Pocket Full of Tinder

by Jill Archer

  She was as dead as the flies.

  21

  DISPLODO

  Whoever had murdered Pestis had literally torn her limb from limb. And then burned her. As if they’d been inspired by the sick, sadistically twisted people who torture insects. The ones who tear wings off flies or burn ants under a magnifying glass.

  Involuntarily, I raised my left hand to my mouth. The smell was awful, but it was also just a natural reaction to seeing something terrible. Lightning flashed and the Magna Fax, high above on the tower wall, flickered. I heard the scuffle of boots on stone and turned around. Malphia and Kalchoek approached simultaneously from different directions. Surprise was evident in both their faces and signatures, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d met plenty of demons who were bad actors with good acting skills by now. I squeezed the hilt of my sword and clenched my jaw, bracing for a blow. But it didn’t come.

  Kalchoek glanced at Pestis, his nose twitching, teeth protruding, eyes gleaming, and then switched his gaze to the rest of the plaza. Malphia just stared at Pestis. Then she looked up at me, frowning, and switched her gaze to the Magna Fax.

  Ari—! Immediately, I expanded my signature, but the stone walls of the tower blocked my magic from reaching his.

  Was Displodo on his way to the top?

  I turned, ran for the door, swung it open, and peered up. I was just about to step inside and start climbing when I felt a sharp, explosive pain in my chest. It radiated outward as if my heart was suddenly pumping burning nitroglycerin through my veins. The shock wave rippled from chest to limbs, pulling them apart as if each had been tied to a different horse.

  Was this what the medieval torture of being drawn and quartered felt like?

  No – this was worse, but mercilessly quicker. I didn’t have time to worry about anything. Not Ari, not my body, not Rockthorn Gorge. Not Displodo… and whether he was actually a she. Whether he was Malphia… or Kalchoek… or Vannis… or Acheron… or anyone else.

  There was only pain, not panic – because there wasn’t time. I fell to the ground, burning. Vaguely, I realized that whatever magic blast had hit me had probably been what killed Pestis. I no longer felt like a burned butterfly wing. I was beyond that. As I hit the floor, I felt like ashes. Ashes that would have been scattered by the wind if they hadn’t been sheltered by the tower. My last thought before darkness took me was of Tenacity – the unorthodox Angel who’d seen me off on my first, last, great flight.

  I died with the words to her parting spell ringing in my head.

  Ich be wy ye…

  I’ll be with you…

  But I didn’t die. I don’t know if it was Tenacity’s spell or one of Fara’s or if Displodo had simply underestimated the amount of magic it would take to kill me or what, but I woke with a splitting head, shattered joints, and flayed skin. Or at least that’s what it felt like.

  My cheek was pressed against the flagstone floor of the plaza. I coughed, tasting blood, and pushed myself up with my hand, my head swimming. I bit my lip so that I wouldn’t cry out and gingerly got to my feet. My eyesight was blurry, my thoughts were in disarray, and my muscles were in open revolt.

  Malphia lay beside Pestis. She looked as bad as I felt, but she wasn’t dead. I could feel the faint wisp of her signature. It shimmied and swirled, wobbled and twisted, echoing the path of the inky black shadow that was oozing off her body. I remembered from the night we’d all stood around Ari’s rota fortunae that Malphia’s “best weapon” was a black shadow. I gathered that she was either shifting to heal or forming her best weapon, but either way, I couldn’t help her.

  I turned back around and eyed the tower with a sense of dread. In my current condition, it would take a half-hour at least to reach the top. Distantly, I felt Kalchoek’s signature and, beyond that, Ari’s.

  So Kalchoek was Displodo?

  I didn’t have the time or mental focus to puzzle it out. All I knew was that, once again, I needed to beat Displodo to the top.

  The same routes were available to me as before: climb… or fly.

  It wasn’t really a choice, since Kalchoek was already halfway up. I shuffled outside and took a deep breath, focusing. I couldn’t afford worry or panic. They’d be counter-productive. I didn’t have time for six attempts.

