by Archer, Jill
“Can you even swim?” I blurted out. Rafe squeezed my hands then, but way too hard. I flinched, instinctively yanking them back.
“I can now.” He laughed viciously and stuffed his hands in his back pockets. “What was the funeral like?”
“Sad.”
Rafe nodded. His expression edged back into nonchalance. But I knew now that his outward attitude of uncaring was as much a mask of his true self as the glamour Fara wore.
He turned to go.
“Wait!” I said, grabbing his arm. He looked down at my hand and then back at me. “Rafe . . .”
I didn’t know what I wanted to say to him. That I was sorry? Of course I was. But I’d already said that to him once already and now it didn’t seem nearly enough. That he shouldn’t feel guilty? Who wouldn’t? That I wished the accident hadn’t happened? But it had and nothing I said would change that.
“I wish I’d been given your memory of the accident and not just the funeral,” I finally said. “I wish . . . I wish I could take away your pain, Rafe. There are some things we’re better off not remembering.”
Oddly, impossibly, he laughed. “So now you want to cast Clean Conscience over me? There’s a reason I never learned that spell, Noon. There are some things even an Angel can’t believe in.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I guess what Peter Aster said about you is true.”
I stiffened. “What’s that?”
“That you’ve got a healer’s heart.”
It was impossible to tell if it was a compliment or a criticism. We stood, staring at each other in the dark, nearly squaring off. About what, I couldn’t have said. Something had changed between us. Finally I said:
“Are you going to give Ari back his memory?”
“The one of you?” Rafe said softly.
Before I could answer, Ari walked over to us.
Rafe winked at me. “Not a chance,” he murmured and slipped off in the direction of Russ and Fara.
Ari gave me a puzzled look. His signature felt fizzy, like sparkling wine. The kind that went to your head, made you giddy and do questionable things. He smiled and reached for me.
“You’ll never guess where we are.”
“The deepest part of the Secernere.”
Ari raised his eyebrows in surprise. “How’d you know?”
* * *
Turned out the deepest part of the Secernere was only a very long day’s row from the Shallows. Between Russ’ calculations and the rudimentary map on the cover page of his almanac, Russ was able to direct us to our original destination by late afternoon the next day. Throughout that day, as we rowed farther and farther east, the land around us got greener and greener. It was a color I wasn’t used to seeing in such abundance. Last semester, it might have enchanted me, but now it just felt . . . wrong. Off. Which was silly because these eastern hinterlands looked exactly as they should: swampy, heavy, wet, and dripping in myriad shades of olive-tinged sepia, sage, ash, and iron.
Cypress and tupelo gum trees crowded the swamp. They stood tall and straight, flanking one another, nearly as numerous, and as forbidding looking, as the demons must have looked in Luck’s lost Host army. The trees thickened the farther we went into the swamp so that it appeared almost as if they were advancing on us, pressing in on us, more than the demons of the rush lands ever had. The trees grew right up to the edge of the Secernere. Some even dipped so low over the water’s edge, we had to duck under them to pass.
Moss hung from the trees like greenish gray hair or the frayed and faded cloaks of folks caught and hung here. It was very disconcerting. No fewer than six times an hour I swore I saw someone moving toward us, on the ground or in the trees, but when I turned to gaze at them directly, I saw only moss . . . hanging, swaying, swinging, though there was no wind that I could feel. It became exhausting. My heart would seize, my hands would clench, my signature would redline . . . and then, when the movement turned out to be imagined, I had to force myself to relax. Slow my breathing, unclench my fists, and expand my signature from the tight little ready-to-explode ball it had wrapped itself into.
My muscles became cramped. With six people in the boat, plus Virtus, there was no room to move around. Standing up was out of the question. Luck forbid an ill-chosen step dumped everyone into the water. I peered over the edge of the boat for the nth time that day, half-fearful of and half-wanting to lower my hand into the water and kill all the green duckweed coating the surface of the river. Rowing down this section of the Secernere was like rowing down the back of a thick green snake. Each piece of duckweed was as shiny and shimmery as a scale. For one wild moment, I imagined the whole river might be one giant slithering water demon. But then I blinked and the illusion vanished. But not the tension.
