by R. Lee Smith
“How shall I know?” The demon glanced at her, and his good-natured smile flickered, became a slow frown of concern. “I have sent the stains of her last making below, to be held against the Book where her blood is laid. Her name is recorded there, but I do not know it.”
“I want to see her.”
“Eh?” He looked over his shoulder at the tunnel and his hound raised its head at once, whining wetly, ignored. “Now?”
“Yes. Please,” she added.
He shot her a startled stare, then disguised it by scratching along the sides of his muzzle. “No student shall be permitted to see the final rites of the dead.”
“But it isn’t completely forbidden, is it? I mean,” she went on when he narrowed his eyes at her, “I was at the last tribunal. Horuseps said all the laws and that wasn’t one of them.”
The demon grunted. His hound imitated the sound, crawling closer on its belly, and he reached back distractedly to pat the malformed head. “I will show thee,” he said at last. And smiled. “For that thou didst ask so prettily. Follow closely. Mok ja’ni,” he told the hound, and it skulked forward to crouch in the tunnel’s mouth, bristling and drooling at the empty ephebeum.
It was not a long walk to the baths, not even knowing she may see Connie’s half-eaten body at the end of it. The demon let her set the pace, but her legs moved her on at a ruthless speed. She had time to wonder whether or not to take the corpse away or leave it here in the Scholomance, only that, and then she was there.
They’d turned the water off somehow, and the hounds had been working some time to bail out the shallow pool where students bathed. Now nearly emptied, it glistened in the yellow light of blister-lamps as hounds prowled through the basin, licking and scratching at the rock as they searched for something else to clean. When they saw their master enter, they stopped and fawned where they stood, some rising onto their haunches in a shuffling, whining dance, others rolling onto their backs to expose their bellies, all gazing raptly up at him with love and fear stretching across their wolfish features. The demon ignored them all, watching her instead.
The body lay at the end of a short, wet trail: a lifeless mass in a waterlogged robe, bloated out of all recognition. Three hounds crouched around it, hard at work—not eating, but sewing—making a shroud of her own black robe. They’d drawn her hood and fastened it to her collar already, pushed her arms in through the sleeves and belted her with them, bent or broken her knees and fit her legs inside, and now had only to finish stitching up the hem to complete her death-sack.
It was difficult work for the hounds, with their paw-like hands, and even the way they had to sit looked unnatural on them. Looking at them made her think of a page in a picture-book she’d owned as a small child: the wolf from Red Riding Hood, dressed in Granny’s cap and nightgown, trying to lie still in the old lady’s bed, but for all his effort, looking like nothing but a hungry, drooling wolf. They did not look up when Mara came closer, although she heard them muttering at each other in coarse huffs and growls. Their minds, neither human nor demon, eluded her.
“Ska,” the demon said, and every hound in the room stopped what they were doing at once and lay close to the ground. The three attending to the corpse withdrew, lips stretched in lupine grins, panting and whining as they crawled past their master’s feet and away to the wall, leaving their work unfinished. “Look then,” the demon said, gesturing. “She has been dead half the day. By needs, thou must look deep.”
Mara knelt down in the cold puddle that dripped off the dead woman’s robe and took hold of the pinched, roughly-stitched seam running down the center of the hood. She pulled. Water squished up between her fingers and trickled down to the floor in reddish streams. It was going to be bad. She braced herself, grabbed a fistful of robe over the body’s chest, and ripped the new stitches away to uncover the corpse’s face.
She was quite sure she didn’t make a sound, not even a gasp.
“Thou knowest her,” the demon said, watching her closely. His alarm flared through the Mindstorm, almost but not quite bringing his thoughts into clear focus. “Is it she?”
“No,” Mara said. “It’s not Connie. Just…someone I met.”
She hadn’t been able to get Shaitan after all, it seemed. Mara wondered, had she settled for someone else, or actually tried to do it herself without mastery of the proper art? In any event, the results were the same. Magic didn’t always simply fail when it went wrong. Sometimes it went wild.
