and to report on her activities. But you weren’t. You weren’t following An’Teela at all. You were following the child that she keeps by her side.”
Silence.
“You understand that those Barrani are Hawks, and even if they were to detain the girl, they would be extremely unlikely to harm her?”
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