Chapter 19 #2
We filed into the room. Jagger basked in the conjurers’ undivided attention.
It was interesting to see their reactions to him.
He was a giant compared to most men, nearly seven feet tall and wider than most doorways.
Gray-skinned, slate-gray eyes with no whites, sharp teeth, arms longer than a human’s with bulging joints, and long fingers with thick claws.
He was humanlike enough that he could pass for one if he wore sunglasses, a thick coat, and a hood and went out at night.
But it was tricky, because while he could cover his physical appearance, he couldn’t prevent people from noticing the feeling he gave off.
When you got close enough to him, the hair on the back of your neck stood on end, and you felt in your bones there was something evil about him.
Something very wrong. It was a repellent feeling that made many people hurry to the opposite side of the street and look over their shoulder as they quickened their pace.
I guess Winnie was right. I must’ve grown used to the sulfuric smoke of hell, because I’d stopped looking over my shoulder years ago.
Both the Bard and the Clark watched Jagger with annoyed disdain, as if they couldn’t quite believe they were in the same room. It was the look of a pair of lions watching a lice-infested vulture circle around their kill.
Primus surveyed him with arrogant detachment, his lip curling. Last gripped the fabric of her dress, and by the flattening of her mouth, I knew she was thinking about killing either Primus, Luvic, or Jagger.
Luvic, out of all of them, was the only one who looked at me. It was a quick glance, although I felt it with an electric jolt. The metallic scrape of his gaze hurt like a bee’s sting. A quick prick—there, then gone.
It made me wonder what he’d done to me. His lips turned up in a smile that lasted a millisecond, then he turned away and focused on Jagger.
Was Luvic’s jaw tenser than usual; his shoulders tighter? He would hate coming back here. He would hate thinking of the cage in the basement.
“Welcome,” Jagger said, his voice booming off the stone walls. “Welcome to Hell Gate.”
Jagger’s creatures fanned around the dining room, lining the walls. Not a single conjurer looked at them. I imagine in their minds, there was no point in noticing something that couldn’t possibly be a threat. It was why they hadn’t looked at me, Justice, or Griff.
Jagger positioned himself in front of the conjurers. I stood to his right, Justice and Griff on his left.
“I’m pleased you agreed to visit my humble home—”
“Leggerock,” the Bard interrupted. “The only reason you are alive and your hellhole is still standing is because we are curious. You insulted us by insinuating a conjurer might align with a leggerock. A human does not align with a creature.”
Jagger’s expression remained as flat and smooth as granite. “And yet . . . here you are.”
Justice shifted, moving subtly to position himself between Luvic and Jagger. He must’ve sensed something or seen a threat. He held himself in the taut-wire pose that preceded an explosive attack.
Luvic barred his teeth in a taunting smile. “Yes. The Smith stole our crown. Killed our brethren. And . . .”—he looked at me, his eyes filled with amusement—“set our homes ablaze. When a leggerock claims he has the only means to defeat the Smith, we become . . . curious.”
“Take note,” Primus said, holding out his hand, with his thumb pressed to his second and third fingers. “If you lie, you die.”
Jagger laughed. It was a happy rockslide scrape. He enjoyed it when the conjurers threatened him. He felt it meant they took him seriously as an adversary. A wolf didn’t snarl at a gnat; it snarled at another wolf.
“I do have the means to his defeat. The man harasses my creatures. He harasses you. It seems we have a common enemy. I propose we enter an alliance.”
“No,” the Clark said. “Clarks don’t align with lesser creatures.”
“Neither do Bards. There is nothing a leggerock and his creatures can do that we can’t do better.”
Jagger turned to me. I felt his will running through me, a poisonous stream scalding my veins.
“Mari. How about a small demonstration?”
My heart thundered, pushing Jagger’s will through my limbs. My hands tingled with pins-and-needles sensations, and my mouth tasted like copper. Oh. I’d bitten my tongue.
Luvic sent me a quick glance. He was surprised but covered it quickly.
He knew what sort of demonstration Jagger meant. For years, Luvic had helped me to stay undiscovered, and now, I was about to throw it all away.
I stepped forward, my black dress billowing around me.
“Mari?” Last mouthed. Her mouth formed a pleased “oh,” and then she looked at me as if I were a table full of sweets she was about to glut herself on.
A smile blossomed, stretching her hollow cheeks and lighting her eyes.
I hate to admit it, but a little pulse of happiness shot through me.
It was left over from her memory crown; the facsimile of her illusion was still tacked inside me.
