“One of the three,” Lucia said, eying the man. That left the two other malefactors she’d seen at Parliament as the target of the Duke’s vengeance. Lucia rose to greet the two fellow guests kindly, trying her best to keep her face passive.
Talia rose beside her and offered her hand to the man directly behind Walter. “I am pleased to be the new Duke of Fallmire House,” she said.
Lindell, the snake himself, paused a moment to study Talia’s face before he delicately grasped her hand. “The pleasure is mine, my Duke Fallmire,” he said, his tongue smooth as silk. “At the invitation of my dear friend, the Deacon Erasmus Chase, I am your humble servant, Bishop Henry Lindell.”
“The Bishop of Cavaline, indeed. The Royce House must be grateful for your patronage,” said Talia stiffly.
So. This was the snake, so named by Talia herself. He certainly looked to be one, his conversation pentiment—no, penitent—and reserved. His companion, Erasmus Chase, on the other hand, bubbled over with eagerness, happily taking the Duke’s hand, and then kissing Lucia’s hand in his turn. His eyes shone with the day’s light.
Chase was an easy companion for Walter Royce, who gently guided him up the path towards the luncheon area as he matched his speed in conversation.
“Oh, are those real flower petals? How excellent, just excellent!”
“Yes,” Walter said. “White rose petals, I believe.”
“I didn’t know they could grow them in that color. Excellent!”
And then they passed out of Lucia’s earshot. Behind them, Lindell ascended up the path in a more dignified fashion, exchanging a low word here and there with Erasmus but little more.
Lucia whispered, “I had no idea he would—”
“It’s fine,” Talia said, still rigid. “He knows nothing. This social call is perfectly in tune with his usual habits. It’s fine.”
Lucia touched her arm, trying to will a small measure of comfort into Talia through the gesture, but of course, due to the strictures of this summoning ritual, she could not manipulate the emotions of her summoner—no matter how hard she tried, they were shielded from her influence. She could look, but could not touch. She didn’t know if her mundane efforts would do much of anything.
She saw Talia relax a fraction, though.
“This is an opportunity,” the Duke whispered, “if we take the utmost care. It will be useful to confirm some of my suspicions about the man, though it would not do to raise undue alarm.” She took Lucia’s arm and let her up the path. “Let’s divide our efforts—you shadow this Deacon Erasmus and keep your ears open, and I’ll stay near to Lindell.”
“Alrighty,” Lucia said, heart racing just a little. “Should we defer over tea? You, uh, have afternoon tea served in this country, yes?”
“Con-fer, and yes. That seems like a reasonable time and place.”
Their walk up to the picnic area was far too short. At the end of the path, the Royce servants had erected an archway of ivy and tulips all the guests must pass beneath before being seated along a cozy, oval table. The guests would then be surrounded by hastily uprooted hedges speckled with a variety of flowers. Talia pulled out the chair for Lucia, and she took her seat first as the Duke followed suit. With all of them seated, the luncheon commenced.
Walter opened the conversation, surprising precisely nobody.
“So, I’ve been dying to ask, but my dearest husband has kept me from this particular line of inquiry—However! I must know! My Duke, how did you meet and fall for your lovely wife?” Walter shot Lucia a conspiratorial look.
Lucia’s mouth dropped open, realizing that she had never worked out a cover story with Talia. How could she have missed this?
She blinked and then turned her head toward Talia. “You should tell it,” she said, trying to keep the edge of surprise out of her voice.
Talia did little better, grunting and wiping her lip with a napkin. “Well, I was in the service at the time—”
“Was this before or after you captured the infamous Captain Fallmire, scourge of the southern—”
“Patience,” said Raleigh. “Let her tell it, my fairy light.”
Lindell chuckled, covering his mouth with a napkin.
Talia tilted her head, eyes distant as if recalling—or composing. “During that event, I suppose you would say, Sir Walter.”
“Oho! Do tell! Urk—” and Lucia caught Sir Raleigh jabbing his husband beneath the table; she stifled her own laugh.
“Well, the pirate ship Seven Deadly Sins had been moored on an island two days sail from Adriano, the northernmost port in Eldam.” Talia’s tone dropped into a low, dramatic register. “My crew were manning a small ten-gun sloop, light and maneuverable, but nothing that could match the firepower of the Seven. We’d need to use our stealth to win the day—and of course, we were under orders to capture the dread Captain dead or alive, with sealed orders to that effect delivered direct from his Highness the Prime Minister—”
All the table was wrapped up immediately within Talia’s tale. Lucia’s eyes slid from Erasmus—eager, mouth opening in surprise and alarm at every dramatic turn—to Lindell—eyes lidded in slight amusement throughout. The Royces, of course, were characteristic: Raleigh wore an expression of deep military respect, and Walter outdid the Deacon with every reaction flashing across his face. Annalynn had her chin resting on her fist, the purest of wistfulness gracing her features.
