The Demon's Covenant

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “Okay,” he said.

  “What?” Mae shouted.

  She surged forward, but Annabel got there first, her sword a blur of light and then a line of steel held between Jamie and Gerald.

  “You’re not taking him,” said Annabel. “He’s mine.”

  There was a ring of steel on steel.

  Helen of the Aventurine Circle had lunged forward, and now her blade was kissing Annabel’s. They stood looking at each other. Annabel lifted her chin, defiant, and Helen’s lip curled.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “He belongs to us now.”

  Mae thought Helen would turn away then, and she did.

  First she lunged in and drove her sword to the hilt in Annabel’s chest. Annabel made a small sound, more incredulous than pained, her body crumpling on the blade. Helen slid her sword free and swung back into line with the other magicians.

  Annabel tumbled to the ground on her back.

  “Mum,” Jamie said, his voice small and terrified, and he dived to his knees by her side. Mae didn’t know why there was a clawing in her chest, didn’t know why her mouth had gone dry, when Jamie was going to heal her. When Annabel was absolutely fine.

  She did not look fine. Their mother was lying with her smooth blond hair fanned out on the bloodstained bricks. Blood was trickling from one side of her mouth, was a spreading pool on her white blouse, and her eyes were staring wide and sightless into the clear night sky.

  Mae made a low, hurt sound in the back of her throat. Jamie’s hands, frantically patting and searching, had gone still.

  “Mum,” Jamie repeated, panicked, as if he was searching for her, as if he had lost her and could not find her, as if she was not right there. “Mum, please, please. Mum.”

  And without Mae making the decision to kneel down, there she was on the bricks, on her hands and knees beside her brother. She was making that low, wounded sound again, her hands on Annabel, shaking her and shaking her until Jamie pulled at her wrists.

  “Mae,” he said, crying, close to her ear. “Mae, don’t. She’s—she’s—”

  She was crying too. He was nothing but a blur of magic-hazed eyes and demon’s mark, and then he was holding on to her, clinging around her neck the same way he’d clung to their mother this afternoon.

  “Hush,” Mae said, her voice sounding oddly distant in her own ears. Jamie’s tears were slipping down her neck. She had to be strong for him. She smoothed her palm down her brother’s shivering back, down the line of his spine. “Hush,” she whispered again. “I know she’s dead.”

  The Goblin Market was camped out in Portholme Meadow, not so far away from the town. It was, Mae vaguely remembered, the largest meadow in England. It was also, she realized dimly, quite beautiful. The caravans and tents of the Goblin Market took up only a tiny bright space of all the lush greenness, and all around them in the early morning were the sounds of birds singing and trees whispering to one another.

  Mae was lying alongside Jamie in a red tent, watching the shadowy patterns the leaves cast on the fabric. She was trying not to move, trying not to wake Jamie after he’d cried himself to sleep, but she couldn’t sit among all those strangers whispering condolences to her. She just lay there, watching the shadows move.

  She didn’t even know what they had done with the body.

  “You do realize you’re as good as dead,” Nick said from outside the tent. “With that mark on you. Gerald’s playing with you like a cat with a mouse. He just wants us to think about what happens next. You’re already crippled again.”

  “I don’t mind that,” Alan said gently. “It was you who minded.”

  Nick laughed with a razor edge to it. “Oh, you like being in constant pain.”

  “The leg’s part of who I am by now. It just happened—”

  “Because of me!”

  “Yes,” Alan told him, and Nick was suddenly, terribly silent. “Being your brother is dangerous,” he continued. “It was a risk I took, it was something I chose. I changed myself and the world to keep you. And you were worth it.”

  “And if Gerald kills you,” Nick ground out. “If he does worse.”

  “Then you were still worth it.”

  There was silence then, and no shifting of shadows. Alan didn’t even try to reach out to Nick.

  “You are so stupid,” Nick grated out at last. “I hate you sometimes. I hate you. And I don’t know how to save you!”

  “Shhh,” said Alan. “Don’t wake Mae and Jamie.”

  Nick made a low, awful sound, like the snarl of a nightmare monster, and then his shadow retreated.

