The Bone Palace - Amanda Downum [44]
“Do you have a coin we can flip?” she yelled to Khelséa. Echoes bounced off slime-slick stones.
“I thought,” a familiar voice said from the darkness, soft but carrying, “that you were going to wait for me.”
Khelséa spun, pistol shining in her hand, and Isyllt flung out a hand before she could pull the trigger. Her heart spiked sharp in her chest. “Don’t! He’s—” Safe was definitely not the word. “Not a threat,” she finished half-heartedly. “Are you, Spider?”
“Not to you or yours, necromancer.” He stepped into the light and Khelséa’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. In the darkness and witchfire it was hard to believe he could ever walk the streets unnoticed, glamourie or no. Gaunt and grotesque, inhuman. Demonic.
Isyllt realized that she’d never talked to Khelséa about consorting with demons, and if the inspector might ever condone it. Maybe that was a conversation to have with plenty of wine, too.
“It seemed a pity to waste the daylight,” Isyllt said, stepping neatly between Khelséa and Spider. From the corner of her eye she saw the inspector lower her pistol, but not holster it. “I thought you’d be sleeping.” She blushed, and gave thanks for the darkness.
He chuckled. “You’ve been reading the wrong sort of stories. Oh, yes,” he said when she raised an eyebrow. “I follow the penny dreadfuls.”
“You should write some of your own, if the others are so inaccurate.”
His grin bared his fangs, and the gaps around them that let him close his jaw. Like an animal’s. “I don’t think your citizens would like to read the truth of us.”
Isyllt snorted. “We can discuss literature later. If you want to help us, then by all means lead on.”
“So impatient,” Spider said. “You haven’t introduced me to your companion.”
Khelséa stepped forward, holstering her pistol and extending her gloved hand in one smooth motion. “Khelséa Shar.” No rank or title, and Isyllt silently blessed her discretion. And from her willingness to share her name with a demon, guessed that it wasn’t her birth name.
“Spider.” He bowed over her hand with an exaggerated marionette grace. “Delighted to meet you.”
He hadn’t been so delighted to meet Ciaran. Maybe Khelséa was more to his taste. Isyllt thanked the saints that he wasn’t to hers.
“Do you know which way they went?”
He studied the branching tunnel, nostrils flaring. Finally he cocked his head toward the far one. “That way, I think.”
Of course it would be the side that made them cross the canal. She glared at the churning black water. Spider caught her expression and laughed. He moved faster than she could follow, a pale blur and a ghostly afterimage behind her eyelids. When she blinked again he stood on the far bank, sweeping out a mocking hand to invite them across.
“Show-off,” Isyllt muttered as she backtracked to the last narrow bridge.
“You do have the most interesting friends,” said Khelséa.
Another winding, branching walk followed. Isyllt had long since lost track of time, but getting out of the sewers before early autumn darkness fell seemed unlikely. Not that it mattered, if the vrykoloi truly didn’t sleep. Although he’d earlier said they did.
She wondered if Spider could read her thoughts, or only knew the curious minds of mages. After a while he slowed till she walked at his shoulder; Khelséa kept watch at the rear.
“The older we grow, the more we sleep,” he said softly. She shouldn’t have been able to hear him over the din, but she could. “The elders nap for months at a time, or longer. But only injury drives the young ones to rest, while they’re safe from the sun. Daylight is… tiring. Painful. Like the worst of summer and winter is to the living.”
He was only trying to bribe her with information, but her curiosity was piqued all the same. “And how old are you?”
His eyes glittered with a sideways glance.