Mercurial Page 12

  Nyx’s lips felt numb. Her skull echoed with memories, too crowded to admit the present moment. After a moment she managed to force out, “It was hers.”

  Helenia dropped the silk like it was something rotten, something that might infect her. “She was here, then, with Tal. She is alive.”

  “I already know she is alive.”

  Helenia frowned. “How do you know? I thought you said the last you saw of her, she was in a bad way.”

  “I know she is alive because my oath tells me so.”

  Helenia was deadly silent for a long, long moment. “Your what tells you so?” she asked, calm in a way that meant she was envisioning murder. Probably because Nyx hadn’t yet been brave enough to tell her all the details of her torture and the events immediately following it.

  Nyx didn’t answer her girlfriend. She’d heard a scuffing sound behind her and turned to follow it, and saw Maluk a few dozen yards away. The land beneath him sloped downward sharply and he was pacing at the edge of it, his gaze fixed on something at the bottom. Nyx scrambled after him and followed his line of sight.

  At the bottom of the slope was a dark hole in the side of the mountain. A thin, watery trail of smoke led upward from it, a gray etching against the sky. Inside the cave, something orange and red flickered in the darkness: embers, or sparks.

  Nyx’s dagger was in her hand. She was crashing heedlessly down the slope, tripping, nearly falling, righting herself and lunging onward. Helenia didn’t shout after her—she’d spotted the cave too, and didn’t want to alert anyone who might be inside. Nyx barely heard her or saw the blur of gray at her side that was Maluk. All of her focus was on the red of the embers, which matched the color of the flames that had pinwheeled in the Destroyer’s palm when she had finished torturing Nyx. All her attention was on the hilt of the dagger in her hand, the way it warmed to her touch and seemed to mold itself to her grip, as if it thrummed with the same eager fury that tore through Nyx’s veins. Her oath sang within her, and her very soul joined in its chorus.

  I will see your empire fall.

  She reached the cave. The darkness smelled like old death. She plunged into it without waiting for her eyes to adjust.

  And your reign ended.

  She drew back her dagger to throw it. This time she wouldn’t miss.

  And you dead.

  Do you hear me, Elodie?

  But there was no target for her aim. Even before her eyes had fully adjusted, she could tell the cave was empty. She held her breath anyway, tried to silence her thundering heartbeat, and took in the details of the cave in a long, sweeping glance.

  Campfire in the middle. Clumsily built, burned down to bare embers, with the evidence of a full night’s burning in the ash piled beneath it. To the left, a strip of abandoned fabric and a space that had been cleared of dust and pebbles, just the right size for a single body to sleep. To the right: a piece of stained cloth, wadded up and half-hidden beneath a rock, and a shallow white line where a blade had scraped against the ground.

  They were not here. But they had been.

  Something was raging through Nyx. An emotion, or an emptiness—something that she had never felt before and could not harness now. She drew her arm back and hurled her dagger with all her might. It clattered loudly against the cave’s wall and fell. She would be lucky if it wasn’t chipped. She would be lucky if it wasn’t broken. Trauma like that could do things to a blade that couldn’t be repaired. It would never be like it had been before.

  Nyx didn’t realize she had sunk to the ground until she felt Helenia ease down next to her. She didn’t realize she was sobbing until Maluk licked her tears from her cheek.

  “She has stolen him again,” Nyx choked out.

  “We will find them.”

  Nyx tangled a hand in Maluk’s thick fur. The contact calmed her a bit, enough to be able to speak almost normally. “We waited two years for this chance. Mother said the opportunity was sent from God. I drank poison every day, Helenia.”

  “I know.” Helenia’s voice had a hint of hardness to it now, but Nyx barely heard it.

  “I promised her I was ready.” Nyx squeezed her eyes shut. “I failed.”

  She could still see her mother’s steadfast eyes, watching from the darkness of her cell.

  “You didn’t fail,” Helenia replied.

  “She said—”

  Helenia stood up in a sudden and uncharacteristically violent movement. “I don’t care what Saasha said,” she bit out, her eyes shining. “What kind of a mother sends a daughter to be tortured?”

