Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (34 page)

What if the door was enchanted?

Before I could touch it, Rafe reached for it.

“Heraldry is an Angel’s job. Allow me”—and he brushed my hand aside and stepped in front of me.

T
he door was locked, which gave Rafe pause for only a moment before he murmured a spell and the latch popped like the buckle on a too-tight pair of pants. Tentatively, he pressed the door open and peered inside. All I could see through the door was blackness. The little shed had no windows.

Rafe pushed his way in and then motioned for us to follow. Once we were inside and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the contents of the shed were exactly as I’d suspected, which eased my fears not at all. I couldn’t imagine the rest of this visit would go as predictably, or that our findings would be as innocuous as a few fishing poles, a tackle box, ten crab pots, and two birdcages.

Slowly, our group made our way through the tiny shed to the door on the other side. That one wasn’t locked. The five of us, plus Virtus and Delgato’s uncannily levitating form, exited the shed into what lay beyond, which was, for a moment, the reverse of what we’d experienced entering the shed. We stood clustered together, blinded by bright sunlight. For one brief second, I was paralyzed by fear.

Nearly every demon I’d ever met had been horrible. Serafina had been small, but had burned Ivy and almost killed her. I shuddered recalling Nergal, my client from last semester. Lamia, his wife, had been even worse. Jezebeth may have been loved by Ynocencia but he’d killed multiple people, and his horns, claws, and jaws had inspired a healthy dose of fear in me. Delgato had been the only decent demon I’d ever met and even he had induced mild heart palpitations the first time we’d met. So, needless to say, I was braced for someone awful.

The demon that stood before me was awful, but not as bad as I’d braced for. He was large and imposing, with well-muscled arms and a strong face. His hair and beard flowed nearly to the ground, looking creepily like the moss that had hung from the trees we’d just rowed through. His skin had a slick sheen to it that reminded me of the Secernere’s duckweed, but its color was darker, duller. He wore a dark brown, leather-belted tunic with a small, short, rust-colored cloak. The cloak was fastened with an elaborate iron pin. His eyes were greenish gold with thin black slits for pupils. We blinked at each other and instinctively I stepped back. The demon’s signature felt sluggish, but there was definitely
something
about him that warned he could strike at any moment.

Surrounding the demon, in a great big hovering flock, was a gaggle of children. They appeared to range in age from two to twelve and were covered in mud. It was on their clothes, their skin, even in their hair. But they looked happy enough and, I was surprised and pleased to see, they didn’t look nearly as thin as I’d thought the children of the Shallows might be. They hopped up and down, chirping and chattering excitedly, and pointing at us with crooked fingers and flailing arms.

The demon opened his mouth and uttered a greeting—in a language I’d never heard before. I have no idea what he said, but the children rushed to us then, laughing, and those who could get near enough to do so, embraced us. I nearly fell over from the force of their exuberance. Ari’s signature was steady and alert. I sensed from him that he was slightly bemused by this welcome but still wary. I doubted Ari ever let down his guard for long, and certainly not while meeting outpost lords accused of murdering their own people.

At first, the children kept a respectful distance from Virtus. I imagined none of them had ever seen a tiger before. Natural beasts were much more common in Warja than in Halja. But it was clear they had the same fascination with Virtus that Russ had had when he’d first laid eyes on him when we were loading up in New Babylon almost six weeks ago. In the time since, Virtus had grown bigger. His coat was sleeker and his frame leaner. Fara motioned to the children who were closest to Virtus, encouraging them to approach him and give him a pat. For his part, Virtus looked positively smitten with all the attention. I swore I could almost hear the rumble of his throaty purr over the incomprehensible high-pitched chirps and squeals of the children. I glanced at Rafe and Fara.

What language was spoken here in the Shallows?

The demon complaints had both been written in the Haljan common tongue. So some of these children must know it. Though I realized, while listening to all the squawking and screeching, that it probably wasn’t their first language. Rafe was leaning over toward a group of children, conversing fluently, apparently telling them something amazing because their eyes grew as wide as the whirlpool we’d passed through to get here. After answering a few more questions in this strange-sounding language of theirs, Rafe ruffled the top of one of the boys’ heads, a wistful expression on his face, and stood up, looking toward me.

“Avian,” he said, answering my unspoken but assumed question.

Interesting,
I thought.
Who would have guessed?
Even if Lambert Jeffries had agreed to work with me, his Aquaian would have been useless here. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Rafe knew Avian. I was betting he knew lots of demon languages that he hadn’t yet told me about.

Rafe grinned at me and then turned to address Vodnik formally. Since Rafe was my Guardian and I was the lead investigator, it fell to him. He raised his hands above his head, palms down, and immediately the children grew quiet. Vodnik eyed Rafe with rapt attention. In a strong, clear voice Rafe uttered a series of guttural whorls and warbles, interspersed with a few tweets and chirps. Knowing the Angels’ penchant for theatrics in general and Rafe’s preference for silliness in particular (regardless of the number of life-threatening situations we’d faced together, or the somberness of some of his own memories, I could never forget that this was the man who’d said he knew the spells Pat on the Back, Ladies Man, and Wet ’n Wild), Rafe could have made a mockery of the introduction. But instead he appeared to infuse his unnatural speech patterns with all of the gravitas appropriate for the situation.

