Savannah the Librarian, long of leg and short of temper, got out of the city to do some killing. As ever, she rode her sly, dependable white mule, Seldom. As ever, the invisible swikehead demon, Boy, crouched on her left shoulder. Neither mule nor demon had ever acknowledged the other’s existence.

The Doge of Tuliax-by-the-Sea didn’t acknowledge their existence either—a mule was beneath his notice and Boy went to great pains to conceal himself from the thalassocracy’s devil-sniffers—but the old man was entirely too aware of Savannah’s. On this most recent visit, he had again attempted to recruit her to act as condottiere to a mercenary company he would fund, and she had again rejected his offer.

Her time in the Company of Lucero had earned her a reputation as a scholarly type—thus her nom de guerre—as well as a profound distaste for working with others. Including the demon on her shoulder, something else she had earned during her time as a mercenary.

“You should have slain him,” said Boy.

“Who this time,” asked Savannah, only halfway paying attention to his hissing and spitting.

“The old man, the one with the hat.”

Every old man in every city-state on the peninsula wore a hat, but Savannah knew who the demon meant.

“His guards would have descended from every direction if I’d even put hand to pommel,” she said, with a little heat in her words.

“You should have slain them, as well. You should slay them all. You should rid this cursed peninsula and this whole cursed world of all humankind. This is why you have been chosen as my mount.”

“Ah yes,” said Savannah, ignoring the word “mount” for the moment. “Your diabolical task, lain on you by the Dukes of Perfidy.”

“Yes!” hissed Boy. “It is my unholy destiny to rule a blasted and fiery Earth!”

“First we need to catch this apprentice,” said Savannah.

The apprentice, runagate for three days now and fleeing the hangman for murdering his master, had enough florins on his head—attached or not—to see Savannah down the coast and away from the Doge’s center of power, with just enough left over to expand her small collection of books by a volume or two. Tuliax-by-the-Sea was a center of mercantile, not scholarly, activity, but there were a few printers and booksellers operating in the Old Town. She had her eye on one book of verse and one manual of swordsmanship, though her facility with her falchion was already considerable.

“He is inland,” said Boy, confidently.

Boy frequently expressed confidence that was ill-founded, but in this case, yes, that had been the direction the gate guards had seen the apprentice running and there were shepherd’s huts and hunting lodges aplenty in the heights, all of which would be empty this time of year. The boy wasn’t believed to be carrying anything in the way of a weapon, or even any food, which would make for an easy taking. There were some weeks when Savannah might have pitied the youngster and brought him in alive, but the murder he had committed had been particularly foul and left a young widow with a babe still nursing.

And it wasn’t one of the weeks that Savannah was feeling pity.

She clucked her tongue and Seldom took the gravel road leading west, up into the hills. In no time, the inland blowing breeze was cooling Savannah’s neck, and when they had navigated the first switchback, she looked down to see the sea, a brilliant blue beneath the sun. Tuliax was spread out before her in all its maze of streets and avenues, the Doge’s great palace on a manmade hillock near the docks. Savannah had never particularly liked the city-state, but she had to admit that, from a distance, it was lovely.

They reached the top of the ridge line by mid-afternoon and came to a crossroads. The better-maintained gravel turned south, while shepherds’ tracks went north and west up into the hills. Savannah dismounted and had a look at the ground, though she was no tracker. There was an off chance the apprentice had left a trace she could discern.

What she found was a set of deep tracks, too big for a horse and unshod, leading west.

Curious.

“Have a sniff there, Boy,” she said, and the demon hopped down from her shoulder. The particulars of their bargain—a bargain which neither of them had sought and which both rankled under—were such that the swikehead could never be more than a couple of yards from Savannah. He leaned over and stuck his notable proboscis into the nearest track.

“Ox,” he said. “Ridden by a human man who has the stink of magic about him.”

“Are you sure?” Savannah asked.

“Bah!” Boy said, and spat. “When have you ever known me to be wrong?”

Savannah leveled a look at the little demon. “Do you want the whole list, or just a few exemplary instances?”

