Page 21 of House of Dusk

“We seek out evil and destroy it,” answered Timeus, proudly. “So that the spirits of the dead can be reborn.”

“Ah.” Nilos tilted his head. He drew something from beneath his cloak, making her tense.

But it was only a lump of wood. He began to scrape at it with his short dagger, paring away curls of wood.

“And how do you know these evils?” he asked.

“It would be a handy trick, to be able to spot it so clearly, like a bit of dung on the road.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Timeus. “Skotoi are terrible monsters of shadow and blight. They smell of death and have horrible uncanny eyes, and if they touch you, they can consume your spirit!” He spoke with the relish of someone who had never actually seen a skotos.

Perhaps realizing this, he turned to Sephre.

“Sister Sephre would know better than I, though. I’m only a novice. ”

Sephre gritted her teeth. She did not care about impressing this man.

“Was that always your calling in this life, Sister Sephre?” Nilos asked, his green eyes fixed on her. “To destroy evil?”

Sephre had kept her handful of flames kindled, to provide light within the barn. It was dark outside, well past sundown, and the rain still drizzled down, veiling moon and stars. Now the sparks flared with her irritation. Why had he asked? What did he care?

“No,” she answered, truthfully. “Or maybe yes. I don’t know. And you?” She was here to find out this man’s secrets, not to share her own. “You carry a sword.”

“Yes.”

“Are you a soldier?”

“No.”

She hadn’t thought so. “So what, then?” She nodded to the carving, to his blade slicing away shards of wood, revealing some sort of four-legged beast. “A wood carver?”

He leaned back, his eyes half-lidded, still watching her. “I gather stories.”

She snorted. “A bard who carries a sword instead of a lyre?”

“Not a bard. I collect stories. I don’t share them. Most of the time.”

What did that mean? She was tired of his tricksy answers. Maybe it would be best to speak plainly. Did you murder Iola? Do you know what happened to Castor?

And then it happened. So fast she had barely time to gasp. Nilos, shoving himself forward, one arm lashing out toward her. A flash of his dagger, reflecting her flames.

Even in the prime of her training, Sephre doubted she could have moved so quickly.

Like a crack of lightning across the sky.

One moment, lounging back against the straw.

The next moment there beside her, so close she could feel the heat of his arm, as he drew it from the shadows.

A dead serpent hung limp from the tip of his blade.

The sight of it made her belly flip. Not just dead. Rotted . Slippery white bones showing through between tattered scales. A waft of fetid air nearly made her gag. Timeus pressed a gray sleeve to his nose, coughing.

“Here, sister,” said Nilos. “Something more for you to bless .”

The flames between her fingers had gone hot and hungry, burning away her initial shock. She held them out. Nilos shook the uncanny thing gingerly into her burning hands, where it flared once, then fell to ash.

Timeus gave a choked gasp. “Look!”

For a heartbeat, a ribbon of something darker seemed to hang in the air, where the serpent had been. Two slitted glints of purple flared. Then it was gone, and the flames in Sephre’s palms subsided.

“What was that?” croaked Timeus. “That wasn’t a normal snake!”

Nilos had returned to lounging against his hay bale, looking completely unruffled, as if deadly demon snakes invaded his picnics every day. “You should know. If all that was true, about the ashdancers fighting evil demons from the underworld.”

“Is that what it was?” Timeus looked even more alarmed. “A skotos?”

“How did you know it was there?” Sephre demanded, glowering at Nilos.

He shrugged, tucking the carving and dagger away. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“A lot of practice fighting demons that no one has seen in centuries?”

“Would you rather I’d let it attack?”

She’d rather he jump into the abyss. It was obvious he knew more than he was telling her. But he had—possibly—saved her life. “No,” she said, sourly. “Thank you.”

“You owe me nothing.” The words felt heavy, resonant. Nilos settled himself deeper into the hay, tugging his cloak tighter. He leaned his head back, eyes already closed. “Good night, Sister Sephre. Brother Timeus.”

Good night? That was it? He was just going to go to sleep?

“What if there are more skotoi?” asked Timeus, and for once she was glad of his questions.

“There aren’t,” said Nilos, eyes still closed.

Timeus goggled at him. “How do you know?”

The only answer was a faint snore. Sephre gritted her teeth.

It would serve the man right if she grabbed his sword and took him prisoner.

Except that she doubted she was capable.

He had moved so fast . If he’d wished her ill, he could’ve simply let the skotos bite her.

She could guess, now, what had happened to Castor, Iola, all the others.

But why? Had they simply had the bad luck to stumble on one of these serpent-skotoi? Or had the creatures hunted them?

And she herself had nearly been one of them. Another marker on Halimede’s map. But instead Nilos had saved her.

She sat in silence, yellow flames flickering and snapping in her hand.

It was the same sort of frustration she’d felt when she used to play pebbles with Zander.

No matter how she tried to capture his pieces, he always managed to slip out of her grasp.

