Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) Read online

  “Your father has never lost control in his life.”

  Yet another reminder that I’d never live up to his expectations. I sighed.

  “Mother, what are you doing here?”

  “I came to see you off. And to give you these.” She held out two large white wax-paper packages.

  I reached for them, but my mother held one back. “Actually, I should probably give this one to your Guardian to hold. Inside it are seeds for the outpost settlers.” She handed over the other package. I continued staring at the package my mother still held.

  “Mederi-blessed seeds? That’s . . . well . . . It’s kind of you.”

  My mother looked sheepish, a look that didn’t sit well on her face. “I didn’t do the blessing, Nouiomo,” she said with a slight huff. “Your brother did. Night came up for a visit a few nights ago. Your father told us the Shallows was going to be your first field assignment.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence as we both decided not to say what each of us must have been thinking: it was a first assignment that could prove to be fatal.

  “Did he say why?”

  Aurelia shook her head. “I just assumed there was a job that needed doing and you were the person best suited for it.”

  Hardly. But it was refreshing to hear my mother speak of me in such glowingly confident terms. And at least Karanos wasn’t running around Etincelle telling everyone how yellow-bellied I’d been.

  I peeked into the packet she’d given me. It was full of herbs. Dried ones. Or I wouldn’t have been able to hold this bag either. A waning magic user’s touch is deadly to all growing things.

  “I realize your Guardian will be your first line of defense, but it never hurts to have a few medicines on hand. I put a bunch of them in there, all in their own pouches with further storage instructions and dosing directions in case you need them. There’s yarrow, arnica, comfrey—hope you won’t need that one!—white willow, valerian . . . I even put some damiana in there for you and Ari.” She snickered delicately.

  “Thank you, Mother,” I said quietly, stopping to clear my throat. I looked away, not wanting her to see how grateful I was, how touched I was that she’d brought me something to be used for healing instead of killing. I turned back to her, happy to see that her eyes were also dry. Tears between us would have been way too awkward. I walked toward her, thinking to clasp her hands in mine, but she stepped back quickly, extending her arm so that the bag of seeds was far away from me. I stepped back too.

  “So, Noon, who should I deposit these with for safekeeping?”

  Oh. I guess my parents had been told only part of yesterday’s story. “Well,” I said, laughing in a self-deprecating sort of way, “I guess you can give them to Ari’s Guardian. Once we find out who that is.”

  “Why not yours?”

  “Because I won’t be working with an Angel this semester,” I said summarily. And maybe not ever, I thought. But no need to mention that now.

  Aurelia stared at me, her face serene as she processed my news. “Serene” with Aurelia almost never meant peace or acceptance.

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “Ari’s my field partner and he’ll have a Guardian.”

  “Right,” she said, her tone suggesting that solution was anything but. “Well, then I’ll just keep these for tonight and see you in the morning.” Just as she was leaving, the desk clerk found me and handed me a leathery envelope with trailing ends of loose string and a broken wax seal. The only difference between it and Vodnik’s case file was that this envelope was thinner and it had red wax instead of gold.

  “A messenger just dropped this off for you,” the clerk said. “It’s from the dean of demon affairs.”

  With a sinking feeling, I said good-bye to my mother and opened the envelope. It was a second demon complaint.

  COUNTRY OF HALJA

  DEMON COMPLAINT

  CITY OF NEW BABYLON

  TOWN OF ETINCELLE

  OUTPOST: THE SHALLOWS

  ACCUSER: ZELLA RUST

  ACCUSED: ?

  DATE FILED: RIGN 2013

  CASE NO.: 2013 OSH 00000002

  NATURE OF COMPLAINT:

  FIVE DAYS AGO, MY SISTER, ATHALIE RUST, WENT MISSING. SHE LEFT EARLY ONE MORNING WITH OUR DEMON PATRON AND OUTPOST LORD TO CHECK THE TRAPS. SHE NEVER CAME BACK. LORD VODNIK SAYS HE LOST SIGHT OF HER AND THAT GRIMASCA MUST HAVE GOTTEN HER. BUT ATHALIE WOULDN’T HAVE WANDERED OFF. SHE’S ONLY EIGHT AND IS AFRAID OF THE DARK WATERS. PLEASE SEND SOMEONE TO HELP ME FIND HER. I KNOW A DEMON MADE HER DISAPPEAR.

