After dark, all cats are lions.
—Iberg saying
16
Questions In The Dark
It was past midnight when Harric buckled the flaps of the last pair of bulging saddlebags and lugged them to the cellar to hang on a hook beside the others. Two he’d stuffed with grain for the horses. The rest he’d crammed to the seams with butter, potatoes, wax-wrapped cheeses, and as many cakes of “strong bread”—a dense Iberg confection of figs, spiced honey, and whole hazelnuts—that he could fit. He’d stuffed himself with half a cake while he worked, and imagined he could live happily on strong bread alone.
“Harric?” Caris’s voice down the cellar stairs.
“Here.”
A moment later, she appeared in the doorway. When she saw him, her cheeks darkened and her nostrils flared like she was about to cross the room and plant a kiss on him. A heavy dread tugged at his stomach, even as his heart and other parts cheered approval.
“You’re sleeping with me tonight,” she said.
Harric blinked. He opened his mouth to speak, but found himself at a loss for words. Something set alarum horns blaring in his mind. Her eyes. She was actually meeting his eyes, pinning him with an intense gaze. The act was so alien for her that it took him aback. Normally, her horse-touched nature kept her eyes averted and limited her to rare glances. He’d never seen a sustained gaze like this. It was eerie. Un-Caris.
“Um. Sure,” he said. “I mean, we’ve all been sleeping in basically the same room since we arrived—”
“No. I mean I put our bedrolls together in the stable loft.” Her brow creased and then her cheeks flushed again. “It’s…cooler there. And more private.”
Her eyes held his, and he found himself looking away, embarrassed. Embarrassed? Moons, by what? He couldn’t tell. “Okay. Is…everything okay? Do you need to talk?”
She nodded, eyes still intent. Now she seemed furious with him, or with herself. The muscles of her neck stood out, taut as lute strings. “So you’ll come?”
“Yes. Of course.”
She gave a curt nod, and finally broke her stare.
As she left, Harric stared after her, unable to move. That wasn’t Caris. Something was very wrong. The ring. Something in the ring’s spell had changed. His stomach gave a sick twist. He had to find Fink. Fink would know.
He flung the last saddle back on its hook, closed up the rest of the packs, and shut the cellar behind him. Above, the tower seemed to sleep. No light and no sound whatsoever traveled down the curve of stairway before him. He crept up the stairs to the ground floor then crossed the empty landing to the heavy exterior door. There he left his candle in a cresset and slipped out.
The sweet scent of fire-cone needles greeted him on the end-of-summer air. A light fog seemed to be moving in from the west. He couldn’t help but think of the fogs his mother used to send, full of grasping spirits and vileness. But this fog had none of the unnatural opacity of her fogs. It appeared to be natural, if inconvenient for travel.
The red light of the Mad Moon turned the fog to blood, dashed itself against the trunks of the fire-cones, and glittered like bloody shards in the canopy of needles.
Across the yard, the stable was already dark, which meant Caris had finished with the horses and gone up to the straw of the stable loft, where she’d made their beds. With luck, she’d fall asleep, so he wouldn’t have to explain why he didn’t come straight to bed. Day work was done, yes—but night work was just beginning.
Ignoring the call of his weariness, he crept down the stairs into the yard, and since Brolli and Mudruffle had gone north for their watch, he headed south.
A shape the size of a large squirrel darted toward him from the shadow of the stables with a querulous mew that announced it was his little moon cat, Spook.
“There you are,” Harric whispered. “Did you miss me, catty-cat?”
Spook padded up, rubbing against his ankles and meowing as if scolding Harric for his two-day absence. Harric picked him up and held him in the crook of his arm as he walked, scratching behind the cat’s big ears. Spook purred with the volume of a much larger animal. To Harric, it was the drumming of distant hooves.
“Hush, little growler. Mudruffle will hear you from the other side of the ridge. He’ll think Bannus is upon us.”
