Chapter Thirty-One Abel
Our prisoner is high value and therefore extremely dangerous. Keep his location—nay, his very existence—a secret from the public at all costs.
Chapter Thirty-One
Abel
Marshal Bard leads me into the interrogation cell and locks the gate behind us.
The wall torches wipe the shadows from a blue-cloaked figure’s face in the center of the room.
Ropes bind the young man’s arms and legs to the chair.
Sweat glazes his pallid skin. Black veins draw cracklike marks across his cheeks.
He’s a stark contrast to the healthy woman Claire killed when we escaped Ravinfort.
“You were supposed to secure the park’s perimeter. How did they get past it undetected?” I demand. “Let alone this man. He’s ill.”
“That fact concerns me as much as it does you,” Marshal Bard replies. “We barely saw the silverwolves before the assassins started shouting commands in the Old Tongue.”
I want to be angry, but I can’t blame him. I had the same experience back in Ravinfort. Plus silverwolves aren’t unheard of in Jardincourt National Park.
The prisoner’s head lolls.
“He’s said nothing?” I ask.
“We’ve been interrogating him since the arrest. All we’ve gotten are a few words.”
“Eau de vie…eau de…s’il vous pla?t,” the prisoner whimpers, as if on cue. He sags in the chair.
“Can you translate?” Marshal Bard asks.
“Eau de vie.” I swallow. “It means ‘water of life.’ ”
“What is that?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” I approach the man. “Where is Madame Afi?”
His blink is slow, eyes bloodshot, as if he’s had too much to drink.
“Have you offered him the pardon?” I ask Marshal Bard.
“Yes.”
“A full one? Upon immediate recovery of Madame Afi?”
“Yes, we’ve been very clear with him. We even offered him life-changing amounts of money to give up his allies. All he’s done is babble in the Old Tongue.”
“Then I’ll try the Old Tongue.” I snap my fingers in front of the prisoner’s face. “Où est-elle—Madame Afi Meteku?”
“S’il vous pla?t.”
“Parlez-vous la Langue Commune?”
“Eau de vie. S’il vous…pla?t.”
I look at Marshal Bard. “He won’t say where she is or whether he speaks the Common Tongue. I’d assume he’s choosing not to cooperate, but he doesn’t appear to be in his right mind. Any idea what’s wrong with him?”
“I was hoping you could shed some light on that. Step back.” Before I realize what he’s doing, his knuckles slam into the prisoner’s face with a sickening crack.
“Marshal!”
He punches again and again. The prisoner’s head snaps left and right. The chair, bolted to the floor, rattles but holds him in place. Blood drips from his brow and lip. A tooth flies across the cell and nestles in a corner. Only then, out of nowhere, does he thrash against his bonds.
“Eau de vie! Eau de vie!” Tears stream down his face. “Eau de vie, s’il vous pla?t!”
“This is the reason we only managed to apprehend one of them.” Marshal Bard shakes out his fingers. “Observe.”
At first, nothing happens. Then I hear the crackle.
The prisoner’s wounds start to ice over.
Ice. It crawls over the wounds like frost on a window, seals the bleeding, then stitches the flesh beneath. Once he’s healed, the ice melts and rolls off his skin with the ease of raindrops. The sickly color of his complexion remains, but he’s otherwise uninjured.
I step back, cold sweat on my neck. “What in the Gods’ names is this?”
“It explains how they overwhelmed the people of Ravinfort, including the local Gendarmerie, so thoroughly,” Marshal Bard says. “They couldn’t lose. My brigade might’ve been slaughtered had these people not prioritized their escape.”
The rosy-haired assassin Claire killed in my defense was—is—one of them. She must’ve healed and walked away.
Claire felt all that guilt for nothing.
“I hoped you might know something about this magic, given the similarities to dragon healing,” Marshal Bard adds.
“Dragons don’t heal like that. Not with ice.” The ache in my shoulder throbs to the beat of my spiked pulse. “But the War-Torn Gods control opposite halves of creation. Solar and lunar. Fire and ice. Each one’s domain of magic inherently counters the other’s. So it’s almost as if—”
I shoot Marshal Bard a look. His jaw clenches just like mine.
“We’re both thinking it,” he says roughly. “Say it.”
“Almost as if Noctu cursed them.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose as if to center himself. “You can’t imagine how validating it is to hear you say that aloud. I felt like a heathen just thinking it.”
“Feel free to claim it was my theory first. My research already puts me in the heathen category.”
“I’ll owe you a favor for that,” he remarks. “But Noctu attacks with meteorites. Why bother cursing individual humans?”
