Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL)

by Archer, Jill

  Beetiennik was alive.

  What did it mean? That he was innocent? I didn’t believe that and wouldn’t no matter how many divination tools told me otherwise. Did the fact that Beetiennik lived really mean that Luck had saved him? Or that Luck was still testing me?

  When Beetiennik’s wheezing subsided and he could finally speak again he said, “You are free to go now, Ms. Onyx. You’ve come to the Shallows and completed your assignment. You can go back to New Babylon now. The Boatman should be here in a week or two. Your Angels can bear witness to both my testimony and trial. There are no further crimes that need to be tried here.”

  Was he mad? Of course he was mad.

  I couldn’t leave him here! And wouldn’t. I didn’t care that Luck may have deemed him innocent. I realized then that even if Beetiennik promised to go somewhere very far away, I wouldn’t let him do it. It was blasphemous to put my judgment before Luck’s, but I was too afraid Beetiennik would do it again. To another Hyrke—or even another demon—somewhere else. And what would that make me? As guilty of that future murder as Beetiennik would be.

  I took a deep breath, because what I was contemplating was so very grave. I wanted to make sure I could live with my decision. If I executed Beetiennik now, I would be the one committing a sin, arguably against Luck himself.

  “You’re free to go,” I said to the Angels. I didn’t want them to be witnesses to anything they didn’t want to be a part of. To anything that could get them into serious trouble later, should the truth come out. But they didn’t move. Instead they readied two blue bolts of Angel light.

  For this execution, however, I was going to strike first. Because if anyone was going to take the blame for casting the first stone against an “innocent,” it was going to be me.

  I reshaped my magic from a filleting knife into a huge amorphous blast—exactly the kind of blast both Rochester and Delgato had warned me never to throw. Because, though they are hot and blinding, they are almost never deadly. Beetiennik laughed, an odd warbling gurgle that sounded like a bubble being dislodged from his throat. He thought I’d made a mistake. But I hadn’t. I knew, without the element of surprise, my magic wouldn’t kill this demon. It was far too powerful. So while the demon laughed over my apparent magical miscalculation, I unsheathed Burr’s knife and stepped close. Just as its laughter was fading, I plunged Burr’s knife, his real one, deep into the demon’s heart.

  Beetiennik had been prepared for magic, but steel worked just as well.

  “Now, you can blast it with Angel light,” I said, stepping back. I didn’t want a slow death. It wasn’t torture I was after. And, truth be known, it wasn’t justice either. I wanted an end.

  Beetiennik shifted several times before he died, convulsing in ghastly paroxysms from the black, slithering water serpent Ebony to the moss-bearded Vodnik to Ari and then Athalie, as I’d first seen her in the Meadow. Only it hadn’t been her. It had been Beetiennik. Or Biviennik. It had been them all along.

  When the creature finally died, I found myself staring at myself. The hellcnight’s last transformation was into Noon Onyx.

  Rafe’s mother had said Grimasca was the one demon you never wanted to meet. The one demon you were deeply afraid of. Well, Grimasca wasn’t real. But hellcnights were. So how fitting was it that this hellcnight had died looking like me, the one “demon” I’d never wanted to meet? Again, the first conversation I’d ever had with Rafe came back to me. The one we’d had at the Carne Vale when I’d taunted Sasha for hiding behind its “pomp and circumvention.” Rafe had asked me if I ever would, or could, kill an accused in cold blood.

  That’s what you’re telling him, right? That he ought to put his magic where his mouth is? So, what about you? Would you do it? Could you do it?

  I hadn’t wanted to know the answer then, but I knew now.

  Luck, how I wished I didn’t.

  Chapter 27

  It took us until morning to move all of the victims out of the bottom of the keep. There were twelve in all, including Athalie and Antony Rust. The Shallows settlers soon discovered what had happened. Everyone was in a state of shock. Many were overjoyed that loved ones had been found alive, but that joy was tempered by the knowledge that their loved ones had been bitten by hellcnights and now were in a deep state of sleep. Everyone knew about Delgato, who was still resting in the med shack, and no one had forgotten poor Cephas. And the relatives of those whose bodies were not recovered were, understandably, near inconsolable. Zella and Athalie’s father had not been one of the twelve. Honestly, if I’d not had the recovery effort to focus on, I might have succumbed to hysteria or grief-induced apathy myself. To say the situation at the Shallows was depressing was as much of an understatement as saying Armageddon had been a small skirmish.

  Sometime after we’d removed the ninth body, the rain had started again. This time, it seemed like Halja’s heavens were serious. Yesterday’s downpour had been a mere throat clearing. In a matter of minutes, the sky opened as if Ebony’s Elbow were above us in the clouds, swirling, twisting, turning, and spitting out water and spray at a relentless, waterfall rate. The moat started rising. Those victims who had been pulled out already were moved into the med shack or relatives’ huts. Over the sound of the storm, I yelled for volunteers. We had one more chance to pull the last three people out before the water level rose too high to crawl back in there.