Desdemona’s split lips lay slack and open, grotesquely lengthened and now lined with teeth. Mara could see an eye half-opened and dully staring out of the dead woman’s swollen tongue. Her cheeks had split in several places, torn by malignant growths of bone. She’d bled a lot, but not enough to kill her. Mara supposed she’d never know for sure, but she thought it very likely that the weight of her new skull had dragged her down into the bath to drown. Mara looked for a long time. Then she covered it over again and stood up.
“Not the Ka-nee?” the demon asked, his brow furrowed.
“No,” she said, making her way through huddled hounds and back towards the ephebeum.
“Ah.” He smiled, joining her and matching her brisk stride with long, easy steps of his own. “A relief.”
“Is it?” she asked tonelessly.
“I would rather have thee grateful.”
She glanced at him, unsurprised.
He held up his empty hands, grinning. His claws gleamed with reflected light. “I cannot force thee to pay, yet the price I ask is only fairness.”
“Ask?” She stopped walking and faced him. “You’re a Master, aren’t you?”
“And thou, favored of Kazuul. I’ll not touch thee. But I gave thee to look as thou didst will it.” He licked his teeth, still smiling, and lowered his hands. “And I wish a like repayment.”
Mara frowned. “You want to look at me?”
“Unclothe.” One word, hoarse and hungry. His smile never changed.
No, she supposed it wasn’t unreasonable. Inappropriate, maybe, with the lights of the bath burning behind him and corpse water still soaked coldly into Mara’s knee, but really, what was the point of grieving? Desdemona had been Mara’s warden for a day. They hadn’t known each other in anything like a friendly fashion, and what Mara had known about her hadn’t been all that endearing. She’d killed two people, for God’s sake, killed them for money, and then come here looking for eternal youth and beauty so she could continue marrying and murdering indefinitely. What was there to feel bad about?
She’d had the chance to help. She’d turned her back on the woman.
‘It’s not the same as killing her,’ Mara thought furiously, and pulled her robe off.
The demon’s eyes sparked. He exhaled once, slowly, his gaze crawling over her in a way she could almost feel. Then he began to laugh, soft and low, amazement and lust and conquest all mingled together in his smile. She didn’t understand it. She supposed she didn’t have to, but…
“Are you laughing at me?” she asked. She kept her voice steady. She was calm, in control.
The demon shook his head, still moving his ravening gaze over her. “Knowest thou how I am called here?”
“I think you’re Suti’ok.”
“So I am. Born of the tribe Suti, the first descent after Adam.” He brought his eyes up to hers. They were cold, triumphant. “I am less than thou art. Please. Show me thy cunt.”
If he’d said it another way, she would have refused out of hand, but he was so oddly polite that Mara simply found a jut of stone on the tunnel wall to brace her foot on and opened her thighs wide for him. He laughed again—threw back his head, opened his arms, the whole bit. He was the very picture of victory. Baffled, Mara could only wait him out.
“Am I supposed to feel humiliated?” she asked finally. Because if that was the case, she could get angry, but—
“Nay, nay, ‘tis my private pleasure only. Thou art very beautiful,” he added, ducking his head in what was almost a b
ow. “Dress.”
She did, and noticed that when she did, he actually turned away as if to give her privacy. She could see only the upturned cut of his smile, the blade of his cheekbone, the satisfied glint of one eye. She wished she could read him better, because she really did not understand this.
“Wilt thou keep secret our dealings here?” the demon asked without looking at her.
“If I can. You know that Kazuul’s a telepath.”
“I know thou art also. Aye, he may discover what I have asked of thee,” he said with a shrug. “But I never touched thee. If thou must, wilt thou remind him?”
“Sure, but I think you’re overestimating my control over him.”
“Am I? Dost thou truly need me, fool of Suti that I am, to tell thee that the object of desire ever dominates? Even our hearts. Even his.” He laughed again, nastily this time. “He will lay his throat open beneath thy hand to have what mine eyes have caressed, never doubt it. He would give thee all this mountain to fill the chalice of thy cunt.”
