Chapter 32
The stone room at the center of Hell Gate was the cold, empty cavity where its heart should reside. There should be warmth, blood, a beating pulse that fed the inhabitants with life.
Instead, walking into the stone room was like cracking open a walnut shell expecting a nut, only to find a husk fly had laid its eggs and the larvae had hatched and devoured all the flesh. The shell was a hollow, desiccated cavern.
Hell Gate, like its master, had no heart.
I bowed my head, my chin nearly touching my chest, my throat constricted. Jagger’s fire raced through me, burning my blood so it was acid pumping through my veins. I clenched my hands and resisted wiping free the sweat dripping down my forehead.
“No Silencer. No Furtig. No Knife.” Jagger punched each word with a violent jab, so each syllable sent a sharp agony through me. My vision turned black, then red, as if the room were coated with a bloody film. It spun around me, dizzy and distorted. “Mari, I don’t like failure.”
I choked as the pressure on my throat constricted and then coughed as it released.
“What will you do to remedy your mistakes?”
I dragged in a breath. It burned as it filled my lungs. I burned.
Once, years ago, I had a fever of 106 degrees. I remember feeling like I was standing on the surface of the sun, begging for a single drop of water, but every time Rou poured liquid down my throat, it felt as if it evaporated. Nothing could cool the fire.
I was locked in that same river of fire now, and just like before, it was burning me from the inside out. Jagger wasn’t happy, and he wanted me to know it.
“I’ll get the Furtig tonight—”
“Yes.”
“I’ll find the Silencer, steal it—”
“Don’t bother.”
“I’ll go after Justice—” I dropped to my knees as a mountain of pain slammed over me and crushed my bones.
“What did you say?”
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. Jagger knew it.
“It’s interesting. I thought you knew the rules. I thought you knew my will. But if so, why would you ask to help someone? Why would you desire to rescue someone careless enough to need rescuing?”
I struggled to stand. It was common knowledge that if you cowered when Jagger hurt you, he was more likely to kill you. He hated weakness.
When I pushed myself upright, he smiled. Next to him, Gerald, the slipshot, grimaced. I’d forgotten he was there. Pain had a way of blinding you to everyone and everything.
“The slipshot,” Jagger said, his gray lips curling, “told me everything. You and Justice could’ve left, but instead, you chose to save the conjurers. Is that right?”
I swallowed, my throat burning. “Yes.”
I braced myself for another river of pain, but it didn’t come.
“Then you allowed the conjurers to leave before you. You even let the slipshot out before you. Is that right?”
Something tickled my mind. I hesitated before responding. “Yes.”
Jagger’s boulder-like stance widened. He was a rock. A mountain. A hard, granite, hateful thing. He turned to the slipshot. “You helped my mines escape?”
Gerald nodded. “I did.”
“Yet you left the Den before them?”
“I . . . I . . .” Gerald licked his lips, sensing something wasn’t quite right. “I did.”
Jagger sighed.
“Wait—” I cried.
It was too late. Jagger thrust his hand out and yanked the slipshot’s throat free.
It was done so quickly that only a second passed between when Gerald was breathing and when he was not. He lay dead, crumpled at Jagger’s feet.
Jagger licked his long gray nails, staring at me as he tasted the slipshot’s blood.
“Why?” I asked. But I knew why. First, no one helped another without punishment. Second, in Jagger’s mind, Gerald should’ve been the last creature out. If he were, he might’ve been the one taken by the Den instead of Justice. For Jagger, a slipshot was worthless compared to a mine.
“Don’t question me, Mari.”
I curled my fingers into my palms.
“You’ve cost me a slipshot. You’ve cost me my Knife. You’ve cost me a Silencer and even a bottle of Furtig. What should I do with you?”
I looked into Jagger’s slate-gray eyes. “Is he still alive?”
Jagger’s mouth stretched into what some would consider a smile. It filled his dark, cavernous office with a sickly, gleeful feel. “Oh, he’s alive. He’s suffering horribly, and it’s delicious.”
The smile stretched wider, and I shuddered.
How long had he been there now? It had been four hours for me; had it been weeks or months for Justice?
Years? The Merchant had said time there was unstable.
It moved in spurts and jerks. Gerald, in his recitation to Jagger, had told him he thought he’d been there twenty-five years (the life span of a slipshot).
We’d experienced five years; he’d experienced twenty-five.
How quickly was time moving for Justice?
“Send me after him.” My voice sounded raw, burned and battered by the fire in my throat. “Let that be my punishment. Let me bring him out.”
