The Demon's Surrender

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Nick was sitting in the other sofa, scowling across at the messenger. Anzu was not there.

  Nick said, “You’re just in time.”

  “For what?”

  “To hear me finish delivering my message,” Jessica replied. “Which Nick seems to find so amusing.”

  “It’s the way you tell it,” Nick assured her.

  “Apparently Gerald wants me to meet with him,” Mae said in a colorless voice. “He says he wants to make a bargain with me.”

  “Anything to oblige Gerald, of course,” Nick said. “What can I do for him? Does he want to borrow a cup of sugar? I’m afraid I’m all out of brothers. He took my last one.”

  Nick’s voice had grown colder and harder as he kept speaking, every word like a stone being hurled.

  “He doesn’t want anything from you at all,” Jessica said, smiling sweetly at him. “If he did, he’d just order you to give it to him. And you’d have to do it, wouldn’t you?”

  Nick glared at her. Jessica was looking at Mae and did not even seem to notice.

  “He wants Celeste’s pearl,” Jessica told Mae. “He has something to offer you in return. Something he thinks you’ll be very interested in. He wants to meet you this evening to discuss it.”

  So Gerald thought Mae had the pearl. Since Sin had come to the same conclusion herself at first, she felt she could hardly blame him.

  But what did he have to bargain with, and why did he want to bargain when he could just try to take? Did he want to make a bargain with Mae, who he must presume was the new leader of the Goblin Market, in the same way he’d tried to make a bargain with Merris? Did he want them to promise they would leave the magicians to their killing and never help another tourist?

  Sin’s lip curled as she watched Jessica. Mae would never go for it.

  “Something I’ll be interested in?” Mae repeated inquiringly.

  “How interesting!” Nick said in a savage voice. “Do you have any useful hints, or are you trying to entice me by being a woman of mystery? Mae’s not going to meet Gerald anywhere.”

  “Mae’s not going to be spoken for,” Mae told him. “Mae can speak for her own damn self. What will Gerald do if I don’t go?”

  Jessica shrugged. “I imagine he will come to find you.”

  And if he did, he’d find Mae’s aunt or the Market. Sin could see the wheels in Mae’s brain turning.

  She could see Mae was curious.

  So, apparently, could Nick.

  He stood from the sofa and said, his voice rolling through the room like thunder in the sky, “You’re not going.”

  Mae’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you dare try to stop me.” She sat glaring up at him for a moment, then turned deliberately to Jessica and said in a cool voice, “Excuse me. If I’m meeting Gerald, I’m going to have to settle matters with this demon first.”

  Jessica waved a hand giving permission. Mae turned with such vehemence her shoe squeaked on the floor, and made for the door. Nick followed hard on her heels.

  The shouting started about an instant after the door to the hall banged shut behind him.

  “Pardon me,” Sin said, and slipped out after them. “Do you two mind keeping it down? There’s a messenger in there listening to every word you say!”

  “Then you take a turn getting this through his thick head,” Mae said. “I’m going. It’s the best thing for the Market, to find out what he wants right away. It’s the best thing for all of us.”

  “I agree with you,” Sin said.

  Mae flashed her a grateful look, and Nick glared at them both. “And it hasn’t occurred to you that Gerald won’t be pleased when he finds out you don’t have the pearl?”

  “He won’t believe I don’t have it if I don’t come,” Mae said. “And then he’ll come for me. The only thing to do is talk to him, and find out what he thinks he has to offer.”

  “What if he gets annoyed by the fact you don’t have the pearl and kills you?” Nick shouted.

  “Jamie won’t let him kill me,” Mae said.

  “What if he kills both of you?” Nick raged. “What am I meant to do then?”

  Mae stepped in close to Nick and shoved him furiously hard. Nick did not brace himself against the blow. His back hit the wall. He did not react much at all; he just kept that dark, intent stare on Mae.

  “What do you mean by that?” Mae demanded.

