“She’s got spirit,” the satyr gasped, still grinning. “I like that. A spirited mare always gives the best ride.”
Neila started in for a second round, but Salim put out a hand and stopped her.
“I think he’s telling the truth about the kidnapping,” he said. “The fey weren’t involved. It doesn’t make sense.”
Neila looked irritated, but didn’t try to go around his arm. “Very well,” she said. “Then we’ll simply take him back to Lamasara and turn him over to the authorities for arson and attempted murder.”
“No.”
Neila whirled, staring at Salim. Delini looked up with new interest as well.
“What did you say?” Her voice was the cold, furious disbelief that only a child of privilege can master.
“I said ‘no,’” Salim repeated. “The fey had nothing to do with your father’s death, which is all I’m interested in. Your petty land squabbles are none of my concern, or the church’s.”
“But he burned my house!” Her body shook with barely restrained rage.
“As you did to them, from the sound of it.” Salim’s voice was calm and collected. “The trees you cleared for your manor were their home, and you burned that to put in your fields. I’d call that even.”
“He attacked us!” An accusatory finger.
Salim thought back to the dying dryad, the pixie he’d cut almost in half. If he recalled correctly, pixie arrows induced sleep, not death. And the nymph had only blinded with her beauty.
“They weren’t fighting to kill,” he said slowly. “We were. And we did.” He wiped his sword tip on the hem of his robes, then sheathed it. “Leave it be.”
He turned back to the satyr, who was again grinning the rakish smile that seemed to be a permanent part of his face. He was clearly enjoying the exchange.
“You’re even now,” Salim repeated. “Don’t press it. Next time, there will be no such clemency.”
Delini bobbed his head. “Of course.” He turned to Neila. “And if you should ever find your noble existence feeling hollow and empty, Lady Anvanory,” he said formally, “my offer remains firm, and will continue to stand.” He waggled his eyebrows and swept one arm low in a courtly bow, then turned and bounded off into the bushes like the goat he resembled.
Next to Salim, Neila was making a growling sound low in her throat, narrowed eyes following the retreating satyr. She ceased when she saw Salim looking at her, but said nothing, fixing him with much the same expression. Unperturbed, Salim turned and began to retrace their footsteps north, back toward the house. After a moment, Neila joined him.
They walked in silence for a long time, and when Neila finally broke it, her voice was forcibly light and controlled, as if nothing had happened.
“How did you catch him?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anyone run like that in my life. You took off like an arrow from a bow—like you’d been drawn back, and then suddenly let go.”
That sounded uncomfortably close to the truth. Salim shrugged and pressed forward, drawing aside a springy branch to let her pass.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Come on. Truce or no truce, we don’t want to be in these woods after dark. And your house is still on fire.”
Chapter Seven
Leavetaking
By the time Salim and Neila returned, the fires had been successfully put out, though portions of the great house still smoldered. Without Delini’s pipes to rally them and call the tune of their grisly dance, the fey had quickly faded away into the fields, leaving only their dead to fertilize the soil of the manor’s grounds. Several of the farmhands, drunk on rage and victory, requested permission to pursue the attackers into their forest, but Neila didn’t even look at Salim before denying them. In truth, most of the men looked relieved not to be taken up on their offers. Even in their bolstered state, they knew better than to challenge the fey in their own woods. After instructing the senior house staff to post guards and care for the wounded, Neila bid Salim goodnight, leaving him to retire to his own bed, where he quickly fell into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
He woke the next morning to a flurry of activity, the sounds of wood and steel clinking and men calling to one another. He went to the window and pulled aside the diaphanous hanging to reveal a sun already free of the horizon. At first he was surprised to have slept so late, and then the aches of his wrestling match with Delini woke as well, and he put his arms over his head, twisting to loosen a back that was mostly bruise. No doubt his body was working overtime trying to repair the damage of fists and tree roots, blood swirling under the skin to create black and green contusions.
Outside, a team of men led by Olar was busy using hammers and chisels to scour or tear out charred patches of the house’s walls, replacing them with fresh lumber and sand-colored mortar mixed in big tubs. Beyond them, armed guards—the same stable boys and footmen who had fought the previous evening, now outfitted with bows and swords—stood at regular intervals around the house, scanning fields bereft of laborers. Aside from a few rusty patches of soil, there were no signs of the dead fey.
Salim turned and made his way out of the room and down the hall. He smelled the campfire scent of smoke as soon as he opened the bedchamber’s door, but it remained faint as he traversed the house. Clearly the fey’s firebombing had been more symbolic than effective—no amount of cleaning short of magic could draw the smoke smell from the air and walls that quickly if there had been any real blaze. Likely the fairies had known that when they attacked, seeking to set fire to the Anvanory’s expensive possessions rather than actually torching the manor. Or maybe they simply misjudged how difficult it was to set fire to a primarily clay-brick building.
He found Neila in the foyer, speaking with her majordomo. Salim waited quietly while they finished, then the servant bowed and backed away, and Neila turned to him.
“How bad?” he asked.
