Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  There was a sharp snapping sound and a man’s scream that was barely muffled a moment later. Elysia felt something still and cold click into place inside of her and she straightened.

  A couple of Dorian’s fingers were swollen and one was sticking out at an odd angle. The woman knelt before him had to have been Lissel Verida, all pink skin, dark hair and furious eyes.

  Those eyes were all for Dorian. He looked over her shoulder at Ely, eyelids flaring. She was starting to crouch, to go for Callum’s gun, but the recognition in Dorian’s face was too immediate and Lissel started to turn around. As she moved, several wounds became apparent that Ely seriously doubted had come from Dorian. Nothing to be done for it then.

  Ely pulled a knife from her wrist sheath and grabbed Lissel by the hair, driving it into her eye socket. She made it shallow, a wound to blind rather than to kill, and dragged Lissel back off of Dorian.

  Lissel screamed and twisted, her cabled tongue whipping out and slapping Ely hard in the shoulder. Her entire arm felt numb. She kept her fingers clenched around the blade.

  Lissel was in bad shape. She had bandages all along her arms and torso, all blood soaked. Ely’s mind began filling in blanks. Lissel had lost a fight, or won but barely escaped with her life. She’d decided to come take it out on someone who wouldn’t be as likely to fight back.

  Ely could drag this out. Get some answers.

  The look Dorian was giving her over Lissel’s shoulder was pure distress. The moment it took her to notice, Lissel threw her into the bar. She barely had a beat to duck her head against the shower of broken glass, the harsh treble scent dripping cold down her back with the liquor itself.

  She was lying face down behind the bar, surrounded by broken bottles.

  She tried to stand carefully. A shard of glass scraped her calf, and one jammed into her palm anyway. Where had her dagger gone? The rhythmic drip of rum pat pat patting from the ruined display behind her hit the floor behind the bar.

  Where was Zenith?

  Lissel Verida had been breaking Dorian’s fingers. If Lissel Verida wanted him dead he would be already. There’s no use breaking bones when you plan to kill the man anyway. Lissel Verida would not have left him alive if she didn’t think she had a use for him.

  Facts rolled through Ely’s head like a mantra as she got to her feet and turned to look at Lissel. She’d already turned around and it was the widening of Dorian’s eyes that made her start to turn back.

  It took her two seconds to notice and a fraction of one to turn around. By then Ely was right behind her again. The eye was a ruined pit, that side of her face coated with blood and ocular fluids. Her tongue lashed out again and this time, Ely caught it on her forearm and gripped it with her right hand. The shard of glass pressed deeper into the meaty part of her palm.

  It bit muscle but missed tendon. Acceptable. She would heal from this. Perhaps a scar. She could live with that.

  She took a step towards Lissel, closed the distance between them. Nothing her father had ever taught her could have prepared her for this moment, but she remembered her mother, fighting for her life in an alley.

  Looking into that purple maw, Elysia wasn’t sure she wanted to stick a fist in there. There was a major blood vessel in the tongue. If Lissel bit down this fight, and her life, were both over. If Lissel bit down with Ely’s fist in her throat Ely would lose the hand and Lissel would lose nothing. She was a dead woman anyway.

  One of Lissel’s hands clamped around Ely’s forehead to hold her back and the other flailed wildly. She was holding her face to shield her remaining eye. Primal fear.

  “Of course,” Ely whispered. “Silly me.”

  She reached up with her empty hand and got a grip full of Lissel’s inky hair. She pulled both left and down as hard as she could. Lissel only bothered to pull right.

  Ely’s knee crunched into Lissel’s jaw, and the jaws clenched in return. There was a soft ‘thud crack’ like a human biting through a carrot before the tongue went slack in Ely’s hand and Lissel began to shriek tonelessly. There was blood gushing between her teeth.

  Ely dropped the tongue and inspected the shard of glass in her palm. There was enough left sticking out of it that it was easy enough to pull out. Lissel had curled up on herself, hacking and screaming, shielding her head. Blood reached out like grasping fingers from her collar.

  “Dorian,” she said, softly. He could not tear his eyes away from the screaming Verida. Ely sighed and looked back at the bar. She’d lost her knife on this side of it.

  It was eight steps back to the bar, about fifteen seconds to grab her knife and a handful of mixing straws, and eight steps back. Lissel’s shrieks had become half-sobs, her entire body wracking. She protected her face. She left her back exposed.

  There was a moment when Lissel’s human nerves had become more animal than man. She was more afraid of the darkness than she was of dying.

  Ely slipped her knife between two of Lissel’s ribs, twisted ever so slightly, and drew it back out. Ely would have knicked the heart, and one of Lissel’s lungs was likely filling with blood. The screaming stopped, replaced by bubbling gasps.

  Exsanguinating hemmhorage. Her last two to three minutes would be a formality. The blood she choked on would make screaming impossible. Ely looked to Dorian again, and all he did was whimper.

  “Dorian Asteri,” she said, stepping over to him. She would have liked to have watched Lissel die. She would have liked to have confirmed it to be sure no one would come at her back. This would have to do. “Look at me.”

  He tore his eyes from the corpse-in-progress to look at her.

