18
Natividad was not surprised that Grayson wanted her with him in the morning, when he went down to confront Ezekiel. Of course he wanted her there, for lots of reasons, which was fine because she wanted to be there anyway. She felt quite fiercely that she wouldn’t have allowed Grayson to go down those stairs without her. But she didn’t have to worry about it anyway, because there was a note waiting for her when she woke up.
It was late, after 8. That wasn’t surprising, but even so she didn’t take time for breakfast. She wasn’t hungry anyway. She didn’t exactly feel sick, but she was nervous enough that she didn’t want anything to eat. But the note, signed with a strong angular “G L”, said “I will require your presence downstairs. Come find me when you are ready,” in big blocky letters. So, that seemed to mean she had time to splash water on her face and dress carefully in her best and most grown-up blouse, one without any girlish lace or frills, and a plain brown skirt. She had time to put her hair up and find her pink crystal earrings. She looked at herself carefully in the mirror as she put the earrings in. The girl who looked back at her looked so much like Mamá… but her eyes were darker now, Natividad thought. Or maybe that was her memory of shadows and darkness.
She found Grayson not in the room with the fireplace, but in his own suite, in his study, seated in a big chair behind an ornate walnut desk. He was working, a pad of paper open on the desk and a thick pen of bone or ivory in his hand, but he put the pen down when she knocked gently on the doorframe. He looked tired, but not with the previous night’s desperate on-the-edge exhaustion. He looked almost entirely human. His shadow, pooled beneath his chair, was very dense but also very quiet.
He shoved the pad away, looked her up and down without expression, nodded, and got to his feet. “You are well?”
“Yes, of course,” Natividad assured him. “Um… you?”
Grayson gave her a scant nod.
“And, um… Ezekiel?”
“That, we shall have to determine.”
Natividad nodded. “Only I meant, that is, you won’t…”
“We shall have to determine,” Grayson repeated tersely. He indicated with a gesture that she should proceed him back out to the public areas of the house.
Natividad took an obedient step backward, but she also said, “But…”
“Last night we all discovered the limits of our control. This morning we shall discover whether we have redrawn those limits. Your presence may be an asset – or, for Ezekiel, perhaps otherwise. We shall determine that.” Grayson paused. Then he said, as gently as his deep voice could manage, “But nothing of this is your fault, Natividad. Nor anything of what will happen now.”
Natividad knew that wasn’t true. The Pure helped black dogs stay civilized, they helped black dogs keep the peace. If she couldn’t do that, which was the most basic and important responsibility of the Pure… She would do it, though. She didn’t say so. But she knew she couldn’t bear it if Grayson let Ezekiel out of the cage and there was another fight. She was more and more nervous. She wanted to run down the stairs, see for herself how Ezekiel was this morning… but Grayson offered her his arm, so she had to take it and match his measured steps.
To her surprise, Alejandro was already downstairs. Grayson had said, “No black dog is to approach him,” but Alejandro had anyway. A tray of bacon and sweet pastries on the table by the cage provided an excuse. Kind of a thin one. She knew very well the real reason her brother had come down those stairs was that he, too, had thought maybe there might be another fight when Grayson opened the cage door. He lowered his gaze and backed away as Grayson led her down, trying hard to look unobtrusive and obedient and like he wasn’t really there and certainly hadn’t disobeyed Grayson’s order, but he didn’t make any move to leave. Grayson gave him a long, steady look, but to Natividad’s relief said nothing.
Ezekiel looked… alright. He looked like he had been awake for a while. He was seated in the cage’s one chair, one elbow propped on its plastic arm, his legs stretched out and his feet resting on the cot, which had been made with a care for precise corners and a wrinkle-free blanket. He managed to look not merely rested, but cool, neat, and assured. Natividad didn’t believe that pose for a minute.
After one quick glance at Natividad, Ezekiel paid attention only to Grayson. And Grayson, after that one glowering stare at Alejandro, looked only at Ezekiel. The Master showed no expression, but Natividad felt the hard tension of his arm under her hand. He did not speak.
