Ravnica

by Cory Herndon

  “Hello,” the woman said. She placed gloved hands on the back of Jarad’s empty chair. “Is this seat taken?”

  “What?” Fonn said. She could barely see what was happening in the pit below through the crowd that had closed in to line the rail. It sounded like Jarad and the other non-demon combatant were still alive, but then again the fight didn’t sound like it had actually started yet, either.

  “I was hoping to join you,” the red-haired woman replied, and Fonn took a good look at her. She had strikingly beautiful, angular features and eyes the color of gold.

  “Well, I’m busy,” Fonn said. “A friend of mine is down there fighting a demon.” She’d used the word “friend” without thinking, she realized with surprise. Something about the woman put her at ease, which Fonn wasn’t certain was a state she needed to reach at the moment. “That is, an associate,” she hurriedly corrected herself, “who is doing his best to get himself killed.”

  “I believe,” the woman said, “that our two associates may be associating in the endeavor.”

  “Right,” Fonn said. “So that would put us at odds, I would think.”

  “You would think,” the woman said. “You do not sound like a Devkarin.”

  “What business is that of yours?” Fonn said.

  The woman gestured to the line. “My apologies, I did not mean to insult you. However, I may be able to get us a better look.”

  It was the voice, Fonn realized, not the woman that was making her feel odd—relaxed at first, now less so. This was no ordinary human. Could the worm-thing they’d faced in the undercity change itself so much as to resemble this creature? She looked again at the striking woman, and something in her eyes made Fonn decide to trust her, against all reason. She rose from her seat and joined the woman at the rail.

  So stunned was Fonn by the sight of the second challenger she almost didn’t notice the woman move behind her until the woman had pinned both of Fonn’s arms to her sides.

  “What are you doing?” Fonn cried. Even she could barely hear her own voice over the crowd. She twisted in the woman’s grip and cursed herself for having trusted her for even a second. “Let me go!”

  “I will,” the woman said, her mouth close to Fonn’s ear, “when I learn who you are and why you and your partner are interested in the bombing on Tin Street.”

  “What are you going to do, throw me in the pits?” Fonn said.

  “Perhaps,” the voice, beautiful and terrifying, sang in her ear, “But I would rather have the truth. I suspect your charge would have felt the same.”

  Fonn twisted around to look into the tall woman’s eyes, which flashed with inner light. “My charge?” she said. “Who are you? How do you know that?”

  “I did not know. I suspected,” the woman said. “Now I know. You are the ledev guardian. My associate and I have been looking for you.”

  “Kos,” Fonn said, sparing another glance at the pit. “Your associate is Agrus Kos. But he’s a wojek, not an assassin.”

  “I assure you I am not an assassin,” the woman said. “But I will ask you a few questions. If you run, I will pursue you.”

  * * * * *

  Kos spotted the second petitioner almost immediately and for a moment forgot completely about the half-demon. The second challenger was a Devkarin elf. The pale, wiry shape stalked the space before his antechamber like a cat, sizing up the pit and the combatants. Kos found his movements familiar. The elf had to be a hunter. He wore no mask and had his tangled dreadlocks knotted into a ponytail, but the stance was unmistakable.

  The elf wasn’t just any hunter, or for that matter just any elf.

  “Ho there, ’jek,” the elf said. “What’s it been, fifty years?”

  “Fifty-seven and change,” Kos said. “Devkarin, I told you I didn’t want to see you in my city again.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” the elf said. “And you might want to duck.”

  “What?” Kos said, turning in the direction of the Devkarin’s glance. He took the elf’s advice a half second too late to completely avoid Iv’g’nork’s club, which knocked his helmet against the pit wall with a clang. The wojek went with the strike and managed to keep his footing just long enough to throw himself sideways to dodge a boulder-sized fist bristling with bony spikes.

  “Hold still, human,” the half-demon snarled. It lashed a forked tongue over the raw, exposed bone that had once anchored its upper lip—from the looks of it, recently. Iv’g’nork had certainly gotten hungry while he’d waited.