  Stillwater and Russ volunteered to go in with us for the last rescue effort. Swimming back into the demons’ watery hidey-hole for one last go-round was both more and less harrowing than before. This time, there was no threat of attack, but the water was so high in some of the passages, we had to tip our heads back to breathe in the few inches of air that was left between water and ceiling. I gained a new appreciation for the Angels’ efforts. Oath or no, they were risking their lives to pull people out that may never wake again. And Stillwater and Russ! Stillwater proved over and over again, as he kept his cool in the dark, narrow, skull-lined, quickly-filling-with-water passages, that he’d been the right choice for outpost gerefa. I honestly don’t know where Russ got his steely grit from. I knew Hyrkes could be tenacious, but I was starting to realize that Hyrke sailors were in a courage class all their own.

  When we reached the central interior room, Rafe took one body, Stillwater and Russ another, while Fara and I walked over to the third and last victim. This victim had been placed farthest from the door and closest to where the hellcnight had fallen. I couldn’t help taking one last glance. The hellcnight had, thankfully, reverted to its true demon form. It was ghastly to look at, but not quite as awful as seeing my own dead face stare back at me. Its hand clutched the handle of a butcher knife. I hadn’t noticed before, but apparently its dying plan had been to fight steel with steel. The demon must have been in the process of withdrawing the knife when it had been blasted by Angel light.

  I don’t know why I did it. I suppose if it had been Beetiennik’s knife I would have left it. But I remembered Beetiennik (or maybe it had been Biviennik) showing it to us when we’d first been introduced to him as “Vodnik.” I didn’t know who the knife really belonged to, but I knew it wasn’t this demon’s. And then—just as I heard a sharp cracking sound, followed immediately by a deep rumbling—I remembered the silver spice box. The floor shook and the water in the room sloshed. This time, though, it wasn’t because there were feet splashing around in it. It was because the Stone Pointe keep was falling. After millennia, it was finally giving in to the combined effects of time, rain, and, more recently, magic blasts. With frantic fingers, I searched the hellcnight’s dead body.

  “Noon!” Fara shouted. “Impenetrable won’t save us if the whole keep falls. We have to get out now.”

  My fingers closed around the silver spice box and I snatched it out of the dead demon’s pocket. Rescuing that box made about as much sense as rescuing the victims who would never wake. Maybe I was becoming as romantic as the Hyrkes. But that box had belonged to someone else, and my guess was that someo
ne had been Ebony’s lover. If not Grimasca, then another demon who’d likely been wronged by Beetiennik. It seemed wrong to leave the spoils of Beetiennik’s sins with him when he died. Beetiennik deserved nothing but the death he’d gotten.

  On the way back out I had many instances to regret my romanticism. On multiple occasions, I figured Fara and I (and the poor sleeping person we carried between us) would die because of my stupidity. I didn’t regret it on my behalf. But I did regret getting Fara into this. At one particularly tricky spot, when I truly thought we’d drown, I told Fara how wrong I’d been, how sorry I was, and what an extraordinary Angel she’d turned out to be.

  She’d smiled sweetly and then said through gritted teeth, “Noon, I swear if you take any more time out for self-recrimination or anything else, I will blast you with Angel light. If Luck, or the Savior, had wanted to drown us, we would have died at the Elbow. Now take a deep breath and swim!”

  Right. I took a deep breath and ducked under the water, pulling on the arm of the settler we were rescuing and dragging him with me. I kicked as hard as I could, with one hand stretched in front of me, hoping we wouldn’t crash into an unseen wall.

  We emerged from the moat a minute or so later, panting and gasping for breath. Strong arms pulled us out of the water. I raised myself up on my elbows just in time to see the keep fall. It reminded me of Beetiennik just after he’d drank the waerwater. The keep just seemed to shrivel up on itself, collapsing from the inside, then imploding, and sinking into the moat. The ground shook as if it were an earthquake. I looked around at the settlers’ expressions. Their faces were full of terror-filled wonder and frightened awe.

  After confirming that everyone else was out and accounted for, I dragged myself into an empty hut and fell asleep. I did not pass out. But, after the day’s events—finding out my boyfriend was really a winged demon in disguise, confronting two murderers, executing one of them, coordinating the rescue efforts for a dozen Hyrkes, and witnessing the fall of a structure that was old enough to have once housed giants—I was allowed to be tired.

  * * *

  I woke up next to a fanged, clawed, and tailed hairy beast. Luckily his purr told me right away who it was so I didn’t singe Virtus into ashes. He wasn’t the only one who had crawled into the hut and gone to sleep. I looked around the room and saw that the Angels had also managed to find room in here. It was cramped, and I was more than sore, but we were alive and, under the circumstances, that was no small miracle. I took out the silver spice box I’d risked our lives over at the end. Had it been worth it? Certainly not, but curiosity compelled me to examine it. Etched on its front were the words:

  For Ebony

  But much more interesting were the words that were etched on the back, the ones I hadn’t been able to see the first time I’d seen this box:

  “Better late than never” is a lie.

  What did that mean? I was just about to open the box, when Rafe’s voice interrupted my thoughts, startling me enough so that I almost dropped it. I glared at him. He grinned.

  “You know what they say, right?”

  “What?”

  “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  “It’s ‘Curiositas killed Cattus,’” I said.