  I tried. But instead of forming a fiery drakon, I just felt like I set myself on fire again. Tears welled, from frustration or pain, I don’t know. Probably both. I almost starting sobbing right then and there, but instead I dug my fingernails into my palms, bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, and forced myself to concentrate. I formed Megaptera on my second try.

  Feeling even more ragged and worn, I climbed onto her back. It was a clumsy, ugly mount but I managed to position myself adequately if not confidently and Megaptera launched herself into the air. Three rotations around the tower’s exterior, sensing nothing but the wind and the storm. The smattering of raindrops that I’d barely noticed on the ground now felt like ball bearings aimed at my face. I squinted against the gray haze as I flew round and round on my way to the top. It seemed like a year again but it was only seconds before I reached the battlement.

  By then, Kalchoek was already there. Ari took one look at me – Luck knows what I looked like; probably more bloody and burned than he’d ever seen me – and his face reflected true horror. But it was the horror of concern… and conflict. I couldn’t be sure – signatures don’t allow us to read minds – but he looked like someone faced with an impossible choice. Urge me to jump to the roof and face Kalchoek with him, or urge me to fly off, out of harm’s way.

  But he had to know it wasn’t his choice. Before I could jump, however, Kalchoek threw another waning magic blast at me. I twisted my torso with a hair’s breadth of space to spare and nearly lost my seat. Kalchoek’s blast singed my chest anew as it sailed past, but there was no direct hit. Megaptera seemed to flicker in time with the cloud that exploded behind me and the rain became fiercer, as if Luck was trying to extinguish my mount.

  I had a feeling a second blast from him would be fatal. That no spell, no matter how thoughtfully or expertly cast, would be able to save me.

  Behind the battlement, Kalchoek appeared to brandish a scroll. But I knew it wasn’t a scroll. It was a page from the Magna Fax’s matchbook. My terror increased when I saw its end catch fire.

  If Kalchoek used it to light the Magna Fax, where would the cannon’s first stymphwax ball go? The mountain ridge opposite us? The Memento Mori dam?

  Or the town of Rockthorn Gorge?

  Ari and Kalchoek circled each other while I circled them in the sky. The wind, rain, and thunder drowned out my voice. It was dizzying and disorienting.

  Why wasn’t Ari blasting Kalchoek?

  Then I realized that the rooftop was covered with paper – pages from the cannon’s matchbook. Kalchoek must have had the book in his pocket and, once he’d reached the Magna Fax, he’d shredded it. Ari didn’t want to risk accidentally lighting the cannon. After nearly two thousand years, the wax creation would be far from stable. So Ari was trying to smother Kalchoek by leeching the oxygen from around him, which Kalchoek was resisting, of course.

  Well, he’d have a harder time against two of us.

  I flew close to the battlement and prepared to jump off, but when I stood in my seat my hand brushed against the pepperbox holstered on my hip. I’d completely forgotten about it. Suddenly, an idea sparked.

  Why wait to smother Kalchoek when I could just shoot him from here?

  I pulled the pepperbox out of the holster and aimed it. My unexpected move caught their attention. Ari’s eyes widened in surprise, but Kalchoek just laughed and took advantage of the moment. A cold, sinking feeling, wetter than the rain, heavier than the Magna Fax, seemed to descend on me as I watched, seemingly in slow motion, as Kalchoek launched himself toward the Magna Fax’s fuse. I pulled the pepperbox’s trigger, but I already knew I’d been too slow.

  Three things happened almost instantly: Kalchoek touched the burning e
nd of the match to the Magna Fax’s fuse; my bullet reached Kalchoek’s brain; and Ari threw his own waning magic blast – this one directed toward the Magna Fax itself. I guess he thought to destroy it before it was fired…?

  The cannon crackled with fiery heat as the Tempered stymphwax melted into an inchoate ball of searing light and brittle magic. Ari jumped from the roof just as the ball exploded. A blistering shock wave shattered the battlements and slammed into me, knocking me from my seat. Megaptera fractured into a million dark, glinting flakes. I flailed, grasping at nothing, my insides churning with icy fear as I tried to re-form her. Fear metastasized into full-fledged horror as I realized my magic was blown.

