Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3)

by S. M. Reine

  “It was inevitable, given his foolish and irresponsible habit of taking work home,” Onoskelis said.

  “I have some of the remaining papers.”

  The goat’s lip peeled back, baring square teeth. “Do you?”

  “I can give them to you,” Elise said, leaning forward and speaking in a low voice. “I’ll give you everything I have, and every book, scroll, or scrap of paper Abraxas has in his House.”

  “Interesting that you feel the need to bargain when I have given no indication of requiring it.”

  “Nothing is free.”

  “Indeed,” Onoskelis said. She blew on the top sheet of the stationary and turned it so Elise and Jerica could see. It was the equivalent of a marriage license, and it already had both of their names on it—but not Elise’s real name. Beside Jerica’s name, it said “Bruce Kent,” which was Elise’s favorite pseudonym. She had no idea how Onoskelis could have known that. “Sign this. You’ll need it to leave without attracting attention.”

  Elise signed under her pseudonym. When Jerica took the pen to sign her line, Onoskelis stood.

  “Come with me,” she told Elise.

  Jerica froze, pen poised over the paper, as if questioning whether or not she should follow.

  The librarian walked away. She had a slight limp when she moved. As her robes swayed around her, Elise glimpsed hooves instead of feet.

  When Onoskelis reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped. “Coming?”

  Elise hurried to catch up, leaving Jerica behind.

  On the second floor, Onoskelis turned on a standing lamp by pressing a button on its base, then moved on. Elise gazed across the expanse of the library to see that there were mismatched lamps on every floor, and at the end of nearly every stack of books. Some were illuminated on the other side of the room, too, though Elise couldn’t see any reason why. There was more than adequate light coming from the sconces on the ground level.

  As she followed Onoskelis deeper into the stacks and watched the librarian turn on more lamps, she realized that it was meant to be a way to find her way back. The shelves were dense, forming twisting paths deeper into the tower that soon obscured any sight of the stairs. If Powell’s Books had added a few dozen stories and sold books bound in human flesh, it would have looked very much like the Palace library.

  The librarian staggered into the next room, selecting a book off of the shelf to the left.

  “What do you think of Aquiel?” Elise asked.

  “I think nothing of him at all. It’s been a long time without a Council, but Council control has been a historical exception, not the rule,” Onoskelis said, hugging the heavy tome to her chest. It was half as big as she was and its covers were buckled shut.

  “So the conquering thing is more typical.”

  “In recent history, yes. In the grand scheme of things, no.” Onoskelis limped back the way she came, brushing past Elise.

  Instead of heading back down, Onoskelis took Elise along the catwalks, climbing higher and higher. They were alone up there, far above the guards and the other librarians. Jerica was a tiny figure seated at Onoskelis’s desk.

  They entered a small, quiet workroom set off of the catwalk. A desk with a box of empty book covers waited for them.

  “Is Aquiel in the Palace now? How do I find him?” Elise asked.

  “Those are the wrong questions.”

  Annoyance prickled through her. “Tell me the right ones.”

  “I could tell you that the Palace defenses are bound to the blood of the standing administration via soul links, much as the touchstones were once linked to the Treaty,” Onoskelis said. “At least three administration members must bleed to change the links. Their replacements need not be members of the Palace’s current occupying force—blood is blood. The old magics can’t tell the difference.” Onoskelis set the heavy book on the table and opened the lock. “Aquiel is not here, but you would be unable to assassinate him within the Palace if he were. The wards are soul linked to him—Aquiel’s, and that of his two favored generals. To harm them here would be suicide.”

  “Unless I change the links first,” Elise said.

  Onoskelis picked up the straight razor with delicate fingers. The motion of her arms was strangely smooth in comparison to her jerky, staggering walk. With a flick, her sleeves slid back to her elbows, baring delicate wrists. “The records Vassago took home detailed how to change the links, how to operate the Palace magics, weaknesses in the defenses. He was a fool to think that might give him leverage against the administration.”

  “Do you know the specifics of those records?”

  “Again, that is the wrong question.” Onoskelis slashed the razor down the open page of the book, separating it cleanly from the bindings. It seemed strange, almost obscene, for her to so casually tear the book apart.

  Elise grew impatient. “So I need to get the blood of Aquiel and his two ‘favored generals’ to link the Palace to me and my favored generals. Who else is bound to the Palace? Is one of them Belphegor?”

  “Yes,” Onoskelis said.

  The simplicity of the answer surprised her. Elise frowned. That ruled out finding Belphegor and destroying him from a distance with one of James’s spells.

  “You’ll be interested to know that the route to the soul links is perilous for those such as yourself,” Onoskelis went on. “The path is fraught with wards that shatter semi-corporeal demons. You and your new wife cannot enter.”

  The librarian folded the pages she had removed into one of the leather covers, tying them with a cord so that they could be carried without falling apart. It formed a book much smaller than the original tome. She placed it into Elise’s hand.

  “I look forward to the restoration of my library,” Onoskelis said. “We’ll talk more then. I trust this has been helpful?”

