He blew a breath, kissed Sofya’s forehead. She cried and clung to him, her tears dampening his shirt.
Ermond prodded the dead Belvora with a toe. “Magick demons shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Never heard of them coming so far south.”
“They’re after us. One attacked me in Windhome the day I sailed from there.”
He spoke without thinking, then clamped his mouth shut. That had been in a different time, a lost future. But neither man asked for details. Ermond merely nodded, not even questioning why demons should be after the three of them…
“Mara,” Tobias said. He lurched to his feet.
Ermond’s eyes widened. “Blood and bone.”
Tobias retrieved his pistol and started toward the plank. After only two steps he realized that he still held the princess.
Ermond was already on his feet. “I’ll come with you.” Bramm said, “We both will.”
“No. One of you needs to stay with Nava. Take her below. Don’t let anyone or anything near her.”
Bramm and Ermond exchanged glances.
“I’m no good with wee ones,” Bramm said. “She likes you.”
“All right. Give her here, lad.”
Tobias handed Sofya to the sailor. She screamed in protest, writhing and kicking. Ermond held her and sang to her. She didn’t calm down, but Tobias didn’t dare waste a moment trying to soothe her.
He descended the plank, loading his weapon. Bramm followed, a pistol in one hand, his bloodied sword in the other. Together, they raced into the city. Tobias didn’t know in what direction she had gone, or how far she had ventured. He had to hope she would find some way to signal him. Or that the Two would lead him to her.
At the sound of the voice, Mara spun, then shrank back, though she raised her weapon. A Belvora crouched on the low rooftop of the building before her. She was huge, her skin pale and leathery. She had round eyes, thick features, and a mane of silver hair that flowed to her muscular shoulders.
The creature straightened to her full height and jumped to the street, her membranous wings fluttering briefly to slow her drop. Mara retreated another step, bumped up against the wooden wall of another building.
“I see you are familiar with my kind.”
“What do you want from me?” Mara threw a quick glare at Aiwi. “Why are you helping her?” she asked the Tirribin.
“We are cousins,” the Belvora said, her smile revealing fearsome teeth. “As are all the Ancient races. You should know that.”
Aiwi said nothing, but she watched the Belvora the way a child might an unfamiliar dog.
“Now, you will answer questions, and then you will die.”
Mara’s pistol hand shook violently. Belvora fed on creatures of magick, including humans. Especially humans. Her abilities as a Walker made her less attractive prey to the Tirribin, but they were the very reason the Belvora would want her.
“If I’m going to die, why should I tell you anything?”
“Because I can feed on the dead, and I can feed on the living. I prefer the latter, but it is far more unpleasant for my prey.”
Belvora were supposed to be mindless predators. This one seemed intelligent enough. Mara tried to aim with her trembling hand. She would have only one shot, and even if she managed to kill the Belvora, she would be at the mercy of the Tirribin.
The Belvora eyed the shaking weapon, but appeared more amused than alarmed. An instant later, she lashed out – a flick of a talon. The pistol flew from Mara’s grip and clacked on the cobblestone. Blood ran from a wound on the back of Mara’s hand.
The winged demon laughed. “You humans are too reliant on your firearms.”
Before any of them could say more, the flat report of weapons fire echoed among the lanes and structures. An animal scream rose and fell.
The Belvora sobered. “We have not much time. I sense your magick, but cannot discern its flavor. You are a Walker, yes? And yet you smell of–”
A second distant gunshot stopped her. A third followed, and with it came another screech. The Belvora stared toward the wharves, clawed hands opening and closing. Two more reports sounded in quick succession.
“I should go, cousin,” Aiwi said. “The humans will be wary now, and ever more protective of the prey you have promised me.”
The Belvora kept her gaze fixed to the north.
The prey you have promised me…
The meaning of this penetrated Mara’s fear.
