by Jill Archer
“I thought Maegesters and gunpowder didn’t get along,” I said, pointing to the giant cannon. My pants and tunic pressed against me, as if they were afraid of the wind that pushed them, while daring strands of my hair escaped their binding and flew madly around my face.
“They don’t,” Ari said, unshouldering his pack. He glanced up at the Magna Fax and then turned to me. “The first lords of the gorge were Maegesters, just like Servius Rockthorn. But after the fifth one died of natural causes within only a century and a half, some residents started pushing for a demon lord. The town’s engineer argued against it. Said a demon lord would end up being a bugbear to the town instead of protection against the rogares. He told the townspeople he’d build them something that would be more valiant than a Maegester, more enduring than a demon, and more powerful than Luck himself.”
I stepped out of the shadow of the tower and into the light of the setting sun. “Didn’t Rockthorn Gorge’s early settlers know that mortal arrogance rarely goes unpunished?”
Ari gave me a cryptic look. “The engineer was a practical man who believed in living people more than absent lords. Sound familiar?”
Reflexively, I opened my mouth to say something smart. But I shut it when nothing came to mind. It was true that I wanted to believe the living held more sway over me than the dead, but my life’s course had been directed by too many quirks of fate for me to convincingly argue that Luck didn’t play his part.
“The engineer told the town he could build the ultimate protector for them out of stymphwax.”
“Stymphwax? As in stymphalian birds?” I whistled in admiration. Stymphalian birds were Lucifer’s fabled birds of prey. They made basilisks seem like ladybugs and drakons seem like lumbering elephants. Their feathers were hard as mail and their blood and body fluids were hideously flammable. During Armageddon, they’d dive-bombed Lucifer’s targets, willfully sacrificing themselves in order to create fiery infernos around their dead bodies. They lived for two things: war and death. They had zero nesting instincts – because they built hives out of stymphwax, which was a thousand times more explosive than they were.
I laughed. “Has the Magna Fax ever been fired? If that story is true, a gunner would be safer waving a lightning rod in a thunderstorm than they would be trying to fire that thing.”
Ari smiled, but it seemed as though he was enjoying my amusement rather than agreeing. “The Magna Fax is ensorcelled,” he said.
I gave him a wry look. Of course it was. My amusement faded. In my experience, ensorcelled objects, while not always cursed, almost always led to bad luck.
“An Angel helped the engineer collect the stymphwax and mold it into the Magna Fax. Then she cast Temper over it. It can only be fired with a slow match made from the pages of her spell book.”
“What happens then?” I asked, my voice low and foreboding.
“Gorge legend says the Magna Fax is pre-loaded. That its cannonballs are magically produced when it’s lit. The town likes to boast that their ‘protector’ could level a city… or an invading army. But who knows? You were right to ask; it’s never been fired.”
“But it could be. I don’t see any guards up here, and you don’t seem too concerned about someone firing the Magna Fax. Does that mean the Angel’s spell book – the cannon’s book of matches – was destroyed?”
Instead of answering me, Ari walked over to the low wall surrounding the plaza’s perimeter. Beyond him, the view was stunning. Soft, green waves seemed to undulate around us. Nearer mountains shimmered in bright shades of lime and pear, while those farther away dissolved in a distant curtain of greenish-black. To our left the sun was sinking, and its dying light made the Magna Fax look as if it were cast from burnished gold.
“Let me guess,” I said, coming to stand beside Ari. “The engineer destroyed the Angel’s spell book – because he realized loaded weapons can backfire?”
“No. Town historians claim the Magna Fax was the outpost’s only protector for almost thirty years – from the day it was built until the day the engineer died.”
I snorted. “Besides the legionaries. In any case, who really knows what happened up here eighteen hundred years ago? We barely know what happened in New Babylon then.”
Ari shrugged. “True, but you should know the rest of the story, since you’ll be living here for the next six months… or possibly longer.”
I glanced over at him, stunned by the brief, blistering swell of hope in his signature.
