Demon's Cradle (Devany Miller Book 3) (29 page)

“What about moving it? Could I do that without dying?”

“How would you do that? It’s a big sucker.”

Magic, Dad. Duh. “I’m going to try. Sit tight.”

“Ha ha. Don’t get yourself killed, young lady. I’ll never hear the end of it from your mother.”

My breath caught in my throat. We shared that bittersweet memory of my mother, his wife, and her words, held it between us for a long moment before I backed out of the room. “Love you Dad!”

“Love you, honey. Come back to me.”

“I will.” I hoped.

NINETEEN

I made test hooks until I could hold one without it getting ripped apart like tissue paper. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized if I did manage to hook to the Omphalos, I wouldn’t be able to get away from it. If it was shredding my hooks when I wasn’t even in the room with it, I didn’t have a prayer to escape its sealed in room ... unless I succeeded in destroying it.

What would happen to the city if the Omphalos was gone, its magic scattered? Would it collapse immediately or slowly fade?

All I needed was a way to remove the barrier around my Dad, I reminded myself, and there had to be a way. They’d stuck him in there after all and in order to execute him, they would have to have a way to get him out. At least now I knew how they’d hid him from me. The Omphalos ate energy. Greedy thing.

I paused, focusing on that thought. It gulped magic but Dad said it was also leaking. Could I feed it enough energy to heal the crack? Could I fix the damn thing and get Dad out? Hell, maybe if I fixed it, they’d pardon Dad and let me gallivant around their precious witch city without them thinking I needed to be magically neutered. As if they could even do that.

I settled into a protection bubble since there were still prisoners wandering around, some of them coming out of their self-induced drunks to discover their freedom. I sank down into my control room, something I rarely had to do anymore. The magic was becoming more and more automatic, if still blundering and raw, but I thought this might need more finesse.

I followed the energy back to its source, finding a brilliant, sun-like orb of light that filled the view screen of my mind’s eye. “Ack,” I croaked, shutting off the view until I could darken my mental viewfinder enough to blunt the force of the glare. When I could see the Omphalos without going full brain-tumor, I could easily see the crack. It was a glaring flaw in an otherwise perfect creation.

I sat in awe for I don’t know how long. It was the
rashn
on steroids. It was the brilliant heart of a dying star. It was amazing.

Shouts off to my left made me jerk. I swam up from my meditation to see a dust-up at the far end of the hall. I cursed and scooted backward until I was hidden inside the empty cell behind me. I hoped they wouldn’t turn the barriers back on with me in here and that if they did, that I could still hook away.

‘Thought you said it would hold them forever,’ I muttered at Neutria.

She hissed at me.
Other door.

‘Sure,’ I said, then stopped taunting the predator in my head and went back to the Omphalos. I wasn’t sure how to fix the crack and decided to use very concrete imagery. Glue seemed so mundane for such a magnificent creation, so I imagined it had to be glue made of diamonds and titanium. Elmer’s Glue was too mundane for this job. And of course, the glue was actually power fed through me to the greedy rock I held pictured in my imagination. Magic was crazy. I directed the flow of my glue at the Omphalos, being very deliberate in how I filled the crack. Slow and easy. The shouts grew louder and I squirmed but didn’t open my eyes. More power. It was greedy. It sucked at me once it noticed me, feeling more like a thousand little awarenesses tugging at the energy flowing through me. Was it sentient? I just didn’t know. It
felt
alive. My head started to pound with the effort of it but I kept at it, pouring, pouring, directing the flow, repairing the crack. Sweat broke out on my face, my chest, made the backs of my knees moist, which was awful and still the Omphalos wanted more.

I hoped I wasn’t making things worse for Kroshtuka’s people by repairing the damned thing.

My muscles shook. Still it wanted more and I gave it, until the last inch of the crack was filled. The connection between me and it snapped and my eyes opened. I blinked furiously, as exhausted as I’d ever been. Had it worked?

