Fury of a Demon

by Brian Naslund

  He pointed to the alchemist’s pack on Felgor’s shoulder.

  “But I do want to know what Ashlyn gave you before you left.”

  Felgor unslung the pack and produced one of Jolan’s massive needles. Bershad could see the canister inside was filled with the black sludge. “The kid showed me how to use it. I practiced on a banana.”

  “I don’t want that shit in my veins.”

  “Emergencies only,” Felgor said. “But the queen was very specific about me making sure you didn’t get yourself turned into a tree due to idiot heroics. And being honest, she is scarier than you. So I’m coming, and I’m bringing the needle with me.”

  Bershad shook his head. “Fine,” he muttered. “Just don’t slow me down.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Bershad started walking again. Felgor trotted after him.

  “You know what nickname I would have given you, if you didn’t already have so many when we met?” he asked.

  “Don’t care.”

  Felgor pinched an ant off his neck and flicked it away. “Sunshine. On account of your pleasant disposition.”

  Bershad grunted. “I hate it.”

  “That’s the point.”

  Bershad quickened his pace as they reached a hill, moving into more of a run than a jog. He crested the hill and looked back. Felgor was barely halfway up the hill and gasping for air.

  “I told you not to slow me down,” said Bershad when Felgor finally caught up.

  Felgor put his head between his legs. Spat. “Didn’t realize you were gonna run to Deepdale.”

  “If we walk, it’ll take three days. That’s too long.”

  “You can’t run for three days straight.”

  Under normal circumstances, that was true.

  Bershad pulled a hunk of moss from the pouch and ate it. The burning in his lungs and ache in his muscles disappeared. Bershad took a knee.

  “We’re only going to do this one time, and you’re never going to tell anyone about it. Clear?”

  Felgor smiled. “Clear.”

  “Good. Now get on my back.”

  46

  NOLA

  City of Deepdale, the Swine Pens

  After getting captured, Nola and Pern were taken to the covered pens in the livestock district and locked inside, along with the other captured citizens of Deepdale. Wormwrot men wrapped each pen three times with a strange and thick black wire to prevent them from breaking free.

  That had been seven days ago.

  Suko, Kiko, and Dervis—the one-armed warden—ended up in the same pen as Nola. Every day, stragglers were dragged in by Wormwrot and thrown inside. Every day, Nola prayed that Grittle wasn’t among them.

  So far, there’d been no sign of her.

  Nola didn’t know if they were dead, captured and taken somewhere else, or still hiding underneath Jakell’s floor. She had no way of finding out. All she could do was sit in the cold mud and stew in a private mixture of rage and sadness and fear. The only small bright spot in the whole experience was when Lord Cuspar was brought in on the second day, covered in mud and crying. There was no sign of his two wardens. Nola assumed they’d been killed.

  Nola had mostly avoided Cuspar. So far, he’d done the same. But she knew that he recognized her. She caught him staring at her every once in a while with a guilty look in his eyes.

  The gates to the livestock district opened up and a Wormwrot man came in. He headed directly for her.

  “You miss Grungar?” he asked, pulling a steel bucket over to Nola’s spot and sitting down.

  Grungar was the man whose teeth she’d kicked in on the first day of the attack. Today, he’d brought a plate of Dainwood snails with him, which she knew that he was going to eat in front of her using a silver fork with a pearl-inlaid handle. She knew this because that was the same thing he’d done the day before, except that day he’d eaten a rack of pork ribs drizzled in a honey sauce that was still stuck to his beard. The day before that, it had been a perfectly cooked paku fillet, which burned Nola up because it reminded her of the one Grittle fished out of the canal before the whole world went to shit.

  Nola had learned the first day that ignoring him—or moving deeper in the pen—just made him angry and caused problems, so she met his eyes.

  “Sure, Grungar. I missed you like a warden misses cock rot.”

  Grungar paused—a forked snail halfway between the plate and his mouth—as he tried to decipher the meaning of what she’d just said. He didn’t do so well with similes that were spoken in Almiran. Eventually, he gave up his study of her words, and popped the snail into his mouth. Chewed it with all the grace and manners of a Blackjack munching on a goat.