But Zander had been her friend, her trusted companion, a fellow soldier who had been at her side through the very worst of times. Nilos was none of those things.

She did not trust him.

“Sleep, Brother Timeus,” she told the boy.

He glanced toward Nilos. “Are you sure?”

She nodded, and he dutifully curled himself into his corner. Trusting her.

Sephre propped herself upright with a sigh. She’d spent plenty of sleepless nights. Not just during the war, but at Stara Bron, when she had bubbling tinctures to oversee, and nightmares to avoid.

She cupped her hand, willing the flames to subside, drawing the darkness in.

· · ·

Her first sluggish thought was that the captain was going to murder her for falling asleep on watch.

Then she remembered that, no, she was the captain now, so she would have to murder herself.

Sephre blinked, groggily, and saw the dim outlines of a stone structure, smelled straw and a faint whiff of something sweet. Figs.

Then, finally, she remembered herself fully, and shoved herself upright. Her muscles protested, weary from a day of travel and unused to sleeping on the ground. But it was nothing to the pounding in her skull. Furies’ tits, she hadn’t drunk that much.

Her mouth tasted like old cheese. And now her heart was galloping too, because the gray morning light made plain that something was missing from the barn.

Nilos. The man was gone.

Timeus lay curled in his bed of straw. She watched him for a moment, until she caught the rise and fall of his shoulder. Sleeping. Safe. A tiny knot of tension in her released.

Wincing, she ran her tongue over her teeth, tasting the lingering sweetness of the wine. How much had she drunk? Surely not enough to knock her senseless.

But there was something else. A sharp herbal note clinging to the back of her tongue. Not mint. Not chamomile.

She swore as it came to her, finally. Dreamfast .

Fates, she was a fool. She’d doled it out often enough to others at the temple, if they were having trouble sleeping.

She’d trusted the holy flame to purify the wine, but dreamfast was no poison.

An infusion of the leaves was, however, more than enough to ensure a heavy slumber.

Especially combined with wine. And the weariness of a long day.

“Timeus,” she called. “Time to get up.”

A muffled groan came from the novice. “Is it time for morning devotions already?”

“No,” she said. “It’s time to chase down some answers.”

· · ·

“But why would he do it?” asked Timeus. “He didn’t take any of our things. Not that we have much, of course, but if he were a thief he might’ve taken our cloaks. And if he meant worse, he could’ve slit our throats while we slept.”

Yes, and it galled her to admit it. “You don’t drug someone out of kindness and good intent,” she said, quickening her pace.

They were nearly to Kessely. She could see the outline of structures above.

Several small, blocky houses clung to the rough ridge, bare to the bright blue sky that had swept in to clear the last shreds of the storm.

Like many of the villages in these parts, the folk of Kessely had built their homes in the heights, in memory of a more violent age, when Helisson had been a fractured land of city-states, and no peace had held back the Scarthian war bands.

She led the way up the last of the switchbacks. In the village, they were greeted by a man hoisting water from a well.

“A stranger? Yes, I spoke with him, an hour past or so,” he said.

“Said he was looking for friends, had come with a gift for their newborn babe. I sent him up the old hunter’s path.

” The man pointed to a trail that wound away into a bit of scrubby wilderness, still higher up the hillside.

“Charis birthed her first last month. Fine, healthy child.”

Sephre thanked him, then tugged Timeus after her, jogging now. “What does he want with a baby?”

“He didn’t seem like a bad person,” said Timeus.

Sephre gritted her teeth. The boy was impossibly naive. “You mean he didn’t have glowing eyes and smell like death and cackle at us with malevolent glee?”

Silence then. When she glanced back, the novice had his head down, focusing on the narrow, rough trail.

Well, he had to face the truths of the world someday. Life wasn’t a story like the Golden Boar, full of handsome heroes and loathsome villains. They called her a hero, and look what she had done.

“There’s a house,” panted Timeus.

Sephre surged onward, ignoring the tearing of her quick breath, the heat that burned in her chest. Inside, she found a woman, curled on the floor as if asleep.

And she was, in fact, asleep. Not dead, thank the Fates. There was another woman a few feet away. A heavy staff, the sort used by shepherds in these parts, lay tumbled beside her, as if she’d been holding it.

Fighting back, against a green-eyed stranger who came for her child?

But there was no sign of the baby. Or Nilos. A fist of panic clenched Sephre’s chest.

“Listen!” said Timeus suddenly, turning toward the door. “Do you hear that?”

In the distance, a thin wail.

Sephre dashed back outside, following the cry.

The trail that had led them to the house continued higher, winding past a stand of ancient olives.

She pelted past the trees, around a sharp turn of stone, climbing higher and higher, until finally she came out to a wide, flat shelf of stone, the blue sky a bright bowl above.

And halted.

Nilos stood before her, a wriggling bundle in his arms. He regarded her with annoyance over the soft curls of the baby’s head. “This would have been so much easier if you’d just drunk all the wine.”