Hands Of Flame Part 16

Momentum, nothing more, lent Daisani strength. Her own speed was nothing like enough to knock down a st.u.r.dy front door, though the ruckus of her arrival drew both twins to the door fast enough. Kate jerked it open so hard the hinges protested.

"Djinn. Someone followed me, knows where you are-" Urgency, not breathlessness, spluttered her words: the race down the block was nowhere near enough to wind her.

Fire blazed in Kate's eyes, deepening hazel to jade and then through to crimson. Her throat and ribs expanded, contorting impossibly as she drew in more breath than human lungs could conceive of. Wisps of blue smoke appeared, streaming around the corners of her mouth: inhaled, as though she drew heat from the air and turned it deadly. Janx's, Janx's, Margrit realized in a bolt of triumph. She had no agenda tied to learning their parentage, but Margrit realized in a bolt of triumph. She had no agenda tied to learning their parentage, but knowing, knowing, being the first being the first to to know, carried its own thrill. know, carried its own thrill.

Humans, she found herself thinking, were strange creatures.

Then, in a blur of speed, Ursula smacked a fist into Kate's stomach. The redhead's eyes bugged and she made a sound mixed between a burp and a hiccup that left her dis...o...b..bulated. Ursula drew her lips back from her teeth, pure animal warning for her sister, then simply disappeared, leaving Margrit agape and Kate still wheezing for air.

Wind whipped behind Margrit. She twisted around, watching a dervish dig a hole in the front lawn, as though a miniature and highly directed tornado had been given the task of landscaping. Flashes of color moved within the whirlwind, moving far too quickly to actually be seen. Kate jolted forward, coming as far as Margrit's side. Without thinking, Margrit lifted a hand, stopping the other woman. Only after she'd acted did she glance at Kate, who lifted a sharp eyebrow at Margrit's audacity, but didn't continue on.

The funnel erupted, expelling a slender body so quickly it had smashed into the brownstone wall before Margrit could fully register that something had moved. A column of air shot skyward and dissipated, and Ursula slid down the wall of her house to land in flower beds with a dull thud. Kate flowed to her side, the same graceful shift of a large creature's attention from one place to another that Margrit had seen repeatedly with Janx.

"Nothing to hold," Ursula said groggily. Contusions were rising along the arm that had hit the wall and an already-purpling bruise ran down her cheek like overly dramatic goth makeup. "I couldn't get hold. He got away. Sorry, Kay. Sorry. I wasn't fast enough." She put one hand against the brownstone and the other into Kate's, then shoved herself upward. Her eyes swirled in their sockets, dizziness overcoming her, and Kate caught her easily as she fell, scooping her into a bride's carry as though she weighed nothing.

"n.o.body's fast enough to hold the wind." Margrit heard wry sympathy in her voice as she stepped forward to offer a hand, though Kate clearly needed no help. "Are you all right? Should I-" Her own words caught up with her and she broke off, staring, then said, "s.h.i.t!" with so much enthusiasm she clapped her hands over her mouth. No one was fast enough to hold the wind, but Ursula Hopkins had done one h.e.l.l of a job trying.

Kate gave her a steady look over Ursula's head. Margrit parted her fingers to whisper, "You're not twins."

"Of course we are," Kate said derisively. "We just have different fathers."

The scornful comment followed Margrit the rest of the day. She'd accompanied Kate back into the house to make certain Ursula was all right, but the twins had resisted her prying into their heritage. Margrit was torn between understanding and disappointment: even if the prurient details were nearly four hundred years old, they still made a good story. They left at the same time Margrit did, none of them under any illusions: the djinn knew both where the twins were now, and whose children they were. They would be unlikely to disappear again, and so their only choice was to decide quickly how to establish themselves, and to do so.

Margrit tried to put those questions out of mind as best she could for the morning, taking second counsel on the trial she'd missed the first full day of. She'd been right: her coworker was well prepared, her presence more psychological rea.s.surance than necessary. Watching him, she was more than aware that her failure to attend the day before had wiped out any confidence she might have provided. Guilt stung her, bringing a wash of tiredness that fed into a cycle. Part of her mind rang with recriminations: she should have been there to do her job. More profoundly, though, lay the awareness that, though she wasn't entirely comfortable with it, she felt more strongly about protecting and guiding the Old Races than she did about doing good for her own people. The two might be one and the same at some juncture, but for now, she had chosen Alban and his people's battles as her own, and had to trust that her coworkers and others like them could fight humanity's wars.