“Dad,” I said, and pushed my shaky self off the floor.

I peeked around the corner and saw that the chaos had moved along. With trembling legs, I hurried back to where I’d left Dad, my heart pounding as if I’d run eight miles straight. I stumbled into the room but was brought up short by the sight of Anforsa Kenda and a group of eight Council members surrounding my dad. He was in a bubble, thank heavens, and the barrier was down, but they were shouting, screaming, one of them crying.

“What have you done?” Kenda shrieked at my father.

I pulled up a bubble too, unwilling to catch their shit when they realized I was here. Then I said, “I fixed the crack. Now you’re going to let us both go or I’m going to reverse my work and break the Omphalos into a million bitty pieces.”

Startled eyes turned my way. Muttering commenced. A few, “Not possibles,” and some “Bullshits,” until, one by one, they went into their magical selves to figure it out for themselves. Whatever they felt or saw or found must have convinced them. Their arms dropped, their stances relaxed. Not a few of them were slack-jawed.

“Don’t let down your guard, Dad,” I said.

“I’m old but not stupid,” he retorted.

I eased closer, keeping the power around me until it could merge with his. When we were together, I formed a hook.

“Wait!” Her voice was desperate but not angry. “Why did you do it? How?”

I flipped her off and endured my dad’s chiding as I whisked us away.

***

In our kitchen, Dad sighed happily as he breathed in the aroma of the coffee in front of him. “Home is a wonderful place, honey, but no matter how great the magic is on Midia, they never did have great luck with coffee.” He looked up at me. “And can a place really be great without coffee?”

I pulled a face. “Yes.”

He snorted. “Fat lot you know. It can’t. That’s the only acceptable answer.” He sipped and looked like he’d been transported to Nirvana. When his eyes fluttered open, he smiled. “Thank you. I guess I should have known better than to think they would have forgiven something so big.”

I shrugged. “I haven’t found them to be very tolerant overall, so I’m not too surprised that they had a long memory. You know what though?” I lowered my voice. “You might not want to tell Arsinua about the whole Omphalos thing. I’m not sure she’d take it well.”

“I did what I thought was best for my people. I won’t apologize for it. Not even to that nice young woman.

Nice young woman. Bossy, moral woman maybe. Okay, also nice. But not as often as she was bossy. I started to speak when Kroshtuka’s ring hummed against my chest. He’d found Ellison. My stomach lurched and my thoughts went immediately to Jasper.

All will be well,
he said, but offered nothing else.

“What’s wrong?”

I shook my head, forcing the emotion back down. Took a deep breath. “I have to go again, Dad. I have to take care of the Rider once and for all. Will you—?”

“My grandkids are safe with me. And your brother. And Arsinua. Go. Do what you have to.” His eyes gleamed and I thought maybe he was forcing some emotion back down too. “Your mother would have been so proud of you.”

“Thanks Dad.” I grabbed his hand and we squeezed each other tight.

***

The kids were still sleeping, so I contented myself with blowing a quiet kiss to each of them before leaving. I hated the idea that one of these times I might not get back to them. Every time I left to go to Midia or the Slip, the likelihood I wouldn’t return increased.

With my hand on Kroshtuka’s ring, I shut my eyes and concentrated on him. The thread connecting us was a shimmering gold and it tingled when I held it in my imaginary hand. He and his folk were outside Banishwinds, on the edge of the Wilds. I slipped into his arms and smelled him, grounding myself in his strong, steady presence. “Where is he?”

“He is hiding in Basin.”

From his tone, I could tell this wasn’t a good thing, even though the word “basin” held no dire implications. “How far away?”

“It isn’t a distance away. It’s an idea away.” He smiled at me. “That isn’t the worst part of it.”

“Of course not.”

“How much do you know about the Wilds?”

I shrugged. “Very little. Just what I saw when I traveled with the Carnicus and hunted with you.” We walked together to the small fire and I nodded at the group of Wydlings as I settled on the ground next to Kroshtuka.