“It was three hours before dawn, you see,” said Talia. “And we still had no signal from Hammond. He was my finest spy, so if he could send us no sign, he was doubtless in trouble. I spoke to my men, hidden among the trees of course, and we agreed that two of us should follow him under cover of darkness. We had no boat that would not be spotted, but to swim out to the Seven Deadly Sins would be a feat few of us contemplated. My first mate, Unwin, volunteered immediately. And I went with him.”
“Unwin,” said the girl Annalynn. “Allen Unwin? I know him!”
“Hush,” said Raleigh, but Talia nodded to her.
“He’s a good man, an honest sailor.”
“He has the coolest tattoos,” said the girl solemnly.
Talia chuckled. “That he does. But I daresay you haven’t seen them all.” This drew a polite laugh from the listeners, all save for Lindell who gave a bland smile.
“In any case, we made the swim, and in those frozen waters we could not spend long before we would catch our death. Soon enough we reached the boat and climbed aboard in the strictest of silence. Unwin went first, and he dispatched the lookout and lowered the poor fool overboard with nary a sound, so we were in.”
Talia closed her eyes, then looked at Lucia with the nearest to a lover’s gaze she’d ever given. It looked good on her as she continued, “I made my way to the cabin where slept the dread Captain. And who should I find there, tied up at the foot of her bed, shivering in the cold, but the very woman who would become my wife.”
Ah. Here we go.
“She was the best of gentlewomen,” Lucia cut in. “She sliced through my bonds and whispered words of comfort to me, all without letting the Captain stir.” She did her best to shudder. “I do not like to recall what I endured under Captain Fallmire’s cruel hands.”
A romantic sigh came from Annalynn.
“But what came next was entirely my fault,” Lucia said. “My gasps of pain as my bonds were loosed could not fail to awaken the wicked pirate. My Duke drew her saber immediately, point against the Captain’s heart. My own nearly beat its way out of my chest,” Lucia continued. She leaned against Talia with a dramatic sigh. “The Captain’s eyes burned like a demon of the Abyssal Dream.”
“The Captain died in that moment,” Talia broke in. “She went for her pistol, which she always slept beside, but my saber drove true. Oh, apologies,” she said, mostly to the wide eyes of Annalynn. “The life of a Captain in the service of the Commonwealth is hardly a topic for polite company.”
“Oh, don’t apologize, the story was just incredible,” Walter broke in.
“So romantic,” swooned Annalynn.
“Annalynn,” came a note of reprimand from Raleigh.
“Oh, your daughter is delightful,” said Talia, and she turned to the girl. “I am curious, my dear. What is your wish for your future?”
“I’m going to join the Navy!” she declared. “And defend the Commonwealth from every threat, from the continent or the thousand islands of the southern reach!”
“Annalynn Miriam!”
“But she asked!”
“I did,” said Talia. “It’s a hard life out at sea, no sight of land from horizon to horizon, sailing at the mercy of the winds and the dead god’s own whims. But there is some romance in it, chasing the sun as it rides the sky.”
“I’ll say,” said Lucia, putting on her bedroom eyes.
Talia took Lucia’s cheek and kissed it, to the delight of the lunch guests. “You’re rubbing off on me,” Talia whispered in her ear.
And the rest of the luncheon passed in polite harmony.
***
The Deacon Erasmus declared his intention to play a game of crow-kay, so Lucia followed suit, taking up the rear of the small party walking through the gardens to where the servants had set it up. With them was Annalynn, who was the Deacon’s best possible companion, eyes wide as she asked the most obvious questions to keep him talking about his incredibly boring life as an inquisitor.
“Well, you know of course of all the classes of demons—known classes, after all, for no demon falls neatly into categories.”
“Oh, but what kinds are there?”
“An excellent question!”
Just like that.
Once they arrived, Lucia learned from the groundskeeper that the sport of crow-kay involved the gentle coaxing of differently colored balls through tiny wire gates set up across the lawn, the winner decided by the first to hit their ball against a particular stick at the end of the miniature gauntlet. She hefted the mallet she had to use, wondering how easily it would break if she did what she wanted and applied her full strength.
What kind of rich idiot came up with this game, anyway? It had absolutely nothing to do with crows, for starters.
She turned back to the conversation between Annalynn and the Deacon. That was what she was supposed to do, of course: listen.
“… which we call the Library of Babel,” he was saying. “It’s all very experimental of course; I don’t believe even the diocese of Cavaline has constructed one yet, but the fundamentals are fairly easy to grasp.”
“How does it work?” The wide eyes of Annalynn seemed better suited to a girl of seven or eight years than eleven. Though, to be fair, the demon knew little of children.
