28. Chapter 28 #2
I’m told every human has a funny uncle, he said, settling my eyes upon a man with a fuzz of black hair, a body riddled with scars and backlit by a spitting bonfire.
The irresponsible kind you shouldn’t leave your children alone with.
Well, he’s mine. The lift in his mood turned me a little drunk with residual elation.
Amusing man. Barking mad. He let us play with knives as children.
Let us wrestle hellhound pups. My mother nearly killed him once when I came home with a split lip and my first gash.
The wounds were already healing, but she threatened to freeze him solid, kick him over and let him smash to pieces.
“Oi!”
In the dark room of my mind, I leapt to my feet, startled, but It was unaffected by the volume of Valic’s roar.
Valic slid a palm upon my shoulder as their uncle looked around in a crackle of red sparks.
I expected a bit of astonishment to break across his face, maybe for his lips to round into an O of surprise.
He reached us in a few long strides, the blades against his chest gleaming in the bonfires.
His shoulders bulged, his coarse cheeks apple-red, cords running all over his arms.
“You took your time about it,” he yelled over the racket as his hands found my shoulders. “Almost thought you’d forgotten the way home.” He glittered in the flames as they played across his scars, both hands in my hair, slicking back the strays. “We’ve missed you.”
I wondered for a moment if It would even be able to summon words, the way my throat thickened. “I missed you, too.”
“At least you made a friend during your exile.” His uncle tipped his head to the side, as if from that angle he could find me in my cell. “Or did you compel her all the way back?”
“She needed no convincing.”
“What,” Valic shouted suddenly as he gazed off at a demon who had his hands splayed across a woman with skin so dark she shone like obsidian in the firelight, “is Belson doing with my mother?”
She did not look old enough to be his mother, and neither did she seem to mind Belson’s overt attentions. It was as if he had eight hands and they were everywhere, all over her body.
“Celebrating,” Its uncle said. “His favorite’s the last one standing.”
“He can celebrate my boot up his ass next.” Valic loosened a blade from his baldric, but his uncle snared a hand around his bicep. “I’ve never known a woman who needs less protecting than your mother.”
When Valic continued to glower in Belson’s direction, It said, “Can we go to your apartment? I need to feed her. My mother hasn’t bothered yet.”
As the regent of Fury, It told me, his uncle Radax kept quarters inside the Hell circle, along with certain lieutenants and other important members. Normal pit workers lived in barracks on the other end.
Radax’s chambers were large, multiple rooms and hallways which presumably led down to many others. Comprised of stone shining a baked bronze from twin braziers, it was far cleaner than Its apartment. The parlor was sparse but free, at least, of a furry carpet of dust.
I held my tongue as they spoke, unwilling to interrupt the reunion.
I had hoped the conversation might inform me of what It was truly called, but I’d been thus far disappointed.
They tossed around plenty of names but not his, which had begun to bother me the more I mulled it over, alone in my cell.
After all that happened, where we were and where we’d come from, he still couldn’t bring himself to tell me?
I had no need for his true name; I didn’t want to have that power over him or anyone, but a proper name to call him seemed the bare minimum to ask for.
If It heard my grumblings, he did not acknowledge them.
At some point his joy at reuniting with Radax seemed to ebb and I began to feel a pulse of need coming from him, a throbbing ache he at first tried to ignore.
Then he had tried biting it back, but that hadn’t worked, either.
“Have any of you had eyes on Luceric lately?”
A long, ugly silence.
“Still on that, are you?” Radax propped a booted foot up on the low table before him. “Figured time away would have cooled your temper.”
My chest felt tight and hot as It looked from Radax to Valic. “That will never happen.”
Another tense lull fell. The twin braziers shimmered and shifted.
“Well, we can’t watch round the clock,” Valic finally said, as if he were soothing an angry hellhound. “But one of us goes out there every day. Finn and Casper have been gone for a while now, trying to find more information.”
“And?”
“And often there’s more coins than souls.” Valic fiddled with the handle of one of the knives crisscrossing his bare chest, avoiding my eye. “But none of us has seen so much as a feather from Luceric, and if they’ve found anything, Finn and Casper haven’t gotten word back home.”
“Your father,” Radax said, “would not have wanted you to set fire to your life over this. I told you we would sort this out quietly—”
“My father was Fang and Fury,” It snapped. “He would have ripped that prick to shreds and gotten drunk on his blood.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean he’d have wanted you to do the same. I knew him longer and better than any of you boys.”
“How can you just accept this?” It shook my head in disbelief. “You act like it’s just some sad thing that happened, like we should all just move on—”
“Moving on is all that can be done. You don’t have any solid proof to start a war and proof is what the council needs—”
“I was fucking there.” It choked on an incredulous laugh. “I saw his light, I felt the wind from his fucking wings, I saw the marks on my father’s body. How does that add up to nothing?”
“I never said it was nothing,” Radax said tolerantly, as if this were a well-worn discussion.
“I said it wasn’t solid. You lost all credibility the second you started flying off the handle.
Some things need patience, time. If your father had caught wind of what was going on, he would have known that too; it’s the only reason I can think that he didn’t come to me about it.
The council was never going to believe you about a few extra coins, but if you’d kept watching and documenting you might have found something eventually.
Now they’ll never trust another word you say and not even I can help you. ”
It was obvious they had had this fight before, their arguments well-rehearsed, refined by repetition. I felt It narrow my gaze on his uncle. “What choice did I have? Nobody else cared enough to actually do anything.”
“I think you mean,” Radax said, black eyes flashing dangerously in the light of the brazier, “nobody else was stupid enough to do what you did. Your brothers have been back here trying to sort through this mess quietly, the way you ought to have. If your mother lets you out and when Finn and Casper get back we’ll have more to talk about.
Until then, mind your tongue. If anyone were to hear you going on about these things do you think your mother will ever free you? ”
“I’m going back to my room.” It lurched me to my feet. And when Valic rose to join him, It cut him down with a look. “Don’t follow me.”
“What the fuck did I do?” Valic barked at my retreating back as It tugged the hood of the cloak up and over my head. “I’ve never not believed you; who’s the asshole who’s kept an eye on all this shit while you were gone?”
I didn’t feel it was my place to tell him anything, but I couldn’t help my thoughts.
Don’t run off and sulk, I would have told him, had he asked my advice.
Sulking never helps. Obviously I didn’t know the specifics but that hardly mattered, did it?
Had all this molten anger made one whit of difference the last time he’d had this argument?
Close your eyes and bite your tongue and take a moment to gather yourself before responding, don’t just run off and shut down—
Des, It said, like it took him a lot of effort not to snarl at me as he blazed a trail through the muddy maze of paths out of Fury, not now. Please.
I’m sorry, I said, and I was. I can’t help my thoughts.
I know, just— he broke off with a sigh, didn’t finish the sentence.
What is this about coins and souls? I eventually chanced to ask as we went down the frozen Frost staircase. This is about the ferryman? He’s collecting more coins than he ought to?
The coin-to-souls ratio doesn’t always add up. Often he has more coin than souls to go with them. I would stay out in the river all day sometimes, counting them as he passed.
You think he’s not bringing the souls to the In Between like he’s meant to?
No. I think he’s letting someone steal them, he said, a loud, empty-room echo edging his words. I think my father found out and was murdered for it.