“No!” she said. “You can’t have her! She’s–” She broke off. She’d meant to say, She’s important, but she sensed that both demons knew this. What else would bring a Belvora to the Knot? Why else would these two cooperate in this way?
The Belvora rounded on Mara. She flinched, but remained trapped by the wall at her back.
“She is what? What is the child? And what are you?”
“Cousin?” Aiwi said again, eager now.
“Yes, go. You have done as I asked. The babe is yours. My debt to you is paid in full, yes?”
The Tirribin bared needle teeth. “It is. In full.”
With a quick glance at Mara, she blurred away.
Mara could barely breathe for her panic. Sofya! She had to warn Tobias. If he was even alive. Who fired those shots? And at what?
“Tell me about the babe. And about yourself.”
“Tobias!” she screamed as loudly as she could. Desperation. She was too far. And yet… “Tobias, there’s a Tirri–”
A blow from the Belvora knocked her off her feet, left her sprawled on the filthy cobblestones, her cheek throbbing, her vision clouded. But she fell near the pistol. She grabbed for it.
“You will answer me!” the Belvora said, covering the distance between them with a single leap. “Or I will feed now!”
Mara tried to aim, but the Ancient crushed her arm beneath a leathery foot. Still, Mara managed to squeeze the trigger. The boom reverberated. Maybe Tobias would hear that.
“The child!” the creature demanded.
“She’s only a baby.” Mara cowered. A sob thickened her words. “That’s what I was going to say.”
“You are lying. But no matter. She is something of value. That is what matters, and it answers one of my questions. Now tell me of yourself. Quickly!”
“I’m a Traveler.”
“I know that!” The demon’s voice blared in the closed space.
Mara drew her knees to her chest and covered her head with both arms. Her hand brushed something as she did this. She groped for it, grasped it just as the demon seized a fistful of her hair and yanked her off the ground. A stone. A broken piece of cobble.
The Belvora held her up so that her eyes and the demon’s were barely a hand’s width apart. With her other taloned hand, the Belvora raked a finger across Mara’s cheek. Her claw came away bloody. She grinned, licked the finger clean.
She opened her mouth, to speak or to feed. Mara didn’t give her the chance. Her scalp aching, blood dribbling over her jawline, she pounded the stone into the side of the demon’s head with all the strength she could muster.
The Belvora reeled and bellowed, dropping Mara to the street.
Mara landed awkwardly, but scrabbled away. The demon roared again and pursued. She kicked out with a clawed foot, catching Mara’s shoulder. The force of the kick tore Mara’s flesh and flipped her over as if she were a child’s doll.
The demon bent over her. Though dazed and in pain, Mara managed to throw the stone. It hit the Belvora in the chest and bounced away. She might as well have thrown it at a rock wall.
“Enough,” the demon said, as much to herself as to Mara.
She dropped to her knees over Mara – a feeding position. She raised her hand, talons extended to rip open Mara’s gut. Mara sobbed. Another weapon boomed in the alley, much closer than the others. The demon twisted and screamed. Mara covered her ears.
A second shot. The demon fell against the nearest wall, but righted itself. Dark blood flowed from wounds to its back and side.
Tobias and Bramm sprinted at them. Tobias reloaded his pistol as he ran. Bramm bore a sword.
The Belvora glanced at Mara, considered the approaching men, and spread her wings. She leapt into the air, her wingbeats uneven and weak.
Bramm leapt, slashed at the Belvora with his sword, slicing through part of a wing. The demon crashed onto the nearest roof, writhing, keening. It fell off the building and landed beside Mara. Before it could stand or even crawl, Bramm struck at it again.
Mara dragged herself to the far side of the alley. When the creature’s severed head rolled free, she closed her eyes.
Tobias rushed to her, gathered her in his arms. At her gasp of pain, he examined her shoulder.
“This doesn’t look good,” he said. “We need to get her back to the ship.”
“Sofya,” Mara said.
“She’s safe. She’s with Ermond.”
