Marlowe was incandescent. The dark eyes were fire, the dark curls looked like they’d had hands running through them, and the skin was dead white from fear or shock or God knows what. He looked like he would have slammed the door behind him, or possibly ripped it off its hinges and thrown it at Mircea’s head, only there wasn’t any door. I’d wondered why there was a colonnade inside a building, especially since it wasn’t holding up the roof, and now I knew.
Each large segment between giant marble pillars was closed off by an invisible ward, creating a bunch of quiet rooms where different groups could hold discussions in private. I knew that, not because anybody had told me, since nobody was in a mood to tell me anything. But because all sound from outside had cut off as soon as I followed Mircea and Marlowe through two of the pillars.
Which, all things considered, was just as well.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Marlowe demanded, as his friend—usually—turned around.
“I was thinking that a few things needed to be made clear.”
Mircea looked eerily calm, and as perfect as always, except for a lock of hair that had escaped from the tight confinement it was usually kept in. Mircea’s hair was longer than modern styles permitted, at least for guys who wore Armani suits, meaning a little below shoulder length. Rather than cut i
t to comply with social expectations, he’d compromised by pulling it back into a discreet clip at the base of his neck.
From a distance, or even up close if you weren’t paying attention, his hair looked short, since he frequently wore dark colors that the “ponytail” blended into. But not now. He pulled the clip off and tossed it aside, the tortoiseshell rattling on the stone of the floor because he hadn’t bothered to put it in a pocket.
Without it, mahogany waves fell onto broad shoulders, giving him the distinct air of a barbarian prince; he just needed a circlet. Which he was entitled to, although his family had never been ones to lounge around comfy palaces, listening to music while servants peeled them a grape. Mircea looked like what he was: a scion of a line that had battled its way to power on the very disputed borders of a war zone, and then battled both in that war zone and at home to keep what they’d taken.
Wheeling and dealing with dangerous people, or strapping on a sword and going to crack open a few stubborn skulls, was bred in the bone. He just didn’t usually look like it. He was kind of looking like it now, but the chief spy was too angry to notice.
“Made clear, he says!” Marlowe snarled. “If you want to make a play like that, you let me know in advance! I didn’t have most of my men here. I didn’t have anything—”
“I didn’t plan this,” Mircea said. “I merely—”
“Bollocks!” Marlowe snapped. “That was deliberate—”
“Yes, it was deliberate, but it wasn’t planned.”
And neither was Marlowe’s heart attack, I thought, although it looked like one was imminent.
I glanced behind me. Getting a dressing-down from your coworker could be interpreted as weakness, but nobody could see us right now. At least I was pretty sure. The ward had darkened after we came in, enough that it looked like I’d put on shades whenever I looked outside.
Which I probably shouldn’t be doing, because it wasn’t helping my mood.
That break Batman had told me about had finally been called, and the room had flooded with people. We were supposed to be one big, happy family, but the divisions were only too obvious. The mages were congregated together in a huddle beside Jonas, their long leather coats wafting about as if in a gale because of the magic pouring off them. The fey—including the disturbing dragon-headed guy, were clustered around Caedmon, who for some weird reason was looking pretty upbeat. The weres were in a knot covering the transformed girl, whether trying to calm her down or to shield her while she got redressed, I wasn’t sure, but that lag in their movements was extra obvious suddenly. And the vamps . . .
Well, the vamps were everywhere.
It looked like a lot of people had used the excuse the break had provided to call in their family members—all of them. The big space looked like a ballroom suddenly, one filled with high-level vamps who were way twitchier than usual, maybe because of what they’d just heard. Or because there were so many of them that their power streams kept tangling up and ricocheting off. I felt some of them buzzing across my skin even this far away.
It would be a miracle if there was no violence before this was over.
In here as well as outside, I thought, glancing at Marlowe, who was still yelling.
“—extremely ill-advised! What if he’d challenged you—which he almost damned well did! What if it went badly and you ended up dead? What if it went badly and he did? Because there was no upside here, you understand? Tell me you fucking understand that!”
I just stared. I’d never seen Marlowe this intense. He was usually the slick charmer with the sharp brown eyes and the ready smile, but with an edge to it. Just enough to let you know that maybe, just maybe, there was more to him than there seemed.
But I rarely saw that other side. I saw a man who was charming and handsome and occasionally silly. To the point that, as far as I’d been able to tell, being the consul’s chief spy involved telling the Pythia gruesome stories about Tudor life, or giving her such extravagant compliments that they seemed designed to make her laugh.
I wasn’t laughing now, and neither was Mircea.
“It is not always possible to know the exact moment for such a ploy,” Mircea informed him tightly. “You have to strike when the moment is right—”
“And you thought that was the right damned moment?”
“Yes. You weren’t prepared to deal with a challenge today, but neither was Parendra. Most of his men aren’t here, and those who are tend to the political side of things, advisers and aides, not warriors. His second wasn’t even in attendance. He couldn’t afford to risk it—”
“And if he forgot that? You know his temper! And you were deliberately trying to humiliate him—”