  “Is s-she?” he managed.

  “Dying. I give her two minutes if I’m being generous. Deep breath in through your mouth,” she said. She still reeked of spilled liquor and the copper scent of blood was filling the air. “You have to give me your hand, Dorian.”

  He didn’t look like he understood, but he didn’t stop her when she went to take his broken hand in hers. They were swollen and purple, not the dexterous fingers of a prestidigitator. It would take him months to heal if he ever did, completely.

  “I’m not going to be able to perform like this,” he said.

  “Dorian,” she said softly. “Look at me. I’m going to set your fingers, but it’s going to hurt. Can you put on a brave face for me for just a minute and not pull away? I might hurt you worse if you pull away.”

  “Y-yeah,” he said. His voice shook. His face was pale.

  “Alright,” Ely said. She started to run her fingers along the break, feeling out where it was. The face Dorian was making made it look like he was going to start crying all over again. “I know you aren’t used to this. This was a lot, you’re allowed to be upset.”

  At the second syllable of the word ‘allowed’, she slid his pinky finger back into place. She bound it carefully with a ribbon from her pocket and moved on to the next one.

  Dorian made a half-sobbing sound, but he didn’t scream again.

  “Dorian,” she said, drawing his eyes back to hers again as she felt for the break. “You’re going to be alright. We can get you home, if you want. I’ll deal with anyone that comes looking for you.”

  On ‘looking’, she set another bone. The pang in her chest was almost regret. Her clothes were sticking to her skin, wet with blood and alcohol, and she was tying her love’s broken fingers together.

  When had she stopped pretending to that mask? When had that become a part of her? She didn’t speak at all before she set the third one; he didn’t anticipate it, either, though his chest wracked with his inhalation.

  We’re not monsters, we just speak their language.

  No, father, she thought, eying Dorian’s hands. This monster has terrible teeth and claws. This monster has the seventy-seven eyes of an angel. This monster has the memory of the great magi and will never forget a slight. They will pay for harming what is mine.

  She looked at his beautiful, broken face.

  What was mi
ne.

  “We’ll get you home,” she repeated.

  When he got enough air down, he spoke through gritted teeth, defiant even with the tears still on his cheeks. “I am home.”

  “Dorian,” she said a third time. This time it was soft and uncertain. An unspoken question. “That’s enough, let’s get you back to your place for now. We…we can maybe talk about this later?”

  He took one last look at the body on the floor, and then back at her. His voice was surprisingly steady when he said, “That’s probably for the best.”

  When Callum came to, he was in some kind of basement. There was a certain scent that came with the underground, with dripping walls and mildew and places they put you to forget about you. The light was very dim down here. He could easily fix that.

  “Callum?”

  Tess’s voice came, soft, as a plume of fire danced above his fingers. He looked at her through the shadows of the bars and straightened himself; the right side of him was damp from where he’d been lying on it.

  “I’m alive,” he said. After it came out of his mouth he wasn’t sure how much of that was for explaining ‘right now in this moment’ and how much would carry over to ‘at all’ later.

  “No kidding?” she asked. The scorn in her voice was a soft undertone laced with amusement. “Were you ever planning on telling me?”

  “You already knew,” he said, groaning as he sat up.

  There was a silence between them and he could feel her eyes on him. She didn’t speak to break the silence, so he did.

  “How did this happen?”

  “Well,” she said, voice on the edge of something between humor and panic, “my father found out I was investigating the murders. I guess that was probably inevitable considering he’s been involved in them.”

  “You’re going to have to run that by me again,” Callum said. “I spoke to a Nightingale and she said it was a Gate Street Player holding the knife.”

  “Since when have you ever known aristocrats to hold the knife themselves?” Tess asked. “Anyway, I don’t know much. I know that I came home one night and he was waiting up for me, sitting in that high backed chair of his. He fixed me with a serious expression and asked what I’d been getting my fingers into. He told me to stop. I told him our people were dying and that it was horrible of him not to care, and I guess that was too much because he flung his tumbler at me. He was drunk and I wasn’t, so naturally he missed. He told me I didn’t understand. I asked him to explain it and all I got out of him was some vague babble about when the dead one comes. How long can you hold that fire?”

  Callum furrowed his brow and leaned around to look at her. She was as filthy as he was, in damp clothes with tattered hair. She had a sharp rock in her hand.

  “As long as you need me to,” he said. “I take it you have a plan?”

  Even as he asked, he started patting himself down. His knife was missing. His pistol had been missing since Ely took it but when his fingers poked at the empty spot in his belt where it normally would have been he felt a cold chill anyway. At least he still had his pants.

  “I could have a better one,” Tess said. She lowered herself to a crouch, holding her skirt out of the way with her left hand as her right began to make some markings on the stone with the stone in her hand. “I’m not the most comfortable doing this without the right materials, but I hear it can be done.”

  “What are you trying to call down?” Callum asked.

  “I know three or four names off the top of my head,” Tess said. “Entities I’ve called in practice under supervision. I’m not sure if that will make them more or less likely to do me harm, but I don’t have a key and I saw them take your lock picks so it might be the only shot we’ve got. He knows what you are. And if Callum Trezza isn’t dead they are still missing an afrite.”

