Unbinding (9 page)

He frowned. “I hadn’t thought of that. I should have. I’ve grown accustomed to thinking of you as you are, not as my Queen once feared you to be, but if your magic still looks a great deal like a binder’s, then that is possible. Though I would expect even a half-dead deity to be able to tell the difference.”

“What do you mean,
if
my magic still looks like a binder’s? Why wouldn’t it look the same as it used to?
Kish
is supposed to be unalterable.”

“Your ground doesn’t change, but the magic that flows through it is shaped by the ground and by you—your thoughts, actions, habits, beliefs. As you grow and change, so does your magic, within the parameters established by your
kish
.” His brows drew down. “Hasn’t Eharin explained this?”

“Eharin presents definitions and theory and tells me what to do. She observes my efforts. She doesn’t answer questions—unless you consider it an answer to say that I’m not ready for that knowledge yet. Or that it touches on an area not covered by our agreement.”

He muttered something she didn’t catch, except for one significant word. She grinned. “If that was some version of ‘a pox on her house,’ I agree. It would be so satisfying to blame these stupid doubts on her, but—”

His eyebrows flew up. He said encouragingly, “Doubts?”

She used one hand to wave that away. “Never mind.”

“Kai.” He tugged on her braid. “If there’s something I’ve done or not done, you need to tell me.”

“No, no. I didn’t want to talk about it because I don’t understand it, but I guess it’s okay if you know. Lately—not all the time, but sometimes—I get hit by all these doubts. About me, you, anything, or everything.” She scowled in frustration. “I can tell I’m not being reasonable, but that doesn’t make it
stop.”

“Ah.” He ran a hand down her back soothingly.

“What kind of ‘ah’ is that?” she asked, rearing back to look at him suspiciously.

“Now, there’s a question I don’t know how to answer.”

“It sounded like a knowing
ah.
”

“That’s a bit strong. I wouldn’t say that I
know
what’s bothering you.”

“Don’t stop there.”

“Maybe I’ve a notion, but I’m not going to be like those women’s magazines, handing out advice at the drop of a—”

“Nathan.” She gripped his shoulders but refrained from shaking him. “Tell me your notion.”

He sighed. “Your problem is that you don’t know what you want.”

That was just silly. “Of course I do. I want to help others with my Gift. And you. I know I want you.”

“And I’m glad of it, but I’m talking about larger wants, the framework everything else grows from—the
kith
of your identity, you might say. It’s why the Queen’s offer troubles you, why you haven’t told her yes or no.”

“Maybe I haven’t given the Queen an answer because it takes time to make a decision like that! We’re talking about the entire rest of my life. She recognized that. She doesn’t need an answer right away.”

“You wouldn’t have to hunt an answer if you truly knew what you wanted. You’d have to think to see how her offer fit or didn’t fit, but you’d have a way of deciding. Instead you’ve got a big smear of uncertainty that’s leaking out over everything, making doubts spring up like weeds. And look there.” His mouth took a wry twist. “There’s why I should’ve kept my mouth shut. You’re working your way around to being mad.”

She was, and that was stupid and unfair. She’d asked, hadn’t she? Insisted he tell her, and now he had, and it made her mad. And it just made her madder that he’d noticed she was being stupid and unfair. “I don’t—”

There was a rap on the door, then Benedict’s voice: “My Rho would appreciate it if you’d join him in the great room. He’s got a problem you might be able to help with.”

T
HE
great room was a long, inviting room at the back of the house. A big fireplace held down one end; an oversize dining table, the other. In between were couches and chairs that made up three seating groups and a wall of windows that looked out on the back deck. Kai liked the room’s colors—rich browns and several shades of green with splashes of yellow, like sunshine breaking through forest branches. Personally, she’d add a few touches of sky blue . . . but she was always mentally altering or adding to the colors in other people’s spaces.

Color was important. The colors people surrounded themselves with mattered, yet too many people settled for bland. Ask a hundred people what their favorite color was, and not one would say “beige.” Yet that’s what half or more of them lived with.

Tonight she didn’t pay much attention to the room’s colors, however, or to the colorful thoughts of the people in it. She was too busy wishing they’d stayed in a hotel in spite of the excellent food here. She and Nathan hadn’t been loud, but they didn’t have to be. Not around lupi. Benedict didn’t give any indication of having overheard their argument, but Benedict wouldn’t give any indication of having caught on fire, either—other than briskly and efficiently putting it out.

“Can I get you something to eat or drink?” Benedict asked.

“Nothing for me,” Nathan said.

Kai shook her head. Why was Benedict here, anyway? It was after eight. Shouldn’t he be home with Arjenie?

Hospitality taken care of, Benedict moved to one of the couches. The coffee table in front of it held a disassembled gun of some kind. It was large and military-looking. Benedict picked up one of the pieces and a white cloth and began wiping it down.

Their host and the Rho of Nokolai Clan stood near the fireplace. He wore jeans and a plain green shirt and looked not at all wolfish. If Puck had decided to masquerade as a village blacksmith, Kai thought he would have looked just like Isen Turner—burly and bearded, with arms that could swing a hammer all day and a spark of amusement burning bright in his eyes.

