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My mouth drew down into a scowl. “Right, so my dark room has no light switch.”
To my surprise he shook his head. “The switch is there. But I keep moving it.” He dropped the piece of grass and lifted his hand. The dragonfly alighted on his index finger as though he’d called it to him. “I’ve spent most of my existence walking that line and others, sticking my toes over.” His eyes remained on the elegant insect. “In law enforcement terms, I’d have a rap sheet full of misdemeanors, a fistful of felonies, and be wanted by Interpol.” He gave a light shrug. “I’m a troublemaker.”
“No wonder I like you.” This time a faint smile curved my lips. “How about we back up one more step. Can you explain why there’s a line at all?”
“Explaining that would be like running across the line and shooting the bird at the ones who drew the line.” He raised his dragonfly-free hand with middle finger extended and others folded to clarify that he didn’t mean a sparrow. “I can’t go there. Not now.” He paused. “Not yet.”
“Ones? Not Rhyzkahl?”
“No, not Rhyzkahl. The Demahnk Council,” he paused, looked away. “And others.” The last two words came out as a near breathless whisper.
My frustration degraded to something closer to despair. I could barely comprehend the oaths he had with Rhyzkahl. How was I supposed to understand more beyond that, of the Council and of others he wouldn’t even name? “I don’t know what to do, Zack,” I said, brow furrowing. “Should I stop asking you for help?”
The dragonfly whirred away as Zack snapped his head toward me, gaze sharp. “No!” He drew in a breath. “No,” he repeated a bit more calmly. “Let me see how I can put this.” He closed his eyes, and I imagined him sifting through words to
find the least incriminating ones. “It is so very complex. In the convoluted insanity of the agreements and decrees, some interventions—such as using the demahnk ability to travel—carry consequences in certain Earth situations.” True distress creased his forehead. “I know a woman’s life is at stake right now, but I must weigh the consequences against the benefits.”
“What kind of consequences do you mean?” I asked, determined to get some sort of useful info. “Are we talking volcanoes and locusts? Or, you get in trouble and get put in time out?”
“Volcanoes and locusts if I went too far,” he said, expression grave. “Extensive consequences. But every transgression carries personal consequences. Very personal.” He retrieved the dropped stem of grass. “If I extract Angela Palatino, we win the battle, but I cripple myself for the greater war.” He gripped his temples between his thumb and fingers, shook his head. “Kara, this is . . .”
I reached over, gently pulled his hand from his head, and wrapped my fingers around his. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m stressing you out. I don’t understand who has you boxed in like this, but I get that you are. That’s more than I knew before, and it’s enough for now.” I peered at him, smiled. “So tell me how I can help you, other than not asking you to blip out and pick up my dry cleaning.”
Relief eased his features. “You’re doing it right now,” he assured me, then tipped his head back “The other night you said that if a bond isn’t mutually shared, symbiotic, then one party is a parasite.” He cast the stem of grass away like a spear into the water, watched the ripples spread from it. “You’re right,” he continued. “The bond in question was never intended to be mutually beneficial. However the imbalance now is . . . intolerable.”
I felt myself frown. “Whenever I mention breaking the ptarl bond to Mzatal or Szerain they kind of freak.”
“Because it is inconceivable for them,” he stated.
“It’s inconceivable to them,” I said, “but not to you. Why?”
He regarded me, eyes unveiled and ancient. “Any inferences that you make from that are yours, but I can’t go there.” He lifted his hand, middle finger extended, but I didn’t take offense. This was his way to signal that the answer was too far over the line and into shooting-the-bird territory. “And in all fairness,” he added, “it’s almost inconceivable to me.”
I mulled over what little I’d learned so far. Okay, so the bond between a lord and his demahnk ptarl was never intended to be mutually beneficial, but the demahnk clearly weren’t at the beck and call of the lords. So what was the deal? “The demahnk initiated the bonds with the lords, not vice versa,” I said after a moment of thought.
Zack offered no verbal or physical cues of affirmation or denial, and that on its own spoke volumes. “I don’t know if I could do it, even if it is . . .” He trailed off, his voice thick with emotion.
“Even if it’s right?” I asked. I shuffled the bits and pieces of clues into what I hoped was a logical order. “I guess you’d have to weigh the long-term effects of doing it,” I assumed he meant breaking the bond with Rhyzkahl, “against the long-term effects of letting the parasite continue to feed.”
“Plus the short-term effects, and medium-term effects. And if it is indeed ‘right.’” He looked away, exhaled. “Throw on top of that a sincere desire to protect and cultivate the parasite, and it gets more twisted.”
No kidding, I thought as I filed information away. Since Zack seemed to have more freedom saying parasite rather than Rhyzkahl, I stuck with the metaphor. “Parasites are funny things,” I said conversationally. “They can be beneficial to their hosts, but the kicker is that it’s only because it’s beneficial for the parasite.” I stood, chucked a stick into the water. “And sometimes there comes a point when it has no further need of its host.” I slid a glance to him. “Then again, most parasites aren’t with hosts who have friends who will stand right by them and pick them up when needed.”
“Very, very true.” He fought for a smile, but his eyes held a fear I’d never seen in him before. His throat bobbed in a noisy swallow. “I wonder what happens to the host when isolated from both the parasite and the other hosts?”
Tidbits of information filtered through his words. Other hosts. He’d expanded beyond himself. The other demahnk? “The other hosts would still be prisoners of their parasites,” I said, then crouched before him. “The free host would be with others who are free.”
He squeezed his eyes shut as though blocking physical sight would block a concept too traumatic to consider. “Not others of its own kind.” He opened his eyes and repeated in a voice as empty as the void, “Not others of its own kind.”
An ache of sympathy tightened my chest. How well would I be able to face a choice that meant isolation from all humans as one of its consequences? There was a reason why solitary confinement was a punishment. “I’m so sorry.” I slipped my arm around him in a cradling hug. He leaned into me as though craving any form of comfort he could get.
“I’m so tired, Kara,” he said. “So tired. I don’t know if I answered why I can’t go get Angela.” He paused. “No. That’s not true. I can, but I won’t.”
“It was enough,” I reassured him. “We’ll find another way.” And we would. Somehow. What good would it do to save Idris if we lost Zack?
He remained still and quiet for a moment. “Kara, this is the part where I’m supposed to strip from you everything that you’ve inferred, surmised, or heard.”
I took a moment to process that. Zack can do mind manipulation, I realized. I’d harbored some suspicions about that due to the nature of his work with Szerain, but the demahnk in general certainly didn’t advertise that they possessed that particular ability.