  I JUST DON’T KNOW WHICH ONE . . .

  I was glad I hadn’t eaten anything all day because I suddenly felt sick. Athalie Rust, the feisty “woman” I’d thought was one of the fishermen’s wives, was probably one of their daughters. She was the person who had filed the original complaint, and now she was missing too. And we were weeks away from helping her. I didn’t know Athalie. And I too had no idea which demon was responsible for her disappearance. But I did know that our trip to the Shallows now had a priority other than safety.

  Speed.

  Chapter 9

  The fishermen’s deaths were tragic, but it hadn’t occurred to me that anyone else would be in danger. On the contrary, I’d assumed the people of the Shallows, and its patron, would be extra cautious in the aftermath of the incident. Apparently not. And while life outside of New Babylon and Etincelle was precarious, and death was to be expected, it wasn’t supposed to come from sources “inside your fort,” the place full of people who were supposed to protect you. Either Vodnik was killing his own followers, or this mysterious Grimasca was. It was my job to figure out which one. And then stop them. I conscientiously ignored the weak-kneed feeling I got when I acknowledged, if only to myself, that “stopping them” would likely mean killing them.

  I went downstairs and made immediate arrangements to have my books packed up and sent to dock twenty-three E. Then I left to go find Ari. It was after 5:00 p.m. He should know by now who his Guardian would be. That left us the evening to gather our supplies and pack up. I walked over to Rochester’s office, which, along with the rest of the faculty’s, was in a building we students none-too-affectionately called the Rabbit Warren.

  The Warenne Tiberius Rhaetia Administrative Building was an aboveground maze. The near-windowless building was really one small building and a dozen or so ill-thought-out expansions. Endless narrow hallways twisted around and through the building like square burrows. Locating an office usually meant navigating no fewer than fifteen turns and as many doors. Some had signs. Some not. It all depended on how engaged the occupant was with the here and now. (Administrative work in a demon-run law school wasn’t always the paper-pushing job people thought it was.)

  I was on my way to Rochester’s office when I felt the stink of Brunus’ signature. It crept up on me like the smell of a garbage can full of fish heads and bilge water. Sure enough, seconds later Brunus, Sasha, and Tosca—my class’ trio of Maegester-in-Training malcontents—rounded the corner. They started laughing immediately.

  “Nice burn mark, Onyx,” Brunus said, pointing to the still-blistery spot on my cheek from yesterday.

  Tosca stopped directly in front of me, forcing me to stop. He cocked an eyebrow at me, daring me to push past him.

  It was a little embarrassing. I was immeasurably stronger than all of them put together, but I had control issues and they didn’t. Tosca was taunting me. Crazy as it was, I think he wanted me to try something. Here, in the hallways of St. Luck’s! Which was insane. But if things went disastrously wrong, who would get blamed? Me, of course. The girl who’d destroyed Justica.

  “Don’t bother looking for your Guardian. You weren’t assigned one,” Sasha crowed, pointing behind him. “Guess you get to work alone, just like you wanted.”

  “She’s not alone.” Ari’s quietly menacing voice suddenly sounded from the far end of the hallway. “She’s with us.”

  He stepped out from around the corner and a second later someone
else stepped out too.

  It was Fara Vanderlin, wearing a floor-length, deep purple, embossed velvet gown. She strode purposefully down the hallway, skirts swishing around her ankles, bell sleeves flapping at her wrists, brandishing, of all things (I nearly laughed out loud), a dowsing rod, which she pointed at Sasha, Tosca, and Brunus as if it were a wand.

  “Extremum vitae spiritum edere,” she screeched. Uh-oh. I looked over at my classmates, expecting them to be turned into water or gold or something Fara might have used that dowsing rod to find. But instead, they merely faded, becoming translucent images of themselves right before my eyes. Their voices became muted too, because they suddenly started shouting at Fara and I couldn’t hear a thing.

  Fara waved her hand in the air toward the trio of ghosts she’d just made.

