Chapter Eight Abel
It is futile to question why Noctu shaped the night sky with that owl constellation upon his Ascension. What benefit does worrying yield besides reminding us of the apocalypse he wants?
—Sermon on The Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des étoiles), Part III: The Age of Mortality
Chapter Eight
Abel
The low light of sunsrise drags me from sleep.
I barely slept. For all my talk about survival, Claire is a beautiful girl. Insufferable, but beautiful. The dawn air has a brisk chill to it—I make that my excuse to collect more firewood instead of continuing to lie there with her.
My hands still shake from the weight of that woman’s sickle against my daggers. Her strength felt inhuman. And Gods, she killed Hanna.
I breathe through my nose until my nausea settles.
Claire is sleeping surprisingly soundly, and I don’t know what to make of that.
When she slit that woman’s throat, it was like watching another slayer fell her first dragon.
Bloody. Frenzied. Cathartic. But slayers spend their entire childhood preparing to kill.
Claire has no fighting experience, yet she didn’t hesitate to save my life.
Her bravery exceeds even the Guild’s standards for a beginner.
Then again, Claire is a con artist. Maybe her skill set is bloodier than she lets on.
I shake my head at myself. As I think back, her form with that dagger was terrible. There’s no way she’s hiding a murder record.
Best to let her sleep awhile longer.
I get dressed, restart the fire, and take down the damp fabrics from the clothesline. To determine our location, I climb the rock formation behind us. There seems to be a small settlement about a half hour’s walk downstream.
Unbelievable. We could’ve walked there last evening. Instead, we spent the whole night shivering under that damn owl constellation, which forced me to cross far too many lines with a client.
If that isn’t the definition of Estellio luck.
At least we’ll have a place to find transportation.
In the meantime, I wait on a log at the fireside and make a point of not staring at a new inch of leg every time Claire shifts under my overcoat.
Lucy’s head sticks out from the collar, beneath Claire’s chin.
I shake my head at the sight. The nerve of that tinderfox.
I wish I had that kind of courage around women. At least her coat is gold again.
While I wait for Claire to wake, I focus on the bigger problem. The smiling silver mask in my hands. The mask of Hanna’s killer.
Nostalgia sinks my stomach. I had feelings for Hanna when I was younger.
Headstrong girls had always been my type.
Then she literally kicked the attraction out of me.
Now girls like that scare me a little. Still, Hanna was the talent of a generation.
If she didn’t survive, I doubt the rest of her family did.
Their castle was in ruins. The archive, too.
And the Metekus’ shop. Lyle and Madame Afi are my closest—well, after what I did to Micah, my only—friends. Gods, I hope they’re safe.
With a satisfied hum, Claire rolls onto her back and stretches her arms over her head. I nearly drop the mask. Lucy slips out from under the overcoat and licks her cheek.
“Good morning, ma Luciole,” Claire coos, and rubs her ears.
I scratch my stubble, unsure how to break last night’s tension. I settle for “I’m glad you slept well.”
Her smile crumples. She sits up, a tight fist holding the overcoat to her chest. I turn around on the log to give her privacy.
“Your clothes are relatively dry.” I fight not to bounce a knee. “You should put them on.”
She remains silent, but I can tell from the rustling that she’s getting up.
I’m not handling this well. In my defense, none of my previous clients were this much trouble. Get hired, slay the dragon, collect the bounty. That’s how the process works. It should be a straightforward endeavor.
“Why is my bodice still soaked?” Claire asks.
“Oh. Sorry.” I rub the back of my neck. “I scrubbed the bloodstains in the river after I woke up.”
A pause follows, quiet enough for me to hear Lucy pawing the embers.
Claire walks up beside me, her boots in my peripheral vision. “Why?”
I scratch the mask with my fingernail. “You didn’t need to see them again.”
“Very well. I’m going to kick you now.”
I gawk at her. She stands over me, hand on her hip, hair tied with a ribbon in a messy ponytail.
I know I offered, but is she serious? I can’t read past the stoic look on her face.
I’m especially thrown when she avoids eye contact.