  Mae climbed slowly to her feet and emerged from the tent flap into the hot sun.

  “I’m already awake,” she said. “What did they do with the body?”

  Alan, standing like a lone guard by their tent, said, “They’re taking her to Mezentius House.”

  “Why?” Mae asked, prepared to be outraged at anything. “My mother—she wasn’t possessed.”

  “There’s a graveyard there,” Alan told her very softly, as if he was terribly sorry for her. “In case you or Jamie ever want to visit it.”

  “I never will,” said Mae. “Never.”

  They couldn’t report Annabel’s death, though, couldn’t show the police the body of a woman murdered with a sword without all having to face inquiry. The only alternative was tipping Annabel into the river with the rest of the dead. Mae shut her eyes and made a strangled sound, trying to banish that thought, of these people throwing her mother in the river.

  Alan spoke while she had her eyes shut, his voice soothing and terribly sad for her; exactly the right voice. “Okay.”

  It made her mad. Her eyes snapped open.

  “I don’t want to go out with you,” Mae hurled in his concerned face.

  It felt as if there was a live animal scrabbling inside her throat, trying to draw blood. She was terrified she was going to cry.

  She raged instead. “You played me. You asked me out to fool Gerald. You made sure that I wouldn’t say no before the night of the Market. You never intended to betray Nick for an instant. You just wanted me to tell Jamie you were going to do it, so Jamie would tell Gerald and Gerald would believe him because it was coming from the mouth of Alan’s girlfriend. It was a filthy thing to do.”

  Alan turned his face away from her a little. There was a river stretching by the side of the camp, the waters tranquil and gleaming in the dawn light, hovered over by strange dragonflies.

  “I know it was,” Alan said quietly.

  “You couldn’t have trusted me?” Mae whispered.

  “I could have. I didn’t,” Alan whispered back. “It was easier and safer to lie. I’m sorry.”

  He’d probably been sorry the whole time he did it, but he’d still done it, heard what was wrong with Merris and worked out how to use that, got Mae to call up Liannan so he could strike a bargain with her and lie to her about what the bargain was, kissed her and lied, lied and lied and lied.

  “You could have broken my heart,” said Mae. “And you wouldn’t have cared.”

  Alan smiled a crooked, hurt little smile. “I couldn’t have broken your heart,” he told her. “You never liked me enough for that.”

  Of all the girls I ever saw, I dreamed of you the most.

  Mae swallowed and let her eyes slide shut for another moment. “I liked you a lot,” she told him. “I think—I think maybe you could’ve had a chance with me. But you lied.”

  “Thanks for saying so,” Alan said, as if he meant it. And as if he didn’t believe her. He sounded sad, but resigned; he must have grown fairly used to the idea of losing her while he was lying to her.

  Mae opened her eyes again and saw his narrow, pale face, his wonderful twilight eyes, and she reminded herself past the rage and pain that he had taken that mark last night. That at any moment he could be tortured, or possessed, or killed. His whole life hung on a magician’s whim, and he had done it for a child he hardly knew, for a child who belonged to the Ma
rket that hated him as a traitor and a girl who hated him because he was crippled.

  He had lied to her, the girl he’d wanted to love, cold-bloodedly and relentlessly, for weeks. And then he’d done one of the noblest things she had ever seen.

  She could feel the shaking inside her, starting low in her stomach and building, but she wanted to hide it from everyone else. “Alan,” she said. “You are crazy.”

  “See, that’s why I started liking you,” he said gently. “Because you’re so smart.”

  Mae would’ve attempted a smile, but her face felt like it might crack. Alan looked as if he was trying to think of ways to speak to her, to touch her, to make her feel better, and she thought they might work and wanted to run.

  “Mae,” Jamie said tentatively, coming around the tent. “Can I talk to you alone?”

  He looked flushed from sleep and tears, his spiky hair rumpled. He looked about twelve years old. Mae turned to him, as if he could pull her on puppet strings, desperate to do even the smallest thing for him.

  “Of course, I’ll go,” Alan said. “I need to go find a place where Nick and I can talk things out properly. Somewhere on the other end of the meadow, away from people.”

