Chapter 19
Saer sorted through various bits of parchment over his desk. He’d tossed the robe into the corner of the hut and stood newly clad in a plain linen shirt and pants tied with scratchy cords.
Learn the culture. Gain trust. Pull sins. End the ones who promised themselves to the Daemoenica. Steal their souls and hand them over to his kin.
Relocate.
Again, and again, and again.
Was this all there was?
Would it be different with Neyu by his side from now on?
Neyu…
“Another job well done, it seems.”
Saer froze, then all at once his shoulders slumped. He shook his head, keeping his attention on the task at hand. “Go away.”
“That’s not my decision. Where you go, I follow. Remember?”
Saer growled. “I have hopes, each time I relocate, that you’ll find something else to do rather than track me down.”
The voice shifted position as it moved across the room. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m not any happier about this than you are.”
Saer forced his focus on the task at hand, separating bits of parchment from others.
“Future prospects?” The bitter mutter sniped at Saer’s back.
He gripped a stack and let them fall to the floor in an unceremonious mess. “None of your business.”
“Why didn’t you go back with them?”
Rolling his eyes, Saer pivoted to face his inquisitor. “How long have you been here, Little Ghost?”
The spirit form of Ruki leaned against the wall furthest from Saer. Its head tilted to the side, answering in a tired but curious tone, “Years of seeing your kin come and go, but Neyu is your equal and partner, different and above the others. Why did you avoid her?”
Saer’s jaw worked, the line of questioning digging at his insides while at the same time a spark of his innate sin ignited to have someone—even an invisible spirit—acknowledge what Neyu and he meant to one another.
Still, he didn’t owe any explanation to Ruki’s soul about his vow to his maker, nor the danger it suspended over Neyu’s head. And his.
“That’s not your concern.”
“Neyu said you’ve been gone for a while. She meant you hadn’t returned to the burning place, didn’t she?”
Saer blinked, trying to remember when that particular conversation with Neyu took place. Weeks ago, when she’d first arrived. His stomach clenched. “How in frenzied Hells—?”
“I’ve gotten better at hiding.”
“It would have been better if you’d stayed quiet.”
“Really?”
Saer grunted and refocused on sorting through another pile of parchments. He already warred with distracting himself away from Neyu’s absence and fate. He had no patience left for the spirit.
“Seeing the two of you together was interesting.”
“Watch yourself,” he hissed between clenched teeth.
Ruki’s essence pushed itself from the side of the hut—as if it had physical form—and approached him. “Or what? You’ll take me to the burning place as you took my father?”
“It would be a pleasure to take you there,” Saer lied.
“Then do it.” Ruki’s soul threw its hands out from its sides. “I’m ready!”
Saer’s lip curled. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“Anything is better than this!”
Huffing a sharp breath from his nose, Saer cleared off the rest of the papyrus from the desk, storing rolled parchments in his pockets.
“You haven’t gone back since you took my father.”
Saer’s fingers spasmed, his only tell that it surprised him for Ruki’s spirit to have noticed.
The soul’s voice persisted at his back. “I’ve gotten to know all your kin through the decades. One of them comes in at the last minute, every time, to take…what do you call them? Your harvests? But you don’t return anymore, do you? And I can’t follow them when I’m dedicated to you.”
Saer strode through the hut’s exit and slammed the door behind him.
He gestured with a harsh wave of his hand, setting the shelter aflame.
Ruki’s spirit walked through the burning barrier, untouched and unfazed.
“Why does the great and powerful Saer stay behind while his kin reap the rewards of harvested souls? Why doesn’t he rid himself of me once and for all? ”
“Go away!” Saer shouted over his shoulder.
“You’re afraid.”
Afraid. Saer whirled around and bared his teeth with a bark of a sound more befitting a beast than a man. “I was willing to go back!”
Ruki’s essence paused and held up its translucent hands, though went on in a more subdued tone. “But you didn’t.”
Damn this spirit for spying on everything they’d done and said!
“She convinced you not to, but there’s more, isn’t there?”
The question might as well have been an exploitative slap. This soul didn’t know anything about him, much less his inner thoughts—
“Perhaps our friendship wasn’t genuine. But the feelings you have for Neyu are real,” Ruki went on. “You can’t experience that in the burning place, am I right?”
