“What, did you agree that I would boink her instead of signing a treaty?”
Mab smiled slowly. “I believe you recall the nature of our act of conclusion, when you pledged yourself to me.”
I swallowed. I’d been through easier battles. I still had dreams about that one. Sometimes flashbacks. Mostly it was a big, terrifying erotic blur.
“You,” Mab said, “are my proxy in this negotiation. You must act on it to conclude the bargain.”
“You can’t do it yourself?” I asked.
Which…was an image. One that rapidly expanded in my mind’s eye to a short film. Which caught on fire and burned through before it really got anywhere.
“Obviously, or it would already be done,” Mab snapped. “You are capable and have a disciplined mind. You have the power of my mantle to draw upon. Close the deal, my Knight. Or I will perforce begin afresh.” She walked over to one of the bookshelves, where Lewis’s Narnia books stood in a row. She idly began changing the order of them around. “Have you sated Etri’s need for vengeance as yet?”
“No,” I said. “I’m working on it.”
“Good,” she said. “I expect the matter to be closed before spring.” She gave me a gimlet look. “You met Drakul.”
“Looked like a big old stuffed shirt to me,” I said.
“I will not fight him,” Mab said.
Whoa. That took me aback. It was a second before I said, “You won’t?”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“He’s…more powerful than Winter?” I asked carefully.
“Winter,” Mab corrected me frostily, “has no power over him. There would be nothing to gain and much to lose in such a confrontation.” Her mouth twitched. “And there are considerations, amongst immortals. I may need him two thousand years from now. Or five thousand. You, atmy most optimistic, might give me a few centuries’ service. Be mindful of your importance.”
I frowned. “Well. I’m probably going to fight him.”
“The Winter Knight, throughout history, has engaged in many personal battles that have nothing to do with me. It is in the nature of the role.” Her mouth twisted as though the words were bitter on her tongue. “It is one important way in which you are well suited to the mantle. But mark me, my Knight—you are not yet able to carry your battles to the likes of Drakul. If you do so, you court your own ending. And not a pleasant one.”
“Like the one you have planned for me,” I said bitterly.
“I do not casually cast away useful implements,” Mab said calmly. “I take excellent care of the tools with which I work, like any craftsman. When you came to me, your home had burned to the ground, your woman had lied to you about what was most important and all but sentenced you to death by doing so, and you were in the process of leading yourself, and your apprentice, to some vague but undeniably dramatic form of self-immolation. Not only that, but the very White Council you looked to for protection had done little but use and threaten you for years on end.” She gestured around her. “Now you are the master of a heavily defended castle that stands where your boarding house once did, capable of protecting you and your offspring. You are engaged to a wealthy, powerful, desirable woman who respects you enough to tell you the truth, and your former apprentice occupies a position of power, which gives her a sense of purpose and has rendered her immortal to boot.” Mab looked at me and eyed me up and down. “You are in considerably better personal health and physical shape than when you came to me. And you are free of the White Council of Wizardry, fully capable of charting your own destiny without their constant manipulation and interference. I am many things, wizard, none of them kind. But I am an excellent liege. You have given me your oath and I have returned your faith in kind. Your life has improved in every way, since you swore yourself to my service. I defy you to tell me that it has not.”
I opened my mouth to argue and…
…and just couldn’t.
She was right. Or at least she wasn’t wrong. Mab wasn’t really human. She had been once. She understood some things. She remembered some things. But she didn’t feel them anymore. She didn’t feel loss.
She didn’t miss Murphy.
“You’re thinking of Ms. Murphy,” Mab said quietly. “You mourn her still.”
“Yes,” I said.
“She was a warrior born,” Mab stated. “She chose to face fear and death as a regular habit. She chose to go into battle. She died there.” Her voice grew softer. “She was a woman who knew her mind. That had nothing to do with you, wizard.”
“It had something to do with you,” I said, even more quietly.
Mab became creepily statue-still. Her eyes glittered.
“The banner of your will,” I said quietly. “You sent it out for that battle. You took fear and pain away from those who stood to fight.”
“Yes, I did.”