Jagger’s blood rushed to the pleasure and devoured it.
Last lifted her hand and gave me a small, happy pinkie-wave.
“Mari,” Primus said. His gaze scraped over my features, a callous calculation taking place behind his eyes. “The Smith’s body? The one who killed the null? You are that Mari?”
I didn’t flinch at his question even though I wanted to. Instead, I nodded and said in my cold mine voice. “I am.”
He inhaled excitedly at my admission, and then his eyes raked over me once more.
“She killed him once,” the Bard said, “and it didn’t stick. Why should we believe she’ll do better the second time?”
“Because,” Jagger said, smiling at the way Primus was dissecting me with his gaze, “she was a nine then. Now she is a mine. I’ve made her into a creature of solange.”
At his words, the conjurers stilled.
This was Jagger’s lie. His half-truth, full lie. He wanted the conjurers to see I could unravel illusion, but he didn’t want them to know I was a true lockpick. He wanted them to think he could create mines that held the power of solange.
“How?” the Clark asked.
I thought of the treatise on his desk.
He studied me, probably searching for the traits and characteristics of a lockpick.
I didn’t have any. The record was faulty.
It claimed truth seers were ugly, warted, and disfigured; that they hated washing themselves and smelled like rotten corpses.
It also said they could appear golden-haired, green-eyed, and angelic in their beauty.
It was one or the other. Horrifically ugly or impossibly beautiful. I was neither.
“How?” Jagger asked, smiling, “How does a leggerock’s power work? Hmm. Let’s ask the earth. Let’s ask the sky. Let’s ask—”
The Bard cut his hand through the air. “I want this demonstration. Show us how your creature could defeat the Smith.”
Jagger smiled, his sharp teeth glistening. “We’ll need a volunteer.”
The Bard snapped his fingers at Luvic. “You. Do it.”
Luvic raised his eyebrows. “Me?”
The Bard snapped his finger again, and Luvic flinched.
Last snickered, covering her mouth with her hand.
Primus sighed. “The Bard heir is scared a creature will hurt him. He is weak.”
Luvic stepped forward, meeting me in the middle of the circle. The conjurers were at his back; all of Hell Gate was at mine.
He studied me for a moment, almost as if he were asking if I was certain this was what I wanted to do. I didn’t have a choice, though, did I?
“Feel free to conjure anything you like,” Jagger said in a gloating tone. “As long as you do your best to kill her.”
Last clapped her hands, and I don’t know if she was cheering for my death or for Luvic’s.
Luvic raised a single eyebrow. Ready?
I tilted my chin. Ready.
I sent my mind outside of myself, into the place where I untied illusion.
Beneath me was the endless expanse of power that could unlock and untie a thousand knots.
If I let it out, it would rage through Hell Gate like a flash flood.
Maybe it would untie all illusion for miles around, just like Finn’s solange had done at the closing ceremony.
Luvic twisted his hand. A giant wall of water rushed at me. It was swarming with snakes, and the current roared, threatening to suck me in and devour me.
Overhand and bowline knots, chain splice and back splice—I unraveled the knots without conscious thought, moving on pure instinct. The second the illusion disappeared, Luvic threw another.
A lake of lava.
Unraveled.
A rainstorm of bullets.
Gone.
A river of swords.
Untied.
A storm of poison.
Swept away.
Every illusion Luvic conjured I plucked from existence a millisecond after it was born. He began to sweat, breathing heavily. That low, rumbling jackaltooth growl started low in his throat.
When he conjured a giant, three-headed sea monster and it flickered into nothing before it had a chance to roar, the conjurers began to mutter among themselves.
Then, with Jagger’s will pushing me, I stepped forward, swaying in my heels, and slammed the flat of my hand into Luvic’s nose. His head snapped back, and blood bloomed, dripping down his face.
Last laughed. She twisted her hand and threw a morningstar at my head. I yanked the clove hitch free, and the morningstar disappeared. She made a delighted noise and went to conjure again but stopped when the Clark narrowed his eyes.
Luvic tugged his white handkerchief free and pressed it to his bloody nose. “Enough?” he asked the conjurers.
“Not quite,” the Bard said. He twisted his hand and conjured a creature of nightmares.
If you took every culture’s bogeyman and combined it into one dark, hateful thing, then this would be the result. It was the thing that ate children, sat on people’s chests and gave them nightmares, and cursed farmland. It was a hundred Prusik knots, blood knots, and eye splices.