Slip Song (Devany Miller Series) (20 page)

“
Your pretty little Skriven is busy right now. Tit for tat.” And the connection was lost. Holy fuck, what was that? Amara?

I wracked my brain, trying to figure out what the hell to do or who to ask. I settled on my wayward Draw who I’d dropped in the middle of Omaha in winter. Would he be amendable to helping me now? “Nex? I’ll be back,” I called down the hall.

“Mmm,” was all he said. I made a hook and stepped through it to a bathroom downtown. The stall I came out of had been out of order for a couple years now so I’d figured I wouldn’t startle someone half to death by hooking there. I made my way through the Coffee and Cafe and out into the cold, regretting my lack of coat instantly. Shivering, I headed down the street, opening my Magic Eye to hunt for Vasili’s thread. I found it, small and forlorn, and followed it.

The Skriven sat, huddled and miserable on a street corner, a red Solo cup in front of him with only a handful of change inside it. When he first glanced up at me, he didn’t recognize me. Then he jumped up, startling the older man leaning against the building next to him. “You came back for me.”

“Yeah, but you’d better not fuck around this time,” I said, yanking him down the slushy walk as I looked for a good place to hook. “Tytan is in trouble. I think. I tried talking to him through the thread and your mistress told me he was occupied. Tit for tat.” I pulled us through the hook as soon as we were out of view of the street and sighed in relief as we stepped through to the Slip, where it was never hot nor cold. “Does that mean she claimed him as her draw?”

“
I doubt it. You would know. His thread would have resounded. Some of your power would have left you.”

“
Where would she be?”

He stopped in his tracks, still looking like the dreadlocked young man I’d changed him into before plopping him on Earth. “No amount of torture would be worth telling you that.”

“You liked Earth that much, huh? You already want to go back?”

He looked pained and miserable. I felt bad, I did, but not that bad. “Follow his thread.”

“She cut it off, somehow.”

“
Oh. Oh. That’s not good.” He rocked a little, clutching at his puffy coat sleeves as he did. “She’s trying to call his soul.”

“
What?”

“
You could do it for me, if you wished it. Call my soul. Most Originators don’t bother. They like the status quo. If Amara wants you removed, though, she might go to the trouble of hunting for his soul.”

I muttered a curse. “Can’t I stop her? Petition the council or some garbage?”

He shrugged. “They would consider it a matter between you and her and would not interfere.”

“
Great. Just great.” Now it was more important than ever to find Tytan’s soul before Amara did. “Shit, shit, shit.” I paused. “How does it work, to force find a soul?”

He shrugged. “Easiest way is torture.”

The thought made me sick. It wouldn’t be the torture I’d put Vasili through by plopping him down on Earth without power. No. This would involve blood and pain, something Tytan had already endured from his former master Ravana.

“
Is there anyway you can think of for me to find his soul quickly if I don’t have access to Tytan?”

Vasili’s nut brown eyes rolled upward as he thought. “No.” He shivered despite having the coat on. “She’s cut me off.”

“What?”

“
I still don’t have any power. She won’t let me access it.” He looked miserable.

“
Can you use mine?”

He looked startled. “You would allow that?”

“On one condition.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“Distract her.” He opened his mouth and I held up my hand, “I don’t mean you have to put yourself in danger. Heaven forbid. Just make it hard for her to concentrate. You can do that, can’t you? And wouldn’t it be worth it to get back to your normal self? Mmm? What do you say?”

“
I say I’ll regret it if she finds out what I’m doing.”

“
Be sneaky.”

He nodded once. “All right. Thank you.” The two words sounded like they might get stuck in his throat but at least he said them and looked like he meant it.

“Do I need to do anything?”

“
Just accept my petition for power when it comes. I can make the offering when I’m home.”

“
Okay. Uh.” I tucked my hair over my ear. “And what will the petition be? I mean, do I get a note carried by a pigeon, what?”

“
It will be a feeling, in your solar plexus. Accept it, that’s all.”

“
Seems too easy.”

He snorted, sounding and looking more like his snotty old self. “Originators don’t like work. My end will be the hard part.”

“Okay.” I held out my hand and he looked at it as if I were holding out a dead fish. “Shake on it, damn it. Promise not to double cross me and I’ll promise not to ever put you on Earth again.”

That had him. He shook with a vigor that hurt my shoulder. I formed a hook, then remembered the reason why I’d plopped him on Earth to begin with. “I need you to do one more thing.”

“Of course,” he said, his expression wary.

“
Find out how to fade a place, to keep it from being noticed or seen. I’m going to need that information as quick as you can find it. Okay?”

He nodded. “That shouldn’t be difficult. I will send word as soon as I have the information.”

I left him and hooked back to the wagon, my head buzzing. Tytan getting tortured to give up the location of his soul. Wasn’t that stupid? She was an Originator, she knew he wouldn’t know where his soul was. I should have asked Vasili how the torture would gain her anything, then realized she must be trying to hack into his connection with his soul. The thread that tied them together. Apparently she just couldn’t look and see it. I wondered if I could. Probably. That’s why she cut me off from Ty. Damn I had so much I needed to know about being an Originator and no time to learn it.

I opened my Eye and looked for Ty, on the off chance I could spot him somewhere. Hundreds of strands tangled and swam but nowhere did I sense his. I did spy Ellison’s strand. A thought came to me and I turned my attention to the front of the wagon where Jasper rode. He had a ephemeral grey strand, gossamer and light. The tiniest filament linked him to Ellison when I looked from Jasper to his Skriven. When I turned the tables, the string all but vanished. Oh, it was there, I could catch glimpses of it but it was so elusive and small I felt a small shiver of relief. Amara had her work cut out for her. I had no idea how she would follow something that transient.

