Just a bit more reach.
I was nearly blind, staring down at the ground, panting for air with lungs that had a hundred holes in them. Staring down at the circle of blood and black feathers.
“Evan,” I said.
“Wicked old bitch! Alexis was cool!”
“Evan!” I said.
“What!?”
“The corpse of the crow,” I said. “Bring it here.”
“The corpse-”
Mara moved.
I’d guessed right. The dead crow was critical. Somehow.
Mara moved, and kicked the wing I’d torn free of my back. I raised it, and she tripped on it. Staggered just a bit.
I moved around. Two long strides. Evan was still on my shoulder.
I caught hold of Mara’s hair. The Hyena touched her throat.
I’d won. I didn’t feel like I’d won, but I’d won.
It was over.
Hollow victory.
“Do you still want me to get the dead crow?” Evan asked.
The dead crow.
Part of the reason it felt so hollow. There were things I didn’t get. Why had she killed the bird? Corvidae?
“I can, if you want,” Evan said.
That little body, so far from this one.
To deny us the chance to ask him?
Why, if she’d expected to win?
A decoy?
Corvidae couldn’t move. Not until he was freed.
Or no longer bound.
“I-” Evan started, speaking to the silence for a third time.
I moved.
Stabbing.
Striking at open air.
I found flesh.
“Kàgàgi,” Mara said.
Above us, the birds started to clear.
Light filled the area. More than a sliver of dawn this time.
Corvidae stood before me. Hand extended, an inch or two from Evan. His arm went limp, and he dropped to his knees. He broke up into feathers. I saw only a glimpse of a lock of hair in one hand before the hand disappeared. Letita’s hair. Glamour.
I checked. Alexis was no longer in the circle.
The second time I’d nearly been fooled, tonight.
A second breach of trust.
To make use of him like that, she’d killed him. That much was true.
But she was a practitioner.
She’d called him right back.
Disguised him.
“You’ve won,” she told me. “You killed him. You’ve caught me.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Kill me, then,” she said.
I could see the others gathering. Some were turning their heads, shielding eyes as they looked skyward.
One was pointing.
I looked.
Off to the west. Smoke.
And where there was smoke, there was fire.
Peter and his cousin.
When she realized…
“No,” I said. “I’m not that kind. Now come on. You have some questions to answer.”
My eyes were on Rose, as she hurried over, her priority finding the mirror, not Mara.
Twice tonight, an ally in the guise of a friend had turned on me.
Would it happen a third time? An important time?
14.08
I managed to keep Crone Mara from seeing the smoke while we worked on binding her hands behind her back. The wire was a little more brutal than I might have liked, but it was what the Knights had on hand.
When that was done, I stepped away.
I’d spent so very long in darkness. Ever since the fight with Ur, really. The Drains, the mirror world, where small patches of light were surrounded by vast tracts of shadow.
While I’d watched ‘Alexis’ die, I’d become aware of how very cold I was. Not necessarily emotionally cold, but in terms of my humanity. There was a lot to be said for having that warmth emanating from within one’s own body. It meant that no matter what happened, no matter what emotions or events we experienced, we at least had that simple aspect of humanity.
I couldn’t quite phrase it right, put words to the idea.
But something swelled deep within me, as the sunlight touched my body, reached past gaps to touch things within, and touched the exterior, that little sliver of flesh I still retained, down the center of my face. The light was warm, and it approximated the sort of warmth I’d been missing, existing in such cold, dark places.
A quiet, simple sort of joy. The same kind that came with a hot meal, or sitting by a fire.
Holy hell, had it ever been a long night.
I turned my head, looking past the trees. I could see the town, and I could see the darkness that still lingered within. The sun was rising over it, but the light didn’t touch the town.
We had to go back. Plunge past the surface and into the darkness.
I wasn’t in a rush. I stood there, the sun shining on my face, letting the others deal with Mara, looking after the injured and the dead. Teddy.
I felt the lightest of weights settle on one shoulder, tiny feet shuffling on one thicker branch that extended from what would have been my collarbone to my shoulder. Opening one eye, peeking, I could see Evan there, wings slightly spread, face turned to the sun, same as mine was, both his inner and outer eyelids closed.
“It’s nice,” I said. “Sunlight.”