  “Not a problem,” Kos said from the ground. He managed to roll onto his back in time to see the Devkarin launch himself at the slaver’s extended left leg as Iv’g’nork turned awkwardly to keep his guard against them both at once. The elf struck the half-demon’s knee with one shoulder at a speed that should have snapped Iv’g’nork’s leg in two, sideways. Instead, the hunter crumpled against the half-demon’s limb like a thrown doll with a startled “Oof!” Iv’g’nork kicked out with surprising agility for a creature that appeared to be at least eighty percent bone and flipped the elf into the air. The hunter recovered quickly and twisted in mid-flight to kick off the stone wall of the pit—no, he wasn’t kicking off, he clung to it. Nice move, Kos thought. Hope I can take advantage of it.

  He picked up his helmet, half caved-in and useless as protection, and threw it at the back of the half-demon’s spiked skull. It struck at just the right angle to knock off a couple of head spikes and to get Iv’g’nork’s attention.

  “Stay put, elf,” the slaver said and turned on Kos. Iv’g’nork heaved his club over Kos’s head, but the swing was clumsy and he dodged it easily.

  “Hit you harder than I thought, did I?” Kos said.

  “You’re hardly worth the effort, either of you,” the half-demon hissed, “but a meal is a meal.”

  “The spikes,” Borca said, floating in front of Kos’s field of vision. “It’s the spikes. You dazed him!”

  “I know. Get out of the way!”

  “Who you talking to, little human?”

  “Borca, the next time someone asks me that, I’m going to fry you with a grounder,” Kos said.

  “You wouldn’t,” the ghost scoffed. “Besides, I don’t think those work on me, and I don’t think you remembered to grab any on your way out of the infirmary.”

  “I don’t care, I—”

  “Shouldn’t you be fighting and not talking to me?”

  Borca floated to one side, and Kos saw that the Devkarin had moved, spiderlike, up the wall. The elf leaped onto the charging Iv’g’nork and grabbed the half-demon’s head by the upper set of ram’s horns. He pulled, muscles straining beneath his pale skin, and wrenched the slaver’s head back enough to force Iv’g’nork to stop.

  “Do something, ’jek!” the elf shouted, “I can’t do this—oof—for long!”

  Kos already had his short sword in hand. He would have killed for the pendreks they’d had to leave behind to avoid setting off alarm spells. He could really have used a fully charged execution blast right now. Instead, he tried to maneuver close enough to do some real damage to the half-demon without getting flattened by Iv’g’nork’s club. He feinted right, and Iv’g’nork clumsily smashed the stone floor with his weapon, which was little more than a stripped tree trunk. It splintered against the rock, not completely but enough to split down the middle. The elf flipped over the half-demon’s head when the club struck stone, but the Devkarin didn’t flip quite quickly enough to avoid a collision with the pit wall. The Devkarin rolled off the wall and back to his feet.

  “Wow,” Borca said, “I hope you don’t have to fight him next. You’d never be able to hit him.”

  “Shut up,” Kos said.

  The slaver’s blow exposed his left side, and Kos lunged with the sword in what he knew was a useless strike, but might give the elf a chance to try something else. The bone plates looked fused, he suspected there was no way he could slide a blade between them. As it turned out, he was right.

  Kos�
��s blade bounced jarringly against the slaver’s natural armor and flung his sword arm back and up, but the tip struck something that wasn’t a bony plate—Iv’g’nork’s left armpit, where the bone separated to allow him movement—and Kos let the momentum drive a thrust straight upward and into the slaver’s shoulder socket. The blade crunched against a softer, more fragile endoskeleton that explained how the thing could move so fast. It wasn’t hollow, but the plates were obviously there for a reason.

  Iv’g’nork screamed and roared in pain. He jerked back and wrenched Kos’s sword from his blood-soaked shoulder. One massive, bony arm flopped around uselessly as the half-demon flailed in surprise and agony, which forced both Kos and the Devkarin to dance back out of the way. The only way the ’jek would get his sword back now would be if he took the half-demon apart.

  “By the Legion!” Borca gasped. “Did you do that?”

  “Yeah, I think I did,” Kos said.

  “Did what?” the Devkarin asked as stepped beside the ’jek to watch the half-demon flail. “Lost your blade?”

  “I hurt him,” Kos said. “You got thrown into a wall.”