She had wanted to change the world. She'd simply never imagined she might do it in the ways she'd been offered.

Her cocounselor was one of several who took her to a celebratory, bittersweet lunch when the judge called recess. a.s.suring her he could handle the case, after lunch he sent her back to the office to finish packing and to find a small bouquet of daisies and pink flowers. A card lay at the vase's base, and Margrit read it, then went back to the front desk to smile at the receptionist.

"The pink ones are sweet-pea flowers," he said, before she asked, then smiled sheepishly. "Sweet peas and Michelmas daisies. They're for farewells."

"Sam," Margrit said in genuine surprise and delight. "I didn't know that. You know flower symbolism?"

Sam's smile grew even more sheepish. "Me and Google, anyway."

Margrit laughed and pulled him from behind his desk to steal a hug. "Thank you. They're beautiful, and I'm going to dry them when I get home so they'll last."

"That's not very farewell-like." Sam grinned and returned the hug. "We're going to miss you."

"I'm going to miss you, too." Margrit sighed and pa.s.sed a hand over her eyes. "I'm going to miss this job. This new thing for Mr. Daisani will give me a lot of opportunities I wouldn't otherwise have, but I'll miss this place."

"Well, we'll take you back if you decide the air up there is too rarefied for your Legal Aid lungs." Sam b.u.mped his shoulder against Margrit's, sending her back to her packing. "You are are coming out tonight, right? The party's planned. We'll see you off in style." coming out tonight, right? The party's planned. We'll see you off in style."

"I'll be there for a while, at least. I've got another thing later tonight." And there were waters to smooth with her housemates, if that was at all possible. Margrit shook herself and said, more firmly, "Right after work. I'll be there."

There should have included dinner. Margrit shot a glance toward the door, thinking longingly of the hot-dog stand up the street. It had already shut down, but the idea was appealing after an evening meal made up entirely of red wine. She'd been trying to nurse them, not wanting to face the Old Races at anything less than her best, but the best-laid plans had fallen in the face of raised toasts, and she'd lost track of how much she'd had to drink. should have included dinner. Margrit shot a glance toward the door, thinking longingly of the hot-dog stand up the street. It had already shut down, but the idea was appealing after an evening meal made up entirely of red wine. She'd been trying to nurse them, not wanting to face the Old Races at anything less than her best, but the best-laid plans had fallen in the face of raised toasts, and she'd lost track of how much she'd had to drink.

The alcohol, though, hadn't gone to her head the way it would've done even a few weeks before. As with the fight against Grace, she could almost feel her body responding to the wine, metabolizing it and shunting its effects away. It seemed very much like a conscious response, as though because she didn't want to be drunk, she couldn't become drunk, even with wine flowing freely and friends doing their best to see her under the table.

Cameron and Cole had arrived around six-thirty, Cam waving a greeting and Cole at least making an attempt to wipe away a scowl when he met Margrit's eyes. She caught a glimpse of them again and, smiling in unmeant apology to her coworkers, slipped away to try to catch up with her housemates. Someone thrust a fresh gla.s.s of wine and an uproarious congratulations at her, and she accepted both with as much grace as she could, then found herself distracted as she searched for somewhere to put the gla.s.s down without drinking from it.

Cole cut in front of her unexpectedly, dropping his voice below the general uproar of the party. "So you're really going through with it."

Suddenly glad she still had the wine, Margrit took a fortifying swallow and then handed it to the nearest pa.s.serby, who looked startled, then grinned in thanks, toasting her before he moved on. Margrit's returning smile felt pained, and fell away entirely as she looked back at Cole.

"I really am. I thought that Upper East Side apartment would be such a nice move up for all of us..." She'd always antic.i.p.ated losing her housemates when they got married and moved to a place of their own, but the possibility of losing them more permanently loomed too large now. "Cole, can we get out of here and talk?"

"What are we going to say, Grit? I'm not going to change your mind and I don't think you're going to change mine. I want you to be happy. I just don't think I can watch it, if this is how you're going to get there." Cole sounded tired. "I don't think I bend that far."

