“Where did you go?” Micha asks softly. “These children needed your protection.”
“Where were you,” Ella retorts, “when your charges snuck out from under Leesha’s skirts and crossed the wards? Don’t go tellin’ tales about how this is my fault.” She balls a fist and gets to her feet, ward tattoos glowing fiercely. Her aura becomes a flamework display, hot and violent.
I know Micha sees it as well, but she remains calm, her aura calming even as Ella’s blazes. “This is not a matter of blame, sister. We are on the same side, are we not?”
Ella blinks, noticing her extended fist as if for the first time. It seems to require an act of will, but she uncurls her fingers and her glowing wards fade back into normal tattoos. “These weren’t the only corelings tonight. Scattered a pack of them hunting nightwolves.”
A ripple passes through Micha’s aura. “A diversion to draw you away?”
“Thought the same thing,” Ella agrees, “but ent seen anythin’ like that in…”
“Fifteen years,” Micha finishes. “You must skate to the capital immediately and inform Mistress Leesha.”
Ella shakes her head. “Mrs. Bales will decide what’s to be done. But first, I need to hunt the rest of those demons. Meantime, you escort these kids home.”
Micha opens her mouth to argue, but Ella fades to mist and is gone.
* * *
—
“Selen, Oskar, and Lanna,” Micha calls. “Patrol the camp perimeter, but stay inside the wards. The rest of you start making litters for the wounded. It will be a long journey back to Pumpforge with so many to carry.”
“What about me?” I ask, as the others hurry to comply.
“You, I am not letting out of my sight,” Micha says. “Wash your hands. We have work to do.”
I fetch my canteen and a bar of soap, cleaning my filthy, bloody hands. When I return, Micha is kneeling over Tam. He bites on a stick, tears streaming from his eyes, as Micha slowly pushes his intestines back into his abdomen. I retch at the sight, slapping a hand to my mouth.
“Tsst!” Micha hisses. “It is only wind, sister. Bend as the palm and let it blow over you. There is no time for coddling.”
I’ve never seen a palm, but I know the mantra well enough, a Krasian concentration technique I’ve been taught since birth. I swallow back the vomit in my throat and force myself to look back at the wound with calm detachment. I’ve trained for this, assisted surgeries in the hospit, but the patients were strangers, and asleep, not sobbing friends staring at their own intestines when they should be dancing and kissing under the stars.
For the remainder of the night I assist as Micha, whom I’ve never seen bind so much as a paper cut, performs surgery on demon wounds with the skill of an Herb Gatherer. She stitches where she can, and amputates where she cannot, working with the calm of a chef at the carving board. Tears run down my cheeks as I pin her screaming, thrashing patients.
At last the work is done. Six dead and seven wounded, four of them unable to walk. Micha wipes her hands clean. “Rest while you can, little sister. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
“We won’t make it back to Pumpforge before dusk with four litters to pull,” I say.
“No,” Micha agrees. The survivors huddle around the firepit, but she walks to the far end of the camp, kneeling beside one of the great wardstones and closing her eyes.
I follow her. “Let me run ahead. I can bring back help.”
Micha shakes her head, still facing away from me, eyes closed. Her voice approaches serenity, but I can sense an edge to it. “No. Selen will go.”
“I’m faster,” I argue. “Stronger. You know I am. I should take the risk.”
Micha cracks an eye to look at me. “You are the risk.”
I know the wise course is to leave her be, but we would not be in this position if I had followed the wise course. There is something festering between us, and it needs to be lanced. “What does that mean?”
“Do you think it coincidence,” Micha asks, “that the first tour in over a decade to see a demon is the one you snuck off to join?”
My face goes cold. I shiver, though there is no breeze. “They came…because of me?” It makes no sense.
“Of course they came for you!” Micha snaps. “Fifteen years I have protected you, only to have you break my trust and run off into the night, drawing alagai like birds to a crust of bread.”
