Well, what does it say?
Jael was impatient. Jael was imperious. Jael was, thought Razgut,
at his mercy.
I dont know, he replied casually, and also truthfully. He hadnt opened it yet. Its probably a fan letter. Possibly an invitation to a christening. Or a proposal of marriage.
Read it to me, Jael commanded.
Razgut paused as though he were thinking up a reply, and then he farted. Squinching up his face, he did so with effort. The reward was slight in resonance but grand in aroma, and the emperor was not amused. His scar went white in that way it had when he was extremely put out, and he spoke through clenched teeth, which, on a positive note, did help contain the flying spittle.
Read it to me, he repeated in his deadly quiet voice, and Razgut judged himself to be one step removed from a beating. If he did as he was bid now, he might spare himself some hurt.
Make things easy for me, Jael had said, and Ill make things easy for you.
But where was the fun in easy ? Razgut crammed as much prosciutto into his mouth as he could while he still had the chance, and Jael, seeing what he was about, ordered the beating with a dull twitch of his head.
They both knew it wouldnt yield a result. This was just their routine now.
And so the beating was given and received, and later, when Razguts new injuries were seeping a fluid that wasnt quite blood onto the fine silk cushions of a five-hundred-year-old chair, Jael tried again.
When we get to the Far Isles, he said, and when the Stelians lie shattered in the streets but before we have crushed them utterly, I could demand a boon of them. Everyone grovels at the end.
Razguts smile was a diabolical thing. Until you come up against Stelians, perhaps , he thought, but did not disabuse the emperor of his fantasies.
If, Jael continued, visibly struggling to maintain a semblance of gracea mask that fit him very illif someone were to make his best efforts to be accommodating between then and now, I might be persuaded to ask that boon on his behalf. It is not beyond Stelian arts, I wager, to repair you.
What? Razgut sucked himself upright, his hands flying to his cheeks in his best impression of a beauty queen hearing her name called. Me? Truly?
Jael was not so big a fool as to miss that he was being mocked, but neither was he fool enough to show his frustration to the Fallen thing. Ah, my mistake. I thought that would interest you.
And it might have, but for one critical point. Well, two critical points, the first of which was really all that mattered: Jael was lying. But even if he hadnt been, the Stelians would never grant a boon to an enemy. Razgut remembered them from the time before, and they were not foes to be taken lightly. Ifand this was a difficult thing to picture, if simply because it had never happenedthey ever found themselves overpowered, they would self-immolate before surrendering.
Its not what I would wish for, said Razgut.
What, then?
When Razgut had bartered with the blue lovely for a way back to Eretz, his wish had been simple. To fly? Yes, that was part of it. To be whole again. Not so simple, for more than his wings and legs had been ravaged and he knew that he was, in the most important ways, irreparable. But his true wish, his souls bedrock, was simple. I want to go home, he said. His voice was stripped of mockery and sarcasm and his usual nasty delight. Even to his own ears, he sounded like a child.
Jael stared at him, blank. Easily done, he said, and for that, more than anything Jael had ever said or done to him, Razgut wanted to snap his neck. The void within him was so immense, the weight of it so obliterating, that it sometimes took his breath away to remember that Jael had no knowledge of it at all. No one did.
Not so easily, he said. If there was one thing Razgut Thrice-Fallen knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was this: He could never go home.
More to conceal his own distress than out of any desire to stop torturing the emperor, he unfolded the letter. What does it say? he wondered. Who is it from? What kind of offer?
Is it almost time?
It was a bittersweet thought. Razgut knew that Jael would kill him the second he no longer needed him, and life, even at its most wretched, does get its hooks in you. With maddening exactitude and the slowest movements he could produce with his shaking fingers, the exiled angel made a show of flattening out the pages.
Confident script, he saw, ink on good paper, in Latin. And then, finally, he read out Jaels first offer of patronage.
50
HAPPINESS HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE
They were very near, and the situation was absurd. Too absurd, when it came down to it. The shower knob was digging into Karous back, the feathers of Akivas wings were actually caught in the door, and Zuzanas contrivance was clear. It was sweet but awkward extremely awkwardand if it was meant to enflame anything, only Karous cheeks obliged. She blushed. The space was so small. The bulk of Akivas wings forced him to bend toward her, and by some maddening instinct, both obeyed the impulse to preserve the wisp of space between them.