  Grungar insisted on tormenting Nola each day by making her watch him eat, which hadn’t been so bad the first few days, but was now abject torture. She hadn’t had a bite of food since her portion of bacon the morning the skyships arrived. She’d debated having seconds, but decided it would do more good to sell it.

  That decision haunted her now, when the only thing that had filled her belly in seven days was the dirty water the Wormwrot poured into the pig troughs each morning.

  Nola was running out of ways to quantify her hunger. Last night, she’d spent three hours talking with Pern, describing how good it would be to eat a baked potato full of butter and chives and shreds of smoked pork. Today, though, she couldn’t even summon specific desires. The hunger felt like a gaping mouth that had swallowed her soul.

  “Where friends?” he asked, grabbing another snail.

  “I don’t have any friends in this cage,” Nola lied.

  “Don’t believe girl,” Grungar said. “Seen you talking.”

  He peered around the pen. “That one,” he said, pointing a greasy finger at Pern.

  Nola just shrugged. For such a brute, Grungar was pretty observant.

  “Them, too,” Grungar continued.

  This time, his finger went to Kiko and Suko, who were huddled on the far side of the pen.

  Nola winced. Very observant. But she still didn’t say anything.

  Grungar bit into another snail, which had been cooked in butter and sprinkled with cracked pepper. Fucking. Pepper. It had occurred to Nola that Grungar’s elaborate and seemingly limitless food supply hadn’t come from the skyships, but from the sunny side of the city across the canal. While Nola had been bartering her tavern away to criminals for one pig a week, the lords had been munching through stores of spiced meats without a care in the world.

  Who knows, maybe those snails had come from Lord Cuspar’s personal pantry. That notion gave her a scrap of satisfaction, seeing as Cuspar was sharing a pigpen with her now. Coated in the same shit as her. Suffering through the same empty belly. But sharing a shitty situation with an asshole lord didn’t really improve the situation from her end.

  Grungar speared a new snail, then held it out to Nola, close enough for her to grab it if she tried.

  “You want?”

  Nola knew that Grungar was baiting her. Taunting her in the hopes that she’d lunge for the food, so he could snatch it away with a snarl and a smile. But she also knew that what he really wanted was for her to say yes. To beg for it. And that was something that she refused to do.

  “Naw,” she said, starting to pinch a mud totem. “I’m not hungry.”

  She worked the figure together, fingers quickly making the shape of a man. Then she flattened the head with her thumb and spat on it.

  “But I’m more than happy to curse those snails with the forest gods’ blight, so you fucking choke on them.”

  Grungar’s smile faded. “Take it back.”

  Nola smiled. “No.”

  Like a lot of the Wormwrot men, Grungar was petrified by the threat of forest god magic. Nola figured all the totems that the Jaguars had been making during the war had made an impression. Or maybe Grungar was just from a particularly superstitious country, wherever that was. Pern said he was from beyond Taggarstan, which was the same as sayi
ng he didn’t know, since that land was just a big mystery.

  Grungar stood. Towering over her like a giant.

  “You squash the mud-demon’s magic, girl. Or you pay.”

  “You can’t hurt me. I know about the rules. Vallen Vergun said it himself. The people of Deepdale aren’t to be harmed, just starved.”

  Well, one person was harmed each day. But Vergun made that choice. Not Grungar.

  “Rules can’t be broken,” said Grungar. “But bent? Like fingers of girl’s friends? This, not problem.”

  Nola swallowed. She’d have kept screwing with Grungar if it was only her fingers that were at hazard, but she wouldn’t put her friends in danger. She pushed the totem into the earth with her palm. Spat again to squash the imaginary spell.

  “Satisfied?”

  Grungar sat back down. Eyed the flattened mud with suspicion for a moment before returning to his snails.

  Nola stayed put. Did her best to think of something besides how good those snails would taste, or what kind of things she would do just to eat one. She’d kill people for certain. She’d kill Grungar. Lord Cuspar. She’d kill one of the strangers sharing her pen, probably.

