Page 26 of House of Dusk

SEPHRE

“L et that baby go,” Sephre ordered. She was deeply aware that she had no weapon, but then, Nilos had not drawn his sword either, his hands being full of squirming infant.

“What, just drop the little one onto the cruel earth?” He tsked her. “I’m not going to harm them. Quite the opposite. So long as you don’t interrupt.”

“Put them down on the ground. Carefully .” She brandished one hand, kindling the holy flame. “Then back away.”

“I can’t do that,” said Nilos, far too calmly. “Not if you want the baby to live.”

Timeus joined her, breathing hard but wearing a determined expression. Good lad. He had even thought to grab the oil lamp from the cottage. The tiny flame wouldn’t do much, but it was better than nothing. “Be ready to take the baby,” she told him. “Leave Nilos to me.”

“Indeed,” said Nilos. “We do have unfinished business, you and I. But this is more important.”

He glanced down at the baby, who had stopped wailing, and was actually smiling up at the man. And was that a gurgle ? Sephre huffed.

“On your left,” said Nilos, suddenly.

She barely had time to register the rush of movement, the sudden stink of decay, the burning eyes, before the skotos was in her face.

Not a dead snake this time, but some other animal.

Maybe it had been a deer once? A goat? Now, it was a stomach-churning slither of bones and weeping flesh, hide mottled with rot.

It had too many limbs. Four of pale bone, four more of slithering darkness. The black tentacles reached for her.

Sephre flung her handful of flame, but the movement was stilted.

She’d been too focused on Nilos. The golden fire spattered across the stones in front of the skotos, merely an inconvenience.

It leapt to one side, coiling down. The long jaws split, lined with needle-fine teeth.

Her own death waited there. Desperately, Sephre clawed her hands. Only flame could save her.

Crack ! Something smashed into the dark maw. And suddenly the skotos was ablaze, flames boiling from its mouth. Shards of pottery fell to the ground. Dimly, Sephre recognized them as a broken oil lamp.

She lanced her own golden flames at the monster, but it was already crumpling, bone turning gray. As it fell to ash, she glanced to Timeus. “Well done.”

For a moment she was afraid he might faint. His skin had gone gray, his eyes enormous. But her words seemed to free him. He gulped, then managed a wan smile.

“Yes,” said Nilos. “You have my thanks as well.”

Sephre whirled back to face the insufferable man. “What is this?” she demanded. No more games. No more lies. Only answers, even if she had to rip them out of him word by word. “Why are there skotoi everywhere you go?”

“Because they seek the same thing I do.”

“Speak plainly,” she snapped. The flames coiled around her fingers, and a brighter flame filled her chest.

“Easier to show you.” He spared a moment to tickle the baby’s belly, loosening the swaddling, revealing a plump brown shoulder dusted with darker freckles. Then he traced one hand lightly over the skin.

Sephre gasped. It was as if Nilos had dipped his finger in ink. The lines bloomed beneath his touch, one by one, until they formed a faceted ring. The same mark she had seen on Iola, on Castor.

Nilos made a face at the baby, who began to gurgle in delight.

“What are you—?” Sephre broke off, casting a hand over her face against a sudden burst of light. Lines of brilliance blazed against her eyelids, as if she were staring up into the stars themselves.

“There. That’s better, isn’t it?”

Sephre swore, blinking to clear the dazzle from her eyes. At first she thought nothing had changed. Then she saw it. Or rather, she realized what she was no longer seeing. The mark had vanished, as if it had never been.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“Saved a life. Possibly more.” Nilos gave her a feral grin. “What have you done?”

Bodies heaped like trash. The clatter of blades, beating against shields in triumph. Blue eyes, begging her. Help me, Seph.

Sephre wrenched her thoughts back to the present. To Nilos, looking at her as if he could somehow see her thoughts, a trace of something like pity in his eyes.

“You don’t remember, do you?” he asked, still with that infuriating note of sympathy.

No. She did remember. That was the problem. She remembered all of it. Even after nine years hiding away from the world, losing herself in prayer, in silence, in her garden. Oh, how she remembered.

“Catch,” said Nilos, then tossed the baby at her.

She lunged, arms outstretched, barely managing to quench her flaming palms before a bundle of wriggling, squishy baby smacked into them. Fates! Was he mad?

She shoved the baby at Timeus. “Go. Get away! Keep the baby safe!”

The novice fled, gray tunic flapping, his long legs eating up the earth. In a moment he was gone down the trail.