“Why?” She advanced on him; he watched her come, his smile stretching wide and wet with fangs. “There are dozens of other women here, why me?”
“How many uncounted thousands shall there be without this mountain?” he countered scornfully. “Why hast thou love only for Ka-nee, why only she? Ha! But nay, thou must demand conspiracy. Thou wouldst shun our lord’s bed and favor for thy suspicions when thee should fall, aye, fall upon thy hands and be grateful his eye is upon thee, and thee with so much need of him.”
She actually felt the sting of heat in her cheeks. Not much, maybe not enough even to show in this light, but it was there. Grateful. The word was almost foreign to her. Mara didn’t have to be grateful, not to anyone. Mara made people do what she wanted them to do. Mara was in control. Fall upon her hands? She’d sooner fuck a hound than Kazuul out of gratitude.
Behind them, a hound suddenly yelped, and several of them loudly snarled. The demon glanced that way and so did Mara, but she kept staring long after the hounds had settled. She couldn’t see the body from here, but she imagined she could smell it over the wet, mineral musk of the mountain. Desdemona was being sewn into her own robe and maybe it wasn’t the same as killing her, but Mara could have found someone in five minutes to fix her face and it had been too much trouble. Now she was dead. She was dead…and Connie was still missing.
“Grateful,” she murmured, hating the word.
“But who am I?” The demon shrugged again, and continued walking to the tunnel’s mouth. “Only Suti’ok, and pride has ever been my pleasure and my shame. Perhaps I revel overmuch when I see it shine so brightly in others. Thou art beautiful, Mara, and thou hast been uncommonly gracious. Go thy way, and let mine own good favor, feeble thing that it be, go with thee.”
He moved his sentry hound aside for her, making it clear with his direct stare and outstretched arm that he was dismissing her. Mara retreated, but paused at the threshold of the ephebeum and had to turn back.
“What do you do with the bodies?” she asked.
The demon merely gazed at her. “Shall I have her possessions brought to thy cell?”
The suggestion startled her, as much as if it were an accusation. “No!” she said. “I hardly knew her!”
“So? Death is profit here. Should it not be thine?”
The notion repelled her. She started to argue, then narrowed her eyes and said instead, “Where do you take the bodies?”
“For certain, yon unfortunate would rather see her goods in the hands of a stranger than go to those whom she knew well.”
“I want to see the graves.”
He grunted amusement. “There are none.”
“Then where—”
“She was an acolyte in life. She must have other robes, perhaps a larger cell. Her spoils are thine to claim. Shall I gift thee the loan of a hound to track thee to her chambers?”
“Why won’t you answer me?” she demanded.
“Because of this hour, I am thy Master,” he replied, hammering each word home with fierce satisfaction. “And it pleaseth me to defy thee. Now I order thee hence. Go, and remember that I did thee a kindness, and that I touched thee not.”
An urge swelled up in her all at once, the urge to tell him that she could say pretty much anything about whether or not he touched her and Kazuul was likely to believe it. It was an ugly feeling and it left an ugly stain after she crushed it. “You did me a kindness,” she said instead. “Thank you.”
She turned away.
“Humility. Odd, that it pleaseth me as much as pride to see in thee.” Suti’ok followed her out into the open cavern and casually snagged his claws in her hood, holding her. In a low voice, scarcely moving his lips, he said, “I do not mark the living, girl, yet there is no embrace more familiar than that which I share with the dead. Faces change here and scent decays, yet Time has its own sweet flavor that knoweth no pretense. I have not tasted honest youth such as surroundeth thee in many years of handling human meat. If thy Ka-nee were of an age to thee, I know I have not looked on her. Be warned, there are many deaths here which do not merit the personal attentions of the Master of the Hounds.” He spoke his title with obvious sarcasm, then smiled and released her. “The bells are nearly rung and we both have work to be about.”
