hunters_forest | Coldfire re-read: When True Night Falls

It's chapters 32 and 33 today - pursuit is arranged, and then immediately evaded again (because we're far too early in the story for serious captivity scenarios, so a daring getaway has to happen).

Plot Summary

Chapter 32
The Matria of Esperanova receives her pet regent and finds out that the elusive foreigners have shown up in her city. She gives orders to hunt them down, of course, and for a villain is surprisingly competent about it.

Chapter 33
Damien, Hesseth and Jenseny encounter the Matria's henchmen - a prime opportunity for Damien to show up his knowledge of "how to evade pursuit in crowded and less crowded city streets". They manage to get away, with a bit of assistance from Tarrant (who won't allow the Matria's pets to catch his pet priest companions. Damien, as expected, makes a fuss about it because he just knows collateral damage isn't a word Tarrant has ever bothered with.

Quotes

For many long minutes she struggled with it, and then, just as she was ready to throw up her claws in frustration, the power flickered into existence briefly in the air surrounding her. Not much, but it was good enough. She molded it with a practiced touch, and used it to weave a mask over her features that no human could see through.

It had stuck in her mind ever since, a sterling sample of human reasoning.
"Their God will know His own," she purred. "Let Him sort them out."

If he had prayed to a pagan god, perhaps it would have answered. Perhaps, for a favored son, it would have staged a truly divine rescue, complete with pyrotechnics and a choir of demons. Certainly Tarrant's Iezu seemed to have the power and the temperament to stage such a thing. But the price of changing the world through faith was that one had to forgo such convenient spectacles, and it was with heavy heart and a trembling hand that Damien steered his companions away from their intended path, into the heart of the factory district.

He squinted into the shadowy air as he lined up the second pellet in the gun's chamber, as he aligned the second priming. It wasn't that they were becoming invisible, so much as . . . changing. Yes. That was it. The girl's dark hair becoming a tangle of blond curls, the priest's formidable bulk shrinking to the middle-aged potbelly of a henpecked bureaucrat, the woman's robe becoming mere housewife's garb, blood-spattered . . .

The dark eyes turned on him with gentle disdain. "You've made your feeling on that point rather clear, Reverend Vryce." With his free hand he plucked Damien's own from his arm, handling it like one would a child's. "As it happened, I didn't kill them. Nor do I think that our enemies will. I gave them, as you would have wanted, a fair chance. Even though that increased the risk to us all."

"You spared their lives?"
The Hunter turned back to him; a sparkle of dry humor glinted in his eyes. "In all probability, yes."
"For what reason?" He couldn't imagine Tarrant motivated by human compassion.
"For the best of reasons," the Neocount assured him. "Because I knew that if they died I would have to spend the better part of this voyage hearing about it." And he added, with gentle maliciousness, "Verda?"

Thoughts

The disguise of the Matrias - that kind of working is something that's intrigued me for a while. We never get to see a human do the same, and that when it seems like such an effective bit of Working (mostly for criminal activities, admittedly). Calesta's disguise of the Terata is the closest, but that's Iezu magic; the Obscuring Damien does later on is quite different.

I can't quite remember - have the Matrias ever figured out that Hesseth is rakh? If not, I wonder whether that would have changed anything about their actions. Perhaps they'd have seen her as a potential ally?

So Damien's mysterious teacher has taught him how to shake off pursuers. Once again the eternal question - who is he? The Ernan version of a super spy?

I can't help noticing that over the last few chapters, Damien has started to do quite a bit of touching Tarrant. Mostly it's grabbing him when he does something irritating, but still... together with Damien moving to a first name basis, they're building a new level of familiarity here. Do you think Damien is aware of what he's doing?

It's a good thing Damien doesn't know the details about what happened to the simulacra who distracted their pursuers. If he had any idea a child had been harmed, that sea journey would turn out a lot more tense than it's already going to be. I find it interesting that he's learned by now not to ask too many questions because he knows he won't like the answers (and Tarrant is playing along with it). That way, he at least doesn't have to feel too guilty about it. Which is hypocritical in itself, of course...