Every argument Margrit had died in the making, all of them metaphors that failed on a fundamental level. Humans struggled with skin colors and cultural differences, but it was too easy to see how those could at least be filed under the vast range of human differences, and perhaps accepted and understood. Alban, though, was very literally of another race. race. Inhuman. Inhuman.

She looked up at Cole, trying to find a way beyond the barrier Alban had created between them. "He's a sentient, caring person. Isn't that what should matter?"

Cole sighed and pulled her into a careful hug that felt full of regret. "Maybe." He was quiet a long moment before shaking his head. "That's about the best I can do. Good luck, Grit."

"Thanks." The whisper hurt her throat. Margrit disengaged from the hug and slipped out of the bar alone.

TWENTY-FOUR.

ALBAN REMAINED STILL in the first minutes after sunset released him, savoring a subdued sense of belonging that had not been his for well over three centuries. As a youth he would never have noticed the quiet sense of connection that lingered in the back of his mind: the awareness of his people, both physically and mentally. They shared their lives and their thoughts easily, an endless background murmur, and not until he'd cut himself off from it had he realized that it had a sound of its own. Not until he could hear it again did he understand how alone he had been with his own memories. in the first minutes after sunset released him, savoring a subdued sense of belonging that had not been his for well over three centuries. As a youth he would never have noticed the quiet sense of connection that lingered in the back of his mind: the awareness of his people, both physically and mentally. They shared their lives and their thoughts easily, an endless background murmur, and not until he'd cut himself off from it had he realized that it had a sound of its own. Not until he could hear it again did he understand how alone he had been with his own memories.

They still weighed him down. Would always weigh him, as they should. There was still despair when he thought of Ausra's death, though that was tempered with inevitability now. There was still horror at Malik's death, and an awareness that his acceptance within the gargoyle overmind might be short-lived: there had not yet been a reckoning on the matter of the djinn. Only confession, spilled messily into the minds of all the trial attendees through Margrit's dangerous inability to control her thoughts and memories.

Unfair, Stoneheart. Alban's silent chiding came the way Janx would form it, as if he played up the stoniness by scolding Margrit for lacking a skill she had no reason to have. No one, least of all Margrit, could have suspected what would happen if she attempted to share memory with the gargoyles. Alban's silent chiding came the way Janx would form it, as if he played up the stoniness by scolding Margrit for lacking a skill she had no reason to have. No one, least of all Margrit, could have suspected what would happen if she attempted to share memory with the gargoyles.

And there was a certain relief in all secrets being undone. He wasn't made to keep them, not the kinds he'd acc.u.mulated in the past few months. Kate and Ursula, yes; Sarah's life; that secret he had been willing to keep for the sake of children and for the sake of friendship. Killing, done in defense of another or not, done accidentally or not, was too burdensome to bear.

Biali's grumbling presence was nearby, awake and tinged with bitterness. Alban welcomed the familiarity as much as he regretted the divide that parted them. Regretted, but doubted he would try to cross: too many lives, too many deaths, lay between them, and Biali was not by nature a forgiving soul.

Sour humor pulled his mouth long and Alban stretched out of his crouch, admitting the truth behind that thought: gargoyles gargoyles were not by nature forgiving. Stone did not forget easily. were not by nature forgiving. Stone did not forget easily.

Beyond Biali in Alban's mental awareness, if not actually in physical distance, were the gargoyles of the tribunal. Eldred was the steadiest of those, his sense of self and his roots in the memories reaching down until they became bedrock. Amongst those memories were the last encounter any of the Old Races had had with the selkies before they'd slipped into the sea, becoming, as far as their ancient brethren were concerned, extinct. Eldred had, all those centuries ago, expressed disgust for the selkie attempt at saving themselves; at their decision to breed with humans. It had seemed futile at the time, and the elder gargoyle's opinion had been widely reflected throughout the Old Races.

Their world had changed profoundly since then. Alban had, as he'd foreseen in his youth, watched humanity restructure the world to its liking, and had held fast against those changes, believing tradition to be the only way to survive. That long-held conviction had been shaken under the tidal wave that was Margrit Knight.

Margrit. A smile curved his mouth. She pervaded his thoughts the way Hajnal once had, her actions affecting him so deeply that he could barely imagine his life without her. He'd lost pa.s.sion to solitude centuries earlier; rediscovering it in her arms was a breath-taking adventure. For all that he couldn't always agree with her, her fire was welcome, warming him after lifetimes of loneliness. Her memory, and the long-lost echo of the gestalt whispering at the back of his mind gave him courage, and with it in hand, he left his chamber to greet his own people at sunset for the first time in centuries.

