The Demon's Covenant

by Sarah Rees Brennan

She thought Alan might be offended, but he laughed. “No, I suppose he wasn’t. But he was mine.”

  Toby made a spirited lunge for the knife, and Alan blocked him.

  “No, I won’t let you hurt yourself,” he informed him, pocketing the knife and turning the child around in his arms so they were facing each other. Toby regarded him solemnly for a moment, and then reached up to curl a fat fist around one of the lenses of Alan’s glasses. “Speaking of belonging to people, I suppose I should return you to the people you belong to. That’ll be fun.”

  He gathered the child back up and rose as he did so, using a ruined wall to help him stand. His eyes traveled to Mae.

  “Do you want to go see the dancing?” he asked, with a small smile, a little wicked, that was for her and not the child. “I’ll catch up.”

  “Well,” said Mae, because it seemed tactless to say that she wanted to run to wherever the dancing was more than anything in the world.

  Alan’s wicked smile became a wicked mind-reading smile. “Have fun,” he told her, and limped away with Toby in his arms still negotiating over the possession of his glasses. Mae smiled after his retreating back.

  Then she turned and walked through the beautiful ruins, reaching a part of the castle that was paved over for tourists, stone smooth and modern as a brick road. Even that was iced over by the goblin lanterns. Light turned a brick road into something like a path cast by the moon, leading the way to magic.

  She knew which way she was going. She could hear the singing over the sound of the sea.

  Mae followed the music and reached a place where the ruins were cut almost in two by a crevasse with a river rushing through it to crash into the sea and foam against the rocks below.

  Across the crevasse was a bridge made of ropes, spangled with lights and tied to the crumbling ruins at either end. It looked like glittering gossamer. It looked like it could snap at any moment.

  There were four couples dancing on the bright threads suspended over the rocks.

  Mae saw the girl right away.

  She was unmistakably the leader again, with a red crown of flowers in her hair. She’d been like a vivid forest creature in the woods, and now she was like something born from the sea foam.

  She was wearing white that reflected the moonlight, material that the night wind sent clinging and fluttering down her body, so thin you could almost see her skin dark and soft beneath it. Her hair was threaded with silver ribbons, and her skirt was slashed into silver ribbons as well, trailing over and wrapping around her legs as she danced. Her feet landed light as air, perfectly balanced in the strange web above the waters.

  The ropes trembled whenever a foot touched them, shivering over the abyss. The boys were all in black, shadows following the brightly colored girls, none of them as arresting as Nick had been when he danced. The girls in red and yellow and blue looked like shadows as well, next to the girl in white.

  Lanterns were swaying over Mae’s head. She looked up and saw the thin, steely flash of the wire supporting them, and then down, all the way down the cliffs that the light laid bare. They were jagged and cruel-looking, stone sharp as knives and going on for miles, and Mae’s stomach sank even as a thrill chased up her spine.

  By lantern light the sea below looked a strange, clear turquoise. Mae wondered if that was more magic.

  There were people singing on the other side of the abyss, their voices high and rising as the girl in white was thrown up easily as a white flower into the night sky and came tumbling down like an acrobat, feet curving onto the exact same strand of rope she’d been standing on before.

  The audience murmured, voices warm as the sound of the waves was cold. The girl paused, hanging there, being still in beauty as much a part of the dance as hurtling through the air. Her dark hair streamed out with her silver ribbons, like a flag of shadows and light.

  Then she lowered the arms held in a triumphal arch over her head and dismissed her audience by simply turning away, walking along a tightrope more lightly than Mae could have walked along a street. She leaped from the rope to the edge of the cliff and stood facing Mae, her dark eyes suddenly wide.

  “Oh,” said Sin of the Market, red lips curving back from her white teeth. “It’s you.”

  Her look and smile were brilliant: Mae glanced backward to see who they were for and saw nothing but ruins and the sea by night.

  “Yes,” she responded, disbelieving, a little breathless. “It’s me.”

  Sin’s attention was like a spotlight. She smiled, and the whole world became brighter and more intense, seemed to hold the possibility of becoming another world entirely.