Sephre spun back to Nilos, who had taken her distraction as an opportunity to retreat toward the far side of the clearing, where the trail continued. “Oh no you don’t!” she snarled, flinging a handful of flame.

The yellow sparks burst against the stones just in front of the man. “That’s far enough, baby-tosser.”

He faced her again, folding his arms over his chest. “You have the child back. What more do you want?”

“I want some answers.” And Fates help her, she was tempted to burn them out of him. “What did you just do? Why did you put that mark on that baby?”

“I didn’t. I removed it.”

“Where did it come from, then? The Serpent is dead.”

Nilos’s dark brows arched. She could see him better now, in the warm sunlight. He held himself still, but it was the sort of stillness that promised violence. She thought he must be closer to forty than thirty. Or even older. He knew his own power. Confident, but not arrogant.

“And what does a sister of Stara Bron know of the Serpent?” Nilos made a tsking noise. “I thought he was your enemy. Aren’t you afraid of corruption?”

“Knowledge isn’t corruption,” she said.

He arched a dubious brow. “No? Well, then I’ll answer what I can. The Serpent is dead, yes. But not gone completely. His power was shattered into fragments, scattered throughout the labyrinth of the dead. Like seeds in a fallow field, waiting to sprout.”

She didn’t like where this was going. “Sprout how, exactly?”

“By binding to one of the spirits that passes through the labyrinth. And being reborn, with them, into the mortal world.”

“So you’re saying that baby was carrying a piece of the Serpent’s power?”

“They were. I merely awakened it. Made it visible, so that I could claim it.”

“Why?” she demanded. “What are you?”

“I told you what I am.”

She scoffed, “A story collector? And I’m the Winged Architect.” She licked her lips, felt the comforting flare of the flames in her palms. Flames that could burn away all that was corrupt. “You’re trying to bring back the Serpent.”

“Yes.” He said it simply, without pride or shame. He might’ve been telling her he was going to buy fish at the market.

“Why?”

Sephre hadn’t planned to ask that. The reason shouldn’t matter. The Serpent had nearly destroyed the world, once. There was no answer Nilos could give that would sway her. But apparently she was too curious for her own good.

“The world needs the Serpent,” said Nilos. “The same way it needs the moon, and the sun, and the sea. Things are unbalanced. Tilting into chaos. You can’t just remove one of the first gods and not expect something else to try to take its place.”

“And that’s your excuse? For murder?”

“I didn’t kill that shepherd,” he said. “Like you, I was too late. Someone else found him first. A power that doesn’t want the Serpent to return.”

“He died of snakebite,” she protested.

“No,” he said. “He was killed by a skotos in the guise of a serpent. Because someone wants you—and your order—to believe that the Serpent is behind this evil.”

She didn’t want to believe him. But unlike the baby, the corpses still had their marks. So perhaps he wasn’t to blame, not for that. And then there were the words of the skotos that had attacked her. To sto p return. It made no sense to her then. It made no sense now.

“I don’t trust you,” she said.

He smiled then, a slice of white teeth. “Nor should you. My goals are not yours. But even so, you’d do well to listen to my warning. The skotoi hunt those who are marked. Their master does not want the Serpent to return.”

“Their master is the Serpent.”

“Not any longer. They’ve found a new lord. And he will do anything it takes to prevent me from claiming the fragments. As you’ve seen. They would have killed the child. And...” He watched her closely, letting the words hang between them.

She found herself brushing a hand over her arm, tracing the freckles that spattered her skin. She didn’t feel as if she had a fragment of a broken god of death inside her, but then, how would she know? The skotos at Stara Bron had hunted her. As had that skotos-serpent, in the shelter last night.

“They can sense it, just as I do,” said Nilos. “I could awaken it now. Claim it. Set you free.”

For a moment it sent her heart leaping. It was this alien thing, this taint that had corrupted her. Lured her into enlisting. Led her to that island. Made her a part of that horror. It wasn’t her fault.

But that was too easy an answer. Like excusing a man who beat his child because he was drunk. She’d made her choices freely.

And there was no way she was letting this man put his hands on her. Even if she believed that he wasn’t to blame for the deaths, that didn’t mean she was going to help him restore an ancient death god that had been destroyed for very good reasons.

“No.” The flames snapped from her palms, a warning.

But he only nodded, as if he’d been expecting the answer. “Very well. But know that it makes you a target. They will come for you, Sephre.”

She bared her teeth, the fire coiling so bright it was nearly white. “I should burn you to ash.”