  As the billowing edges of the explosion raced toward us, Ari started shifting. His chest swelled like a balloon, his muscles bulged and popped, his skin stretched… His wings formed, one snapping open like a sail, the other writhing in the wind… His face contorted with pain… Until he finally emerged from the transformation with his drakon’s gaze locked on me.

  Ari would have caught me. I know it. And we both would have lived. The wing wouldn’t have mattered. It was perfect. Ari was perfect. I don’t know why I ever thought it wasn’t or he wasn’t. Or why I ever thought things could somehow be better. They’d been absolutely perfect. Exactly as they were. There was never any need to go back to an earlier time in our relationship. Or any other point in my life. If only we could have stayed just like that forever…

  But the Magna Fax detonated instead of firing, and the resulting explosion engulfed Ari. It would have engulfed me too if he hadn’t shielded me from it. His claws extended as he reached for me. I reached for him too, screaming, my hands raking the air. I watched as the fire consumed him, first his tail, then his wings, his body, and then finally his head. The last image I have of Ari is his eyes – mulberry red and fiery, warm with love and sacrifice.

  I continued to fall down the side of the mountain after that, thinking to die and welcoming it. Ichabye started kicking in and I rejected it. The only person I wanted with me had been turned to ashes before my eyes. Oddly, impossibly, I remembered something Ari’s mother had said to me once.

  It’s not every day you meet the woman your son is willing to die for.

  I wondered now as I’d wondered then – had Joy seen Ari’s death?

  I’d said that she couldn’t have meant what she’d said. Because how could someone go on living after something like that happened?

  Thank Luck I don’t have to, I thought, just as I felt a rush of magic. Something in the back of my flight suit released. My descent slowed abruptly and forcibly. Once again, I felt a punch in my chest and a loosening in my joints. But it was gentler than Kalchoek’s blast had been. I looked up. I was tied to some kind of huge, frameless, silk umbrella.

  I would have burned it and continued falling if I’d had any magic left.

  22

  A DIVINE HELL

  Sartabella called it a parachute, I found out later. The name was a pre-apocalyptic meld of two words that meant “to protect against” and “fall.” But what I’d really needed wasn’t protection against falling, it was protection against falling in love. Or protection against my heart breaking again. This time, in a way that couldn’t be mended.

  Ari, Pestis, and Kalchoek-cum-Displodo were all dead. The Magna Fax had been completely destroyed, along with the plaza and the tower at the top of Mount Occasus. Pieces of it had fallen into the Acheron River below. Remarkably, Malphia, like me, had survived. Before the explosion, she’d fully shifted into smoke and shadow. For one glittering moment, her story had given me hope that Ari might still live. Maybe he’d done the same…?

  But the black spot in my heart that grew larger by the day told me otherwise. Ari might have been able to escape the blast that way, had he not been trying to catch me. If he hadn’t tried to save me from falling…

  For days, I went round and round what happened in my mind, obsessing about the details. All the things I could have done differently. I knew it was madness. That I shouldn’t think about such things. But I couldn’t help it. I began to realize Ari’s death was my fault.

  How could I have been so arrogant?

  Why had I thought I’d be able to succeed at what other Maegesters didn’t even attempt?

  Riding a drakon shaped from my own magic? Firing a gun? Casting a spell?!

  I’d been a lunatic to think I could get away with such things.

  My actions may not have directly caused Ari’s death, but I blamed myself nonetheless. Luck had punished me. I was sure of it.

  Because there were no remains, a memorial was scheduled instead of a funeral. Neither were very popular with demons, but because Ari had been the outpost’s patron, his would be a large, well-attended affair. Upon hearing of his death, Cliodna had declared herself and all her artisans in a state of mourning until the patron’s procession. The announcement had been perfunctory though; it wasn’t as if Cliodna was grief-stricken.

  True to character, Yannu had taken charge after the catastrophe. He’d assessed the damage, searched without success for any remaining traces of stymphwax, and warned the ranks and the town that there would be zero tolerance for any “aftermath chaos.” Ari’s camarilla agreed to stay on until a new patron was elected, since it was likely the new lord would have need of their services in the same way that Ari had.

