Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (13 page)

5 daggers

4 battle-axes

3 morning stars

2 throwing spears

A suggested reading list:

Gabinius Hauerite’s
Demon Patrons: Duties and Dereliction

Serverlinus Ludwigite’s
Hyrke Deaths and Disappearances (Investigative Series)

Bato Vauxite’s
Butchery, Bloodshed, and Murder (Criminal Elements Series)

Tullio Trona’s
Demon Executions: Prosecution, Protocol, and Practice

Clodianus Agrinierite’s
Halja’s Outposts: Chronological History and Cultural Analysis

Furius Cinnabar’s
Rogare Demons: Survival Strategies

Diana Elsmoreite’s
Estes and the Lethe: Cycle of Birth, Death, and Re-Birth

As well as a suggested route of passage and a map of the eastern Lethe.

I assumed Delgato would be familiar with the suggested route of passage, but I was glad for the map’s visual overview of the area we’d be traveling through. The only portion of the Lethe I’d ever traveled was its width. I’d been ferried back and forth from New Babylon to Etincelle countless times (and once, Ari and I had even rowed it, although
not
as part of some romantic holiday, but that’s another story . . .), but I’d never gone more than a few miles east of New Babylon, on land . . . or water. I peered closely at the map.

The Lethe, like its own patron demon, Estes, was large and powerful. Here, near New Babylon, it was more than a mile across, but farther east (miles and miles farther), it branched into countless streams, tributaries, rivulets, and runoffs, each more meandering than its nearest neighbor. Some of the streams then went on to merge with other streams. Some rivulets dead-ended, curling around at their end into natural cesspools that seemed to (according to the map anyway) swirl right into Halja’s underground. Some tributaries doubled back on themselves, multiple times, producing odd little elbows, doglegs, and liquid switchbacks. On the map, these places were marked as highly dangerous, with the river’s currents racing every which way. (In Halja, water could even flow uphill if the conditions were right.) But most troubling were the spots marked as “Wild Territory.” These were the spots where we were most likely to encounter water wraiths, the most common form of
rogare
demon in some of the areas we’d be traveling through.

I spent the morning locating the books on the suggested reading list. I added two others: the simply titled
Field Guide
, which was a collection of essays written throughout the years by various Hyrke, Host, and Angel explorers, and a slim paperback volume I’d found by accident:
Oude Rode Ogen, Bicho Papao, and Grimasca: Folktales for Children
. I had no idea what it was doing in our law library, but when I saw the reference to Grimasca, the demon Vodnik blamed for the fishermen’s deaths, I’d tucked it immediately in with the rest. Around midday, I stumbled back to my study carrel and dumped the books onto my desk. They landed with a great big thud. Would anything in here help us? Or would I be better off taking the books’ weight in salt instead? Salt was a known water wraith repellent.