Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (14 page)

“Such a fierce look on such a fair face,” said a smooth, cool voice from the shadows. “What are you brooding about, Nouiomo? The merits of spear versus sword?”

“I’m going to be a Maegester, Mother,” I said, turning around slowly, “not a foot soldier. My weapons will be wisdom, knowledge, and experience.”

Aurelia snorted. Of course, coming from her, it sounded almost genteel. I was surprised to see her. My mother rarely left our estate, let alone Etincelle. She wore a long, flowing, forest green dress in some sort of shimmery fabric. Even in the low light of Corpus Justica she appeared to set off sparks. But it wasn’t her magic. She wasn’t a firestarter. Far from it. She was a Mederi healer (or, she was supposed to be). Her magic was the soft, nurturing, and creative kind (well, it was supposed to be), but the last time Aurelia had practiced medicine had been the night before my brother and I were born. Before the disastrous mix-up of our twin births.

In the Host, magic is closely related to gender. Males usually inherit waning magic, or the “drop of demon blood,” that allows them to control demons, and females usually inherit waxing magic, the “growing magic” that’s used for midwifery, field nursing, and medicinal botany. Needless to say, my brother got the green thumb while I got the demon blood. My mother blamed herself, my father did too, and for most of my childhood (despite our wealth and status), my home had been a very unhappy place.

Recently, however, my mother and I had been trying to mend our relationship. It was a prickly path, what with her being the most ferocious Mederi, and me being the softest Maegester, to have served Luck in over two thousand years. Her gaze rested momentarily on the recent burn mark on my cheek and she raised her hand as if to touch it, but just as quickly she let her hand drop.

“I heard about Metatron’s Justica,” she said. I cringed, but she laughed, the tinkling sound of it as out of place in this dusty library as a wind chime made of baby spoons would have been. “I would liked to have seen it. Karanos’ daughter destroying Justica.”

“I lost control,” I hissed, upset at my mother’s enjoyment of the story. “Someone could have been hurt . . . or killed.”

“But they weren’t, were they? Everyone loses control from time to time. What’s important is that you found a target for your wayward magic. All things considered, I think you performed admirably.”

This
coming from the woman who’d torched her garden with a match and a can of gasoline.
Why was I surprised?

“You think Karanos will see it that way?” I asked.

For a moment, my mother looked young and vulnerable. She’d been amazingly beautiful once. The toast of the Host in Etincelle. I always tried to imagine what my parents’ life must have been like when they first married. She claimed they’d been in love. It was hard to imagine, except during fleeting moments like this. But the moment passed and her look hardened.

“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.

C
OUNTRY OF
H
ALJA

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.

T
he 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.)