Page 49 of Quicksilver

Kingfisher grabbed me, his hand closing around my wrist. I'd been about to poke the powder inside the crucible with my fingertip, but...

“Where you come from, does a smith poke a finger into a crucible right after it comes out of a blazing furnace, Osha?” Fisher demanded.

I worked my jaw, feeling absolutely, completely, devastatingly stupid. If I'd done that back in Elroy's workshop, he'd have screamed at me until he was hoarse and then banished me from the shop for a whole week. I wouldn't have even been allowed to approach the crucible without wearing a pair of heat-resistant gloves. Here, I wasn't thinking straight. I was distracted. And the reason for my distraction had just saved me from potentially losing my whole hand. My cheeks burned hotter than the fire in the hearth. “No. They donot.”

Kingfisher released me. He said nothing further on the matter, but the hard, annoyed look he sent my way said plenty.Be morecareful,Osha.“The bone was Fae,” he said after a moment. “For centuries, our kind has tried to understand how the relics that allow us to travel through the quicksilver were made. There have been many theories over the years, but that's all they've ever been. Theories. With the quicksilver sleeping, wehaven't been able to experiment or put any of those theories to the test. But now that you're here...”

“You want me to wake the quicksilver so you can try and bind things to it and see if you can make a relic out of it.”

“Exactly.” He grinned. It was the first real, full smile I'd seen from him and it was terrifying. Not because of how evil it made him look. Far from it. He looked so much younger than he did when he was scowling. He lookedhappy, and that was what really fucked with me. It was easy hating Kingfisher when he was being a bastard, but in this moment, he appeared very un-bastard-like, and that was...confusing.

I didn't have the time or the inclination to pick apart that confusion right now. It didn't matter. I had more important things to worry about. “You're using bone to see if fusing the quicksilver with biological material will trick the pool into thinking the living creature passing through it is a part of it?” I asked.

Kingfisher rocked back on his heels, his eyebrows hiking up his forehead. “Yes, actually. That's precisely what I want to do.”

“Well, all right, then. Let's do it.”

“Really? After yesterday, I expected that you'd be reluctant to try activating the quicksilver again.”

“I'm not happy about it, no. But if it means that we ca—OH!Holy gods!”

We weren’t alone.

My hand closed around a pair of tongs. I clutched them like a dagger, leaping forward, adopting a defensive stance. My pulse hammered in my fingers and my toes and everywhere else it possibly could. In an instant, I was ready to fight, but Kingfisher moved quicker than me. He became a blur of black smoke. Cold wind ripped at my hair, and then he was gone. He rematerialized on the other side of the workshop, murder in his eyes, that lethal black sword gripped in both hands, dripping smoke.

“Whatisthat?” I stabbed my finger at the hideous thing crouching next to the hearth. It hissed at me, baring its teeth, showing the whites of its eyes.

Kingfisher took one look at the creature and straightened out of his defensive stand, cursing in a language I didn't understand. “What’swrongwith you? It's a fox! Gods, I thought you were about to get your face torn off.”

“Fox? What's afox?”

Kingfisher muttered darkly under his breath as he went and stood over the strange animal. It had a thick, furry coat, white as the snow out of the window, and glassy black eyes the color of jet. It cowered, pressing its body against the stone floor, small, black-tipped ears pinned back against its tiny skull as it watched Kingfisher raise his sword over its head.

“Just so you know,” the warrior growled, “transporting like that when you have a headache is the worst.” He brought the blade swinging down.

“NO! STOP! What are you doing?”

He drew the weapon to one side just in the nick of time. “Graceless fuckinggods,human! Stop fucking yelling!”

“I don't want you to kill it! It just surprised me, that's all!”

“It's a fox! A pest! This is probably what was living in the hearth before we ripped that den out. They steal food from the kitchens.”

The creature wasn't nearly as hideous as I'd first thought. I darted forward, stooping low, covering the little thing with my body, gripped by a sudden remorse. “You definitely can't kill it then. Not if we destroyed its home.”

“It's going to bite you,” Kingfisher said.

“No, it won't. It—”

It bit me.

Its teeth were sharp as needles. With its jaws clamped around my forearm, the little fox chittered and squealed, makingall kinds of strange sounds. It seemed like it wanted to run away and hide, but it couldn't quite figure out how tostopbiting me.

Kingfisher set the tip of his sword against the stone at his feet and casually leaned his weight against it, watching the scene play out with no obvious feeling one way or another. “They carry all kinds of diseases. Lung rot,” he said. “A flakey skin thing, too? Some kind of fungal infection, I think.”

“Ow! It's almost down to the bone, Fisher.Helpme!”

Kingfisher pushed away from the sword, standing up straight. He looked up at the rafters overhead, squinting. “This...is a learning experience, I think. There are always consequences to our actions. Your new furry bracelet is a consequence of human weakness. Wear it with pride.”