The words sting—doubly so because I worry she is right—but the pain does not make me recoil as it should. Not coming from her. “Trust? What trust did we have, ‘sister’? Everything I know about you is a lie. Night, are you even really my sister, or is that one more thing I simply took for granted?”
She turns to face me fully now. Rolling back off her knees to squat, coiled like a snake. “I am the second-born daughter of Ahmann Jardir, Shar’Dama Ka and ruler of all Krasia.” She rises, taking a step toward me, and I can’t help but take one back. “My mother, Thalaja, was a lesser wife, so at nine years old I was taken from my family and given to a merciless drillmaster, sent to live in the underpalace.”
She reaches into her robe, pulling free an object she throws at me. Instinctively I catch it. My vial of sleeping potion.
“For a year, Drillmaster Enkido poisoned our food at random to teach us to recognize the taste. If we could guess the poison, we were given the antidote. If we were wrong, or failed to notice at all, we were left to suffer the effects. If we guessed poison and there was none, we were beaten.”
She continues to advance, and it’s all I can do not to keep backing away. “There were five of us, then. Spear sisters. Now my cousin Ashia wears the white turban of Sharum’ting Ka. My cousin Jarvah is bodyguard to the Damajah, herself. My cousins Sikvah and Shanvah died with glory unbound, saving countless lives in Sharak Ka.”
I know the names. The Sharum’ting were the elite female warriors of Krasia, and their exploits during the demon war are immortalized in histories taught throughout the duchy. I hold my ground, but I feel as if I am shrinking as Micha comes to stand nose-to-nose with me.
“And what of my service? My deeds were no less glorious. A demon prince fell to my spear! Yet where my sisters are known throughout the land, I was given a veil and fifteen years of brushing the hair of an ungrateful brat who has no idea how many times death has come for her.”
I stumble back at last, reeling at the thought. What was she talking about? What came for me? “Times? This has happened before?”
Micha’s eyes flick to the others in the camp. More than one is watching us, even if they cannot hear our words. “We are in the wilds, far from home, sister. We will have a reckoning, you and I, but for now, you will obey.”
8
THE FAMILY BUSINESS
“Easy now, Darin,” Hary says. “You want to lure him out, not rile him up.”
My lips are dry as they dance across the pipes, but I’m too nervous to wet them. I can hear the coreling coming, smell its stink, but even with my night eyes I can’t spot it in the thick trees.
Hary Roller sits on a log in the center of the clearing, keeping a steady accompaniment on his cello. The Master Jongleur is calm, confident, but it’s all I can do to keep my hands from shaking as I call to a demon with my pipes.
The mournful tune we’re playing is a spell, of sorts. Magic responds to emotion, and nothing stirs emotion like music. My playing is a story, telling the demon I am prey, vulnerable, but quick. I tell it to creep quietly close to take me by surprise.
I don’t want any of this, if I’m to tell honest word. It should be the militia hunting the demon, or even Mam. Night, this is Bales’ land. Why aren’t Grandda and my uncles out here with the hands?
But in the Brook, getting rid of lone Wanderers has become just another chore no one else wants to do, like filling the egg basket and milking the cows. My da was famous for kill
ing demons. Everyone expects I will be, too, once I’ve had a little practice.
“Careful, now.” Aunt Selia hovers protectively nearby in full armor, shield in hand and spear at the ready. Her long gray hair is pulled into a tight bun visible at the base of her helmet as she scans the trees around us and the branches above. “Don’t see them till they strike, sometimes.”
Fear sweat breaks out above my mouth to mock the dryness of my lips. I don’t want to be here. I’d rather be playing my pipes down by the swimming hole, or even weeding the fields. Night, I’d rather read a book. Anything but sitting in the dark trying to call a demon.
But this is what folk expect of the Deliverer’s son. They know I have a bit of magic, and want me to use it like my da did, keeping folk safe from corelings. But my magic doesn’t work like his did, or Mam’s. Despite lessons from as far back as I can remember, I’m no great Warder and I don’t like to fight. I can’t turn into mist, lift a hay wagon over my head. The only thing I’ve ever really been good at is playing my pipes.