Ezekiel’s mouth twisted with bitter amusement. After a moment that stretched out uncomfortably, he rose, took one step forward toward the bars, and dropped to one knee. He turned his head to offer Grayson his throat. “Master.”
“Well?” said Grayson, his voice hard.
“I forgot myself,” said Ezekiel, which was something that, Natividad knew, he meant literally: he had forgotten his human self and his shadow had broken his control. He went on, speaking slowly, “I thought I could endure anything.” He glanced up at Natividad. “I forgot that you’re too young and that spring has not yet come.”
Natividad had no idea what she should say, or if she should say anything. Her throat ached. It was all hard and too much of it was her fault.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Ezekiel said to her, quietly, without a trace of mockery in his cool voice. He looked Grayson in the face, then bowed his head. “All the fault was mine. I know that. I pretended so hard that I have no limits, I didn’t realize I had gone beyond them. I beg your pardon.”
There was a little silence. Then Grayson said, a little less harshly, “You turned away from your kill. I am not mistaken in this.”
Ezekiel glanced at Natividad once more, fleetingly. Then he again lowered his head. “That’s so. So did you. I admit that surprised me.” His mouth twisted again. “Not the only time recently I’ve been surprised.”
Grayson didn’t answer.
Ezekiel said, “You have warned me once or twice that arrogance is my besetting sin. I don’t argue it. I beg your pardon, Master.”
“Dimilioc needs your strength and your skill.”
Ezekiel bent his head a degree lower, acknowledging this.
“But that isn’t why I held back from the kill,” Grayson added. His heavy, deliberate voice added emphasis to the words. He stopped, regarding Ezekiel in silence.
But at this Ezekiel finally brought his head up to meet the Master’s eyes. They stared at one another for a long moment, their gazes locked. It wasn’t a dispute, though. It wasn’t defiance. It wasn’t a black dog sort of look at all.
Eventually, Ezekiel bowed his head again and said, his voice low, “Alright.”
Grayson did not nod or smile. If he had won anything by Ezekiel’s concession, Natividad did not know what it was. If that had been a concession. She sort of thought there hadn’t actually been a contest.
The Master asked, his heavy voice inexpressive, “Shall I open the cage?”
Ezekiel answered, still quietly, “I swear I will not challenge you.” He looked up suddenly, not at Grayson but at Natividad. “In April… In April, if you choose Grayson… I will not challenge him.”
Natividad’s eyes widened. She glanced from Ezekiel to the Master and back again. “But I…” she said, and then stopped. “I’m not…” she began again, and stopped once more. She took a step toward the cage and stood for that moment alone between the two Dimilioc wolves.
“I can’t promise as much for anyone else,” Ezekiel warned her.
“I… You…” Natividad took a deep breath. Then, rallying, she cocked her hip forward provocatively, set a hand there, tipped her head challengingly to one side, and said, “It’s true Grayson’s got that super-sexy older guy thing going, but if I choose somebody else, you know, I’ll get you to promise to leave him alone before I announce it.” When Ezekiel began to answer, she held up a hand and asked warningly, “You think I can’t do it? You want to double dare me?”
After a stunned moment, Ezekiel ac
tually laughed. Grayson, too, looked about as amused as he ever got. He held out the cage key to Natividad, who took it with a feeling of deep relief that made her want to laugh out loud. She wasn’t even sure exactly why she should feel so relieved and suddenly so happy, only she did, and she knew she was right. Everything was going to be alright after all. Everything was fine. She opened the door with a confident little flourish, as though inviting Ezekiel out into a kingdom that she herself owned and ruled.
Ezekiel rose to his feet. He did not immediately move toward the door, however, but looked deliberately to Grayson for permission. Just as deliberately, the Master lifted a hand in summons: come. And Ezekiel stepped forward, out of the cage, to reclaim his place at Grayson’s side.
Alejandro, aware he had missed a good deal of the subtext between Grayson Lanning and Ezekiel Korte, found himself relieved and confused in almost equal measure as he watched his sister go up the stairs with Ezekiel. The young verdugo offered her his arm, and she laid her hand there and walked beside him up the stairs, just as she had come down with Grayson. She did not even look at Grayson for permission. Nor did she look at Alejandro. She didn’t look back at all.