  “They?” Callum asked.

  “He’s in on it,” Tess said. “He’s the one that’s been feeding them the names of all those nephilim.”

  “You’re kidding,” Callum said. “He’s the mayor. He already has everything. What could he possibly have to gain from this?”

  “He thinks he’s going to take over other city-states,” Tess said. The stone scraped the floor. “He thinks he’ll still have control once this thing gets summoned. I’m sure they’ll find another afrite, but we can’t let them have you and remove all doubt.”

  “That’s an implication I hadn’t wanted to think about,” Callum said. “Do you know who he’s working with?”

  “Well,” she said, “now I know the Gate Street Players were involved in this somewhere.”

  He sighed and rubbed his face with his free hand. Just how deep did all of this go? “My parents will kill me if I die again without seeing them first.”

  “That won’t happen,” Tess said. She used her hands to block out measurements and the circle she scratched into the floor was nearly perfect. Callum swallowed around the dryness in his throat. Nearly perfect could be a death knell in a complicated summoning.

  “Tess,” he said. “Think about this. Whatever’s coming out of that circle you’re drawing can probably kill us just as easily as your father can. And your father isn’t going to kill you.”

  “No,” she said, “he’s just going to expect me to step back and leave the city in the hands of whatever man he deems worthy of it and me and the big nasty thing he’s calling down. He won’t kill me, he’ll sell me and expect me to watch my city in chains. There’s a point where you have to ask yourself if that’s any better.”

  “I don’t know,” Tixi’s voice said from somewhere out in the shadows. “If you’re still here you can still change it.”

  “Tixi?” Tess asked. “Can you get in here?”

  “Afraid not, Ms. Tess,” Tixi said. “He’s had silver worked into the bars.”

  “Damn,” Tess muttered. “Can you try and find the key for me?”

  “I can try,” Tixi said, “but there’s probably silver in that, too. I wouldn’t be able to carry it.”

  “Not you,” Callum said, “but you could get help.”

  “Who do you want me to look for?” Tixi asked.

  Callum considered his mother for a moment, but Tixi hadn’t seen her so that was no good. She had been in the room with him and Sam, however, and in the room with him and Ely.

  “My brother,” he said. “Do you remember the one with the silver hair? Go and get him.”

  There was a stretch of silence, and Tixi’s coy little voice said, “And?”

  “And tell him I said to get you caramels,” Callum said. There was no time to fight her on it. Candy wasn’t that expensive. “If he doesn’t do it I will once you’ve brought him here. I promise.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” Tixi said. There was a soft rush of air and he knew she was gone. Callum leaned against the bar separating his cell from Tess’s.

  “So you knew,” he said.

  “From the first moment. I know your voice,” Tess said. “If you thought a mask was going to fool me you’re stupider than I thought you were. Ashes.”

  The teasing tone in her voice caught him off guard and he laughed. She made a contented sound and for a moment, they just sat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “You should be,” Tess said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t even tell my parents,” he said. “And besides, it seems like I didn’t need to, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s not the point. I thought we were closer than this,” Tess said.

  “I told Sam,” Callum said. “That was it. Ely ended up finding out on accident. There were some people involved, told me to keep things quiet.”

  He didn’t want her to know Lena, he realized. Somehow, if Tess knew it was the woman that had coaxed her father into this, if she knew all the details…no. That part he could keep to himself. That part was over, anyway.

  “You’re not the kind of person that falls for something like that,” Tess said. “Come on.”

  “
I think there was magic involved,” Callum said, shrugging. The more he said the more he was sure she’d figure it out. His shirt moved against his skin and the wet fabric felt cold all over again. He immediately regretted having done it. “It was dumb. I know it was. But it can’t be changed now.”

  The scratching sound on her side of the bars continued.

  “When I thought you were dead,” she said. “I cried all night. I remember thinking it couldn’t have been possible, but I saw your body. How did you survive that stab wound? How did you survive and your mother not know when she was cradling you like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Callum said. “I don’t know most of what happened after. I went down and I woke up in the morgue.”

  “They had a visitation and everything,” she said. “It was incredibly convincing. Was it you in the coffin?”

  “I don’t know,” he repeated.

  “There were a lot of reasons I didn’t want to believe you were the man in the mask,” she said. “I didn’t want to be wrong. I didn’t want to think so and then have you turn out to be someone else entirely. I didn’t want to think this was the kind of thing you would lie about. Grief isn’t the kind of thing you cause the people you love lightly.”

  “I guess, I was just thinking…if I was dead the people who killed me had no reason to keep looking and they might get comfortable. Start making mistakes,” Callum said.

  “Did they?” Tess asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, He turned his head to look at her, the little flickering flame between his fingers illuminating her face just enough to see but not enough to measure her expression. “They took you.”

  “We’re going to figure out how to deal with my father,” Tess said. “He’s involved in this. Apparently so are the Players. Whatever it is they’re planning…if my father thought this was definitely going to work he would be going public with it. As long as no one knows he was involved, it isn’t his fault if it goes poorly. I don’t think he’s considering exactly how poorly this can go.”