Chapter Text
The candlelight flickered when the cook closed the door, then steadied. The windows were closed and covered, all the doors locked, and Unathi sat at the head of the table, as still as flames.
The table was set and the Habbalite was expecting a guest. Starting before its guest arrived would be impolite. Its guest was no stickler for etiquette, but that was no excuse for becoming sloppy. One could not revel in excess without an awareness of what was adequate, and how it could be surpassed.
Unathi waited as the minutes crept past the appointed hour. Its students would be quiet enough in the lower floors of the house, and all the mortal servants had been sent away for the night. There was no reason to be impatient.
Even if it might feel ever so slightly irked at the delay. But the prerogative of Princes was to take their sweet time getting to appointments.
A cadaverous man stood at the other end of the long table. He leaned forward, spidery hands laid on either side of the place set there. "Unathi," he said. "Did you miss me?"
"Always, Lord," Unathi said, and raised its wine glass in greeting. "Down to the pit of my stomach."
The Prince of Gluttony lifted the plate and ate its contents. He crunched through the china, the gilt of its pattern glinting off his teeth. "You want the Word," he said. "You want responsibility. I can smell the ambition from over here." He bit a chunk out of the table; splinters fell from the corners of his mouth. "You're burning for it under that slick candy shell. Would you say I'm wrong?"
"Never." Unathi picked up a fork to slide through the foie gras. Acceptable in every way, and no more than acceptable. It would have to speak with the cook about doing better. "I want to serve you with more power than I currently possess, Lord."
"You want more power," Haagenti said. He ate a second place setting.
"I don't see that these two goals contradict each other in any way."
Narrow fingers and bony arms spread across the table, and cracked it across. A third of the table fell down, its two legs insufficient for stability. (A metaphor, Unathi decided, and an appropriate one. Even an angel could only be so self-sufficient. Minions and masters both were necessary for thorough support.) The Prince ate handfuls of wood, tablecloth, china, venison. The souffle dish disappeared down his throat.
Unathi took up a knife, and sliced through the venison on its plate.
"I gave you distinctions," Haagenti said. Red wine dripped off his chin and his fingers as he advanced. "Attunements, vessels, artifacts. You want more?"
"Always," Unathi said. "Always and ever more."
Haagenti laughed. The candles went out. "Child of mine that you are. Do you aim to eat your own father one of these days? See if you can wrap your teeth around that?"
"If I meant to eat Princes," Unathi said, when it had swallowed that bite of venison, "there are others I'd butcher first."
Its Prince snapped out another three mouthfuls of table, and the middle legs went. The rest of the table plummeted forward; Unathi lifted its plate first, to hold for itself, fork raised, as wine and candlesticks fell across the floor. Just as well, then, that all the flames were out. The house was too old to have fire suppression systems installed.
"I appreciate ambition," Haagenti said. "It swells a demon up, like a funnel down the throat. You will get your Word, Unathi." He laid his hands on the Habbalite's shoulders, bony fingers pushing grease and wine into the fabric of its coat. "If you set your house in order. Can you do that?"
"Certainly," Unathi said.
Its Prince wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. "Then why haven't you already?"
When he was gone, Unathi laid its plate down on the floor, amid the ruins of the dinner.
So it had a runaway student to retrieve and punish, a stolen artifact to recover. Nothing outside its power, if it turned its full concentration to the matter. Unathi was quite sure it would find the one with the other.
Then it could become Ice, and explain to the world everything it hadn't understood before.