  Nick hesitated. There was a click in his throat, as if it was dry, as if he was out of words.

  They waited, and he wasn’t.

  “I was fighting Anzu up on the roof yesterday,” he said at last. “I could see all of London. I’d just beaten Anzu, and it wasn’t any good, it didn’t make any difference, Alan was still gone. And I thought about setting the river on fire again. I thought about setting the whole city on fire, and watching it burn. I was angry enough to make it happen. But then I thought of you and Jamie.”

  His voice was expressionless. Mae stared at him, her eyes suddenly beseeching as well as furious, and Nick looked away from her and stared at the floor.

  “I want to burn the world because Alan is gone,” he said. “I want to destroy everything I see. But you mean something to me. I will not destroy the world, because it has you in it.”

  Nick crossed his arms defensively over his chest. They were all silent for a moment.

  Mae said, in a voice trying far too hard to sound practical, “Also, Liannan took half your power, so you probably couldn’t destroy the world if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t know about that—I set the river on fire. I could set the city on fire. I could give destroying the world a good try. I was never really sure how much power my brother left me, but it seems like it was more than I thought. It seems like he gambled on me one more time. So you see,” Nick said, soft and menacing, “you and Jamie are all that is protecting the world from me. You should think about that before you throw both your lives away.”

  Mae looked shaken. “You mean something to me, too. But that doesn’t mean I forgive you. And it doesn’t mean I’m not going. I am.”

  “Then promise me something,” Nick said. “Promise me that if things get bad, you’ll let me handle it.”

  There was another pause, during which Sin saw Mae think it over.

  She finally promised, “I’ll let you have first try.”

  They returned more sedately than they had left. Jessica had an air of slight amusement as they filed in.

  “We’re going,” Mae announced. “All of us. Where does Gerald want to meet?”

  “At the Monument, six o’clock,” Jessica replied.

  Sin was startled. She carefully did not look at either of the others, lest she betray that fact.

  The Monument was not part of the Bankside. It was outside the Aventurine Circle’s circle of power. Other people could use magic there.

  But Gerald had control of a demon, and Mae had no magic at all. He obviously wasn’t afraid of anything the Market could do.

  “We’ll be there,” Mae said, with barely a pause. “And you don’t have any hint of what this bargain he is offering might be?”

  “Hey, just the messenger,” Jessica said. “Not even that for long.”

  “And what do you mean by that?” Sin asked.

  Jessica looked across at her. “Haven’t you heard?” she inquired. “I suppose the exile’s always the last to know. Merris Cromwell left a necromancer in charge of the House of Mezentius. And the new leader of the Goblin Market is a tourist.” Jessica’s coolly amused gaze slid to Mae, standing still as stone, and back. “I heard she says that anyone who wants to join the Goblin Market—necromancers, pied pipers, potion-makers, messengers—can join. They’ll be just as good as the Market people, they can travel with them if they want, and there will be no private deals between Market folk or keeping any particular magic for themselves.” Jessica shrugged. “Who knows if it will last? But I thought it was worth looking into. I’m getting tired of the magicians’ games.”

  So Mae was bei
ng referred to as the new leader of the Goblin Market, as if she had won by default.

  Even worse, Mae was not denying that she wanted to overturn Sin’s Market into chaos, in a time of war? She couldn’t trust the people they had, let alone a pack of necromancers, carrying their dead bodies around with them wherever they went; potion-makers, who used God knew what ingredients in their potions; or pied pipers who would pipe you down the river literally for the joy of the song.

  Worse than any of them, worthless messengers who had been reporting back to magicians their whole lives.

  The worthless messenger eyed Sin, looking a little amused.

  “Don’t say you’re upset, my dear.”

  “Actually,” said Sin, “I wasn’t planning on talking to you again at all.”