Mara shook her head, addled still, desperate to make him understand. “There’s a Tirribin. Working with the Belvora. She’s headed to the ship. Probably there already.”
“Blood and bone!”
“Go, Tobias. Save her.”
“Bramm?”
“Go! We’ll get there as fast as we can.”
Tobias kissed Mara’s brow and eased her down to the stone. Then he was running, his steps receding into the night.
In a blur of Tirribin speed, she slipped by sailors and wharfmen, peddlers and laborers. She passed several children, all of them filled with sweet years. There was no shortage of suitable prey in the city this night. Any of them might have satisfied her hunger.
Still, Aiwi didn’t stop. She didn’t even slow.
It would never have occurred to her to bargain with a Belvora. She disliked the winged ones. They were dim, and crass, and they smelled awful. This female, though – there was more to her than most. And she offered the most tantalizing of treats.
For Tirribin, nothing used up a city faster than taking children. Grown humans grew vengeful, inconveniently vigilant. So Aiwi had long contented herself with sailors, merchants, wharfmen.
The Belvora, however, had offered a true child. Not ten. Not even eight. A tiny one, barely more than an infant. The sweetest years imaginable, filled with promise, unsoured by disappointment or loss or grief.
And so she entered the bargain. Freely, and fairly.
Only after sealing their bargain, on pain of Distraint, did Aiwi learn she had been cheated. Oh, there was a child, young as the Belvora said.
But its years were already tainted by misfuture, bittered by profound changes in the trajectory of her life. Aiwi would feed on them anyway. They would be sweeter than most. But the perfect innocence of an infant’s years, which she had thought were hers for the taking, had long since been lost.
As she neared the wharf, she slowed to human speed.
Weapons fire crackled behind her. She wondered if the Belvora was dead. If so, she was free to abandon this hunt. The Distraint was only binding so long as all parties involved lived.
She couldn’t be certain though, and the promise of those years compelled her toward the ship. She crept along the pier, clinging to shadow.
The smell reached her while she was still well short of the vessel: sharp, foul. Belvora blood. A good deal of it.
The ship’s deck teemed with men and women, all of them bearing firearms and blades, all of them alert to the possibility of further danger. Another disservice done her by the winged ones.
Never again would she submit to any bargain with their kind.
She caught the scent of the babe as well. Not perfect, but lovely just the same.
Aiwi slid into the water, giving the ship and its humans a wide berth. She hated swimming, but she wouldn’t allow that to keep her from this feeding, particularly with the punishments of the Distraint possibly looming over her.
She moved in silence through the harbor, barely disturbing its surface, always keeping to shadow, even here. She approached from the open water west of the wharf and soon reached the ship’s stern. She climbed the hull, clinging to the wood like a spider on stone, and followed the contour of the ship around the side of the vessel to the oar holes. Once inside, she sensed that the child was in a hold above and behind this one.
She crept to the stairs, climbed them until she could peer out over the deck. Sailors crowded the rails, looking toward the city. A few scanned the sky.
She spotted the other hatch. At Tirribin speed, she crossed the deck to that stairway and blurred out of sight down into the hold.
The aroma of the babe’s years was almost overwhelming here. It was intoxicating.
“Don’t move.”
A sailor stood between her and the child, who slept on a small pallet. He was thick, powerful looking for a human. His brown hair was straight and salted with silver. Humans might have thought his eyes pale.
He held a sword in one hand and aimed the barrel of a flintlock at her chest with the other.
“I know what you are,” the man said. “Even with your powers, a bullet can kill you.”
“Yes.” She moved slowly, stepping away from the stairs, giving herself a clear path to the man and the child beyond him. “And I know about that weapon in your hand. You have one bullet. If you miss me, you’ll die.”
He adjusted his grip on the pistol. She sensed his unease.
“One shot, and every man and woman on deck will be down here. You can’t kill all of them.”
A fair point, but for her surety that she was faster and stronger than he could imagine.
“Perhaps we can reach some accommodation,” she said.