  She said, “I was hoping you would come back.”

  10

  Sin on the Market

  They stood at the edge of the cliff looking at each other for some time. Mae still could not quite manage to believe the surprised pleasure in Sin’s eyes.

  “I liked your style,” Sin told her. “Most of the tourist girls don’t think much of dancers, and as for dancing themselves …” She snorted, scarlet mouth curling scornfully.

  “I can’t dance like you,” said Mae, feeling shy for the first time in her life, like a new girl in school humbly lingering at the fringes of a group and wishing desperately to belong.

  “You can be taught,” Sin said confidently. With an arch look back over her shoulder at the assembled watchers, she pushed back her hair and ribbons, letting them spill into the wind. “I’m a good teacher,” she continued, the practical words sounding strange and incongruous in her husky voice. “Are you dancing tonight?”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” Mae said slowly, and then she smiled at Sin. “But maybe I will.”

  “I would suggest you decide quickly,” said a voice behind Mae, and she turned around so fast she almost toppled off the cliff.

  There, where she would have sworn nobody had been an instant before, was Merris Cromwell, her black dress flaring like raven’s wings as she walked toward them. The leader of the Goblin Market stood with fairy lights playing on her talisman brooch and on the white streaks in her black hair, making them glint like Sin’s silver ribbons.

  Her dramatic appearance was a little spoiled by her voice, which was slightly rasping and distinctly sour.

  “I remember you,” she told Mae.

  Mae swallowed, keenly aware of the last time she’d seen Merris, at the House of Mezentius, which Merris wanted to keep secret from the Goblin Market people at all costs.

  Mae smiled a small, careful smile. “It’s nice of you to remember,” she said. “We only met once, but I was really grateful that you let me dance. I was hoping I could do it again.”

  Merris tilted her head, regarding Mae with what seemed to be a fraction less distaste and more interest. Mae’s message was obviously received loud and clear.

  “I suppose it would do no harm,” she conceded eventually. “You do seem to have the right attitude. Who will you be dancing with, child?”

  “Me,” said Sin, the single word warm and certain.

  Mae looked into her laughing eyes.

  “Um,” she said. “I thought that it had to be a girl and a guy.”

  “Not necessarily,” Sin told her, that husky voice seeming about to tip into a laugh at every word. “It usually works best that way, but I think we could manage to tempt a demon or two together. Don’t you?”

  The whole Market was humming and shining with magic, its leader had welcomed her, and now Sin of the Market reached out and offered Mae both her hands.

  Mae let herself relax at last, almost at home amid all the wonder. She took up Sin’s challenge and touched the tips of the other girl’s fingers, which were outlined by fairy lights.

  “I’m not totally convinced,” she said, grinning at Sin’s startled look. “But I’m willing to give it a try. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Sin threw back her head and laughed. She seemed more real suddenly; less like an ideal and more like someone Mae wanted as a friend.

 
; “Try to keep up with me, tourist,” she said with the laugh still lingering in her voice. She swayed away from the cliff edge, already dancing, and called back over her shoulder, “If you can.”

  Mae followed her to a place in Tintagel where there was no stone and only a grassy dip in the ground, like a forest grove—if forests were made of ruins instead of trees. There were dancers in the clearing already cutting circles in the ground with ceremonial knives, drawing the lines of communication and intersection between the worlds.

  Mae had always had a knack for graphs and maps. She remembered these symbols.

  “Hey, Sin,” she said.

  Sin turned. “Yes?”

  “Let me cut the circles.”

  Sin’s eyebrows were the expressive kind, ones that could indicate surprise when the rest of her face was still. Just now the delicate black arches looked about to take flight off her face.

  “Pretty confident, aren’t we?”

  “Usually,” said Mae, and Sin reached around to the back of her dress and produced a long knife, which she tossed at Mae. Mae crushed down her instinct to duck away from the huge sharp thing hurtling toward her, and caught it easily enough by the handle.