  “‘We are all but pale spirits to be poured over the land until the time shall come to be made whole again,’” she preached. “Joshua, five, thirty-four.”

  With a final flip of her hand, Fara made Sasha, Tosca, and Brunus swirl away as if they were smoke she’d just chased from a fire.

  Oh, crap. “Are they coming back?”

  “Eventually.” She tapped her rod against her leg. “So, Nouiomo Onyx, solo practitioner, you know what else Joshua says?”

  If only I could swish Fara away with a wave of my hand.

  “‘He who borrows cannot choose.’ Joshua, ten, nine.” She pushed her dowsing rod into my shoulder and gave it a satisfied little shove.

  Slowly, I raised my hand to the rod and pushed it away.

  “Really?” I said, careful to keep my magic to myself. “I always thought it was, ‘She who borrows has the biggest closet.’”

  * * *

  Ari chased me out of the Rabbit Warren and into Timothy’s Square. He finally succeeded in grabbing my hand when I was almost ready to step onto Victory Street. He turned me to face him, grabbing my shoulders to prevent further escape.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, what?” I snapped.

  “I didn’t choose her. You know that. She was assigned to me. To us.”

  “No she wasn’t and you know it. No one was assigned to me. That’s how I wanted it.”

  Ari’s jaw hardened.

  “Please,” I said, exasperated. “Don’t go pretending you’re upset. Fara was your top pick all along.”

  “For you!”

  “Well, now she’ll be on the boat regardless.” I softened. “Look, it doesn’t matter, Ari.” I told him about the second demon complaint that had just come in from the Shallows. “The only thing that matters right now is getting there, and getting there quickly.”

  * * *

  Ode to Ivana Jaynes, the best friend a girl could have: At the beginning of the week, Ivy was forced to start off her second semester by watching a hideous demon execution in our public square because my father wanted to teach me a lesson. The next day, she returned from morning classes to find the cooled remains of my melted alarm clock cemented to my desk, a chilling reminder of my hot temper. On the third day, she found similar evidence of such in the form of the ashy remains of what had probably been a nice useful stack of treatises, primers, and horn books the night before. By the fourth day, she was told I’d created a whirling fervor of explosive, destructive, out-of-control fireballs. And on the fifth day, she heard a rumor that three people had “given up the ghost” in my presence. Yet . . . today, she wept for my leaving.

  Go figure and Luck bless her.

  Saturday at dawn, we stood together at the dock saying good-bye. Ivy was a little weepy. Did she really think I wouldn’t come back? Fitz was a little more sanguine.

  “If you don’t come back, can I have the books that Waldron Seknecus gave you last semester?”

  I glared at him. He smiled unapologetically. “What? Can you blame me? Think about what an edge I’d have if I had access to our dean of demon affairs’ student notes.”

  “You both don’t have to wait, really,” I said, glancing over my shoulder—again—at the empty pier behind me. The dock was relatively quiet, with very few whistles or bells. The main traffic was farther west, at the main docks where shoppers and day-trippers would be taking the ferries to and from Etincelle. Piers in the twenties were for anyone catching a boat to the east, like us. It wasn’t exactly heartening to see that, so far, we seemed to be the only ones.

  A low rumbling of thunder grumbled ominously to the east. I didn’t believe in weather portents. Luck had controlled the Legion; the weather was beneath him. But still, choppy waters weren’t exactly how I wanted to start this trip. The wind was relatively calm, but every now and then an odd gust would blow, a sign of something coming. Too bad it wasn’t our boat. I wanted to get my stuff off the dock and under cover, before the storm hit.

  Fitz’s expression suddenly turned serious as he followed my gaze off to the east. “I meant it, you know,” Fitz said quietly.

  “Meant what?”

  “That I’d go with you.”

  “Fitz,” Ivy said softly. Her voice held a low warning note. “We talked about that. You’d only be a liability to her.”

  Fitz’s jaw set and he said nothing, just stared out at the water. He glanced over at me then, his expression the strangest combination of humility, anger, and . . . yearning?

  “Yeah,” he said finally, his voice thick with some unshed emotion I couldn’t quite place, “well, being a Hyrke sucks.”

  “Fitz!” Ivy frowned. “Is that your idea of ‘fare well’?”