Might as well go full heathen. “I don’t know. But the mere presence of ice magic in this realm suggests Diu’s defenses aren’t as strong as we were taught. These people might even be Noctu’s foot soldiers, working toward the apocalypse.”
Alarm crosses his expression. “How much damage do you think they’ve done to the realm without us knowing?”
“That’s not even the scariest question,” I answer. “If these people are such blatant criminals, then why isn’t Diu punishing them?”
As a slayer, I fully believed my role was to purge the realm of the greed that turned people into dragons.
Even after Micah, Gérard, and Claire challenged my understanding of who deserves the curse, I still maintained my responsibility to protect the people of Florent and mitigate the suffering.
But if the point of Diu’s punishment is to correct our moral compass, then he’s missed the mark by a long shot.
As far as I can tell, morality has nothing to do with magic.
“Maybe Diu can’t curse them if Noctu got to them first,” Marshal Bard offers, but then he rubs his face, looking unconvinced. “I don’t know. The Tale of Stars is so vague about the limitations of their power.”
“It was written to convey a moral lesson, not a scientific one,” I reply. “The rules of creation magic were lost to the Dark Days, probably by the authors’ design. The only magic we can hope to understand is what manifests in front of us.”
“I have more questions than answers at this point.”
“I wish I could offer more information, but Noctu’s magic is beyond my expertise. If your prisoner doesn’t explain how it works, I don’t think we can know.”
“This confirms my thoughts on the ideological profile, though.” He gestures tiredly to the slumped prisoner. “They’re Noctu cultists.”
“Cultists?” That’s a strong word.
“When you submitted your initial evidence for this case, you described their attire as a ‘uniform.’ In the context of Noctu’s magic, that’s not just an accurate description.
It’s a tell,” he explains. “Blue cloaks, sickles, silver masks with crescent-shaped cutouts for the eyes and mouth…Even the silverwolves follow a certain theme.”
“It’s all lunar symbolism,” I realize.
“Criminals don’t put that kind of tell on themselves unless their ideology is stronger than logic. It also explains why they don’t care if slayers die. They want what Noctu wants: to destroy the mortal realm. Dragons can only help.”
“Noctu cultists,” I repeat, bewildered. Apologies to Claire, but fringe beliefs really do exist within Florent.
The prisoner’s head tilts, like he’s trying to listen but can’t focus. Drool drips from the corner of his mouth. “Eau de…” He trails off.
Frustration edges back in. “That still doesn’t explain what ‘water of life’ is. Or how to rescue Madame Afi.”
“Indeed, there’s more to uncover,” Marshal Bard agrees. “In the meantime, you need to tread carefully, Monsieur Estellio. At a minimum, I concur with your assistant. These cultists obviously want to censor the contents of your journal.”
“There’s nothing in my journal!” I exclaim. “I learned nothing. ‘All dragons must die.’ That won’t ever change.”
I clench my eyes shut, clinging to the memory of waking up with Claire’s face next to mine. For one precious second, I knew what it meant to feel at peace—before I remembered my promise to kill her.
Less than two months left.
“I believe you,” he assures me. “But you’re still their target. Madame Afi has the best odds of survival if you remain safe and alive. Just do me a favor and continue to avoid all known Old Tongue speakers until I can conclude where exactly these cultists are hiding.”
In other words, the archives are forbidden ground. My goal of changing slayer culture is suspended until further notice.
My fingers twitch with the urge to experiment on the prisoner’s magic and wring more information out of him.
But even if I could justify the torture, I’m injured.
I’ll be more useful once I’m healed. Plus there are too many unknowns to untangle, and there’s too little time left to spend with Claire.
“Give me two months,” I tell him. “If you still need my input, I can help research Noctu’s magic then.”
I’ll need a distraction once Claire is—
My throat closes up. That’s not a word I can attach to her yet.
Marshal Bard tips his tricorne. “I’m a criminal investigator, Monsieur Estellio. You’re not my only resource. If there are no other insights you can provide, then it’s time to bring in fresh opinions.”
“Whose opinions?”
“Follow me. We have a guest from Varsonne.”
After a series of locked gates, we exit the cell block and enter the station proper, where we then move to his office. Lyle jumps up from one of the chairs that face Marshal Bard’s desk.
“Abel!” He hugs me with a slap on the back. “Good to see you up and active.”
“Good to see you in high spirits,” I say, confused. “Did I miss something?”
“Look behind you.”
He points past my shoulder. I nearly jump at the figure I missed when I stepped through the now-closed door—a surprisingly petite woman in a marshal uniform.
A network of braids pulls taut the copper skin at her hairline and spills out beneath her tricorne.
She stands at ease, but her sharp eyes rove the activity on the first floor through the window built into the office door.
“Marshal of Varsonne, I presume?” I start. “My name is—”