Something within Saer wavered, a sprinkle of icy reality sprinkling over the burning rage in his heart. No, he couldn’t be with Neyu in the Hells. Not with their maker so near. But also…
“You’re learning what it is to be human.
” The spirit locked gazes with Saer, no fear apparent.
“To be more man than monster. You haven’t rid yourself of me.
Perhaps because you don’t want to condemn me to the agony you commit the rest of them to.
Maybe you don’t want to go back. Or because I actually succeeded in forming some sort of bond with you, which you didn’t expect.
” The soul paused, and when Saer didn’t respond, it finished, “Perhaps all three.”
A low sound simmered in Saer’s throat as he pivoted and marched away once more, both from Ruki’s soul and the implications it made.
The spirit’s voice raised beyond its usual calm. “Which is it, Saer?”
“I don’t know!” He whirled on the ghost and matched its frustration with his own, the shout echoing through the empty village.
Ruki’s essence took a step back and adopted a questioning, softer expression.
The pause forced words from Saer’s throat, like peeling an unripe orange. “A lot can happen over the course of centuries, Little Ghost.”
“I should think I know that better than most.”
Saer frowned. “I don’t know what you’re expecting.”
“Anything besides blatant disregard is an improvement.”
“You expect me to talk to you?” Saer folded his arms across his chest. “To tell you what I’m thinking as you used to do to me? That was never the way things were between us.”
“Maybe it’s my turn to be the listener.”
He considered, then shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Who am I going to tell, Saer?”
Saer drew in a breath to answer but stopped halfway. He didn’t want his innermost thoughts leaking out, shared with ears not meant to hear. Ruki’s spirit stood dedicated to him and him alone. The soul was his to do with until…
Until when?
Harvested souls needed to be handed over to Lucifer, but what if they were never given?
What if Lucifer forgot they existed?
“No one else can hear you but me,” Saer murmured. When he met the translucent eyes of Ruki this time, a profound sadness flashed through them. Something unexpected kicked him in the gut, took his breath away. “Until I hand you over, you’re alone, save our interactions.”
The spirit’s lips thinned, and it lowered its gaze to the ground. “That appears to be the way of it, yes.”
Saer’s stomach churned, unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
He licked his lips to fight his grimace. “It is far easier to be Daemoenic than it is to be human.” His voice growled around the word for his own kind, pronouncing it in a specific way the human tongue would be challenged to duplicate.
Ruki’s essence watched Saer, silent.
“There’s no reason to put thought into what I do, what I am,” Saer said.
“I’m commanded. I carry out the order. There is an implied loyalty to one and one alone.
There is no...” He struggled to find the word, unfurling one of his hands and gestured like he pulled it out of himself. “…right. Or wrong. There simply is.”
The spirit of Ruki waited, patient.
Once Saer couldn’t hear the pounding of his own heart any longer, he continued, “I observed these concepts, contemplating the difference between one man and another. Why are some condemned where others are praised? Who made these rules? Why does one person deserve to die and another live?” The ground blurred as he stared at it, seeing beyond the trampled sand and discarded leaves.
“It is such a...a human thing. It’s somewhere, here.
” He touched two fingers to his temple. “Or, perhaps here.” The same two fingers grazed his chest. “I can’t tell which.
Sometimes both. But it was never there before.
And now that I’m here, now that I’ve stayed, I’m learning it. That is dangerous and...intoxicating.”
“You’re learning what, Saer?”
He grimaced. “What makes you laugh when there’s joy, cry when there’s sorrow, scream when there’s fear.
I learned to do these things. At first, to blend.
Now...” He sighed and the sound infiltrated his whole body.
“There was a man in one of the villages I harvested. The townspeople spoke of him with disdain. They hunted him down because he forced himself upon several women, beat all and killed one, killed a child. They found him. They hung him.”
Ruki’s soul folded its arms.
“They cheered when he died. They rejoiced in it. ‘Justice,’ they said. It was ‘justice.’ And that made it right.” Saer uncurled his other arm and shook his hand in front of his body, like he struggled to touch the concept.
“And yet, when he killed that woman, killed that child, it was wrong. How in frenzied Hellsfire does that make any sense?”
Ruki’s essence inhaled to answer, but Saer had only paused long enough to gather breath.