The season brought a definite chill to the night air, and Harric hadn’t thought to bring a blanket, so Spook’s warm little body brought comfort as he followed a trail between gigantic fire-cone trunks. The soft thrum of Spook’s purr was also a balm to his nerves, which were frayed by the taxing events of the day. By all rights, he should be fast asleep in his bed, not heading out to meet Fink.
But of all his worries, Fink was the first.
Since he’d struck the deal with the imp, a weight had hung in his chest. In his desire for the power of invisibility, Harric had jumped into a pact without really knowing what it entailed. Beyond the fact that entering the Unseen made him invisible in the Seen world, he knew almost nothing of the Unseen. He didn’t know its rules, its dangers, or its denizens. He was a babe in the woods, forced to rely entirely on Fink as his nursemaid—Fink! A creature with whom no one would leave a corpse, much less a baby.
He sighed and paused beside a fire-cone trunk to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. “I am in deep, Spook,” he muttered.
Spook acknowledged that with a tiny hitch in his purr.
Why did Fink even want a pact with Harric? What did Fink get from it? Harric had given Fink his freedom, of course, but Harric had no idea what that really meant, beyond the fact that, in exchange, Harric himself wouldn’t be enslaved after death. But what if, by freeing Fink, he’d created a worse problem? What if there was a reason Fink was required to serve as a slave? What if it was some important restraint or punishment? Maybe it was as simple as Fink proving himself to some “Black Circle,” or maybe his sisters; the imp had implied that the pact with Harric was his chance to show himself worthy.
But that only raised another question: What would happen once Fink proved himself? Would he have any use for Harric? What would be in it for Fink after that?
Harric ran a hand over his face. Moons, I know nothing.
And Fink knew all about Harric and his friends. Harric knew Fink had spied on more than one of Harric’s conversations with Caris, and no telling how many with Willard and Brolli.
There. That was the core of the problem.
Though the pact made them technically equal—dealt them each an equal hand—Fink knew all Harric’s cards. Yet it was equally clear that if Harric wished to become a useful servant for the Queen and the greatest trickster Arkendia had ever known—he needed Fink. Alone, Harric could barely hold himself in the Unseen for a minute. With Fink at his side, it was effortless; he could stay in the Unseen all night.
As expected, he found Fink in a clearing where one of the thunder-rod’s heavy cables swooped down from the sky and anchored in the earth. The cable was thicker than Harric’s thumb and stretched up into the darkness like a strand of the Unseen Web. A windlass in the lowest reaches of the cable kept tension high. It was on this windlass that Fink perched, muttering.
“Talking to yourself?” Harric stepped into the moonlight of the clearing. Spook looked up to see Fink and yawned. “I’m not that late.”
“Hey, kid.” The imp perched at eye level, like an agitated crow, eyes skipping to the sides, weight shifting from one foot to the other on the cable.
“Your sisters.” A chill of dread slid up Harric’s spine. He too looked about. “You just met your sisters, didn’t you?”
Fink scowled, an act that made his face doubly hideous, which Harric hadn’t thought possible. “Sibling squabbles,” he croaked. He waved a taloned hand in the air as if banishing their memory, and turned his milky eyes to the upward-swooping cable and the high thunder spire to which it was attached. His familiar grin spread across his face. “Your people do some pretty odd things, you know that?”
“I
f by that you mean great things, yes.” Harric soaked in Spook’s calming purr. The cat was as comfortable with Fink as Harric was. Maybe more, since it had been the pet of Fink’s former master. “By the way, Fink, if lightning hits the spire, you’ll cook like meat on a stick.”
Fink grinned. “The only cloud for miles is the fog crawling up the valleys.”
The sight of the imp crouched in midair like a knob-kneed spider made Harric nervous that they might be seen. If Caris saw that, she’d split Fink on her sword before asking any questions. “I think Caris is sleeping,” he said, “but Mudruffle and Brolli are out scouting…”
“I’ve seen them. The Kwendi’s far over the ridge.” Fink waved to the north. “Brolli went down into the valley and left Mudwhistle walking back and forth on the rim like a knee-less wind-up doll. How do you take that guy seriously?”