“You will be the first to be sacrificed to the Dukes of Perfidy, when—”

“—when you inevitably crush all the kingdoms of humankind beneath your mighty, cloven feet, yes, you’ve made that clear.”

Boy spat again and fluttered up to her shoulder, his batwings beating maniacally.

Savannah remounted and took the western path.

• • • •

The dead boy they found wasn’t the boy they were looking for. Savannah had a sketch of the apprentice rolled up and tucked away in one of her saddlebags and she had memorized the rather bland features. Bland except for a badly crooked nose, which this corpse lacked.

“Rather straight nose, in fact,” she said to herself. Though of course, Savannah could never say anything just to herself, and cursed that she had again overlooked that fact.

“Let me down and I will render it far from straight.”

“No abusing cadavers,” Savannah reminded him. That was one of the terms of the contract.

“I will dance with his entrails wrapped ‘bout my waist! I will drink his blood, no matter how rancid!” shouted Boy.

“Now, see,” said Savannah, “that would clearly constitute cadaver abuse.” She studied the surroundings. Whoever the boy was, he didn’t appear to have put up much of a fight against whatever foe had killed him. “Presumably the magically inclined ox rider,” she said aloud.

“He smells like sheep,” said Boy.

“The magically inclined ox rider?” asked Savannah.

“The corpse which must remain inviolate.” Boy’s tone told what he thought of that.

She dismounted. Seldom sounded a happy rumble. They had been on the trail for hours, now, and even the mule’s strength was being tested by all the climbing.

Savannah went to her saddlebags and pulled out the shovel she used to dig waste pits when she was travelling.

“You are not planning to bury that thing,” said Boy, incredulous.

“That is exactly what I’m planning on doing,” said Savannah. “He looks to have been murdered by either our quarry or by whoever else is tracking our quarry. Doesn’t deserve to rot under the sky.” She paused and looked at the corpse. “Likely doesn’t.”

Before she began the heavy work of digging in forested ground, she unsaddled Seldom, who expressed her thanks by nuzzling her soft nose in Savannah’s palm. She wanted feeding.

“Just a little while, friend,” said Savannah.

When she turned around, the corpse was lurching to its feet. Green fire played around its eyes and the claws it extended had never been on the hands of any shepherd boy.

“‘Ware the dead!” screamed Boy, and shifted his position so that he was on her back, clinging to her black braid.

Savannah cursed and took the shovel in both hands. She would rather have drawn her falchion, but she had set it aside in preparation for the digging.

The thing lurched forward, a foul smell emitting from its open mouth. Two or three rows of sharp black teeth showed there, and a coiling purple tongue extended out at least a foot. It growled and stumbled toward her.

Straight into a swing of the shovel. The metal scoop took it full in the face, the vibration of the blow making a ringing sound and briefly numbing Savannah’s fingers. The sound was accompanied by Seldom braying in alarm and Boy screeching in fear.

The undead shepherd’s head lolled back, its face smashed beyond recognition, its neck clearly broken. When she saw it reaching up to wrench its head back into place, Savannah dropped the shovel and dove to her left, where her sword belt was lying on the ground next to Seldom’s saddle.

It crossed the distance between them more quickly than she imagined it would have been able to, but she had time to draw her falchion.

“A little help,” Savannah said, gasping as she narrowly avoided a sweeping blow from the thing’s claws.

She thrust her sword back over her shoulder and she felt Boy change position. She heard the loathsome sound that always came when he spat on her sword.

Then she swung and swung hard. The expected red flame and sulfurous smoke burst out of the falchion’s blade, and she struck the creature’s head clear from its shoulders. It fell to the ground, motionless.

“What are the rules on abusing the corpses of undead?” asked Boy.

• • • •

Savannah had coaxed Seldom another mile up the trail before setting up camp for the night. She wanted to put a goodly distance between her and the corpse she had doused with oil and set ablaze. Boy had complained mightily when she had refused to let him be the one to put tinder to the body.