"Korund." Grace's voice cut down the tunnels, sharp with alarm. Alban turned, surprised, and Grace strode toward him through flickering lights and tall, round walls. "What in h.e.l.l are you doing?"

Alban glanced down the tunnel, then back at Grace, eyebrows lifted in confusion. "Searching out a meal and the tribunal before finding Margrit."

"Like that? that?" Grace gestured as sharply as she'd spoken and cold curdled Alban's heart. He flashed to human form, hands lifted to stare at them. Talons disappeared into well-formed nails, the one delicate compared to the other, though even in mortal form he had strength beyond anything men could conjure.

"I have never forgotten that before." Disbelief strained his voice. "In all my years, I've never forgotten."

"You're getting complacent," Grace snapped. "Too many things have gone too well for you lately. You're forgetting what you are and what the world would do to you."

"Never," Alban murmured without conviction. "But thank you, Grace." He finally took his gaze from his hands, training it on the curvaceous vigilante instead. The impulse to follow Margrit's curiosity-and his own-caught him for a moment, but he swallowed it with a reminder to himself as much as an acknowledgment to Grace: "It seems the debt I owe you is growing by the moment."

"And I'll call it in some day," she promised. "In the meantime you can get your Margrit to call in her last favor with the dragonlord and get him out of my tunnels."

Alban lifted an eyebrow. "And that's not calling in my debt?"

"That one's Margrit's promise to keep, not yours. Besides, you're the one walking around human territory in your natural form, love. Even if I'd never done you any other favors, you'd owe me large for that one."

"I would." Alban studied the door he'd almost taken, then looked at Grace again. "Tell me what my welcome will be, Grace O'Malley. I was confident a moment ago, confident enough to forget myself. But now I find myself remembering that these men and women were called to pa.s.s judgment on me, and while they have granted amnesty and I can once more walk among the memories, I know very little of them, or how they think of me."

"And you think I know?"

Humor quirked Alban's mouth and he quoted, carefully, "'Grace knows more than she should, love.'"

Surprise brightened the woman's dark eyes and she laughed. "There's a spark of cleverness left in there after all. All right, Korund. They're curious, is what they are, which I think you could learn quick enough from the memories."

"I could." Alban hesitated over continuing, and Grace hopped on his pause with a spark of humor in her eyes.

"But it seems like prying, does it, after all this time? Ah, Korund, you're not one of them anymore, but you can't be human, either. Maybe you're well matched with Margrit after all, the both of you forging ahead into new territory." A shadow pa.s.sed over Grace's face, aging her unexpectedly and making Alban realize he had no idea how old the platinum blonde was. She'd been part of the city's underground for years, according to Margrit, but it hadn't left its mark. Just then she looked far older than even the greatest number of years he could accord her, though it faded and left her as she had been, young in form and face, but somehow ancient in her gaze. "Go on, then, Stoneheart. Join them. See who you are among them, and then move on to see who you are in the world."

"What about you, Grace?" The question held him in place even when he might have wanted to move at her command; to embrace the world as it had become and learn his place in it. "Will you stay where you are while the world changes around you? Will you not move on, too?"

"Ah, sure and you know the answer to that," Grace said with a sighed smile, and a ghost of humor turned Alban's mouth up at the corner.

"You'll move on when you've been given the kiss of angels, isn't that what you say? What does it mean?"

"Grace'll let you know when she finds out." She nudged him toward the door with a b.u.mp of her hips, encouraging him to move without touching him. Alban chuckled again and went where he was bid, putting weight onto the heavy iron door handle that opened the way into the below-streets central refuge.

It opened silently. Grace's territory was inevitably well oiled and smooth-running, far more so than might be expected of a ragtag bunch of teens led by a leather-clad den mother. The group within, though, was wholly different from the youthful faces and chip-on-the-shoulder att.i.tudes Alban had come to recognize and admire over the past months.

Instead an older man straightened from his crouch and turned to look at Alban. He was stocky, not gone to fat, but broad and jowly. White touched otherwise steel-gray hair at the temples, and deep-set eyes were much the same shade as his hair. Alban wondered suddenly if it would be as clear to Margrit that this was Eldred in his human form, or if the ability to recognize one another in any shape was part of what made them unique.