“After the engineer’s death, Rockthorn Gorge elected its first bunyip patron. If you believe the old ballads, that first demon lord conceded that the Magna Fax was capable of defending the town, just as it was capable of destroying it. He hid the Angel’s spell book – the cannon’s matchbook – and then he had an offering bowl installed up here to remind everyone that Rockthorn Gorge was protected by a living demon and waning magic, not a stymphwax machine held together by an Angel’s spell.”
Whoa. Well, whoever that first bunyip was, he wasn’t subtle. Nor did he seem to care for Angels. Were those universal bunyip traits? Because he sounded like Yannu.
“Where was the matchbook hidden? Do you know?”
“It was disguised as the tabula ansata on the statue of Servius Rockthorn – the one that’s in the center of the rotunda’s atrium under the oculus.”
“Who else knows that?”
Ari frowned. “You, me, Cliodna, and Yannu.” He must have known what I was thinking then because he said, “It’s been safe there for millennia.”
“Nothing stays hidden forever.”
We stared at each other. He blinked first. “Well, what would you have me do? Move it now? That would only draw attention to it. The rotunda has twenty-four-hour guards and a surfeit of shielding spells. Any member of the camarilla – except you – would have a hard time stealing it.”
I sighed. That would have to do. For now. Eventually the book would have to be moved to New Babylon for safekeeping. But I had enough to press Ari about today.
I looked around and spotted the offering bowl down on a lower level of the plaza, as well as a bronze plaque at the base of the tower beneath the Magna Fax. I walked over to take a closer look.
TO YOU, THE HARDY SETTLERS OF THE GORGE,
MAY THIS GRAND CANNON DETER YOUR ENEMIES AND ENSURE YOUR FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE.
OBADIAH ZEFFRE, FYR 128 AA
“Zeffre?” My voice was laced with suspicion as I turned toward Ari. I didn’t believe in coincidence. “Your foreman – your uncle – is a descendant of the engineer who built the Magna Fax?”
He nodded.
“Ari,” I said cautiously, knowing how important his adoptive family was to him, “didn’t Displodo’s legend start in the second century?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “But Nephemiah Zeffre is not a sinner.”
I pressed my lips together as a new theory started to take shape in my mind. Maybe Ari had been right when we’d discussed Displodo earlier. Maybe Displodo was human. Maybe Displodo was Nephemiah Zeffre. Maybe Displodo had always been a Zeffre. Maybe Obadiah’s unfinished legacy – convincing Rockthorn Gorge to eschew demons and declare their independence – had been passed down from father to son for nearly fourscore generations.
I walked across the plaza, down the steps, and stopped in front of the offering bowl. Chalices were everywhere in Halja. Hyrkes used them to offer blood sacrifices to the demons they adored. This one came with the usual knife, bandages, and another inscription.
FOR TO THE DEMONS BELONG DOMINION OVER RIVER, LAND, AND SETTLERS
“Rockthorn Gorge’s first demon lord wasn’t subtle about his claim,” I told Ari, who’d followed me. “Instead of hiding the Angel’s spell book, that first bunyip patron should have dismantled the Magna Fax – or at least removed Obadiah’s inscription. Foolish, wasn’t he? To allow the idea of freedom and independence to fester in followers’ minds?”
Ari gave me a funny look, half-surprised, half-amused. I smirked—should I tel
l Ari my question was facetious?—and peered at the river below. From this distance, it looked as thin as my arm.
“Do people still climb up here to offer sacrifices to the Lord of the Gorge?”
Ari nodded and faced me.
“Did you bring me up here so that I could offer a sacrifice to you?”
I’d offered countless sacrifices before. Most of them had been nothing more than a symbolic scratch, but I knew from our time together that Ari had never liked the idea of me doing it. Now, however, his dislike of blood sacrifice took on new meaning. Maybe it was because he didn’t like the idea of me giving blood sacrifices to other demons.
But even before I saw his face, I knew that couldn’t be right. He stared back at me, his expression a mixture of disappointment and disgust.
