She noticed me noticing and raised an eyebrow. “Well?”
“Tempting, but maybe now isn’t the time?”
“Coward.” She dropped the teasing and became serious, as serious perhaps as I’d ever seen her. Another crack in the diamond facet. “They’re going to win, aren’t they?” and then, before I could say anything, “No, don’t answer that. Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be out saving the world? Or at least this bit of it?”
There were a lot of things I could have said to that, but they would have been uncomfortably close to the truth so instead I said, “Why aren’t you going with the rest of the house? Do you think they can get through?”
A brittle smile that baffled me. “Because I’m not, and nor are some of the others. Probably for the same reason you’re not heading that way yourself. And because I have some very wealthy clients who have been very generous, so I can afford to get some of us out. Not to mention some of my girls have been down that Mishan gate every day for the last week, softening up the captain. He’s got a real thing for one of them by now and his sergeant is a sucker for a pretty face. Add in a few little trifles worth a month or two of a captain’s salary, and the fact I’m sure you can guess who entertained the Mishan diplomats when they were here, and of course my special friend, the Mishan liaison. When we entertain, men don’t forget us easily. Which you’d know if you ever let me entertain you. I’d say they’ve got a good chance. Better than ours.”
I knew better than to ask again why she wasn’t going. Exhaustion fuddled my brain, made me struggle to think why I was here – I’d come to tell her something. Only now, even here the black was with me. The black never got me at Erlat’s, but this wasn’t her house any more. This was a room with her in it. I blinked and the world seemed to shift around me. I blinked again and I was sitting on the bed, shadows dancing in all the corners, and not just shadows either – the darkness growled and showed me its teeth.
“You can’t stay here,” I said at last to the wavering face in front of me. “Storad will be through any time. You should all go, now.”
“Rojan —”
“Even if you don’t go to the gate, get out, you have to move. I mean it. Go to the lab, or something. It’s pretty safe there, I think, locked up tight – Perak had it reinforced when he found out your Mishan friend wanted Lise. It’s a damn sight safer than here will be. They’ve got guns; Lise has booby-trapped the whole place. Dench knows where it is, so they might try for it, but if all else fails, Lise can blow it and them sky-high.”
Erlat put a soft hand on my arm and the shadows receded back to where they should be, out of my head so that I could think clearly again. Something – no, someone – I should have been thinking of, and hadn’t, hadn’t dared to because to think of her meant to face my own shortcomings. I didn’t have a lot of choice though, because my shortcomings were scattered at my feet like snow.
“Jake, is she…” I almost said, “Is she all right?”, but that was a stupid question. Of course she wasn’t, but I needed to know that she was, well, not all right, but going to be. I owed that much to Pasha. That and not taking advantage of the fact he wasn’t around. Only now, now it came to it, that was the last thing I was going to be doing. Maybe I was finally growing up.
Erlat shook her head ruefully, as though I was some little kid who just couldn’t quite grasp how to tie his bootlaces. “She’s back on duty, up with Perak. What else has she got now? She needs something to keep her mind away, help her lock it all down. Once she had the matches to do that, but now she has this. She blames herself, of course. If it hadn’t been for – No, that’s not for me to say. But she won’t show a damned thing if she can help it, not even to me.”
“Blames herself? But —”
A soft knock at the door, as though the knocker was ashamed of interrupting.
“I thought you’d be here.” Guinto came in, a flush creeping up his neck because here he was, a good and pious priest, in a brothel. Or what had been a brothel – there wasn’t much left by now.
“Look, if you aren’t going to the gate with the rest, get to the lab. The Storad will be through here anytime. Please, Erlat?”
I waited for the lash of her words, about how she didn’t need big old me to protect her, but she winked at Guinto, making him blush worse than I had, and said, “Maybe, we’ll see. I do have a gun of my own, you know. I suppose you’re off to save the world now?”