  17

  The Knife That Would Cut Through Anything

  MAE LEFT ALMOST AS SOON AS THE MESSENGER HAD, SAYING she had to make preparations for the meeting with Gerald. Sin suspected that Mae simply wanted to get away from her, and told Mae they’d follow her.

  She had a lot to say to Mae, but first there was something she had to ask Nick.

  “Where’s Anzu?”

  “I let him go try to find Liannan,” Nick said. “He was angry that you left, and I knew she would be long gone by now. Neither of us were ever able to find her when she didn’t want to be found.”

  It was a relief, a reprieve, not to be faced with Anzu right now. But Sin knew you had to pay for most gifts in the end.

  “So he won’t find her,” Sin said. “And he’ll come back angrier than he left.”

  Nick nodded, inscrutable as ever, betraying not the slightest worry about what Anzu might do when he was angry. On the whole Sin thought that was better. She could imagine it well enough on her own.

  “Well, we’ll have to deal with that when it happens,” she said. “Let’s go before he comes back.”

  She had to deal with the Market, and then the magicians, and last of all the demon.

  The Market was not, as Sin had uneasily feared, in ruins.

  It was under construction.

  She and Nick could hear the hammering from halfway up Horsenden Hill. The ringing floated up into the clear blue dome of the sky like bells.

  Sin lengthened her stride and Nick fell slightly behind, obviously not seeing the urgency of the situation at all. He seemed totally unmoved when they reached the crest of the hill and saw the new wagons. Some were brilliant with fresh paint in the sun. A couple were wooden skeletons, planks bare and spaced out like the yellowed ribs on the skeletons of extinct animals in museums.

  She recognized almost everyone who was there, milling around, whether they were helping with the construction or fixing food or—as a lot of them seemed to be—standing around talking in unhappy knots.

  Mae was on the ground, hands cupped around her mouth so she could yell something up at Sin’s friend Jonas, who was standing on the roof of a half-built wagon rolling his eyes, as if what she had to say was not significantly helpful. He caught sight of Sin and called out, “Sin! You came back.”

  Mae turned and strode across the sunlit grass, beaming.

  “Hey, Sin,” she said. “What do you think?”

  “You invited necromancers to live with us?”

  Mae blinked. “Sin, we needed more people. Confusion to the enemy, right? They won’t know what messengers to use, they won’t know exactly who’s with us or how much magic they have when they attack. Besides, this is the right thing to do.”

  “To invite necromancers to live with us,” Sin said, just in case Mae had missed that point before.

  “Yes!” Mae said. “They’re all on our side. They’re not magicians. We can use all the magic and all the help we can get, and the Goblin Market should be a place where we can all live and work together, not just one night a month.”

  “And you’re the authority on how the Goblin Market needs tearing to pieces, why exactly?”

  “Who else is there?” Mae demanded. “What would you do?”

  A young potion-maker Sin knew called Isabella yelled out to Mae about where to put something. Mae glanced around.

  “Coming! Excuse me, I’ll be right back,” she said. “You,” she added, addressing Nick in a cold voice, as if to prove to both herself and him that she truly had not forgiven him. “You’re a demon, right? I seem to recall something of that sort. If you have to be here, go make yourself useful.”

  Mae stared stonily at Nick. Nick stared back, his face a blank wall, but after a moment he walked toward one of the wagons under construction. Mae glared after him and then went running off to Isabella.

  Sin was left standing alone at her own Market, with nothing to do.

  “Sin,” said Carl the weapons master, breaking away from one of the murmuring knots of people. “Thank God you’re here.” He hesitated. “Where’s the—”

  “Lydie’s with my father.”

  Carl’s face cleared. Sin’s father was a tourist, after all, not one of them. “That was the right decision. And now you can be here for us. That tourist’s got completely above herself, and she’s running wild. Some of those necromancers arrived with stinking bodies in their cars.”

  Confusion to the enemy seemed to be leading to confusion about who the enemy was.

  “Nobody’s happy,” Carl murmured conspiratorially. “Look around.”

