No Earthly Treason

by Genevra Black

  She opened the fridge and carefully unwrapped the huge Atlantic salmon on the top shelf. Edie and Cal went down to the fisherman’s market at the marina every afternoon and bought whatever hadn’t sold during the morning. Thankfully, he paid for all the fish.

  Edie couldn’t help but wonder where he got the money, but she was glad he had it. Keeping a seven-foot marine animal fed was a pricey task, and she and Mercy were racking up debt that Edie knew they had no hope of ever paying back. Mercy’s parents had helped where they could, but she still didn’t want to dip into the band fund. Unfortunately, neither of them was in much of a position to go out and apply for jobs.

  She grabbed a cutting board from the cabinet and flopped the fish down on it. A couple of months ago, she’d had trouble with tuna from a can, but now she could butcher fresh fare with the best of them. Fisk preferred to eat it whole while it was still wiggling and bleeding, but he was still in her bathtub, so he was going to eat raw fish in chunks like a respectable gentleman. She grabbed a cleaver from the knife rack and chopped the giant fish into four pieces, then scraped them into a bowl. Fine dining.

  The kettle screeched, and Edie poured the boiling water into the mug, then packed her skull-shaped tea infuser—“Creepy Steepy,” as Mercy called him—with tea leaves.

  The television was on in the living room, repeating the morning news. Something about another riot, this time on the south side of the city. A bunch of prisoners had been broken out of jail by a mob. Edie didn’t have to look at the photos flashing across the screen to know who had done it.

  The New Gloaming takeover had been absolute. Astrid said Sárr had probably been planting his people for a long time, slowly replacing key Gloaming officials, so that when he began his “culling,” it would happen virtually overnight. And it had worked. The New Gloaming was the only Gloaming now.

  Now it made sense why no one had heard of the Wounded: he’d done it on purpose. If you had no idea something was coming, you couldn’t prepare for it.

  His people ruled the night. Instead of hiding, they walked the streets brazenly—so much so that even the unattuned were taking notice. Agents that Astrid and Satara called Watchers patrolled the streets everywhere. Attacks and murders in Anster had risen drastically, and the police did nothing but clean up after them. Between these Watchers and the Aurora still hunting her, going outside for long periods of time had proven dangerous for Edie and her friends.

  Maybe it was for the best that Edie didn’t have a job. No way would she be able to survive an eight-hour shift somewhere.

  She checked the tea, added sugar, then carried it and Fisk’s breakfast down the hall.

  When Edie entered the bathroom, Mercy was sitting on the edge of the tub, her crutches leaning against the nearest wall. She was looking over Fisk’s shoulder, petting his spines as he tried to sound out the words of his soggy copy of One Fish, Two Fish. Fisk himself was a considerably duller shade of turquoise than he had been, his gills sallow.

  “This is the language of bastards,” he said, looking wearily at his book as Edie approached. “The mouth-words sound similar to the Old Tongue, but the look-words are too round.”

  Edie smiled. “You’re doing good, though.”

  “I knew a little before….” He trailed off, offering no further explanation before slamming the book shut and setting it aside. He eyed the bowl in Edie’s hand.

  She handed Mercy and Fisk their respective items and placed her hands on her hips. “Remember to keep it all in the bowl this time, okay? No one wants fish bones and guts clogging up the drains.”

  The vættr had already swallowed one of the pieces whole, and didn’t seem to be listening.

  After taking a sip of her tea, Mercy hummed and asked, “Have you heard from Satara yet today?”

  Edie sighed and took this opportunity to finally have her morning pee. She sat across from Mercy and fiddled with her raven ponytail as she took care of business. “Not yet.”

  Since it had become apparent that Edie needed to step up her game, she and Satara had been hitting the gym every few days, venturing out for a couple hours at a time. They’d gotten to know each other much better. Edie knew Satara and Astrid were trying to figure out where the Wounded had come from and what his next move was, but Satara hadn’t mentioned any sort of breakthrough. Their unsuccessful hunt was probably exactly what Sárr had wanted.

