Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (21 page)

“What happens if the hellcnight comes back?” I asked.

Delgato laughed. “Then there will be no warning, not even a magic blur. If you’re very, very lucky, you might be able to fight one off. Which brings us to what we’re going to discuss next: using waning magic as a weapon.

“Rochester told me that you have trouble shaping your magic, Nouiomo. But yesterday you shaped it into a flying dove. Not only was the dove a recognizable, fairly complicated shape, but it was an animated one. Your magic is powerful, but you need to learn control and consistency. Could you repeat last night’s magic trick?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. It wasn’t a lie.

Delgato nodded. “Angels only have to worry about one thing when they cast their magic,
potentia
, or how much focus they have left to cast another successful spell.” Delgato looked to the Angels for confirmation. Fara nodded and screeched, “‘
Potentia
becomes
exponentia
when combined with discipline, study, and practice.’ The Book of Joshua, nine, thirteen.” Rafe murmured his assent and then yawned. Delgato continued.

“Waning magic users, on the other hand, have myriad aspects of their magic to worry about: speed, strength, accuracy, range, as well as their ability to sustain it and manipulate it. Some aspects can be improved through the use of booster spells and some can only be improved by practicing.

“So let’s practice.”

Practicing by moonlight on the sundeck of the dahabiya was every bit as miserable as practicing in the Manipulation dungeon back in New Babylon had been. Sparring with Delgato was just as bad as sparring with Brunus or Sasha would have been. And, to top it off, apparently Rafe knew only two useful spells, the healing spell and the ridiculously titled Flame Resistant Blanket, neither of which was helpful when I was
trying
to throw waning magic. When Delgato finally called an end to the night’s practice, I was sweaty, sooty, and so agitated I probably would have set off all of the cannons had they been loaded.

*   *   *

D
uring that first week, we fell into a routine. That is, if anything that felt so tense could be called “routine.” The wildflower fields, forests, and rolling hills of the New Babylon countryside gave way to the flat, sprawling rush lands of Halja’s river delta. I’d never seen anything so expansive. In the wind, the undulating green rushes ran to the edge of the world, only stopping when the bright blue expanse of heaven rolled down to meet them from above. Looking out from
Cnawlece
’s sundeck, I could almost imagine the curvature of our world. Halja’s big sky was like the tinted top of a snow globe, but instead of a sky that rained white sparkles, our earth spawned dark demons. Luckily, our sky stayed cloudless and the demons stayed hidden.

For all its open beauty, though, our world began to feel closed in, in a way it never had back in New Babylon. The snow globe’s edge wasn’t the limit of what I could see, but the edge of
Cnawlece
’s decks. As inviting as the passing world seemed to be, I couldn’t touch it, move in it, explore it, or experience it. In order to survive, we needed to simply pass through it.

And, besides, nighttime disabused us of any notion that the surrounding lands were either empty or bucolic.

Each night, as the sun went down, the dark stole across the land, bathing everything in black. The new moon we experienced on our seventh night out was especially bad. As soon as darkness fell, the sounds and signatures rose, creeping along the edges of our magic and our minds. Demons make horrible sounds: clicking, clacking, chirping; grunting, braying, snuffling; crying, whistling, rattling. I had no idea, since I couldn’t see them, whether my enemies were more or less terrible than I imagined. Over and over again, when I was on night watch, I had to convince myself not to scream out or redline my magic so I wouldn’t bring on an attack or burn us all to bits.

Though Delgato and his crew had sailed the eastern Lethe alone before, Delgato told us it would be safer (or less dangerous) if one of us was always on watch. The
rogares
would be able to sense us, he said, just as we would them. Three waning magic users sailing down the Lethe would attract notice. Some demons would be merely curious. Some wouldn’t be strong enough to consider an attack. But other demons naturally hunted together and some were quite formidable all on their own. So we divided the day into four shifts of six hours each, the first shift beginning at ten each night.

We trained and practiced during the evening shift. Under Delgato’s careful tutelage, my magic control increased at a faster rate than it ever had back in New Babylon. Maybe it was that Delgato wasn’t as afraid as Rochester was to mix emotion and magic. Delgato warned Ari against it. Said it was too late for him; he should stick to what he knew. But for me, he agreed it might be the answer. As he put it, “Cheating was the only way to make up twenty-one years of missed practice.” After statements like that, I no longer wondered why Delgato wasn’t a member of the St. Luck’s faculty. Yet, despite my advancements, true magical finesse eluded me. It felt like I was still holding back.

We got used to the boat’s motion under our feet. It no longer felt like we were moving, even in rougher waters. Meals were taken in the dining room, although whoever was on watch was always missing.

We ate fish.
Lots
of fish. I got used to filleting. And then I became very skilled at filleting. Every night, as I chopped off a head, ripped out bones, and sliced off skin, I practiced channeling the emotion I would later put to even better use on the moonlit sundeck during our evening training sessions: peace. After all,
si vis pacem, para bellum
, right?
If you want peace, prepare for war.
The fact that we weren’t actually headed to war made me feel incrementally better about where we were headed: an investigation that might lead to an execution.

Virtus put on a good ten pounds and thankfully stopped hissing at Rafe every time Rafe tried to pet him, which was annoyingly often. I was still getting to know Mr. TBD but his relationship with Virtus seemed a microcosm of how he related to the world at large. He never cared what others’ reactions were to him. He did whatever he wanted. Eventually, things seemed to go his way. If he hadn’t ended up knowing some decent spells (albeit with ridiculous names), I might have thrown him overboard.

