Chapter 16

"He comes," she said, pleased, on the fourth day.

"What! When?" the nervous young man said. Tall and exceedingly young in appearance, hardly more than a boy, he wore dark wool trousers and a cotton blouse, with dark eyes in a fair, narrow face, under dark brown hair. He looked like the scion of aristocracy. He was the scion of aristocracy. It was just that it was not any aristocracy of this world.

"He comes. He said he would, and that is enough." The metallic-toned beauty looked at the one she addressed with amusement. Her magnesium-dark hair went well with the coal-gray full dress she wore, magnetite buttons in twin rows down her right side caught the light and sparkled in concert with her eyes from the light coming from the chandeliers overhead. Sipping a glass of rosé wine — she recently found she had quite a taste for the stuff— her dark eyes shone with suppressed humor. "You should worry, you know," she assured him. "He is, I think, much stronger than you."

"Silence, woman," the young aristocrat ordered, and she could only comply. Though, she was still able to sip her wine, which she did, unruffled. Losing her ability to make speech had happened a few times now, and she kept her composure, knowing either the young man would remove the spell out of frustration and loneliness, or it would dissipate on its own.

From across the room, there came the sound of a page turning. The third inhabitant of the house was in a large overstuffed chair, reading one of the many books arranged about him. Seldom did he move, except for that which was necessary, or to retrieve more books. Food was, apparently, in the necessary category.

For a short time each day after the first, he joined the woman and the aristocrat in the courtyard in the center of the old house, and they exercised and engaged in swordplay.

The woman used a light, supple blade edged along its length, two of her graceful fingers wide, blunt on the backedge, with blood grooves and a simple recurved hilt. Her sword was plain and serviceable, but of a truly marvelous steel.

The bookish one, who seemed to never speak, found an epée in the house's armory. The epée was a fop's blade by most accounts, having only a point, though the acute angles of the edges of the trapezoidal weapon would cut flesh painfully, if not deeply, and cause rents in armor. Even taller than the aristocrat, the gangly scholar came alive at sword-practice, and the light in his eyes as he learned to use the weapon made the aristocrat shudder.

The three of them spent the largest part of their days in the library, now, falling into a routine quickly. The quiet one was an avid reader, starting first with books on mathematics, navigation and naval architecture, and moving on to a wide variety of other things.

The woman watched it all, silently, unable to speak for the while. The scholar worked quickly, never seeming to need to reread a book, only occasionally going back to find a specific point or passage in a book, which he found quickly and unerringly. Truly impressed, she reasoned the man taught himself the languages the books were written in, and thus must have learned the mathematics they contained.

It made for long hours, though she kept her dismay and fear in check, and the aristocrat, uncharacteristically for his kind, seemed almost sympathetic. Though, in addition to what else the scholar learned, the aristocrat required everyone to speak Denarian.

Time passed, and the scholar moved into books of magic on the second day. Though there were books on sorcery, if one lacked an internal fire, the descriptions were of little use, other than to satisfy curiosity about a similar discipline.

Instead, the scholar read about spells and cantrips, curses and witchery. He met with some success, more success than anyone expected. Mild smokes billowed from a small brass dish at one point, smokes unnaturally made, though violet, and for a brief moment they inexplicably formed the shape of an orchid, pleasing the scholar enough to actually emit a grunt of satisfaction.

This drew the aristocrat's attention. Rather than put an end to it, the aristocrat simply watched, amused, much as the darkly colored woman had, though she knew more of the why of the thing than the aristocrat did.

From this, there were other experiments, and when a small, naked and sexless creature, perhaps a foot high started to pull itself from the mirror surface of the brass dish, the aristocrat spoke up.

"No, not like that," he said.

"Well then, how?" Shan Hu was irritated. "You've only watched me smugly, it's not as if you offered to help."

The aristocrat's eyes narrowed. "Look, in school they taught us a definite progression. You're trying stuff in the fourth order, and this is your third day playing with magic. Let's back up a level and see if you've got that mastered."

Sable waved a finger at the decanter idly, floating it across the room. She took the chance that the young demon, a minor cousin in one of the Noble Houses of Hell, was so engaged in what he was teaching Shan Hu that he would not notice her small use of sorcery.

She knew it was going to be a long wait. Though the magery the young demonic aristocrat used when he'd snatched her and Shan Hu nailed her metaphorical tail to the floor, she had very quietly performed a sorcerous magic four days before. When it was plain the device the demon held when they were still in the idiot god Bronze's garden had caught her, she had tied herself with a tendril of the stuff of sorcery to McAllister's brooch. Just in time, too.