  He glared at her and, if looks could kill, she be skewered twice over. But then he relented and grinned, looking much more Fitz-like.

  “Fine,” he said. “Then Ivy and I will just have to dream up a little lark of our own while we await your return.”

  Through the hazy mist, two dark silhouettes made their way toward us. Fitz leaned in toward me and squeezed me in a great big bear hug. Just before he released me, he whispered in my ear:

  “If you’re not back by Haerfest, I’ll torch Seknecus’ books and him too and then come after you.” His threat sounded chillingly real, especially considering, when he was not at St. Luck’s, he resided at the Seknecai Estate (his mother was head housekeeper for Waldron Seknecus). I stepped back and searched his face for signs that he was kidding. Thankfully, his earsplitting grin gave abundant evidence of it and my momentary stomach flutters ceased (I simply could not go off into the hinterlands wondering what sort of trouble Fitz might get himself into back home).

  Without a second glance, Fitz turned and left. Ivy gave me a swift hug too and then departed after him, swiping tears off her cheek. I wanted to yell to her that she’d likely see more drama in Darius Dorio’s Council Procedure class than I would on the river, but my throat felt too raw to pull off the joke. I didn’t want anyone, least of all, me, falling to pieces on the docks. What sort of first impression would that give our new teacher and captain? So I remained mute.

  From the east, the outline of a boat appeared. A low whistle sounded and I waved. When I turned back, Ari and Fara’s silhouettes were recognizable. It looked like they were arguing. And when I saw the small, dark, four-legged silhouette that trailed behind them, I thought I knew why. My jaw dropped. She truly knew no bounds. For her trip to the Shallows, Fara had packed two bags and a . . . tiger cub.

  “You can’t bring it,” I heard Ari say.

  “He’s a good fighter. He’ll be useful if we’re attacked by water wraiths.”

  “I don’t care. He belongs in Warja, not Halja. I don’t care how you got him—or why. He’s not coming.”

  “You know what your problem is? You don’t think outside the box. None of you Maegesters do.”

  “Praeceptum primum, praeceptum solum, Fara. Scrupulous rule following is ‘the first rule, the only rule.’ You know that as well as us.”

  Fara snorted and dropped her bags. As if on cue, the tiger cub sat.

  “There’s no rule against owning a tiger,” Fara said dismissively. “Morning, Noon.” She
snickered at her own joke. As if I hadn’t heard that one before. “Ready for a fight?”

  With who? Her? Her cat? The rogare demons we’d likely encounter along the way?

  The tiger appeared to survey the dock disdainfully, ears twitching, tail lashing. I sensed absolutely zero signature from it. It was strange to see a nonmagical beast in New Babylon. I didn’t want to give Fara the satisfaction of seeing I was curious about her cat so I merely nodded a greeting and turned back to watch the boat dock. Let Ari deal with her. She’s his Guardian, not mine, I thought with an odd mix of thanks and regret.

  The boat was now within a few hundred yards of the dock. I stared at it, thinking how quickly the trip’s problems were mounting (and we were only two minutes in!) The boat was beautiful to be sure—a long, low dahabiya with hardwood trim and bright white triangular sails. And she was big—over a hundred feet long and almost twenty feet wide, which was good because it meant I wouldn’t have to bunk up with Fara and sleep next to that tiger. But considering where we were going and the length of time it would take to get there, I still thought “claustrophobic looking” and “coffin-like” were more apt adjectives than “luxurious” or “leisurely.” Dahabiyas weren’t known for their speed. In this thing, we’d be ducks in situ for every rogare demon along the way.

  Ari walked over to me and planted a kiss on my forehead. He put his arm around my shoulders and turned me toward the incoming boat, pointedly ignoring the absurd scene behind us: Fara amid duffel bags, boxes of books from the library, war chests, and the exotic tiger cub.

  “I can train the cat to defend your girlfriend, Carmine,” Fara called.

  Ari gave me a contemplative look. I was just about to say don’t be ridiculous when someone else beat me to it. My mother. I hadn’t forgotten that she’d said she see me off but, not wanting to be disappointed if she didn’t show, I hadn’t thought too much more about it since yesterday.