  “But it’s a parable. About the dangers of opening small boxes.”

  “No, that’s another one,” I said. I thought about what Fara had said when I’d told her what a great Angel she was, that neither Luck nor the Savior wanted us dead or we would have died at the Elbow, and decided to open the box. After all, hadn’t faith saved us at the Elbow?

  “Noon . . .” Rafe warned. I pressed the catch and the box sprang open.

  Inside was a chalky white powder. Huh. My first guess was ashes, but the substance was too white. It was a spice box, so maybe salt? Or sugar? I licked my finger and dipped it into the powder—

  Rafe hissed my name again and Virtus growled. Fara woke up groggy, rubbing her eyes, and stretching. Her glamour was back, but it was slightly more subdued than usual. When she saw what I was about to do, she frowned.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Testing a theory.”

  “What theory is that?”

  “That this isn’t salt or sugar.”

  Then they both started protesting at the same time, but by then it was too late. I’d already tasted it.

  Well, it wasn’t salt. And it wasn’t sugar. Whatever it was, it was bitter as hell. But that’s all I could definitively say about it. I clicked the box shut again and put it back in my pocket.

  * * *

  By evening, we felt rested enough to make our way around the camp and see how others were faring. Meghan, Stillwater, and Russ had segued into the leadership vacuum. If they realized the danger they were in now with no outpost lord (and not even a keep to hide in), they gave no sign of it. I saw anew how these people had survived for four hundred years in the swamps. New Babylonians could learn a thing or two from them. Frustration over a missed hourly ferry, impatience over a “long” cabriolet ride from one side of town to the other, or irritation over burned bread at the Black Onion, all seemed ludicrous and laughable out here.

  We stopped by Zella’s hut to see how she was doing. I was worried she might not want to see us, but her response was by far the warmest. It had to have been the fact that we’d found Athalie and Antony, combined with the fact that her labor was now over and her baby had been delivered safely.

  “What’s her name?” I asked, happy that I could now approach both mother and child without fear of endangering them. Zella had paused and then smiled shyly at me.

  “Nona,” she said.

  I swear, I almost started crying. “Nona” was another nickname for Nouiomo. Once the tears had formed, betraying my emotions for all the world—or at least Fara, Rafe, Zella, and Meghan—to see, I was half-afraid that Zella would say something like, “We named her after her birth time,” but then, just so there was no misunderstanding, Zella asked if I wanted to hold her because, after all, she’d been named after me.

  I accepted with tears fully rolling down my cheeks. It was embarrassing, but something I was also willing to endure. Because I’d never held a baby before. And it sure beat most of the rest of the experiences this trip had given me.

  On the way out, I spotted the baby’s reed basket. I stopped so suddenly upon seeing it that Rafe bumped into me from behind.

  “Are you okay, Noon?”

  I nodded, but my thoughts had scattered to earlier discussions about mothers, baskets, babies, and floating things—and people—back to Estes on the Lethe. Rather abruptly, several memories came back to me at once.

  The memory of an idyllic, sunny afternoon with Ari last semester in Bradbury:

  “What’s with the basket?”

  “Joy found me at the riverfront one morning, floating around in that basket. If she hadn’t come along, I would have drowned . . . At first, my parents thought it was someone from Bradbury who couldn’t afford a child . . . But then, when it became clear I was no ordinary Hyrke child, they looked to Etincelle. There are a few Host families in New Babylon, but not many, and the current flows in the opposite direction. It was pretty clear that basket had come from your side of the river.”

  “Then who are your real parents?”

  “Steve and Joy Carmine.”

  “But . . . don’t you want to know?”

  “No. As far as I’m concerned, I was born in that basket.”

  And a discussion I’d had with Fara in Cnawlece’s library just last week:

  “But I don’t understand how drakons can exist in the first place. Aren’t demons spawned from the ground? I mean, Luck creates them . . . because demons can’t create anything.”

  “Demons are spawned by Luck, anywhere he likes. So who’s to say he can’t spawn one in a woman’s womb? And when he does, they’re born as drakons . . . Estes is rather virulent, you know. Delgato’s dining room pictures don’t lie. Sometimes his affections are returned, sometimes not. But wh
en he lies with a woman, often Luck will gift his lovers with a child.”

  “Gift? A drakon growing in your belly?”

  “Whether they want one or not. The horrible thing is, it’s nearly a death sentence for Hyrkes. A powerful Angel or a Mederi would likely survive such a birth, but then, can you imagine an Angel or a Mederi wanting to raise a drakon?”

  And then finally, my discussion with Meghan about Cephas night before last:

  “Where’s Cephas now?”

  “His family gave him to Estes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They put his body on a raft and floated him out into the Lethe.”

  Had Ari’s birth mother tried to do the same with him? Had she tried to give him back to the demon that was responsible for his spawning? I shuddered. I wasn’t sure I was prepared to think of Ari again in any light—infant or adult—for a long, long time.

  But Luck has a habit of ignoring my wishes. When I ducked my head out from behind Zella’s door hut curtain, I felt him.

  Ari was here again. In the Shallows.

  Chapter 28

  He’s back,” I said.