“Personal things,” Deirdre replied.
I narrowed my eyes.
Something wasn’t jiving here. Deirdre was demonstrating absolutely no emotion about her mother, which in my experience is the next best thing to impossible for almost anyone. Hell, even Maeve had carried enormous mother issues around with her. If Tessa was really trying to beat Nicodemus and Deirdre to the Holy Grail, there should have been something there. Frustration, irritation, fear, anger, resignation, something.
Not this distant, cool clarity.
Tessa wasn’t after any Grail.
But what else could motivate her?
Deirdre looked up from below and studied me calmly. “He knows that you mean to betray him, you know.”
“Makes us even,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t,” she said, in that same distant voice. “Not even close. I’ve seen him disassemble men and women more formidable than you, dozens of times. You don’t have a chance of tricking him, out-planning him, or beating him.” She stated it as a simple fact. “Mab knows it, too.”
“Then why would she send me?”
“She’s disposing of you without angering your allies at her. Surely you can’t be so deluded that you don’t see that.”
A slow chill went through me at the words.
That . . . could make a great deal of sense, actually. If Mab had decided not to use me after all, then my presence was no longer needed—but enough people thought well of me that they could prove extremely trying for her, should they set out to seek revenge.
Of course, that wasn’t how Mab played the game. When she set something up, she did it so that no matter what happened, she would run the table in the end. Mab probably intended me to do exactly what she’d told me she sent me to do. But what she hadn’t said was that she’d set it up so that it wouldn’t hurt her too badly if I failed. If I was too incompetent to work her will, she would regard me as a liability, to be dispensed with—preferably without angering my allies. Nicodemus would get the vengeance-level blame for my death if I failed, and Mab would be free and clear to choose a new Knight.
I felt my jaw tightening and loosening. Well. I couldn’t really have expected anything else. Mab struck me as the kind of mother who taught her children to swim by throwing them into the lake. My entire career with her would be shaped the same way—sink or swim.
“We’ll see,” I said.
She smiled, very slightly, and turned back to regard the table below. Grey was sitting with Karrin, speaking quietly, a smile on his face. She had her narrow-eyed expression on hers, but a smile also lurked somewhere inside it. He was being amusing.
Jerk.
“Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?” Deirdre asked.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Why?”
“Why what?”
I gestured around. “Why this? Why do you do what you do? Why bite out the tongues and murder hirelings and whatnot? What makes a person do something like this?”
She fell silent. The weight of it became oppressive.
“Tell me, child,” she said. “What is the longest-lasting relationship in your life?”
“Uh,” I said. “Like, in terms of when it started? Or how long it continued?”
“Whichever.”
“My mentor in the White Council, maybe,” I said. “I’ve known him since I was sixteen.”
“You see him daily? You speak to him, work with him?”
“Well, no.”
“Ah,” she said. “Someone that close to you. Who shares your life with you.”
“Uh,” I said. “A girlfriend or two. My cat.”
A small smirk touched her mouth. “Temporary mates and a cat. One cat.”
“He’s an awesome cat.”
“What you are telling me,” she said, “is that you have never shared your life with another over the long term. The closest you have come to it is providing a home and affection for a being which is entirely your subject and in your control.”
“Well, not at bath time . . .”
The joke did not register on her. “You have had nothing but firefly relationships, there and then gone. I have watched empires rise and fall and rise again beside Nicodemus. You call him my father, but there are no words for what we are. How can there be? Mortal words cannot possibly encompass something which mortals can never embrace and know. Centuries of faith, of cooperation, of trust, working and living and fighting side by side.” Her mouth twisted into a sneer. “You know nothing of commitment, wizard child. And so I cannot possibly explain to you why I do what I do.”
“And what is it that you think you’re doing with him, exactly?” I asked her.
“We,” she said, with perfect serenity, “are fighting to save the world.”
Which, if true, was about the creepiest thing I’d run into that day.
“From what?” I asked.
She smiled, very faintly, and finally fell silent.
I didn’t press. I didn’t want to hear anything else from her anyway.
I withdrew and went down to the table with the others.
“. . . dinner,” Grey was saying. “Assuming we’re all alive and filthy rich afterward, I mean.”
“I certainly can say no,” Karrin replied, her tone light with banter. “You’re a little creepy, Grey.”
“Goodman,” Grey said. “Say it with me. ‘Goodman.’”
“I was a cop for twenty years, Grey,” Karrin said. “I can recognize a fake name when I hear it.”
I settled down next to Karrin and pulled the new revolver out of my pocket, put it on the conference table right where I could reach it and said to Grey, “Hi.”
Grey eyed me and then the gun. Then he said to Karrin, “Does he make these kinds of calls for you?”
“You’ll have to try a little harder with something a little less obvious than that,” Karrin said. “Honestly, I’m sort of hoping he shoots you a little. I’ve never seen a round from that beast hit somebody.”
Grey settled back in his seat, eyeing me sourly. “Bro,” he said, “you’re totally cockblocking me.”
In answer, I picked up the monster revolver. “No,” I said, and then I freaking cocked it, drawing the hammer back with my thumb. Rather than a mere click, it made a sinister ratcheting sound. “Now I’m cockblocking you.”
The table got completely quiet and still. Anna Valmont’s eyes were huge.
“Touché,” Grey said, nodding slightly. “Well, there was no harm in my asking the lady, was there?”
“None to her,” I agreed amiably. “Murphy, should I shoot him anyway?”
Karrin put a finger to her lips and tapped thoughtfully. “I’ve got to admit, I’m curious as hell. But it seems a little unprofessional, as long as he backs off.”
“Hear that?” I asked Grey.