“I suppose none of them had time to waste on you,” he replies. He gives the animal a pat on the neck. It hisses and snaps its jaws in response. Vizmodeus just laughs when he sees my startled expression. “He’s playing.”
“Sure,” I say, unconvinced. “I just don’t knowwhyI didn’t spend more time trying to get to know them while scavenging.”
“Enough,” Syrus says, his lips pressed together in that annoyed expression he pulls so often when I speak. “Show us the spot, Viz.”
“Right.” The chamberlain nods, pulling out his usual scroll of parchment from one of his many pockets and holding it up to the street. I lean in a little closer and see it’s a map. He points a pencil in the direction of a stone structure on the corner that looks like some kind of monument, then back to the scaled down drawing of the city.
“The locations seemed random at first,” Vizmodeus says. “My guess is the ephilium had a trial-and-error period figuring out how to open rifts in the right place. Typical bird-brain navigation. Then, I traced three rift signatures within two miles of each other. One by the crossroads at Trasor, one on the north corner by the Daughter’s Temple, and a third—this one, by the Snare’s Well.” He looks up at us, eyes gleaming with the triumph of a student who’s done all their homework and knows they’ve aced it.
“Any theories on what connects them?” Syrus asks.
“They’re all landmarks,” I say automatically, studying the map over Vizmodeus’s shoulder.
The pale-faced demon jerks his head around at me. “How did you know that?” he asks accusingly.
I roll my eyes. “You just said so. I mean, a crossroads, a temple, and a well? Anyone in the three realms could tell you what those look like, whichmeans they’d be easy spots to navigate from if you’re unfamiliar with Malice.” I point at the places Vizmodeus indicated on the map. “And it looks like they’re all on the eastern side of the city, closest to the Morphos.”
Vizmodeus shares a look with Syrus, and I wonder if I’ve just said something stupid that’s going to get me in trouble.
“She’s right, isn’t she?” Syrus says, a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth.
“Yes,” Vizmodeus replies flatly, folding up the map, and then under his breath: “But I worked it out too.”
I shrug, shifting uncomfortably under the Lord of Malice’s calculating gaze as he watches me for a moment. I’m relieved when he turns away.
“And the well is where she’ll go through?” he asks. He draws a knife from a sheath at his waist. It’s an impressive thing—gleaming like obsidian, with a long, sleek handle. There’s a band of runes etched into it in gold. Even to my untrained eye, they look far more complex than the ones on the axe I traded a few weeks ago. It’s the kind of prize scavengers would murder for out on the plains.
“Yes, right on the base, by the stone head of Aurealis the Fanged,” Vizmodeus says, leading Syrus over to the monument.
“Come,”he whispers into my mind, and his magic tugs on my waist as if it’s a pair of warm fingers urging me forward.
Arrogant, controlling bastard.I follow after them, concentrating on keeping the angry words locked up behind my mental walls. I’m testing how loud I can think without the Lord of Malice hearing.
He doesn’t respond or look at me, so that must be progress. Instead, he and Vizmodeus are leaning down beside the well, discussing something. Most of their words are Cyrax, which makes sense when Syrus lifts the knife and begins to scratch marks into the stone. Vizmodeus is telling him which runes to use, I realize.
“This will open the same rift the ephilium made?” I ask. Ithadoccurred to me that if I knew how to make a rift to Strata, I could open one myself. But it’s obvious now I’ll have no hope of remembering all those complicated etchings, and I can’t exactly write them down. Until Syrus dragged mehere, I’d never even seen a rift open up close. The only humans typically allowed to open them are those who man the official trade rift between Pax and Aradis.
There are no government rifts between Strata and Infernum. We’re too afraid of the demons to trust them with a semi-permanent doorway between our worlds.
“It will reverse their rift,” Vizmodeus says, pausing to correct one of Syrus’s runes. “It’s unlikely they left the same way they came in, given that they didn’t need to worry about triggering the wards on the way out. This rift will trace the signature of their entry back to its origin point in the Mire, wherever that may be.”
“And you don’t need blood to open it?” I ask. In spite of myself, my voice shakes a little, my mind going back to the night with the sorcerers and the runes they painted on my body.
Vizmodeus shakes his head, but the hand holding the knife pauses.“They only needed your blood because that rift was special.”Syrus’s voice is quiet even in my mind.“You were supposed to act as the shackles as well as the cell door.”
He goes back to carving the runes as I frown, unable to parse what he meant.
I’m about to ask him to explain when something more important occurs to me.
“So you don’t know exactly what’s going to be on the other side of this rift? Or where we’ll end up?”
“It’ll be in Pax,” Vizmodeus says. “The signature is strong enough to show that, at least.”
“Still,” I say, anxiety twisting my insides. “Isn’t that a bit risky?”
“That’s why you’llactuallybe going. I’m just coming along for the ride inside your mind,” Syrus says. “If we’re about to walk into a den of ephilium, it’s better I wear your face.”
I gape at how baldly he puts it, but there’s no point in venting my outrage. He’s a coward, preferring to send me marching into the danger zone ratherthan face the enemy himself, even with all his power. Yelling at him about it won’t change that.