It gave me time. Not a lot, but some. And hope that I could get Cyres somewhere safe and save Tytan before Amara hurt him beyond repair.

-FIFTEEN-

The wards went up at noon, after we stopped for lunch. “Have we even gone ten miles?” I asked, annoyed, hot, and frustrated with the inching pace of the wagon train.

Jasper grinned at me and handed over the water so I could get a drink. “You don’t like the great outdoors?”

“Not really. Too many bugs and too much dirt.” And one too many psychopaths.

“
When we enter the Anwar, we’ll move much faster.” Sharps had pulled up alongside our wagon astride a golden horse with as much attitude as a runway model. Sharps had glared fiercely at me until I understood I wasn’t supposed to ask how she was or say anything about last night, then leaned over and handed a circle of grey to Jasper and a multicolored one to me. “Slip this on your wrist. As soon as you hear the horns blow, put up a protection barrier around the train. It doesn’t matter what type you use, just make one as solid as you can make it.” She prodded her horse into a cantor and left us to the dirt.

I slipped my circle onto my wrist and spun it a few times before losing interest. “I’m going to go insane. This is too damn slow.”

“What was the last thing you made with your hands?”

I eyed Jasper. “What?”

He leaned over and, in a conspiratorial whisper, said, “I’m distracting you.”

“
Oh.” I smiled. “Okay.”

“
I’ll start. I carved a kitten from a block of wood. I’d been with that group for so long, they’d forgotten I might want to escape and when I asked, one of them gave me a knife. I whittled all sorts of things but the kitten was the project I was working on when I escaped.” His thumbs rubbed the leather reins in his hands. One of the blue oxen moaned loudly. “I carved and created until they forgot that it was a knife and could only see the animals. They each had at least one of my carvings before I escaped.”

“
Were you any good?”

He nodded, gave the reins a little snap. “At the end. A few of the group were paying me to carve them things. A horse. An owl. A fleshcrawler.” His lip curled. “Don’t tell your friend, but I never started that project.”

“I think Nex would be pleased the idea of carving one of his kind freaked you out.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and fought down my impatience. “I made a potholder. With my daughter. One of those plastic loom projects we found at the store. It’s such a tiny thing that it isn’t good for much, but we both made one and they are hanging in the kitchen over the stove.”  I wished I could see more than the grimly painted wagon in front of us, all black but for a few red slashes of color. “What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in your lifetime?”

Jasper settled back on the bench, legs spread, casual. Was he unaware of how handsome he was? I thought he was pretty laid back but he had to know he was good looking. Didn’t he? “To expect people to hurt you.”

“Ouch.”

“
I haven’t had many good experiences. My apologies.”

“
You don’t have to apologize. It just sucks. I’m sorry.” I thought over my life and said, “There will be people who hurt you but they are always outnumbered by people who care.”

Another moan from our blue oxen answered by one further ahead. I heard someone shout and a whip crack. Jasper looked sad and I wished I’d picked something else to talk about, something innocuous. “I hope that I learn that someday.”

I laid my hand on his arm. “Me too.”

A horn sounded and I grasped my circle, closing my eyes. I wasn’t sure how it would work to set a circle while we were moving but I did, picturing a giant blue bubble around the lot of us. For a moment I wasn’t sure it worked, then I heard the zing and pop of it snapping into place.

When I opened my eyes, the landscape was streaking by us so fast I couldn’t make out any scenery. “What the hell?”

Jasper was sitting up too, gazing around us in awe. “A back road.”

“Huh?”

“
I heard traders talk about the back roads through the Anwar, shortcuts only certain people could find and even fewer could survive. I think we’re on a back road.”

Hope returned to my heart. Traveling this fast, we’d be on the Theleoni by nightfall, surely. As I thought it, the scenery slowed. Our train made a wide, slow turn to the right and then off we went once more. Over the course of the day, we entered and left many of these speedways that Jasper called back roads. It wasn’t easy travel, either, even though it never felt like we, ourselves, were speeding up or slowing down. A call down the line let us know we’d be stopping for the night even though it’d only felt like four or five hours by my internal clock.

I wanted to protest until I jumped off the wagon and saw the blue oxen, their heads lowered and their muscles shivering in exhaustion. Mounds of froth and lather humped over their hides as they slumped in their yolks, waiting for Yorloff to free them.

They circled the wagons into the same spiral we’d first walked into. Poles were knocked into the ground around the camp, lodestones hanging from each one. Once a physical perimeter was established, Zed touched one stone and power leapt from one to the other until energy hummed around us. A sigh went through the camp as people let go of their individual protections. I hadn’t realized until I let mine go how taxing it had been on me to maintain it all day.

I helped Jasper dust the wagon and then we joined the group for dinner around a fire. Leon told a story in which he figured prominently, then the tattooed hypothermia victim stood, her blue-streaked white hair dancing down her back like icicles. “I am Inna for you virgies.” Half-hearted laughter from some of the crowd, a hearty chuckle from Leon, his beefy, Popeye-esque forearms pressed against his thighs. “And I have a tale to tell, about the Wydling woman who bargained with a Skriven for the love of a witch man.”

I had a thin metal plate propped on my knees with bread, cheese, and an offering of lightly boiled veggies, most of which I couldn’t identify. Lucky me, none of them tasted like beets. I popped a fat green stem into my mouth and enjoyed the texture and flavor as Inna continued.