Last time Chatoya had seen Therese Orage, she had been curled into a ball on the ground, senseless after the dual effects of gorging herself on blood and being briefly tortured by Blue. At the time, other concerns had meant she hadn't given the vampire more than a glance.

 And so about the only aspect of her that didn't come as a surprise was her appearance.

 The door was opened by a young boy who stared up at her with disconcertingly sharp eyes. Therese's brother, already a member of the family business at an age when kids shouldn't have any career, never mind this one. "Yeah?"

 "I'm looking for Therese," she said, resisting the urge to hunker down so they were on the same eye-level. This child, she reminded herself, belonged to Nightfire, and she had been warned about underestimating him.

 "Come in. You the lady who's taken over Pursang?"

 Every time someone called her a lady, she had to resist the urge to look over her shoulder to see if someone statelier was behind her. "I guess so."

 He stepped back and gave her an assessing look that was so old and jaded, she felt a stab of pity. Didn't you have a childhood? she wanted to say, then he cracked a grin that was full of mischief. "Well, I wouldn't give you a job. Anyway, Therese is in her room, doing girl stuff." He said it with such disgust she had to hide a smile.

 When she was halfway up the stairs, his voice caught her, hesitant. "Um, Ms Irkil?"

 She glanced back; he was loitering by the banister, frowning. "Riose?"

 "Aspen's living with the Slones, right?"

 She nodded.

 "He won't, you know, bite any of them, will he? Only, I'm kind of friends with Celia, and I don't think he should bite her because it's..." He searched for the word he wanted. "Not...right."

 She blinked. Maybe all hope wasn't lost if Riose was managing to develop something approaching morals. "Riose, have you met Mrs Slone?"

 His face lit up. "Yeah. She kicked me out of the house the first time I went over, 'cause I forgot to take off my shoes. And then she said I needed to brush my hair. Then she gave me cookies. She kicks ass," he concluded, looking awed.

 "You think she'd let Aspen bit any of her family?"

 His slow smile had a charm to it. "Nah. She'd turn him into mush." He looked quite happy at the prospect. "That'd be cool." With surprising candidness, he added, "I like you better."

 "Thanks," she said dryly, unsure how much of an endorsement that was.

~*~

 By process of elimination, the only shut door on the second floor had to be Therese's room. It seemed odd for one of the Furies to have a family, to be a daughter and a sister just like everyone else.

 But then, Chatoya thought sadly, I was those things once. If they hadn't been taken from me, I wouldn't be here now. I wouldn't be who I am.

 She tried not to regret the life that she had forged from the wreckage of her family's deaths, but sometimes, it was impossible not to wonder who she would have been otherwise. Happier? Less powerful? Lonelier?

 Maybe, but it would a life empty of so many people she loved. There would be no Jepar, always ready with a hug and a joke. No Lisa to mother her, or trade gossip with. No Cougar to throw ear-splitting tantrums or hurl abuse at anyone who he thought might have hurt her. No Circle Strange. No Vaje, no Lance or Aspen, who - crazy as they were - had somehow drawn affection from her like venom from a wound.

 No Blue to be blessing and deepest damnation, to display a snake's sinuous charm even while dripping poison from each word. Probably that would have been a mercy though.

 No, she didn't think she would have been happier in that other utopia, but she could never know. Blue had made sure of that.

 Therese opened the door with blood smeared around her mouth and a headless snake dangling from one hand. Chatoya looked from one to the other and didn't know what to say.

 Therese Orage was an uncanny sight as it was: her bald head only made her black, liquid eyes appear even larger, the most striking aspect of her blunted face; round cheekbones and a plush, overfull mouth gave her a savagely seductive look, but it was her eyes which were unreadable as an animal's, as though her thoughts came from different and wilder places.

 Then she gave Chatoya a thin, meaningless smile. "I was peckish," she said, then stepped aside. The dead snake was flung into the bin. "Reptiles have so much more piquancy."

 "More than humans?" she said before she could catch herself.