  Obscure as Onoskelis had been, she had proven very helpful indeed. But one more question struck Elise, and she called out to the librarian before she could leave the study room. “Is there any cure for ichor poisoning?”

  She wasn’t sure what the contraction of Onoskelis’s facial muscles was meant to indicate. Elise had never done well at reading emotions, and a goat-headed demon was hardly any easier. “Ichor poisoning?” the librarian asked.

  “Yeah, a poison that came from the mother of all demons. She could infect people and objects with her ichor. It turns everything into stone, like the mountains here. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “Everything I know is in this library,” Onoskelis said, “but everything in this library is not known to me. I know nothing about what you ask.”

  Damn.

  Elise turned the new, smaller book over in her hands, wondering what Onoskelis might have given her. Secrets to turning over the Palace? A key to Aquiel’s weakness? “What are the right questions?” Elise asked. It was meant to be rhetorical, but the librarian stopped in the doorway.

  “The question you’ll want to ask yourself,” Onoskelis said, “is how demons travel when the surface streets are too dangerous.” Her face twisted into what might have been a smile or a grimace. “You may also wonder why a House with a mine does not store minerals in its warehouse.”

  Elise frowned. “Do you mean…?”

  But Onoskelis was already staggering away, hooves ringing out against the tile. She left Elise standing among the stacks, alone with segments of a history book and a lot of questions.

  The House of Abraxas did have a mine. But Elise hadn’t seen any of the mine’s output on Neuma’s inventory.

  She also hadn’t felt Belphegor leave the House…because he hadn’t left at all.

  “How do you feel about running the Palace?” Elise muttered to Jerica under her breath as they walked out of the library. Onoskelis’s book felt heavy in her back pocket. The guards didn’t notice that they had left with more than they had entered with; if there were spells meant to keep books in the library, Onoskelis had turned them off.

  “Sounds like an organizational night
mare, no pun intended,” Jerica said. She was twirling their rolled-up marriage license between two of her long fingers like a baton.

  “It can’t be much worse than running a casino or the House of Abraxas.”

  “I’m pretty sure you’re hinting that you want me to be responsible for something terrifying. We’ll have to discuss it later.” She dropped her voice to a low hiss. “Sometime when we’re not in the belly of the enemy.”

  She had a point. Elise glanced up at the walls. They were seething with nightmares.

  “Why aren’t you with them?” Elise asked. Jerica gave her a questioning look. “Aquiel’s the Prince of Nightmares. Why stick with me? Why not fight on his side?”

  “Neuma,” she said. She leaned close to Elise’s ear and added at a whisper, “Plus, Aquiel’s a dick. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Elise began to follow her toward the visitors’ entrance again, beyond which lay Damnation Square. But when she stepped into the flesh gardens, the sight of construction on the new tower caught her eye.

  The new tower wasn’t part of the secure area. Too many creatures were moving in and out of it, carrying supplies up and construction waste down. The bridge looked even more impressive now that Elise was standing underneath it. The latticework of metal allowing it to stretch toward the fissure seemed impossibly frail, almost physically impossible, yet the crystalline bridge didn’t sway in the wind.

  Maybe something so fragile could be destroyed by a single determined demon.

  Elise wanted to get a closer look.

  “Wait a second,” she told Jerica.

  She slipped into the door at the base of the tower. Half of the first floor was a broad staircase wide enough to accommodate a hundred people walking side-by-side. The other half looked somewhat like a hotel lobby that was supervised by tall, skeletal demons with black pits for eyes. Elise wasn’t the only person in the tower that wasn’t working. Plenty of demons were watching. They were well dressed in the trashy Earth way—the bourgeoisie of Hell supervising the fruits of their investment.

  Elise skirted around them, trying to look like she belonged. The casual wear made her look mortal, not like a demon debutante of Hell.

  Nobody stopped her as she mounted the stairs. She didn’t dare phase, just in case her glamor failed, so she ran. The steps were very shallow. An easy slope for an army to march upon.

  The sounds of hammering and stone grinding against metal grew louder as she climbed the stairs. Above the seventh floor, the walls were open to the hot air; there was nothing between Elise and a long fall but a few slender ropes.

  She crouched behind a stack of I-beams and let a handful of laborers pass before climbing higher.

  The construction site for the edge of the bridge began on the thirteenth floor. It was blocked by armored nightmares. Elise hung back in the hallway, peering around the corner to study it.

  There was no way that she could approach without being seen. As she had painfully learned at the lab, the nightmares would see her if she tried to sneak past as an incorporeal mist. And they were carrying more Tasers. If James’s glamor wouldn’t survive Elise phasing into shadow, it surely wouldn’t survive an electric shock to the gut.

  If they were waiting with Tasers, then Aquiel knew that Elise was coming. She doubted that there were any other dissidents bold or stupid enough to try to face down an army of nightmares that they couldn’t even injure.

  She waited until the nightmares were turned away and peered through the holes in the wall again.

  What she could see of the bridge was an impressive construction, even more impressive than it was from the ground. The path that people would walk on glinted with magic. Not infernal magic, but human magic. The demons were working with witches, whether willingly or otherwise. The bridge thrust into the smoke in the highest levels of Dis’s atmosphere. A gust of wind momentarily parted the darkness. Elise glimpsed the fissure and sunny blue skies beyond. She pulled back into shadow again so it wouldn’t touch her.