Now the sun was peeking above the treetops to the east and she busied herself, first feeding Seldom, then coaxing the campfire back to life to boil water for porridge. Boy, as usual in the mornings, remained fastened to her shoulder, snoring loudly. Savannah had learned to ignore this, and to take pleasure in these brief times when she could read. This morning, she brought out a history, almost certainly fanciful, of a journey by sea beyond the narrow passage and down around the Horn.

Boy was still snoring when Seldom let forth a low, warning neigh. She hardly need have bothered. Whatever was coming down the hill from the west was making no effort to conceal its loud footfalls.

Savannah stored the book in her saddlebags and moved the iron pot off the fire grate. She stood, loosened her falchion with one hand, and reached up and gave Boy’s tail a hard tug with the other.

Boy cursed and dug his claws into her scalp. Savannah was used to this indignity and didn’t say anything. It was generally a bad idea to converse with the demon when anyone else was around anyway.

A great shape hove into view. It was an enormous ox bearing an enormous man. Blonde-haired, bronze-skinned, impressively fat beneath his chain shirt, the man wore a turban like those of traders Savannah had seen along the southerly branches of the Great Spice Road. He was no merchant from the east, though. If anything, he had the look of the cold lands to him.

He spread both hands and smiled. Savannah noticed that he held no reigns, and in fact, the blue-black ox sported neither bridle nor collar. He appeared to be guiding it with the strength of his legs alone, so it must have been even better trained than Seldom.

“A traveler on the heights!” he said, his voice booming. “What an unexpected delight!”

Savannah did not respond, but she did take her hand from her sword’s hilt. She nodded.

“Ah, a cautious traveler on the heights,” said the man. “Wise, wise.” The ox came to a halt at the edge of the clearing where Savannah had made camp. The man slid gracefully off the giant beast’s back and stayed a respectful distance away. “I see I have interrupted your morning repast. May I say that it appears to be a humble one? May I offer you some of the delicacies I have tucked away?” He patted his great belly. “I never travel without delicacies!” he near-shouted, then guffawed.

Savannah said, “Don’t trouble yourself, stranger. I have a delicate stomach.”

Boy and Seldom both snorted.

The man’s blue eyes darted from the mule to Savannah. He lowered his eyebrows and his smile briefly broke. But then it was there again, and he said, “Introductions are in order! I am Dyronus of Clacia, and I am a seeker of knowledge! And of wayward apprentices, which I imagine you know something about, eh?” He gave her a sly wink.

Clacia was a city-state, rival to Tuliax-by-the-Sea, controlling an archipelago to the south of the peninsula. The people there were not blonde and the whole island chain had been wracked by famine for the last year. Clearly, this man had suffered no famine.

“I have been to Clacia, Master Dyronus.” At least the name was Clacian. “You seem so formidable, it’s surprising that I did not hear your name there. Surprising, too, that you beat me up here.” Savannah didn’t intend to spar at words with the man. “The warrant was only issued yesterday morning. And you were ahead of me on the trail.”

“Would you believe me if I said I have friends among the Doge’s court who gave me advanced notice?” he asked, and grinned broadly.

The Doge’s bureaucrats were infamous for taking bribes. Yes, she could believe that.

“Don’t believe him!” Boy said, curiously leaning into her ear to whisper. “He stinks of magic! Stinks!”

“I suppose we are rivals, then,” said Savannah, with some care. She was suspicious of the man, as she would be suspicious of anyone who was clearly lying about his origins and who Boy feared as a sorcerer. “You shouldn’t have turned back to find me. Seldom there will soon leave your unusual mount behind.”

“Oh,” said Dyronus, if Dyronus was his name, “I’m not overly worried about that. My beast is prodigiously strong, if not keen of mind, and is willing to cut cross country. And besides, I have an advantage! I know the very lodge where the murderous scum has taken refuge, at the head of the valley carved by the second stream crossed heading upland.”

Savannah smirked. “And you tell me this, obviously, to lead me astray. I wonder if there even is such a lodge, in such a place.”

The man smiled back. “I assure you there is. And I assure you that the wretch is laying there even now, gasping in fear, half-starved and thirsty, eyes rolling and knees quaking.”

“You paint a vivid picture,” said Savannah. “I could almost imagine you’re somehow seeing him from all this way away.”

