The Silenced Tale, стр. 108
The air around us shivers and tingles with ozone. The emergency lights flicker and crackle. A low chuckle builds like fog around us, echoing in the rubble. From the direction of the ballroom, I hear people begin to shout and panic once again.
Bevel’s eyes widen as recognition settles there. He places a hand on Pip’s shoulder, fingers brushing her bare nape. His own voice heavy with the Shadow Hand’s less savory Words of Revelation, Words of Dominance, and Words of Binding, he shouts: “Viceroy, former right hand of King Carvel Tarvers, betrayer and traitor, I compel you with your second name to show yourself, to come before us unarmed!”
Kintyre starts and looks around, eyes wide. “I don’t know his other name!” he hisses.
“I got it,” Pip says, and sets Ahbni’s head down on the ground gently to stand. Her chest is splotched with blood, a grim waistcoat to go with her elbow-length red gloves. She throws her head back and bellows: “Child and Heir of Solinde! By the Deal-Maker magic carved into my bones, put there by your own hand, I compel you to appear before us!”
The laughter careens up into an incredulous screech. “How do you know her name? How do you know?” the Viceroy squeals.
“Show yourself!” I shout.
The laugh condenses, tightens, crystallizes. Just over my left shoulder.
I spin around, snap the tie holding Smoke into its sheath, and heft the sword. Then I stumble back a step when the Viceroy wraps one gloved hand around the sword’s tip. “My dear Lordling Turn,” he hisses, “all you needed to do was ask.”
Chapter 15 Forsyth
I slash the blade at his face. The Viceroy dodges backward, laughing with a manic grin that is cartoonish in its grimacing horror. Pip bolts across the floor to intercept him, sword flashing, and once more, I am grateful that my wife enjoys exercise and jogs so often. But her sword work is clumsy, and she telegraphs her movements too easily. He dodges her, as well.
“Ah, Mrs. Turn! Where’s that implausible spawn of yours? Is she well?” the Viceroy asks conversationally, skipping backward, as if we had met on the street in passing instead of in the midst of pursuing him with blades drawn. His footsteps leave acid-green scorch marks on the cement, magic bolstering his retreat, making him fleet and nimble.
“You don’t get to talk about her,” Pip snarls, slashing at him again.
“Oh?” the Viceroy asks, eyebrow cocked, and he spins hard on the ball of his foot, doubling back and skidding to a stop over Ahbni’s supine body. He straddles her shoulders, hands on his hips, and giggles.
Kintyre and Bevel, who had been pacing us to try to find their own opening, spin quick to face him, weapons high. Bevel fires the ray-gun, but the Viceroy deflects it with a spluttering ball of phosphorescence.
“Ah, ah,” he says. “Mind yourself. You wouldn’t want to harm her, now, would you?”
“I thought you didn’t care about your new sidekick,” Bevel challenges.
The Viceroy sighs in delight, as if just looking at Bevel is as relaxing and refreshing as a hot cup of coffee on a chilly morning. We are all sweating and red-faced, stinking of adrenaline and desperation in this airless, lightless concrete box, but one glance at Bevel’s face and the Viceroy looks like he has just stepped out of the most pleasant springtime meadow.
“Oh, Bevel,” the Viceroy says, voice dropping to a seductive register, and it is close, intimate. “Hello.”
In an instant, he’s abandoned his perch over Ahbni, and is pressed right up against Bevel’s body like a lover. Bevel tries to flip the gun around, to aim it at the Viceroy’s head, and a tendril of green magic wraps itself around Bevel’s wrist and wrenches his hand behind his back, jamming it upward so hard I can hear Bevel’s shoulder pop. A flare of green flame consumes the ray-gun, and the prop melts right out of Bevel’s hand, pooling in a puddle of hot plastic on the floor and filling the room with the acrid stench of burning chemicals.
My brother-in-law only grimaces and grunts, grinding his molars together, not giving the Viceroy the satisfaction of voicing his pain.
“I’ve missed you,” the Viceroy whispers. His hand on Bevel’s cheek is tender, and light, but also strong; his fingers brush the lower lid of Bevel’s left eye, seeking out the scar that Bootknife had left in the furrow under his eye two decades prior, when Bevel had been young, and strong, and handsome. “You’ve gotten older, but your eyes . . . your fine, blue eyes are the same. Oh, Bevel, what a cruel mistress Time is. Look at you and Kintyre—old men. White hair and wrinkles and sagging faces. I should pluck out your eyes now, before they are lost behind cataracts. Would you thank me for it, preserving your one true beauty? I think you would.”
“Get off him!” Kintyre snarls.
“Tut tut, Great Hero of Hain,” the Viceroy teases. “So jealous. You’ve shared him often enough before. Surely you can’t object to letting me have a taste?”
The Viceroy, golden eyes on Kintyre, slowly and deliberately leans forward and bites Bevel’s bottom lip.
“Aren’t you sick of playing second to this brainless barbarian?” the Viceroy smears against Bevel’s grimace. The rest of us dare not try to attack now, lest he use Bevel as a shield, or decide to kill him immediately and toss him aside. “Join me, Bevel. I’ll cast off the girl. I’d rather have you instead.”
“Rot in all seven of the hells,” Bevel sneers, turning his head as far away as he is able.
The Viceroy sighs dramatically and pushes Bevel back hard. Kintyre is there, though, keeping him from breaking his arm in his fall, getting his trothed immediately back on his feet. The Viceroy paces back to Ahbni, daringly presenting his back to us.
“So, I am stuck with this one, aye?