  And in a few more days, she’d probably kill Pern and Suko and Kiko, too.

  Nola had always been realistic about this world. She’d done what needed doing to survive. But it wasn’t until now—stuck in this pen—that she realized the hidden truth of humanity: they were all just animals who stayed civil and kind because there was food in their bellies and a roof over their heads at night. Take those things away, and the goodness of people got taken away with it.

  While she was marinating in this grim reality, there was a commotion by the entrance to the livestock area, which always portended the same dismal and daily event.

  Vergun had come to choose his next meal.

  He strode across the muddy yard. Surveyed the crowd with discerning, red eyes. Nola didn’t move, and neither did anyone else. Hiding seemed to attract his attention more. They’d learned that on the second day, when he’d chosen a woman who’d cowered behind her husband. Best thing you could do was freeze like a rabbit caught in the middle of a field by a hawk, and hope you were passed over.

  “Commander,” said Grungar, standing up and moving over to him. “Might be you to take girl today?”

  Vergun studied her. Nola’s pulse hammered in her chest. Her throat went dry.

  “No,” he said after what felt like an hour. “There’s a bravery behind those eyes that creates a bitter taste in the flesh.” He turned to Grungar. “What’s your problem with the girl, soldier?”

  “Bitch broke Grungar’s teeth.”

  “That does not seem to be stopping you from enjoying the fruits of the city,” said Vergun.

  “Still. Want girl to suffer.”

  “Mmm. I know the feeling.” He licked his lips. “But today is not her time. Perhaps when some of that bravery has been watered down. Nothing is more delicious than the taste of complete surrender.”

  “Grungar can make girl surrender.”

  “I look forward to surveying your progress,” said Vergun. Then he returned his attention to the pens, spending a few moments with each muddy, starving face. Nola kept her eyes on him, even though she’d apparently been passed up for the foreseeable future. After the first few days, people started thinking that if you looked back at him, he wouldn’t choose you. That theory went out the window yesterday when he picked a beet farmer who’d glared at him the whole time with icy eyes.

  Nola didn’t know what Vergun had seen behind those eyes that he wanted to eat, but apparently it wasn’t bitter bravery.

  Eventually, Vergun’s gaze halted on Lord Cuspar.

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  Lord Cuspar looked like he’d just swallowed a hot coal. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Your name,” Vergun hissed.

  “El-Elias Cuspar.”

  “You are highborn?”

  Cuspar nodded.

  “What type of lands does your family hold?”

  “Some coffee farms to the south. And … businesses in the city.”

  “What kind?”

  “Different kinds. Taverns, mostly.”

  “Show me your palms.”

  “Wh-What?”

  “Your hands. Put them through the bars.”

  Lord Cuspar did as he was asked.

  “Hm. Not a callus in sight,” said Vergun. “Makes for tender meat…”

  “Oh, gods … gods … gods.” Cuspar’s gasps made it sound like he had been running for a long time rather than sitting in a muddy pen. He started crying.

  Vergun left him in tears. Shifted his attention to a young woman nearby. Nola recognized her—she came into the tavern once a moon’s turn and always shared a single pint of rain ale with someone who looked like her sister.

  Vergun stared at her for a long time. Her shoulders were trembling.

  “Your name?” he asked.

  “Sh-Shelley.”

  “No family name?”

  “No.”

  “What is your trade?”

  “I used to keep chickens.”

  “Not anymore?”

  Shelley looked up at Vergun. “Your skyships killed them all.”

  “They aren’t my skyships, but I take your point.” He gestured to her. “Hands.”

  She obeyed. A tear streamed down her cheek as Vergun examined them.

  “What were you doing to form this callus here?” he asked, pointing to a ridge along the heel of her palm.

  “Breaking through the wing joints on chickens.”

  “Did your mother have them, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interesting. Very interesting.”