“Not so far as that,” said the man, just as Boy was saying, “Slay him!”

Dyronus spoke on. “I propose, learned lady, that we join together and beard the ne’er-do-well in his lair. The reward is considerable, and even half of it would make a heavy purse.”

Savannah blinked. “What do you mean by calling me learned?” she asked.

Boy whined and put his hands over his eyes, coiling his tail around himself for good measure.

“You may not have heard of me, which is not surprising, for I have no reputation to speak of. But Savannah the Librarian! The book-collecting bounty hunter who rides a white mule! I knew I was entering into the presence of greatness as soon as I laid eyes on you!”

“Look at his turban,” whispered Boy.

Savannah shook her head in irritation. She did not like being recognized by the man and she did not like being distracted by the demon. But she looked and saw nothing. “I never like it when my reputation precedes me,” she said.

Then she saw what Boy must have intended her to see. The red and green silk wrappings that made up the turban were moving.

“Ah. Ah ah ah, you see it. But you would not have, would you?” asked Dyronus, and for the first time there was no humor in his voice. “Would not have if you had not had it pointed out to you. What do you have there? Is that a swikehead? Stupid little things, but not without a certain amount of low cunning when their lives are on the line.”

Boy hissed and stood on Savannah’s shoulder, using his wings to balance himself. “He sees!” he cried. “He sees! Filthy human wizardry!”

Dyronus laughed and Savannah took a step back. Without ceremony, she drew her falchion. She said nothing, conserving breath and energy in case things went even more poorly than they were already.

“Wizardry is rather a broad word, little imp,” said Dyronus. “I am diabolist. And this Coil, though it cannot speak, is your kin. And your superior in art and venom, if not ambition.” He looked at Savannah and rolled his eyes. “They’re always pathetically ambitious, swikeheads.”

“We seem to know things about one another that would see either of us hanged, Dyronus of Clacia,” said Savannah.

“Burned, Savannah, burned. Our sins far exceed any that are only worth a length of rope.”

The turban—the Coil the diabolist had called it—was slowly unfurling itself. The red and green did not resolve into distinct woven bands, but instead twisted over and under each other in a constant, roiling flux. Soon, it hung high above Dyronus’ head, parallel to the ground, its full length revealed as greater than five yards. At either end, where Savannah would have expected a fringe if this was anything so sane and mortal as a scarf, what looked like human fingers wriggled.

“Flee!” shouted Boy, pulling on her braid and flapping his wings, as if he were attempting to draw her up into the air after him, though of course he lacked anything like the strength to do such a thing.

When the Coil struck, it struck so fast that Savannah saw nothing more than a scarlet, verdant blur. It left an echo in her vision as if she had just witnessed a lightning strike. She felt an impact on her right forearm, so hard that the whole limb went instantly numb. She heard a high scream.

When she managed to blink her sight clear, she looked up to see the Coil holding her falchion at one end, and, by his tail, a quiescent Boy at the other.

• • • •

“I offered you a chance,” said the southerner, or the northerner, or whatever he was. His expression was amused, his tone jovial.

Savannah waved her arm around, wrist cracking, in an attempt to return feeling to it. “Does that mean the offer is rescinded?” she asked. “I don’t recall having turned you down.”

He smirked. “No, but your partner there made his feelings clear. I see by the nature of the chains binding you to him that he would have made trouble if you’d come along. And, of course, the Coil would have grown restless. Ancient rivals of the swikeheads, aren’t they?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Savannah. She had circled, putting the campfire between her and the diabolist. She looked around for anything that might be of use. The shovel had certainly proven handy the night before.

Boy let out a mewl. His wings beat slightly. He did not open his shining insect eyes.

“That’s him dying,” said Dyronus. “The chains are pulled too taut. You’ll start feeling it too, soon enough. “

In fact, Savannah was feeling oddly feverish. And the feeling had not returned to her arm. “I see no reason for enmity between us, sir,” she said. “You can obviously count on me to keep your secret, being privy to mine as you are.”

