Chapter 14 - Reap and Sow

It was sunset before either of them spoke.

They found temporary refuge on the roof of a tenement building. It was the tallest on the street, offering an excellent view of blackened building tops and rising chimney smoke.

They sat side by side on the roof edge. The demon rolled up his trouser leg, hissing.

“Does it hurt?”

“No, darling. It’s actually giving me a pleasant tingle.”

“You can walk up walls and turn into animals. A high pain tolerance would hardly be surprising.” But looking at the state of his bare skin, it was impossible to imagine that he couldn’t feel it. Colloidal silver would do little more than stain a mortal’s skin bluish gray. To Kit, it had eaten away at his calf, leaving bloody tracks where his flesh had melted like hot glue.

“Silver is…different.” He grimaced. “It will scar. But it will heal.”

Eda was already rummaging in her trouser pocket, searching for the crumpled kerchief Lawrie had left in there.

Kit jerked in alarm when she reached for him. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning the wound.”

Molten eyes flickered between hers. Were he still a cat, Eda fancied his ears would be pinned to his head. “Why?”

She frowned. “To stop it from getting worse. I’ve no clean water, but we can wipe off any silver that might still be burning you.” Impatient, she cupped his shin.

Kit hissed and yanked it back.

“Don’t be such an infant! Just stay still.” Eda dabbed around the bloody fringes of the wound. Her cheeks flushed, for his leg was hard and warm beneath her hand. Don’t look at him.

Despite the tension practically vibrating through his skin, Kit submitted to her ministrations. “I can do it,” he bit out.

“I know. But you got hurt in my defense. Please let me.”

Silence descended. Kit slowly seemed to relax beneath her fingers. When she dared to glance up, he was looking wistfully at the view.

“It’s beautiful like this.”

The sun had dipped farther, burning a bloody red. The city skyline was a study in contrasts: dark spires against a pink-and-orange sky. Dotted throughout the dark silhouette of Blackbridge’s architecture, little streetlamps and hearthfires came alive. Stars against a midnight sea.

The wistfulness in his tone took her aback. Beautiful. Eda had never thought it such. Down in the filth of the streets and the damp of the canals, Blackbridge always felt like a great warren of mortal vulgarity, and she just another rat scurrying through. But up here…

“I suppose it is.” Surprised to find she meant it.

Glorious as the sunset was, it was Kit that arrested her attention. He still assumed his mortal form, though it wasn’t clear why—there was no one around to see. She studied the spill of ruddy light upon his face and wondered what he was thinking. If he missed his world. If he resented having to stay in this one, comely skylines or no. Mr. Night would.

In Kit, she saw no such rancor.

Eda swallowed. She searched for a clean section of the kerchief not yet soaked in blood. “That little girl…” The image of the fiend’s jaws closing over the child’s skull flashed like a pan fire behind her eyes.

“Those are fiends for you.”

“But it bowed to me. Why would it do that?”

“This bishop can’t be blamed for controlling them if they openly defer to someone else. I suspect they’re under orders to act subservient in your presence. How fortunate for you that the Commander of the Blades herself saw it in action.”

Eda bit her cheek. Dabbed at the worst of his leg. “Everything I touch is ruined,” she whispered. Here she was, trying to make things right—a wound to soothe, brothers to save—and yet it felt inevitable that she would go on to cause some new hurt. Like a dog chasing its tail, trying to catch up to her mistakes and fix them before she made another.

“To err is human,” Kit murmured suddenly.

She looked up. “Poetry?”

“Mm. You mortals have a way with words.”

A creeping guilt settled in her belly. Kit’s help had cost Eda dearly, but it was help nonetheless. Without him, she would have no Mantle of Concealment. No safe haven to lay her head at night. No one to defend her against fiends or Blades, nor assistance getting inside their stronghold. She dared not consider her brothers’ chances without him. But more than all that, he had been fair to her—unforeseen trips into the Embel notwithstanding. He did not have to be.

She considered his wound with a grimace. He was putting himself at great risk for the sake of their agreement. Would her dishonesty regarding Mr. Night place him in even worse danger? Her secrecy had been vital in securing Kit’s aid, and she’d been too wary of his reaction to come clean after the fact. But now with these fiends skulking about, the truth seemed inevitable as the rising sun. Mr. Night had promised Fane a boon in return for killing Kit—the bishop would do it, given the chance.

Eda steeled herself. Hopefully, throwing me off this building counts as “grievous bodily harm.” “I haven’t been entirely honest with you about my past. About how I got here.”

