Page 73 of Inferno
Fuck. Yorin looked over at Nerik as well, still struggling to figure out how his world had come so undone in such a short time. Only a week ago, he’d been as naïve as everyone else in town – not just about Nerik’s true identity, but about his own feelings for him. “I love him,” Yorin admitted. Gods above, his heart would have been pounding to make such a public statement even if Nerik had been nothing more than an ordinary human. Only a handful of people knew that they’d kissed. No one knew how much further things had gone between them. “I’m arguing for his life not on the basis of anything I know, but on the basis of how I feel. I love him. I trust him. And I… I have no fucking clue what to do about the fact that he’s a demon, but… At the very least, shouldn’t he have the opportunity to explain himself?” The plea was entirely heartfelt, and every word was the truth. He still hadn’t really figured out his own feelings about the gate, and what they should do about the thousands of refugees on the other side, and the fact that Nerik had murdered a man, and that he was mating with a group of females on a regular basis. There were parts of the situation that made Yorin’s stomach churn. But he loved Nerik. And that was grounds enough for him to work through the rest of it.
Renfold took a long, hard look at Nerik. He stood quietly, and no one dared interrupt him. Over the past few months, Renfold had earned a reputation for being entirely reasonable, and far more open minded than his predecessor, at the same time as dealing very strictly with anyone who tried to push him the wrong way. So Yorin waited. Henrick waited. Stanley waited. The entire town stood and waited for the pronouncement of a man with a wealth of wisdom and who held the admiration of nearly every person in the city.
“I’m sorry, Yorin,” Renfold said finally. “But the answer is no. Nerik dies tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Well, at least Yorin had a solid excuse for loitering around Nerik’s cage now. No more needing to pretend he was only interested in the unicorn, or ‘chatting’ with his companions.
But the downside – the huge, overwhelming, dark and immovable downside – was that there was no longer any hope of reasoning with Renfold, nor of staging a sneaky escape and getaway. The guards would be more alert than ever for troublemakers, and any suspicion – if there was any suspicion to be had – would fall directly on Yorin, or on anyone else who had a close friendship with Nerik.
Renfold had suggested twice that Yorin go home. There was no point in dwelling on the inevitable, he’d said. More likely, he just wanted the square less crowded and some of the spectacle dispersed.
But the glare Yorin had sent Renfold’s way after the second suggestion had shut him up, and now, Yorin and the group of Chalandrians lingered awkwardly, uttering occasional curse words, but coming up with nothing more useful than that.
Yorin could hear plenty of muttering around him about his relationship with the ‘demon’. News that he’d been seen kissing the man had spread like wildfire, and now there was speculation about what other activities they might have been getting up to behind closed doors. A week ago, he would have found being the centre of so much attention mortifying. Now, however, he couldn’t summon enough energy to care. These people were blind and naïve, and nothing they said was of any consequence.
Half an hour passed without much change. Yorin sighed, and then frowned, as he detected a faint scent of smoke in the air. Odd. There was a steady wind coming from the north, which was usually enough to clear away the dregs of any cooking fires. Not many people had fires going in the middle of the day, after all.
Maybe it was just his imagination. Maybe it was Nerik, emitting the scent from his internal fire, and Yorin simply hadn’t noticed it the last time he’d seen Nerik in his infernal form.
“You’d best say your goodbyes,” Gosta muttered, sidling up to Yorin. “Not much else for it, now.”
“How about you fuck off,” Yorin snapped at her. It couldn’t be over. There had to be some way out of this that they weren’t seeing. Try reasoning with Renfold again? Gather a group of townsfolk to speak up for Nerik?
Nerik, meanwhile, had said nothing, seeming resigned to his fate, and Yorin hadn’t yet worked up the courage to ask how he was doing, terrified that Nerik would tell him to go home, to leave him to suffer this alone.
Far off in the distance, a bell ringing distracted Yorin from his thoughts, but he tuned the sound out. Maybe there weren’t enough Chalandrians to convince Renfold to change his mind, but surely there were some humans who could be persuaded to join their cause? Some humans who were capable of looking beyond Nerik’s exterior to the warm and kind-hearted soul inside?
The bell continued to ring, and as it did, it drew more attention from the crowd in the square. People left off staring at Nerik and began muttering about the sound instead.
“Is that the fire alarm?” someone wondered aloud.
“Someone’s house is on fire,” someone else decided – based on nothing more than the sound of the bell. The noise was coming closer, though, and growing louder as it approached. Heavy hoofbeats echoed beneath the clanging, and everyone turned to look as a fire cart thundered into the square. There was a young woman standing on the rear platform, ringing the bell as if her life depended on it.
The horses had barely pulled to a stop when she leapt off the platform, sprinting over to Renfold, while screaming at the crowd to get out of the way. “Fire in the forest,” she announced breathlessly, shoving a letter at Renfold before bending over to gasp in a few deep breaths. “Five unicorns came through the gate, with a bunch of those little red demons. They busted through the lines of soldiers. The warriors killed one of them, but not the others. They’ve set fire to the forest.”
Renfold scanned the letter, which presumably said the same thing, then muttered, “The gods have mercy on us.”
“It’s spreading fast,” the young woman reported. “They’re doing it deliberately, having the unicorns run up and down from the battlefield to the old Langford cottage.” She glanced at the sky, where dark plumes of smoke were already starting to drift over the city. “It’s heading straight for town.”
It would be, too. The wind had been blowing steadily from the north all day, getting stronger in the last hour or so. And in late summer, the forest would be rich with debris, dry and crisp and eagerly ready to burn.
Why would five unicorns come through all at once?Stanley asked, aghast at the news.We’ve told them time and again that I can only take one every two days.
Maybe they couldn’t afford to wait that long, Rimdolen suggested, a stark assessment of the desperation of the refugees. Yorin could only imagine the difficulties they were facing on the far side of the gate.
More likely, they’re deliberately using the fire as a way to distract the warriors,Gosta said.Create a diversion, then a large crowd can make a run for the gate. Or maybe they’ve got a ragion they’re trying to get through and they need to give him time to get away.
Or maybe they just hate humans and want to burn the city to the ground,Kit said, a suggestion that carried surprisingly little resentment, given that her home, too, was here in Minia.
Angering humans is never going to advance the Chalandrian cause. Yorin turned around, surprised to hear Nerik speaking. He’d said nothing since he’d admitted to Renfold who he really was.There are too many humans, and burning the city will only give them more fuel for their hatred. This strategy is a foul one that is only going to make things worse for us all.
While they’d been having their conversation, Renfold had been busy snapping orders, sending for the three other fire carts in the city and drawing a hasty map on the back of the letter, to throw some kind of strategy together.
“Four fire carts are never going to be enough to stop a forest fire,” Bril said, loud enough for Yorin to overhear him. And for a number of other people to do so as well.
“We’re going to lose the city,” someone declared.