  While they’d been talking, Lord Cuspar had slowly begun to relax, thinking that his time had passed. Nola noticed that he had almost managed to get a grip on his breathing. But Vergun turned back to him without warning.

  “Lord Cuspar, I have a proposition for you.”

  That got his breathing all shallow and weak again.

  “Prop-prop … what proposition?”

  “I would like you to choose my dinner for me.”

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  “I am either going to eat you tonight, or I am going to eat Shelley. You get to choose.”

  Cuspar glanced at Shelley, whose eyes had become wide as saucers.

  “Is this a trick?” Lord Cuspar asked.

  “No trick. Just a simple choice that you need to make.”

  “But, why me?”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going to put such a weighty decision on the chicken girl’s shoulders. You’re a noble. This is what you’re meant to do, isn’t it? Make difficult decisions that cost people their lives and keep other people fed?”

  “You’re sick!” someone shouted from farther back in the pen.

  Vergun ignored him.

  “I am waiting, Lord Cuspar. If you do not decide soon, I will eat both of you.”

  Cuspar was breathing so quickly now that Nola thought he might pass out.

  Eventually, he hung his head like a condemned man waiting for an axe. “Take her.”

  “Are you quite certain?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  Vergun motioned to a blond-haired Wormwrot. He approached the pen, and placed a gray disc into a strange lock, which slackened the rope around the pen, allowing two Wormwrot to open the gate and drag Shelley out. People cursed and cried and some even shouted to go in her stead. For Shelley’s part, she seemed too shocked by the events to fully register them. She just stared at Lord Cuspar as she was dragged away, her worn-down shoes leaving two lines in the mud.

  Vergun lingered. Surveyed everyone with those creepy red eyes.

  “My initial intention was to deprive you all of food until Silas Bershad returned. But I believe that a small exception is in order. Lord Cuspar has chosen my dinner for me. Should the rest of you desire a meal tomor
row evening, you can have it.” He pointed at Cuspar. “But it must come from his flesh.”

  Cuspar retched. Tried to, anyway. Nothing came out except a small amount of green bile.

  “One more thing,” Vergun added. He pointed at Nola. “She’s the one who decides. And she alone.” He smiled. “We’ll see how much further that bitter bravery will carry you.”

  Vergun left.

  Grungar laughed. Then he scooped up the remnants of butter and pepper from his plate with a dirty finger and licked it.

  “Girl might be brave today,” he said. “But soon, girl loses bravery. Grungar knows it. Then girl pays for breaking Grungar’s teeth.”

  Once he was gone, people started to whisper.

  “Dunno about you all, but I’m not eating a person.”

  “He let Shelley get eaten instead of him.”

  “That’s different.”

  “I wasn’t saying that it’s the same. I’m saying the highborn fucker deserves to die, is all.”

  “Cuspar is a bastard,” said Dervis. “And I haven’t eaten in days and days.”

  “Everyone, please!” hissed a younger man with gold rings in his hair. “Can’t you see that he’s a sadistic monster? He’s trying to divide us.”

  “You’re saying that ’cause you live on the sunny side o’ the canal, too!” shouted Dervis.

  “I know a silk merchant who was trapped in a mountain pass over Lysteria for three months after an avalanche. Some in his crew died … and … well … he said that it tasted like pork, kind of.”

  “Wormwrot can throw us into pens like animals, but we don’t need to become animals!”

  “Nola. Please. I’m starving.”

  “We’re all starving.”

  Lord Cuspar was still staring at the ground in shock. Pern was looking at Nola. He shook his head slowly. She wasn’t sure what that meant.

  So she closed her eyes. Clamped her hands over both ears and pressed down as hard as she could to dampen the whispers.

  She couldn’t take this, on top of every other horrible thing that had happened in the last week. She missed Grittle. She tried to think back to a time when it was just them running the tavern and there were no skyships or wars or people debating whether eating someone was acceptable. But she couldn’t conjure a clear memory of that time. She knew that it had happened—knew that she’d spent entire, slow afternoons sipping a rain ale and playing hide-and-seek with Grittle and Trotsky—but those memories were foggy and far away.