She is standing net to him, on his side of the table. In addition to the dark magic fire that glows in the fireplace, the white winter sky enters through the window and is reflected in her raven hair and dark red pavement. For a study, the room is large, spacious, and the day fails to illuminate it completely. There are still dark recesses escaping from the rays of the bleak winter sun, between the works of the library, around the ocher Durennian carpet, under the pedestal tables, behind the hangings and the official portrait of the king where Viren poses at his side.
The shadow is still there. The shadow is always there.
It is about fourteen o'clock. Viren gave orders to bring three meals at fixed times, medicines for Claudia's flu that did not quite left her, and some fish left over for the animal. According to his prediction, Claudia should put forty-eight hours to resolve, and she is with him in the room for eight hours.
Harrow has left him some paperwork to check - all who does not need the royal seal. Essentially statistical reports: crime rate, access to education in remote villages, price of bread, standard of living of the inhabitants ... On his desk, on his shelves, many ancient spell-books to examine. Under his fingers, he feels the characteristic touch of the eleven skin parchment, and the smell of reddish ink - coagulated blood. Ancient draconic, ancient Valyrian, Tarquian, Merovian, so many dialects from the bottom ages to decipher, so many spells stating how to drown the Sun, freeze the moon, change the ocean into lava ...
Viren is therefore profitable enough time away from the royal family. And Soren. He will have to think of finding something for him, or he will still make a scene like he did last year. Fortunately he has already planned the present for Harrow, which certainly arrives the next day, but one is never too far-sighted.
Claudia comes close to him when he is sitting at his desk. She is holding the white kitten in her arms, covering her black dress with hair as she passes, and caressing her head distractedly as it purrs. But following the witticism of the rats that Viren has just made, which resembles him so little, she seems completely lost. Then she nervously taps on the kitten's fur, pinches her lips, she stares at the Durennian rug with her green eyes as if she wants to flare it.
"Do you understand how crazy your reasoning is?"
"... And you, you ask me to kill a kitten for nothing. In which way this is better ?"
When Claudia looks at him with those big wet green eyes, he has trouble holding back a smile.
"No, I ask you to kill him so that you can attend the king's birthday. And that of your brother. They have gone to Banthere with Queen Sarai and the princes, and we will not go to join them until you kill it. "
Viren lets a sorry smile distort his features briefly. He found only this excuse to push Claudia to the wall. It is not sure that she understands his intentions - and he himself is not sure that his double machination will be of any efficacity. She is only nine years old after all. So he goes on lying, he insists:
"Of course, you can also wait and let this cat door is open, besides, you can go out whenever you want."
He calls it with a gesture of the chin. Finely crafted, double-leafed wood. Claudia pouted at her feet. She does everything to keep the door out of her field of vision.
"But you do not want to miss such an important event," Viren finishes, resting his hand on his shoulder and re-melting his voice. Is not it ?
"But - "
"Kill it, Claudia. "
He passes her a hand through her long raven hair, then dipped his quill in the inkwell and goes back to his paperwork. Claudia does not insist, and returns to the middle of the room, on the carpet, the kitten in her arms. She rests it on the ground so that it can throw itself on the remains of fish on a plate, then swallow her medicine for her flu by looking at the wooden-crafted door.
The goose feather in Viren's fine hand creaks on paper between spell annotations and statistical reports. The deaf kitten has discovered he has an adventurer vocation and has escaped Claudia's arms to explore the dark corners of the study, between curiosity and game of hide and seek. The weights add up and are distributed on the scales of the scale. There is no artificial harmony between weight and counterweight, this time, no sleight of hand to desensitize the beam, no dark magic to distort the weighing and maintain a balance as reassuring as scabrous, a tacky compromise of blood between morality and good conscience ...
Today, there is more than the balance.
Claudia's denial, which fails to find the beast hidden in some nook, is followed by revolt. It's not fair, Soren, Callum and Ezran were allowed to go on vacation and you force me to kill a kitten, normally it's spiders, disgusting insects, elven horns and human remains, and then you know what, I do not want to kill any more animals, I want to do more dark magic, that's why mom is gone, I never want to be like you.
Viren closes his eyes to take the shock, and he repeats:
"Kill it, Claudia."
But she continues.
Come on dad, look at him, he's really too cute, come on, please, I'll give you a new inkstand with my pocket money, with solar phoenix feathers, excuse me for what I Did I tell you, I'll do it more, promise, swear, or a new costume for your birthday? He wanted to hold back a smile-without success, Claudia saw it. But all she could do to dig the flaw hit the grave:
"Kill it, Claudia."