He shook his head and started to respond, but already she had blurred to speed. She was on him before he could say anything, before he could fire the pistol.
She slapped it from his hand, still moving at Tirribin speed. It hit the floor, bounced away. By then she had scrambled up to his neck and latched on. She took several of his years.
Something bit at her shoulder. Hot, painful. She released him, retreated a quick step. Blood poured down her arm, dripped to the floor from her elbow.
The man gaped at her, his breathing labored, his features sunken, the skin around his eyes and mouth wrinkled. He appeared ten years older than he had.
Her blood glistened on his sword. He was better with a blade than she had credited.
“You should not have done that,” she said, her voice coarse with rage and pain.
He cried for help. Footsteps scraped overhead, and then on the stairs.
Aiwi dashed past him, snapping her needle teeth at his face and delivering a sharp punch to his gut. He shied from her, grunted at the blow. All the time she needed to grab the child.
It started to squall the moment she touched it. It twisted and fought her, kicking its tiny feet and swinging its arms.
The man dove for the pistol and aimed it at her once more.
Men and women streamed into the hold, more weapons pointing at her. Only the babe kept them from shooting. Aiwi held it before her, a screaming shield. For the first time she could remember, she feared for her life. And because of humans. It was intolerable.
A tall woman stepped to the fore. She, too, carried a pistol, and she projected an air of unflappable strength.
“Put down the child and we’ll let you leave here alive,” she said. “If you take her years, or harm her in any way, we’ll open fire. With all the flintlocks in this hold, one of us is bound to hit you.”
Another human pushed his way down the stairs. She sensed his years and knew him for the other Walker. The throng parted for him, and he came forward, halting when he stood shoulder to shoulder with the woman.
“Your Belvora friends are dead,” he said.
Aiwi glanced around, making certain that none of the other humans tried to attack her. She doubted the man understood the significance of his words.
When she didn’t respond, he raised his pistol. “They will have offered you your life in exchange for the child’s. They’re
afraid to fire because you’re holding her. I’m not. I’m good enough with a flintlock to kill you where you stand.”
“Then why don’t you?” she asked.
“I know several Tirribin, and I count them all as friends. I prefer to let you live.”
Not what she had expected him to say.
“I also know an Arrokad, one who has promised me a boon. Shall I call for her? Shall I let her see you as you are now, surrounded by humans, trapped like an animal, a child in your hands? What would she say? What would she think if she knew you had allied yourself with Belvora?”
Clever.
“The question, human, is whether you are prepared to trade my life for this child’s. I don’t believe you are.”
She raised the screaming babe and put her mouth to its neck. It was all she could do to keep from feeding right there. She didn’t, because she didn’t wish to die this night.
“No!” The man lowered his pistol.
“Make them put down their weapons.”
Indecision clouded his expression. Aiwi darted out her tongue and licked the side of the child’s neck.
“Make them do it now!” she said, the rasp deepening her voice again.
“Do as she says,” the human said, a plea in his words.
Slowly, reluctantly, the others lowered their pistols and set them on the floor. It seemed Aiwi might get away after all, and with the babe.
“Ujie,” the man said.
Aiwi frowned. “What did you say?”
As she spoke, the answer dawned on her. It had been a summons. Already, she sensed a power approaching at speed. The Arrokad he’d mentioned.
She didn’t wish to be on this ship when the Most Ancient One arrived. Even this child wasn’t worth such humiliation.
Aiwi threw the babe. As she expected, the man lunged to catch the girl before she fell. She darted past them all, up the stairs, and onto the deck.
“Hold, cousin!”
Aiwi halted, body swaying. She pivoted, the motion feeling excruciatingly slow after the blur of her escape from below.
An Arrokad stood on the ship’s deck, a female, her body still glistening with seawater, her argent eyes fixed on Aiwi.
“I was summoned by a human,” she said, in a voice like crashing waves. “Are you the reason?”
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