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Marla nodded. “Are you going to try to kill me again?”
“If you choose to let me go free, I will report to my master that you defeated me. He
will be displeased. Perhaps he will send me after you again.” Ch’ang Hao shrugged.
Marla nodded. “Look, if I could cut the ties that bind, set you loose from your master’s
thrall…would you do me a favor?”
Ch’ang Hao tensed. “This is not possible,” he said at last.
“I’ve got a knife, nice and sharp, that cuts through the metaphysical as well as the
actual. I used it to cut a ghost out of Rondeau once—he’d still be possessed if it weren’t
for me.”
“It’s true,” Rondeau said. “She’s a dab hand with the blade.”
“I can cut the threads that tie you to your master,” Marla said.
Ch’ang Hao looked into the sky for a moment. “If you do this thing, my master will be
your enemy forever. He…values my service.”
“He already tried to have me killed,” Marla said. “I’m not especially worried about
pissing him off worse.”
“You will cut the harness away?”
“I didn’t say that. I don’t like the idea of you getting too big for me to fight, either. But I
can sever the connection between you and your master, the thrall that keeps you from
running away, the one that makes you keep going back to him, that makes you obey. I’ll
cut the leash, but I’ll leave you muzzled.”
“I see,” Ch’ang Hao said, his face expressionless. “And what favor will you ask in
return for this great service?”
She shrugged. “I like having ancient powerful beings owe me their freedom. I don’t
know what I want from you, yet. I won’t ask for any service that would require your
death, though. Maybe the risk of death, but not certain death.”
The veins in Ch’ang Hao’s arms began to bulge, and snakes came slithering out of his
pores, tiny at first, but growing as they emerged, four long yellow-and-black serpents
that fell from his arms to the ground and slithered around their feet. Something about
Ch’ang Hao’s bearing let her know this wasn’t an attack. Each snake took the tail of
another in its mouth, forming a circle with Marla and Ch’ang Hao inside. “Inside this
circle, promises are binding,” Ch’ang Hao said.
Marla nodded, feeling the power of his spell. “And a poisonous death for any promisebreakers,
I assume.”
Ch’ang Hao nodded. “If you free me from my master’s thrall, I will owe you a favor in
return, to be named at your convenience.”