Page 115 of Blood Stone

“I could guess,” Nial replied.

“Most of the blood calls me Khurshid.”

Nial nodded. “Then my guess was correct. It is an honour, madam.”

“I’m glad you think it so.”

Cyneric handed her a martini glass, complete with an olive and curl of lemon skin. She smiled her thanks at him and wrapped a perfectly manicured hand around the elegant glass. The liquid shifted inside as the limousine rounded a corner. Sebastian watched the glass, fascinated.

“I don’t like to travel,” Khurshid told Nial. “It takes me away from my things. You have made me travel, Nathaniel Aquila Valerius Aurelius.”

Nial sat back. Sebastian saw his chest lift as he breathed deeply. He was on the defensive.

Then Khurshid lifted the glass to her lips and drank half the martini in one long mouthful. She licked her lips and put the glass down on the coaster, on the flat table top next to her. “Perfect as always, thank you,” she told Cyneric. Cyneric nodded and closed the lid of the bar and sat back.

Sebastian found his gaze flickering between the half-empty martini glass and Khurshid. He really had seen her drink it.

Khurshid settled her hands in her lap. The movement disturbed the hem of her dress, inching it higher, which revealed the lace of a slip beneath. Everything about her screamed of an elegance of days gone.

But Sebastian kept looking at the martini. She had powers they didn’t understand and couldn’t estimate.

“I’m sorry you feel you were inconvenienced,” Nial said, his tone polite. “But there was no need for you to stir yourself.”

“If I had not, others would.” She reached for the glass and sipped from it again. A long sip. “Are you professing no notion of what your games are stirring up, Nathanial?”

Nathaniel smiled. “I know exactly what…and who…I’m stirring, madam. That’s the point of these games.”

Cyneric gave a small sound, something like a sigh that was a mix of irritation and illumination. “He’s building himself a chessboard. He doesn’t like a hunting range.”

“Exactly,” Nathanial agreed.

“Explain,” Khurshid demanded.

“Chess is a game of perfect information,” Cyneric said. “The players know all the information there is to know about each other and their pieces. There are no secrets. That renders the game one of almost pure strategy. Nathanial believes that is a game he can win. A hunting range, on the other hand, hides everything including the hunter, more often than not. It’s a game of stealth and sometimes the players are not certain of who is in the game. That is what Nathaniel is trying to learn. Who is in the game.”

Nathaniel raised his brow.

“And how are you doing this?” Khurshid demanded. “Tell me.”

Nathaniel explained his game plan, designed to draw the individual members of the Pro Libertatis and the League for Humanity out into the open where they could identify them. He spoke for five minutes and during that time neither Khurshid nor Cyneric interrupted him once. They listened in absorbed silence.

When he had finished, Khurshid drained her martini glass and put it aside. “You do all this as preamble, before exposing the blood to humans. Did you not think to ask anyone if exposure was what they wanted? Did it not occur to you that the resistance you are experiencing from your brethren is a vote ‘no’?”

Nathaniel leaned forward. “With all due respect, madam Khurshid, the Pro Libertatis have not voted ‘no’. They have voted ‘not yet’. But the timetable I am following is not of my choosing.”

Cyneric snorted. “Let me guess. Humans and their technological ways are going to be the undoing of us all. Let’s put ourselves ahead of the inevitable.”

“Yes,” Nathaniel agreed quietly.

“And there we have the measure of his foolishness,” Cyneric said to Khurshid, his tone withering.

But Nathanial didn’t look at Cyneric. His gaze was locked on Khurshid. “You haven’t asked about the timetable that was forced on me,” he said.

Khurshid dismissed it with a wave of her hand. “We are of the blood. There are ways around human affairs, always.”

“Not this time,” Nial insisted. “The crisis is coming, madam. It’s about three years away, which gives us just over a year to do anything useful.”

Khurshid’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t like that. “What crisis?” she insisted.