Title: Not Good Enough
Prompt Set: Various #2
Prompt: 007. Lies
Timeline It didn't take Istrel long the next morning to decide she would have been better off keeping Skailari locked in the bedroom rather than letting it out soon after she'd woken up. It seemed wrong, somehow, to keep the door locked, though Skailari wasn't even a human, not a she but an it. Nevertheless. She just wished the damn Ghost wouldn't make her regret unlocking the door in the first place.
Skailari stood across the room-did it ever sit?-eyes fixed on Istrel wherever she went. It seemed to take no notice of Kaytam so far as Istrel could tell, which was something of a relief, but she rather wished it would stop following her with those pale eyes, like a dog watching its master, or-somehow a more likely possibility in Istrel's mind-a cat watching a mouse. At last, walking from her small kitchen into the front room, Istrel turned to glare directly at Skailari, the first time she had really acknowledged it this morning since opening the door. "Do you have something you'd like to say to me?"
It didn't preface its question with anything, didn't try to explain itself, simply asked, "You know a mage, don't you?"
Kaytam looked up at Skailari with an interested expression. Istrel merely gave it a contemptuous sneer. "Of course I know mages. Some of my clients are mages." She shook her head disdainfully and moved to sit down beside Kaytam on the couch, but Skailari's next words froze her where she stood.
"No. I mean a mage who knows the truth about you. One who is helping you."
Istrel wanted to ask how Skailari knew that, or guessed it, but she didn't, couldn't ask. Her heart had jumped into her throat, fluttering like a startled sparrow, but she swallowed hard and answered as calmly as she could, "That's ridiculous. You should know the mages don't like us, and we don't like them. Why would any of them help me?" Anyone but Siaph, tentative, shy Siaph who was nothing like any other mage she'd ever known, the only one who seemed to care about principles over whatever it was that drove the rest of the mages… She would not give Siaph up to this Ghost. Not when she had no reason to trust it, when she still didn't know if it were lying.
"I want to see him. I want to speak to him," Skailari said, undeterred by Istrel's denial.
"There is no 'him,'" Istrel growled. "There is no mage. Do you understand that, you crazy demon-thing? Or don't the mages spell you to understand that much?"
Skailari's expression didn't shift, and Istrel could hear no alteration in its tone, but somehow she sensed or imagined amusement from the creature. "You are a good liar, but not good enough. I want to speak to him."
Abruptly, Istrel decided she could stand this no longer. Argument she could have handled, but how to argue with a thing that never changed its tack or listened to her responses, merely kept repeating the same things with the same absolute certainty? It didn't help, either, that the thing was right. Istrel turned away from Skailari to look at Kaytam. "You need to go back to the Academy or you'll be in trouble. I'll walk you back. You, Ghost… don't go anywhere, and stay away from the windows. Don't open them. I don't need my neighbors wondering about you." She took hold of Kaytam's wrist and quickly pulled her out the front door, making certain she locked it behind her.
"Do you really know a mage like she said?" Kaytam asked, halfway down the street, after Istrel had released her arm and the two of them slowed to a more leisurely pace, Istrel holding onto her control mostly by an act of will. She didn't even bother to answer Kaytam's question aloud, simply gave her friend a mildly irritated look that served as all the response necessary, and that quieted Kaytam for some time. As much as anything ever quieted her.