For all her flirtation, she’s embarrassed. I suppose even she has boundaries.
I plant my elbows on my knees and brace for the hit. “A promise is a promise. Like I said, preferably not in the—”
A hand finds my shoulder. I flinch. But it isn’t a painful gesture; if anything, it’s a gentle squeeze. I glance up at her in question.
“I don’t punish the sweet ones,” she says.
Of course, the second I relax, she pats my cheek twice, hard enough to sting. I rub it away as she struts off to collect her coat.
There it is. The reason headstrong girls scare me. I don’t have the first clue how to read them.
Not that it matters. I need to keep her at a distance.
“Claire.” I hold up the mask. “We need to talk about what this means for our journey.”
She rolls her coat into a tight ball. “So talk.”
“We’re facing a lot of unknowns. Who are these people? Where did they come from? What do they want?”
“Fair to say they wanted Ravinfort destroyed, no?”
“I agree.” Lifting the sickle, I run my thumb along the leather-wrapped grip. “What’s haunting me is why.”
Tugging at her ponytail, Claire hums. “A slayer outpost is an odd target. Attacking Ravinfort only enables dragons to do more damage.”
“Right.” I sink the sickle’s tip into the dirt, which makes it stand off-kilter. “Why would anyone want to kill slayers? We’re the only people capable of suppressing the curse.”
“There are other clues. The silverwolves, for one.”
As far as clues go, that isn’t a strong one.
Even The Tale of Stars contains only a handful of references to silverwolves.
Noctu created them as an experiment; he wanted to know if a species of individually powerful beings could peacefully coexist, or if they would turn on each other.
They passed the test. The seamless cooperation found within silverwolf packs was the assurance Noctu needed to help Diu create the Immortals, and to give them access to the lunar domain of magic.
After The Book of Origins, the references to the beasts taper off.
As for modern-day references, the only encounters I hear of are brief sightings within forested hunting grounds.
“I’ve never heard of anyone taming a silverwolf,” I answer. “Have you?”
Claire shakes her head. “Your experience with tinderfoxes doesn’t offer any insight?”
“ ‘Tame’ is a generous descriptor for that.” I gesture to Lucy, who furiously digs at the remains of our campfire.
“But it’s the symbiotic nature of the relationship that makes it work.
I have no idea what would compel a silverwolf to betray its innate fear of humans, let alone take orders like a hunting hound. ”
“Fear is a horrifically pliable instinct,” Claire says quietly. “I’ve retrained horses that were petrified into obedience. Trauma-based training would explain the aggression, too.”
“That still doesn’t tell us who the tamers are. We need more clues.”
“What about the Old Tongue? They sounded fluent.”
I stiffen. The shock of what I saw them do made me forget what I heard.
Education in the Old Tongue is strictly passed down through the Slayers Guild and the Church. Royal decree grants both institutions full control over document access to ensure all records remain free from translation errors. Only a successful petition to the king and queen can modify it.
In short: Average people shouldn’t know how to recognize fluent Old Tongue.
That includes Claire.
I was na?ve to dismiss her vocabulary, as if it were a bluff akin to the rest of her tactics. It wouldn’t be smart of me to proceed on this hunt without an explanation.
“You told me you weren’t fluent in the Old Tongue,” I say. “Did you lie?”
“Of course not. I’m above average.”
Same difference. “Tell me where you studied it.”
She raises an offended eyebrow. “Testing me again?”
“Normal civilians don’t casually learn it, even if they want to hire a slayer. For all I know, there’s a secret organization hoarding ancient literature in the middle of nowhere. And you never know what fringe practices small towns might generate.”
“ ‘Fringe’ practices? That’s what you took from my heartfelt stargazing story?”
“You had to have broken the law on some level to access controlled documents. What did you do?”
“Oh, fine.” She twirls a lock of hair. “I may have lifted a copy of the original L’Histoire des étoiles from a cardinal on his way out from Port-de-Chance.”
I stare. “Lifted it.”
“What? It’s not like the Council of Cardinals ever stays in one church. They have the good word to spread. His travels would have provided him access to other copies.”
“Those are ancient relics, Claire.”
“Better I stole a book than the donation money bound for their orphanages and whatnot.” She waves me off. “Comparing that text to the translated version was the quickest way to self-teach.”
“To what end?”
“I was preparing to con my way into a slayer archive building.”
I palm my face. “You plotted to steal hunting records, too?”
“I didn’t think a slayer would take my job offer without a human identity attached.
” She pokes my chest. “Don’t judge. I had to lie about knowing the Bourlin dragon just for you to hear me out.
And you agreed that my knowledge of Sellecastel’s residents was a solid place to start.
I won’t apologize for being overprepared. ”
Diu spare her. “Dare I ask where the book is now?”
She’d better not tell me it’s at the bottom of the Tordou River.
“I left it with my…mentor of a sort. After that, I couldn’t tell you.”
Translation: It’s been sold on the black market, most likely.
I rub the knot between my eyebrows. A missing relic isn’t the real problem here. If thievery were all it took for Claire to scrape together an understanding of the Old Tongue, others could have done the same.
Anyone could be a suspect in the slaughter of Ravinfort.
“I can’t fathom who would want slayers dead,” I say. “That only serves to offend Diu.”
“Hypocrisies exist everywhere, even among the faithful,” she answers sternly. “Whatever their goal was, they didn’t want witnesses. We need to lie low.”
I roll up my tent and furs. “You can’t expect me not to alert the Gendarmerie.”
“I don’t, but—” She bites her lower lip. “That’s the obvious response. Those killers might be watching every Gendarmerie station and aviary post downriver to pick us off.”
“What do you suggest I do? Nothing?”
“I suggest you start learning how to protect yourself against people. These are criminals you’re dealing with, and I know how they think.”
I pause halfway through sliding the mask into my pack, beside my journal. I see what she’s doing. This is Claire’s way of asserting her necessity. Our argument last night never ended.
My side of the debate proves weaker now that I’ve had time to process the severity of what happened. I’d have died twice if it hadn’t been for her help. My pack would have been stolen. Lucy would be dead—mauled by a silverwolf or drowned. Micah’s story would never make it to an archive.
“I’m sorry, Claire. I should’ve thanked you sooner. For…” I make a vague gesture with my hand. “Everything.”
“You can thank me by keeping our arrangement.”
Fifth rule of dragon hunting: Do not endanger civilians.
That rule is the reason I hesitate.
A loud grumble cuts through the silence. It takes me a few blinks to realize it’s Claire’s stomach.
I snort. “You’re not accustomed to skipping meals, are you?”
A blush colors her freckled cheeks. She slips her satchel’s strap over her head and turns her back on me. “Where to next, Monsieur Abel?”
I heft the pack onto my shoulders. “There’s a small settlement downstream. We can determine where we go from there. And before you say I’m dense and I learned nothing from this, we’ll stay off the main path.”
“Now, now. I never said you were dense.”
Her sarcasm tells me she was thinking it.
I call Lucy, whose snout and paws are caked in soot. She trots to Claire instead, tongue lolling. Claire shoots me a victory smirk.
People aren’t easy for me to read, but I’m trained to study behavioral patterns. She smirks every time she overcomes an obstacle. It’s an overcorrection of sorts.
She’s suppressing more emotion than she lets on.
If I accept her help, there will be more dangers, more brutal choices to make to defend ourselves. But that doesn’t seem to deter her. Her bloodthirst for the Sellecastel dragon runs too deep.
Technically, the slayer’s handbook leaves “endangering a client” open to interpretation.
There’s no royal decree against a funding arrangement, either.
If the Guild wanted to make it illegal, the highest-ranked slayers would have to travel to the étoile Palace and get in line behind hundreds of civilians just to seek an audience with King Philippe. They won’t care enough to do that.
My decision goes against everything my parents and instructors trained me to do, but I need Claire’s unscrupulous skill set. Without her, my odds of survival decrease exponentially.
That settles it. Claire comes with me. I just hope neither one of us regrets it.