He pushed it open and rushed out into the light. He was relieved to see she was waiting for him on the street. Demascus cleared his throat. “This has all the hallmarks of a trap.”
She shrugged. “You’ll never know unless you come see. Besides, give me some credit. I think I could whip up something a little less obvious, don’t you?”
“I suppose,” he allowed. Except that if she was planning on leading him to his demise, subtlety clearly wasn’t necessary.
They walked side by side through the city. Madri seemed utterly real, as solid as the cobbles below and the towers on either side. But people failed to see her, or if they did notice, their gazes slid from her like water off a greased skillet. Demascus thought about taking her hand, just to see if she was as solid to the touch as she looked. But her rigid posture and frowning demeanor made him think better of it. Either his hand would sink through her because she was a ghost or she would slap him. So he settled on worrying about what she had planned for him.
They didn’t make good time. Madri hesitated at street corners, and looked around a lot as if she was constantly losing her bearings.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“Normally I just appear where I want to go. I was terrified when it first happened. But it’s turned out to be pretty handy.”
“I bet.”
“So this is the first time I’ve had to walk anywhere in this crazy place. What brought you to Airspur anyway, Demascus?”
“The choice wasn’t entirely in my hands.”
He related how he’d found himself in the country of Akanul, sans any real memory of his past, as they wound their way through the cliff-face metropolis. He explained how his enemies had been very much aware of him, and how close he’d come to becoming just one more incarnation in a long line that’d been killed by someone called Kalkan Swordbreaker.
“Kalkan,” said Madri, nodding. She stopped at the front gate of a manor house walled in white stone. The mansion was ostentatious enough to be a noble’s residence. Indeed, it looked exactly like …
“This is a trap!” he yelled, jumping away from the wall. The manor house was where they’d run Kalkan to ground last time. He drew Exorcessum in its lone-blade configuration and put some distance between himself and Madri. A carriage driver who’d been making his way down the street at a leisurely pace saw the deva with the naked glowing rune blade. The driver pulled sharply on the reins and turned his conveyance around.
Demascus shifted his gaze from the wall-top to the retreating carriage, and then to the opposite side of the street. If Kalkan was waiting in hiding, the ambush was blown. He was ready.
“No, Demascus, I told you. It’s not a trap.”
“You’re in league with Kalkan,” he accused. “This used to be his home. He hunted Airspur citizens for food from here. And hunted incarnations of me from here, too.”
“Well, all right. Yes, I began as an unwitting ally of Kalkan. True. But I didn’t think I had a choice. When I realized differently, I quit. I saved you, didn’t I? And I’m done following Kalkan’s script. From here on out, I make up my own future.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her voice had started low; now she was nearly screaming. “It means that I don’t like being manipulated. I did something about the one who tried to chain me with lies. But you, you’re such a trusting fool, you’ll accept whatever a random divine avatar tells you, without wondering whether you’re doing good or ill. No, the Sword of the Gods operates above such ordinary constraints, right? It’s what you must tell yourself so you can sleep at night!”
Demascus frowned. Madri was right. That was exactly how the Sword operated. His fragmented memories told a tale of privilege and power, one that didn’t involve too much reflection. As if his station automatically lent his decisions legitimacy. He’d been caught up in his glory, his own importance. Lying to someone like that would probably be easy …
Madri might be telling the truth. “All right, let’s not get distracted by my shortcomings. Believe me, I’m well acquainted with them. Tell me more about why you were working with Kalkan. You’re claiming you were, what, brought back into the world by the rakshasa? Kalkan called forth your spirit to do his bidding?”
She shrugged. The tension went out of her shoulders and face. “Something like that. Because of our connected past, and because you killed me, we share a psychic connection-maintained or at least influenced by Exorcessum. The first time you changed its configuration, I felt it. The … mental shackles Kalkan used to chain my spirit fell away. I became myself again. That’s when I decided it was time to do things my own way.”
“Was that before or after you stole the Necromancer from the Norjah gallery?”
She gestured to the house. “Come find out.”
“Burning dominions,” said Demascus. What should he do? He didn’t seem to have much of a choice. Shaking his head at his own gullibility, he followed her up the walk to the entrance. One of the two massive oaken doors was ajar.
Madri said, “I normally don’t enter this way-I can flicker in and out of the cellar with a thought. But I’m pretty sure that this door is usually closed.”
Gouges around the lock showed where the door had been forced. “Someone’s broken in,” he said, pointing out the marks. “Recently.”
Madri flickered and was gone.
Demascus charged through the door, hyperaware of the possibility of an ambush as he crossed the threshold. The last time he’d been there, he’d followed Riltana up the grand stairs to a second-floor suite. They’d found evidence of Kalkan’s crimes laid out in maddening detail in a collage of sketches, skinned genasi corpses, and a magical gate to a secret mausoleum, which proved to be Demascus’s own grave. Exorcessum had waited there for him, too. And ultimately, Kalkan himself, who’d crowed about leading the deva around by the nose through a series of incarnations.
Demascus had killed the bastard rakshasa, even as Kalkan Swordbreaker laughed about how everything was all going according to plan.
Kalkan should still be dead. But … with the Necromancer in play, all bets about death, reincarnation, and the circle of life for mortals, devas, and rakshasas alike were up in the air.
Nothing attacked him. The house remained quiet as a grave. Where to? The suite upstairs had been thoroughly cleaned by peacemakers months ago, and the portal stones removed and stored in his own domicile. And Madri had mentioned a cellar.
He hustled through a series of mostly empty rooms on the ground floor until he found the door to the basement. He thudded down the stairs. Below, things were even more abandoned looking. But calling the series of rooms a “cellar” would be a stretch.
Then Demascus saw a door-shaped hole in one foundation wall. Flinders of broken wood littered the floor around it. A maul lay discarded to one side. He crept to the opening. Crooked stairs plunged down a narrow shaft. A sour smell wrinkled his nose. Down he went, taking the steps three at a time.
Madri was in the lantern-lit chamber at the bottom. But so was …
“Jaul?” said Demascus.
The youth stood at the edge of a pile of damp earth. A painting draped with red velvet was clamped under one armpit. In his free hand he held a burned and half-broken mask.
“Demascus!” said Jaul.
“By all that’s holy and sovereign, what’re you doing here?” said Demascus.
“You gotta help me!” Jaul pleaded.
The deva looked at Madri. Confusion made his tongue feel thick.
“He’s trying to make off with the very thing I was going to show you, the thing that could tell you how you’ve been duped! And that dirt pile your friend is standing on … is dangerous. It’s strung round with defensive wards. I’m surprised the little idiot hasn’t already triggered one.”