Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (33 page)

“What did you see?”

“You, Noon. I saw you.”

We stared at each other for a few moments. Oh, Luck. Had Rafe been given a memory like the one Fara had been given?

The bonfire wasn’t exactly the hottest part of the memory . . .

Had Rafe been given one of Ari’s memories? Of me? I squirmed and broke eye contact. But the tall reedy wall surrounding us offered no inspiration on how to extricate myself from this perilously awkward social situation so I turned back to Rafe. He was still looking at me, but his carefully carefree look was gone. I didn’t know what this new expression meant. I’d never seen it on Rafe’s face before. I glanced out at the river. Ari was rowing the boat back toward the shore.

“I think I figured it out,” I said quickly. Rafe raised his eyebrows. His lips curved in the slightest hint of a smile.

“The whirlpool at Ebony’s End mashed up our memories,” I continued. “It took one from each of us and gave it to someone else.”

Rafe’s smile fell. The carefully carefree look was back.

“I got yours,” I said.

“Oh?” His tone was flat.

I wasn’t sure how to begin. I glanced at his silver bracelet again. The one with the word “Bhereg” etched on it and the date his brother died.

Rafe’s gaze followed mine. “Which memory was it, Noon?” His voice was harsher. “You know, I have so many
happy
ones.”

I winced. “It was your brother’s funeral.” When he didn’t say anything, I said, “I know what happened, Rafe.”

He looked at me disbelievingly. Ari dragged the skiff onto the beach.

“You couldn’t possibly. Or you wouldn’t still be sitting here.” I couldn’t sense Rafe’s mood or feelings the way I could with Ari, but it was pretty clear he was in pain. I pointed to the bracelet. The fact that Rafe wore it told me I was doing the right thing. Even though the memory was painful, he
wanted
to remember.

“Does Bhereg mean ‘brother’ or was that his name?”

Rafe clenched his fist and stood up, glancing over at Ari and Russ. He looked back down at me, his expression contemplative. After a few moments, he offered his hands to help me up. I slipped my hands into his. They were rough and strong and smooth and gentle all at the same time.

“It means ‘white’ or ‘bright,’” he said, pulling me to my feet. “I named him.”

We stood for a minute, hand in hand, staring at each other. Somehow, I felt guilty that I couldn’t feel his pain. But then again, that wasn’t really true. Because I could. Through his own memory.

“It was an accident,” I whispered, lightly squeezing his hands. Although it wasn’t part of the memory, I imagined six-year-old Rafe holding his infant brother, trying to soothe the crying child so his mother could rest, walking down the uneven boards of his family’s weathered pier . . . tripping . . . falling . . . and Bhereg . . . tumbling from Rafe’s arms into the Lethe. Had Rafe dived in after him?

“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?”

*   *   *

T
urned 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.

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.