After going through Ebony’s Elbow, I’d said I wanted to push on to the Shallows because, if there was any chance of still finding Athalie, or preventing further disappearances out here in the swamp, I wanted to do that. But as we got closer and closer to the Shallows, I became less and less sure of my plan. I’d started to think Grimasca might be behind the attacks on us and the disappearances in the Shallows. But I’d based that theory on nothing more than coincidence and hearsay. I needed to begin my investigation with Vodnik, the accused.
What exactly was I going to say to him when we arrived?
Prior to the catastrophic losses from two nights ago, we’d at least have shown up on equal footing with the outpost lord. Arriving in the Shallows on the luxuriously appointed dahabiya Cnawlece would have made a statement about who we were, what we represented, and the power and authority behind our visit. Forget about the lost letter of introduction. My inability to fulfill that social and legal formality was laughable compared to the other grave breaches of protocol I’d be making when I showed up in a twelve-foot wooden dinghy with no food or clothing, seeking shelter for my investigative team, a former Cnawlece crew member, and care for its unnaturally unconscious demon captain.
Oh, and by the way, Lord Vodnik, I’m also here to determine if you killed your own followers and, if so, to execute you for it.
Yeah, right. The new introduction I imagined for tonight’s landing in the Shallows was bound to be even worse than the one I’d imagined at the start of our trip. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long for it to occur.
Sometime around late afternoon, I noticed a thinning in the vegetation off to the right side of the Secernere. Ten minutes, two twists of the river, and at least a hundred more oar strokes and an unmistakable clearing appeared. The swampy land from here until the next turn in the river was brown, instead of green. Instead of trees, there were small wooden huts on raised platforms with roofs made from thatched grass or jagged pieces of rusty tin. I wondered idly if Rafe knew the spell Unlockjaw.
As our tiny boat made its way east past the settlement, the only sound I could hear was the sound of our dripping oars as Ari slowly rowed us closer to the shore. The slowing splashes broke my traveling trance as much as the transition from green to brown had.
We were here.
It was a mark of our exhaustion (or a visceral reaction to our visibly depressing destination) that there was no show of excitement. Everyone stayed quiet and still. The whole trip had been that way, what with the cramped conditions of the boat, taking turns at the oars, having slept on the ground out in the open last night, not to mention the still-recent shock of having lost nearly everything but our lives.
The thing was, though, it was quiet and still in the settlement next to us. There wasn’t a sound coming from those huts or the cleared area beyond them. It made the hair stand up on my arms. Just before the Secernere made a sharp turn to the right, a small, rickety-looking wooden pier jutted out into the river. When I saw it, my first irrational thought was that maybe it was best that we hadn’t arrived on Cnawlece because if Cnawlece had tried to dock there it would have ripped it clean out of its moorings. The dock itself was only the tiniest bit bigger than the boat we were in.
&nbs
p; At the end of the short dock was a wooden shack. This one had a tin roof, although it looked slightly less rusty than the others we’d seen while rowing, and the building itself was bigger. But not by much. Ari maneuvered the dinghy right up to the side of the pier. Rafe stepped out of the boat and held it next to the dock. There were no ropes, either on the dock or in the boat. Virtus leapt out immediately. The fact that Virtus wasn’t hissing, spitting, or growling meant there was likely no immediate danger. But that still left all the hours until nightfall and every single one of them after that to worry about.
“Do you feel any demons?” I asked Rafe. I’d poked fun of Rafe and his silly spell titles, but the fact was, Demon Net might be the only thing that would alert us to the presence of either of the two hellcnights that had already attacked us. If the hellcnight who’d climbed on board Cnawlece or the one that had impersonated Ebony and killed Burr had used those encounters to adjust to Ari’s and my signatures, then they could now mask themselves around us and we wouldn’t be able to sense them the next time we encountered them.