As he had when making our introduction to Delgato, he made a few sounds, likely noises describing our names, places of origin, and family connections, and then gestured to each of us so that we could acknowledge Vodnik and his crowd of tiny followers. As each of us nodded or bowed, Rafe chirped a few extra words. In response, the children’s faces reflected varying levels of amusement, awe, horror, or fascination. I got the impression Rafe was telling them the story of how we’d arrived there, as well as each of our parts in the story (no doubt with a healthy amount of exaltation and glorification). When it was my turn, I nodded to Vodnik, and Rafe added whatever chirpy codicil he’d come up with for me. It was longer than the others and throughout there were audible cries of alarm and then, finally, sighs of delight. At the end, Rafe clasped his hands to his heart in an intentionally exaggerated romantic gesture reminiscent of a swooning lover as he once again gestured toward me. The children laughed and I felt the barest uptick in Ari’s signature. He narrowed his eyes at Rafe. Like me, I’m sure he wondered what was being said about us, but since the audience for Rafe’s show was mostly children, I couldn’t imagine it was anything too untoward.

Throughout all of it, Vodnik appeared expressionless and patient. I could not have said what he thought about either Rafe’s introduction or our presence in his outpost. But then he made his position clear.

“Welcome, friends,” Vodnik said haltingly in words I recognized. “We have been waiting for you. I know Zella wrote to the Council for help. The Demon of Hunger has found his way to the Shallows and has taken many.”

I worked hard to keep my expression neutral and my signature steady. Vodnik didn’t realize we were here to investigate
him
. That Zella’s complaint named him as a possible suspect. Or that Athalie’s complaint named him as the accused. Of course, it was equally possible that Vodnik knew those things and he was just a good liar.

“Ask Lord Vodnik who he believes the Demon of Hunger is,” I instructed Rafe. Even before Rafe finished interpreting Vodnik’s response, though, I had a partial answer. The look on the children’s faces when Vodnik uttered the sounds that must have meant “Grimasca” was a mirroring of the demon’s other moniker, “The Grim Mask of Death.”

Ari asked, “Why does Lord Vodnik think it was Grimasca, a legendary and mythical figure who is so old no one is even certain he’s real, and not another hellcnight or some other
rogare
demon, that caused the disappearance of his followers?”

Rafe interpreted Ari’s question. I was beginning to worry we might stand here all night, swapping chirpy questions with a demon who was under heavy suspicion, and get nowhere with the investigation, an eventuality I could barely bear to contemplate after all we’d been through. But instead, in response to Ari’s question, Vodnik pulled two items out of the pocket of his brown tunic and showed them to us. One was a butcher’s knife. The other was a small silver spice box with the words “For Ebony” engraved on it. I stared at them, not understanding.

Vodnik and Rafe thereafter engaged in a lengthy Avian discussion. After a few moments, Rafe turned to the rest of us and explained. Apparently Vodnik’s lawman Stillwater had found these items out in the Meadow where the men had been fishing. Everyone knew Grimasca’s favorite alias was a butcher, although not as many knew Ebony had been his lover. Regardless, the two items were Grimasca’s and finding them at the scene of the sin the day after it happened was evidence enough for Vodnik of Grimasca’s guilt.

Well, huh.
After that tortured analysis, interpretation, and explanation, I was half-inclined to dig Alba’s black onion out of my pocket and ask it what
it
thought. I would have loved to have gotten a better view of both the butcher knife and the silver spice box but Vodnik had already repocketed them. Vodnik observed me keenly. I wondered if his next question would be about the fact that I was a woman with waning magic. But the outpost lord surprised me. He chirped a few notes to Rafe, who then said to me:

“He wants to know what saved us in the Elbow. What saved us from drowning?”

I looked over at Fara. She’d changed her glamour when we’d arrived. She was now dressed in white pants and a mottled brown and white feather vest. Her hair was slicked back and her eyes were ringed with great big black kohl circles. She looked wise and owl-like. I smiled at her and winked.

“Faith and an anchor,” I said.

Vodnik scowled. “They say Ebony was Grimasca’s anchor,” he croaked in the common tongue. I stared at him.

“How do you know so much about Ebony and Grimasca?” I said, suddenly suspicious. Vodnik screeched a curt answer to Rafe.

“He said the Shallows are less than a day’s row from the Elbow. Do we think we’re the first people to have passed through it on the way here?”

There was another exchange between Vodnik and Rafe and Rafe continued.

“We can stay the night. Tomorrow, Stillwater, the outpost gerefa, will take us out to the Meadow where the fishermen disappeared. We can start our hunt there.”

As bucolic as “the Meadow” sounded, I couldn’t help wondering if we would end up disappearing there too . . .

*   *   *

T
he Shallows was a large triangular piece of land bordered by the Secernere, the Blandjan, and a low stone wall that ran for approximately half a mile between them. We’d come into the settlement from its back door on the Secernere. I gathered the fact that we’d arrived via Ebony’s Elbow gave us just as much, if not more, notoriety than the fact that we’d been sent by the Council “to help.”

On the Blandjan side of the Shallows, there was a much larger pier, one that, while nothing like its counterparts in New Babylon, would have been sufficient for docking
Cnawlece
alongside. As I’d suspected, since Vodnik made his home here and his own waning magic would have killed off any vegetation long ago, the interior of the Shallows was completely devoid of the trees, moss, weeds, and reeds we’d seen so much of on the way here. Instead, the ground was either mud, standing water, dried wood chips, or some combination of all three. The settlers’ homes were small wooden huts that stood elevated on six-foot-high pilings. Front “doors” were made of cloth in various shades of mud-splattered olive, lichen, rust, and root. Often, laundry lines were hung across the fronts of the huts, and clothes (looking like they’d been sewn from the same cloth as the door curtains) hung on the lines to dry. It was going to take a while. Because the humidity here was even worse than it had been on the river.