But when Alejandro would have gone after them, Grayson stopped him. All along, after that first hard stare, the Dimilioc Master had not seemed to pay the least attention to Alejandro. But now he stopped him with just a glance, waiting while the other two disappeared up the stairs. Alejandro tried not to show his nervousness. He dropped his gaze and backed away from the steps, moving automatically, but not without realizing he had moved and why.
It felt strange to notice the working of black dog instincts, but the thing that Natividad had done, borrowing his shadow like that, that had left him with a new and not entirely comfortable awareness of the impulses and emotions that moved his black dog shadow. Nothing he did yet felt entirely normal.
Though the feeling of separación was less now than it had been, he thought he would never again risk losing track of the boundary between himself and his black dog shadow. He even suspected he might have learned the secret behind Ezekiel’s extraordinarily control: the new clarity of that boundary made him understand, in a way he never had before, that it was his choice where to draw that line. His choice whether to hold fast to human self-control or allow black dog violence. Not his shadow’s.
That had always been true. But he knew it much better now.
“Come,” Grayson ordered him then, once Ezekiel and Natividad had had time to get out of the way. He led the way up the stairs, down the hall, and out into a winter day glittering and sharp with light and frost. The Master did not stop on the porch, but strode down the steps and out across the broad open area. The tracks of buses and vans and many human feet marred the smooth white expanse of snow, but almost all of the signs of the earlier battle were hidden. There was no wind. The forest, lying bright in the sun before them, was very quiet. At last, just before they reached the trees, Grayson stopped and turned his back to the forest, staring back the way they had come, toward the house.
Alejandro turned with Grayson and followed his gaze, wondering why the Dimilioc Master had brought him out here. He tried not to think that maybe he already knew. He tried not to think that maybe…
“You came to Dimilioc a week ago,” Grayson said abruptly. He turned his head to stare at Alejandro. “How many times have you lied to me in this week? Whose decision was it to approach Dimilioc? You told me it was yours, but that’s not true, is it? Was it your sister’s idea, or your brother’s?”
Taken utterly by surprise, Alejandro said nothing at all.
“You will not answer? Well, then, tell me this: why were you downstairs just now, when my order was that Ezekiel was to be let alone, that no black dog should approach him?” The Master added, with heavy sarcasm, “Perhaps you believe my orders do not include you? You have certainly appeared to believe that you have special dispensation to defy me. How many times have you disobeyed me in this week?”
Alejandro still said nothing. He had no idea what to say. He dropped to one knee instead, turning his head to expose his throat. He had known he risked punishment for disobedience. He had believed Grayson had brought him away from the house to punish him. But he thought now this might be worse. He was now almost sure that the Dimilioc Master meant to send him away. The Master wanted Natividad and probably didn’t care about Miguel, but a young black dog who wouldn’t take orders? A black pup who argued and lied and defied him and would not obey; who went out windows and pulled all of Dimilioc after him into ill-considered danger?
Now Malvern Vonhausel was dead, and Grayson had all those other black dogs, at least any of them he decided to keep, and also the ones James Mallory was supposed to bring when the roads opened… maybe the Dimilioc Master thought he could dispense with one disobedient black dog pup. Alejandro shut his eyes, breathing slowly, trying not to show his dismay. He knew he should be grateful that Grayson couldn’t actually kill him without offending Natividad. She and Miguel would be safe, that was the important thing. But Alejandro’s heart sank at the thought that the Master might send him away – he would be alone, just another solitary stray black dog, maybe for the rest of his life. He did not know what to say to make Grayson change his mind.
“You are loyal to your sister,” Grayson rumbled. “And to your brother. That does you credit. But Dimilioc itself is nothing to you. Can you broaden that loyalty of yours to encompass Dimilioc entire? I wonder about that.”
Alejandro opened his mouth, but closed it again without speaking. He had realized as Grayson had spoken that the Master was wrong; that Dimilioc was important to him, that he wanted it to belong to him as a home, that he wanted to belong to it in turn. But he did not know how to say any of this. He did not even know when the change had happened, or exactly why. It was Natividad who immediately cared what happened to anybody and everybody she met, and it was Miguel who cared about Dimilioc as an institution, as a concept. But he… Grayson had been right about him: he had not cared about Dimilioc at all.