The cell phone in his hand seemed an anachronism. “Yes, I know you do . . . hold on a moment, please.” He smiled at Nathan and Kai. His thought-colors went well with the room—lots of greens with swirls of midnight blue and a few yellow crinkles, but a worried sludge-colored snake wound through them at the moment. “I’m speaking with my pigheaded son and my lovely new daughter—who is, if anything, even more stubborn than her husband. They don’t trust the rest of us to handle the situation. You might be able to talk some sense into them.”

“I don’t know that words can put sense into someone who lacks it,” Nathan said, “but I don’t think your son lacks sense.”

“Many times I’d agree with you. Tonight, sadly, I cannot.”

Nathan’s phone dinged from back in their room. “I’ll be back,” he said, and headed quickly for the hall.

“Very few people have that number,” Kai explained. “It’s probably important. Not that your request isn’t, but—”

“But it may be less urgent? Of course. Would you object to answering some questions?”

“No, though Nathan could do that better than—”

“Thank you.” With that, he handed her his phone.

She looked at the phone in her hand, unsure why she’d accepted it. With a sigh she held it up. “This is Kai. You have some questions I can help with?”

“Don’t be too upset with Isen,” a cool soprano voice told her. It sounded like she was on speakerphone. “It’s hard on him, being unable to order us around.”

That was Lily Yu, the Special Agent who’d stopped a god from destroying Earth. Dyffaya had come all too damn close to unbalancing the world’s time-stream in an effort to gain entry. Lily sounded pretty wide awake for someone who couldn’t have been up long. Kai had only a sketchy notion of international time zones, but she thought it was pretty much dark-thirty in France. “I see why Isen can’t give you orders,” she said, “since you’re FBI, but Rule is his heir, right? He can give his heir orders.”

This time a male voice spoke. “I am also Rho of Leidolf. Isen can expect obedience from his Lu Nuncio. He can’t give orders to another Rho.”

Kai had been told Rule was heir or Lu Nuncio to his own clan and Rho of another. She didn’t understand how he could be both, but she didn’t need to figure out lupi politics right this minute. “Listen, I feel like I’ve been thrust into the middle of a family spat, but if I understand right, the two of you intend to cut short your honeymoon and return here?”

“Of course,” Rule said.

“Don’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He sounded like an English nobleman confronted by unexpected insolence—ever so politely astonished. It made Kai grin. “The thing is, we—Nathan and I—are convinced Dyffaya is behind today’s chaos outbreak. I know the, uh, the black dragon—” For some reason the Eldest didn’t use his title here, so she wouldn’t, either—“couldn’t say for sure, but Nathan can. His certainty is based on instinct, but when it comes to a Hunt, his instinct is more reliable than gravity.” Gravity could be fooled, given the right spell. Nathan couldn’t. Not about a Hunt.

“And for some reason,” Lily Yu said, “you think that means we should stay away.”

“Did Isen tell you that Dyffaya used to be the god of revenge?”

“Yes, but he isn’t the god of revenge now, so whatever spiritual stuff is associated with being god of that, he can’t tap into it.”

“No, but he’s got a high opinion of revenge and plenty of other powers to tap into. He’s going to put a priority on payback. At the moment we figure Nathan is his primary target, but I’d bet you’re high on his to-do list. If you show up here, he might put his revenge on Nathan on hold long enough to deal with you.”

“Nadia,” Kai heard Rule say, then the voices went faint and muffled. Someone had put a thumb over the phone’s mic. After a moment, Lily Yu came back on. “You seem to be assuming that he won’t come after me in France.”

“He can’t. At the moment, he’s strictly a local deity.”

“You want to explain that?”

“I’ll try. I had something of a crash course in godheads right before I left Winter’s court. Um . . . this applies to godheads occupied by a former mortal like Dyffaya, not to Old Ones like your Great Enemy. Most godheads start as local accumulations tied to a particular place. Mountains are popular. Look at how many mountains all over the world are held to be the home of a god or powerful spirit. This is because of the way spiritual power grows, building up like rainwater, with little eddies trickling into larger ones, until there’s enough for it to either become or attract a godhead.”

“Okay,” Lily said slowly. “But all that building-up happened with the chaos god a few millennia ago. He’s obviously broken free of whatever place generated him. Why would he be stuck in San Diego now?”

“That would be easier to explain if I understood it myself.” It had been a hurried lesson, and in elvish. Some of the words hadn’t translated well. “But what I did understand is that Dyffaya is not of our realm. He’s never been worshiped here, so even though he’s been a god a long time, it’s like he’s starting over. He doesn’t have a way to act in our realm except through the chaos energy from the knife Nathan killed. That energy is a mix of spirit and magic, and while spirit is unpredictable, magic isn’t. You know that spells lose coherence over running water, right?”

“They do?”

“Oh, yes. Unless a spell is bound in specific ways, like in a potion, amulet, or artifact, running water separates intention from action. Think of it as a spell coming unraveled. The more water a spell crosses, the stronger the effect, and the ocean is really big. Nam Anthessa could have crossed the ocean. The unbound energy released by its death can’t. Which means that unless Dyffaya has somehow come up with a lot of French worshipers, he can’t get there from here.”

