Page 25 of Devil’s Doom (Jaga and the Devil #2)

Chapter twenty-five

Labor

“Do you know of anyone who can control time? Like, for example, walk into the past—or the future?”

My voice is perfectly neutral, my body turned away as I take throwing knives out of a training dummy. I missed all the crucial points, but at least four out of ten knives hit the target this time, so I’m proud of my meager progress. Lutowa trains me outside of my sessions with Draga and Wera.

“Hm, I don’t think I know of anyone with that ability. Those who were born before time can stop it at will, but they can’t travel into the past,” the bieda says, thinking.

I hide a grim smile. So Woland told me the truth in that instance. As always, when I think about him these days, my chest wrenches with a horrible mixture of longing and hatred.

A month has passed since I saw him last.

“How many are there?” I ask, getting back to my throwing spot.

Lutowa comes over, correcting my stance. “Keep your ribs from flaring. This should be as hard as rock,” she says, patting my abdomen. “Remember the wrist motion we practiced.”

I tighten my stomach and shake out my arms, focusing on the dummy in front of me. In a real fight, I won’t throw knives but magic spells. Right now, I rely on magic for accuracy, and it’s inefficient. Lutowa wants me to be able to aim on my own, which will make my resources last longer.

“The oldest gods,” she says when I start throwing. “Perun, Weles, Swarog, Dadzbog, Chors… The master, of course… Mokosz. Time began when the first people were made. They required it to exist.”

I throw all ten knives, but I concentrate on Lutowa’s words instead of aiming, so only two hit the mark. One of them lands perfectly between the dummy’s eyebrows. I aimed for the heart, but I’ll take that win.

“You get sloppy when you’re distracted,” the bieda says, clicking her tongue. “During a battle, you’ll need to be aware of everything that happens around you and still hit the mark. And when you fight Wera, you have to focus despite people laughing and booing. Until you learn this, you won’t have a chance in a real fight.”

I sigh, going to retrieve my knives. I am distracted, and I loathe it. Every time I see an uncanny shadow or hear a voice that sounds remotely like his, I can’t help but look around, hoping to see a glint of his golden eyes. I’m furious with myself for reacting this way, and even more with him for abandoning me.

When he caught me and drank my blood, I was convinced he craved me to the point of insanity. Now it’s clear I was wrong. Woland is perfectly happy without me, and I am the only one plagued by ridiculous longing.

I think it wouldn’t hurt so much if he were away for good, but I know he visits the rebel base every day, checking on his people and giving new orders.

He just never has time to see me.

“Again. I’ll be quiet this time, and you should focus on aiming. And during the next round, I’ll tell you some more, and I’ll still expect you to land at least four hits. Go.”

I banish Woland from my mind and focus my entire attention on the dummy. My magic trills under my skin, eager to help, but I push it down. Apparently, I make the mistake most novices do, which is relying on magic for everything I can’t do on my own. I have to control this instinct if I want to learn.

The knives cut through the air, five of them hitting the dummy. Two land close to the heart, for which I aimed. Lutowa nods.

“Better. Get them, and let’s see how you do when I talk.”

When I throw, she tells me more about time magic. “Some types of bies, like the licho, can create an illusion of time stopping. They can lock someone in a loop, so that person will walk in circles and the time of day won’t change for them. But that’s not real time magic, more like a mind game the lichos play to make their victims desperate.”

Three knives hit the target. I retrieve them, and Lutowa keeps talking, while I do my best to absorb each word.

“The way gods stop time works differently. The master uses shadow magic to do it, while Swarog hammers out a perimeter of hot sparks. People trapped inside can’t cross it. Mokosz uses vegetation. The person she wants to trap in a timeless circle is surrounded by a maze of plants they cannot exit until she releases them. And Chors’ is the most beautiful. When he stops time, the entire area is bathed in silver moonlight.”

She stops and we regard my result. One knife hit the dummy’s thigh.

