Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Margaret
This is the second night I’m partaking in a stake out with Vidar Coalstone.
He’s assured me that the fire beasts have migrated away. The Skyggjar, if real, isn’t known to be aggressive. And, most importantly, the weather is going to be pleasant tonight.
This is important because I’m wearing yet another tube top and a pair of shorts with flip flops. Basically, my uniform here on Tarvos. The shorts are just long enough to not ride up between my thick thighs when I walk, so they’re perfect. I really love this outfit, which is surprising.
I also love the way Vidar gazes at me with molten heat in his eyes when I wear these skin-baring clothes.
I’m in the second chair, positioned right next to Vidar’s open chair, with a mug of traq. Skylo has claimed my feet, and the field burner is throwing off enough heat that I’m actually comfortable.
Today was a lot.
Chloe gave us the tour of the fabulous Heimdall Residence after the meeting.
It was a great tour, considering how knowledgeable she is about the architecture and design of the home she updated.
Vidar kept asking her questions about what the historical register let her change, what material was used on the beams, whether the green under the gold was original.
And Chloe lit up, obviously in her element.
I exhale, still thinking of today’s meeting. The Board voted to go ahead with Halloween on the alignment, exactly as Riley planned. Molten Lava will be on the perimeter, both gates and the whole length of the wall.
So I should feel fine about this, but I don’t still consider us perfectly safe. Instead, I feel, uneasy?
We walked the path earlier, before full dark. Out to the first turn, the exact spot Dagr described, with Skylo ahead of us and Vidar sweeping the ground scanner in slow arcs.
Nothing. No additional prints, no disturbance, or sign of anything at all.
I was disappointed, which is ridiculous. Some deranged part of my brain has decided that if I stand in the correct place and squint hard enough, something is going to be standing in the trees looking back.
And then my bare-chested, satanic-looking Hyrrokin scientist pulls something surprising out of a bag.
I blink with surprise. “You brought print books?”
He sits down in the chair next to mine. “You said you did not know the legend.”
He hands over very old books with Academy marks on the spines and small, precise handwriting inside the covers.
“Are these allowed out of the building?”
“No.”
He doesn’t elaborate.
Hmm. Fortunately, the universal translator in my brain allows me to not only understand and speak the Hyrrokin language, but I can read it too.
So I read while Vidar works his way down the equipment line.
And I look up more than I should, because he’s shirtless the way every male on this planet is shirtless.
But the burner light does something to the muscles that ripple across his back when he crouches.
And jeez, his ass and thighs are utter perfection.
I shift in my seat again, trying to get relief from this constant ache.
I swear my clit is throbbing for attention.
I’m trying to refrain from masturbating though, because I guess I’ve decided to join Vidar’s vow in solidarity, which is really difficult.
About a third of the way into the second book, I discover an interesting drawing.
Hand-rendered and faded, with the ink gone brown at the edges. A figure stands upright and long-limbed, drawn beside a Hyrrokin male for scale, and it’s got a head and a half on him. Long claws.
“Vidar, there’s a drawing in here of the Skyggjar, exactly how Dagr and the kids described. The eyes are gold. If you think that the Skyggjar isn’t real how is it possible that Dagr described a creature only seen in drawings that aren’t easily accessible?”
“That book is hundreds of years old. The plate is a copy of an earlier plate.”
“Well, how does a fourteen-year-old describe it?”
“The same way six other offspring did.” He doesn’t look up from the equipment.
“The description is in the story which includes gold eyes. Every grandmother on this half of the continent has told it that way for hundreds of years, and the artist who made that plate had heard the same story. The drawing is not evidence of the creature. It is evidence of the description.”
“Okay.” I set the book down. “That’s a good answer. Can I ask you something else?”
He chuckles. “You will regardless.”
“Was it a mistake? Not moving Halloween.”
He stops what he’s doing.
I bite at my lip. “There are going to be almost a hundred kids walking about at night, lots of them will be very close to that wall.”
“Ninety-four,” he says. “I counted.”
I roll my eyes. “Of course you did.”
“Ninety-four offspring, forty-one of whom are of an age to have come into their firestarting within the last three years.” He sets a tablet down. “That is the population the folklore specifies. I am aware of the number. I have been aware of it since the Board voted.”
“So, was it a mistake?”
“No.” He looks at me. “Because there is nothing in that preserve, and if I behave as though there is, I have done the exact damage I came here to undo.”
“The three who went in with weapons,” I say quietly.
“Yes.”
“And the landowner with the fire beast.”
“That one was a calf. I did not tell you that part. He was entirely certain he had seen a Skyggjar and what he killed was a calf, and he wept at the hearing, and I sat nearby and could not tell him anything that would help.”
Oh.
“So you are worried.”
“I am worried that a hundred beings will be outdoors in the dark on the one night the story names, and that somebody will see something ordinary and be certain.” His jaw works. “That is what frightens me, Margaret. Not the preserve. The community.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“And there are households in this region where offspring are not permitted outdoors on an alignment night at all. A four-year-old comes into her first flame, which is the proudest diurnal of her small life, and some being tells her it makes her prey.”
I don’t say anything, because I’m thinking about Mitry.
“That is the harm,” he says. “And it’s not hypothetical harm. The poachers might be the worst part of all of this.”
“Poachers?” I gasp.
“There is a market. A mounted Skyggjar head — not a claw, not a hide, the head — has been listed on the dark exchanges three separate times in the last decade at figures in the millions of credits. For a creature that does not exist. So long as no being can say definitively there is nothing there, some collector in the outer sectors will pay a fortune for a thing that cannot be delivered, and some being will go into a preserve at night to try and deliver it.”