“Ah,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her, but up at the Coil, which was turning a lazy circle. When Boy was at the far point of the circumference, Savannah wretched. Boy’s wings stopped moving. “Secrets, well. Here’s another of mine. I can sense the true essence of a person. You, for example, are a killer. But you are not a murderer. And once you determined, as you no doubt would have, that the boy did not kill his master, you would have spared him.”

“You’re . . .” she paused and took a deep breath, “you’re in such dire straits that you’ll kill an innocent apprentice for a half-hundred guilders of the Doge’s blood money?”

“Of course not,” said Dyronus. “I want a great deal more than that from the Doge and he’ll not give it up if he learns I sacrificed a master dyer to the Queens of Night.”

Boy rotated back, closer now than he had been when he just hung there. Savannah felt a little better, but she still found herself leaning over, breathing hard, hands on her knees. “He saw you. He’s a witness.”

“To things no mere mortal should ever see, yes. I’m afraid I was careless. I didn’t even know he’d escaped until the Doge’s men told me after I crossed their palms with the usual morning silver.”

“You still beat me here. You still could have killed the boy and let me be.”

“I’m afraid that was never going to be an option, dear Savannah. Your swikehead would have sensed the Coil and my mount soon enough, and then there would have been a tiresome pursuit and a pointless battle.”

Boy had, in fact, sensed the mount, and its rider as well. But she’d never known him to sniff out another demon. Not that he’d told her about, at least.

“What now?” she asked, wearily.

The diabolist made a gesture and the hell cloth descended and closed on her. “Now, the Coil will cocoon you and your familiar into a daze, from which I will rouse you tonight after Vindictus has borne you to our camp.” He smiled and indicated the ox. When Savannah looked at it, she saw that its eyes were glowing red. The steam blowing from its nostrils was not from any cold weather.

The Coil dropped Savannah’s falchion point down in the fire pit. It formed a circle, now grasping Boy with both sets of fingers. Then it was directly above her, descending slowly. There was a strange moaning sound in the air, and Savannah found that she could not move.

Whatever magical paralysis had afflicted her, it seemed to have stilled Boy as well, unless he was already dead.

It did not seem to have afflicted Seldom.

The ropes Savannah used to hobble the mule were not particularly heavy, but neither were they particularly light. So it was something of a surprise when Seldom kicked free of them with apparent ease. She brayed, wheeled, and raised her hind legs. She kicked Dyronus square in his belly, and chain shirts were designed to foil piercing swords and spears, not bashing mules’ hooves.

The man let out a sound that indicated all the air had been expelled from his lungs and flew backward into a tree trunk, hard. As he slid to the ground, the Coil dropped Boy at Savannah’s feet and flew to its master, who was apparently unconscious. Savannah doubted she was so lucky that Seldom’s surprise attack had killed the man.

Apparently revived, apparently invigorated, Boy fluttered up to her shoulder and shouted, “Your sword! While he’s still down!”

Savannah was already running toward Dyronus, not even pausing to reach out with her recovered hand to pull her falchion free of the coals. Boy spat on its blade as she ran. Then he spat on it again.

“The Coil first!” he screamed.

But the Coil had seen them, or heard them, or smelled them, or had sensed them in whatever fashion it sensed things. It had been winding itself about Dyronus’ head again, but now it flew up into the branches of the tree. Its master was moaning and trembling, coming to.

He wheezed. “Broke . . . ribs,” he barely got out.

Savannah was no murderer, but she was a killer as the man had said. And she had no compunction swinging her falchion at his neck.

But Vindictus intervened, and for all that her sword scored a vicious, smoking wound along its flank, it did not slow when it swung its head to the side and impaled Savannah on one of its razor-sharp horns.

• • • •

The campfire crackling before Savannah’s eyes when she woke up was not the campfire she had built that night. Assuming she had not lost an entire day.

She tried to sit up but found that she was so tightly bound that she could not move. Hearing a disgusted snort, she looked down to see that Boy was bound as well, but in strands of iron instead of hemp. A soft snort sounded, and she saw that Seldom was there, too, hobbled much more effectively than Savannah had ever bothered with.

There was no sign of the Coil, the demon ox, or their diabolist master.

