“We didn’t know how many wolves Dimilioc had lost,” Miguel protested. “How could we know?” He walked forward, touched Alejandro on the arm in passing, and faced Grayson. He dropped to his knees before the Master, turning his head to expose his throat in formal submission.
Grayson stared down at him, but did not, at least, seem inclined to hit him. “Well, boy,” he rumbled at last. “You feared your father’s enemy enough to bring a weapon, I see. Silver bullets. Shall I understand that Edward actually encouraged you to involve yourself in black dog battles?”
“Not exactly, sir, but Papá thought we should be able to defend ourselves, especially when the war–”
“Do not parse law with me, boy! Did your father never teach you that our human kin stay out of the fighting? Which is for your own safety, boy; humans take their own wounds!”
“Staying back from the fighting didn’t protect your human kin,” Miguel pointed out, his calm voice sliding like an unexpected knife through the Master’s anger.
Grayson, taken aback, stared down at Miguel in a silence that might, Natividad was afraid, become far more dangerous than his previous anger. She shuddered, shifting closer to Alejandro, grateful for the arm he put around her shoulders.
Miguel said quickly, “Forgive me, sir, but it’s the truth! It is the truth, and anyway, if I broke black dog laws, they’re Dimilioc laws, made in a different time, when Dimilioc owned the world. They’re your laws, you can change them – you have to change them.” His voice rose with the urgency of his need to persuade the Master. “It’s different now! Those laws only made sense when there were lots of Dimilioc wolves! Everything’s different now!” Forgetting himself, he looked up into the Master’s face and met his hard, dangerous stare.
Natividad tensed, and beside her Alejandro went stone-still, but Grayson still did not hit Miguel, who, remembering caution, looked down again. He said stubbornly, “If you will trust your human kin to use guns loaded with silver, then we can be an asset to you, not a vulnerability. Sir, please, respectfully, you’re right about Vonhausel not just going away again – I don’t think he will, sir, no. Wouldn’t this be a good time to change outdated laws to match the world as it is now?”
Ezekiel came in, quietly, in time to hear Miguel’s plea. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his head tilted at a sardonic angle. He completely lacked the echoes of anger and blood that clung to Alejandro and even to Grayson and ought to trail after any black dog who had been fighting. It was a level of control Natividad had not even imagined. He looked poised, cool, unapproachable, and very dangerous – it was more than just physical presence, Natividad thought, though Ezekiel had plenty of that. This was an intense psychic presence, sort of. He just seemed to take up more space than anyone else in the room, even Grayson.
He said into the fraught pause that followed Miguel’s words, “The boy has a point.”
Grayson turned his head to stare at Ezekiel. He asked in his hard, gravelly voice, “How did you miss that gun?”
Ezekiel angled his head to the side, showing Grayson his throat. “I have no idea.” He lifted an eyebrow at Miguel. “How did you hide it?”
Miguel hesitated. He said after a moment, “It’s a light gun, a LadySmith .22. It was Mamá’s gun. I took that one because it would be easy to hide.” He hesitated again, flushing, and then added, “I wrapped it up in Natividad’s extra, um, underthings, with a strong rose sachet to hide the scent of the silver.”
Natividad straightened in indignation. “You did what?”
“Well, you like rose scent,” Miguel said to her. He added to Ezekiel, “Then I wrapped all of that in two layers of plastic. I thought even if you looked in the pack, even if you searched it, you’d probably not go through Natividad’s, uh, personal things. The gun’s so light I thought you might not notice the weight.”
Ezekiel was smiling: a thin, cold sort of smile, but a smile. “Clever. I didn’t.” He looked at Grayson. “My mistake. I beg your pardon, Master.”
“Arrogance is your besetting sin, Ezekiel,” the Master said, not angrily. Simply stating a fact. “Next time, you’ll remember this.”
“Yes,” said Ezekiel.
“And you,” Grayson growled, once more focusing on Miguel. “You brought that gun and that ammo because you knew your father’s enemy, having killed him, would stalk you. Is that how it was?”
“Not exactly,” Miguel said in a subdued tone. Alejandro tensed, his weight coming forward on his toes.