“Gestamar is having a draught prepared for your headache,” the reyza told me as he maneuvered me through a debris-strewn hallway.
“Oh. Thanks,” I said. Not Mzatal. Gestamar. Maybe Mzatal didn’t give a fuck how miserable I was. Hell, there was no maybe about it.
My heel came down on a shard of glass as we walked but, to my surprise and relief, no slicing pain came with it. Remembering, I lifted my arm and peered at the long scratch from the window. It was an owie and little more.
“What is this stuff?” I said, nudging a piece with my big toe. “It’s not real glass, is it?”
Safar snorted. “It is very real, though not made like the glass of Earth. It is closer to a resin. Stronger, insulates against heat and cold more effectively, and does not cut like your glass.”
Without Gestamar breathing down my neck I could slow down enough to take in more of Szerain’s palace. I had to wonder how much of a hand he had in its actual creation since the whole thing was like a work of art, mostly curves and graceful arcs—even the doors—with sharp angles kept to a minimum. Portraits, paintings, and statues were ubiquitous—humans, demons, and some—well, I didn’t have a clue. Déjà vu integrated like an extra sense. At first it freaked me out; little things like knowing how many windows would be in the next room or which hallway might lead outside. It wasn’t always right, but enough for me to have no doubt Elinor had spent some time here.
Safar finally entered a chamber that wasn’t my cell. A big window draped in dust-free emerald silk dominated the far wall of a room about the size of my bedroom at home. In other words, not very big. A comfy looking chair of golden velvety stuff nestled by the window. A larger table and matching chair of heavy oak or similar wood dominated the center of the room. Déjà vu reigned supreme in here, and I knew without doubt that a bedchamber was beyond the closed door on the wall to the right.
Safar guided me into the chair at the table and then released me. I sat gratefully, rested my elbows on the table and rubbed at my head, grimacing. He stepped back into the corridor for a brief moment then returned with a mug that he placed before me. “From Gestamar,” he stated.
I took the mug and peered briefly at the contents. Couldn’t tell a damn thing about it except that it was liquid and it had a weird and tangy scent. Fuck it. It wasn’t as if this day could get any worse if the stuff turned out to be foul.
I slugged it down with only a slight grimace. It wasn’t vile, though I doubted I’d be asking for seconds.
“Your chambers are here,” Safar said as I placed the empty mug on the table. “Bed and bath there.” He gestured toward the door with a claw.
“My chambers?” I said. “You’re not taking me back to that other room?” My spirits dared to rise a few millimeters.
He crouched and shook his head. “Dahn.”
I peered at him. “How hard is it to learn y’all’s language?” I asked, pretty sure it was hard as hell given the gutturals, stops, and sounds that were just plain weird. Kri meant “yes” and dahn meant “no.” I’d picked that up from my dealings with demons through the years but not a lot else, since the demons I summoned all spoke or at least understood some English.
Safar spread his wings in a bone-popping stretch then settled them again. “Difficult for humans. Most who spend time here learn some words and phrases. Few become conversant. Only three have gained fluency.”
Most Who Spend Time Here. Well, let’s just hope I’m not here long enough to learn more than a few phrases. I grimaced and amended my mental statement. And not because some asshole lord decides to kill me because he thinks I’m a threat to his world.
“So, what do I do now?” I asked.
He peered at me. “Eat, bathe, rest, whatever you choose short of killing yourself or leaving the grounds.”
“Eat?” I asked as my stomach gave an accompanying growl. “Real food?”
He bared his teeth. “Kri…yes. It will be here soon.”
I eyed him dubiously. “Not that broth stuff, right? Real, solid food?”
Safar rumbled in what might have been amusement. “Real, solid food.”
My spirits rose a couple of inches this time. “Any chance I can get clothing? Underwear? Nifty shit like that?”
“In the bedchamber, awaiting.”
Now for the money question. I pursed my lips. “What about a toothbrush?”
“You will find the basics in either the bedchamber or the bath chamber.”
Hot damn. I pushed up from the table and headed for the bedroom, along the way realizing that my headache had vanished in the past couple of minutes.
Relief wound through me when I found my own clothing and shoes on the bed, obviously clean. I checked out the bath chamber next and stopped dead in my tracks, eyes fixed on the graceful gold-stone bath tastefully adorned with a pattern of leaves.
“You carved this for me?” I hear myself say, barely able to contain my delight.
Szerain sits on the edge of the tub, fingers idly tracing patterns of light on the surface of the water. He looks over at me, smiles. “Finished only yesterday. You will abide for some time to come. Rhyzkahl and I came to agreement.”
“And what of Giovanni?” I ask, barely daring to breathe or hope. He looks away, and my heart sinks. “My Lord?”
And there I was alone in the bath chamber staring at a tub already full of steaming water and no clue what happened to Giovanni. Like a fucking cliffhanger. Gah! I tried to get the image back but no luck.
Well, there was no doubt that Elinor had a thing for this Giovanni. How did all that turn out? I wondered. Elinor died. I knew that much. Murdered? Was that it? I couldn’t shake the utter certainty that there was something more to her death than simply being consumed in a gate. Not that there was anything simple about that, but still. And then the biggest mystery of them alclass="underline" How had a slip of a girl with only adequate summoning skills come so close to destroying the world? There was a missing piece to all of this. I knew that. Even if no one else knew what had really happened, surely I could figure it out, right? After all, I had the best eyewitness camped out in my head.
And then there was Szerain. I took a step forward and touched the carvings on the lip of the bath where the memory-vision had been. He didn’t look anything like Ryan in the face, but his build, green gold eyes and hair were right. Well, Szerain’s hair was longer than Ryan’s FBI-regulation cut, but the color and texture were a match. What else about him was different? Elinor hadn’t been afraid of him. That was some consolation at least.
Every answer seemed to raise two more questions. I gave a mental shrug and dipped my hand in the water. Plush towels, basic toiletry items—including the much-desired toothbrush—and a full hot bath. Looked like just what I needed. Yeah, a nice long soak could make up for a lot.
I stuck my head out of the bedchamber. “I’m going to bathe, okay?”
Safar snorted and crouched, which I took for acknowledgment.
I returned to the bath, stripped quickly, and sank to my neck in the water. For a moment I wondered who the hell filled the damn thing since there was nothing resembling a faucet, but then decided I really didn’t care. It was completely awesome. Would’ve been better if I didn’t have a death-or-madness sentence coming up in two days, but what the hell. All the more reason to enjoy the shit while I could.
Chapter 4
After about twenty minutes I felt more human and more certain that I was well clean of any lingering Tracy-bits and my own puke-spatter. I dried and dressed but paused before returning to the main room, taking this chance to peer at the damn collar in the mirror. No seam that I could feel or see. My gaze swept the bathroom and finally rested on the edge of the stone table that held the basin. Crouching awkwardly, I scraped the edge of the collar against the table about half a dozen times then peered at it in the mirror.