Pele shot him a glare, and Eli removed his arm before she did it for him, hurrying down to the riverbed to stand beside Josef at the edge of Slorn’s circle.
Slorn himself was standing at the center beside the carefully stacked pile of materials that had passed his rigorous examination. His bear face was impossible to read, but his movements were anxious as he motioned his guests closer.
“I’ve finished material preparations for the coat,” he said gruffly. “But before I begin the cloth, I’ll need to take one final measurement.”
“What?” Josef said. “Did the girl miss an inch last night?”
“This measurement can’t be taken with tape,” Slorn said. “This coat doesn’t just hide Nico’s body; it hides the nature of her soul, and what lives inside it. For that, I need to take Nico up into the mountains.” His dark eyes flicked to Josef. “Alone.”
“Why?” Josef said, hand drifting to the Heart’s hilt. “What do you need that you can’t do here?”
“Those are the terms,” Slorn said. “If you don’t like them, you can leave.”
Josef looked supremely uncomfortable, and Eli was about to say something to deflect the tension when Nico stepped forward, her cracked-leather boots soundless on the packed sand. “I’ll go.”
Eli blinked in surprise. “Are you sure?”
Nico just gave him a scathing “of course” look over her shoulder before going to stand at Slorn’s side. The bear-headed man nodded and turned to Pele. “Bring these”-he pointed to the pile of materials at his feet-“to my workroom. Eli, you and your swordsman can put the rest back into storage.”
Eli gaped at him. “What part of our deal says we’re your grunt labor?”
But Slorn had already turned and started walking toward the woods, Nico following close behind him. Pele just grinned and started gathering the chosen materials. A moment later, Josef started picking things up as well. When it was clear he wasn’t going to be able to get out of this one, Eli sighed and started lugging bolts of cloth into his arms, muttering under his breath about Shaper wizards and the dreadful decline in service. Josef, however, was ignoring him. The swordsman picked up the balls of yarn and yards of cloth with only half an eye to what he was grabbing. His real attention was on the trees, where Nico and Slorn had vanished into the forest’s shadow, and nothing Eli said could draw him away from them.
Nico and Slorn moved silently through the forest. They followed no path, but they did not need one. The trees parted for them, the young hardwoods creaking softly as they lifted their branches. Slorn nodded his thanks as he passed. The trees rustled in return but then grew still as Nico walked by.
They walked without speaking until they reached the foot of a steep, leaf-strewn slope. There, Slorn began to climb, his heavy boots moving surely over the slick leaves. Nico followed more cautiously, digging her hands into the wet leaf litter to keep from slipping. They climbed for a long time, and as they got higher, the trees began to change. Slender oaks and birches gave way to heavier, darker trees Nico couldn’t name. They clung to the slope in great knots of root and stone, looming enormous and dark, their black leaves blotting out the sunlight until the ground was a dim patchwork of shadows.
As they climbed in the dark, the need to flit ahead through the shadows was overwhelming. Why, something inside Nico whispered, should she crawl like an animal? She could have been at the top ten times over by now. But Nico forced the feeling down. Such thinking was dangerous. Shadows were the demon’s highway, and moving through them, even for a short jump like this, always made her feel like a shadow herself. Without her coat, it was easy to lose focus, to forget to come out of the dark. Easier for the thing inside her to go places it shouldn’t, the places in her mind where she hoarded her humanity. A cold, clammy feeling began to wrap around her, and Nico shook her head, focusing her attention to a dagger point on Slorn’s back as they trudged on. To stay with Josef, to stay human, she needed to keep her mind clear, sharp. It was only a little longer. She would see what Slorn wanted her to see, and then go back. Easy, simple. She repeated those words again, and deep in the dark behind her eyes, something began to snicker.
Finally Slorn stopped. They were high now, the air cold and heavy with the smell of snow. The strange trees were shorter here, thinner, and Nico caught glimpses of blue sky through the branches. Yet the sun seemed to shy away from them, leaving the thin woods at the top of the slope darker than ever. Everything was quiet. Despite their height, no wind rustled the trees, and no animals moved in their branches. The slope was still, a heavy, unnatural stillness that pressed down on Nico like deep water, and she had the strong feeling she should not be here.