 Therese dabbed at her mouth with a tissue, apparently unconcerned, but Chatoya thought that something close to sorrow passed over her face. "More than most humans. There are always exceptions." She pulled at the gold chains that ran from her nose to her ears. "Snakes are an acquired taste. But I've heard you're a connoisseur yourself."

 "Have you?" she said guardedly, not sure where Therese was going with this.

 "Well, Blue's taken a shine to you."

 "He didn't have much choice in the matter." Once he realised he couldn't just kill me, she thought grimly.

 The vampire's laugh was smoky and low. "People have thought that before, and been wrong."

 Therese scooped some of her dozens of belongings onto the floor, revealing a chair. Chatoya sat there dubiously, taking the moment to steal a look at the room. It was cluttered, yet gave away no hint of personality. Everything was impersonal: name brands and very ordinary possessions. No books, but a lot of clothes.

 "Did any of them live?" she said mildly.

 Respect gleamed in Therese's smile, and when her tongue flickered between her lips, Chatoya couldn't hide her reaction. Therese's tongue was forked, as though all that snake blood had begun to mutate her.

 "Not for long." The vampire eyed her, a rigidity to her body. "And speaking of timely deaths, I suppose I should thank you for Laburnum Martin's."

 Chatoya met her eyes dead-on, but saw no hint of vulnerability. "My pleasure," she said, meaning it.

 "I wish it had been mine." Therese picked up some nail polish and began to paint her nails: a pretty pink that was at odds with the rest of her stark appearance. "So, you aren't afraid to kill. But do you need a cause, or is the filthy lucre enough?"

 It was a bladed question. "I'm not intending to stop that part of Pursang, if that's what you're asking."

 "I wasn't. I've heard enough about you to believe you've got common sense. I want to know if when it comes to it, face to face and eye to eye, can you drive in the knife, or will you find an excuse?"

 I've driven home plenty of knives lately, she thought, even if none of them were killing blows. But could I? I don't know. I hope not. I think the day that I could kill without questioning myself is the day I've lost something that's never going to return.

 "That's a pointless question," she said bluntly. "I might let one person live and another die. It depends on the person. And what about you?" She made her voice strident, putting on a show of bravado. "When it comes to it, face to face and eye to eye, can you stay your hand, or will you just drive home the knife and call it an excuse?"

 Therese looked taken aback, but she seemed to be considering the question. "Mercy is...a valuable quality," she said finally, very slowly. "And with considerable power. But few of the Furies consider it important. I'm not one of them."

 Chatoya had expected her to dismiss the question offhand, as Blue or Aspen would have. "You're the first person who's said that to me."

 "I'll probably be the last. Mercy is not something we experience often and so it's hard for us to understand it. But..." Her eyes half-closed, and Therese seemed dreamy as a prophet, wheeling through the future. "I've been lucky. Two people have shown me mercy, and neither of them had any reason."

 "Blue," she guessed, remembering how Aspen had spoken of him.

 "He'd call it a business decision, because he dislikes the idea of mercy. It gets in the way of his philosophy." A touch of mockery seasoned those words, and Chatoya began to understand that Therese Orage had more to her than Aspen's fractured collection of tenets or Blue's strange but strict honour code. She was grappling with a woman of intelligence and insight, one who had ruled K'Shaia for most of her adult life.

 "Doesn't everything?" she said dryly.

 "Not everything. But yes, it was mercy, what he did."

 "You said there were two people?" she prompted.

 In that veiled gaze, Chatoya could grasp nothing. She could only rely on Therese's voice, carefully guarded. "The other was driven by pity. He made a decision for me, but don't think that happens often. And he taught me something else, Chatoya. Sometimes mercy is driving the knife home, and sometimes cruelty is staying your hand. So maybe I asked the wrong question."

I underestimated her, Chatoya realised, and I'll bet I'm not the first. "Ask again, then," she said, aware that she was treading dangerous ground.

 Those eyes snapped up, and in them, she saw a conscience and an acumen she had not seen in any of the Furies before. "Will you do what is necessary?"  

 "Always," she said without hesitation. "But our ideas of what's necessary are probably different."

