her pleasure. In flight, in love, that strength had been sensual.

And in battle it had been terrifying. Margrit made fists and opened them again deliberately, trying to push away the remembrances, and stood to examine the stone. She had no other way to get into Grace’s tunnels, so she would have to lever the stone out somehow. Grooves marked two sides of its sides and she slid her fingers into them, then laughed with frustration at the uselessness of her attempt.

Stone grated against stone again, sound rolling down the stairs. Margrit froze, eyes wide, then spun around in a circle, searching for somewhere to hide. There was nowhere, save under the cot, and for some reason the idea struck her as absurd to the point of embarrassment.

“Pardon me.” A terribly polite voice came from the direction of the stairwell. Margrit, for all she knew someone was coming down the stairs, shrieked in surprise and whipped around again.

An Episcopalian priest with an erratic white beard peered around the corner. “Pardon me,” he repeated drolly. “I hate to interrupt, but I saw you come down, and I feel rather obliged to tell you that—Er, Ms. Knight?”

“Father.” Margrit squeaked the honorific, utterly at a loss to explain herself. “I’m, um. Oh, God. Uh.”

“Merely a representative,” the priest said cheerfully. “Ms. Knight, what an unexpected pleasure. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you in a while. Either of you,” he added more calculatingly. “How is Alban?”