The Demon’s Surrender (18 page)

Her hair flipped into her face, air rushing around her but none in her lungs, every burning molecule of her aware that if she fell, the crash would bring the magicians in the next room running.

The backs of her knees hit the rafter. She latched on and swung like a pendulum until she could get a grip on it with her hands, then grasped the wood and pulled her weight up until she was lying flat against the rafter. She found herself breathing a little hard.

There was no time to be lying around, though. She turned, her body almost tipping off the slender beam and the world swimming crazily in her vision for a minute, until she was on her front. Then, facedown, nose pressed hard against the wood and her fingertips lightly curved around the edges, she began to wriggle her way down the rafter into the other room.

Chandelier lights refracted in her vision, brilliant and blinding for a moment. Heat and noise rushed up toward her like a blow. Sin swallowed, closed her eyes, and held on for a moment.

When she opened her eyes she could see, though blurry yellow afterimages danced in front of her, like the mocking stars around a concussed cartoon character’s head. She began to slide slowly along the banister again.

The scene below her was like a play seen from terrible seats, with hot, glaring spotlights in Sin’s eyes and a riot of color and activity below. For a moment the people below her looked like splashes of paint on a palette, all mingling together in a vivid blur.

Then the colors coalesced into shapes. She could make out the magicians of the Aventurine Circle. They were all, as far as she could see, wearing white. There was Helen, bright and straight as a blade in a white silk suit, and the woman called Laura in a simple white dress.

Celeste Drake, wrapped around and around in ivory gauze, was making the rounds with Gerald behind her. They nodded at and shook hands with everyone they saw, engaging them in brief rounds of conversation. They did it very well, Sin thought. One of them always managed to make the magician they were talking to laugh.

At no point did Celeste and Gerald ever touch. The first Market after Mama was dead and Sin was back from Mezentius House, Merris had taken her around and showed her to everyone as the heir apparent. Sin hadn’t done half as well as Gerald was doing now, but the whole time Merris had kept her hand on Sin’s arm, steady and sure, anchoring her.

Seb was leaning against a wall, shoulders hunched beneath his white T-shirt. He looked ready to run if someone spoke to him.

Sitting on one of the fragile chairs as if it was a throne was Jamie, surveying the company with the scorn of a spoiled young prince and the eyes of a mad soothsayer. His gleaming white clothes matched that bright opaline gaze. The only dark things about him were the demon’s mark crawling on his jaw and the demon crouching at his feet.

Nick was in position to spring for throats, and looked as if he would have liked to. He was wearing the battered black clothes he’d been wearing earlier, but the effect was good, like the black pearl at Celeste’s white throat.

Sin had to admire Celeste’s showmanship. The Aventurine Circle stood out radiantly against all the other magicians, an army with a weapon in plain sight.

Their weapon, the Rottweiler at the spoiled young prince’s feet, was glaring people away. Jamie was the only magician who did not have to make nice with the members of other Circles.

Occasionally he grabbed a handful of Nick’s black hair and yanked his head back to address a few words to him. Sin saw the strained line of Nick’s throat and the curl of his mouth when his head went back. He never answered Jamie.

They sat alone until the door of the ballroom opened and Mae walked in.

She was in white too, a shimmering dress tight as a bandage with her shoulders rising bare from the wrapped material, and wavering slightly in some of the highest heels Sin had ever seen. They seemed to be made entirely of glass and silver threads.

Mae pulled it off the same way she pulled off her pink hair, brushed now into shining perfection, looking ridiculous, appealing, and dignified all at once.

Mae’s faith in herself was as towering as those heels, and so she could walk into a nest of magicians not even able to run.

Oh, you brave dumb tourist
, Sin said to her silently.

Now she had two girls to get out of here.

When Mae reached Jamie, she went and stood by the side of his chair like a sentinel.

Sin’s fingers bit into the edge of the rafter, splinters sinking into her skin. Mae couldn’t fake much. She certainly wasn’t faking this, the way even her face bent toward Jamie’s was loving, her neck a protective arch above him.