 "Some of the time. But you did manage to stop Blue from playing the fool with dragons." The vampire's gaze held an exasperation that wasn't aimed at her. "His ambition has always outstripped his brain. Not by much, I'll admit, but enough to cause needless trouble. If I weren't so indebted to him, K'Shaia might have gone its own way on a number of matters."

 Chatoya frowned. "Are you always this open?" Or are you lying to me?

 "I don't mince words." There was a frosty edge to that statement. "And I won't stand for useless sentiment."

 Chatoya refrained from saying that Therese has just displayed some sentiment. Had that been useless?

 "You need to know what the situation is, because if your Samaritan's heart messes up my plans - well, I will kill you, and Blue will probably thank me for it afterwards. So understand this: if you've got ideals, be prepared to put them aside, or get ready to fight."

 "What do you think I've spent the last year doing?" she said quietly.

 Therese shook her head. "You've been fighting Blue, not the Furies. Whatever is between you is personal. But this is business." She flashed a brutal smile. "And our hearts just don't come into it. So, can we work together, or are you going to stand in my way?"

 Therese was asking for an unequivocal surrender, disguised as a truce. It was very close to the terms Blue had offered her, when she had fought him in dreams.

 "I'll work with you when I choose, and I'll fight you when I choose."

 To her surprise, the vampire threw back her head and laughed. "You know, I can almost see why he likes you. All right, then, Chatoya. No ceasefire. But you won't win them all, you know." Careless confidence in her voice. "You've got no leverage with me."

 "I won't lose them all, either," she answered evenly, though nerves had set her pulse racing. "And if you're thinking about killing me, you might want to remember that you could never have persuaded Aspen to go against Blue. But me?" She forced a smile, tight and cold. "I don't have to be your enemy all of the time."

 A calculating expression settled on Therese's features. "Now that's a promising thought. Yes...dear Blue, he is so used to getting his own way. Anyone who disagrees with him usually disappears, and well, we all know people who vanish with Blue don't come back."

 Except me, thought Chatoya, but the talk of vanishing had reminded her of a question that had been bothering her for a long time. "What about people who vanish with you? They don't seem to come back often."

 The vampire paused in painting her nails and Chatoya felt that intelligence behind her words, probing, testing her. "Somehow, I don't think you're talking about business."

 "I'm talking about Rob Slivan," she said more harshly than she had intended. "Last time anyone saw him, you were with him. Where is he?"

 Those black eyes held a warning. "Why should I care about vermin?"

 But Chatoya pursued her; Therese knew something, she was sure. "You cared enough to drink his blood, from what I've heard. Was he one of the exceptions?"

 Therese looked away. "Very exceptional," was all she said, her voice soft and thick with unidentifiable emotion. "And he's gone. You won't see him again, Chatoya."

 "Where is he?" she repeated, sure there was more.

 Therese's head snapped around like a cobra's, striking-swift. Anger leapt from her features, a thin ferocious thing. "I don't know! Gone, gone, gone - how many times do you have to hear it?"

 At last Chatoya had something personal, but she felt no triumph. Rob had been a friend of hers, if not a close one, and she didn't think she could use his absence to needle Therese again and again.

 Gone, she thought, away from us, away from the monsters. I hope you come back one day, when it's safe.

 "Do you have anything else to say, or are we done?" demanded Therese, abrupt and still animated by rage.

 "We're done," she echoed. She would be meeting with Therese and Blue more formally in a couple of days, and she had only wanted to know something about this woman who had borne Blue's company for so long, who had had the gall to rule one of the Furies and yet had a room at her family's home.

 "Then you should run home." Therese's voice was jagged as broken glass. "I have my answer."

 Her answer? She didn't understand, even after Therese added, "You still need payment. It just isn't money."

 She pondered the conversation on the walk back, and still couldn't comprehend what Therese Orage had been trying to say, but she suspected that in her way, Therese would be every bit as unpredictable as Blue.

 And this time, she had only her wits to fight with. She hoped that would be enough.

Lyrics from Luck Be A Lady, originally from the musical Guys and Dolls.