Rafe nodded. “There’s a demon on the other side of that shack, some distance away, but coming toward us.” I felt it too. I tensed and swallowed. I didn’t feel any waning magic blur, which meant the demon coming toward us had to be either Vodnik or one of the hellcnights who’d already attacked us. Or possibly Grimasca himself, if he was powerful enough to mask himself during a first encounter with no telltale hellcnight blur.
Fara cast a simple levitation spell to lift Delgato out of the boat and then she and Rafe cast Impenetrable over everyone, even Virtus, just as a precaution. Ari dragged the dinghy over to the shallow muddy edge of the river next to the pier and pulled it up on the bank. Together we walked over to the shack’s small, wooden door.
Should we knock?
Some outposts had guardhouses, but this ramshackle building hardly looked up to that task. I thought it much more likely that, due to the unusual nature of the route we’d taken to get here, we’d inadvertently arrived at the Shallows’ back door. My guess was that this rickety hut was a storage area for fishing supplies, crab pots, and the like. I reached out to clasp the latch and paused.
What if the door was enchanted?
Before I could touch it, Rafe reached for it.
“Heraldry is an Angel’s job. Allow me”—and he brushed my hand aside and stepped in front of me.
Chapter 20
The door was locked, which gave Rafe pause for only a moment before he murmured a spell and the latch popped like the buckle on a too-tight pair of pants. Tentatively, he pressed the door open and peered inside. All I could see through the door was blackness. The little shed had no windows.
Rafe pushed his way in and then motioned for us to follow. Once we were inside and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the contents of the shed were exactly as I’d suspected, which eased my fears not at all. I couldn’t imagine the rest of this visit would go as predictably, or that our findings would be as innocuous as a few fishing poles, a tackle box, ten crab pots, and two birdcages.
Slowly, our group made our way through the tiny shed to the door on the other side. That one wasn’t locked. The five of us, plus Virtus and Delgato’s uncannily levitating form, exited the shed into what lay beyond, which was, for a moment, the reverse of what we’d experienced entering the shed. We stood clustered together, blinded by bright sunlight. For one brief second, I was paralyzed by fear.
Nearly every demon I’d ever met had been horrible. Serafina had been small, but had burned Ivy and almost killed her. I shuddered recalling Nergal, my client from last semester. Lamia, his wife, had been even worse. Jezebeth may have been loved by Ynocencia but he’d killed multiple people, and his horns, claws, and jaws had inspired a healthy dose of fear in me. Delgato had been the only decent demon I’d ever met and even he had induced mild heart palpitations the first time we’d met. So, needless to say, I was braced for someone awful.
The demon that stood before me was awful, but not as bad as I’d braced for. He was large and imposing, with well-muscled arms and a strong face. His hair and beard flowed nearly to the ground, looking creepily like the moss that had hung from the trees we’d just rowed through. His skin had a slick sheen to it that reminded me of the Secernere’s duckweed, but its color was darker, duller. He wore a dark brown, leather-belted tunic with a small, short, rust-colored cloak. The cloak was fastened with an elaborate iron pin. His eyes were greenish gold with thin black slits for pupils. We blinked at each other and instinctively I stepped back. The demon’s signature felt sluggish, but there was definitely something about him that warned he could strike at any moment.
Surrounding the demon, in a great big hovering flock, was a gaggle of children. They appeared to range in age from two to twelve and were covered in mud. It was on their clothes, their skin, even in their hair. But they looked happy enough and, I was surprised and pleased to see, they didn’t look nearly as thin as I’d thought the children of the Shallows might be. They hopped up and down, chirping and chattering excitedly, and pointing at us with crooked fingers and flailing arms.
