The Knight

That was when I first noticed his eyes. I have probably said a couple dozen times that all the Aelf had those yellow fire eyes. Up until then it had not bothered me that Garsecg did not. Before, he had bushy blue eyebrows, and the eyes deep in. The alligator’s eyes had been really small, and I guess I had not paid a lot of attention. When he looked like me, his eyes were easier to see and I looked at him harder. And he did not have Aelf eyes at all. He did not have human eyes, either. Or cat eyes or dog eyes or anything like that. His eyes were a high wind on a dark night.

I had been scared plenty already, and that scared me a lot more. I pretended I had not noticed, but I was shaking inside. To cover up, I told the other Khimaira to renounce Setr.

She would not, and I said, “Even if he made you look ugly and stay there? What did he ever do for you?”

“We ressieved nothing,” the first one said, “ssave thesse sshapes. We were promissed great benefitss, alwayss to be paid when the nexst tassk wass done.”

The one I had been talking to nodded. “Alwayss another tassk.”

Garsecg stepped between them and me. “That being so, as I know it is, why will you not renounce Setr as your fellow did?”

That one stepped around him and knelt to me. “Lord, I will sserve you in all thingss whatssoever. Iss that not enough? I ssaved you jusst as Baki did. Assk what sservice you wissh, and you sshall resseive it.”

I needed thinking time, so I said, “What’s your name?”

“Your sslave iss Uri, Lord.”

Garsecg was changing again, going back to the way he had usually looked. “You must not suppose, Sir Able, that those are their true names, of use in weaving spells.”

“Yess, yess!” they said. “They are!”

Well, I had wanted to think. And sometimes I really do. I had been wondering about certain things, like why Garsecg’s eyes did not look right and why he wanted me to let those two khimairas go. So I said, “It’s not always a real good thing to throw around real names, is it? Like, Abie’s just what everybody calls me here. Is it all right if I use your real name? Or should I just keep on saying Garsecg?”

Garsecg said, “You are correct. Do not speak my true name, even when we are alone.”

“Fine. I guess you know these two whateveryoucall ‘ems just about killed me.”

He shook his head. “I would have saved you.” If he was lying, he was a good liar. Which he was.

I said I would not argue, but I felt like he owed me.

“I will repay you by letting you claim a storied weapon all the world will envy.”

“Are you talking about Eterne?”

“No. It is not here, and I am surprised you know of it.”

I sort of shrugged. “That’s the only one I want, and you were going to let me take something anyhow, so I could fight Kulili for you. I think I’ll take these two instead. They’re quitting Setr, so they ought to take off his uniform. That’s how it seems to me.”

“One has renounced Setr, as you say, and the other has sworn to serve you. Will you fight Kulili?”

“I said I would. I don’t go back on my word, Garsecg.”

“Then there is no reason you should not have these two to assist you—if you really want them. Make no mistake. When a man owns a slave, the slave owns a master.”

I said I could live with that.

“Never say you were not warned. Their new uniform will be ... ?”

“Their natural shapes,” I said, “their Aelf shapes. If they won’t change for me here, I’m taking them to the top of this skyscraper. That ought to do it.”

Garsecg did not like that at all. He wanted me to let them go, and go straight down to the armories with him like he had planned. I would not do it, and when he got us over to the inside stairs the Khimairas and I went up instead of down. Finally he said all right, he would meet us up there.

Chapter 24. Sunshine

If I told everything that happened after that on the stairway that went up the inside of the skyscraper, and what I said to Uri and Baki, and what they told me in the way that they told it, it would use up a stack of paper as high as the stairway was. So I am not going to. Here are the main things.

I wanted to know why the Aelf had driven Setr out, and it was because he wanted to be king of all of them. Some of the kings and queens they had already had not liked that.

Then I wanted to know why some of them were for him, Uri especially. It was because of Kulili. They hated her, and Setr had been trying to kill her. He had raised a big army, all the Sea Aelf, all the Fire Aelf, and some others. They had tried to mob her, and she had killed about half of them and chased the rest. I tried to find out why they wanted her dead, too, but I never got to the bottom of that. It was the same when I asked what she looked like. She looked all kinds of different ways, so she was a shapechanger too. She lived in the sea, like the Sea Aelf, but in deeper water.