“I didn’t bring you up here so that you could make a sacrifice,” he scoffed, clearly annoyed with me now. “You followed me.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “You were going to bring me up here.”
“Do you really not know me, Noon?” And then, with no warning, he kicked the chalice, smashing it into bits. Large chunks of it sailed off over the cliff while the rest of it fell to the ground in pieces.
I was more dumbstruck than scared. I didn’t know what shocked me more, the fact that Ari had just destroyed a relic that was almost as old as the Magna Fax, or the fact that he’d done it using only his muscles and no magic.
But Ari wasn’t dismayed, or even out of control; he was simply angry.
“I don’t want you to treat me like a demon or a deity,” he said bluntly. “That’s not who I am.” He stared at the river below, his signature a mass of churning emotions. “You asked me earlier why I came here... why I chose to become patron of Rockthorn Gorge.” He turned to face me. “I didn’t do it for me. I did it for you. I knew if I became Lord of the Gorge, I’d be able to request a consigliere. The day after the election, I told Zeffre to write your offer letter.”
At first, I didn’t know what to say. He became the patron demon of seven thousand people just to have an opportunity to win me back? It was almost too much to contemplate. But then I reminded myself that, regardless of the future, I had a job to do now.
“Ari, you can’t become Lord of the Gorge and then not expect to be treated like a patron. You say that’s not who you are – but it is. Regardless of the reason, you chose this life. Your followers are depending on you to keep them safe. Someone out there is a threat – to them, to you. What was it you once said to me? ‘You were born with waning magic. You should learn how to use it.’ Well, Ari, you were born as a drakon. Don’t you think it’s time you learned to fly?”
“I know how to fly.”
“Then show me.”
“This from the girl who had her Angel cast Stonewall to keep me ground-bound earlier today.”
I said nothing. I didn’t need to. I had a feeling silence was my strongest argument to that statement.
Sure enough, after a moment, Ari raked his hand through his hair and gestured futilely between us. “The difference is that I love the part of you that is full of waning magic, but you don’t love the part of me that shifts into a drakon – and neither do I.”
“I didn’t love the part of me that was full of waning magic in the beginning,” I said. “You taught me to do that.”
Ari’s gaze met mine again, his face half-golden, half-shadowed. How appropriate, I thought.
Was I brave enough to make a deal with a demon?
“Ari, I want to offer you something. But you have to offer me something in return.”
I could tell he suspected a trap – and he was right.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to shift in front of me. Here. Now. Without anyone watching or waiting to kill us. I want to see your left wing. I want to see if it can be healed.”
“It can’t be.”
“Nightshade regrew my tooth, you know. And everyone said that couldn’t be done.”
Ari laughed. “Impressive, but a tooth isn’t bone. And your tooth is what, a half-inch long? My wingspan is almost thirty feet. Even your miracle-working Mederi brother wouldn’t be able to grow back something that big.”
The sun, and my window of opportunity, was slipping below the horizon. The wind buffeted us from every direction and I had a feeling we were standing on the edge of more than just Mount Occasus. We were standing at the edge of the rest of our lives.
“If you want to keep working together,” I pressed, “you’re going to have to do this.”
“What do you mean? You can’t quit this residency.” Ari’s tone was mostly amused, but there was a hint of apprehension.
“No, but I can work to contract, as they say. Act as your consig during the day and then disappear into my room every night…”
Ari’s eyes narrowed and his gaze became calculating. It was pretty clear he was already thinking up all sorts of reasons for me to be wherever he wanted me to be.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll give you an offering. And then you can decide if you want to reciprocate.”
“It better not be blood.”
I shook my head, suddenly unable to speak, and stepped toward him, shaking. My offering – my gift – was irrevocable. Once given, I wouldn’t be able to take it back.
Ari watched me move toward him the way Virtus watched rabbits. I think this morning’s melee and our discussions this afternoon had made Ari feel less assured than usual. But it wasn’t insecurity I sensed in his signature as much as a need to shore up his position. I stopped walking when the tip of one of my boots hit his and then, before I could lose my nerve, I stood up on my toes and pressed my mouth to his. Instantly, a stinging spark raced from my lips to my navel. I gasped and laughed and he smiled, as if he had all the patience in the world.