“They went after the apprentice,” said Boy. “He’s planning on sacrificing us all three to the Queens of Night in a ceremony that will last until dawn.”

Savannah was surprised by her first reaction. “What about Seldom?”

Boy rolled his eyes, which still disconcerted Savannah even after all these years, the compound surfaces rippling this way and that. “Says he’s going to keep her. Says he likes her spunk.”

Seldom blew out her lips, and Savannah realized that demon and mule had just acknowledged one another’s existence.

Things were, indeed, looking dire.

“Why am I not dead?” she asked. “Did the ox’s horn slide off my hauberk?”

“Pierced you through clean,” said Boy. “But I was there, and there’s that annoying clause about doing anything within my considerable powers to ensure your health and well-being.”

“That’s actually one of my favorites,” said Savannah.

Boy snarled. “You’ll come to regret it. Now you have a dram of my infernal blood flowing through your veins.”

Savannah thought about that, then beetled her eyebrows. “Didn’t I already?”

Boy didn’t immediately reply, but eventually said, “Well. Yes.”

“Which reveals your status as an amateur diabolist at best.” Dyronus, the Coil wrapped around his head once more, strode into the firelight ahead of the ox. There was a body slung across the thing’s broad back.

“I never claimed to be any kind of diabolist at all,” said Savannah.

But Dyronus was distracted and did not reply. The time for banter was past, apparently.

He busied himself with pouring silvery powder in a triangular shape around the fire, the flames burning at its apex. Then he walked over, heaved who could only be the apprentice over his shoulder and dumped the boy at another corner. There was a groan, and Dyronus gave the boy a kick. “Quiet,” he said.

The diabolist then came for Savannah, grabbing her by her braid, and dragging her to the third corner.

“Me and the boy and the fire,” said Savannah. “Your figure is full, you bastard. So much for a diabolist sacrificing a demon.”

“The swikehead goes in the fire,” said Dyronus absently.

“Hah!” screeched Boy. “You think fire will even discomfit me! Do your worst, human!”

Dyronus nodded and pulled a glowing blue razor from someplace. Boy barked with fear.

“Oh, you little fool,” said the diabolist. “My worst is exactly what I plan to do.”

• • • •

Of the three of them—Savannah, Boy, and the apprentice—only the Librarian wasn’t sobbing. To his credit, Boy was sobbing in pain. The apprentice was sobbing in fear.

The diabolist and his Coil were dancing, each in their own way. The flames were getting higher, and with each pinch of dust that the man tossed into the fire, they changed in color and heightened in heat. Boy’s sizzling flesh did not smell like anything Savannah had ever experienced.

Another person might have been helpless. But Savannah was not helpless because she was not hopeless. She had never been hopeless, even when her only chance to live had been to leash herself to a swikehead demon of dubious abilities and cancerous wit.

“Lad,” she said. “You’re not burning, and you’re not being cut. Why are you crying?”

She had called him lad instead of boy because Boy was being burned and being cut. Each time Dyronus spun by in his rhythmless dance he darted in and dragged the glowing blue razor down the demon’s narrow chest or clear through his now-shredded wings.

“I’m going to die!” the boy cried. “He gutted Master Eiron and now he’s going to gut me!”

Savannah thought that likely true, but also thought it wouldn’t be helpful to voice the thought aloud. Instead, she said, “Tell me what he did to your master. Tell me exactly.”

The hell ox was lowing in a twisty, dissonant pattern. Savannah could not see Seldom from where she lay but hoped the mule had somehow closed her ears to the diabolical song. The sounds hurt.

The sobs hurt, too. Boy’s and the apprentice’s both. Just not in the same vicious, visceral way. Yet somehow, the sobs were worse.

She tried again. “What is your name?”

“What? Why?”

“Tell me your name.”

“Jaxon. My name is Jaxon. The Jaxon from the Old Pier.”

The Old Pier was a neighborhood in Tuliax-by-the-Sea which bore a name of mysterious provenance, because it was hard by the inner walls, as far from the harbor as any part of the city. If this was Jaxon from the Old Pier, it followed that there were other Jaxons.