  She knelt down on the ground, the dew on the grass soaking the knees of her jeans, and her blade parted the earth easily, forming shapes and angles. It was like doing math equations or reading music, foreign at first glance but making so much sense in the end, and beginning to come naturally.

  Once she was done with her own circle of summoning she did Sin’s, the second circle just touching hers.

  Only then did she look up and see Sin’s intent eyes as she returned to Mae, holding a bright, firelike fruit.

  “I’m impressed.”

  “Thanks,” said Mae, and offered Sin her knife back.

  Sin took it in one hand and then, fingers moving deftly, she cut the fever fruit in her other hand into gleaming, tempting slices. The golden juice spilled into her palm, then slid slowly down the inside of her wrist, shining in the faint fairy lights against the tracery of veins.

  Mae remembered, with a sudden visceral pang of yearning, how the fruit had tasted. All other food had tasted like ashes in her mouth for days afterward.

  “It’s all right,” Sin whispered. She held the fruit up to Mae’s lips and said, “Taste.”

  Mae leaned forward, mouth brushing Sin’s fingers, and the fruit burst on her tongue, cool and sweet as a promise of love or adventure.

  “And now you’re feeling much better, am I right?” Sin asked, withdrawing with a wink and popping a piece of fruit into her own mouth.

  “Can I have some more?” asked Mae, and was startled: That hoarse voice did not sound like hers.

  “No,” said Sin. “You ate too much last time. You were all messed up.”

  Mae remembered standing with Nick in the shadow of trees, her whole body straining into his.

  Sin shook her head as if she could read minds. “Nick always needed more than the rest of us,” she said softly. “Guess now we know why.”

  Because he wasn’t human, and he had never cared about Mae.

  Sin tucked her knife into the sheath that must have been hidden under the frail white dress, which looked as if it concealed nothing but Sin’s body, and that not terribly well. She smiled as if the weight of a knife against her back pleased her.

  “So let’s see if you can really impress me,” she said as the drums began. “Let’s dance.”

  The music seemed to be coming out of nowhere until Mae saw the ruined wall. Drummers were hidden there like an orchestra concealed in a pit; other people were playing the guitar and the flute, all the instruments coming together in a strange blend of harmonies. There were three people in front, and they were all singing different songs. One was about Tintagel, and one about the Goblin Market—the chorus was “Come buy!”—and the last was singing a stream of nonsense words Mae didn’t even understand.

  “Taw, Cenio, Tamar,” sang the woman’s voice, climbing high, as Sin took Mae’s hands in hers.

  Mae expected them to be soft, but the long fingers were calloused and strong. She led Mae into the summoning circles, touching but separate, their hands joined over the place where their circles met.

  Mae felt the difference as soon as she entered the circle; the ground beneath her feet changed somehow, as if the lines she had cut in the earth were charged with electricity and she had to balance along a humming live wire. The singing was louder now. Mae wasn’t able to make out any of the words. It had all become a delirious rush of noise that mingled with the sound of the sea.

  Sin winked at her again and let go of her hands.

  “I call on the shadow in the forest who lures travelers to die far from home,” she said, her voice chiming with all the other sounds, imploring and sweet, as if she was begging her lover back to bed. “I call on the dream that turns people from real love and warm skin. I call on she who drinks blood and rises from the ashes. I call on Liannan!”

  As Sin spoke, she began to dance, and the lines within the circles began to move, blurring like the spokes on bicycle wheels, and Mae had to move with them. The blurred lines shone beneath her, and she felt as if she had gone dancing on the web of ropes after all, dancing balanced above a dark abyss, just a stumble away from cold, screaming destruction.

  Hair lifting in the night wind, Mae grinned.

  Sin was spinning in the corner of her eye, a blur of white silk and white fire, better than Mae could ever be, but that was all right. Nick had been better too. Seeing someone do something so well was not only beautiful to watch, it was exhilarating and inspiring. It was a challenge.