“It’s a beautiful place,” he said, as if he had to defend it. I suppose he felt he did; the witches certainly viewed it with disgust and horror. “It’s alive, though not in the way you or I are alive.”

Like the Omphalos, I thought. I wondered if all magic was similar. Alive but not alive. I hadn’t felt anything weird off the
rashn,
but I’d been a little preoccupied when I first encountered it at the bottom of the fleshcrawler kingdom. Hadn’t had the presence of mind to chat with it, you might say.

“It moves; you know this. It also directs things.” He put his arm around me and I leaned into him. “I think it brought you to Odd Silver.”

I thought it had, too.

“And I think that it protects us, the People, because we honor it and try to live with it, rather than against it. But even so, there’s a part of it that has been broken and those parts are dangerous. The auroras that crackle across the land are one manifestation of this brokenness. I believe this is how the Ringmaster was so tainted by wild magic.”

“He said a group of Wydlings tortured him and left him to die.”

Kroshtuka’s eyes were grave. “He killed a little Wydling girl when he was but a boy, hurt her in ways no little girl should be hurt. Her family caught him, yes. They tried to bring him to life in the way of our kind. They took him to the gathering circle and brought blessings to him. They encouraged him to talk about his past. They sang to him. They shared their kindness with him in the hope it would fill the dark void inside him. Even before he was tainted by the magic he wasn’t right. Boy that he was, he was already broken. The wild magic, the aurora that is the wild magic’s shadowed-heart, just fed off that darkness in his soul and helped it grow.”

How had Sharps ended up in his hands? I shuddered to think of her in his custody all her young life. Kroshtuka’s gentle touch brought me back from the dark thoughts.

“The Basin is like the aurora. It’s a broken place, full of teeth and blood.”

“And that’s where he’s hiding.”

He nodded. “I know not if his Skriven self is affected by the wild magic. I would imagine so.”

“Then how are we going to get him out without being destroyed ourselves? Or warped. Tainted. Whatever.”

“We need to visit the goddess.”

I blinked. “Uh, what?”

“She may be able to protect us. She was alive before the magic was broken, and she might have something from Before that would shield us.”

Crab apples. If I went back, I’d have to take Tytan. If I took Tytan, I did not want to take Kroshtuka. “Us, huh?”

“I would not want you to go alone into the Basin. I know you are a warrior, but there are some things that are best done with your family and not alone.”

Family? The word made me feel all warm and squishy inside and I told myself to pay attention. I could feel mushy later. “I’ll have to bring Tytan.” He didn’t question me, just waited. I sighed. “She asked me to bring him to her. I haven’t exactly told him about it. Which means it will be a big production. And he won’t like you,” I added.

Kroshtuka smiled, flashing a glimpse of his very sharp hyena teeth. “That is all right. I can take care of myself.”

“He’s a Skriven,” I said, even as I realized if Ty got sassy I could magically neuter him. So there, Witch’s Council, I thought. I could do dirty deeds too. “Okay. I’ll get him. We’ll go visit the goddess.” I slouched a little, feeling nervous and not knowing exactly why. Okay, I knew why. Geez. “You sure there’s not another fix? Protection bubbles set on super thick?”

“We could,” he said, slowly. “It would be dangerous. I’m not sure how long the bubbles would hold or if we could even use them in the Basin. I’ve never met anyone who came out of there with any sense in their heads.”

Raving lunatics. Right. I stood and brushed off my butt. “Fine. I’ll go get him. Explain things. Be prepared for ... well. Anything, I guess.” I kissed him and then hooked away, going first to my home to pick up the obsidian
emiliometer
that would take me directly to Tempest Peaks. Then I concentrated on Tytan. When I found him, he had a skinny witch pressed tight against a tavern wall, his hand at the man’s throat.

“Hello Devany.”

The man at Tytan’s mercy kicked ineffectually and made gagging noises. “What are you doing?”