I thought that would be enough to let folk know I wasn’t my da, but Mam wasn’t satisfied with jaunty tunes. She skated to Hollow and asked Hary Roller, a Master Jongleur, to come all the way to the Brook to teach me to charm corelings.
When your da saves the world, it can cling to you like a skunk’s stink.
A rumbling builds in the boughs overhead, resonating with my playing. I stiffen as the wood demon appears, crawling down the trunk of a thick tree like a possum. Its corded arms are long and sinuous, small body armored in the same rough texture and color as the tree bark.
Hary is not impressed. “Lot of work to lure a coreling that’s more stump than tree.”
“Don’t get swollen,” Selia warns. “Give it half a chance and even a stump demon’s strong enough to rip any of us in two.”
She’s right. I can see the coreling’s magic shining in the night. Sweat forms on my fingers, making them slippery on the pipes, but my wind is steady as I continue to draw the demon closer.
It can no more see me than I could see it a few minutes ago. Around my shoulders is Mam’s Cloak of Unsight. Its wards bend the flow of magic around me, making me invisible to demon eyes. Selia and Hary are similarly protected.
But a demon’s senses are as keen as mine. It can smell us in the air. Hear our breath, the creak of Selia’s armor, Hary’s murmured instructions. It knows we’re here, somewhere.
Cautiously, it creeps closer. In moments, I will be in range of its talons. I begin thinking less about the pipes and more about the short bow slung across my back. If I took it off my shoulder now, I’d probably have enough time to shoot the demon before it recovered its wits.
Probably.
Aunt Selia raises her spear, armor creaking as she tightens her grip.
“Not yet, Selia. Give the boy time to practice.” Hary’s playing gets louder, giving lie to his confidence. He’s ready to take over the moment I stumble. I sniff the air, catching his worried scent. Night, he expects me to stumble.
Nose like a hound, Mam says. Just one on a long list of ways I’m different from other folk. I wonder what it’s like for everyone else, unable to smell what the people around them are feeling, where they’ve been, or what they’ve been doing.
The way folk tell it, by the time my da was my age, he’d have picked this demon up like a hen that stopped laying and broken its neck. Me, they expect to lose nerve.
I suck in a quick breath and quicken the tempo, instilling in the demon a sense that its prey might flee. It approaches more aggressively now, seeking the source as I stand and walk it around the small clearing until it has its back to Selia and her spear. So fixed on my music, the demon pays her no mind.
With a flourish I stop playing and throw back my cloak. The stump demon’s eyes widen and it bares rows of sharp teeth, tamping its muscles to spring.
Selia is quicker, thrusting her spear with two hands into the coreling’s back. Wards on the blade flare as it punches through the demon’s armor, severing its spine. The demon gives a thrash and falls to the ground, twitching.
“Stupid and reckless boy.” Selia pulls her spear free in a spray of ichor. “What if I missed?”
I try not to think about that. “You never miss.”
“Everyone misses now and then,” Selia says, but I catch a whiff of pleasure on her scent as she kicks the demon onto its back. It stares at her with glossy black eyes. “Ent dead. We leave it be, coreling will heal even a wound like this in a few minutes.”
I nod, taking the bow off my shoulder as she prepares a killing blow.
A growl from above checks her. I’ve got an arrow strung before anyone moves, but the boughs hide the source as the sound echoes from tree to tree. Is it a single demon moving, or…
“Ent hunters anymore.” Selia buries her spear in the stump demon’s eye, twisting to scramble its brains. The wards on the weapon brighten and I can see the power running along the shaft into her hands and up her arms, filling her with strength. She rolls her rounded shield off her shoulder and onto her thick arm. “We’re prey.”
My hands start to shake, jostling the arrow I have nocked. I take a deep breath and will them into stillness, but I can hear what Hary and Selia cannot.
We’re surrounded.
