Without a whisper of sound or the faintest hint of warning from my island-specificintellectus, Mab was suddenly standing over both of us, resplendent in a deep green robe of something that might have been silk, complete with a hood drawn up over her hair.
“You knocked loose the Eye of Balor,” Mab murmured. “Which was the most useful act of the evening. Be content that you did that to a Titan and walked away with your health and sanity.”
I choked on the last bite of my sandwich, tried to wash it down withthe last bit of the Coke, and wound up mostly making strangling sounds and snorting bits that shouldn’t have been there out my nose.
Mab stood over me with a small smirk on her lips. Then she turned her head slowly toward Lara.
Lara swayed where she sat, as if some kind of magnetic force had drawn her toward Mab. Then she squared her shoulders, straightened her back, and made her face a polite mask. You couldn’t have read her expression with one of those fancy laser scanners and a panel of body language experts. She inclined her head, slightly, to Mab.
“You understand why?” Mab asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Of course,” Lara said. “It reduces complications.”
“And increases efficiency,” Mab noted. She flicked her chin toward me. “My Knight, of course, will attempt chivalry. He is troublesome in that way.”
“And if he should succeed?” Lara asked.
Mab smiled faintly. “Perhaps you will choose to remain as a vassal of Winter. You will do well there. Time will tell.”
“You would not be angry if he pried me loose of you?” Lara asked.
“I would be vexed,” Mab mused. “He is frequently vexing. But only a fool grows angry at a dog for barking, an adder for biting, a scorpion for stinging. It is their nature.” She showed her teeth. “I am willing to play the game fairly. I rarely lose.”
Lara tilted her head, studying Mab thoughtfully.
I fished some paper napkins out of the bag and cleaned myself up while they talked.
“Is what she says true?” Lara asked.
“She can’t speak untruth,” I said. “Don’t confuse that with an inability to deceive.”
“Ah,” Lara said. “She didn’t say very much that was direct, did she?”
Mab smiled benignly upon me.
“You catch on quick,” I said to Lara.
“Lady Raith,” Mab said, “I will not deny my Knight his pursuit of folly, even if it threatened such an excellent acquisition as yourself. I am pleased with his defiance, in general. In retrospect, it has yielded me outstanding results.”
Lara looked even more thoughtful.
“Blah, blah, blah,” I said. “We have a major spell to work.”
“Indeed,” Mab said. “I have inspected your circle. It seems…adequate.”
“I think you meant to sayperfect,” I muttered.
Mab sniffed. “I meant to sayadequate. Though I suppose to you, the terms are, for this working, similar.”
“You read the outline of the spell? My notes from the experiments?”
“Mmmm. You do have an exceptional gift for this sort of working, my Knight.” She tilted her head. “Shall we begin?”
Chapter
Forty-Seven
I went back into the chamber of the greater circle and went over the sigils again, checking each. I didn’t really need to, I supposed, if the design had Mab’s seal of approval. But you don’t do dangerous magic without covering all your bases, period. So I went around the circle, methodically checking again, each design against its to-scale paper counterpart, one by one, almost in rhythm, ordering my mind for what was to come.