“Well, we place the demon in the circle, which is pretty standard for a summoning. They can’t get out, which is how we keep ourselves safe from them as we place them under their oath—or just banish them back to the Abyssal Dream. But here is the fascinating part,” (Lucia highly doubted that), “with the Library of Babel, we then surround the demon with precisely-ground mirror lenses on each of the four cardinal directions, north, south, east and west—”
“We know what the cardinal directions are,” Lucia said, then instantly regretted her impatience. The Deacon did not rise to her temper, though.
“Right, um, well. The important thing is they need to be precisely aligned, and voila! The demon is now trapped within their own mind.”
Oh. Huh. Lucia blinked at the final sentence. Good to know—not to mention a little terrifying.
“But why would you trap them there?” said Annalynn, placing her crow-kay ball down and lining up her shot.
“Interrogation, experiments, whatever we need,” Erasmus said innocently.
“That’s horrid!” Annalynn swung hard, rocketing the ball through the first arch and pinging it off the second.
“Careful,” said the Deacon.
“Sorry,” she said, sheepish. “But would you truly trap a demon who hasn’t done anything wrong?”
“Oh, you misunderstand the nature of demons, my dear girl,” Erasmus raised his finger, and Lucia could precisely imagine a lecture room appearing around him, chalkboard and all. “They are not feeling beings like yourself. We humans were created of earth—‘of the dust He made Man’—and thus we partake of the earthy element that is solitude and grief, but also love and life.”
Lucia took her turn next, gently tapping the ball through the arch. Hooray. What a thrilling game.
“Demons, on the other hand, are of a different element entirely—fire. And though fire can ravage a home if left unconstrained, it is not tangible in the least. There is no substance to it, merely energy, either put to good use, or escaped to ravage and feed. So it is with demons. Under contract, they are directed and contained, but their nature is all-consuming destruction. Their minds are as illusory as the tongue of a flame.”
“That doesn’t make any sense—”
“Imagine a box, my dear,” Erasmus said, placing down his ball as the last in line. Lucia breathed in slowly, wondering if Talia would care if she throttled the man. She knew the Duke would, unfortunately.
“A black box,” he went on, “and you don’t know what is inside the box, you’ve never seen it opened. All you know is, if you write a question on a slip of paper and insert it in the box, you hear the clanking of machinery, the turning of gears and so on, and out emerges another slip of paper, an answer to your question. You can carry out an entire conversation with that box if you wish. Ask it what its name is, what it likes, and so forth.”
Annalynn’s eyes were spinning at the power of the Deacon’s intellect.
“But is the box a thinking, feeling being such as you or myself? Of course not. It’s all gears and axles and, presumably, a stack of paper, pen, and ink. No spirit, no truly animating force like you’d find in the trees, in the animals, in humanity.”
Lucia opened her mouth to voice the obvious flaw in the Deacon’s dumb analogy, but thought better of it. Instead, she changed the subject. “I’ve heard a skilled summoner could summon a human, instead of a demon.”
The Deacon was silent for a moment. “Where did you hear that?”
“Just a rumor from my country. Well, a children’s tale,” Lucia improvised. “The evil summoner will steal the souls of wicked children and spirit them away to ride the winter sky. Which sounds like a pretty great deal when you think about it, but still.”
“I suppose your children’s fairytale has a grain of truth to it. Summoning a human requires a good deal more energy, since our souls are already embodied in flesh—and a soul always fiercely resists being torn from it. Thus, why we instinctively flee from death, you understand. And there’s a second hurdle, after all—you must know the true name of the human you summon.”
“That doesn’t sound so hard,” Lucia said. She tapped her ball through the third gate, then ceded the field to Annalynn.
“Oh, but it is! Only precious few people have actually learned their own true name. A summoner or inquisitor could study and divine for decades before discovering their own. And without a true name, you have no hold over the soul you summon. Demons are more pliable than a summoned human in that way; they’re easier to bind, as they can enter a ritual contract without giving up their name.”
“Interesting,” Lucia lied through her teeth.
Annalynn agreed wholeheartedly. “Oh, yes!” Then she struck her ball with enough force to send it spinning through the second-last gate, bounce up from a poorly placed rock, and strike a glass statue of a horse, shattering its right flank.
“Oh, no!” she cried. “Oh dear, oh no!”
Lucia felt the spike of fear in the girl, and she instinctively reached out to soothe it. Annalynn calmed immediately, but the Deacon took a step back and gasped. Around his neck, a ruby amulet began to glow with dull light, and it began vibrating against the man’s chest.
The gleam of light grew brighter within the ruby—and the Deacon Erasmus looked up with an expression of amazement, surprise … and accusation.
“Why,” he said, his voice a mix of anger and fear, “you know far more of this than you’re letting on.”
Lucia could not keep the guilt from her face. She desperately reached out with her power, but found the Deacon warded against her intrusion.
Fuck.
He’d found her out. That amulet had detected her demonic power.
Lucia fled the scene, running to find Talia.