  She looked at Jonas trudging by with his tools and fresh wood in hand, wearing a scowl caught between uncertainty and anger, and she realized that most of the core Market people, the real Market people, were feeling that uncertainty and anger. They were feeling abandoned enough that they would put their trust in what was familiar. Merris was possessed and abandoning them. Mae was a tourist dragging chaos in her wake.

  Sin had arrived without a magician in tow. They knew her.

  She wouldn’t even have to try and win them back. If she started giving orders, they would obey.

  It was a stunning realization. Even more stunning was the second one.

  She didn’t know what orders to give. “Everything stay the same!” was probably not a good idea, given that the magicians could attack at any moment.

  Given that the magicians could attack at any moment, having more people in place to fight started to seem like a better idea.

  Sin caught sight of Matthias, piping beside one of the wagons shining with new paint. There were tiny objects floating in the air all around him: hinges, nails, and several small screwdrivers.

  She excused herself to Carl and headed over to him.

  “Hey,” she said. “Got a minute?”

  Matthias lowered his pipes. A dozen nails dropped lightly to the ground and lay sprinkled and gleaming in the grass. “Not really.”

  Sin inclined her head to the wagon. “You moving in as well?”

  “Oh yes,” said Matthias. “Nothing in the world I want more than to live with you miscreants in all this racket.”

  “Why are you helping, then?”

  Matthias, raising his pipes back to his lips, paused. “If people are so massively misguided as to want to live with you,” he said eventually, “they should be allowed.” He paused again. “Besides,” he added, “with the new regime, I thought I might bring my parents to the next Market.”

  “Your—what?”

  “My parents,” Matthias repeated irritably.

  Sin had never thought of Matthias as having parents. She supposed it was logical, most people had them, but Matthias liked music so much more than people, she would hardly have been surprised to learn his father was a flute and his mother a music stand.

  With the new vision that came from being jolted into a new way of thinking, Sin watched him push back his hair and noticed that despite how gaunt and worn he was, he was probably still in his early twenties.

  She wondered if there were young necromancers, too.

  “Your parents would have been welcome anytime,” she said.

  “Oh yes,” said Matthias. “Anyone with money’s welc
ome. And if they happened to hear a joke about pipers stealing children, well, where’s the harm?”

  Sin didn’t make piper jokes herself, because it would be insane for a dancer to annoy her musicians. But she’d heard them. “That bothers you?”

  “Only the fact that they’re stupid,” Matthias snapped. “What the hell would I do with a pack of children anyway? My landlord doesn’t allow pets. But my parents don’t need to know about it. They gave up a lot for their piper son. I accidentally stole their voices when I was a kid, and they think the Market is this place of—of celebration. They don’t need to come here and see me sneered at.”

  Sin chose her words with care, because she was not sure how to respond to what Matthias was saying, but she had asked to hear it. He deserved a thoughtful response.

  “You think all this will make that better?”

  “I don’t know,” Matthias said. “But the Market spoke, and my people came at their word. And I’ll play for them. Or I would, if you would stop asking me ridiculous questions.”

  “Just one more,” Sin promised. “I guess you’ve changed your mind about who should lead the Market?”

  “Is the leadership still in question?” Matthias asked. “If it is, I think you should let us know. A lot of people might be very interested.”

  He raised his pipes to his mouth with an air of decision and resumed playing. Sin opened her mouth, and he raised one eyebrow in a manner that suggested he would not be impressed if she spoke, and the nails rose from the grass, hanging in the sky like tiny stars.

  Sin turned away and saw Nick and Mae standing side by side. They looked a bit funny together, Sin thought, Nick tall and grim and Mae so short, with her bright, silly hair.

  They didn’t look like they were having a funny conversation. Sin started over to them.

  “I won’t do it again,” she heard Nick say abruptly as she came into earshot.

  “You’re damn right you won’t,” Mae told him. “If you do, I swear, I’ll find some way to kill you.”