Viren waited for the departure of the royal family to begin the ordeal. He did not tell them about it. He knows that they would have disapproved of his twisted manner, it must be admitted, to apply the king's advice. He almost hears from here Queen Sarai spit out his contempt. It's like she's standing, breathing, shattering and chopping in her office. Her footsteps echo on the pavement. How can you turn your daughter into a killing machine, murderer, unworthy father. You claim that dark magic kills to save but the death of this poor beast will not benefit anyone. Did you only understand what Harrow told you? Your method seems more a way to test her cruelty than to point out her guilt! Finally, be serious, all Katolis knows that your daughter is already mad. What need do you have for yet another test to prove it!
Somehow, Viren is forced to admit that Sarai is not entirely wrong.
The cold pragmatism he conveys to his children - and especially to Claudia - may seem implacable, even immoral. In particular, he remembers five moribund wounded soldiers whose only chance of survival was the agreement of a single donor. Sublimate his life force and share it among the five wounded, just enough to keep them alive while they are being treated sustainably ... Viren, who at the time was looking for nothing more than staying safe at his banner post of the late King Alzar, a sudden surge of morality had suddenly occurred. There was no time to wait and he did not hesitate for one second. He had slipped by night into the infirmary-the floor creaked slightly under his feet and it was dark; and then he had taken everything, sublimated, saved the five soldiers.
But the donor did not know anything. He was sleeping peacefully in the next bed (a small wound that, although painful and impressive, did not involve much of his strength) and Viren had not hesitated. The sublimation had certainly spit a little blood in passing, prostrate on the ground to cough miserably, wipe his mouth and hand in lint, and he had been dizzy for two full days after that ... but he had saved five lives for the price of one.
"Dad, did not you have the properties of the Black Sand Mountain beasts to have me checked?
"How does the venom of the Iron Wyverns act?"
"The Wyverns," she recites, Fer-born or not, are often wrongly confused with the dragons with whom they share many morphological characteristics. But their behavior in the face of a threat differs radically. They try to bite their prey, but it's actually a diversion, because from behind, hop! they sting theirs victims with their dart-bzz! -bzz! "
Claudia, too happy to have a distraction, jumped up, went as far as throwing her arms in front of her like spades, and tried to give his face a false-cruel expression -surprised, the kitten falls from her knees and push a little meow of protest. Viren gives her an amused look. She resumes, encouraged:
"And the enzymes of their Iron-born magic venom, connected to the Earth's Arcanum, force the victim's blood to clot through the too high dose of injected iron ore, and the pebble prevents the blood from circulate properly, the brain is no longer irrigated -ah no, that's because neuro ... neurotox …"
She stumbles on the word, but she finds it:
"Because of postsynaptic neurotoxins that block the communication between the brain and the muscles. And death occurs in minutes."
"These are both at the same time. Nicely played."
"So can I go outside to play with the cat?"
"No. The term is blood clot, not pebble."
"Okay. A clot of blood. Can I go play and leave the cat alone now?"
"Let me think ... No. Well tried, but no."
The sarcastic tone he used left no chance. However, Claudia shrugs with a small smile:
The door is open. I go out when I like it.
Viren makes a gesture of the chin towards the door. Maybe she will come out, after all:
"Go ahead, then. "
Claudia's smile fades, and the pout returns. Viren resumes his paperwork, and Claudia runs her hand over the cat's back.
When Viren has to kill a monster or an elf for a spell, there is no question. But now, no doubt because of Harrow's honorable influence, when he is a human being he must sublimate, he always makes sure that the victim is a criminal, a rapist, a murderer, someone who deserves death for inflicting it without good reason.
"The good conscience of the executioner, yes!" Sarai squeaks - the scratching of the feather on the parchment barely covers her voice. "Sublimate? Nice word to talk about a murder. Killing someone to solve all our problems at once? Of course. And soon, are you going to tell us that you are an reverse necromancer and that it has nothing to do with killing people? No, it's too easy, and it's not fair. It's even totally unfair. "
Thus proclaims the warrior of which one of the highest feats is to have pierced five Evenryan soldiers at once on a punitive expedition ... Queen Sarai is certainly a precious friend - he has been sincerely appreciating her for the last fifteen years they know each other, but she can show an aberrational bad faith that sometimes makes her hard to bear ...
" Dad ?"
"Hm?"
"Why does the little boy fall off the swing?"