“Shocking. Do elaborate.”

“The Blades did find a Gateway in our shop, and they did arrest my brothers. Bishop Florian was the one to do it. But…I never told you why we had that Gateway in the first place.”

“I never asked.”

“I know.” A breeze rolled over the rooftop. She shivered inside the mantle. “When I was a babe, my father tracked it down. Used it to make a Pact. My mother died birthing me, and he wanted her back. Desperately.” She paused, anticipating some dark joke or otherwise inappropriate interruption, but Kit was silent. “He got what he wanted, but our mother was…She wasn’t our mother anymore. I don’t remember, but Ben and Lawrie do. She was this empty, haunted thing. Didn’t talk. Didn’t eat. A walking corpse. The boys were little, but even they knew it wasn’t Emmeline. They wouldn’t go near her. Our father was forced to keep her in the cellar because she scared them so much. One day he forgot to lock the door. Ben found her standing over my crib.”

Kit’s wound had stopped bleeding. It looked as clean as it might get without further treatment. Eda continued to wipe it—an excuse not to meet his eyes. This was not a tale she’d shared with anyone before. “Emmeline wasn’t doing anything. Just looking. But she was holding a knife. Ben called out to her. He remembered how sad she looked. And then she—well. He says he can’t actually remember her doing it. Maybe he was too young, blocked it out. But when Oswin came home, he found Emmeline dead on the floor by my crib. She’d used the knife on herself.” Eda flexed her hands, trying to coax some warmth back into them. “Turns out you can die twice.”

She finally leaned back and met Kit’s gaze. It felt dangerous, even a little gratifying, to be the sole focus of his regard. “After, Oswin still had a Pact to fulfill. He’d promised to bring the demon a thousand years, at least fifty by every autumn harvest. But he died of the pox when I was seven, and we took on his debt. I’m telling you this because—”

“Because the demon you’re indebted to is Baelion,” he supplied in level tones.

Eda flinched. “You knew?”

“I’d considered it.”

“I didn’t know he was your…Not until Tripp mentioned the deal with Florian Fane. I only ever knew him as Mr. Night.”

Kit blinked. “What stupid fucking name is that?”

“We were children. He usually came at night. It just stuck.”

“Surprised he didn’t gut you for lack of originality alone.”

Still making jokes. That has to be a good sign. “You’re not angry?”

“Of course I’m angry. You and your dim-witted family have brought me right back into the thick of my brother’s business, which is precisely where I don’t want to be. But,” he continued, before she could defend herself, “I chose to make a Pact without knowing all the details. That was my own brand of idiocy.”

“Why did you?”

“Honestly? I suppose I was bored. Then here comes this mad, pretty little thing breaking into my home and demanding a Pact, willing to trade so much…” He shrugged. “I couldn’t help myself.”

Eda tried not to focus on his calling her pretty. “Tripp told you to take back the seat that was yours by right. Does that mean Baelion is a usurper? Are you one of the archdukes?”

“Why should you care to know?”

“Maybe I’m just bored,” she parroted. Untrue, of course. Eda was curious to the point of pain. But it was worth saying, just to elicit that fetching twitch of his mouth. She met his scrutiny with her own and wondered if that loneliness, tempting her to share so much, existed within him too.

She was rewarded with a cautious explanation: “Baelion and I share a mother,” Kit said. “She was archduke. With no daughters to inherit the title, it fell to one of us. Baelion was born long before I, but age has little to do with succession in Infernus. Only the strongest are given preference.” Eda wondered at that. Mr. Night looked as youthful as Kit, but then, he’d never been short of human years to extend his own. “Baelion was sired of a low-ranking consort. My father was beloved by our mother, and a favorite of the courts. When I began displaying magical prowess young, everyone whispered that I was the obvious choice for successor.”

“Baelion can’t shape-shift? Walk on ceilings?”

“No. Few can. My brother is adept in matters of shadow magic and little else. A useful ability, but considered trite by most. Shadow cannot maim nor kill. Baelion came to rely on his physical prowess to prove his strength. He is formidable in a fight.”

“But…he brought my mother back.”

“He didn’t. He would’ve enlisted the help of another demon to revive her. One with power over reanimation—another rare talent. It’s common for demons to trade favors or wealth in order to fulfill Pacts.”

Her surprise rendered her mute. Their mother’s doomed resurrection had made Mr. Night seem so frighteningly powerful, not to mention the myriad twisted ways he’d given dealies exactly what they’d bargained for. She thought of stones turned into golden coins, of enchanted rings and blinded men.

