The Gathering Dark by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online

glasses off and clutched them in his hand, then raised his head high, as though a man without spectacles was somehow gifted with greater dignity than one who wore them.
    “Are you aware that your speech becomes more formal when you’re angry?” the priest asked.
    Peter smiled, not now the friendly, lopsided grin he had worn before but something far colder.
    “Oh, I’m not angry, Father. You haven’t seen me angry.” He held his hands out, palms upward, and sketched slightly at the air with his fingers. “And you haven’t seen a single bit of magick. Not even a card trick. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
    The priest took a deep breath but kept his gaze locked with Peter’s. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know, Mr. Octavian. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. If you’d like, I’ll go now.”
    Peter slid back in his chair and crossed his hands on his lap. “Sit down, Jack.”
    After only a moment’s hesitation, the priest complied.
    “You know, I’m not the only one whose speech gets a little uptight when tempers flare.”
    Father Jack’s hand was shaking when he raised it and slid his fingers through his neatly trimmed hair. Slowly, carefully, he put his glasses on once again and regarded Peter with an admirable display of calm.
    “So tell me what I don’t know about you. That is, if you’d care to.”
    Peter considered that a moment. Then he sat forward again, fingers steepled under his chin, the bubbling of his little ziggurat waterfall whispering in his ears, calming him.
    “First, why don’t I tell you what you do know? Or what you think you know. And you can tell me where I’m wrong.”
    “That really isn’t—”
    “No. I insist.”
    Father Jack nodded, sitting stiffly on the edge of the sofa cushion. When the tea kettle began to whistle, he actually flinched, then huffed out a short, embarrassed breath.
    Peter rose. “Let me get that.”
    In the galley kitchen he took a pair of brittle old china teacups and poured hot water from the kettle into each. He knew they were more appropriate for aged English women, but he was fond of them just as he was of the antique chair in the living room. There was texture to old things, impermanent things, that he appreciated now in a way he had not always.
    Moments later he returned with a tray upon which sat the teacups, a variety of tea bags, milk, and sugar. He set the tray down on the end table beside the sofa and stood while he dipped a bag of Earl Grey into his own cup and then stirred sugar into it.
    “Allison Vigeant’s book about the Venice Jihad says I was born in 1424,” Peter began, not looking at the priest as he poured just a drop of milk into his tea. “She made that up, Allison. Or someone did.”
    Now he did glance up and he saw that he had Father Jack’s undivided attention. The man did not seem even to be breathing. Peter raised his cup toward the priest.
    “Drink your tea.”
    Father Jack laughed but it was a hollow sound, for effect only. He did, however, reach over and pick up a tea bag and begin preparing his own tea. Peter turned and went back to his antique chair among the plants and the mist of the ziggurat waterfall. He sipped the tea and found it exactly right. Over the rim of the cup he regarded the priest.
    “I don’t know what year I was born, but that’s near enough I suppose. My father was Constantine the Eleventh Palaeologus, the last emperor of Byzantium, but I was illegitimate, a bastard, and therefore not exactly royalty myself.”
    “You . . . you were a soldier,” Father Jack said, tea held halfway to his lips.
    Peter frowned at him. Out on the street someone honked a car horn and the priest started, spilling several drops of tea on his lap. He barely noticed.
    “We were all soldiers in those days.” He closed his eyes. “I can see it all still, you understand. The blood and the rain storms and the men digging in the mud that spring when the Turks hammered at the walls of the city