Chapter 9
Elver sat in her corner of the cellar, her back against the wall, and watched the sleeping monk.
She’d tied him up as he’d instructed, hands bound at the wrists behind his back, and his ankles too for good measure, and when he’d thought they were still too loose, he’d asked her to retie them, as tightly as she could.
He’d also tried to convince her to leave the cellar for the night, but she’d refused.
As uncomfortable as it was to be in the same space as this young man, it was still infinitely preferable to being out in a lively human city.
I could just kill him and go. Now is the perfect time. Except that they were locked in the cellar. If the barman opened the door in the morning and found her and a dead body in it, she suspected she would get reintroduced to the Addersport city guard faster than she’d like.
When she had bound Artair to his satisfaction, he had lain down on the dirt floor and closed his eyes.
He’d told her that one of the things they learned very early in the Golden Tower of the Perpetual Morning was that sleep could not be resisted; in fact, it was dangerous to try and avoid it, because if you stayed awake for too long, sleep would simply claim you without asking, and you might not be prepared.
So now she listened as his breathing grew deeper, and slower, the light of the oil lamp lying softly on his face.
He had very dark, thick eyelashes, that lay like soot against his cheek.
She found her eyes returning to the small scar that divided his eyebrow.
For reasons she couldn’t name, she found herself wondering what it would feel like to brush her thumb over that scar.
Elver stood up and went over to the cub, who was finishing up the cheese and meat—neither she nor Artair had felt like eating, so she’d put the plate down on the floor for him.
‘I’ll take you home soon,’ she said quietly. ‘I promise.’
This is good, this yellow stuff , said the cub. What is it?
‘It’s cheese.’
We don’t have it at home. Who is he? Why did he put me in the dark?
‘He is… Artair. Some idiot human. Well, mostly human.’
Huh. The cub had hoovered up all the crumbs on the plate and was licking his lips. I will bite him. Rend him with my teeth.
‘Maybe when you are bigger.’ Elver crouched down next to the cub and scratched him behind the ears. ‘Technically, the fool is jih. Can you believe that?’
The cub snorted. Smells human to me. We should eat him. You’ve tied him up so I can eat him, right?
‘He is one of the Sleepless. He’s himself all day, but when he falls asleep, someone else inhabits him, someone bad. And then when that person also falls asleep, Artair comes back. I’ve tied him up so that when the evil spirit comes, he won’t be able to leave this room.’
Makes him easier to eat , the cub commented.
‘Are you still hungry?’
‘Who are you talking to?’
Elver startled. Artair had sat up awkwardly, twisting his body around to look at her.
His voice was sharper, more direct, and although it was difficult to see in the darkened cellar, for a brief second Elver thought his eyes were a different colour—more hazel than brown.
She stood up, her hand on the knife at her belt.
‘You are the dark spirit.’
‘I have a name, which is Lucian, and I’d thank you to use it.
Being referred to as the dark spirit gets incredibly tiresome.
’ His words and tone were relaxed, but something in the way his eyes glittered made Elver consider escape options: except, of course, that the tavern keeper had locked them in, and not long after she’d made her dramatic entrance the tavern keeper’s son had blocked up the window.
Perhaps I should just take my chances and cut his throat here after all , she thought.
He was still looking at her closely, his eyes travelling up and down her slender frame.
‘You’re not human,’ he said eventually. ‘What are you?’ Elver was struck by the similarity of the conversation she’d just had with Artair.
While the monk’s interest had seemed born of genuine curiosity, Lucian’s interest was as sharp as a blade.
‘You’ve been touched by a god, is my guess, but you’re no mage.
’ When she didn’t reply, he gave a short bark of laughter.
‘I’m guessing that you’re not having a conversation with that table about cheese, which means you’re able to communicate with this juvenile monster.
You’re not a mage, but you have some small spark of magic, and that makes you a jih spirit.
Am I right? A monster girl. And from that I would have to conclude that the god who made you is the Queen of Serpents herself, she who has dominion over all monsters. That is very interesting indeed.’
During this little speech, the cub had come over to Elver and pressed himself to her ankles. He had not been afraid of Artair in the slightest, but clearly Lucian was another prospect.
‘You’re jih too,’ she said, although she found herself wondering. This Lucian wasn’t human, that seemed certain enough—he was a parasite inside another’s body—but Artair had every appearance of one. Did that make him less jih?
Lucian shrugged. ‘I feel no kinship with you and that little creature down by your feet, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘You have a lot to say for yourself.’
Lucian smiled. ‘You didn’t expect a dark spirit to be so eloquent?
The truth is, monster girl, I don’t often have anyone to speak to, so this is quite the treat.
The monks that keep this idiot locked up,’ he nodded at his own chest, ‘like to keep us isolated.’ He looked around the cellar.
‘Which rather begs the question, what are we doing here? And where is here?’
‘My name is Elver,’ she said. ‘Not monster girl. And I’d thank you to use it.’
He laughed delightedly at that. ‘Elver. Fine. And where are we, Elver? Why are you here with us? Not that I’m complaining.’
Slowly, Elver sat and crossed her legs. The cub jumped into her lap immediately, his feathery ears drooping.
I don’t like it , he said. I don’t like this one. She put her hand on his head to calm him.
