There wasn’t a single identifiable movement to her face. Not a twitch of eyebrow, nose or mouth. She didn’t move a fraction, but I could sense the shift in her attitude. The tension of her muscles changed. She was danger distilled.
“Things were stable before you came, diabolist. They are now far from stable.”
“I want things more or less stable, too,” I said. “But you’re letting the diabolist label lead you to conclusions.”
“Do you have any conception of how old I am?” she asked. Her voice was more dangerous now. She was big enough and her voice had enough low notes that I could feel the vibration of it in the air. “How few of the mortals alive today are able to trace their ancestry back to the day I was a cub breaking free of my egg? When the first thing I did after that was devour my weakest siblings?”
Her wings had unfolded somewhat, making her silhouette larger. In the gloom, her eyes caught the light.
“The works which wrote of my mother have largely yellowed with age. I have seen events play out time and again, and I have grown tired of the patterns I see you mortals repeat, time and again.”
She said tired the way I imagined a serial killer might talk about murder. With a hint of danger, but a suggestion that it was very matter of fact for her.
“The pattern of the cults, the cabals, the secret societies, it’s one I see again and again. The only reason I do not say it with certainty, to tell you that you will fall to corruption and ruin, is that I’m not certain you’ll live long enough to get that far.”
“That’s fair,” I said. “Alexis, Ty, I need you to do all of us here a favor.”
“What’s that?” Ty asked.
Alexis didn’t speak, but I saw a puff of smoke to my left. I didn’t turn to look at her, in case i started to lose my balance and wobbled on the spot.
“Swear. You won’t tou- you won’t open or read from any of the darkest tomes. None of the demon stuff.”
“You said we shouldn’t make oaths lightly.”
“This isn’t light. This is one sphinx with a lot of experience and a number of concerns, wanting some reassurance. One way of getting that reassurance is by devouring us. Another way is for you to make a promise.”
A puff of smoke. Alexis. I heard her say, “I promise, I’m not going to mess in the dark texts you and Blake are talking about.”
“Okay,” Ty said. “I promise.”
I looked up at Isadora and spread my arms.
“I have seen this play out before, Thorburn,” the sphinx told me. “The oaths. Oaths can be broken, consequences or no.”
“Then I’ll swear too,” I said. “I’ll take all reasonable measures to keep the contents of those books out of the hands of my, er, disciples.”
“You would do better to swear not to touch those texts yourself, Thorburn.”
“I can’t make that promise. I have other responsibilities, and other entities leaning over me. Were I to promise, I’d earn the enmity of other forces.”
“Forces related to the greater evils.”
I nodded. The lawyers would stop playing ball if this went any further.
“This does not please me,” she said.
“My motives aren’t to side with those forces. I speak from my heart when I say that I believe I am one of your better options. I have no intent to use the knowledge in those tomes in any way that could spread the taint, only to bind the beings and save innocents from their touch. I did it with the imp, and I tried with another evil.”
“You gave the imp to Conquest,” she said.
“Largely because I had no support to draw on, Isadora, daughter of Phix.”
Her head moved, and her eyes flashed as the light left them, then caught the surface again. “You blame me?”
“Some,” I said.
She pursed her lips, then turned her head to glance back at the others. The Sisters of the Torch, the Shepherd, the Drunk and others. As she moved her head, her hair moved from where it draped over her left breast. I avoided looking, in part because I was more captivated by the way the ambient light caught her high cheekbones and the frown-creased brow, making her appear more like a lion or a raptor than I’d ever seen her. In part because being caught looking seemed dangerous.
She looked down at me. “So be it. This promise doesn’t remedy the situation, but if you fail in this, you and yours will suffer for it. There is justice in that. I believe in justice.”
I nodded.
“You will exact promises from your other disciple. I smell one on you. She was there when you came to my office. She is warm for you.”
Warm for me?
Alexis coughed, just behind me and to my left.
“I’ll extract the same promise from her, if and when a convenient hour arises,” I said.
“And any disciples who follow.”
“Yes,” I said. “In exchange for this amenity, I would like to ask a favor.”
“Ask.”
“Let us end the conversation here. Allow me passage inside. Don’t slow me down or get in my way. I have a schedule to keep, and it will do more harm than good if I can’t.”
“If we stopped you here,” she said, “What would the consequences be?”
I remained silent.
“You should give me an answer you know is wrong, feed yourself to me. With every ending, the cosmos reorders, the geometry settling into new patterns. At the hands of a goblin, such as the one you bound, the reordering is an ugly thing. Consequences persist. The skein tangles. I am a creature of the balance, and death by my tooth and nail, talon and claw is the cleanest death you could be offered. The new order would be a better order, for you having left it.”
“I’m almost insulted,” I said.
“You have my leave to go. I cannot speak for the others,” she said.
She couldn’t speak for the others, but she had enough authority that I suspected her permission would count for a hell of a lot.
“Are we coming?” Ty asked.
I glanced at him. I opened my mouth to say no. That the Knights were close, and they should stay behind. That I needed the backup outside.
“They remain safer with you than elsewhere,” Isadora said.
Seven words to dash my plan to the winds.
“That doesn’t mean it’s better to take them with me,” I said.
“It is better,” she said. “I’m not a prophet, but I have an eye for the ways of things. You have help elsewhere, but you’ll need help inside.”
I hesitated.
“I appreciate the advice, but ‘better’ is vague. Better for me, for them? For the world as a whole?”
“For all things.”
“I’m too used to having everyone turn on me, everything be a trap,” I said. “This… I’m having a hard time trusting my recent fortune. No offense intended.”
“You did a good thing. A right thing, and you recently transferred some of the negative karma from yourself. Three separate events.”
I frowned. “Then the reason I’m free to put a circle together-”
“That has nothing to do with it,” she said. And her expression went a little cold. “I cannot speak for the particulars. Maybe there was some good in it. But I meant what I said earlier. The cosmos gave you a rope. You have neatly knotted it. I hope you are the only one who hangs, but as I said before, I have been around long enough to see the patterns. I am not so optimistic. I suspect things progressing smoothly there was not karma being kind.”