What if it was real? Sin thought with a sickening lurch. It felt for a moment like she was going to fall off the rafter, even though she hadn’t moved. What if she’d left the Market, no matter how temporarily, in the hands of a traitor?

Mae loved Jamie, she could see that much. If it was Lydie, so affected and addicted by magic, Sin didn’t know what she would do.

She couldn’t even really think about it. When she tried, the idea turned into a nightmare, a black cloud she could not hold on to or deal with but that diffused itself around her mind and made everything dark.

People approached Jamie then; they approached him through Mae. Mae smiled and shook hands, held brief conversations. She was acting in a way Sin could only describe as sophisticated.

Sin guessed it was a trick Mae had learned from her mother or a formidable headmistress or someone else in her rich world. She wished she could learn how to do it, and doubted she could pull it off. The best acts needed conviction behind them.

After yet another person had left, Jamie leaned back farther in his chair and said something to Mae. Mae hesitated for a moment, then slowly left Jamie’s side, one hand clinging to the chair back, as if it was the only thing keeping her afloat and it was being inexorably drawn out of her reach.

She clenched her hand into a fist when she finally let go, and offered her other hand to Nick. Nick glanced up at her and then stood, very slowly.

Once he was standing he loomed over Mae, tall, dark, and sinister like a villain in a pantomime about to crush an innocent, but he seemed like a villain who had forgotten his cue. He just stood there, and his complete lack of action looked almost like helplessness.

Mae stuck her hand out farther, persistently. When Nick turned his own hand palm up, moving as slowly as if he was a robot with rusting joints, Mae laid her fingers across his palm. He used her hand to draw her body in close against his.

Moving gradually into the center of the room, they started to dance. Mae’s skyscraper heels at least made her closer to Nick’s height than she usually was, so she could meet his eyes comfortably.

Sin couldn’t see either of their faces, but there was a solemn atmosphere about the moment, the song playing fainter than any of the other songs before. Nick’s hand was at Mae’s gleaming white waist, and her hand was gripping the shoulder of his black T-shirt.

The assembled magicians were staring.

Jamie stopped slouching and got up, slipping easily through the crowd.

Sin decided it was about time for her to go as well. There were a lot of people here, but none of them were Lydie.

She squirmed slowly back along the rafter, creeping backward rather than forward. She had a moment where she misjudged, not seeing where she was going, and found her leg sticking out into space. She pulled it back slowly, reanchoring herself and refusing to panic, then risked a glance down.

Apparently none of the magicians had been looking up just then.

Reaching the other room was such a relief, the dimness and relative quiet like being submerged in cool water after the hot lights and having to watch dozens of people act out a hundred strange scenes. Sin let her eyes shut for just a moment, and breathed out.

When she opened her eyes, she saw someone moving in the darkness below.

Adrenaline chased chills up her spine, straightening it and preparing her for action. The person below was wearing a long garment with a hood. She couldn’t tell if they were male or female, but Sin could get the jump on them, and that was all that mattered.

Then she caught the movement beneath the cloak, the very slight tell.

Sin let go of the rafter and stretched out an arm, wrapping just enough of the chain round her wrist around the rafter. She launched herself into space, the chain reaching its limit and her feet hitting the chair back at the same time so the impact was shared.

Sin unwound her chain carefully and leaped lightly onto the ground. She barely made a sound, only a very faint jingle, like faraway bells.

He turned.

“What are you doing here, Alan?” Sin asked softly.

Alan pushed the hood back, curly hair ruffled and looking almost black in the dim lights.

“Rescuing you?” he suggested with a small wry smile.

“I appreciate the thought,” Sin said, smiling back.

“I’m lying,” Alan told her.

Sin raised her eyebrows. “I’m shocked.”

“I came to bring you these,” said Alan. He drew out two long knives, one in each hand. “I know candy and flowers are traditional, but…”

“I’ll call them candy and flowers,” Sin said. She took one in her right hand; it was a beautiful weight. “This one’s Candy.”

“Nick sent me a text message saying they’ve got Lydie in a cabin away from the main living quarters, the first door across the deck.”

