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Fortunately, Louis-Cesare changed the subject.
“You managed to recapture the artifacts,” he said, from the other side of the room.
I carefully returned the shawabti to its place and Hassani and I walked over to some shelving along a wall, where the fey items we’d brought had been displayed. Well, most of them. One large basket-like thing was on the ground, with a strange blue light shining from under the lid that I didn’t remember having been there before.
Considering what had happened the last time a fey artifact lit up, I gave it a wide berth.
“Yes,” Hassani agreed, gazing at the shelves. “Most of the attempted thieves were apprehended on site, and the rest were tracked down shortly afterward.” He reached up and took down a small object. “We also recovered this from the location of your attack.”
I hadn’t seen what it was, because it had been sitting behind something else. He handed it to me, but this time, it wasn’t a cute little statue. This time—
“Shit!” I dropped the wicked thing, which still reminded me of a stone hockey puck: small, round and flat, with a crusty, whitish gray color and strange cracks scrawling across the surface.
“What is it?” Louis-Cesare asked, pulling me back slightly.
“That thing! That fucking thing—”
I started to kick it away, but Hassani moved faster, scooping it up.
“My apologies,” he said, and he sounded genuinely disturbed. “I had not thought—but of course, it would be traumatic for you.”
“What is it?” Louis-Cesare demanded, and this time, there was no courtesy in his tone.
“The thing that separated Dorina and me,” I said, panting slightly. The damned thing was just lying there in Hassani’s hand, but it was about to give me a panic attack. “You should have destroyed it!”
“That is, of course, up to you,” the consul said, looking grave. “However, I would caution against rash action. You may need it, after all.”
“Need it? For what?”
He cocked his head. “Why, to put you two back together again.”
I stared at him, still half panicked, with my pulse fluttering in my throat. But after a moment, I realized that he was right. I didn’t know what had happened to me in that alley, and the only people who did were probably fey, who weren’t likely to tell me.
Even if I found Dorina, it wouldn’t do much good if I couldn’t put us back together.
“Thank you,” I said roughly. “For retrieving it.”
Hassani inclined his head graciously. “It is yours, of course. I only wish I could tell you how it functions. I had my people examine it, but even my best mages had no idea.”
“Our senate has additional resources,” Louis-Cesare said, taking the horrible thing so I didn’t have to touch it. “An entire research department has been set up to study fey artifacts taken in the war. We’ll have them look at it.”
“I wish you success,” Hassani said, bowing slightly. And I guessed he decided that we’d seen enough exhibits for one day, because led us through the mini museum into a finely appointed sitting room that branched off to the right.
It was down three steps, like a sunken living room, and had the usual tan and cream color scheme that I had come to associate with Hassani’s court. It also had some more of the expansive windows. These were long and curved, to follow the rounded wall of the medieval tower that comprised part of his suite. But outside wasn’t the night view of the city that I’d been expecting, or even a glimpse of the ongoing party. For a moment, I didn’t know what I was seeing.
“The sound and light show, at the pyramids,” Hassani explained, as we sat down on a large, half-moon sofa positioned so as to take in the view. “We couldn’t have fireworks inside the city, but we thought it would do to bring some color to the festivities.”
I guess, I thought, remembering how close his shields had made the pyramids look once before. He settled onto a small sofa opposite us, leaving him silhouetted against all that vivid color—electric blue and green, bright pink and purple, brilliant yellow and blazing white, that flowed across the ancient monuments. I assumed there was a story that went along with the visuals, because occasionally a diagram or a pharaoh’s head appeared, including one that was superimposed over the sphinx briefly. But I couldn’t hear anything.
I couldn’t even hear the sound of the party, still going on above. It didn’t surprise me that Hassani’s chambers were soundproofed: when you lived among hundreds of beings with supernatural hearing, it was probably a requirement. But it made for a faintly eerie ambiance: the dim, almost dark room, allowing us to appreciate the spectacle outside; the vivid colors flowing over the furniture and splashing our faces; the dark silhouette of the consul, his back to the light show, his face in shadow.
A strange ripple went across my skin, like a moving wave of goosebumps. I suddenly wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear what he had to say, after all. But it was too late; he’d already begun to speak.
“I have become a bit of a history buff, as you see,” he said, gesturing back at the outer room. “It was always an interest, but it became something of an obsession over the years as I searched to find some chink in my former master’s armor.”
“Your master? You mean—” I paused wondering how to phrase it politely. I gave up. “That thing downstairs made you, too?”
“No.” He shook his head, a brief jerky movement unlike his usual elegance. It wasn’t quite a shudder, but it told me how much he liked that idea. “It’s ironic, in fact. His blood flows through the veins of every consul on Earth save two: the Chinese Empress and me.”