“Surprisingly little damage,” she said. “A few of their flaming pitch balls made it through windows and cost us several tapestries and divans, and there’s some superficial scarring to the wooden trim on the eastern edge of the house, but nothing a few days of work can’t repair. The longest part will be sufficiently airing out those rooms...I’ve already sent a housemaid after jasmine and lavender.”
Trust a noble to think of her possessions first. “And the wounded?”
Neila waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal that was already becoming familiar.
“Four blinded, three more seriously injured, all sent to the cathedral to be healed. The rest are minor cuts and scrapes.”
No deaths—that was good. “And the fey?”
Neila snorted. “Their wounded crept away, but my men accounted for at least half a dozen of them. It’ll be a long time before they think to take up arms against civilized folk again, truce or no truce.”
“What about the corpses?”
The wave again. “The men asked for permission to string them up along the edges of the forest.” She spoke lightly, looking off toward the front door where several servants were returning from town. “As a reminder and a warning.”
Salim said nothing. She waited, then sighed.
“But,” she said, meeting his eyes, “I told them to bury the creatures properly at the forest’s edge, with as much respect as they could muster. Do you approve?”
He nodded. “You do your station credit, Lady.”
She looked at him shrewdly to see if he was mocking her, but his compliment was genuine.
“In any case,” she said, brushing her hands together. “The servants know their duties, and we have little enough time. We’ve exhausted the obvious leads, and neither the Lamasaran Guard nor the church appears to be able to offer anything better. What comes next?”
Now it was Salim’s turn to sigh. Reaching into the fold of his robes, he brought out a circular amulet twice the size of his thumbnail and let it thud softly against his chest, hanging pendulous from a rawhide thong around his neck.
> “This, unfortunately.”
Neila leaned forward with interest, craning her neck for a better look. Against the pure, midnight black of the stone, Salim’s robes looked almost gray. In the amulet’s smooth-polished center, a spiral of indefinable color shimmered. From the way Neila moved her head back and forth, Salim could tell that she was having trouble fixing the iridescent spiral in place, the engraving seeming to constantly twist and lose focus.
“What is it?” she breathed.
“A doorway,” he answered. “Or rather, an infinite number of doorways. A passage to the eternal vastness of the planes, and all the strangeness therein.”
She looked up at him sharply. “The planes? You mean—Elysium? Nirvana?” She paused, then whispered, “Hell?”
“Among others.”
“I don’t understand.” She was still bent forward, drawn toward the stone. He reached up and slipped it back inside his robe.
“We know that your father’s soul made it as far as the Boneyard before it was taken,” he said. “The church’s auguries have told us that much. As we’ve exhausted all our avenues of inquiry on this end, the only reasonable course of action is to begin at the other, examining the place where he was last seen.”
“You mean to travel to the Boneyard.” Her voice was flat, bordering on disbelief. “The land of the dead.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time. Nor likely the last.”
She said nothing. Instead, she appeared to be wrestling with some all-encompassing thought. One edge of her lower lip caught prettily between her teeth, and she crossed her arms as if hugging herself against a nonexistent chill. At last she let out a heavy breath, and her arms dropped.
“So be it,” she said. “If we must, we must. Allow me twenty minutes to instruct the house staff on actions to be taken during my absence, as well as to gather the supplies we’ll need.”
Salim’s laugh was involuntary, a bark that escaped his lips before he knew it was coming.
“You can’t be serious.”
Her head whipped toward him. Blue eyes glinted dangerously. “Do you see any reason for me to be joking, Mr. Ghadafar?”
Salim felt himself bristling, and did his best to hold it down. One hand went to adjust his sword, squeezing the cool bronze.
“The planes are not your back woods, Lady,” he said. “Nor are its inhabitants a mob of irate forest creatures. The denizens of the Outer Sphere care nothing for rank and station, nor will they content themselves with merely burning a few of your accoutrements. I’ll travel faster alone, and I’ll return as soon as I know more.”
She ignored him. “I’m going to put our affairs here in order,” she said. “And if you aren’t here waiting when I return, I’ll have no choice but to contact Khoyar and let him know that you’ve broken the terms of our arrangement. Regardless of your position within the faith, I’m sure he can make your existence decidedly inconvenient for the remainder of your stay in Thuvia.”
The heat in Salim’s gut was rising, and the imperious edge to Neila’s voice was like nails on slate.
“This is unnecessary,” he said, choosing his words as if speaking to a willful child—which, he supposed, he was. “And dangerous. Even on the more benign planes, there are creatures that could burn out your soul simply from passing near you. Beings whose beauty would rip your sanity to shreds, or who would sell and trade your very essence like a palm date. The towers of the Abyss are built of soul-maggots, and not all of the damned sequestered in their walls deserve to be there.”
Neila’s face lost some of its color, but her jaw remained set. “I’m well acquainted with such stories, Mr. Ghadafar.”
“They aren’t just stories!” It was all Salim could do to keep from screaming. Such deliberate ignorance! “These things are real, and they’ll set upon you in a second, tearing your eyes from your head and ripping the shit from your stomach with hands like scythes!” He paused for breath, arms gesticulating uselessly. “Have you ever seen a demon, Lady?”