  “All those assholes did, besides kill people, was grandstand and make lofty speeches,” Mercy said, rolling her eyes. “It’s hard to believe that they’re subtle enough to not leave any sort of clues.”

  “That’s probably true for Zaedicus. But I think Sárr was just giving people what they wanted.” Edie flushed, but remained sitting on the toilet, lost in thought. “Or maybe we’re not looking in the right places.”

  “Whoever’s funding them probably has some strong feelings about what they should be doing with the money. So if you find those people, you find their driving force. And their plan, hopefully.”

  Edie considered that. “Satara said they’re cleaning out the coffers of all the ousted Gloaming Lords. They’re making a ton of noise about it. So they might not need crazy-rich supporters now. But you’re right, they will eventually.”

  Fisk swallowed the fish head whole and asked, “Do you two always bond while relieving yourselves?”

  Mercy smiled and patted his head. “It’s a human thing.”

  The vættr thought for a moment, then made a face, gills flaring.

  A series of thumps on the apartment door drew Edie from her reverie, and she stood and pulled up her leggings.

  Mercy’s brows drew together as she asked Edie, “Who is it?” She had expressed some nervousness about letting anyone into the house, which made sense, but the apartment was a safe place for now. Fisk wouldn’t let anything happen to her, and Edie only unlocked the door for Cal or Satara.

  And considering it was almost time for his morning visit…. “Probably Cal. I bet his hands are full. I’ll go get it.”

  She exited the bathroom and closed the door softly behind her. Poor Fisk. But what could they do? He refused to return to Maine, and insisted on being close to them, especially Mercy. There was probably someone in the city they could contact, someone who could heal him or give him the right minerals or something … that’d be a good thing to ask Astrid or Satara.

  Edie went to the apartment door and stood on her toes to look out of the peephole. Cal was on the other side, staring right at her with a sour expression on his gnarled face. Not in a good mood, then. She’d tell him to smile, but he didn’t look any better when he did that.

  When they’d first met each other—after he’d tried to kill her, that is—she’d learned she was the only one who could effortlessly see through his glamour, and he wasn’t pretty underneath. Because of charms her father had put on him years ago, when he’d raised him from the grave, the revenant would always be frozen in a state of pretty grisly decomposition.

  Mostly, it didn’t bother her. He wasn’t gooey or decaying, and he didn’t smell rotten. Still, it was pretty menacing to see that face glaring at you.

  She unlatched the chain and flipped the lock. The moment there was enough room for him to squeeze past her, he did. He was dressed in light wash jeans, a matching jacket, and a flannel. It had been an unseasonably cold summer so far, and even though the temperature only bothered him on a superficial level, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself by being that guy walking around in a T-shirt when it was freezing outside.

  In one hand, he held four or five shopping bags; with the other, he shoved a new smartphone into her hands.

  “I hate this fucking thing,” he snapped, setting the bags on the coffee table in the living room before turning and thrusting a finger at the phone. “There’s too much shit on it. I can’t find anything.”

  Edie couldn’t help but smile. For a while, she’d found his abrasiveness exhausting, always assuming it was her fault he was such a crab-ass. But nope. That
was just how he was, and generally, he didn’t mean anything by it.

  “You don’t have to use the things you don’t need,” she said. “I can make it so all your important apps are in one place. So you don’t have to click around?”

  “I guess.” He grunted and planted his hands on his waist. “It makes me feel like a fuckin’ old man.”

  “You are an old man.” Edie approached and set his phone down on one of the side tables, then looked at his bags. “Anything good?”

  Cal turned and started to take things out, piling them in her arms as he listed them off: “Bucket of aquarium salt, medicine for Her Highness, and”—he handed her a Styrofoam takeout box—“lunch for you.”

  Edie set the five-gallon bucket aside and looked at the paper bag that contained Mercy’s medicine first. Inside was a tin of ointment about the size of Edie’s palm, wrapped in wax paper with a little tag stuck to it. Crushed brunnmigi teeth & knitbone salve.