Yet none of it had been his doing.

“Magic is power,” Kit continued. “It made me popular. Even my mother was conspicuous in her favoritism. Baelion could not abide it.”

Eda grimaced at that. She remembered when Mr. Night first confronted the bishop, that simmering fury contorting his fair features. He’d always been so unflappable, but the Shaws had never actually crossed him. She could easily imagine the terrible wrath reserved for those who did. My people have ever been gifted in magicks, Kit told her before, but our mastery was once far greater. Over the centuries, we became…lesser. It seemed Mr. Night was no exception. Little wonder he resented a brother so uncommonly gifted.

“It’s usual for siblings to kill one another,” Kit said, as though discussing the weather. “Only one can control the family seat. Baelion knew this. Would have gladly slain me in the cradle were it not for our mother. Where other parents might have supported the infighting in order to assure the strongest successor, she was determined that we both live. Unable to kill me outright, Baelion found…other ways to satisfy his jealousy.”

The words came fast and fluid now, as though he’d waited an age to set them free. “He and his little friends made a game of tormenting me, sought to cow me so badly that I’d never dare stand against him when the time came. I grew up in fear. Told him over and over that I wouldn’t challenge him for the dukedom, that I had no interest in ruling. But my assurances weren’t enough. I had the favor of my mother’s court, and that made me a thorn in his side. He wouldn’t rest until I was plucked out.”

The wind blew back his dark hair. “When our mother died, I knew what would happen. The mourning bells were still ringing when his sycophants came for me.” He laughed without humor. “Baelion wanted me brought before him so he might slaughter me publicly—make a spectacle of it. That was his mistake. He should have sent them to guard the Ansellis mirror first.”

“The Gateway,” Eda breathed in realization. “You fled through our Gateway.”

“Baelion’s Gateway,” he corrected. “But yes. I made my escape, found myself in a little human cellar. Must have scared the shit out of the poor fellow standing there.” He glanced at her. “I’m just now understanding that was probably your father.”

Kit had been there. In their cellar, in their home, while she’d likely slumbered in her crib upstairs. Just for a moment their fates had brushed, only to untangle for the next twenty years. And here we are again, pulled together like thread through cloth.

“So, you found Robin to enchant that ring, and you’ve been hiding from Baelion ever since.”

“As you’ve been living alongside him.” His expression darkened. “I wondered at how collected you were, when you first came to me. Now I suppose it’s obvious. I’m hardly going to frighten you if you’ve been under my brother’s yoke all your life.”

“I’m not—it’s not like that. He was never cruel to us.” She thought of a pale finger on her cheek, a fond smile reserved just for her.

“How fortunate for you,” Kit said. “Not so much for that child smeared across the cobblestones, I fear.”

The callous way he said it made her stomach roil. She was reminded again of his alarming inurement to brutality, though he claimed no particular pleasure in it. “Florian killed her. The bishop is the one commanding the fiends.”

“With the power Baelion has granted him. You think my brother gives one solitary shit what happens to the people of this city, when their lives will prolong his own?”

No. He wouldn’t care. Selfishly, Eda had simply hoped that he cared about her. “It’s Florian Fane creating this spectacle. Mr. Night is just doing what demons do.”

“You know nothing about demons.” With a hazy shudder, his skin bled gray. Fangs flashed. “You know nothing about the world I come from. It’s a violent, pitiless one, I’ll grant you, but Baelion is something else entirely. You think you know him? You don’t.” He jabbed a claw at his broken horn. “I didn’t lose this by accident. I was a youngling. They pinned me down. Baelion laughed.”

Eda eyed the hairline fractures webbing down the stump. It was not sawed off, she realized, but forcibly broken. “All I mean to say is that people come asking for Pacts, use their newfound power and influence for ill. Humans are as bad as demons. Sometimes worse.”

“So little regard for your own kind.”

“Like you don’t think of us the same way.”

“Of humans? Why would I?”

It was her turn to stare. She thought of Mr. Night’s voice in the darkness of their sitting room, the firelight on his marble face. You see the greed and the selfishness of man as I do, Eda Shaw.

“But…we must seem like animals playing in the dirt to you. All your powers, your long life. What are we mortals compared to that?” Self-deprecation was easy when you mostly believed it, but Kit’s expression was stony. He didn’t respond. Understanding dawned. “You like it here.”

