Daughter of Smoke and Bone

There are guerrilla armies that make little boys kill their own families. Such acts rip out the soul and make space for beasts to grow inside. Armies need beasts, don’t they? Pet beasts, to do their terrible work! And the worst is, it’s almost impossible to retrieve a soul that has been ripped away. Almost.” He gave Akiva a keen look. “But it can be done, if ever… if ever you decide to go looking for yours.”

Fury flashed through Akiva. Sparks rained from his wings, to be borne by breezes over the rooftops of Marrakesh. “Why would I do that? Where I come from, old man, a soul’s as useless as teeth to the dead.”

“Spoken, I think, by one who still remembers what it was like to have one.”

Akiva did remember. His memories were knives, and he was not pleased to have them turned against him. “You should worry about your own soul, not mine.”

“My soul is clean. I’ve never killed anyone. But you, oh you. Look at your hands.”

Akiva didn’t take the bait, but he did curl his fingers reflexively into fists. The bars were etched along the tops of his fingers: Each represented an enemy slain, and his hands bore a terrible tally.

“How many?” Izil asked. “Do you even know, or have you lost count?”

Gone entirely was the quivering madman Akiva had hauled up off the cobbles of the plaza. Izil was sitting up now, or as near as he could come to it, encumbered as he was by Razgut, who looked back and forth in distress between his human mule and the angel he hoped had come to save him.

In fact, Akiva knew the precise number of kills recorded on his hands. “What about you?” he threw back at Izil. “How many teeth, over the years? I don’t suppose you kept count.”

“Teeth? Ah, but I only took teeth from the dead!”

“And you sold them to Brimstone. You know what that makes you? A collaborator.”

“Collaborator? They’re just teeth. He makes necklaces, I saw him. Just teeth on strings!”

“You think he’s making necklaces? Fool. You’ve had everything to do with our war, but you were too stupid to see it. You tell me that battling with monsters has made me a monster? Doing business with devils, what has that made you?”

Izil stared at him, mouth hanging open, then stated in a rush of sudden understanding, “You know. You know what he does with the teeth.”

Bitterly, Akiva breathed, “Yes, I know.”

“Tell me—”

“Shut up!” Akiva commanded as the final tether of his patience snapped. “Tell me where to find her. Your life is nothing to me. Do you understand?” He heard the brutality in his own voice and saw himself as if from without, looming over these poor, broken creatures. What would Madrigal think if she could see him now? But she couldn’t, could she? And that was the point.

Madrigal was dead.

The old man was right. He was a monster, but if he was, it was because of the enemy. Not just a lifetime at war — that hadn’t managed to make Akiva what he was. It was one act that had done this, one unspeakable act that he could never forget or forgive, and for which, in vengeance, he had vowed to destroy a kingdom. He hissed. “Do you think I can’t make you talk?”

To which Izil replied with a smile, “No, angel. I don’t think you can.” And then he pitched himself off the minaret, carrying Razgut with him, to fall two hundred feet and shatter against the roof tiles below.

19 NOT WHO, BUT WHAT

The cathedral conducted Karou’s scream and splintered it into a symphony of screams that echoed and collided so the vast vaulted space was alive with her voice. And then it wasn’t. The chimaera silenced her with a backhand and she skidded off the stone slab, knocking down the metal crook and thurible, which sent up a clangor. He sprang down after her, and she thought he would tear out her throat with his teeth, his face was so close to hers, but then… he was dragged back as if plucked, and thrust away.

And Brimstone was there.

Karou had never been so happy to see him. “Brimstone…” she choked out, and then stopped. Her relief faltered. His crocodile pupils closed to black slashes, as they always did when he was angry, but if Karou thought she had seen him angry before, this was to be an education in rage.

The moment froze as he mastered his shock at seeing her there, while for Karou, an eternity revolved in the space between heartbeats.

“Karou?” He snarled his incredulity, lips peeling back in a terrible grimace. His breath, fast, hissed through his teeth as he reached for her, claws flexed.

Behind him, the white-haired wolf chimaera demanded, “Who is that?”

Brimstone growled. “That is no one.”

Karou thought maybe she should run.

Too late.

A lunge, and Brimstone caught her arm right over the blood-tinged bandage of her last angel slash, and crushed it in his grip. Light trembled behind Karou’s eyelids and she gasped. He grabbed her other arm and picked her up, raising her so that her face was just inches from his own. Her bare feet paddled for purchase and found none. Her arms were pinned, his claws piercing her skin. She couldn’t move. She could only stare back into his eyes, which had never in her life seemed so alien, so animal, as they did now.

“Give her to me,” said the man.

Brimstone said, “You need rest, Thiago. You should still be sleeping. I’ll take care of her.”

“Take care of her? How?” Thiago demanded.

“She won’t trouble us again.”

Peripherally, Karou saw the familiar shape of Twiga with his long, hunched neck on sloping shoulders, and she turned to him, but the look on his face was worse than Brimstone’s, because it was both appalled and afraid, as if he were about to witness something that he would rather not see. Karou started to panic.

“Wait,” she gasped, writhing in Brimstone’s grasp. “Wait, wait—”

But he was already moving, carrying her to the stairs, taking them fast, in leaps and lunges. He wasn’t careful with her, and she felt what it must be like for a doll in a toddler’s hands, whipped around corners and drubbed against walls, dropped and tossed like an inanimate thing. Sooner than she would have thought possible — or maybe she lost consciousness for a time — they were back at the shop door, and he hurled her through it. She didn’t land on her feet but went sprawling, catching a chair with her cheek so that a firework detonated behind her eyes.

Brimstone slammed the door behind him and loomed over her. “What were you thinking?” he thundered. “You could not have done worse. Foolish child! And you!” He spun on Yasri and Issa, who had rushed out of the kitchen and were gaping, horrified. They flinched. “If we were going to keep her here, we said, there would be rules. Inviolable rules. Did we not all agree?”

Issa attempted an answer. “Yes, but—”

But Brimstone had rounded on Karou again and grabbed her up off the floor. “Did he see your hands?” he demanded. She had never heard his voice raised to this pitch. It was like stone grating against stone. She felt it in her skull. He was gripping her arms so hard. A whiteness washed across her vision, and she feared she was going to faint.

“Did he?” he repeated, louder.

She knew that no was the right answer, but she couldn’t lie. She gasped, “Yes. Yes!”

He gave a kind of howl that chilled her worse than anything had during this whole terrible night. “Do you know what you’ve done?”

Karou did not know.

“Brimstone!” Yasri squawked. “Brimstone, she’s injured!” The parrot-woman’s arms were flapping like wings. She tried to pry the Wishmonger’s hands from Karou’s wound, but he shook her off.

He dragged Karou to the front door and wrenched it open, shoving her ahead of him into the vestibule.