  The argument was old, frayed around the edges, ready to shred open anew with a single rough word. “It was my plan,” Nyx reminded her girlfriend. “My choice.”

  “Encouraged by her. Nyx, she formulated the poison. She somehow tracked down a copper Smith willing to sell her the ingredients. She lobbied the Saints’ leadership to enact your plan.”

  Nyx set her teeth. She didn’t want to argue. She wanted to find her family. She stood up, swiped an arm across her face, and strode to the edge of the cave. From there, she could see what she had been too focused to spot on her run down the slope: a mess of tracks, leading away from the cave toward the east. She knelt down to examine them. If the fire that the Destroyer and Tal had started last night was still burning, it had to mean they’d left recently. Nyx could still catch up. The oath curled around her bones, whispering its agreement.

  Behind her, Helenia’s boots shuffled as she stepped across the cave. “This silk fabric matches the piece we found above,” she said. The shuffling paused. “But it’s bloody.” She sounded puzzled.

  “Good,” Nyx bit out. “If she’s injured, it’ll be easier to kill her.”

  “No, it’s—Nyx, it’s red blood.”

  Nyx lifted her head and glanced back. “What?”

  “Red. Not mercurial. And there are wood splinters all through the fabric too, like whoever had it on was working, trying to start the fire maybe. Not something the Destroyer would be likely to do.” Helenia held the silky fabric aloft.

  “So…it’s not the Destroyer who’s with Tal?” Hope and disappointment twined together in Nyx’s chest. Hope because the Destroyer’s absence could mean an easier rescue for Tal; disappointment because Nyx needed very badly to kill her, and now might have lost her only lead.

  “I’m not sure,” Helenia mused, tugging her foxtail scarf down so she could examine the ground better. “I’ll look around a bit more and see what clues I can find.”

  Nyx turned her attention back to the tracks. The snow was kicked around near the entrance to the cave, and it was hard to make much out, but when she moved further out into the shadow of the peak the trail became clearer. Some sort of makeshift sled had been dragged through here. It nearly obscured the footprints of the person who’d been pulling it. Those footprints weren’t big enough to be Tal’s, but they didn’t match the prints that the Destroyer’s heeled boots would have made, either. Nyx was still frowning over them when she heard Maluk’s warning growl.

  Nyx jerked her gaze up. Maluk was a few yards further down the trail. His hackles were up and his body was rigid. Another low growl rippled from him.

  Helenia exited the cave, a wad of balled-up fabric in her hand, a grave expression on her face, but whatever she’d been about to say was cut off when she spotted her dog. “Maluk, what is it?”

  Nyx was already at Maluk’s side. Her body went numb with fear as she stared down at the new tracks he’d found: pawprints the size of dinner plates, with imprints of wicked claws pricking the snow above each toepad.

  Mooncat.

  Too late, Nyx recalled the scent of old death that had permeated the cave, and realized what it meant. This cave was the den of a mooncat. It had returned after the blizzard, probably made hungry by the winter that had turned harsh unseasonably early, only to find its lair had been invaded. And now it was hunting down the invaders.

  Tal was injured. Whoever was with him was injured. The scent of their blo
od would have left a trail, one invisible to the eyes of humans but clear as day to a predator. Mooncats were at the very top of the Skyteeth food chain, as large as the great white bears of the north and twice as territorial. Every year, a handful of mountain ward hunters fell prey to them—and those hunters had weapons, crossbows and daggers and ferocious hunting hounds. Tal was a superior fighter, but if he was injured, what chance would he have against a predator that outweighed him by a thousand pounds?

  “We can’t go after them like this,” Helenia called, because of course Nyx was already hurrying down the path of trodden-down snow.

  “I can and I will.”

  Helenia hurried after her and grabbed her arm to stop her. Nyx meant to pause to explain herself, but instead saw her hand lash out, knocking her girlfriend back into the snow. Helenia yelped and winced when she landed. Nyx jolted. She hadn’t meant to do that. It had been as though her hand had been controlled by some outside force.

  No. By some inner force. Her oath was reeling her across the valley like she was a fish on a line. She thought there was a decent chance the Destroyer was with Tal, and she knew Tal was at the end of these tracks; therefore, she had to follow them, because she had sworn to see the Destroyer dead.