A muscle in his cheek twitched. Molten eyes slid away, drawn back to the dusky skyline. “I grew up sneaking into your world any chance I could. When Baelion dogged my every step, when the pressures of being raised to rule grew too much, I could escape here. I didn’t care about Pacts. I’d walk down dirty human streets and pretend I…” He trailed off.

The tapestry that was Kit’rath Ansellis weaved itself into something almost comprehensible. A demon who did not make Pacts. Who hid in a human apartment and collected human art, drank human wine, luxuriated in human clothes. Mimicked their inflections and copied their manner of speech. Not merely out of necessity but of a desire to belong.

It was jarring. Mr. Night would have sneered in disgust at mortal things. They were beneath him, which seemed perfectly logical, for what could a creature of such power and grace covet about humanity? Eda would never say it aloud to Ben or Lawrie, but she would rather be the creature that ruled than the one that served. Oh, to be powerful like that!

Yet here was a demon who rejected all of it.

Eda felt suddenly untethered from herself, as though an old shackle had come loose. She was free at last to twist this way and that, to view things from new angles—but wasn’t certain she liked what she saw. Kit spoke of humankind with more empathy than she ever had. Was that his failing or hers?

Something like shame had her clearing her throat. “Don’t you want your dukedom back?”

“It was never mine.”

“It could be.”

“You sound like Tripp.”

“I suppose you’d have to…” Kill your brother.

Eda allowed herself to imagine it: Mr. Night, dead. Autumn harvest would come and go without issue. The bishop would lose his ill-gotten powers over the fiends. The Shaws would finally be free. Pacts died with the demon who forged them, and they had given Mr. Night no years of their own—they needn’t be the ones to slay him. The attempt would be laughable, besides. But if Kit could do it…

A dangerously heady thought.

“Baelion is every bit entitled to the dukedom as I. He can keep it.”

“Even if your people want to follow you instead?”

Kit’s tone turned icy. “You like opining on matters you know nothing of.” He tugged down his trouser leg.

And you’re afraid. She considered his profile, backlit by the evening sky. Past the gray skin and swooping horns and wicked fanged mouth, there was fear. Kit feared Mr. Night. She supposed that made two of them. I wouldn’t be free for long, even if Baelion was killed. My life is forfeit no matter how this ends.

Cold dread unfurled, as it did every time she let herself consider her Pact. What was she doing, talking with this demon as though any of it mattered? She’d bartered fifty years of her life away, and he’d happily taken them. He wasn’t a friend nor a confidant. She couldn’t afford to forget it.

Eda stood. “You’re right. I know little about you, nor you about me. Once we get my brothers back and find the mirror, we’ll go our separate ways.”

He stood as well. “What of the bishop? You’ll leave the people here to his tender mercies?”

“Just as you leave your people to Baelion’s, I suppose.”

Kit’s jaw flexed.

Go on, she thought heatedly, tell me I’m selfish.

But Kit wisely said nothing. Eda was glad of it. What few cares she had were reserved for her family. She’d paid a steep enough price for that already. The fate of Blackbridge wasn’t her problem.

Unbidden, she thought of blood on cobblestones. The cries of a little girl, cut short. She bit her tongue to stem a surge of nausea.

Desperate for a change of topic, Eda blurted, “What was that word you said? When the Blades broke into your apartment?”

“What?”

“It sounded like some sort of expletive. Vepak-something. Vanash. Vek—”

His bark of laughter was so sudden it made her jump. “You mean vhesak?”

“That one. What does it mean?”

“The most appropriate translation would be ‘oh fuck,’ I suppose.”

“And how do you say ‘fuck you’?”

He seemed enthralled by this line of questioning. “Vhesak’din. Why?”

“I’ve a feeling I’ll make use of it during our acquaintance.”

Kit smirked. “Duly noted. To the Oriana, then. I need to bully Robin into looking at this leg.” He considered the blood-soaked kerchief discarded on the ground. His expression softened. “My thanks. For…that.”

Cheeks burning for some reason, Eda just nodded. “We can’t waste any more time. We’re no closer to understanding how to get my brothers out.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, darling. We now know that those warning fires work just as intended. We know that the bishop has laid blame for the fiends upon your shoulders. And we know that the Blades recognize you, which means you’ll be needing that mantle.”

Eda glowered. “Are these supposed to be good developments?”

“Understanding a thing is the surest way to pulling it apart. All we lack now is knowledge of what lies beyond that portcullis. Once we have it, we can plan a way to get in and out.”

“You’ve some handy plans of the keep’s interior hanging around, I suppose.”

“Not I,” Kit drawled, “but I do have a friend in a very high place.”