The demon opened his mouth and uttered a greeting—in a language I’d never heard before. I have no idea what he said, but the children rushed to us then, laughing, and those who could get near enough to do so, embraced us. I nearly fell over from the force of their exuberance. Ari’s signature was steady and alert. I sensed from him that he was slightly bemused by this welcome but still wary. I doubted Ari ever let down his guard for long, and certainly not while meeting outpost lords accused of murdering their own people.
At first, the children kept a respectful distance from Virtus. I imagined none of them had ever seen a tiger before. Natural beasts were much more common in Warja than in Halja. But it was clear they had the same fascination with Virtus that Russ had had when he’d first laid eyes on him when we were loading up in New Babylon almost six weeks ago. In the time since, Virtus had grown bigger. His coat was sleeker and his frame leaner. Fara motioned to the children who were closest to Virtus, encouraging them to approach him and give him a pat. For his part, Virtus looked positively smitten with all the attention. I swore I could almost hear the rumble of his throaty purr over the incomprehensible high-pitched chirps and squeals of the children. I glanced at Rafe and Fara.
What language was spoken here in the Shallows?
The demon complaints had both been written in the Haljan common tongue. So some of these children must know it. Though I realized, while listening to all the squawking and screeching, that it probably wasn’t their first language. Rafe was leaning over toward a group of children, conversing fluently, apparently telling them something amazing because their eyes grew as wide as the whirlpool we’d passed through to get here. After answering a few more questions in this strange-sounding language of theirs, Rafe ruffled the top of one of the boys’ heads, a wistful expression on his face, and stood up, looking toward me.
“Avian,” he said, answering my unspoken but assumed question.
Interesting, I thought. Who would have guessed? Even if Lambert Jeffries had agreed to work with me, his Aquaian would have been useless here. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Rafe knew Avian. I was betting he knew lots of demon languages that he hadn’t yet told me about.
Rafe grinned at me and then turned to address Vodnik formally. Since Rafe was my Guardian and I was the lead investigator, it fell to him. He raised his hands above his head, palms down, and immediately the children grew quiet. Vodnik eyed Rafe with rapt attention. In a strong, clear voice Rafe uttered a series of guttural whorls and warbles, interspersed with a few tweets and chirps. Knowing the Angels’ penchant for theatrics in general and Rafe’s preference for silliness in particular (regardless of the number of life-threatening situations we’d faced together, or the somberness of some of his own memories, I could never forget that this was the man who’d said he knew the spells Pat on the Back, Ladies Man, and Wet ’n Wild), Rafe could have made a mockery
of the introduction. But instead he appeared to infuse his unnatural speech patterns with all of the gravitas appropriate for the situation.
As he had when making our introduction to Delgato, he made a few sounds, likely noises describing our names, places of origin, and family connections, and then gestured to each of us so that we could acknowledge Vodnik and his crowd of tiny followers. As each of us nodded or bowed, Rafe chirped a few extra words. In response, the children’s faces reflected varying levels of amusement, awe, horror, or fascination. I got the impression Rafe was telling them the story of how we’d arrived there, as well as each of our parts in the story (no doubt with a healthy amount of exaltation and glorification). When it was my turn, I nodded to Vodnik, and Rafe added whatever chirpy codicil he’d come up with for me. It was longer than the others and throughout there were audible cries of alarm and then, finally, sighs of delight. At the end, Rafe clasped his hands to his heart in an intentionally exaggerated romantic gesture reminiscent of a swooning lover as he once again gestured toward me. The children laughed and I felt the barest uptick in Ari’s signature. He narrowed his eyes at Rafe. Like me, I’m sure he wondered what was being said about us, but since the audience for Rafe’s show was mostly children, I couldn’t imagine it was anything too untoward.
Throughout all of it, Vodnik appeared expressionless and patient. I could not have said what he thought about either Rafe’s introduction or our presence in his outpost. But then he made his position clear.
“Welcome, friends,” Vodnik said haltingly in words I recognized. “We have been waiting for you. I know Zella wrote to the Council for help. The Demon of Hunger has found his way to the Shallows and has taken many.”