  Nyx’s lip curled in shocked abhorrence. Was this what the metal oath had been like for Tal? Like someone else controlled your body, like you were an arrow aimed at a target by some unseen hand? “Helenia, I’m sorry,” she said, but was unable to force her feet to stop moving. “I’ve got to go after them.”

  Helenia sprang to her feet. “No, you don’t! You can’t take on the Destroyer and a mooncat on your own! Come with me—we’ll go back to the township, gather reinforcements first.”

  “No,” Nyx grated out, “I mean, I can’t stop.” Quickly, as Helenia trotted to keep up, Nyx explained the oath she had made and why it was drawing her forward now. When she was done, Helenia stared at her for a long moment, then lifted her chin.

  “So. You have no choice but to follow. But I have a choice. I’ll take the sled and get to the township and bring every man and woman who can carry a sword back with me. You take Maluk with you.”

  “Maluk can’t help me take down the Destroyer and a mooncat.”

  “No,” snapped Helenia. “But this way you’ll be forced to think about his safety before you do anything idiotic, if you won’t consider your own. If you get him killed I’ll never forgive you. There; now you have no choice but to keep the both of you safe.”

  Nyx hunched her shoulders. Helenia was being sensible. It was far worse than when she yelled, because now Nyx couldn’t even argue or accuse her of overreacting.

  “Okay,” Nyx said meekly.

  Helenia swallowed, hesitated, and then spoke again more softly. “Nyx. How could you?”

  Nyx wanted to shrivel and vanish beneath the broken accusation in Helenia’s voice. She knew that tone; it had been Nyx’s own tone for the last two years. How could Tal have left her? How could he have been so selfish as to gamble away his own life without a thought for what it would do to her? A metal oath was unbreakable, except by death or the fulfillment of its terms. It was stronger than blood, stronger than family. He’d chosen it over her. And now she’d chosen it over Helenia.

  “I’m sorry,” was all Nyx could say. She meant it with every fiber of her being. But sorry as she was, she would still do it again, to save Tal. They both knew that truth, and so there was nothing left to say.

  But then Helenia lifted the wad of bloodied fabric she was still holding. “There’s something you should know. This sleeve was used as a bandage. It has Tal’s silver blood on it.” She hesitated again. “Nyx—there’s also evidence of rust phage.”

  At that, Nyx’s horror eclipsed all else, and her feet stumbled to a brief stop. “What?”

  Helenia shook the torn-off sleeve out. One side was coated in red-brown blood, with bits of white fur—rabbit fur?—stuck to it. The other side was crusted silver with flecks of orangish crystals reminiscent of tiny snowflakes.

  The Destroyer. A mooncat. Rust phage. How could Nyx protect her brother from so much? What sort of sadistic god would demand such a test of faith from him?

  Nyx’s feet began to move again. Her voice shook. “I will save him,” she said quietly. Even if you will not. It was a silent and unholy challenge, and Nyx regretted it not one whit.

  Helenia shrugged off her coat and thrust it onto Nyx. “I love you,” she said fiercely. “Go and find your brother.”

  “I love you too,” Nyx replied, trying to put her whole heart into the words, afraid she might not get the chance to say it again. “And I will. I swear it.”

  THE SUNGILL HAD EVADED ELODIE FOR NEARLY AN HOUR, but she refused to admit defeat.

  She sat unbowed before the jagged hole in the ice, through which she’d dangled a thin, reedy vine. A beetle and a sharply whittled twig were tied to its end. The little fish—whose shadow she could see flitting about in the alpine lake below the cap of ice—had not yet taken the bait, but it was only a matter of time.

  “I told you, we don’t have the right bait for sungills,” Tal noted unhelpfully from his spot by the shore a few yards away. Behind him rose a crown of peaks haloed by creamy, whipped clouds, which the late-morning sunlight painted in delicate shades of champagne and coral. Such a beautiful rendering of such a lethal landscape. Idly, Elodie wondered if the morning sky was trying to trick them or trying to redeem itself. Or, perhaps, if it simply was what it was: both transcendent and merciless.