‘Everyone knows that the spirits that live inside the Sleepless are evil,’ she said.
‘Chaotic, violent things. Creatures so full of trickery that they should rightly belong to Tisk, the god of lies and mischief.’ There was nothing obviously dangerous about this young man, but as soon as he had opened his mouth she had felt a tension in her body similar to the one she felt when a violent storm visited the Jih Forest. ‘I don’t think I’ll be telling you anything. ’
Lucian shifted on the floor, and sighed. ‘Being tied up is new, and I have to tell you, I don’t like it. At least at the tower I had a bed to lay on, or a chair to sit in. I don’t suppose you would consider cutting these bonds?’
She smiled. It was a cold and icy thing on her lips.
‘The only thing I will consider cutting is your throat.’
‘Very good, monster girl, very good.’
‘What are you, really?’ she asked. Despite herself, she found that she was curious about him too.
Lucian shrugged. It was remarkable, she thought, how he could look like Artair and yet not look like him at all. He held himself differently, moved differently. His face was haughty and almost bored, his eyes narrowed and his brows drawn down as though he were examining her somehow.
‘Tell me where we are, Elver, and I will tell you everything there is to know about myself.’
Elver frowned. Above them, in the busy tavern, someone had started singing off key, and several other voices began to join in against a background of general laughter.
‘We’re in a city,’ she said.
Lucian nodded. ‘I guessed that myself. And from the sound of that din above, we’re in the cellar of a tavern.
Of all the places a prissy little monk could find himself…
I bet the boy is pissing his breeches.’ He sounded very pleased at the prospect.
It was interesting, Elver thought, that this Lucian clearly thought Artair was weak, when presumably they could never have met.
Whatever her opinion of Artair’s actions, a weak person did not enter the Jih Forest with the intention of confronting one of its monsters.
‘In a city, in a tavern. That’s where we are. So, who are you?’
‘That’s the question, isn’t it?’ The spirit called Lucian grinned at her, sharp and full of self-satisfaction, but it felt as though there was something else behind it too.
Desperation, perhaps. ‘My name is Lucian, and I know I’m not supposed to be here, and that is about all I know, monster girl.
Where my past is supposed to be, there is a fog so dense it’s like being blind.
But if you let me out of here, perhaps I could go out into the world and find out. ’
‘You haven’t told me anything at all.’
He shrugged. ‘I told you I would tell you everything there is to know about me, and I have done that. Now. How about you use your clever little knife to open one of these barrels, and we could have a sip of whatever happens to be inside them? When I am locked in the cell at the monastery, I never get to eat or drink. The monk keeps those pleasures for himself.’
‘I don’t think so. And I don’t think I’ll be answering any more of your questions, or performing any other tasks for you.’
‘You will not talk to me further, Elver?’
Elver did not answer. The dark spirit inhabiting Artair’s body tried a few more times to get her to speak—asking her where she lived, if humans were frightened of her, and where the keltraxia cub had come from—but she went back to her corner and sat with the cub, one hand on her knife hilt, until he eventually gave up and fell into a simmering silence.
I don’t think we should eat that one , said the cub as he dozed in her lap. I think he will taste bad.
I think you might be right about that , thought Elver.
Tiredness tugged at her, but the idea of sleeping with Lucian watching her was uncomfortable.
Instead, she put the cub down onto a pile of empty sacks and crossed the room to where Artair had left his pack.
They had agreed to place it out of his reach, just to be on the safe side.
When she picked it up, Lucian raised his eyebrows.
‘That belongs to the monk, doesn’t it? The Brothers who keep me prisoner have robes made of the same scratchy hessian. What are you doing, monster girl?’
‘Nothing that concerns you,’ she told him without looking up.
The pack contained enough silver to make her raise an eyebrow, and some food: apples, half a loaf of brown bread, dried meat wrapped in grease paper.
This last she took a piece of and chewed on thoughtfully as she pulled out two tightly rolled scrolls.
The first one was a map of the Jih Forest, the locations of keltraxia nests marked with circles of blue ink, and the second was a brief description of the monsters, written in a sloping, spidery hand.
At the bottom of this, there was a signature.
Mother Maura.
‘What is it?’ Lucian shifted, craning to get a better look at her face. ‘I’d have said that you couldn’t possibly get any paler, yet you just proved me wrong.’
Elver stared at the signature. In a horrible, stupid way, it made sense.
The mage that Artair had described was bloodthirsty and ruthless, and she had acolytes willing to do her bidding.
More than she’d had in Addersport, but it had been a while.
Mother Maura had clearly gained more followers since she’d thrown Elver into the sea.
This doesn’t change anything , she told herself. I have to return the cub to the forest before the next egg-moon.
Yet here was Mother Maura, intruding on her life again.
Causing more pain and suffering when she hadn’t even answered for the horrors she’d already inflicted.
How sweet would it be to disrupt her plans?
To look her in the face and let her know that Elver had survived after all?
There were many things she could do if she got close enough to touch the mage.
‘Care to share what it is that has given you that steely look, monster girl?’ said Lucian.
Elver shoved the rolls of parchment back into the pack, her heart racing.
‘Be quiet,’ she told him, ‘or I’ll gag you as well.’