Masquerades - Kate Novak [128]
The halfling popped up beside him, munching on a sticky roll. "Shen sight still out of focus, eh?" she taunted, noting the look with which he fixed the croamarkh's son. "You could stand on your head. Maybe that would turn everything right side up." She wandered off to another table for some liquid refreshment.
The saurial glared after her for a moment, then smiled. Only Olive could suggest something so ridiculous that might actually have merit. Not upside down, but backward, the paladin thought. He turned about to face the buffet. As Thistle chattered on about the longer growing season required for melons, the paladin closed his eyes and reached out with his shen sight.
He let the myriad colors slide along his consciousness. He stopped, focusing on a very dark purple to his right. He peeked out one eye. Kimbel, the former assassin, stood on a staircase, watching the guests from behind the guards.
Dragonbait closed his eye again. In a moment, he could sense a deep red hatred speckled with green jealousy. The paladin confirmed his guess. Haztor Urdo, hating Alias, jealous of Victor's pleasure in her company.
With his eyes squeezed tightly shut, the paladin let the colors wash over him longer, until he could sense their pattern as they moved about the blue that he knew must be Alias, as they stepped back from her, circled around her, pulled her close.
Blackness like a shroud covered the blue flame of Alias's spirit, blackness so dark, it devoured the light from her, giving up none of it. Blackness was the lust for power, the voracious appetite for control over all others, the desire that swallowed its tail and devoured the being's own universe.
Dragonbait whirled and glared at the man holding Alias in his arms. Once again, where Victor stood, the paladin saw the blue flame so like Alias's. Now he concentrated on what lay beneath the blue. As if Victor's soul were a canvas, he stared at it for the pentimento that lay beneath the illusion of virtue painted on the surface.
Then he could see it-the image that lay beneath what Victor had seemed. There were pits of blackness filled with black serpents, all poised to devour whatever came their way. As Victor reached a hand out to the swordswoman, Dragonbait saw a serpent wind about the
flame of Alias's spirit, prepared to crush the life from it before making it a meal. Despite himself, Dragonbait let out a mewling cry and nearly toppled forward.
It was a moment before he could gather his shen sight back into whatever spot it rested when not in use. He saw a flame of blue, tinged with a little green jealousy just before his vision cleared. Thistle stood before him, her hands resting gently on his shoulders. "Are you all right?" she asked slowly, in a manner that presumed that because he did not speak her tongue, he could not hear or easily understand it.
The paladin nodded, tapping his chest to indicate he'd only swallowed something the wrong way.
As Thistle turned to get a glass of water for the saurial, Dragonbait watched Victor with new insight. He remembered how Mist had claimed the noble was a pawn to his ambition and desires. The wyrm always did have a talent for understatement, the paladin thought with a wry sense of amusement.
The dance ended, and Alias strode from the dance floor, hand in hand with Victor. Dragonbait excused himself from Thistle and moved toward the couple.
"I must speak with you," the paladin said to Alias in saurial, "alone."
"Can't it wait?" Alias asked, eager to reach the refreshment table and ease her parched throat.
The paladin shook his head to indicate it could not. With a sigh, the swordswoman excused herself from Lord Victor's company. She followed the saurial to a less-crowded section of the room.
"What is it?" Alias asked. She removed her mask and spoke in Saurial so that she would not be overheard. "Night Masks?"
"No, it is Victor," Dragonbait replied. "Olive is right. We cannot trust him."
"Would you forget about Olive?