Looking over the others, he thought it took no more than an ability to extrapolate. The lanky youth-younger, certainly, than Alban himself-had a touch of strawberry to his white-blond hair and was as leggy and elbow-ridden in human form as in his gargoyle shape. The two women were as much Valkyries-Margrit's memory intruding, that; Alban wouldn't have chosen the word himself-in mortal form as in immortal, both broad-shouldered and blue-eyed with long, pale hair. They looked like themselves, all of them.

And they were all riding judgment on him. Nervousness that hadn't been present the night before fluttered in Alban's gullet, a reaction that seemed inordinately human. He bowed, as much a slight offer of respect to the elder as a way to hide his own sudden nerves. After an instant Eldred tipped his head in response, gesturing Alban to join them. A mockery of outrage rose to replace worry: this was, after all, Alban's home, and it should be he who offered a place at the table to the newcomers. Only a mockery, though, the thought seeming laughable even as he felt its sting. There were far more pressing matters to be concerned with than whether he was welcomed or welcoming.

"Alban Korund." Eldred's voice was as deep and rich in his mortal form as it had been the night before. "Welcome home."

What had been a trickle of mental touch suddenly became a flood, emotion ranging from reserved to angry and, as Grace had said, to curious. Unprepared, Alban shuddered under the onslaught, the round walls and concrete seating around him disappearing and staggering mountains replacing them.

There was vitality in these mountains, unlike the memories he'd slipped through over the last months. Those peaks had been worn with time, too many lives lost to grow them taller. They had been his family, his closest friends, and they had reflected a dying race.

No longer. Now mountaintops were jagged with change, snow patches glowing blue in moonlight beneath clear skies. The tree line burst with the promise of spring, hints of green in the night, and echoes of voices rang the stone, shivering loose rock into short slides.

Stunned, Alban turned, taking it all in, and when he'd completed a full circle, he faced a campfire, the half-dozen gargoyles in the room with him seated around it. Beyond them rippled hundreds of others, faces and minds joined in the gestalt but not physically present. Challenge was written on those faces; challenge and interest, anger and hope.

"What has happened?" Astonishment pushed his question out before he knew he intended to form it. "We live. We...live."

Biali thundered in, door clapping shut behind him in the real world and carrying ricochets of sound into the mind of memory. He muttered, "You happened," and sat down at the fire, making himself comfortable in a way that seemed beyond Alban to accomplish himself. "You and that lawyer of yours," Biali added, clearly not expecting Alban to put it together himself. "You and that quorum."

"You sat for the gargoyles at the quorum," Alban protested. "Not I."

"Pah. You started it, Korund. Talking to the lawyer. Telling her what you were. Deep quakes send waves across the world." Biali shoved a thick hand into the fire, rearranging branches, and Eldred, looking wry, picked up where he left off.

"We have been dying, all these centuries. You know this." You You encompa.s.sed far more than just Alban: a shift of agreement ran through a thousand faces, swirling back through crowded memories until it had touched them all. "We are slow to change, and have always chosen the safety of tradition over the risk of innovation." encompa.s.sed far more than just Alban: a shift of agreement ran through a thousand faces, swirling back through crowded memories until it had touched them all. "We are slow to change, and have always chosen the safety of tradition over the risk of innovation."

At that, Margrit's image, rife with exasperation, swam before Alban's eyes and made him chuff laughter. That thought splashed through the linked gargoyle minds, making Eldred lift a heavy eyebrow. Alban ducked his head in apology, finding a smile still stretching his face. "I've always held that we were right to stand by our traditions."

"And yet you have disregarded them broadly through your entire life."

Fresh astonishment burned away Alban's humor and he straightened again, agape as he met Eldred's gaze. The elder gargoyle's expression was cool, though beneath it lay a pool of warmth, even admiration, welcoming enough to startle Alban anew. Eldred's sense of self carried a hint of envy, memories shifting and exploring the choices he might have made, all of those thoughts visible to the gargoyle overmind. Hundreds of years earlier he might have embraced the selkies and their decision to save themselves by breeding with humans. Instead he had been repulsed, holding tight to tradition. Now, for all that gargoyles were not creatures in the habit of second-guessing themselves, it was clear that Eldred wondered what changes might have been wrought in the world if he had admired the selkie daring and accepted their choice rather than turned his back on a man who had been his friend for centuries.

