“He killed it,” she spat. “You said he could go if—”
“He killed nothing,” Adra told her, smoothing down the small moustache he’d acquired since I last saw him, I guess trying new ways of dressing up the pudding face. It was as blond as his hair, though, so didn’t make much of a difference. “He was saved by the Pythia, if only momentarily.”
“Momentarily?” I asked, looking back and forth between them. “Wh-why momentarily?”
“But it’s dead!” Rian shouted. “That’s what you wanted, entertainment for your creatures—”
“This isn’t about entertainment,” Adra said.
“—and you’ve had it! Now let him go!”
“When he has defeated an opponent on his own. He broke the law, invaded a sovereign state—”
“What state?” I asked, suddenly seriously afraid that I knew.
The almost invisible brow went up again. “You were there.”
“Rosier’s.”
I received a slight nod that I didn’t need, because getting Pritkin out of his father’s court had required getting into said court in the first place. And that had required Rian, who, as one of Rosier’s succubi, knew it like the back of her hand. But, unfortunately, the reverse was also true.
She was known by sight to too many people, who might have guessed what we were up to if they’d glimpsed her. So she’d needed to travel inside her host’s body, said host being the unfortunate Casanova, where she was all but invisible. And she’d said she could protect him, that he wouldn’t be in any danger, and we’d both believed it—
And now we’d just gotten him killed.
No. I had gotten him killed. I had put the damned mission in place; I had convinced Rian to help; I had ordered Caleb, a war mage friend of Pritkin’s, to drag Casanova literally to hell and back, kicking and screaming and protesting the whole way. And now he was paying for it.
“He did it on my orders,” I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. Because I doubted demons liked weakness any better than vamps.
“Yes!”
Rian said, latching on to the comment. “Yes! The Pythia gave the order, and she just defeated your creature! This is over!”
“This is not over,” Adra said mildly.
“You’re supposed to be helping me find my acolytes,” I pointed out, trying to keep my voice level. “Not depriving me of an ally.”
“A poor ally.”
“He managed to raid one of your courts.”
“Yes.” Adra glanced over the balcony. “I am sure he was a huge help.”
I didn’t look to see what Casanova was doing. I probably didn’t want to know. “Then why punish him?”
Adra shrugged. “Process of elimination. The prince was punished already. You are a needed ally, and in any case, your power makes any such contest . . . unequal. Rian informed her master of your intent, and thereby won a pardon. And the war mage you used—” He snapped his fingers.
“Caleb Carter.”
“Yes. He is protected by a treaty we have with the Silver Circle. And even were he not, the case could be made that he was functioning as your bodyguard and was therefore under your control.”
“And Casanova? Why can’t he be considered a bodyguard?”
Gray eyes looked behind me. I turned to see Casanova fleeing from a group of tiny bug things, none bigger than the size of my hand, that were hopping along the dust cloud behind him, nipping at his heels.
I turned back to Adra and tried another tactic. “Why punish anyone? No harm was done. Rosier isn’t even—”
“I beg to differ. Harm has been done. Our borders are inviolable; have been so since the Sufferings following your mother’s time, when vast armies held them at great cost. The armies are no more, long since disbanded. But the idea remains. To allow anyone, even you—especially you—to violate their sovereignty with impunity would be to challenge that idea, and could lead to untold misfortune.”