When McAllister was attacked, as the demon bent and ripped space itself to bring them to this house, wherever it sat, Sable was able to send McAllister the image of what the demon did to connect two far-away places with a rent in space. She'd also managed to trigger the Jade into his statuette form and toss it out of the grip of the demon's magic. She hoped McAllister would at least have a horse, if he managed to recover his blade.

Almost immediately after, she'd felt the magic of the stick-talisman as it worked on McAllister and the brooch to slow time, and she'd felt McAllister kill. It was as if she remembered McAllister's emotions afterward, and shared some of his mood. She determined to find out, when she next saw the man, why he could not show her things through the brooch, as she could for him.

She was able to convey emotions and concepts, if not actual conversations through it. When she pulled on the tendril connecting her to the brooch in McAllister's hands, she was able to assure him the question in his mind in regard to the older woman was the correct thing to do, and so McAllister performed his usual skilled lovemaking with the other woman, whomever she was. Sable took satisfaction in knowing the love he shared with her, and to a lesser extent with the dragon Kira, was missing with the other woman. Though, McAllister had an odd emotion when he considered this unknown woman. Sable might have labeled it kinship, though that was impossible, she knew.

Sable was hot, and bothered from all this, though there was no privacy in the house. If she went seeking some, the demon would only search for her. With a wicked smile, Sable decided the next time McAllister bedded a woman, she'd simply take care of the problem it presented, right there in the library. The demon would know better than to try to touch her if she were not receptive to him, and Shan Hu had worked in a brothel. There would be little he hadn't seen.

Any little thing to unsettle the young demon would be useful.

Surprising Sable, the demon was a patient teacher, and a good one, too. That Shan Hu was a good student was never in question. By the fifth day, he quickly moved up to the fourth-order spells and cantrips he'd found in the various books in the library, and together the two worked on a language charm. It was a simple charm, to be sure, one that would only work for a short period of time, and then only if there were some time for it to act. It would only work on a single language at that. Still, it was relatively easily made.

When she found she was able to speak again, Sable joined them quietly. "Why a language charm?"

"I think I shall need the skill, moving around between planes with you and McAllister," Shan Hu replied, "and wherever I may find a home, it is not likely to be within the child-Empress' borders."

"You're not likely to need to worry about a home after my Grand-Uncle gets here," the demon said.

"When will that be?" Sable asked, levelly, masking the scorn and hatred she harbored for the young demon. "It's been some days now."

"I don't know," the demon said, uncertainly, then with some bravado, as if he meant to assure Sable, "but it won't be long."

Sable met Shan Hu's eyes for a moment. Each gave a tiny smile to the other, and then Shan Hu gave a laugh. "For what words I will spare, it were best they were understood," and Sable laughed with him.

The young demon looked between the two of them, clearly feeling left out of the joke. In a huff, he turned the conversation back to the spell. "Pfarr's method was a convolution of Chuc Ho's, and it produced the effect by resonance rather than alignment..."

Sable insisted they take frequent breaks for exercise, and now she insisted again. "A mage who cannot fight when offered steel is offered death," she said seriously, and both Shan Hu and the other nodded.

While Sable learned the art of the sword, she took her bruises from the practice lathes stoically, for she could land powerful blows on the demon in return. Infuriating her, though she did not let it show, he quickly healed his bruises.

It was not a service he offered the other two.

"Hold your point higher," he chided, though amicably. "Remember, you're trying to deflect, to change the path the oncoming blade is taking, and hopefully its momentum will leave your opponent overextended. Your lighter blade and the speed you'll learn will let you dispatch him quickly."

Sable nodded and faced the attack again. Shan Hu, though he wasn't smug about it, was a quick learner at the blade also, and he was, if anything, more patient with Sable. Shan Hu, at least, didn't leave welts when he solved Sable's defense.

"Better," he said. "Now that you've got the attack defended, what would you do?"

Sable showed him. "Good, now some alternatives. If I did this instead..."

Sable learned.

"It seems to be working," Shan Hu said on the sixth day in Mabrahoring, the language of demons.

"Congratulations!" The praise seemed heartfelt to Sable, the pleasure of a teacher for a student. That Shan Hu seemed to be older than the demon mattered little.

"Thanks ... I can't keep not calling you by name," Shan Hu said in that language. "Make one up or something, but it's been hard not knowing how to call you."

The other's eyes narrowed, but then he nodded. "Fine. You may call me Azer."