When he had told Miguel he had to warn Grayson about Natividad being gone, he should have realized then that this had changed. When he had found himself utterly dismayed to think first that Ezekiel might kill Grayson, and then the reverse: he should have realized it then. But he had not known it until now, and now it was too late. He did not have his brother’s quick tongue or his sister’s charm, and he was sure that Grayson would not believe any protest he made.
Grayson’s voice dropped into an even lower tone. “Keziah cares about herself and her sister, no one else. Andrew and Russell Meade will care about their sisters and possibly about each other. Thaddeus is less limited. He cares about his family, but also he wishes to be a man his wife will respect and love. He, I believe, will be a great asset to Dimilioc. You…” He turned his heavy gaze on Alejandro and fell silent.
“I care about Dimilioc.” Even to himself, Alejandro sounded defensive.
“Do you?” Grayson studied him. “Perhaps you do. Or perhaps you might, in time. Your Pure sister may offer you both a good example and an incentive. That seems possible to me. Dimilioc’s previous Master… Thos Korte was strong, but he cared for nothing but strength. In his mind, Dimilioc owned resources. Those included its black wolves, which, as with all his resources, he put to hard use. He was not a good Master for Dimilioc. But he was strong.”
Alejandro glanced at the Master, confused by the change of topic and doubtful of the implication he thought he’d heard. Just as quickly, he looked away. He tried to imagine anyone thinking Grayson weak, and failed completely. Ezekiel might outfight the Master. But Ezekiel was not stronger. He tried to think how to say this, realized he did not dare say anything of the kind, and was silent.
“I think you will develop considerable strength,” Grayson said, with no great emphasis. He was no longer looking at Alejandro, but again at the house. “And you have the gift of forcing down the shadows of other black dogs. That gift, too, will become more powerful
with age.”
Worse and worse. Grayson saw him, then, not merely as a disobedient black pup, but also as a potential rival…
“It’s a necessary gift for any Dimilioc Master,” said Grayson. Turning his head, he thoughtfully looked Alejandro up and down.
Alejandro stared at him, incredulous.
The Master’s mouth crooked with a slow humor that was edged with savagery, yet not unkind. “You have proper Dimilioc blood from your father, which is symbolically important; and Pure blood from your mother, which strengthens your control over your shadow. You hold your temper when you fight, which is crucial. You have a human brother, so you value ordinary people; you have a Pure sister, so you cherish the Pure – and if Ezekiel wins Natividad, your tactical position within Dimilioc will be strong. Especially since you will find Ezekiel does not want the Mastery himself.” He paused.
Alejandro said nothing. He could think of nothing to say.
“So,” said Grayson. “You will accustom yourself to the notion. It will not be soon. But in time. If you learn to care about Dimilioc. It is your commitment I doubt, not your strength.”
Alejandro could hardly imagine being strong enough to take mastery of the Dimilioc black wolves. He said, hardly aware he was speaking aloud, “Thaddeus – and Keziah…”
“You must make Thaddeus into your ally. The strength of your allies can be as important as your own strength. Keziah may be more difficult, I admit.” The Master added after a moment, “If your sister accepts Ezekiel, you will be well-placed to succeed me.”
This had not occurred to Alejandro, but it was obviously true. He drew a breath, but then closed his mouth without speaking. Another breath. He said at last, “I thought you… I thought I…” but stopped again, trying to reorder all his thoughts.
“It will not be soon,” Grayson repeated. “Nor at all, if you remain indifferent to Dimilioc. I will not permit any black dog locked into a narrow self-centeredness to take the succession. I will kill you before I permit that.” He looked away, at the house. He seemed in that moment… not exactly old. But worn. The humor had left him. He said quietly, “Alejandro… Dimilioc must never again have a Master who views his black wolves merely as resources to be used. It must not have a Master who cares for nothing but strength. You cherish your family. That is the drive that sets true determination beneath your control. If you would take Dimilioc, then Dimilioc must become your home and your family.”
Black Dog Page 37