“Would you like to see one now?” Her voice was quiet, choked, and her hands flexed at her sides as if they were claws that would tear his skin. With a start, Salim realized that there were tears in her eyes. His tone softened.
“Neila—” he began.
“He’s my father.” The pain in that whisper brooked no argument. “Don’t you understand that?”
Salim sighed.
“Twenty minutes,” she repeated.
“As you wish,” he said, and seated himself on a low couch to wait.
∗∗∗
She was ready in fifteen. From his perch in the foyer, Salim could hear the hubbub in the rest of the house as Neila’s orders made their way around. Salim assumed she had withheld her actual destination from the servants—pigheaded as she was, the girl wasn’t stupid—but still her retainers would hardly approve of their lady gallivanting off in the middle of such a crisis. And with a stranger, no less. Not that any of them would go so far as to question her decisions or offer their own opinions, but the concern was readily apparent in the sustained buzz of conversation that dropped in volume even as it spread. A Thuvian servant might not tell you her opinions, but only a fool failed to receive the message.
When Neila returned, her clothing had changed entirely. Gone was the long, airy dress, replaced by a simple blouse of gray silk and snug brown breeches tucked into high boot-tops. Despite the heat, she wore a heavy blue cloak with the hood pushed back over a small leather rucksack, her long black hair pinned up sensibly behind her head. What caught his notice, however, was not the clothing, but the new addition at her hip. He looked pointedly at it, then back to her face.
“Pretty,” he said. “But can you use it?”
In response, Neila drew. The rapier’s blade flashed, its edge cutting a mirrored arc through the air in a salute that dropped neatly into a guard position.
Her grip was weak, and the lines of her arm and leading leg left her open to a disabling knee shot, but the draw had been smooth and quick. Salim had seen worse, and not just from wealthy girls playing dress-up. At least she wouldn’t accidentally stab herself. He nodded, and she sheathed the blade, clearly pleased.
“Father didn’t precisely approve,” she said, “but fencing is a noble art, and he understood that a lady in a foreign land shouldn’t be wholly dependent on her staff for protection.” Her smile faded a little. “He had this made for me in Absalom, on our way south. Said that I’d need it to keep my foreign suitors at bay.”
“Clearly it works,” Salim said, and her eyes narrowed, trying to tell if she was being mocked.
“Come,” he said. “If you’re ready, then it’s time we were away. Here.” He held out a hand—no courtly gesture this time. She took it without ceremony, his calloused palm gripping her wrist like a common drover. Forearms locked, he pulled her closer to him, until their sides were almost touching, cloaks mingling.
Salim reached into his robe once more and brought out the amulet, letting it again fall to his sternum. His free hand cupped it, and as it did, the unnameable colors of the spiral began to shift, drawing the eye around its curves and down into its depth with an inescapable gravity. A high-pitched whine, like the phantom tones an ear sometimes hears in a totally silent room, began to rise, countered by a faint buzzing within Salim’s bones.
“Neila.”
With a visible effort, she pulled her gaze from the mesmerizing stone and met his.
“Last chance. You don’t have to do this.”
In response, she only gripped his arm harder. Salim looked deep into those blue falcon’s eyes and inclined his head slightly. In another life, this one might have earned that fancy sword the hard way.
“Very well,” he said.
Then his fingers closed around the hanging stone, and the manor disappeared.
Chapter Eight
The Boneyard
The world twisted. There was no better way to describe it. One moment they were standing in the foyer of Anvanory Man
or, far too close for propriety even given the girl’s position as head of the household, and the next the scene around them warped and swirled, as if being drawn down a drain—perhaps into the amulet that Salim held. At the same time, Salim felt himself pulled sideways—not physically, but as if he had a fishhook lodged somewhere in the core of his being, and was being dragged by an immense angler toward a distant surface. Beside him, Neila’s grip on his arm was painfully tight.
The colors and angles continued to twist and drain, and Salim braced himself. Though he knew, objectively, that the whole process was instantaneous, that instant had its own subjective length and phases to those inside it, and the next was the worst.
For a single, blinding moment, the world was perfectly blank. Not the warm black of closed eyes, or the finite dark of a windowless cell. This was an emptiness—a complete lack of definition, even that afforded by empty space. Salim’s skin simultaneously burned and froze, and through the facade of silence he could hear the howling emptiness, a void that sucked tears from his eyes. In that second, he understood that creation, for all its horrors, could never hope to match its absence.
And then the world snapped back into place, as if it were a bowstring coming to rest.
Gone was the foyer, the marble and adobe. In its place was a vast plain of massive reddish-brown stones and soil, stretching toward the horizon beneath a dark sky of perfect silver, its blankness somehow infinitely more comforting than the one they had just left.
Neila made a noise, and Salim turned to find her trembling, hand still locked in a death grip on his wrist. She made the sound again—a chirp far back in her throat—and he realized she was fighting the urge to vomit. Peeling her fingers from his arm, he touched her back lightly.
“You get used to it,” was all he could say, and then she turned and ran, holding her stomach, behind the enormous stone at their back. As she passed from view, the gagging noises were replaced by full-on retching.
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