  “Well, pick up something,” Borca said. “He’s getting over the initial shock, and I think he’s—”

  “Mad?” Kos said.

  “Furious,” Borca corrected.

  “No,” the elf said, “but I’m beginning to think you might be mad, wojek.”

  Iv’g’nork screamed in fury and tossed what was left of his shattered club against the wall. “That should even things up a bit,” Kos said, but the half-demon corrected the assumption immediately with a brutal backhanded swat at Jarad. The elf went down hard on the pit floor and skidded painfully along the stone, coming to rest slumped against the base of the pit wall. The half-demon roared, stomped over to the dazed elf, and wrapped one bony hand around Jarad’s neck. He lifted the elf into the air and shook him at the crowd, which roared its approval.

  The elf was made of flesh and bone like anyone else, and if Kos didn’t do something he’d never find out why this elf, of all elves, was looking for the same information he was. With one hand full and the other useless, Iv’g’nork had arrogantly left himself open to Kos, who he must have thought the lesser threat. It was an assumption that needed correcting.

  Kos didn’t have his sword, but the shattered hunks of the slaver’s tree trunk club lay scattered around the pit.

  “Here’s a good one,” Borca’s ghost said. He hovered over a hunk of lumber that would have made a decent spear, if his enemy hadn’t been covered in calcified growths. Still, it was sharp, and heavy … he might be able to get it through the slaver’s eye with a lucky throw, but then he’d be back where he started, with no leads at all.

  The crowd, thirsty for blood, roared again. They urged Iv’g’nork to finish the elf and suggested many different and disturbing ways to do so, in a host of languages from every corner of Ravnica. The elf pulled on the massive thumb pressed against his windpipe.

  As the slaver held the elf aloft, Kos saw that the half-demon foolishly exposed his right armpit, again. Well, it had worked once. … “Hey, Iggy!” Kos shouted. “Catch!” He hurled the makeshift spear overhead, and it flew straight and true—or would have, if Iv’g’nork had not turned at Kos’s shout. The wojek’s projectile bounced harmlessly off the slaver’s bony chest. He turned on Kos again, still clutching the elf. The Devkarin wasn’t struggling any more, but his neck didn’t look broken. Probably passed out.

  “Oops,” Kos said.

  “Yeah, next time don’t yell first,” Borca said.

  “You should learn to wait your turn, human,” the half-demon bellowed. “There is plenty of Iv’g’nork to go around. Just ask this fool.” The slaver held the elf over his open jaws. “Now wait your turn while I enjoy the first course.”

  “Shouldn’t have let me get so close,” Kos heard the elf hiss between clenched teeth. The Devkarin, obviously not unconscious at all, pressed his hand against the half-demon’s forehead. A half-dozen tiny black shapes—insects?—shot down the length of the elf’s arm and onto Iv’g’nork’s face.

  “What?” the slaver barked before he dropped the Devkarin in surprise. The half-demon stumbled backward, swiping at his face. The bugs, or whatever they were, didn’t stick around to get swatted. Two scuttled around the sides and disappeared into Iv’g’nork’s tiny earpits. Two more vanished into the half-demon’s sunken eye sockets, and the final pair crawled into his open, quiet mouth.

  Kos pulled the elf to his feet.

  “Ask him how he did that,” Borca said. Kos shot him a look, and the ghost raised both hands in protest. “All right, I’ll just watch. Partner.”

  “What did you do to him?” Kos asked, pointing at Iv’g’nork. The slaver had his bony hands over his face and swung his head back and forth before he lost his balance completely and went over backward with a crash.

  “Took his balance away,” the elf said. “And his eyesight. We’ve got maybe three minutes before the others consume his heart.”

  “With bugs?” Borca asked.

  “How?” Kos said.

  “I have a way with certain creatures,” the Devkarin replied. “Ask me about it later. There is too much to explain before the slaver dies. Just listen, and trust me—we want the same thing, and I’m guessing from your state of dress that you’re not getting a lot of help from your league. Let us get the information from this creature together. Otherwise neither of us gets it at all. Then, if we fight, we fight.”

  “Can you stop the bugs before they kill him?” Kos said. “Three minutes isn’t long.”