  Construction was almost complete. The stairs were already done—that would make it trivial for large numbers of demons to march there. The magic was already in place, too. The tower itself didn’t need to be completed. It looked like they were only clearing away supplies now, opening a path straight to the fissure.

  Once Aquiel got his army to the tower, they could march on Earth.

  Unless Elise took the Palace first.

  “What do you mean, we lost Andrzej?” The voice was loud and angry and harsh. The hard edge to it wasn’t a demon’s growl—it was the sound of a human throat worn raw by the dry wasteland air. The sound of boot heels rang out on the crystal path of the bridge.

  Elise glanced around the wall long enough to see a trio of men walking toward the tower from the direction of the fissure. She shrank behind the wall, making herself as tiny as she possibly could in the shadows. Her human skin felt like a bright flag announcing her position even though nobody was looking in her direction.

  The conversation continued on the other side of the wall. They were shouting, so it was easy to hear them.

  “He never came back from the lab,” replied a nightmare with a silky-smooth voice. “The slaves were gone, too. And it looks like Belphegor was never there.”

  “Never there? Never there?” A man stepped into view, just inches from Elise, yet unaware of her presence. He was broad-shouldered and square-jawed, with the kind of handsome features that would have suited a movie star. But the features were ruined by the blood coursing down his cheeks, the imprint of a black rune on his forehead, the rashy redness of his flesh.

  Anger surged in Elise’s stomach, and she almost forgot that she was meant to be hiding. She took a step before stopping herself.

  She ducked behind the wall again.

  Now she knew why someone had been killing people and making it look like an animal attack. She knew who had been signing the letter J on dead bodies. And she knew whom those perverse “love letters” were being left for.

  Lincoln Marshall had been leaving them for Elise.

  Eleven

  James woke up, which was the first indication that he hadn’t died. Waking up was always a good sign.

  He peeled his eyelids open without lifting his head. The ground was rough and tan-orange under his cheek, and the sky above was steel gray. His gloved left hand was curled beside his head. James flexed his fingers to feel what he was lying on.

  Sand. He was sprawled on sand.

  Water rushed over his body and lapped his face. It was cold, so very cold, but he could barely feel it. His skin was numb. There was no way to tell how long he had been there, but it was definitely daytime. That meant that it had to have been at least two or three hours since Anthony tossed him off the side of the ship.

  The fact that he didn’t remember the hours that had elapsed was an even worse sign than waking up on the beach. Any trauma that rendered an individual unconscious longer than a few moments hinted at major internal injury.

  Anthony had been trying to kill him, and he hadn’t done a bad job of it. In fact, judging by how terrible James felt, he wasn’t going to rule out the fact that Anthony might still succeed.

  He tried to turn his head the other way, tried to lift his chin out of the foamy waves that lapped at his face again, but his neck was stiff and painful. It felt like something in his shoulders or chest was broken. James held still, waiting for the numbness to leave and the pain to arrive. He could feel it lingering on the edges of his senses. He was still too stunned. Probably a mercy.

  He wiggled the fingers on both hands, then his toes.

  Not paralyzed. Excellent.

  He could almost remember hitting the waves. It had felt like being dropped on concrete. But how he had made it from the bay to the shore was an utter mystery—one that he would have to resolve later. For now, the fact that he had survived would have to be good enough.

  Another wave swept over him. He grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut at the sting of sal
twater on his chapped lips. James couldn’t tell how much of the roaring he heard was water and how much was the blood rushing through his head. His vision was darkening again.

  He blinked to clear his vision and realized that a blurry shape was approaching. Someone was striding toward him on the beach, still a few hundred feet away and well beyond his ability to focus.

  His head swam and his stomach cramped as he tried to move again. He had to immediately give up the attempt. If it was Anthony returning to kill James, there was no way that he could defend himself now.

  Unless…

  He wiggled the fingers on his right hand again. They were bare. The cloth that Anthony had tied around James’s fist to prevent him from casting magic had been whipped away in the water.

  He mentally inventoried the runes that should have been on his right hand. There were, unfortunately, no destructive spells—mostly wards, which would be useless against a human like Anthony. But James thought he had also written a few healing spells, tucked between his middle finger and ring finger. All he needed to do was remember the words.

  He had drawn a pain relief spell. He knew that much.

  The indistinct figure walked closer.

  James snapped his fingers too weakly to make a sound. The pad of his thumb and middle finger rubbed together. He spoke a word.

  Instant relief flushed through him, wiping away the fatigue and the cold. It sharpened his mind enough to remember two of the other healing spells he had written for himself, too. James had been saving those for a while, since healing magic was among the most difficult to cast and replacing them would be extremely time-consuming. But if he ever wanted a chance to replace them, he needed to get on his feet, and fast.

  He spoke again and magic flared.

  He heard a strange, muffled popping noise, and felt something similar to being poked in the side. His ribs were fixing themselves. Thankfully, the first spell had numbed that.