“Are you sure this chaos energy is unbound? If the magic part of it is tangled up with the spiritual part, doesn’t that mean they’re bound up together?”

“No, but—oh, Nathan’s back,” she said with relief as she saw him emerge from the hall. “That explanation is above my pay grade, so I’ll let him handle it.” She raised her eyebrows, asking Nathan what the call had been about. He gave her a reassuring nod, but she wasn’t sure whether that meant, “no big deal” or “I’ll tell you later.” She held out the phone. “I’ve been telling Lily that Dyffaya can’t cross the ocean. She wants to know why chaos energy isn’t the same as the bound energy of a spell.”

“Ah,” he said, and took the phone from her, then stood a moment, rubbing the side of his nose. Then he touched the face of the phone. “Hello, Lily,” he said. “I’ve put you on speaker. Your question takes a fair amount of background to answer. Now, I’m no expert on magical theory, but—”

“No theory,” Lily said firmly. “Please.”

Amusement flickered over Nathan’s face. “A simile, then. The magic in a spell has been put in order, like a ball of yarn. In chaos energy, the yarn isn’t neatly ordered. It’s tangled all up with itself and with snarls of thread, with all of that wrapped around a tiny kernel of true chaos. The thread,” he added helpfully, “being
arguai
, or spirit.”

“I can picture that.”

“Good. I should add that spirit is geographically sticky. It can and does move, but it tends to move in relation to itself.”

“Is that supposed to explain anything? Because I can tell you right now it doesn’t. But never mind—I’ll take your word for it. The chaos stuff can’t get to France, and without it, Dyffaya can’t, either. But that doesn’t matter, because we’ll be on the next flight back.”

“You and Rule both, I suppose?”

“Of course.”

“Hmm.” Nathan considered a moment. “That’s your decision, of course, but you should keep in mind that Dyffaya was born an elf. Elves don’t consider humans as worthy targets for truly elegant revenge. You don’t live long enough. He’ll likely settle for something more pedestrian, but just killing you wouldn’t please him. He’ll be after making you hurt, which means his first target is likely to be your Rule . . . just as he’s already taken a swipe at my Kai.” Nathan looked at Kai as he said that. Something dark and burning hid at the back of his eyes, and red splashed through his colors like spilled blood.

Lily said, “My family.”

“They’re here?”

“In the city, not at Clanhome.”

“He’s more likely to target them if you’re nearby so he can see you suffer.”

Three heartbeats of silence. “Can he watch us from wherever he is, then?”

“He’s a god, so he has some degree of clairvoyance. It’s likely limited, and we don’t know how much or by what factors—but location will be one of them.”

“You think my family is safer if I hide out over here.”

“No guarantees, and it’s not a matter of hiding. But that’s my best guess.”

“Toby,” Rule said, his voice taut. “He’s in North Carolina. How far can Dyffaya reach?”

Toby was Rule’s son, a hard-charging charmer maybe ten years old. When Rule and Lily went on their honeymoon, he’d stayed with Isen, but the day before yesterday he’d left to visit his grandmother on the other side of his family.

“I don’t know,” Nathan told Rule. “I believe it would be somewhere between extremely hard and impossible for the god to reach that far, especially with the Mississippi in between. But I can’t guarantee that he won’t.”

“Can you hold a moment?” The call went mute again, but only briefly. Lily Yu came back on. “Tell Isen we’ll be flying Toby to France. His grandmother, too, if she’ll come.”

“He’ll be safest there with you.”

“He’ll be in France. Whether I am or not is still undetermined. You need a Unit agent. Regular FBI can’t handle this. I haven’t talked to Ruben yet, but—”

“No worries there.” Nathan’s voice was soothing, but amusement shot hot pink through his thoughts. “He’ll be calling you any time now to let you know he’s found a Unit agent. The fellow he’s given the job to is an outsider who will have to use borrowed authority, but I think he can do the job.”

Kai’s eyebrows shot up. She didn’t ask. She knew.

So did Lily Yu. “He’s made
you
a Unit agent?”

“More or less. Seems he had one of his feelings. Ah,” he added, turning toward the front of the house. Kai hadn’t heard anything, but he probably had. “I think some of my borrowed authority has arrived.”

*   *   *

N
ATHAN’S
borrowed authority scowled at him across the big dining room table. “Let’s get one thing clear. You may be able to tell me what to do, but you are not in charge of my people.”

Nathan nodded seriously. “I understand the distinction.”

Special Agent Derwin Ackleford was not happy. He probably wouldn’t have been happy about following any hunch handed down from on high, but one that took him away from his regular caseload and put him at the disposal of someone who wasn’t even Bureau set a whole new record in asininity, in his opinion. Kai knew this because he’d told them so.

He wasn’t seriously angry, though. The amount and shade of red-orange winding through his thoughts suggested aggravation, not rage, and the patterns his colors formed spoke of an orderly mind. “If it makes you feel any better, Special Agent,” she said, “Nathan does have law enforcement experience.”