“Nick,” Sin said, tensing. “Alan, do you know—”

Over Alan’s shoulder she saw a flicker of movement, and the magician at the door, backing away. There was no time to think, so she didn’t. She already had the knife in her hand.

Sin threw. The magician caught her knife in the throat and crumpled.

She and Alan went toward the door and stood together at the foot of the stairs. Sin bent and pulled her new knife out of the body. Alan picked the end of his cloak up from the floor and offered it to her. Sin accepted the swathe of material and cleaned the blade carefully.

“Nice cloak. Where’d you get it?”

“There was a magician in this stylish thing,” Alan said. “And now he’s in the river. I imagine he could use some company.”

Sin nodded. “You dump the body. I’ll get Lydie.”

“Meet you on the deck?”

He stood in the doorway, regarding the body with serious attention. He spoke casually, his mind obviously already on getting rid of the magician, trusting her to do her part.

She knew where Lydie was. She couldn’t wait to go get her.

She did pause for a moment before she headed up the stairs. She rested her hands against Alan’s shoulders, met his eyes steadily, and kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

Then she ran up the stairs to find her sister.

Sin just kept going up, chasing through corridors and up stairs, until she opened a door and found herself on the deck. The wash of cool night air was sweet on her face, the lights of the city bright against the deep, dark blue of the sky.

Across the deck a door swung open. Jamie emerged, holding Lydie’s hand. Lydie was stumbling and obviously scared, her fair hair tossing in the wind.

Sin threw one of her knives at Jamie. The magician lifted his free hand and the knife went clattering onto the deck, as if some invisible fist had struck it down in midflight.

Jamie thrust Lydie in front of himself. His unearthly eyes blazed over her little sister’s head.

Sin did not throw her other knife. She advanced on Jamie, shaking the chain out from around her right wrist. The end of the chain hit the deck with a rattle.

“Wait,” Jamie said.

“No,” Sin told him, and lunged. The chain spun through the air and Jamie dodged backward: It only caught him a glancing blow on the head.

Jamie gasped aloud, the sound trembling with pain, and Sin whirled to hit him again before he could retaliate.

The invisible hand of magic caught her chain and held it suspended in midair, like a curtain between them.

“Stop,” Jamie said, his voice still shaky. “Now.”

Sin was very close. She could duck under the hanging chain and stab him. She moved fast enough that she was pretty sure his magic wouldn’t stop her in time.

But he’d used his magic to stop the chain, not hit out at her.

“Why should I?” she snapped.

“I fought for the Market once.”

“And now you’re part of the Aventurine Circle, and you treat one of our allies like a dog.”

Jamie flinched at the reference to Nick, and Sin followed up on that advantage.

“He told me you were his friend,” she said, moving forward. He stepped back, but she saw his fingers tighten on Lydie’s shoulder, and that only made her more furious. “And you’re using him as a power source.”

“What else do you want me to do?”

“Uh,” Sin suggested, “
not
use him?”

“I haven’t taken the Aventurine Circle sigil, which lets you get the stored power from their circle of stones. Gerald has a new mark that allows all the magicians to exchange power between them, and I haven’t taken that either. Using Nick was absolutely the only way I could avoid taking the marks. Having him, and more power than anyone else, is the only reason they let me stay.”

“And why do you want to stay?” Sin inquired.

Jamie looked down at Lydie’s head. “To help.”

“Forgive me if I think you might have another motive,” Sin said. “I can see you’re brimful of magic right now. Everyone at the Market knows how magicians kill more, the longer they’re in a circle. The appetite grows by what it feeds on—the craving gets worse and worse. If you were safe, if the circles were gone, would you give up all the magic the demon gives you? Could you give it up?”

Jamie kept looking at Lydie, and not into Sin’s eyes, but he did answer her.

Low and soft, he said: “No.”

At least he sounded ashamed.

“So you’d rather enslave a friend than give up power,” said Sin. “And you expect me to believe you want to help?”

“I came and sat down beside you with a magic knife in the pocket nearest to you,” Jamie said. “Either I want to help you, or I’m kind of dumb.”