“I've seen your minions, paving the way for your master. You've come for one of us.”
“Mm,” came her response again. An indifferent acknowledgment. But it was followed by a secondary, seduced, “Yess.” I saw the pupils of her eyes dilate, and blinked, quickly, lest I get sucked into that great starry abyss inside them.
“Tanen,” I declared, my eyes shut.
“You do not miss much.”
“You can't have him.”
Her eyebrows arched further as I opened my eyes to face her once again. “I do beg your pardon?”
I swallowed, not knowing how to explain myself. And of course I was a fool, throwing around bold statements that I could not back up with anything but pleading.
It seemed she could read it on my face, however, without the troublesome explanation. It dawned across her beautiful facial structure, and a great, amused grin spread over her lips. A delighted little chuckle – almost a childish sound of glee – escaped her. “You have a debt to repay,” she taunted in realization.
“I have a wrong to right.”
She considered me, amused stars sparkling in her eyes. After a moment, she touched on something; “Righting a wrong is useless unless you mean it, Avante.”
Something in me flared – something defensive, but perhaps guilty. Likely both. I tried to convince myself it was neither. But when I tried to turn it into something else, it only became jealousy that she could read me, and I couldn't.
“Nevertheless,” I continued evenly, working to maintain my unperturbed facade. “I am here on his behalf. I cannot stand by a second time.”
“This is as much to save yourself.”
I fought against the implications, wanting to deny them. Holding onto my composure. I couldn't go home, regardless of what truths lurked within me.
The Ambassador sighed gustily, making a show of humoring me. “And what words have you brought on his behalf? What have you rehearsed to break one Tanen of Cathwade free of the commanding bonds of fate? Only the greatest poets can charm Death.”
“He is not dead yet. I need not charm him from a place of un-return.”
“Well no poet charms me, my dear. Charm does not work against all-powerful seduction.” She let that sink in, let me stand amidst my hopeless folly for a few moments just for good measure. “So what have you to say for yourself?”
“He is not supposed to go yet.”
“Oh?”
“I'm not finished with him.”
That declaration caused her to take pause. I'm sure not because of any real impact, but to read it from me, the cause behind declaring such a thing.
“You aspire to change him,” she surmised, and now she did look surprised.
“I can change him.”
“You are positively drooling with bold statements, aren't you? Perhaps that is what we should call you – Avante the Bold. Avante of...Bold Stature?”
“I have my hands in greater things than Manor Dorn right now,” I agreed with her deduction of me. “He is one of them.”
“So you come bartering with what? Your promise to change him so that I may overlook him in good conscience?”
“Do you have a conscience? If so, then...yes.”
“And if I don't have one? Then what does it matter if I ignore your little plea and move forth with damning a man I hereby see fit in this day and hour?”
“I can change him,” I insisted, perhaps more pitifully than the first time. If she didn't have a conscience, it would do no good, but I had to try. Had to try to make her see. Had to prove that those greater than mortals could understand our noblest endeavors. That they had some indication of it, that it really did mean something.
“I have already kidnapped his soul,” the Ambassador said. “How can you pay the ransom for something so thoroughly set in motion? I can grant what you ask, but not without a price.”
I searched inside myself for some means to answer her with, something I could possibly offer. And something did come back to me – something caught in the web that had become of my fingertips, something burned into it. Upon my first visit to the Ravine, I had singed my fledgeling receptor digits on a shackle buried in the sullied ground-cover, and seen...
“I can bring you the one who got away.”
This, she had not been able to read from me. Perhaps it was buried in the shelter of my own unfathomable gift. She absorbed this declaration in earnest, considering me almost fairly. Perhaps not as an equal, but one who could wing it when I had something to