  She jiggled the fishing lure. “And I told you, this is the only bait we have. Also, I don’t recall asking for commentary.”

  “It’s been an hour. If the fish is still evading you, we should move on.”

  Elodie set her jaw. “You need food. You’re looking even paler today than yesterday. If you’re going to recover, you need a proper meal.”

  Tal looked away. His hair—which was unkempt, flecked with snow and rabbit blood—spilled over his face and hid his eyes, but not the tense line of his jaw. For a disorienting moment, an image flickered in the recesses of her memory.

  A boy with hair splayed over his face, cutting his expression into slivers. Tight jaw. A dark slash of brows etched above stormy green eyes. A mirror snapping shut: my crown, said a voice, so clear and cold that it hurt, like swallowing a chunk of ice whole. Beyond it, she faintly heard Tal’s voice saying something to her.

  Elodie reeled sideways. She caught herself on one hand, and blinked. “What—what did you say?” she asked Tal, shaken by whatever had just happened. A vision? A memory? Some odd trick of her mind, a result of lingering shock?

  “I said I can eat when we get closer to the township,” Tal repeated, his voice tight, his face turned away from her. “I can go a day without food. And you shouldn’t be out on the ice anyway. It’s not thick enough.”

  “It’s held me so far.”

  “And while it’s held you, it has been slowly melting from your body heat. It could crack at any moment, and then I’d have to jump in and save you, and then we shall both die of exposure.”

  “I will not be cowed by a bit of melting ice. And I have faith that if I do fall in, you would find a way to save us both.”

  Tal rubbed a hand through his hair, a quick, frustrated motion. He muttered something under his breath.

  “See,” Elodie said, turning her attention back to the fishing hole, “your hunger makes you irritable. Further proof that stopping to resupply now is the best course of action.”

  “It is not my hunger making me irritable.”

  Elodie only continued gazing serenely at the hole. A thin crust of ice had begun to grow back over it, and she leaned forward to knock it loose with a stick. The noise sent the sungill darting away, its shadow blending back into the murk at the bottom of the alpine lake. Elodie glared at it, then sighed. Maybe there was other, more attainable game nearby that she could hunt instead, or warrens or dens beneath the snow that she could pillage. She would be happy to wr
ing the neck of a fox or a dusk mouse or even one of those stringy-looking burrowing owls she’d spotted a few times. She was starving. More than that, though, she was growing genuinely concerned for Tal.

  She snuck a glance over her shoulder at her travelling companion. He sat with his back against a scraggly lone pine tree, his eyes unnaturally bright and half-lidded as if the sun was too much for him. He’d barely moved since they’d stopped and a light sheen of sweat shone on his brow. She worried he was getting some sort of wound fever, and she had no idea how to cure it or how to help him at all, really, other than getting some food in him. Disgusted yet again at her own helplessness, she vowed that if she lived through this, she would immediately apprentice herself to a physician or a wilderness explorer or both so that she would not find herself in such a situation again.

  A flash of movement caught her eye. Jiggling the vine in an attempt to lure the sungill out of hiding one last time, she scanned the shoreline. She was expecting to see potential prey, a goat or perhaps another hare—so it took her three long seconds to recognize that the creature creeping up behind Tal was a mooncat.

  Sinuous shoulders draped with a wide ruff of ivory fur. Canny moon-yellow eyes. Deceptively soft, broad paws that extended gently across the snow, distributing the great cat’s weight so that it seemed to float atop the thin crust of frost. The crescent fore-fangs that scissored down on either side of its jaw were the white of bones picked clean. Huge as it was, it had managed to steal up behind Tal without making a sound, and was now near enough that if it exhaled, its breath would ruffle his hair.

  Elodie scrambled to her feet, a movement made slow and ungainly by horror. She flung out her hands as if she could stop the massive predator through nothing but the force of her will alone. She screamed, “Tal!”

  Tal reacted at once. His eyes snapped to hers, registering the direction of her gaze. He reached for the small of his back, tucked one shoulder down into a roll, and came up kneeling several feet from where he had been with a short sword in each hand.