"You left our mountains before your hundredth year," Eldred said. "You went to live among humans, to explore the world that they were creating. To try to understand it. Only one of us was bold enough to join you."

"And she paid for that choice with her life," Biali snapped. For an instant tension sang through the gargoyles, Hajnal's loss fresh and painful through the intimacy of memory.

Alban, softly, said, "We've all paid," and after long moments Biali settled back, no longer pressing the point.

Eldred continued as though the brief fracas hadn't happened, his gray eyes turning blue as moonlight spilled over his face. "That in itself was a break with tradition. More so was the friendship you built with Eliseo Daisani and the dragonlord Janx. Dragons and vampires," he said with a shake of his head. "No one befriends vampires. But even that, extraordinary as it might have been, was nothing to the choice you made on their behalf. To separate your memories from all of ours, to make yourself a breach amongst our people, in order to hide half-human children? What-" and he sounded as though he truly wanted to know "-were you thinking? thinking?"

"That the sins of the fathers need not be visited on the children." Alban turned a palm up, knowing he borrowed human concepts and hoping to placate all his people with the gesture. "They were condemned by their heritage, but innocent in their birth. Their mother loved two men of the Old Races and would have never betrayed the truth of them to the world. I saw no risk in helping them all to live."

"And that," Eldred said, voice filled with granite, "is why you are are the Breach, Alban of the clan Korund. Your life has not been that of a gargoyle, not in any way that we recognize. You have lived separately from our memories. You've told humans about our existence more than once. You've chosen to allow forbidden children a chance to survive. You have taken the lives of our brethren, and you have made no apology for these choices and decisions." the Breach, Alban of the clan Korund. Your life has not been that of a gargoyle, not in any way that we recognize. You have lived separately from our memories. You've told humans about our existence more than once. You've chosen to allow forbidden children a chance to survive. You have taken the lives of our brethren, and you have made no apology for these choices and decisions."

"I-" Words were useless in the gestalt, memory and emotion riding faster and farther than any vocal construct could, even if Alban could muster them. Eldred was right: there was no apology in him for the deaths he'd caused. Sorrow, yes, and guilt, and regret, but a lifetime, even one as long as a gargoyle's, would not change the fact that he would act again as he had in the heat of the moment. He would choose Margrit over Ausra; he would, in any way that mattered, choose Janx over Malik. Ausra's madness would always be a point of agony, a thing he would never find a way to cease mourning, but Malik had intended to take Janx's life, and for all his horror at causing the djinn's death, Alban knew it had been accidental. He had not done the deliberate murder Malik had intended, and whether the Old Races, whether the gargoyles, whether anyone at all understood that, it was the fine point of difference that mattered to Alban himself.

And that sentiment rocked back through centuries of time. He believed the choices he had made were the right ones, whether they were supported by Old Races law or gargoyle tradition. Sarah Hopkins had not deserved to die for having loved Janx or Daisani; her children had deserved a chance to live, for all that their fathers' people said they were aberrations which should not exist.

"You are right," Alban whispered. "I am not like you at all." Shock made him cold, unusual for a gargoyle, and he stared across the shifting faces within the overmind in a disbelief so deep it was stained with humor. "All this time spent in defense of our traditions, and it seems I have had very little sense of them at all."

"Biali once said you might have led us." Eldred's eyes went to the stark, white gargoyle, and the weight of a thousand more gazes joined him before they all returned to Alban. Even Biali looked up, mouth flattened with irritation. "I believe you have done so," Eldred continued. "Whether deliberately or not, you have led us to this place and time, and to these schisms in what we were and what we must become."

The urge to apologize rose in Alban, but that intent was drowned beneath the weight of Eldred's words. "We have discussed this amongst ourselves, amongst all the clans who are left." Power lifted his words, a tide of tears and fear and joy so profound that it tore through Alban's chest, ripping away the breath there and leaving nothing in its wake. Antic.i.p.ation: Antic.i.p.ation: the gestalt tasted of it, and his heart began a too-fast beat of uncertainty, as though understanding lay just beyond his grasp. the gestalt tasted of it, and his heart began a too-fast beat of uncertainty, as though understanding lay just beyond his grasp.