Claudia has posted herself in front of the office, she has changed strategy: from the good student, she has gone to the joke, and it is just as effective. The animal, decidedly adventurous, has climbed on her shoulders and observes the landscape. The ambient twilight and the anxiety of vertigo conspire to dilate its pupils, then, icing on the cake, he pushes a little meow. That plays in favor of one of the plates of the scale. Paradoxically, it is its fragility that serves its as armor. These animals are decidedly twisted.
"Because he has no arms," Viren replies with the jaded tone of one who has heard the joke ten times.
"Yeah, this was a funny one, wasn't it ?"
"In my turn: why will not the little girl leave the office?"
"Because she has no legs?"
"Almost there : because she does not want to kill the cat."
"The door is open, I go out when it pleases me."
Always try. I don't hold you back."
That said, notes Viren, perhaps it is also a question of method.
With Dark Magic, there is no frantic beat of the heart under the warm and elastic skin, no howl that rises from the depths of the vibrating throat under the fingers, no dark and gooey red molasses that chews the hands and dries under the nails, no thrilling terror in the veins, no lungs that swell in search of air, no slow motion of the rising of the chest, no gaze that freezes in the eyeballs, no opaque veil that covers the eyes, no stiffening of the limbs ... nothing .
Just a formula, a violet haze, a possible hiccup of pain, a body that falls a few meters away and a soul to sublimate. A soul to use.
With dark magic, life is too far to reach, and guilt falls asleep without dream ...
He could have put a knife in Claudia's hands instead of a Primal Stone of Sky. The monster that the queen likes to see in Claudia would have killed this animal without any hesitation. A blade stroke at the throat, and it was over. Or rather no: the past nine hours would rather have gone to he-did-know-what nonsense, to tear the claws, eyeballs, or for example slicing one by one the pads, sinister creak of the bone, dark and glutinous molasses covering the hands, mewing to crack the soul; to strike, again and again, until the thing picked up on the ground no longer has the strength to whine and beg for completion.
But Viren just does not have the courage to inflict that on his daughter. Already at the time, on the battlefield, he was called a coward.
"Wait, you know that of the elf who repaints his ceiling?"
The mage does not even want to play the game. He sighs, his fingers massage his temples, and he repeats for the twentieth or thirtieth time:
"Kill it, Claudia."
"I can not, he is invisible", she answers as if she did not understand. "He's a Darkmoon Elf, and it's dark outside."
Indeed, the murmur of the court has gone out. In the middle of winter, night falls early and the servant has not yet brought dinner. Viren did not even notice the change of scenery. The study is plunged, besides the sublimated fire that has not ceased to glow since this morning at the price of some creature burning with pain a few kilometers away, in the golden halos of candles and candelabra that he does not remember not have lights on. Surely he did it by reflex, by magic, without paying attention, with a snap of his fingers distracted by his reflections.
"It's not the full moon, and I was talking about the cat. Kill it."
"No but look" she insists with little conviction, "we see his eyes clear and mean and his horns shining in the darkness-"
"Kill it, Claudia. "
This time she does not even talk about the open door.
Claudia is used to the presence of death. Spell books, dissection tables and organ jars are an integral part of her world, as well as himself, as Soren or the stones of Katolis Castle. Dark magic, sublimation, the ballet of souls and bodies ... they have something reassuring and necessary for her. They melted into her mind with the relentless force of habit and comfort.
If she is without her purse of ingredients, as now, she is immediately uncomfortable, fingers nervously fingers or foot -Viren thinks he has the same tic, or she is trying to argue with Soren for fill the gaping void left by her spells. To the point that her first reflex in a locked room would probably be to look for a spell to force the lock, not the key to open it ...
Dark magic is part of her, no doubt.
But what she has in front of her in the familiar coldness of the laboratories, they are only bodies. Or rats, snakes, insects, spiders, animals that are killed without a thought, as one hunts a dust of the hand. They are repugnant. That does not matter. In addition, Dad says that you can save thousands of people if you put the context right, if you sublimate the good creature in the right circumstances.
Claudia plays with death, but she does not face it.
To kill her without sublimating is to deprive her of her dance with death. To kill for nothing is to put her in front of the nothingness. In all its horror and nonsense. It opens a wound, presses and weighs on the guilt that bleeds and hurts.
The kitten was not chosen at random. Viren knows that it is one of the animals that most parasitize the human mind. At two months old, they are small, a light and fragile body, a tiny mouth, big sky eyes disproportionate to the head, a fluffy white fur that calls the hand for it to plunge into it. A single look at one of them brings back a primitive, almost beastly instinct, to take care of more vulnerable than oneself, to cherish it until it explodes with joy, crushed by so much affection.