  Jamie smiled a wavering, falling-apart smile. “Or you could take a plane and have a conversation in the middle of the Sahara desert, possibly.”

  “Might be safest,” said Alan. “Jamie, I’m so sorry.”

  “I know,” Jamie said. “Alan, in case of—in case.”

  He hesitated and then went up to Alan and put his arm around his neck, having to go on his tiptoes to hug him because Alan was so tall. Alan did not hesitate for a moment, just put his arms around Jamie and held on.

  “Thanks for everything,” Jamie said at last, detaching and rubbing the back of his hand over his swollen eyes.

  Alan looked at Jamie, puzzled and tender. “Everything’s been my pleasure.”

  Then, being Alan and blessed with enormous tact, he looked at them both once more and just left, heading away from the Goblin Market camp and toward the hawthorn trees spreading broomstick-handle branches against the pale sky.

  “Hey, you,” said Mae, the words sticking in her throat.

  Jamie looked at her, his eyes back to being dark again, being the exact mirror of hers. He reached out and she reached out, fingers curling in together and linked tight, and she wanted to promise him that nothing would ever hurt him again, that she would protect him, that she would always be there, always.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “It’s all my fault. I thought if I went to London, I could help, no matter how strong Celeste’s Circle will be now. I thought I could send word back. I wanted to help. But instead I—I killed—”

  “You didn’t,” Mae said fiercely. “It was me who made the plan. If it hadn’t been for me—”

  “But you had to do it,” said Jamie. “And I—I still have to go to London.”

  Mae felt her fingers clutch his, nails digging into the back of Jamie’s hands.

  “I have to go, Mae,” Jamie insisted to her silence. “Alan’s wearing a mark; we have to know what Gerald’s planning to do to him. Celeste has got too many magicians, and control over Gerald’s marks. She’ll bring the war to us, and we’ll need somebody behind enemy lines. And—and we have to work out a way to bring the Circles down. Did you see some of the magicians? They wanted to surrender. They can’t keep thinking that the Circles are the only way, and killing people until they don’t even remember that it’s wrong. Someone has to do this. And I’m the only one who can. Will you be okay?”

  He looked at her, hanging on to her just as hard as she was hanging on to him and biting his lips, scared and struggling and in pain and still trying to do the right thing. Her Jamie.

  Mae tipped her forehead against his and held on for just a little while longer. “Yeah,” she promised him. “I’ll be okay.”

  They stood like that until Jamie said, “Nick,” and Mae said, “Huh?” and then stepped back as Jamie said, “Nick. Over here. Nick!”

  Nick was striding past the tent, clearly intent on finding Alan again, but at Jamie’s call he checked himself and came striding over to them. Someone had found him a new shirt, as the old one had been ripped in two and soaked in gore, but beneath the clean cotton his whole body looked tense and exhausted.

  “What?” he asked.

  Jamie let go of Mae’s hands with one last, clinging press. “I’m really sorry about this,” he said. “I know that you’re upset about Alan and you don’t know what to say to me about—about anything, and this is the worst time to try and talk to you. But I’m going to the Aventurine Circle so I can help Alan and all of us, because I’m the only one they’d let in. So there isn’t any other time I can talk to you. I just wanted to say that you were a great friend. I’m really glad you asked me. I’m really glad we did that. And you can go find Alan now. You don’t have to say anything at all.”

  Jamie stood a careful distance away from Nick and spoke carefully too, anxiously, trying to get it just right.

  He was seeing these moments as his last chance to get things right, Mae thought, sick and aching. In case he died somewhere in London, among enemies.

  “What?” said Nick, and scowled. “What are you talking about? Don’t be an idiot. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I am,” Jamie told him sturdily.

  “You want revenge for your mother?” Nick asked, and Jamie flinched. One of Nick’s hands closed in a fist and then loosened. He took a breath. “I’ll get it for you,” he said. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen. You don’t have to go anywhere and get your idiot self killed.”

  “Okay, can you pass yourself off as a magician and gain Gerald’s trust and pass us information about Celeste’s plans and save all the magicians who want to be saved?” Jamie asked. “Because if so, awesome. I shall stay here and eat pie.”

  Nick blinked at Jamie. “I was thinking more in terms of killing someone.”