  Knitbone was fairly straightforward, but she’d been meaning to ask about the other thing. “What is a brunnmigi, anyway?”

  Cal snorted. “Technically, it can mean fox, but in this context? Basically a little goblin who goes around pissing in wells.”

  She made a face and lifted the takeout box. “And this?”

  “Quesadilla from that terrible hipster place you like.” Before she could ask, he said, “Mango salsa inside, not on the side.”

  Edie raised a brow at him. A couple weeks ago, Cal had taught her how to control their mental connection and put a wall between their minds. She had been able to erect a good, sturdy one, but still wasn’t great at letting it come down. Now they were stuck in a weird place where she could still feel some of his emotions, but he couldn’t feel any of hers. He said she’d get more fluid with it, but at this point, it seemed like they barely needed their connection—he still finished her sentences half the time.

  The revenant might have a hard shell, but he sure did a lot of nice things for her without being prompted. Especially lately. Whenever she asked him about it, or took issue with him running errands or paying for her groceries, he acted all dodgy and guilty. She didn’t understand why. It wasn’t like it was his fault she was struggling, right? And she didn’t want to use up all his money.

  “I figured you hadn’t eaten anything yet,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. He tossed his head in the direction of the bathroom. “What with having to take care of them.”

  “I don’t have to take care of Mercy. I want to. I like to.” It was true—and no matter what Mercy said, it was the least Edie could do. She set her quesadilla aside for now, gesturing to the other bags and hoping to change the subject. “What else?”

  He’d only picked up a few groceries and other odds and ends, but she brought them into the kitchen and began helping him unpack.

  “You heard anything from the Norn yet?” he asked, elbows deep in the top shelf of the cabinets. “Indri-whatever?”

  Edie sighed. “No.”

  “Astrid’s been buggin’ me about it.”

  She hesitated. “There’s nothing I can do until she contacts me again. Besides, she didn’t want to talk to Astrid, she wanted to talk to me.”

  “I mean, if she’s gonna join up, she’s gonna have to face Astrid at some point,” Cal said, stacking pasta boxes with alarming speed. “That oughta be a catfight to remember. ‘You sent my boyfriend to Valhalla, you bitch!’”

  Edie rolled her eyes. Indriði had abandoned the Reach because she’d had a “fixation”—that was the word Astrid had used—with a soldier whom Fate had chosen to fall on the battlefield. A soldier whose soul Astrid had to collect. “Yeah, somehow I don’t think an ancient spirit of Fate and a millennium-old valkyrie are going to have a catfight, Cal.”

  “Whatever.” He opened a container from the fridge and sniffed it, then chucked it, Tupperware and all, into the trash. “The lady said she wanted to see you, so she better contact us soon. It’s been over two months.”

  Edie sighed, glancing over the kitchen counter and out the living room window. The sunlight was pale and weak, barely peeking through an iron cloud cover. The buds on the trees surrounding the playground across the street had bloomed in the spring, but had died quicker and younger than usual. She was sure a soul-burning heatwave would turn the tides any day now, as they tended to do lately. Of course, on top of everything, she still had to worry about freaking climate change.

  “Cal?” She turned to look at him.

  He was putting stuff in the freezer and didn’t look back at her. “Hm?”

  “Astrid still hasn’t found anyone who can teach me how to use my powers.” After a pause, “I’m starting to think she’s not going to be able to.”

  He was silent.

  Edie took a deep breath. “But you seemed to know what to do, when I had to help Mercy. Right?”

  He still said nothing.

  “I was thinking—”

  A strange noise cut her off—a faint shriek, as though some passing car had a loose fan belt. Then there was a strangely weighty thud against the living room window, like someone had thrown a small child.

  What the hell? Edie whipped her head around just in time to see a pug-sized, fuzzy, blue—

  —spider.

  Chapter Three

  Edie screamed, and wasn’t sure she’d ever stop screaming, as she watched the thing—literally the size of a full-grown pug—struggling for purchase against the windowpanes, its eight little feet working hard to keep it from falling into the shrubs.

