The Scholomance (67 page)

“You are very
wrong,” she corrected herself, hardly able to speak past the anger chewing her
up from the inside. ‘Be cool,’ she thought, and yes, she knew it. Be calm. But
the rage wanted to sing so badly.

“Our laws are
few,” Kazuul said. “And well-understood.”

“This is
bullshit and you know it!” she spat. “He’s a nothing! He’s nobody! Let him go!”

“I? I did not
pull him screaming from his lessons and order him to heel at thy shadow.” Kazuul
raked his eye across Devlin and the man flinched as if physically burned. “Tis
his will alone that hath set this wheel in motion.”

“You were the
one who told him I needed taking care of!”

“I did not send
him to thy side for all time, I only gave him the word that care must be
provided thee one night. One night, after lessons had been concluded and the last
bell rung, and still he hath spent every hour seeking thee, knowing well the
consequence of his choice!” Kazuul showed his teeth to Devlin in a fierce
smile. “He chose, Mara, to lay his hope at thy feet, rather than at mine. And
he chose unwisely. Apart of which, thou didst require nursing. Now, had thee
remained with me—”

“Oh now we come
to it! No one walks away from you, and this is all you can do about it!”

“Nay, not all.”

Rage. She pushed
it down, but it wouldn’t go far. It struggled in her chest, a clamber of
killing power, coloring everything she saw with an aura of blood-red light. “You
want to pick the next words you say to me really goddamn carefully,” she
whispered. “What else can you do? Say it, you son of a bitch. Tell me the next
time, it’ll be Connie.”

“Thou woundest
my heart,” he growled, turning back to face her. “Never would I threaten thy
best
beloved.”

“What else then?”

“I could speak
for him,” Kazuul said. Without taking his eyes from Mara’s, he reached out to
cup Devlin’s face in one huge hand; he squeezed, dragging Devlin forward with his
eyes bulging over the gasping-goldfish face he was making, to show her. “Because
thou desirest mercy, and so well I love thee that I must give it.”

“Love! Mercy! You
can’t even say the words with a straight face!”

“Tis all one to
me.” Kazuul shrugged, tossing Devlin back into his executioner’s waiting claws,
and folded his arms across his powerful chest. “Yet I do recognize the good
intent with which thy friend did sunder our laws.”

“He’s not my
friend!” Mara snarled.

Kazuul glanced
back at Devlin, smiling thinly at the mark this heated declaration left in the
other’s eyes, his mouth, his whole body. “Then what matter the fate that
befalleth him?”

“Because it’s a
damned trick, that’s what matter!”

“Thou hypocrite.
Argoth.”

The executioner
reached down over Devlin’s shoulder for a hold on the filthy robe, but he did
not pull it away. He grinned at Mara, his claws digging in just above Devlin’s
scrotum, and tapped a pleasant greeting at her mind. He told her he’d make it
quick, if not painless, and he made sure she could hear the lie in his
thoughts. He told her he’d save her out a keepsake, if she wanted one. Perhaps
a belt.

Kazuul gazed
into Mara’s eyes. He was calm in ways she could only pretend at, calm and indulgent,
calm and smiling. “The human is truant and this is irrefutable. Argue his
reasons how thou wilt, it remains the human is truant. There is a penalty and
that penalty is death. Yet it is within my power to alter his fate, and so it
is also within thine. He hath spent three nights in thy bed. Come to mine one
night only, and I will permit him to live.”

“That’s what
this is about?” Rage, and this time, she let it come. “Then kill him!” she
snarled. “Go on. You kill him, Kazuul. And when you do, I will turn right
around and kill every goddamned person in this mountain!” Mara heard a
collective clamor behind her, swung, and roared at them without even seeing
them. “
On your fucking knees, every one of you
!”

They did it, the
thunder of their obedience slapping at her ears, fueling her with the need to
let go, to open her mind and let the rage all the way out, let it take her and
him and all the world. She swung back with an effort to Kazuul.

He wasn’t
smiling any more. The Masters behind him faced her with a single shared expression
of alarm that was almost, but not quite, enough to penetrate her senses and
cool her heart.

“There’s no law
against students killing students,” Mara announced. “And I will do it. And when
I’m done, I will go room to fucking room and kill all the rest of them. I’ll
find Connie that way. How’s that, Kazuul? Who wins then?”

He gazed at her.
The fingers of one hand drummed on his bicep. She stood shaking before him,
power like a caged thing inside her, howling for release and she let him hear
it. She meant it. His mind brushed cautiously at hers; she savaged it away, but
not before he saw just how deeply she meant it. There had once been a time when
she would have suffered almost anything just to know that no matter what else
she was, she wasn’t a killer. But that dream was dead, and one death more or
one thousand made no difference. She would kill them all.

Kazuul
considered, and the longer his silence drew out, the more anxiety she sensed
from the Masters. This wasn’t part of anybody’s plan, but they did not doubt
for a moment that she could carry out her threat. Not the Masters and not the
students, who huddled on their knees in the same thought-thick stupor that
transfixed rabbits in headlights or any student in the malicious grip of any
demon.

“My lord, we—” Letha
whispered.

“Silence.” Kazuul
glanced pensively down at Devlin, who was almost hugging his executioner in the
extremity of his terror, but at least he was quiet. “It fascinates me, Bitter
Waters, that you offer pleas for thy trinket’s protection, yet would murder for
a man’s.”

“Don’t even
pretend this is about him. It’s you and me. It’s always been that and all
because you think you can hammer me into place—” Rage, fought and mastered…barely.
“—but I will
not
go quietly, Kazuul! Drop it, drop him, or I’ll make you
sorry you ever saw me!”

His eyes snapped
up to hers, but not because she was shouting. Emotion of some kind seared into
her, but it wasn’t anger and that was nearly enough to shock her out of her own.
“Not with a thousand deaths,” he said intently. And showed his fangs in a
smile. “Yet thou might make me gladder now and then. Look at him, Mara. Look at
the boy thou art condemning and tell him the bed where thou hast already slaked
thy passions is too great an offense to buy his life.”

Mara glared at
him, hating him, but she couldn’t hold his easy gaze forever. Her own faltered,
then shifted aside. She looked at Devlin.

He looked back
at her, whiter than his neophyte’s robe, with Argoth’s hand a patient knot over
his fear-shriveled genitals. His mouth worked, but he wasn’t aware of it,
wasn’t trying to speak. He couldn’t even think. He waited with the rest of
them, utterly at her mercy.

‘Do you still
think I have a good heart?’ she thought distantly, and looked at Kazuul again. “Let
him go.”

“Upon
condition,” he countered evenly, and held up one claw. “Swear to it.”

“One night in
your bed.”

“Aye.”

She shook her
head, not refusing, but almost marveling. “You’d kill a man for that.”

“Readily. Wilt
thou, to escape it?”

“Let him go,”
she said again. “I’ll do it.”

He reached
around at once, plucked Devlin from the demon who held him, and threw him
nonchalantly at the door. “No student, however well-allied, may break our laws
with impunity. Thou art expelled, human. Death alone shall meet thee here upon
thy return.”

Devlin, sprawled
over the stone floor, slowly rolled onto his hands and knees. He looked at
Mara. His mind beat at her like the wings of a trapped bird, but entirely
without thought.

“Thou art not
numbered among the Ten,” Kazuul continued. He stretched out one claw toward the
Door and it opened in absolute silence—a door in a dream. “Freedom is thine,
and ignorance. Go.”

Devlin crawled
back and stopped, poised right on the threshold. He shivered. He wanted her to
come with him.

“Oh get out, you
idiot!” Mara shouted. “I was never here to save
you
!”

He flinched,
hard. Devlin stood up, his robe rumpled, the toe of one flapping sandal
sticking out past his ungainly foot. He looked at her, his face as stark as the
moon against the blackness behind him, and then he turned around and slunk
away.

Kazuul crooked
his finger and the Black Door shut before Devlin was even out of sight. It
seemed to Mara that he’d tried to turn around, that he might have tried to
shout—her name blared star-bright in his mind—but then he was gone.

“Idiot,” Mara
said again. Her voice shook. Too much anger and not enough time for it to come
and go.

“I do hope that’s
worked out the way you wanted,” Horuseps murmured.

Mara swung on
him, but his back was to her. He stood very close to Kazuul, and no doubt did
not know how his words carried.

“Because it
certainly did not go according to any plan as I perceived it.”

“All rivers run
to the same great sea.” Kazuul smiled at her over Horuseps’s shoulder. “I am
contented with this ending.”

She had nothing
to say to him, nothing at all. He’d taken Devlin away, ripped him out of her
life with no more compunction than a sadistic child ripping the wings off a
fly, just to see it hobble around without them. She had no one left now, no one
she knew, no one to talk to…only him. The anger was gone, leaving her too tired
for words. She thought of her cell—the soft sand and perfect darkness—and
started walking.

“Fulfill thy
promise, Bitter Mara,” he called. “Show me the measure of thy gratitude for my
mercy.”

“Gratitude?!” She
wheeled about and stared at him, then laughed in his triumphant face. “I wish I
had fucked him,” she said, killing his broad smile in a stroke. “I really wish
I had. He was an obnoxious little pest most of the time, but it would have been
worth it to see you get his sloppy seconds.”

Horuseps heaved
a sigh and passed his hand over his eyes.

Kazuul regarded
her for a short silence and then smiled again. It didn’t quite touch his eyes. “Shalt
thee renege then? Spit back thy oath to me now that thy pet is well away? No
doubt it would give thee perverse pleasure to throw thyself under my claws for
pride’s sake, yet I should only pardon thee, and there would we two stand. Nay,”
he said, almost gently in spite of his cold stare. “Come to my bed, beloved one.
Thee cannot win every battle.”

He took her hand
and she did not protest.
 
She walked
beside him when he led her out of the Nave. She didn’t struggle even as he
lifted her into his arms and spun her sickeningly through space and shadow and
solid rock, to appear instantly in his bedchamber without the inconvenience of
walking. But when he placed her on the bed and loomed over her in growling
anticipation, she raised one hand and touched his broad, burning chest.

“You can’t win
every battle either,” she told him. And then she dropped back to the Panic
Room, forced her body into sudden sleep, and switched the monitors off.

“So there,” said
Mara, and watched the Mindstorm.

*
         
*
         
*

It was cold that
finally woke her, cold in shades of high-alert yellow across the Panic Room
monitors. Mara returned to her body at once. If the trouble was severe enough
to switch the screens on by themselves, she couldn’t afford pride.

To her surprise,
she hadn’t been tossed out on the aerie (or over it). She’d been tucked neatly
into bed, but her arm had wrangled its way out of the blankets, exposed to the
icy wind that blasted in from outside. Her fingers were blue and somewhat
swollen, numb to all sensation. She dragged it under the covers, heavy and
unresponsive as a lump of wood, and lay with it across her chest until it woke
up. It hurt a lot.

Besides that,
she thought she was actually okay. It being impossible not to know when Kazuul
had done any sort of sex to her, she could say with a great deal of confidence
that he had not. He’d just put her to bed. Sometimes she really did not
understand him.

Once feeling had
returned and Mara was capable of flexing her hand without pain, she kicked the
blankets off completely and got up. Her robe was still on the floor where
Kazuul had dropped it after so romantically tucking her in, only now it was
three times as heavy with winter’s slush. She draped it over the broken pillar
again, but doubted it would dry anytime soon. In the meantime, one of the
ragged sheets from Kazuul’s bed sufficed as far as her modesty was concerned. She
headed upstairs, trying her best to reinvent the toga on the way, but stopped
as soon as she reached the abandoned theater.

Kazuul crouched
upon the dais, his broad back to her, his head bent low. He didn’t move, not
even a half-turn in her direction to let her know he’d heard her. Only the
subtle shifting of his longer spikes betrayed his breath. If not for that sign
of life, he might have been a statue.

Curious. Mara’s
first thought was one of queer recognition: This was surely what she looked
like all those years ago, when she was in the Panic Room before it had a TV. No
wonder it so unnerved people.

She finished
tying off the corners of her toga and walked up to him. Her mind went out ahead
of her, tapping at his. He tapped back distractedly. Their two minds twined
briefly, like lovers’ hands across a table. She pulled away first.

“Did you enjoy
your one night?”