I groan and stomp over to get my blades, while Lutowa sighs heavily, looking up as if in prayer for patience.

“How do you know all that?” I ask her, taking my stance again.

“From other people who were trapped by the gods at one point or another. Some of them like to play, and what better way than to lock their victim in a place without time?”

“Even Chors?” I ask after my knife embeds in the dummy’s shoulder.

“He is rarely cruel,” Lutowa admits. “But he likes to learn. I know of a wila Chors locked in his circle of moonlight only to ask her odd questions about why she combed her hair three times every night and how her menstrual cycle worked. She got the impression he knew little about people and spent a lot of time watching them at night.”

Three knives hit the dummy. I’m hungry and irritable, but I don’t complain. Lutowa doesn’t have to train me, and I see how much it costs her not to lash out when I fail to show improvement. I’m grateful for her instruction, so I keep my temper on a leash, too.

When I finally manage to get five knives in while listening to her, she calls it a day, and we have lunch. I eat in haste. Nienad expects me an hour after noon, and I make a point to always be on time. He hates tardiness and numerous other things.

“Good, you’re here,” the healer says, looking up from a potion he’s brewing on a stone workbench in the sick chamber. “We have one new patient. He is your fault, so you’ll have the pleasure of treating him. He got here about two hours ago.”

I clean my hands with a harsh solution of vodka and herbs Nienad demands I use. The sick chamber is not really one room, but a maze of small and large caves. I have access to the common spaces, like patient rooms and Nienad’s workshop, which is always filled with the sounds and scents of foul medicines bubbling in cauldrons.

There is an entire section where I cannot go. Nienad claims he works on dangerous substances that I have no business touching.

My hands cleaned, I stop in front of his workbench, glancing inside the cauldron. He’s making cough syrup.

“How is the patient my fault?” I ask, just as a male moan of pain drifts in through the open door of the nearest patient room.

Nienad harrumph, his bushy, silver eyebrows furrowing. He doesn’t even spare me a look. “Because the master cursed him for taking too long to move out of his way. If you did a good job as his consort, he wouldn’t take his frustration out on people.”

I clench my fists and teeth. Nienad blames me for every victim of Woland’s, which I find extremely unfair. Firstly, because I have absolutely no control over the devil, and secondly, because how am I supposed to ease his frustration if he avoids me?

But I’ve fought with Nienad about this, and he told me he wouldn’t teach me if I whined about every little thing. So I refrain from saying what I want.

“Why haven’t you treated him if he’s been here for two hours?” I ask, my voice low with anger.

“The curse is timebound,” the healer says, measuring out three spoons of honey into the cauldron. “It will only be treatable after sunset.”

I throw my hands in outrage but stay silent, breathing hard until I calm down enough to speak. Nienad has taught me a great deal, and even had the grace to tell me I am the brightest of his students, but he’s sometimes impossible to be around.

“How do you expect me to help the patient if his curse is untreatable?” I ask, forcing myself to sound respectful.

“Figure something out. And if you can’t, silence him, will you? His whining makes me irritable.”

Another agonizing moan drifts in from the patient room. I close my eyes, counting backward from ten.

Nienad is a good teacher, simply because he cares little about his patients. He has no qualms about letting me treat them under his instruction. That’s why I’ve learned a lot very fast. I can treat various curses and work with a patient’s magic to heal them. I’ve also learned how to infuse medicinal brews with magic to make them more potent. I know the basic anatomy differences between the most common races.

If not for my successes in the sick chamber, I would feel like a complete failure with how my combat training is going. The downside of that success is, Nienad expects me to treat most of his patients on my own.

“Fine.” I turn around, honing my anger into a weapon. “I’ll dismantle that time spell and heal him before sunset.”

“You have my blessing. And eat something after you’re done,” Nienad grumbles. “Maybe he will enjoy you more if you put on some weight.”

“Maybe I’ll eat you,” I mutter.