She stepped back, although her questions hadn’t been answered. After a moment, she remembered to bow, a gesture which made him throw back his head and laugh again. Then he bowed, actually dropping to one knee and sweeping one arm out with painful formality ruined by his hearty, bitter storm of laughter. When he retreated down the tunnel to the bath, the hound he’d left behind him suddenly stood up upon its hind legs, stood up so that it could bow to her too, a punchline to its master’s joke. It laughed, a high and slobbering sound, and danced on its hind feet as she watched it, then dropped to all fours and ran away down the tunnel, still laughing and howling all together.
“Mara!”
Devlin’s mind pummeled her. His hand grabbed for her sleeve.
She shook both off without looking at him. “Go to class.”
“Someone said there was a body!” he said, grabbing her again. “It wasn’t her, was it?”
“It wasn’t her.”
The laughter of the hound shrieked up into a higher register before finally dying away. Mara looked at her arm, but it was smooth and free of fearflesh. She rubbed her eyes instead, frustrated and restless. “Go to class,” she said curtly. “I’m not playing with you today.”
His hurt pricked at her. Mara walked away from him and found a bench near the wall. She sat, tipped her head back, and stared at the ceiling. On the other side of all this rock, Horuseps held sway over the dining hall right this moment, and above him, Kazuul.
He will give thee all this mountain…
Would he really? She’d made a very bad mistake then, focusing her attention on the threat Kazuul represented instead of what he could do for her. She’d been thinking of him as another distraction all this time, a dangerous opponent with a suspicious fixation on her that would have to be dealt with so that she could proceed. He hadn’t left his chambers in years, by his own admission, and so no matter what else he might be to the demons who seemed so in awe of him, he was useless to her.
It had taken several days and Suti’ok’s contemptuous amusement to make her realize that even if he had no direct knowledge of Connie, his authority over the others could open a lot of doors for her. The oversight disgusted her in a way the bloated, disfigured corpse never could.
Be grateful his eye is upon thee…
And she still didn’t trust it. Couldn’t trust it. He had to want more from her than just sex. Plus, he was a telepath, and a far more practiced one than she, so the whole time he was fucking her, he could be using that contact to steal around inside her mind. She couldn’t risk it.
Didn’t she owe it to Connie to try everything? Or was Connie just another woman in the bath, there to be pitied only for as long as it didn’t inconven
ience her?
Mara flinched, the idea stinging so deeply, she had to look around and see if it came from someone else. But she was alone here, except for a handful of other students (including Devlin, still hovering at her elbow). The weapon had been too sharp and too well-aimed to be anything but her own.
“Are you okay?” Devlin ventured. He’d seen the flinch, damn him.
“I’m fine,” Mara answered. She didn’t know what to make of Kazuul or his strange obsession with her, and so she made herself set it aside for now. His motivations really didn’t matter. She wanted to understand him only because she’d always understood people, all her life, and now she couldn’t and it bothered her, but—and this was a jagged pill to swallow—she didn’t get to have everything she wanted. She wanted Connie back, as no one’s Pretty Doll and no one’s woman in the bath. For everything else, she was just going to have to settle.
“Are you going to come eat?” Devlin asked, plucking at her sleeve.
She hated to be plucked at, and it wasn’t worth talking to him. Mara reached out and dug her needles into his brain. “Go to class,” she said, and as soon as she released him, he got up and staggered away. She didn’t watch him go. All her thoughts were on Kazuul and they were only delays. She knew she was decided.
It was time to stop screwing around, she thought (without any conscious grasp of the irony). She wanted Connie back and either she was willing to do everything in her power to find her or she wasn’t. Which was it?
“Damn it,” Mara spat, got up, and started walking.
* * *
Mara climbed the lyceum unbathed and deep in thought. There were students already milling around on the lower levels, and higher up, she passed an unlit passage where Horuseps at his prettiest and most beguiling played love-games with Proteus. The demon glanced at her and sent a silent greeting as he held the man against his smooth chest, but Mara did not answer his teasing invitation to join them. Then he realized where she must be going, and for a moment, he teetered on the knife’s edge of casting his playmate aside and pursuing her.