More silence, but this one was heavily saturated in skepticism.
“Regardless, your ability to interfere while wielding two pathetic short daggers of questionable manufacture is less than zero. Ah, no. Your ability to productively interfere. In the best possible case for you, they would simply break your arm. In the worst case, they would break your arm and deposit you in jail.”
He shrugged.
“Neither of these outcomes would be of any aid to that child should she require aid.”
Silence, but the texture of that silence shifted. “Maybe,” he said, “they’d just kill me. I think—I think that would make her happy. Maybe it would free her.”
Elluvian stared at the young man’s bent head. His hair was dark and unruly; his skin was likewise a shade of gray that implied his living conditions involved the outdoors. There were those who made a home near the various bridges that crossed the Ablayne, but it was not a safe abode for the mortal.
His own safety, however, did not appear to be his primary concern. Or perhaps his concern at all. “Who is she, boy?”
Silence. But the young man closed his eyes, shook his head. There was a subtle shift in the line of his shoulders; they bent in, as if at the gravity of a memory or a history he would not put into words.
Elluvian said, once again, “I wish to offer you employ.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Don’t you? Most mortals need food, and you live in Elantra, not the forests or the villages beyond its borders. Here, everything is owned and claimed; there, you might forage and feed yourself. You are, if I am not mistaken, a petty thief. But you are whole, healthy. Do you spend time in the warrens?”
“No.”
“May I ask why?”
“Can’t stop you.”
“No.” Elluvian exhaled. “What I ask of you would not, in any sense of the word, be illegal. I do not require petty thugs; did I, I would hunt in the warrens. Mortal petty thugs are all but irrelevant to me, to my kin.”
“What job?” The youth asked, after a significant pause.
Yes, Elluvian thought. There were trials and tests that the boy would have to overcome. “How much do you know about the Halls of Law?”
The silence was different. The young man could shutter his expression, control it, force the lines of his face to give nothing away. The lines of his body, however, he had not yet mastered; the drop and rise of shoulders, the tightening of arms, of hands, the shift of stance, the slight bend of knee.
“You want me to work in the Halls of Law.”
“You would need to submit to a more extensive interview, but yes.”
“What kind of interview?”
Clever boy. Elluvian smiled. “You won’t like it.”
His shrug implied that there was nothing on this earth he expected to enjoy.
“Tell me, what do you know of the Wolves?”
* * *
“Have I ever been mistaken?”
“Define mistake.” Helmat’s glare fell, rather more pointedly than necessary, upon his new desk ornament. That, Elluvian thought, would have to go. On the other hand, Helmat was still angry. The Wolflord folded his arms and now leaned into them, placing more of his weight and his imposing presence—for a mortal, of course—onto the desk, rather than away from it.
“He was a competent Wolf. The Emperor approved of his ability to carry out the executions demanded by Imperial writ. In the history of the Wolves, he is not the only operative who decided that he could, perhaps, be more effective than the current lord.”
“Murder is still illegal. Unless there’s a secret writ of execution given to my operatives, my death would disqualify him from ever holding that position. Was there?”
“Was there what?”
“A writ.”
“I wish you would not waste my time, Helmat.”
Helmat’s grin broadened. It remained both cold and sharp. “That’s not the way it would work, is it?”
Elluvian lifted his gaze to the ceiling, as if beseeching a nonexistent god for patience. “What did I say?”
“I can’t remember. However, it seems germane to point out that we do not always get what we want. I certainly did not want a very competent operative to destroy my door, kill one of his comrades and injure another, forcing her retirement from active duty. There are very few who serve the Wolves who die of happy old age.
“I do not expect to be one of them. But I would prefer—vastly prefer—that the figurative blade that ends my life be wielded by outsiders.”
“Or me, Helmat?”
“Or you. That’s generally how we retire, isn’t it?” The Wolflord’s grin was sharp; his eyes were bright. Too bright for a mortal.
“I would be Wolflord in your stead—in all of your steads—had the Emperor ever allowed it.” It wasn’t an answer. But Helmat had been one of the most successful of Elluvian’s students. “You understand why he does not.”
Helmat did. He didn’t, at the moment, care.
“I do not understand your continuing anger.”
“The Barrani expect betrayal.”
“Indeed. Where we are not powerful enough, not knowledgeable enough, not cautious enough, we will be betrayed. It is not generally considered a personal slight. If it engenders anger, the anger is pointed inward. We gave our enemies the opening that they then exploited.”
“I have some of that anger as well.”
“Yes, but that anger does not drive you to put someone’s head on your desk as a paperweight, and I do not believe it will help in our recruitment. We are, as you have pointed out, dangerously short on functional operatives at the moment, and I believe this one—even in your current mood—is likely to meet with your approval.”
“Why?”
“Instinct.”
Helmat relaxed both his arms and his position. He did not speak. The same instinct had, of course, found Renzo. It had, as Helmat had implied, found every Wolf, every Wolflord, including those who had died by Elluvian’s hands. That he had found far more, in the past few decades, who did not break Imperial Law, was irrelevant to Helmat at the moment. One mistake, this new, was too many.
“Betrayal is only possible if you are unwise. I have told you this. Trust is folly.” When Helmat continued in silence, Elluvian exhaled. “There are Barrani who feel as you feel—and some have spent centuries planning their revenge. Some have even survived it. Betrayal is met with death, where death can possibly be achieved.