Jagger laughed. It was his rockslide rumble, and it battered me with its cruelty. “No. I don’t think so. I believe, for the moment, he will stay where he is.”
“Please. He—”
“Do you think I don’t know my mines? I know them better than they know themselves.
My Knife always fights me. I thought I might have to discard him.
But this . . . I can already feel . . .” The flat stretching of skin on Jagger’s face turned to a triumphant smile.
“He won’t fight me much longer. He won’t want to. ”
His eyes gleamed as he circled me. Jagger was large. Nearly seven feet tall. Sometimes, it felt like he might crush you under his rocklike will. But other times, he moved with eerie fluidity, like the smooth flow of heated marble. He circled me, orbiting the barren room.
My heart pounded painfully. It felt like it was trying to push gravel through a straw. Each beat was a hard, shoving lurch.
The Den was doing what Jagger had never been able to accomplish. It was robbing Justice of his good. I had to go after him. I had to get him out. Even without Jagger’s permission.
He grinned, sensing my decision. “Let’s play a game. It’s a mine game.”
I held my tongue, understanding by the look in his eyes it might be torn out if I didn’t. You didn’t need a tongue to be a mine.
“Justice and I often played this game. Did he ever share it with you? I know he was fond of it.”
I shook my head.
“Shame. It’s easy to play though. I ask a question, and all you have to do is answer. When I hear the answer I like, the game ends.”
A bitter, frightened taste filled my mouth. It tasted almost like Furtig. I hated it. I hated the fear, but I’d never claimed I wasn’t afraid; I’d only said I promised to always go on in spite of my fear.
Slowly, while watching my expression, Jagger ran his finger along the edge of his obsidian knife. Then he pulled the leather necklace over his head and gripped the knife in his clawed hand.
He smiled, then he carefully rolled up his left shirtsleeve. “You can make the game stop whenever you want. It’s simple.”
I stared at the point of his knife pressing against the gray skin of his forearm. He looked at me and asked, “Do you want to save Justice from the Den of Depravity?”
I stared at him. He knew the answer. Of course I did. At this moment, I wanted it more than anything.
But I also knew Jagger’s will. He wanted Justice to stay in the Den until all the good was devoured. Then, and only then, would he bring him out.
Jagger’s will swept through me, choking mine, prodding me to accept—demanding I accept. Leave Justice. Let him hurt. Let his light go out. If he died, oh well.
“Answer,” Jagger said.
I closed my eyes.
When I woke up a mine, Justice had begged me, “Don’t fight it. Don’t fight him.” I hadn’t. I’d done everything Jagger had asked. I’d hurt Griff. I’d hurt Finn. I’d hurt Luvic. If I did this, I’d hurt Justice.
I was following Justice’s advice. Keeping hidden. Keeping safe. But what had it done? I was losing myself bit by bit. I could feel the weathering of my soul, and soon, like Jagger said, it would be carved away, until the only thing left was him.
He wanted me to lie. To say something I didn’t believe and knew wasn’t good or true. Jagger was the king of lies, and he wanted me to be its mistress.
If I gave him the lie he wanted, there wouldn’t be any pain.
There wouldn’t be the threat of violence.
For now. I’d seen this before. Jagger would use violence, pain, or fear to force creatures to accept or repeat something they didn’t believe.
A lie. And creatures, being scared, would repeat the lie.
He would use violence to prop up the lie and lies to prop up the violence. One couldn’t exist without the other.
If Justice hadn’t been swallowed by the Den, if Finn hadn’t become twisted and wrong, if Luvic weren’t a jackaltooth, if I weren’t in danger of losing myself completely, perhaps I would’ve chosen differently. But at Jagger’s question, I saw that Justice, perhaps, had been wrong.
If I accepted Jagger’s will without fighting—if I accepted his lies and even repeated them—then even if I did hide my good away, it wouldn’t matter. I’d be so consumed by Jagger that I wouldn’t remember or care if there was good buried deep inside me.
There was no one coming to help. There was no one. Only me.
If I told Jagger, “No, I don’t want to go after Justice,” that would be a lie. I would lose another piece of myself in saying it.
You always said lies are like parasites. They require people to survive. If you refuse to repeat them, if you refuse to be a host for them, then they die.
“We can’t be against the truth, Mari,” you said. “We have to always choose the truth. How else can we trust ourselves? Each other?”
Maybe I should’ve been listening to your memory all along. Maybe I should’ve remembered that everything is illusion. Even pain. Even death. Especially lies.
Do you remember when I told you I would become the truth? Let me become it now. Let me stay it.
“Yes,” I said, my throat burning. “I want to save him.”