Page 22 of Nemesis Mine
For one long moment they stared at each other through the narrow gap. Then Cyrus scowled.
“Thought you were going to try and kill me,” he complained. He’d put effort into sharpening his blades and everything.
Maximillian looked affronted. “What makes you think I’m not?”
“You knocked. Why would you knock if you were going to try and kill me?”
“Maybe I’m exceedingly confident in my abilities,” the champion muttered.
Cyrus squinted at him suspiciously. That much seemed true. But Maximillian’s hand was nowhere near his sword, and he was looking at Cyrus expectantly, like he was waiting for an invitation to come inside.
He would be waiting a little longer. Cyrus was not in the habit of welcoming people into his lair. A noisy sigh escaped, petulant, and the gap between door and frame stayed obstinately narrow.
“Why bother coming if you’re not here to kill me,” he grumbled. “Waste of time.”
An eyebrow arched. “You had better things to do, I take it?”
Hewouldhave enjoyed a long hot bath with candles and scented oils if Maximillian hadn’t placed his odious self on Cyrus’s doorstep. Cyrus really should have just tried his luck at persuading a tree to squish him in Arclee, and all the witnesses too. Maximillian’s continued existence was very inconvenient.
But he could, at least, wipe that smirk off Maximillian’sface. Cyrus leaned against his doorframe, keeping his tone idle. “Lots of things to do. Bottling the blood of my enemies. Scaring babies. Selling organs on the black market for profit. Not my own. Obviously.”
Maximillian eyed him like he couldn’t tell whether Cyrus was being serious or not. Cyrus stared back impassively.
The champion exhaled. He seemed ill at ease. Cyrus supposed he couldn’t blame him. It must feel an awful lot like a fly visiting a spider. He paused to enjoy that thought, then daydreamed about wrapping Maximillian up in a web and sticking him to the ceiling.
Maximillian made an impatient noise. “Can I come in?”
Cyrus drummed his fingers against the door indecisively. He didn’twantMaximillian in his lair, dirtying Cyrus’s hard-stolen belongings with his stupid noble hands. But on his own head be it if he wanted to come inside.
“Suppose,” he said. He didn’t step aside but shifted his weight slightly, forcing Maximillian to squeeze past him. He cast Cyrus an annoyed look as he did, which Cyrus enjoyed. Less enjoyable was the brush of Maximillian’s body against his. He was warm and very solid and Cyrus had no choice but to inhale the scent he wore, something woody and masculine. He was glad that he already had an incense stick burning by the window, flavouring the air with a trace of musky sweetness. He didn’t want his home to smell of Maximillian.
Cyrus closed the door behind them, glancing at Maximillian to see if he reacted to the scrape of the lock. He didn’t—not visibly, at least. But there was tension in the slope of his shoulders.
It was tempting to hover as Maximillian looked around, but that wouldn’t go well with his cool and imperious display. Cyrus walked over to his brooding chair and threw himself into it with one leg slung out over one arm, letting his dagger rest on the other. From under his lashes he discreetly glanced around, trying to see his lair as Maximillian would.
A scattering of tall candles cast a flickering glow, weeping wax and throwing out undulating shadows as Maximillian’s eyes moved from Cyrus’s kitchen, pans of all shapes and sizes secured to the wall and a rack of herb jars glinting in the low light, to the velvet veil that separated his sleeping quarters. Then his attention was caught by one of the pieces of artwork on the walls. Maximillian stepped forward, hand twitching by his side, as though suppressing the urge to reach out and touch the parchment with its abstract splotches of purple and lilac and lavender.
“Earthshaker original,” said Cyrus, lounging as casually as he could. “Highly sought after. You wouldn’t be able to afford it.”
Maximillian scoffed. “Want to bet?”
“Wouldn’t want you to lose your coin.” Cyrus clucked his tongue. “You might have to take up a new sponsorship deal. Sign on a dotted line and make small talk with some guild masters. Sounds like hard work. Not sure you’re up to it.”
Maximillian’s glance was sharp. But he didn’t respond to the needling, only gave the rest of his lair a cursory once-over and then said, blandly, “Nice place.”
Cyrus would have been insulted by the underlying sarcasm if not for the fact that Maximillian’s sweeping gazehad found his thumb jar, sitting innocuously in the window. He visibly recoiled. Cyrus was pleased he’d thought to remove the linen cloth he usually left covering it. It hadn’t exactly proven to be the hobby for him, mostly just an attempt to scare the locals, and the bag of thumbs had been blackmailed from a gravedigger anyway. But the look of revulsion on Maximillian’s face made it worthwhile.
But Maximillian was not here to admire his thumb collection. Cyrus fixed him with a penetrating look.
“Why are you here?”
Maximillian rocked back on his heels. “You said you’d talk.”
“Yeah,” Cyrus drawled. “I have to say, I wasn’t really expecting you towantto talk. I thought you’d—”
“Try to kill you, yeah, you said,” Maximillian interrupted. It almost felt like a novelty; most wouldn’t dare interrupt a wrongdoer. “No, I do want to talk. Because—” He stopped. Cyrus watched his shoulders tighten further and then forcibly relax. “I meant what I said in that interview, about the monotony. About wanting things to be different. And I have a suggestion for how that could work, but for that I need—”
Another abrupt stop. He was struggling to get the last word out, like it tasted rotten in his mouth. Cyrus waited.
