14. Leah
Leah
“Dead?” I ask, lifting the match higher to look around me with a stab of apprehension. “Where’s the body?”
“There isn’t one,” Syrus replies. “There’s been a smiting here. Hence the smell.”
“You know you being inside my head doesn’t magically transfer all your knowledge to me, right?” I say. “What the hell is a smiting?”
There’s a spiky sensation beneath my skin and a sound like grinding teeth. Is he…bristling? “Not that I expect you to care, but we prefer it if you don’t use that word.”
“I’m repeating what you called it!” I say, bewildered.
“Sweet darkness. Not ‘smiting,’ I mean…‘hell.’ It’s the equivalent of calling Strata ‘the Mire.’”
“Which Vizmodeus does all the time,” I point out.
“Yes,” he says, and I can sense his red-brown eyes flaring. “But I don’t.”
“Hey—” I protest as his grip suddenly seizes my hand and shakes my wrist until the match goes out. I realize the flame had burned low enough that it was close to scorching my fingers. “Oh,” is all I say, blinking at the blackened tip for a few seconds.
He says nothing, but there’s a definite smugness to the way he lurks in my mind.
“All right,” I say, clamping down on my irritation. “Please could you explain what a smiting is?”
A ripple of approval runs through him, making my skin tingle.
“It’s a specific kind of demon death. One brought on by black magic. It takes a demon’s power and burns them from the inside out with it, until all that’s left is…”
“That,” I finish, staring down at the mark. “Can you tell how old this mark is?”
“It depends on the power of the demon killed. But they do fade eventually—it takes a year at most.”
“Okay, so do you think the ephilium tortured a demon to find a way to get past Infernum’s wards and then killed them?”
“It’s possible,” Syrus says, not sounding very convinced. “But it would be helpful to find out who has access to this building.”
I rise from my crouch and head to the front door. The lock twists open on this side, and I cautiously ease it open, not wanting to stride right out into a trap. I have to squint for a moment as my eyes adjust to the brightness, peering out onto the street beyond.
The building is located in a small side street in what used to be a bustling craftsman’s hub, from the looks of it.
Many of its residents seem to have moved on, probably thanks to the bigger factories opening up in Pax’s main industrial quarter.
The whole street is lined with similar workshops, mostly boarded up.
I step out into the sunshine, watching carts wheeling past the end of the street and people bustling around.
My heart lurches a little. After just a week, it’s startling to be so close to people freely going about their day.
Folk who are living their lives, not shackled by bonds they didn’t choose, chaining them to dangerous, demonic strangers.
While I’m staring at those people in the distance, Syrus’s presence slips deeper into my body, stretching out and up toward the surface of my skin.
I expect Syrus to offer some snide remark about us getting on with the job, but he just sits there, and suddenly I feel too full, swollen and choked with a deep longing I don’t quite understand.
Neither of us says anything for a long moment. Eventually, Syrus brushes along the inside of my head to get my attention, the sensation like a finger running gently across my consciousness.
“The location seems deliberately nondescript,” he murmurs. “Whoever was here didn’t want their use of this building to lead back to them. What they obviously didn’t count on was the trail they left.”
“The trail?” I ask.
“Yes, the sulfur: it’s out here too.”
Now he mentions it, there is a faint wisp of it in the air, lingering beneath the other city smells.
Syrus’s presence shifts, seeming intrigued by the prospect.
But I’m thinking about what he said before—how humans can’t normally smell the sulfur from a smiting.
Probably the only reason I can is because I’m bound to him.
The possession is changing me. The idea sets my gut twisting.
“Stop fretting and follow that smell,” Syrus orders, giving the back of my legs a nudge to set them into motion.
I stumble forward, inhaling to catch the direction of the scent on the street.
Great, now I’m a fucking bloodhound.
“Nonsense. Bloodhounds have a much better temperament,” Syrus comments.
I follow the scent down the side street, away from the main road.
My heart continues to sink as I walk. I’m here in Strata, inches away from humanity, yet I have no hope of shaking Syrus long enough to find a way to break the binding spell.
Not when I keep slipping up and blasting my thoughts at him.
The buildings get larger at the end of the street, and when I walk between two of them to follow the trail, I glimpse a stretch of sparkling water down an adjoining alley.