“What makes you special, Jaxon? What sets you apart from other boys?” Savannah was thinking fast.

“What? He’s going to kill us! What are you talking about?”

“What are you talking about?” Boy screamed. That sound of his voice was vicious and visceral, too.

“How did you survive, I mean?” Savannah had to shout, because Dyronus had begun to chant, the beat of it a crazed fight against the lowing of the ox and the nightmare riffling echoes sounding off the Coil. “Why didn’t he kill you when he killed your master?”

The apprentice took a long, ragged breath in. “He didn’t see me. I was hiding. I’m good at that. Was, anyway.”

“You were hiding from that devil man, there?”

“I was hiding from Master Eiron.”

“You’d done something to warrant punishment?”

“No! He meant to . . .” Jaxson broke off in a sob.

“He meant to what?” Savannah tried to make her voice gentle, but it was impossible over the hellish din all around them.

“To do to me what he always did.”

“End this!” Boy screeched. “End my agony, Savannah the Librarian!”

In nine years, Boy had never used her name.

But she had to ignore that fact now, as understanding blossomed in her. “Wait,” she said. “Was Master Eiron a wicked man?”

The dissonant music suddenly stopped. Even the pops and crackles from the fire fell away. Even the sizzling sounds that had been rising from Boy’s torn flesh.

“Oh my, yes,” said Dyronus of Clacius. “Wicked men are the tastiest to the Queens of Night.”

Savannah struggled to turn and look at the diabolist in the eye. “Then why are you doing this to us?”

Dyronus’ visage had been a torturer’s mask for the last half hour, but now he let that smile—that terrible smile—return. “Well, dear Savannah, as has been established, you are a killer. Of sorts. That over there, of course, is a swikehead. A demon of limited powers and small imagination, yes, but a demon nonetheless.”

“What about this lad, though? He’s done nothing. What use could he be to the Queens of Night?” Savannah was surprised to hear how loud her voice sounded in the clearing.

“Oh, little,” said Dyronus. “I suppose you might call him an appetizer.”

“One day someone will end you, Dyronus,” Savannah said.

“Of a certainty,” he replied, smiling. “But not any day soon. And only after I have satisfied vast appetites. Appetites for things you cannot imagine.”

But Savannah the Librarian, killer, yes, but scholar, too, was possessed of a very robust imagination. And she was possessed of remarkable insight. She sensed the edges of it. She concentrated. She caught it. She said it.

“Who made you into this?” she asked Dyronus.

• • • •

He did not cut her with his ensorcelled razor. He did not call down the demonic Coil or direct the hell ox to trample her. He beat her with his fists. He kicked her with his feet.

“Bitch!” he huffed, and Savannah remembered that Dyronus had broken ribs even as she squirmed to avoid the same fate. “Bitch!”

She looked over at Jaxon, and saw him curled tight, his back to the center of the triangle, where Dyronus raged. In the fire, she saw Boy, exhausted, lurched to one side.

Saw him moving his wings back and forth.

Saw the flesh of his wings weaving back together, flame colored.

Then another kick, this time to the back of her head. She saw it coming and whipped her head forward, trying to deflect some of the force of the blow. Between that and the thickness of her braid, she had only stars in her eyes to contend with instead of unconsciousness.

The diabolical music had stopped. The Coil floated overhead, its fingers worrying one another as if it were confused or anxious. From where she lay, Savannah could see nothing of Vindictus, but neither could she hear him bellowing.

Dyronus dropped to his knees and brought his fists down on her back. “Kill you,” he said, weeping.

Then Boy strode out of the fire, his bonds melted away. Dyronus paid him no mind. He didn’t even seem to notice when the little demon plucked the glowing razor from its place in the diabolist’s sash and used it to make one long, careless slice down Savannah’s side, loosing all her bonds at once and leaving her with a shallow, profusely bleeding cut along her leg.

Dyronus raised his hands again, and Savannah rolled to the side. Boy spat on the razor and said, “Not for me to finish.” Then he looked up at the Coil and his gleaming white teeth flashed in the firelight. “That’s for me to finish.” And he flew.