Harric laughed. “Why is he like that? Are all the Bright Mother tryst servants made of sticks and mud?”
Fink scowled. “No, they’re not all like that. He’s like that because he chose to be like that. He could’ve chosen a manifest form, like I do. The spirit taking flesh. But by choosing to enter a construct, he doesn’t have to devote any of his strength into maintaining a form, which gives him more strength to do other things, like make teacakes and doilies and whatever else those White Moon fluffs are into.”
Harric grinned at the thought of Fink in a crotchety wattle-daub construct.
“And before you ask, the answer is ‘No, kid, I will not climb into a scarecrow for you.’ End of subject.”
“I wonder what his manifest form would be.”
“A big white goose.”
“So what is he? A…spirit?”
Fink frowned. When he spoke, he seemed to choose his words carefully, as if defining something. “He is a being composed of the elemental creative forces of his moon. You’d call that a spirit, but it wouldn’t be strictly true. True spirits—like your soul—arise from nature. From the material world.” He motioned around them. “You see it rising from everything alive. Call him an elemental being and you’ve got the idea.”
Harric nodded. From the formal posture Fink had taken, Harric sensed that it would be bad manners to ask right then if Fink were such an elemental being. What would an elemental force of the Spirit Moon be, if not spirit?
“Anyway, we don’t have to worry about Mudnoodle interrupting,” said Fink. “I asked my sisters to keep watch in case he decides to march this end of the ridge.”
“Your sisters.” Harric suppressed a qualm. He’d seen Fink’s sisters once, and the image still visited his nightmares.
“Don’t worry. I told them to keep their distance tonight. You look like you need to talk.”
Harric swallowed. He took a deep breath. “I entered the Unseen after you left. I had to.”
“What did I tell you about that?”
“You told me it was dangerous,” Harric retorted. Weariness made him defensive. “But you also said as long as I was near an immortal, no vulture spirits would dare come near me. I was right next to Molly when I did it, so unless there’s more you didn’t tell me, I was fine.”
Fink stared. He didn’t seem angry at Harric’s outburst. His needle jaws bent in what may have been a smile.
“But it was hard to do, like last time,” Harric said. “Very hard. I could hardly hold it a minute. Is it…ever going to get easier?”
Fink nodded. “I’ll train you. And you’ll get stronger.”
Harric let out a long breath. He stroked Spook’s soft ears to help still his nerves. The little moon cat watched Fink through eyes narrowed near slumber. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this,” Harric said. “Now that we’re—” He almost said partners before he caught himself, remembering Fink’s sisters might be near. They couldn’t know Fink was free.
“—bound,” Fink supplied, eyes widening as if he sensed the near-blunder. “That’s what we call our pact.”
“All right, bound. I have a lot of questions.” Harric felt awkward asking, but angry that he felt awkward, since it was his right to know as much as possible about their agreement. He forced himself to forge on as if he were in a pact with someone no more mysterious than an Iberg trader. “For instance, is this…all you do? Is it your job…to help—” Harric paused, hesitating to call himself a magus.
Fink’s teeth glistened. “Mortals like you? Yes. It’s my role among the moon servants.”
“So, the last magus you had. You taught him how to use his witch-stone?”
“Nexus. It’s called a nexus, kid.”
“You taught him how to use his nexus. And how to use his oculus?”
Fink’s bulbous nose wrinkled. “Gremio was a bitter outcast who treated me like his personal whipping dog.”
“But you had to teach him.”
Fink nodded. “I was bound. But I helped him as little as I could in every way possible, you see? He wanted total control. Didn’t trust me. So I gave it to him. Total control. If he wanted something, he had to tell me exactly what he wanted me to do, and I’d do exactly what he said. If he said, ‘Fink, you ugly bat, go get me something to eat—something simple, nothing fancy, and make it quick’—well, I’d come back with a live lamb on a string. ‘Quick,’ get it? Got him into a lot of trouble in the end.”
“Master in this life, slave in the next, right?”
Fink stared. “I don’t discuss the terms of my former contracts.”