  Jamie’s smile this time was still wavering, but it almost looked real. “I know. But this is something I have to do. So I’m going to go do it. You take care of yourself, Nick.”

  Jamie started to back away and his eyes left Nick, turning back to Mae.

  “Hey,” Nick said abruptly, and tossed something at Jamie’s head.

  Jamie caught it, fumbling it a bit, and then almost dropped it when he saw the rough carvings on the bright handle and worked out what it was.

  “A knife, Nick?” he asked piteously. “I feel so betrayed.”

  “It’s a magic knife,” Nick said. “I made it myself.”

  “I don’t want to seem ungrateful when you have given me this thoughtful, homemade and totally terrifying gift,” Jamie told him. “But you can’t imagine that I’m going to use it.”

  “Just to hold someone off. Just remember what I taught you,” said Nick. “Just buy a little time so I can come get you. Jamie. I’ll come get you.”

  “Nick,” Jamie said. “I know. Thank you for my scary knife.”

  He looked down at the knife, a bit helplessly, and then put it in his pocket. Then he started across the meadow in exactly the opposite direction to Alan, along the side of the river.

  “Also,” Nick added curtly, “I’m sorry about your face.”

  Jamie looked over his shoulder, and touched the demon’s mark crawling along his jaw with the back of his hand. “Sorry about saving all our lives by doing something you had to do?”

  “Oh no,” Nick said blandly. “I just meant, you know. Generally.”

  Jamie stared at him, shocked, and laughed. It was a real laugh, helpless and sweet, and Mae memorized it in case he died. Jamie by the river at dawn, laughing.

  His eyes caught Mae’s and he stopped laughing. His gaze simply held hers.

  You and me against the world. Mae nodded at him, and Jamie turned and walked slowly away down the river. He squared his thin shoulders as he went, and the gesture almost broke Mae’s self-control, but she had
to be standing up and looking all right if he turned around.

  “Don’t leave,” she ordered Nick between her teeth. If Jamie turned around, he would see that she wasn’t alone. She watched Jamie go until even when she squinted against the dazzle of the sunlight on the water he was nothing but a tiny black speck, and then the speck was lost. “Okay,” Mae said at last. It was all over. Jamie was gone. “Okay, you can go now.”

  Nick nodded, his head dipping briefly. His hair was such a dense black it looked dusty in the sunlight, the light glancing off it and forming white around it. The shape the light formed was jagged and nothing like a crown.

  “That woman,” he said. “Helen. I could have killed her on the bridge in London. I didn’t. I thought—it was meant to be a human sort of gesture, sparing your enemies. Showing mercy. I got it wrong. I wish I’d killed her. Then Annabel would be alive instead.”

  Hearing her name was like a blow to a wounded place. Mae wanted to be blind suddenly, to be deaf and dumb and blind so they couldn’t tell her about it and she wouldn’t have to talk about it and she wouldn’t have ever seen it, her mother’s empty eyes staring up into the night sky.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said numbly.

  “No,” said Nick. “But I’d like her to be alive. Not just for you, and Jamie. I’d—I liked her, I think.”

  Annabel, always walking so perfectly in her high heels, her sword flashing in the midnight garden.

  “Just go away,” Mae said, turning away from him, from his face, which was perfect and cold and uncomprehending, always.

  “Mavis,” Nick said, and then stopped.

  Annabel had thought that Mavis, that horrible nightmare of a name, was beautiful. She’d given Mae that name because she thought it was beautiful. Mae’s face felt too tight; her eyes were hot and swimming, and then they were running and her nose was running a bit too.

  “Go away,” she repeated, almost gasping out the words.

  There was only silence, so for a moment she thought he had gone. Then she heard him say, “No,” his voice deep and terribly close.

  Nick put his arms around her. He moved slowly and awkwardly, but once he was done she was wrapped in strong arms, held against his chest. He was big and solid and warm all around her, and she found herself holding on to his shirt, holding tight in both clenched fists as if she was about to start beating on him. She was standing on her tiptoes, but he was taking most of her weight; she was pressing her face against his collarbone. It would be all right to hit him or to shriek or to do anything she liked.