Syrus twitches like a startled rabbit. I’d laugh if it didn’t send me yanking my head around to check he hasn’t noticed some danger I missed.
“Is that the river?” he asks.
My wariness ebbs as I sniff the air again and take a turn down the side of the left-hand building. “You mean that wet, watery thing? Could be, yeah.”
He ignores my sarcasm. “Remind me what you call it again?”
“The Sideris,” I say. It never occurred to me demons might have a different name for our river.
My answer provokes something in him, though I can’t tell what. The flavor of it is shielded from me. What I do know is I get a feeling he’s retreated a little into my mind—found some dark corner and turned his back to me.
Whatever that’s about, I’m more than happy to let it play out. It will be easier to focus without Syrus constantly shifting behind my eyes, asking questions and redirecting my attention.
I concentrate on following the sulfur trail, picking my way further toward the river.
Sometimes I pass a group of lightermen taking a break from transporting cargo, or mudlarks searching for treasure on the flats.
I feel so disconnected from them, like we’re living in different worlds despite being only yards apart.
I suppose we are—I’m a resident of Infernum now, after all.
How would they react if they knew what lurked beneath my skin?
I try to steer clear of them. I’m dangerous to them now—a tool for the Lord of Malice.
It wouldn’t be fair for anyone to bear the consequences of that except for me.
It’s why I’ve been very deliberately trying not to think of Evie.
I’m desperate to see her, to find out if she’s all right.
But if I tried to do that while still bound to Syrus, I’d be putting her in danger as much as myself.
He doesn’t even know I have a sister. Right now, that’s some small blessing.
Following the sulfur takes me around the back of a small warehouse tucked among other dockside buildings. It’s on the edge of where legitimate business bumps up against the less reputable part of the riverside—the bars and dolly shops and cheap lodging houses where they charge by the hour.
I circle the building just to be sure it’s where the sulfur trail leads. It looks forgotten, with more than one smashed windowpane and a rickety, chipped set of front doors.
“You’d think a secret ephilium espionage spot would have better security,” I mutter. I’m starting to get nervous about how quiet Syrus has been.
“Unless they’ve got what they needed from Infernum and have abandoned this place,” he says. “Go inside and take a look.”
I sigh at his imperious tone but obey the order, shedding my cloak for better mobility and hiding it behind some abandoned packing crates. I climb up and enter via a broken window I noted the first time I circled the building. You get good at spotting places to scale a wall when you’re a scavenger.
It’s not a big building. I can see every corner of its interior from my vantage point—not that there’s much to look at. Only more discarded piles of old equipment and the hint of sulfur in the air.
I wriggle through the window frame and find a handhold in the wall, an iron hook I use to ease myself down before jumping the rest of the way to the floor.
Once there, my eyes immediately fall on an old trestle table a few feet away with a pile of broken wood pushed underneath it—thin strips which have been smashed into kindling.
It’s just one of many pieces of random debris I can see in the warehouse, but I bend down to get a better look anyway, tracing points where nails were driven into it.
“Do you think this was a rift frame?” I ask. “Maybe they were opening the doors into Infernum from here too?”
Syrus moves behind my eyes, examining the pile of wood with me. “Yes,” he says, his voice soft as it echoes in my ears. “You’re very observant. I suppose you get that from scavenging.”
I don’t bother to tell him I was good at finding things long before I went out on the plains. Instead, I say nothing. I’m surprised by the compliment, but that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything coming from the Lord of Malice—the equivalent of a master giving his dog a pat on the head.
“I suspect when we trace back the other rift points Viz identified, one of them will lead us here,” Syrus continues.
But we’ve not actually found the source of the sulfur smell yet. Not that it takes long once I follow the scent to where it’s most concentrated on the far side of the warehouse.
There, sprawled across the floor like inky stains, is a cluster of smiting marks. The last traces of four murdered demons.
Syrus
If I thought coming to Strata inside another’s mind would make things easier, I was sorely mistaken. Even now, staring down at the relics of multiple demons’ death throes, there’s no distance. It’s as disturbing as examining them with my own eyes, as smelling the sulfurous stench with my own nose.