  “Perhaps, if he answers quickly and I have any reason to let him live once he gives us what he knows. Even so, he’ll probably die of sudden heart failure within a year. The beetles have already reached his left ventricle.”

  “But you can do it,” Kos said. “That’s leverage. Let me do most of the talking?” He ducked to narrowly avoid a half-eaten dindin melon that exploded against the ground and showered them with sticky chunks of fruit. The Devkarin nodded. “Good. Follow my lead.”

  * * * * *

  “You speak truthfully,” the tall woman said. “I can tell. I believe that you were not involved in the bombing, but my associate will want to speak to you.”

  “You’re not human, are you?” Fonn said. “You’re some kind of, what? Angel?”

  “I am not human. You have keen skills of deduction,” the angel replied, relaxing her grip on the half-elf’s shoulders.

  “No, I think it was your eyes,” Fonn said. “They’re a dead giveaway.”

  “Explain your statement, please.”

  “They’re gold. You know that, right? And that cloak isn’t really—”

  “The previous statement. How do you know Agrus Kos?”

  Fonn took a few seconds just to breathe. The sight of Kos in the pits—it had to be him, he was much older, but humans aged much more quickly then those with elf blood—had knocked the wind out of her more than the angel’s grip. She hadn’t seen him since she was a child, and even then she hadn’t spoken with him or interacted with him in any way. Her mother had pointed him out to Fonn before they’d left the city when Fonn’s father died. Fonn’s mother told her that Kos was the one who had caused Myczil Zunich’s fall, and the man’s face had been burned into her memory.

  Many years later, releases from the wojek case files told her what her mother hadn’t. Fonn wasn’t sure she understood yet—or believed what the case files said—but she was forced to question her old hate.

  “Sorry, I—I’ve never met an angel before,” she finally managed. “And Kos—he was my father’s partner. My father was a wojek, as I assume you are. My father died.” Fonn flipped her hood back with a toss of her head. “I haven’t seen him in a long time. So Kos is working this case?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” the angel said.

  “Good, then I can return to the Leaguehall with you and get all this straightened out,” Fonn said. “Surely you’ve
learned something. I’ve been trying to get back to the surface for three days.”

  “Kos and I work outside of wojek jurisdiction, at the moment,” the angel said. She looked down in shame, and Fonn wondered how hard it was for an angel, an avatar of justice incarnate, to “work outside wojek jurisdiction,” which was essentially vigilantism in the city as Fonn understood it.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The wojek investigation was going nowhere,” the angel admitted, “and the lieutenant chose to pursue the right of investigation. I feel I should tell you that he was injured in the bombing, but once he found out you were involved …”

  So Kos still felt some responsibility, or guilt. Probably both, and Fonn forced herself not to let the old hate resurface. “Well, you found me,” Fonn said, “but if you aren’t taking me to the Leaguehall, what are you going to do?” She doubted she could take the angel in a fight, but the entrance was not far.

  “We seek the same information,” the angel continued. “Yet we—Kos and I—are without many resources due to … interdepartmental conflicts. Perhaps there is no reason for us to work at cross-purposes.”

  Fonn blinked in surprise. Her training and her conscience told her to leave now. She didn’t really owe Jarad anything, and now that she was out of the undercity she should have already reported to Vitu Ghazi, or at least a ledev guardpost.

  But Kos was down there, apparently risking whatever career he had left along with his life, to find out who had murdered her charge. If she went back to the Unity Tree now, less than a day before the convocation, she might not be debriefed for a week, if the other ledev didn’t lock her up for her failure. The angel, Kos, and Jarad probably represented her best chance for getting to the bottom of the bombing.

  “All right,” Fonn said. “You’re on, angel.”

  “Please, call me Feather.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I am afraid not.”

  * * * * *

  Iv’g’nork screamed, and the chorus of roaring cheers began to turn, bit by bit, into shouts of surprise, shock, anger, and intermittently raucous laughter. A hunk of bread bounced off the back of Kos’s head, and a piece of fruit spattered against the elf’s left shoulder. Some in the crowd seemed quite happy to see the brute taken down so quickly, some had wanted a longer fight, and a great many sounded like it was about to be open season on Devkarin hunters and off-duty ’jeks.