Hary puts bow back to string, and his cello hums to life. The metal spike that grounds the instrument is silver, infused with demonbone and etched with wards of resonance that amplify his playing. It’s said Hary Roller can charm a whole copse of wood demons, but before he can build a melody, he’s interrupted by a loud crack.
A huge bough drops from the trees above, branches spread wide like a net. He reacts quickly, but while nimble for his years, Hary carries the weight of eighty-three winters, and cellos ent suited to hurry. He stumbles, the instrument flying from his hand as he falls.
I don’t have the kind of magic my da had. I can’t fly or destroy demons with a wave of my hand. I can’t cleanse the land of their taint for a hundred miles in every direction. Mam says it’s because I haven’t learned to control my magic, but I think it just came differently to me than it did to her and Da. They got their power from warding their flesh and eating demon meat. I was born with mine.
But I’m fast. Faster than a skittish doe, Mam says. Hary has just begun his fall when I catch him, hauling him away from the falling bough. We’re buffeted by small leaves and branches, but make it out relatively unscathed.
Selia rushes to my side, covering us with her shield. “Get behind me. Cloaks up.”
The words are calm. Efficient. There is no fear in her demeanor, but I can smell it in her sudden sweat.
I throw up the hood of my warded cloak and turn to Hary, only to see his cloak hanging in tatters from the fallen branches.
Two wood demons drop from the trees to stand at opposite sides of us. These are much larger than the stump demon that lured us here—eight feet tall, with thick gnarled armor and long, branchlike limbs. They lumber at us like Solstice trees come to life.
Aunt Selia and I put Hary between us. I raise my short bow and fire. The shot sparks as it punches into a woodie’s shoulder, but the demon only roars and picks up speed. The other coreling lunges for Selia. Like a thunderbolt, the wards on her shield blaze to life as she catches the blow.
I fire again as the demon moves in on us, but I’m scared, and my sweaty fingers let loose too quickly. The shot flies wide, but the demon, perhaps remembering the sting of the previous one, flinches anyway. It stumbles and for a moment I have a clear shot at its head. I fire, but its horns are a nest of twisted branches that steal the arrow’s momentum, catching it fast before it can penetrate the skull.
As I fumble to nock another arrow, the coreling recovers and swipes the bow from my hands, sending it flying across the clearing. I know I should run as it rears back for a killing blow, but Hary is behind me,
defenseless.
Or so I think, but then Hary throws a warded knife, embedding it in the wood demon’s throat. It stumbles away, choking and clawing at the blade, but the wards on the handle prevent the coreling from pulling it free. I don’t think it’s a killing blow, but the creature is out of the fight. I unfasten my warded cloak and give it to the old man to replace the one he lost in the boughs.
There are booms and flashes of magic as Selia and the other wood demon exchange blows, but I’ve seen this before. For a moment or two they will seem evenly matched, and then Selia will figure out its weakness and the fight will end suddenly.
I think we have a chance, until another two wood demons appear at the edge of the clearing. Farther back, I glimpse more in the trees. I’m so fixated, I don’t notice the field demon in the branches above me until it drops.
Fieldies are sleek and flexible, built like two-hundred-pound barn cats. They’re designed to race across open plain, but they climb nearly as well as wood demons. I look up, seeing little more than a mass of teeth and claws fast approaching.
I shriek and quickstep out of the way. The field demon hits the ground with a bounce, coming right at me.
I’m fast, but not faster than a field demon, and I’ve never been particularly strong. The demon outweighs me by at least fifty pounds, but I’ve always been…slippery. I can’t dissipate into mist like Mam or the Warded Children. I can’t melt into the ground like a coreling fleeing the morning sun. But I can relax, squeezing bonelessly into spaces too small for me, like a mouse pressing through a tiny crack under the door. When I do, my skin and clothes turn frictionless, making it near impossible to get a grip on me.
The demon knocks me from my feet, but I melt away from its scrabbling claws, rolling around in the dirt until I am on its back, hooking my legs over its thighs and wrapping my arms around its throat.
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