A chill of doubt rippled through Harric’s stomach.
“You don’t trust me,” said Fink. “Maybe I don’t trust you, either. Let’s do a truth geas.”
Harric let out a small laugh. “You don’t trust me?”
Fink’s black tongue flicked across his upper teeth. “You’re clever. What you did last night with our pact makes me nervous.”
“All right. What is the geas? Some kind of truth spell?”
Fink’s hairless skull bobbed. “Every tryst servant can do it. Helps build trust.”
“How’s it work?”
“I’ll show you.” He extended the talons of one hand before his needled mouth and flickered his forked tongue across the tips. Reaching above Harric’s head, he raked them back and forth, as if gathering reeds.
“Wait. What are you doing, Fink?”
“Just watch. I’m not going to hurt you. Much.”
All dreams spin out from the same web.
—Mir Hopi, Unseen Apologist
17
Trust Among Tricksters
A shimmer of spirit moved beyond Harric’s oculus, so he closed his eyes and strained upward into his mind to peer out into the Unseen. Fink had gathered a curtain of glimmering blue spirit strands around them—a curtain woven, he realized with alarm, from the luminescent strands that rose from Harric’s soul. As he watched, Fink bent and re-bent and warped them into a complicated, all-containing bubble; silhouetted against the blue light, Fink looked like a spider on the lens of a lantern.
The imp quirked his head to one side. “Tell me a lie.”
“Hold it. You did this?” Harric struggled to keep the panic from his voice. “You”—he waved his arms at the embracing curtain—“used my spirit to—”
“Relax. It’s the geas.”
“Made from my soul? Think you can tell me when you’re going to touch my soul?”
Fink hissed. “I can undo it.”
“No,” Harric said. He knew he needed this. Trust had to start somewhere, and this was a logical place for it. “I just want to know before you do something with my spirit. Ever.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“Now you’re making fun of me.”
“I give you permission to mock me when I panic over nothing.”
Harric retreated from his oculus and opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented by the comparative dark of night in the Seen. Fink lurked before him, a crow on a wire.
“Lie to me,” said Fink.
Harric took a breath to calm his thumping heart. “
In another context, that request would be horrifying. All right, I’ll lie.” He tried to say, You’re beautiful, but the words were converted to a yelp of surprise and pain as a loud zop! sounded in his head and every inch of his skin recoiled as if slapped.
Fink let out a croak that must have been a laugh, and bounced the cable in amusement.
“You could warn me!” Harric snapped.
“Then it wouldn’t be as funny.”
“Moons, Fink! This is supposed to be for trust.”
Fink spread his hands in a placating gesture. “Kid. Relax. You aren’t hurt. Look, I’ll try to tell one myself. I’ll say, ‘Kid, I hope you treat me like pig shit.’” Fink opened his mouth and seemed to gag on the air. There was another zop! and Fink backflipped from the wire to crash in the dirt below.
Harric smiled. “Okay, that was funny.”
Fink untangled himself from a jumble of wings and limbs akimbo. “Souls, your strands sting.”
“Hold on. If you can’t lie to me, then how could you tell me the lie you planned to tell me?”
“Cute thinking, kid. But it wasn’t a lie then. It was truth. I really was going to tell you that.”
“But what you really were going to try to tell me was itself a lie.”
“Nah, kid. If I don’t intend to tell you a lie, it ain’t a lie.” Fink flapped back up to his perch on the windlass. “Try it.” He bounced on the wire and grinned as if he’d enjoy another Harric zop.
Harric frowned. He didn’t relish the thought of another, but he needed to be sure he wasn’t being played. “All right. I’m going to say, ‘You look a lot like my mother.’” He tried, and again his words caught, and zop! he bounced back with another yelp and a curse.
Fink cackled like a crow. “That never gets old. But you see? A lie’s in the intention.”
Spook squirmed in Harric’s arms. Apparently he’d had enough of zopping and yelping. Harric let him down, and Spook scampered a few paces away before stopping to glare and begin grooming.
The Jack of Ruin Page 13