Fara, on the other hand, grew less confident with each passing mile. Her quoting seemed obsessively focused on fear. We heard “Fear is only as deep as the mind allows” and “The fearful are caught as often as the bold” so many times, I lost count. When she was on watch, she would murmur them, or something similar, under her breath, over and over and
over
again. And she clung to Joshua’s book as if it were a baby’s binky. If I didn’t know her any better (and I really didn’t), I’d have thought she was scared.

I was too.

But still, during that first week and a half, it seemed as if Fara’s father’s wish—
venti secundi, daemones pauca
; fair winds, few demons—was coming true.

All of that changed twelve days into our trip.

T
he suggested route of passage for the Shallows is fairly straightforward. Or as straightforward as any trip on the eastern Lethe might be. Though the number of streams, tributaries, and rivulets only increases the farther out from New Babylon one gets, our suggested route required only one turn. That turn would occur at First Branch, where the Lethe divided into four nearly equal parts. Each part had its own name: the Concelare, the Blandjan, the Naefre, and the Finthanan. We were supposed to take Blandjan at First Branch. Then, and this was critical, we had to
stay
on Blandjan past Second and Third Branch. The sticky wicket—the place we needed to avoid at all costs—was a place called Ebony’s Elbow.

Legend says Ebony was a water demon who gave her memory of hearth and home to her wandering lover so that he could find his way back to her. But losing this memory doomed Ebony to wander the Lethe for centuries until she found a final resting place in the dark waters of the bend in the Lethe that’s now named after her. They say the elbow is full of rushing white water that runs black as a blank mind, rocks as sharp as a spinning propeller, and dozens of derelict ships . . . but no one really knows. Anyone who’s ever gotten close enough to see it, hasn’t survived it.

Oh, there were some tall tales and fish stories in the
Field Guide
I’d brought (stories of how one lone anchor saved an entire ship, pulling it straight out of the treacherously spinning abyss as if it were some ancient Archimedes’ claw) and there was some improbable, counterintuitive advice (“in order to pass unharmed, one had to use their anchor”), but generally, reports, route notes, and the map’s depiction of the place led to a conclusion as inescapable as the place itself: Ebony’s Elbow, a.k.a. Ebony’s End, was a graveyard for river vessels and passengers alike. It was like one of those ancient tar pits or the black void of space. It was an area, up or down, where one was sure to encounter the life-sucking sound of death.

To aid travelers, and help them avoid areas like Ebony’s Elbow, each Branch was marked with a bonfire frame. Ari, who’d been talking with Delgato, told me all about them on our eleventh night out when he slipped into my cabin a few hours before midnight.

“Who’s on watch?” I asked.

“Rafe,” Ari said, quietly latching the door behind him. He stood for a moment, leaning against the door, watching me. I was dressed for bed in black lace bloomers and a blush-colored camisole. The alembic rested lightly against my chest. I wasn’t sure I believed in its ability to determine guilt or innocence, but I wasn’t quite ready to “accidentally” lose it either. With any luck, Vodnik wouldn’t have any knowledge of his barbaric, antediluvian right.

“Is Delgato out there with him? He can’t sense the demons like we can.”

Ari gave a snort that clearly said,
He can’t do much of anything
.

“He cast a spell he calls Demon Net,” Ari said, rolling his eyes.

Despite the fact that Rafe had proven he could cast some useful spells, his constant insouciance and lack of seriousness bothered Ari tremendously. And I had to admit, if only to myself, that although I still thought Fara was a fake who hid behind her glamour and the Book, Rafe was even worse. His flippancy, his absurdly titled spells, his whole
que sera blah blah blah
thing . . . Well, the more it continued, the more I thought it might be a carefully calculated veneer to hide his true feelings for us: disdain.

I stayed on the other side of the bed, wondering what Ari had come to talk to me about. Or if he had come to talk at all. I swallowed and gave him a lopsided smile. Regardless of our romantic history (we’d actually come close to doing many of the things that were shown in Delgato’s dining room pictures), there were still times when I felt nervous around him. It was crazy. But my reluctance, as Ari sometimes called it, was because no one,
no one
, in my whole life, had ever made me feel as at risk as Ari did.

When Ari was around, I had to concentrate extra hard on controlling my magic. It was like I was teetering on the brink with him. Like I was sitting on a powder keg with a lit match. And I thought he secretly enjoyed watching me struggle. How else to explain his casual grazes and meaningful gazes? As much as Ari was always lecturing me about how I needed to learn control, I thought he loved to watch me squirm. And what he really loved was to watch me drop that match every once in a while. And know he caused the resulting explosion.

Which made me the slightest bit resentful. Oh, sure, I loved Ari. But falling in love happens to you. You don’t happen to it. So there was a part of me still—that part of me that wanted to survive—that warned me not to give myself too completely to him. But was it possible to hold any part of myself back? I didn’t know.

But I kept trying.

“Where’s Fara?” I said, ignoring the catch in my throat.

But Ari heard it. He pushed off the back of the door, grinning. He walked over to me (a very short distance, considering the size of the room), waving his hand to show how inconsequential everything outside was.

“She’s on deck with Rafe, trying to see if she can turn Demon Net into some sort of fishing spell so she can catch more food for Virtus. I guess Burr was complaining about how much he was eating this morning.”

“Oh . . .” I said, unable to break eye contact with Ari. I knew the minute I looked away, my cheeks would blush furiously. That would be the sign. The signal Ari would seize upon. Why were flags of surrender white? They really should be red . . .