  In a flash, Mercy and Fisk were out of the bathroom, and Cal was by Edie’s side, staring into the living room. Out of the corner of her eye, Edie could see Mercy start to ask her what was wrong.

  Then Mercy spotted the spider and let out a shriek of her own. “What the hell is that thing?!”

  The horror only escalated when the spider managed to find steady footing and carefully moved two sets of its hind legs along the windowsill. Before any of them could process what was happening and rush out there to stop it, it had wedged its feet under the bottom and opened the window.

  With the tips of its feet, it oh-so-delicately touched the bottom and the side jamb to make sure the window wouldn’t close on it, then slipped into the apartment. It was a streak of cobalt as it hopped up onto the coffee table.

  Then, unexpectedly, it hunkered down and chilled there.

  Though she felt like she could probably go on screaming for a thousand thousand years, Edie was able to stifle her screams and stand, frozen, staring at the unwanted visitor.

  It stared back at her, its tiny eyes glinting in the weak sunlight. It sat there like it was expecting something.

  “Well.” Cal put his hands on his waist and tilted his head. “You don’t see that every day.”

  Mercy stared at the spider for a long time, then looked at Edie, perplexed. “I … I think it’s waiting for you to say hello.”

  Edie grimaced. Of course the horrifying giant spider wanted to talk to her, specifically, because why wouldn’t it?

  She didn’t mind spiders too much. She wasn’t scared of them, really, and some were even beautiful. But she liked them over there, away from her. And not nearly as huge.

  Should she even risk getting close to it? She glanced at the others for reassurance. Cal shook his head; Mercy looked wary. Fisk was nodding in enthusiastic encouragement.

  It seemed she didn’t have much choice. She couldn’t just let it sit there and go about her day.

  Edie exited the right-hand entryway of the kitchen and moved into the living room as slowly as she could, afraid that quick movement would frighten the spider into jumping at her. It didn’t, though; the spider only shifted slightly to face her and sat patiently, rubbing its third set of legs against its abdomen.

  Now that she was closer and not quite so horrified, she couldn’t help but notice what a lovely color it was. Its sternum and back legs were a light cobalt, but the two front sets of legs were a glossy sapphire that almost
seemed to twinkle. Its abdomen was covered in fiery orange fuzz.

  What did you even say to a spider? Edie fumbled for a moment before trying, “Hello?”

  To her great surprise, it raised one of its pedipalps—the tiny not-quite-legs near its fangs—and waved.

  The room fell silent. After a long moment, Edie asked, “Did you just … wave hello?”

  The spider did it again.

  She couldn’t help but smile. It was huge and horrifying, but it was clearly friendly—or at least well-trained—so there was that. She still wasn’t gonna get any closer, though. “Well, aren’t you smart?”

  It covered its fangs with its pedipalps like it was hiding its face bashfully.

  “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  Dutifully, the spider turned around and reached under itself with its third legs. It produced a small object that Edie hadn’t noticed was fastened to it before, shaped like an acorn and made of brass. The spider turned and flipped the top open with its foot, producing a tiny piece of paper. It used its front feet to slide the paper across the coffee table, toward Edie, then stepped back and hunkered patiently down again.

  “Uh … it has a note,” she said, looking back at her friends.

  Mercy tilted her head, eyes wide. “Huh!”

  Edie desperately wanted to know what it said, but it would require her moving even closer to the giant spider. And though the spider seemed very nice, she didn’t feel like taking her chances. “Cal, go read it.”

  The revenant didn’t say anything. He simply threw his hands up in defeat before exiting the kitchen and grumpily grabbing the note. He read it slowly, mouthing the words. When he finished, his face twisted as he turned it over, then turned it back and scanned it again.

  Edie’s brow furrowed. “Who is it from?”

  He exhaled hard through his nose hole and flipped it over so she could see. It was written in fancy, feminine script and signed with one name: