Chapter Eleven Simran #3
“I am too,” she said. She looked at the dead girl. So young. Her voice trembled. “But it hasn’t been a bad life.”
Oliver and the girls left.
Simran stood in the coffee-scented room, and breathed deep, and felt the tug of her tale beneath her breastbone. The knight was near.
Relief, guilt, and irritation rushed through Simran in a nauseating tide. That trap hadn’t held the knight for long. The knight was safe. The knight was here, and Simran hadn’t inadvertently left her to die.
At least now Simran wouldn’t have to go and find her.
The creak of stairs behind. Simran turned, and Lydia was there. Waddling affably beside her was a ball of fluff. The fluff, spying Simran, chirped and raced toward her.
Simran blinked.
“You brought my cat to a murder scene?”
“I brought her to a house where she’d be spoiled rotten, my love. Besides, I could hardly leave her alone,” Lydia said, as Maleficium purred and wended her way unhelpfully around Simran’s ankles. “Look at her, she gets lonely.”
Simran did look at her. Maleficium blinked back balefully, then settled in the approximate shape of a loaf on Simran’s foot, pinning her where she stood.
“Foul creature.” She leaned down and scritched behind Mal’s left ear. Maleficium began to purr malevolently. It was, Simran could admit in the quiet of her own head, a relief to see her cat safe. “I missed you too.”
“What do you need to know about the man who did this?” Lydia asked as Simran reluctantly straightened.
“He set me a quest,” said Simran. “I have to learn his true name. I have to find out why he can’t die. Then I’ll get Hari back safe, and I’ll be free to murder him. He won’t have a hostage anymore.”
Lydia nodded.
“We talked, the other cunning folk and I,” said Lydia. “I have something you can use, Simran. Something to kill this bastard and bring our Hari back safe. The greatest weapon of all: knowledge the archivists don’t have.”
Afterward, Simran went outside and pressed her back against the wall.
Muff’s House wasn’t her usual haunt, but it was a sanctuary for queer folk, her people, and seeing that poor dead Elsewhere incarnate girl inside it had sent her head spinning like she’d drunk too much liquor.
Her eyes ached. She was not going to weep—she hated crying.
But she did slide down to the ground, back to the wall, the rest of her sprawled on a dirty London street with the gray sky thickening with clouds above her.
Bess. Mary. Two incarnates dead at the stranger’s hands.
It could be Hari next. He was no incarnate, but his life was at risk because he knew an incarnate. Knew her. She couldn’t allow it to be Hari next.
She rubbed her face with the back of her hand, then raised her head.
The knight was waiting for her on the other side of the street. She’d changed into a plain shirt and trousers, a sweeping greatcoat thrown over them. Hari’s clothes didn’t fit her as well as they fit Simran—the knight was too broad—but they served well enough.
The knight approached slowly. She didn’t look angry. The gaze she fixed on Simran was gentle and knowing—worse than a knife, worse than pain. To have her grief viewed, seen, handled with such gentleness…
Simran exhaled sharply and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. She forced her face into a scowl.
“How did you escape?” Simran asked.
“Your trap didn’t care for the fae magic in me,” said the knight, tone annoyingly apologetic. “And I always carry good iron and good silver.” She tilted her head to the side. The earrings adorning her ears gleamed.
“I thought you wore gold.”
“Gold paint over iron,” the knight said. Her face was expressionless. Without her smile, it was hard to look at her. “I know you don’t want me here. You can go alone if you really wish to. But I’d like to help.”
She must have walked through the rain. The knight’s hair was dark with water. Her skin glowed with it.
“You called the stranger the pale assassin,” said Simran, finding her voice.
“I asked the fae to tell me about him,” said the knight.
“The fae told me his moniker, and that he’s older than we guessed.
Ancient. There are incarnate tales younger than him, and he’s been killing incarnates just as long as he’s been alive.
The fae told me the stories have been going wrong for centuries, Simran.
Because of the deaths. Because of him. The way the Isle is dying is just… a culmination of his work.”
An Elsewhere-blooded incarnate from an unfamiliar tale, dead in the molly-house behind her. Blood pounded behind Simran’s eyes. He’d done this.
“And no one’s stopped him?”
“No one can catch him, and the archivists and government alike try and cover up his presence. But you might. The fae was right about that. He wants to see you.” The knight took a step toward Simran in turn. “He needs to die so that the stories can be saved.”
“I can’t worry about fixing stories,” said Simran. “I need to save Hari. And then I need to kill the stranger. That’s all.”
“The whole Isle relies on stories,” the knight said.
“When a village is lost because the story that sustained it has perished, everyone and everything that lived within it is lost too. Saving stories means saving people. All the Isle’s people.
I know that matters to you. Our goals align.
Killing the pale assassin—that will help put the stories right. ”
“I can’t think of them,” said Simran. But her voice wavered as she said it. “Maybe I’m just more bloody selfish than you are.”
A brief silence, as the knight looked at her with that steady, awful tenderness.
“I have a more selfish desire driving me too,” the knight said.
“Beyond what the Isle needs, I want him dead because he’s the cause of so much of our suffering.
Yours and mine. Don’t you see, Simran? He’s the reason we exist.” A shadow crossed her face; a single chink in that armor of affability.
“We’re a mistake—a story gone wrong. We shouldn’t be.
We’ve got Elsewhere blood. Incarnates are meant to be Isle-blooded. We should be—free.”
How sweet of the knight, to believe there was any inherent justice in the world, beyond the justice that sometimes cropped up in tales—rewarding the demure, the meek, the palely beautiful girls who had never touched dark magic, who were not queerly wrought or Elsewhere-born.
“There’s no escaping our fates,” Simran said.
“I’m not sure I believe that,” the knight said earnestly.
That impassivity faded from her face and what Simran saw under it wasn’t the cold sharpness of the woman who’d turned a blade on her fellow knights, but something much worse—naked, blazing idealism.
The knight cared. “I have to believe there’s hope for us,” the knight continued.
“This Isle is a wild, tale-wrought place—if tales can live on its shores, then I have to believe miracles can too.”
That one was born to throw herself on a sword, said an old, knowing voice in Simran’s skull. It sounded like Isadora. All for a hope or a dream. Poor thing.
The hope was foolish but there was something contagious about the light pouring from her. Looking into the knight’s face, Simran felt a little less like tears were going to take her. She felt like she could stand. Maybe she could even face what came next.
“Archivists hoard knowledge like gold,” said Simran. “They say they preserve and care for it—but they also control it. They decide what we get to learn, what tales we know, what books and papers we read. If they don’t want us to know how to chase down the pale assassin, we won’t.”
“You’ve found another way,” said the knight. She said it with sureness.
Simran nodded.
“There’s a library in the ancient forest,” Simran said, remembering Lydia’s words to her, feeling their echo in her own mouth.
“Deep in its heart there’s a green library, which holds forbidden knowledge—rejected by the archivists, and saved by cunning folk.
Some cunning folk believe there’s a hidden relic there, that can reveal secrets and bare truths.
I know that knights and enchanted woods go together hand in hand.
If you promise to protect me in the forest, I can do the rest.”
“That knowledge could be a risk to the Isle,” the knight said reluctantly, as if she were loath to say it. “Forbidden knowledge, forbidden tales… They could rip the fabric of the Isle further.”
Simran snorted. “You sound like an archivist.”
“You wound me,” the knight said, touching her fingertips to her chest. Her hand lowered; her expression settled to graveness. “They do what’s needful.”
“Do you really believe that?” Simran shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is this: The green library might give us answers.
The archivists can’t. Even if they know the truth, the minute we speak to them they’ll lock us up in the Palace until we’re ready to love and stab and so forth, and then Hari will be dead.
So will you come with me into the ancient forest? Will you help me find the library?”
She saw the knight hesitate again, and saw her come to a decision. “I will,” the knight said. “But in return I’m going to ask a favor. Call me my name. I’m not just the knight, and you’re not just the witch. Not anymore.”
“And what name shall I use? You told me your name is Lavinia, but I’ve heard so many names for you. Vinny, Vina—”
“Vina,” the knight repeated. “Call me Vina.”
“Is that the name you let your enemies use, or your friends?”
“It’s the name my mother gave me,” said the knight, her gaze direct, her mouth unsmiling. “My father never much cared for it, but it is mine.”
“Fine,” Simran said. “Let’s go, Vina. We have an assassin to kill.”