“What you are feeling is the will of the valley,” Slorn said softly, turning to face her, his gruff voice grating against the silence. “We woke it years ago and tasked it with keeping things away.”
Nico looked around, confused. She didn’t see a valley, just the slope and the strange trees. Slorn saw her confusion, and he motioned for her to look at him, his voice becoming deathly serious.
“What I am about to show you,” he said, “you must tell no one, not even your companions. If you cannot promise me this, I cannot make your coat. Will you promise?”
Nico looked up at him hesitantly. No one, not even Josef, had ever asked her to promise something. She thought about it a moment, weighing the weight of a secret against the necessity of her coat and her own growing curiosity, and then she nodded.
Slorn turned and walked up the slope, motioning for her to follow. Nico did, slowly, fighting against the growing certainty that she should turn around and run while she still could. She was so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that she almost didn’t see Slorn’s shape flicker ahead of her, as though he’d walked through a curtain of water. A step later, Nico felt it rush over her as well, intensely cold and strange, as if the air itself was moving to let her pass. It was only for a moment, and then the world around her changed. She was standing beside Slorn, still on the slope, still surrounded by the strange trees, only now she was balanced on the edge of a knife- sharp ledge looking down at a valley that had not been there a moment before. It was a small, narrow thing, barely fifteen feet across and maybe thirty feet long, more like a fissure in the slope than a valley. There were no trees growing nearby, yet the light was somehow dimmer than ever. When she looked down into the cleft, shadows flowed like a river, making it impossible to tell how far down the crack in the stone went.
Nico frowned. She wasn’t used to shadows hiding things from her. But as she leaned forward to get a better look, a familiar, terrifying feeling crashed into her. It took her over, passing through her senseless body like a spear and landing hook first in her mind. No, deeper. This feeling, the sense of grasping claws, of an endless, gaping, ravenous hunger, of being trapped, of being crushed, was deeper than mind or thought. For an eternity, it was all Nico could do to hold on to the tiny flickering light of herself until, inch by inch, the darkness subsided. Rough, warm hands were shaking her shoulders. She didn’t remember falling, but Slorn was helping her to her feet. Already the feeling was fading like a dream, but deep inside her, something curled closer, drinking it in.
“I’m sorry.” Slorn sounded genuinely upset. “I didn’t know it would affect you like that.”
“What is it?” Nico whispered, shrinking away from the ledge. Yet even as she asked, she knew. She knew the demon hunger as well as she knew her own breath. Slorn’s answer was to step aside, and very slowly, Nico looked again. The gully was the same; so were the shadows, but the overwhelming wave did not come back. Relieved, Nico stared into the darkness until it gave way, and the dark bottom of the valley came into focus. It was a dry, dead place. The bottom was sandy, as if water had flowed there once, long ago. Now there was nothing but rocks and the scattered leaves of the dark trees lying dry and brittle on the sand. And at the farthest, deepest end, sitting cross-legged on a large, flat stone, was a woman in a long, black coat.
She sat very still, her head bowed so that her hair, wispy and dark, fell to hide her face. Her hands, skeletally thin and pale, were folded in her lap, while at her wrists, gleaming dully in the dark, a pair of silver manacles trembled. She wore a silver collar at her neck as well, and rings on her ankles. All of them were shaking, buzzing like bees against her skin so that, even this far away, Nico could hear the faint, hollow clatter of rattling metal.
The woman gave no sign that she saw Nico and Slorn on the ridge above her. She sat as still as a doll, the shaking bindings at her wrists the only movement in the gully. Yet the more Nico stared, the more the woman’s very stillness seemed to move and crawl. The cold feeling began to gnaw at Nico again, and she was forced to look away.
“Is she alive?” Nico said, looking back at Slorn.
“Oh yes,” Slorn said, looking down at the woman with a sad look in his dark, animal eyes. “Very much alive.”
“She’s a demonseed.” It scarcely needed to be spoken, but Nico said it anyway, as if having it out clear and