My life has never been as lively as it is now. I spend every day surrounded by people, going from training to meals, to the sick chamber, and back. I interact with friends and strangers every day, and while it gives me that sense of belonging I’ve missed all my life, it also has shocking disadvantages.

Like the constant comments about my body and supposed relationship with Woland. Nienad isn’t the only one who criticizes me. Since Woland is everyone’s master, and I am apparently his, everyone feels entitled to voicing an opinion.

“What hurts the most?” I ask the young chochol man prostrated on a straw bed in the corner of the room.

He turns his beak toward me, looking utterly miserable. His feathers have a unique, creamy color, and his beak is light brown. His hands are pressed to his abdomen, taloned fingers shaking.

“I-it f-feels like s-snakes. C-crawling inside m-me.”

I push his shirt up just in time to see his abdomen bulging under his ribs before it settles again. I lay my palm over his stomach where a human’s navel would be, and something moves underneath, like a pregnant woman’s belly.

My nostrils flare as I take a deep breath. Knowing Woland, it might as well be snakes trapped in the poor boy’s intestines. I cannot fathom how the rebels still worship and adore their leader when he sends at least two a day to the sick chamber with various injuries, but if anything, Woland’s casual cruelty seems to endear him to his followers.

“It shows his magical prowess,” Lutowa told me once after stuffing herself full with an entire roast duck, complete with most bones. “Only the strongest can afford to curse people left and right without a thought. I admire him.”

I once told Wera she was mad for supporting a man like that. I usually keep my mouth shut, but that was a particularly grueling session, one of the first after we burned each other. She tortured every inch of me twice, and as I lay on the floor, bleeding, I couldn’t hold my tongue.

After my breathless insult, she cackled maniacally and said it was a privilege to be cursed by the master.

“All right. I’ll take the pain out into that orb,” I say, pointing at a crystal pain container. “And then, we’ll see about removing those snakes.”

“N-N-Nienad already t-tried that,” the patient gasps out, his face spasming with agony. “J-just p-please m-m-make me s-sleep.”

“No,” I say with grim determination. “I am going to heal you, and magical sleep will interfere with that. Stay still.”

I clap my hands, and ropes lying by the head and foot of the bed rise and wrap themselves around the man’s wrists and ankles. He whimpers, his orange eyes wide with terror.

“Try to breathe and remember that being cursed by the master is a privilege,” I mutter with spite, focusing on his body in front of me. I close my left eye, leaving only the violet one open, and see inside him.

It’s a trick Nienad taught me that only works with my magical, purple eye. With my vision enhanced by a spell, I look through skin and muscles, seeing right into the hurting intestines. An eye glitters, its pupil vertical, then a flash of scales. I grit my teeth, even more determined to end the curse before Woland’s set time. The animal will most likely die once the sun sets.

“Good news,” I say with a fake smile. “It’s only a small viper.”

The chochol moans in agony, and I pull over a stool, perching myself by the bed. I put both hands on his abdomen and lay out my magic in a thin net, covering the entire area affected by the spell.

I immediately sense Woland’s warning. The spell isn’t time-bound—it contains a counter-curse that will hit anyone who breaks it before sunset.

“Bastard,” I grit out through clenched teeth.

When the chochol tenses, crying out as his stomach wobbles with movement, I try taking out his pain. It’s usually a simple procedure and very helpful, letting Nienad operate on people while they hum or talk easily, completely unbothered as long as they don’t see what he’s doing.

The pain won’t leave, though. Woland took care of that, too. For a spell cast out of impulse, this is incredibly complex.

I see movement out of the corner of my eye. I whip that way, but there are no odd shadows, nothing out of the ordinary. Just my idiot pining heart seeing things.

As the patient strains and screams in his ropes, I consider the problem. I don’t know how to stop Woland’s counter-curse from hitting me, and Nienad won’t help me since he made it clear he wants to wait until sunset. I can’t use Woland’s blood pendant as protection, either. I learned a good deal about blood magic since I got here, and it turns out, a small amount of blood can only bear a certain amount of magic.