  The lines between the demon world and the human spun so fast that they seemed to disappear, turned into a shimmering haze like a veil between the worlds. A veil that could be torn. The circle seemed almost to tip into the cold abyss below, like a trapdoor turning beneath Mae’s feet. The singing sounded almost like a distress cry, tense hush had fallen on the audience, and Mae could hear her own and Sin’s harsh breathing forming a rhythm together.

  Mae put her hands up over her head the way Sin had on the cliff edge, added a hip sway just for fun, and danced.

  The dance came to a natural conclusion, like a fight or a piece of music, the drums slowing as the pulses in her own body slowed. She stood panting and thinking that she’d loved doing it, that she loved the whole Market, and she knew no way to keep any of this.

  She’d almost forgotten the reason for the entire dangerous and overwhelming dance when she saw the demon emerging from the point where their circles touched and blazed fire.

  The demon woman rose wrapped in magic, like a dark goddess wrapped in a shimmering cloud.

  Then magic slid away as if it was really a wrap, pooling and glowing around the demon’s—Liannan’s—feet. She looked like she was standing in a cloud bank.

  Mae had never seen a demon who appeared as a woman before.

  She didn’t look much like the demon Mae and Nick had summoned last time. Mae had seen Anzu twice, and both times he had been a dark presence, golden beauty under a shadow of rage and wings and claws.

  Liannan was soft and shining and lovely, her red hair drifting around her as if it was a second cloud, dyed fiery shades by a sunset nobody else could see. Her eyes gleamed, crystal-colored but full of secrets, like glass balls waiting to tell Mae’s fortune.

  The talisman around Mae’s neck hummed and stung like a bee trapped under her shirt. That was when Mae noticed that Liannan’s skin was white not in the way human skin was white, but in the way paper or china was white, too smooth and too blank. The shine of her eyes and the crimson glow of her hair suddenly seemed like the bright flowers poisonous plants grew to lure their prey.

  “It’s the beautiful dancer again,” said Liannan. “And you brought a little friend.”

  Mae felt disoriented for a moment after she spoke, and then realized why: Mae was used to hearing people use tones when they spoke, use real voices. But Liannan was
n’t talking to Mae, not really. The magic was. The lines of communication in the circle were simply letting Mae know what the demon meant.

  All demons were silent, except one.

  “I’m not that little,” Mae snapped, and then realized she possibly shouldn’t be talking back to a demon.

  Liannan’s eyes swung to her. She smiled slightly, her mouth a vivid red slash in her white face, like blood on snow.

  “If you’re not happy with your body,” she said, tracing the outline of Mae’s shape in the night air, “I’ll take it off your hands.”

  Her fingers made a sound like Nick’s sword did when he swung it, and after an instant in which Mae could not quite process what she was seeing, she recognized why: Liannan’s fingers were icicles, catching the fairy lights and reflecting them back in a dozen brilliant colors, sharp as blades.

  “Think I’ll hold on to it for a while,” she said, a little breathless. Unexpectedly Liannan was reminding her not of Anzu but of Nick: Holding his gaze sometimes felt like this, as if you could hold time while your heart ran a race. “Thanks.”

  Liannan smiled. “Pity.”

  She lowered her bright sharp hand to her side.

  “Liannan,” said Sin, her voice snapping the demon’s head around as if it was a whip around her neck, “I have some questions for you.”

  Mae was startled by the change in Sin’s tone, and then she met Sin’s dark eyes through the shining cloud of Liannan’s hair. Sin’s eyes bored into hers, her gaze heavy with a significant and deliberate weight, and then she gave a tiny shake to her head, and Mae understood.

  Sin was deliberately distracting Liannan. She was protecting Mae.

  It made Mae wonder how many of her dance partners Sin had seen taken by demons.

  “Ask,” Liannan commanded.

  It dawned on Mae, with a dawning that felt more like an eclipse, something dark and terrible blotting out all she knew, that she was linked to Liannan by the lines of the summoning circle as if the lines were puppet strings.

  She’d been aware of Anzu’s rage, but that had been obvious as a battering ram or a storm, and directed at Nick. Liannan’s thoughts were insidious, like a cold draft seeping in under the door of Mae’s soul.