  Since Displodo had been revealed to be Kalchoek, the town found itself unexpectedly free of the underlying tension it had lived with for the past year. Sure, in time someone else would likely use Displodo’s credo to further his or her own aims again; and in the meantime there was always the chance of a random rogare attack; but paradoxically, Ari’s death, happening as it did at the same time as that of the town’s biggest terrorist, somehow made the town feel safer. Instead of a memorial procession, everyone seemed to be planning a celebratory parade.

  And I began to feel as if I were living in a divine Hell instead of modern-day Halja.

  A few days after Ari died, I stood on the platform of Rockthorn Gorge’s train station awaiting the arrival of the Carmines. Because the town lacked an electro-harmonic machine, Zeffre had sent his brother-in-law a note via carrier dove. It was a brutish way to give him the news that his son had been killed, but there was no way to avoid it and still give Ari’s family the chance to attend his memorial service.

  I thought about sending a note to Rafe as well. He’d been Ari’s brother as much as Matt Carmine had, but then I thought better of it. The Carmines didn’t know about Rafe’s fraternal relationship with Ari. Ari’s death would be shock enough. And Rafe had already attended Ari’s funeral once – when he was six. After Rafe had mistakenly thought he’d drowned Ari in the Lethe. Luck knew, I remembered that… or rather I didn’t remember it…

  I groaned in frustration and blinked, looking around, almost not recognizing where I was. The train station, I reminded myself, in Rockthorn Gorge.

  This was what the last few days had been like. Scattered thoughts. Not much sense. Barely surviving. Not eating. Not sleeping.

  Fara had glamoured me today. I think she’d glamoured me yesterday and the day before too. Said I wouldn’t want the world to see me walking around in my nightshirt.

  I could have cared less what people saw me walking around in. It’s possible I might’ve burned the world down if my magic hadn’t still been depleted.

  If it didn’t come back, I wasn’t sure what I’d do. Not become a healer, that’s for sure.

  Maybe I’d toil in my mom’s blackened garden… bury the pepperbox there… dig up some—

  “Noon,” Fara said, her voice impossibly rough and soft at the same time, “they’re here.”

  Matt, Ari’s younger brother, stepped off the train first. He was currently a student at my undergraduate alma mater, Gaillard University. He was blonde and big, but still had that puckish look so many undergrads have. The last time I’d seen him he’d been jovial – home for Beltane break and looking forward to a holiday known
for its anything goes attitude.

  Now, he looked like he’d literally been deflated. His mouth drooped, his shoulders sagged, and his eyes were downcast. He barely recognized me. I wasn’t sure if that was because it had been so long since we’d last seen each other or if it was because of Fara’s glamour.

  He stepped toward me, looking unsure of how to greet me. Fara intervened and somehow smoothed things over, though I doubt Matt remembers what she said any more than I do. Maybe she asked about their trip? I’m sure she said she was sorry. Everyone was sorry, but what good did that do?

  Ari’s parents disembarked next. Joy was still small, white-haired, and pink-eyed, but instead of her usual rainbow hues, she was now dressed in colors as somber as mine.

  I didn’t know what to say to her – this human woman who’d taken in a demon child and raised him to be good and strong and just. Joy wasn’t an enigma to me. I’d gotten to know her not just as a mother, but as a woman, last semester. She was what people in Bradbury called hveit. Born without magic, she was special nevertheless. Immune to magic and blessed – or cursed – with partial sight. She was a soothsayer of sorts. She also baked delicious beef and onion pie, sewed her own clothes, and lived the life of a traditional, salt-of-the-earth Hyrke. Every time I’d ever seen her, whether in her own modest kitchen or standing next to the most powerful person in Halja, she’d always looked like a clear, bright, preternatural prism. But not today.

  Today, Joy leaned heavily on her husband’s arm as she stepped out of the train car. Her grief was so severe I realized she couldn’t truly have seen Ari’s death. At least not exactly in the way it had happened.

  Steve frowned at me. It was fleeting and soon passed, but he managed to convey an excess of disapproval in that one second. He blames me too, I thought. But for reasons that were older than just a few days ago. I remembered what Ari had said the day we’d first hiked to the top of Mount Occasus.