I tried again.
Ari’s lips were soft and warm, a direct contrast to his rock-solid chest. I raised my arms, clasped my hands around his neck, and leaned into him, deepening my kiss. He tasted like salt and sin, two things that were as addictive as he was. My tongue tingled, my thoughts scattered, and my magic parried with his.
Ari was a very willing, albeit passive, recipient of my gift – until I lowered my heels to the ground and started to pull back. Clearly unsated, he then refused to let me go. He kept his mouth on mine as he wound his good hand through my hair, preventing my retreat. Only when he sensed I was short of breath did he leave off, but his fiery kisses were soon scorching a path down my throat. I froze when he reached my collarbone. I wasn’t yet ready for him to venture lower and risk touching my mark, even through the cloth of my tunic. He raised his head. His eyes were glassy and blown, his pupils wide, his expression rapacious.
“Should I shift now, Nouiomo?” His voice was as low as the gorge and just as treacherous. He was sounding a warning note. Telling me the exchange was uneven. I’d given him a kiss, but he would take… Luck knew what. I swallowed, suddenly scared to say yes.
Ari laughed, the sound of it somehow darker and more dangerous than before.
“It’s good to know some things haven’t changed,” he said, his mouth hovering over mine. I closed my eyes, breathlessly waiting, wanting, worrying… about Ari and eventide and surrendering to them both. “You’re still eager… and reluctant.”
Ari’s hand reached for mine behind my back and he locked our fingers together. Then, instead of kissing me, he whirled me around so my back was flat against his chest and he nipped at the nape of my neck. My skin broke out in goose bumps and my knees nearly buckled before I finally broke away and turned around.
“If you wait too long, I won’t be able to see your wing.”
But Ari just shook his head and advanced on me. For once, I didn’t mind. I willingly allowed him to press me back until I was one step away from the broken railing.
“You’re going to shift one way or another,” I warned. When he realized what I meant, he stopped and became serious.
“Come on,”
he said, stepping back. “We should climb down before it gets too dark.”
“I’m not leaving until you shift.”
He sighed. “We can’t stay up here forever.”
“Exactly.”
“Noon, the first time I shifted you were petrified, the second, infuriated, the third, cautious enough to incapacitate me. I don’t want to repeat those experiences, do you?”
“No,” I said matter-of-factly. “Which is why now is a good time.”
“The fact is, we don’t know how either of us will react. Which is why now is a horrible time. If you panic and run… and fall… I’m not even sure I’d be able to catch you. Not that I wouldn’t try, but…”
“The wing, Ari, I know. That’s why I want to see it. Yannu told me it was your biggest weakness.”
“He did?”
I bit my lip and then admitted, “That or me. He couldn’t decide.”
But Ari didn’t look upset. He just looked thoughtful.
“You won’t be afraid?”
I shook my head, making sure my signature was tucked in tight.
White lies didn’t count, right?
“You’ll wait to climb down until I come back?”
I scoffed. “Definitely not. If you can fly off this rock, I don’t want you coming back. It was bad enough watching you climb up here at sunset. I don’t think I can take watching you climb down in the dark.”
“Listen to you,” he said, grinning. “You scale a couple of mountains and suddenly you’re a mountaineer.”
“Get on with it!” I shouted impatiently. “I wanna see some wings and a tail.”
So… he showed me.
And at first, I was petrified (it’s a pretty startling thing to see) and then I was infuriated (it looked excruciatingly painful; I didn’t know who to be angrier with – me, for asking him to do it, or Luck, for making it so painful in the first place). Then I was cautious (although not enough to incapacitate him and, besides, I was no spellcaster) and then, finally, I was curious.
He sat perfectly still as I approached. I’d never been this close to him in drakon form before. My head didn’t even reach the top of his back. For the first time since I’d found out what he was, I looked at him – really looked at him.