“This is again, why you have taken the vow and are very carefully following through with this particular investigation.”
He looks out at the black wall of the canopy.
“I want it in the record, properly, with evidence, in a form that cannot be argued back into existence, so that the listings come down and the households stop locking their offspring indoors and no further being walks into a preserve with a weapon on an alignment night.”
“Okay,” I say. “But answer the actual question. You told me why the legend is dangerous. I asked whether the kids are safe.”
“I believe they are safe,” he responds.
“Believe?”
“That is the only word available to me. I do not have proof of a negative. No being does.” He meets my gaze.
“I have years of experience looking, and no bone, or print I can attribute, no documented predation. And years of accounts in which the creature has never once — not in a single variant, not in any region — taken a child.”
I sit up. “Wait. In four hundred years of stories about a monster that comes for children,” I say slowly, “it has never actually taken one?”
“Not in any account I have located.” He shrugs.
“The legend says it watches them and that is the entire behavior described in every version. It appears, observes and withdraws. The fear is universal but the harm is not there. The Hyrrokin have a legend about a creature that has never harmed anyone but has caused three deaths and one destroyed fire beast out of a fear that never actually happens.”
I exhale. “Okay, that makes me feel better. But… as you said, the danger is still there, not necessarily from the Skyggar itself, but from the chaos that surrounds the hunt for the Skyggjar.”
“Exactly.”
I take a sip of traq. “Well, at least Molten Lava’s on it.”
“Yes, Team Molten Lava will hold the perimeter, both gates, and the length of the wall. That was Bergelmir Touchstone’s recommendation, not mine, and it is a good one.
” He nods once. “Ninety-four offspring in the dark at a public event is a security matter without any creature at all. Beings get lost or wander. There are many ways for that night to go badly that have nothing to do with folklore.”
“So we’re covered either way.”
“We are covered against the likely risks either way.”
And that’s when someone comes up the path.
Skylo is in motion before we even hear footsteps. One moment he’s asleep, and the next he’s snarling at a male before he gets close. All three heads growling and bursting flame, blocking the being before it can bring us harm.
The male has his hands up. “Whoa, hold on,” he shouts. “Please call off your beast. I’m just walking on the path.”
He’s not Hyrrokin.
That is a puzzle because I’ve spent three diurnals surrounded by red skin and black horns.
Tarvos is notorious for being very choosy about allowing off worlders on their planet.
I’m lucky I got a travel visa. This male is tall and slim, with a light complexion, blue eyes and close-cropped, blond hair.
He looks human, but because of all the time I’ve spent living on Salo, I can see the tell-tale signs that show the differences between our two species.
He’s Gravian, which means he’s extremely strong.
“Skylo, down,” Vidar orders.
The wulver immediately banks his fires and he backs up to sit just in front of me.
“Apologies.” The male stops at the edge of our light, easy and unhurried. “I saw the burner. I did not expect anybody out here at this hour.”
I know that accent. That’s west-continent Gravian. It’s the accent of a male from a part of the planet known for not being as peaceful or as religious as the rest of the species.
“You’re a long way from Salo,” I comment.
He grins. “So are you, human. My name is Yorick Vail.” He comes forward and offers a hand to Vidar first, then to me. “Naturalist. I am conducting survey work on the eastern preserves during the alignment.”
“At midnight?”
“Nocturnal survey work. It includes a great deal of standing in the dark. As I imagine you know.” He’s already reaching into his jacket.
“You will want this.” He produces a document tab and hands it straight to Vidar without being asked.
“Research visa. Sponsored, three-month, restricted-access endorsement for the eastern preserves. Please do check it. I would rather you checked than wondered.”
Vidar reads the documentation. I watch his shoulders come down about half a nanco. He looks over at me. “It is in order.”
“You would be astonished how difficult that was to obtain,” Vail explains. “Your peacekeepers do not enjoy off worlders. I filled out nine forms and two of them were the same form.”
Vidar makes a sound that in another male would be a laugh.
Then Vail looks down the equipment line. “Is that a Hesken thermal array?”
“It is.”
“The eight-channel?”
“The twelve.”
Vail whistles. “Then that is not a wildlife survey. Twelve channels on a wall is differential, you are reading heat against the stone.”
“I am.”
“Because stone retains and releases unevenly and you have to subtract it.” He looks genuinely delighted. “What is your false positive rate?”
I sit in the second chair and watch as they talk.
Equipment and then fauna. Vail knows the regional catalogue, the migration windows, he corrects himself on a detail and then corrects the correction.
He’s charming and knowledgeable. His paperwork is real and Vidar doesn’t miss things.
But Yorik Vail answers a hair too fast. Every time.
The answers are just there, sitting ready, like a male who rehearsed.
And he asks me about the case with enormous warmth.
Lovely questions. Exactly the right ones.
“So…have you had any luck finding the Skyggjar?”
“I have insufficient data,” Vidar says.
“Ah.” Vail nods, sympathetic. “Well. It is early.”
Early for what?
He doesn’t stay much longer and wishes us a productive night. He tells Vidar he hopes their paths cross again, and I believe he means it, which is somehow the worst part.
Skylo does not move the entire time.
Not once. All three heads tracking him, the wulver standing between Yorick Vail and my chair from the moment he stepped into the light. Vail turns to go and Skylo turns with him.
Then he leaves up the path, toward the community. Not east, toward the trail entrance he came in from.
“I liked him,” Vidar comments.
“I didn’t.”
He turns. “Why not?”
My eyes narrow. “I don’t know yet.”