“They want you to visit them. I’m something of an ambassador.”
“You wanted to see if I were followed.” He leaned back, studying her. “Just who are you? Why do you know about me, my family? How did you find me?”
“Oh, we’ve been looking. Keeping our eyes open, and we have many eyes. As for your other questions ... well. You saw our card.”
“The Drakes.”
She didn’t seem to like the word, but she refrained from commenting on it. “The group wants very badly to meet with you, Doctor, and it would be in your best interests to do so—yours, Ani’s, and Ghenisa’s.”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned my daughter. I don’t like it.”
“She’s the reason I asked you here.”
Suddenly he realized something. He sat up sharply. “No. It can’t be ... You look just like her.” Well, not just, he reflected, but the resemblance was striking. If Mari had lived another fifteen years, she might well have looked a lot like Oris.
“We want to meet with you,” Oris repeated. “It is of the utmost urgency.”
He swallowed. “Give me an address. Let me think about it.”
“I’m to take you there. Now. I have a car waiting.”
The remnants of the Drakes rearing their wormy heads now, when all the world’s gone to hell. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s go.”
An elegant black limousine idled along the curb, exhaust ports spuming, and a bodyguard in a suit, not quite as large as Janx but very sober and competent-looking, opened the door for them. Once inside, the bodyguard hunched beside his mistress, gazing at Avery across the dark space, his expression blank.
“Go,” Oris told the driver, and the limo lurched into motion.
Far above them floated the ray, massive and shimmering, visible sporadically between buildings.
“Where are we going?” Avery asked. When Oris said nothing, he added, “And why? Why would the Drakes bestir themselves now? What could you people want? If it’s reparations, good luck.”
Oris’s lips became a thin line. “The royal family is very much alive, if diminished and much abused through the years, and we do not enjoy being made mock of.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Please. The expression ‘Drake’ is pejorative. We are the Royal House of Ghenisa.”
“Were.”
To that she said nothing, and the mood in the vehicle turned cold.
Not soon enough, they arrived at a fine mansion of the old Ysstral style, looming and heavily encrusted with nightmarish ornamentation. It stood behind a high, jagged stone wall whose top was actually serrated, like shark teeth, but more regularly-spaced; at each peak, or tooth-point, a two-faced gargoyle crouched, red gemstones glimmering dully for eyes. The gargoyles did not face outward but side to side, and a thin, slow, greenish liquid drooled from their gaping mouths and ran down the top of the wall, slow as molasses, to, presumably (it was too high for Avery to be sure) eventually funnel into a drain at the crux of the jags. The liquid was a poison, Avery knew, as he had seen this technique before, its fumes so poisonous it would kill anyone and so acidic that no thief could sneak over by laying a blanket or the like across the top. Far superior to the broken glass the Lai had embedded the tops of their walls with.
The limousine was inspected at the high black gates, then waved through. Small, crimson stained-glass windows gazed at them from the mansion’s stone façade, and, as often with Ysstral architecture, Avery was reminded of spider eyes. He half expected to see one of the spires twitch like a carapaced leg.
They climbed out of the limousine at the stairs leading up into the mansion, and servants held the door for them as they entered. A manservant escorted them through high, gloomy halls that gleamed and glimmered, but though everything was beautiful and well-lit it seemed to Avery as if a constant haze obscured the air of the rooms, making it somehow murky. It was as if there had been a recent fire, though there was no actual smoke.
Oris dismissed the manservant and led Avery to a drawing room on the second floor, where an aged gentleman sat at an ornate chess table playing a game with a younger man; the chess pieces were carved of different colors of glowing jade—some alchemical process, surely. The pieces ceased glowing as they were removed from the board.
The older gentleman looked up with a smile. “So, you fetched him for us, did you, my dear? Well done.” He stood, shaking Avery’s hand warmly, and Avery was a bit put out by the familiarity.
“I’m Idris,” the man said. He ushered Avery to a couch, where they both sat. Oris and the younger man, who introduced himself as Ajaun, drew up chairs facing them. “Ajaun is our host,” Idris explained. “After his parents passed tragically last year, this house became his.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Avery told him, wondering what all this was about, and why Idris seemed the leader of the group, not the host. “But I fail to see—”
“Please,” Oris said. “Hear us out.”
“I didn’t come here to ignore you.”
Idris sort of smiled. “That is reassuring, Doctor.” He raised an intricately chased silver bell and chimed it, and as he did Avery noticed the ring on his left middle finger: there was a sigil embossed on it, silver on a black gemstone, but Avery couldn’t make it out, exactly, though he had a suspicion as to what it must be. A different manservant entered, a woman this time, and Idris ordered a pot of tea and four cups. He asked Avery if there was anything else they could get him, and Avery said no, again wondering at the fact that it was Idris, not Ajaun, who ordered the servant woman about.
A pot of tea was shortly served, and after the drinks were poured the servants withdrew, solemn looks in their faces—not out of sadness, Avery sensed, but esteem. They respected their employers greatly, or at least Idris.
“Now, will you please tell me what all this is about?” Avery said, blowing on his tea.
“Of course,” Idris said. Steam wreathed his aged but handsome face, and his blue eyes sparkled with vigor. “Your wife Marisela was my cousin, if somewhat distantly. I am Idris Gehalan Vorys. Does that name sound familiar?”
Avery nearly dropped his tea. “Vorys—the prince—the one who escaped?”
Idris nodded sadly, casting a look at his ring, and Avery now saw that the sigil was indeed that of the Drakes, a worm-like dragon. “I was the only one of the ruling house to escape in the madness of the Revolution. I was only a fourth son, I never would have been king, but after that bloody madness ... I was. At least, according to the ways I was raised in. The Revolution changed all that, of course. Democracy!” He chuckled. “I hope they enjoyed it.”
“The bad times are over,” Avery said.
“So you would believe. But that’s not the case. Even now we have a government divided, with one half against the other.”
“Haggarty is a liar and—”
“He’s winning.” Idris said it so firmly that Avery did not bother denying the truth of it. “Haggarty will prevail, Doctor. Denaris’s government, or the pitiful remains of it, will fall. You see that, don’t you?”
