All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [253]
Sealiah tapped her full lips, thinking, and her claws retracted. “Agreed, as long as he is willing to fight for my side as well.”
Louis gave a lamentable sigh.
“And,” Eliot said. “You let my sister and my friends go back.” He looked at them. “If, that’s what they want.”
“If you win the roll,” Sealiah said. “Of course.”
“Wait, I’m not agreeing to any of this,” Fiona protested.
Sealiah held up her hand indicating silence, and Fiona thought she better shut her mouth.
Eliot had a plan—what precisely she wasn’t sure—but if she lost her temper now, things would get bloody fast.
“And if I win,” Sealiah told Eliot, “you fight for me and also pledge your life and soul with an unbreakable oath.”
“No way!” Fiona shouted.
The thought of her brother bowing and scraping before this creature was too much. She started forward, her bracelet chain in her hand, growing and lengthening, links sharpening to circles of razor.
Could she even fight Sealiah and her knights? Would the Pactum Pax Immortalus neutrality treaty between the fallen angels and the League prevent her from interfering? Or was she enough her father’s daughter . . . enough Infernal, to cut the Queen’s head off as she had Beelzebub’s?
Maybe it was time to put that to the test once more.
Eliot turned to her—and the look on his face stopped her dead in her tracks.
His eyes were cold and dark and resolute. Despite everything they’d been through, he looked like, for once in his life, he knew exactly what he was doing.
On the other hand, Eliot always—and she meant always, without fail—got them into more trouble.
But that look . . .
She finally blinked. “Okay,” she murmured. “Just don’t screw this up.”
“You’ll be the first to know,” he told her.
Fiona figured it couldn’t hurt to let Eliot try whatever it was he had up his sleeve—because if it didn’t work, she planned on getting out of here anyway, Eliot in tow, even if that meant cutting down everything in her way.
“I offer you one in six odds,” Sealiah told Eliot.
“Even odds.” Eliot said. “Or no deal. Take or leave it.”
Sealiah shrugged as if this were a trivial matter. She passed one hand over another, and as if by sleight of hand, a small white cube appeared. It was a six-sided die, with tiny symbols on its faces.
She descended the stairs to meet Eliot and offered it to him.
He accepted the die and examined the sides. Etched onto the faces was a scrimshaw head-eating-tail snake, two prancing dogs, three crossed scimitars, four stars, five hands (each making a different rude gesture), and six ravens on the wing.
“Odd or even?” Sealiah asked.
“Even, if your Majesty pleases.” Eliot turned the die so six scrimshawed black birds faced up.
Eliot closed his hand and shook the die. He concentrated, blew on his fist, and cast the die onto the steps.
It rolled and bounced and spun up on one corner like a top.
Eliot leaned forward, his gazed fixed upon the die.
Sealiah, too, stared at it.
The spinning cube gyrated back and froth.
Dots of sweat appeared on the Queen’s brow. Eliot’s hands clenched and whitened.
The die tumbled, popped, and skittered to a halt. . . .
. . . Six crows.
Even.
Eliot exhaled. He’d won.
Louis shrugged off the chains and gag and stretched. “Well rolled, my boy. A pleasure to see you.” He smiled at Fiona. “Thank you, too, my dear.”
Sealiah seemed pleased. And why shouldn’t she? Even losing she had Fiona’s brother and father to fight in her war.
“You can go,” Eliot whispered to Fiona. “This doesn’t have to be your fight anymore.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she told him.
Eliot was being so magnanimous and noble (and that positively irked her). There was no way she could just walk out on him. But there was no way she was fighting for the Queen of Poppies, either.
Louis rubbed his hands. “Before we go any further,” he said. “I insist that if my son and I are to fight, it be as your Dux Bellorum with full honors and rights.”
“Ducks Bell—what?” Eliot asked Fiona.
“Latin maybe?” she whispered. “Duke of war?”
She was pretty good with foreign languages, but