I’ve already made the pendant hide me from Woland and his shadows. When I sense into the crystal vessel pulsing next to my heart, I feel the strain of so much magic trapped in that crystal bottle of blood.

“Well then,” I mutter through clenched teeth. “I suppose we’ll see what you prepared for the idiot who breaks your spell, devil boy.”

I let my palm hover over the chochol’s bare stomach. “Open.”

He bellows in agony and passes out. Good for him. His stomach cavity opens with a slick sound, and I reach inside, gripping the viper just behind its head. It struggles in my hold, but I pull it out, blood and mucus covering my fist.

The room dims for a moment, tendrils of shadows shooting out from my patient’s innards. They hit my stomach, and I bend in half with a horrible, throbbing pain.

It’s almost as bad as my period.

“Nice try, lover mine,” I grit out, holding on to the slippery viper that tries to bite me. “But I’ve had worse.”

With a murmured spell, I send the viper into the pain orb, and it slithers around the crystal vessel, hissing angrily. Ignoring the gnawing pain in my guts, I focus on my patient, taking out his pain and sending it into another pain orb so that he doesn’t suffer any longer. After I heal his internal injuries, I spell his stomach closed. His heartbeat is strong, breath even. He’ll live.

Bent in half from the pain, I limp over to an empty patient room, locking the door behind me. I undress, swallowing nausea when I see how my bare stomach ripples. The counter-curse is more of the same, then. Nothing original.

This time, I can put my pain away, which I do gladly. I don’t know if I could do this while feeling everything.

I lie down on the bed and turn the ceiling above me reflective, calling forth all the light orbs to light my dancing stomach. “Open,” I command, staring at my reflection.

Without the pain, the procedure is almost mundane, as if I wasn’t digging in my own guts but in someone else’s. The squelching sounds are unpleasant, the touch of smooth, wet viscera disgusting. They are warm and pulse with life as I sort through the endless coils of my intestines.

I find the viper quickly, a small, dappled thing with bright green eyes. It almost slips out of my grasp, but I catch it at the last moment. Some of that battle training paid off, after all. I have great reflexes.

“Hello, darling,” I murmur to the reptilian thing that comes out of my body like a caricature of a baby. “I suppose if he gave me children, they wouldn’t be much different from you, hm?”

Something flickers in my periphery, but I don’t even turn. Here I am, thinking about Woland again, even talking to him. This has to end.

I send the viper into a pain orb and close my wound. When I’m sure everything works properly, I free my pain and let it crawl back into my body. It’s invisible, but I imagine it as a small, furry creature that lives in the pit of my stomach.

When Nienad sees me floating two pain orbs containing my new pets, he shakes his head with a curse.

“Girl, you need to learn to never go above and beyond like this,” he says with a sigh. “People will eat you alive if you offer too much of yourself. Those are fine specimens, though. Can I have them for a potion?”

“No. They are mine.”

The vipers hiss with fury, slithering fast until their scales blur into a hypnotizing dance, distorted through the thick crystal. They aren’t happy being trapped, but it’s their problem. I already know where I’ll put them—each on one side of my gorgeous, blooming belladonna plant.

That way, if Woland ever graces his own room with his presence, he’ll see them right away. It’s a promise, since I have detailed plans of what I’ll do to him once he shows up. He’ll pay for all the humiliating things he’s made me feel.

When I go back to my room in the evening, my two little beasts floating in front of me, I find Lutowa at the table, scraping clean the bottom of an enormous bowl that looks like it was filled with butter. She’s as thin as ever despite devouring enormous quantities of food every day.

“Pretty,” she remarks, looking at my new pets. “Though a bit useless. Their venom isn’t very strong.”

“I delivered them both today,” I say with a straight face. “One is my baby.”

Lutowa laughs, slapping her thin thigh. “Well, bring them up well so they join the rebellion,” she says with a tooth-gapped grin.

“But before I forget, I came to tell you something. About what you asked me today.”