Savannah spun onto her feet and kicked out, catching Dyronus in his side. She hoped it was the side with the broken ribs.

It must have been because he collapsed to the ground, hugging himself, and making a great effort to breathe. He looked up at her, the whites of his eyes visible all around his blue irises. He tried to say something.

How Jaxon struggled to his feet, Savannah did not know. But she saw the apprentice’s boot crush the diabolist’s face before he fell to the ground again, still sobbing. When she looked back at Dyronus, she saw blood gushing from his nose, flowing into his furiously blinking eyes. He was spitting broken teeth and still trying to say something.

Shreds of red and green cloth fell into the fire.

Savannah stood. She spared a glance for Jaxon, sprawled on his stomach, and said, “Get away.”

She ripped a bit of cloth free from her tunic and leaned over, trying to staunch the flow of blood from Dyronus’ nose. He spat at her.

She asked, “Who made you into this?”

He tried to roll up, wheezed, and lay back down.

She asked, “Who made you into this?”

The sound of heavy footfalls came from behind her, and she turned to see Vindictus. She started to rise to somehow defend herself, but then saw that the ox was . . . faltering. The beast seemed to fold, to collapse in on itself, until, she saw, there was no ox before her at all but a shamble of an old man. There were wisps of blonde hair about his scalp. His eyes were blue, but it was clear that his stare was blind. His toothless mouth gaped open. His arms ended in stumps instead of hands.

He raised those arms, but then collapsed in a smoldering, necromantic heap.

Savannah turned and looked at Dyronus. He was staring at the mound of smoking dirt, which lay near his feet. He was still fighting for breath.

“Him?” Savannah asked. “And you turned him into a beast?”

Dyronus spat out another tooth. “The Queens of Night . . .” he began, but he did not finish.

“Forget the Queens of Night!” shouted Savannah. “Why are you going to kill the boy when you know what happened to him? When the same thing happened to you?”

Dyronus said, “Because he’s spoilt, now. Because he’s filthy.”

It was too late for the diabolist.

As Boy finished things above, she finished things below.

• • • •

The magistrates eventually accepted that Jaxon had not murdered the master dyer, and the dyer’s widow released him and all the other apprentices from their bonds. Some took service with other members of that guild. Jaxon returned to his parents, who wore troubled expressions the day Savannah stopped by their tenement on her way out of Tuliax-by-the Sea.

Jaxon appeared in the doorway. He sat on the stoop and did not speak. He still had a haunted look on his face. Savannah stood in the muddy street, Seldom quietly standing behind her.

“I’m leaving,” she told him.

He nodded, not meeting her eye.

“I brought you this,” she said. She held out a package wrapped in paper and tied with twine.

Jaxon looked at it for a moment, not meeting her eyes, then took it. His fingers fumbled with the knot, then he carefully folded the paper and set it to one side. He coiled the string around two of the fingers on his left hand.

Then he did look up at her, looking less haunted, looking somewhat confused.

“A book?” he asked.

“I was told you can read,” said Savannah.

Jaxon nodded and opened the wooden cover. His eyes moved back and forth over the first page. “Means of Mending Broken Vessels,” he said. He looked up at Savannah. “You think . . . you think I should become a potter?”

Savannah’s smile was sad, but encouraging. “They’re poems, Jaxon.”

He nodded. “Thank you. I haven’t read many poems.”

Savannah clicked her tongue and Seldom sidled close enough to mount.

“I hadn’t read many when that book was given to me, either,” she said.

• • • •

Leaving the city behind her, Savannah kept to the coast road. She had heard that a coalition of merchants was organizing an expedition northwest, to take spices and silks to the little kingdoms in Alba. If they were going to Alba, they would need guards, and Savannah was tired of bounty hunting and mercenary work.

“Mount,” said Boy, and squawked when Savannah reached up and pulled his nose. “Why did you do that?”

“Seldom is my mount. I am not yours.”

“Bah! What would you have me call you then?”

“How about Mistress?”

“You will burn!”

“My lady?”

“Tortured ’til the end of time!”

And they went on like that, as they rode away from Tuliax-by-the-Sea, to wherever came next.