Worldsoul

in the sandy earth, around the side of one of the beehive huts. The place smelled of sunwarmed earth and mimosa; the trees nodded above the stone, humming with insects.

“Ator?” The word fell into the silent air. Gremory paused before entering the hut. “Are you there?”

It seemed too still for there to be a human presence, but then a voice croaked, “I’m here.” It took Shadow’s eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness, but when they did, she saw an old man sitting on a pallet on the floor. His hands were twisted and arthritic; his head was bowed beneath a crown of long, yellowing white hair which fell in knots and snarls down his back. Then he looked up and she saw his face was young. A terrible scar ran down from the left side of his forehead to the right side of his jaw. She would guess it was from a scimitar slash.

“Ator,” Gremory said again. His face held a weary resignation.

“Demon. It’s you.”

“I’ve brought a guest.”

His eyes were yellow, too, like a jackal’s, and hot. His gaze lingered on her; she could feel it through the veil and did not like it. It held a kind of bitterness, an amusement, something more.

“Not a demon.”

“No. I’m human. I’m from the city. I-” She had been about to say an alchemist, an assassin, but stopped just in time. She was not prone to spilling her secrets like water out of a cracked pot, so what was it about this unkempt person that had nearly drawn them out of her? He smiled, charmingly, but his teeth were blocky, with sharp incisors.

“My name is Ator.”

“I gathered that.”

“Tea?”

“Why not?” the demon said. She slid easily down to her heels. The black robe billowed around her like a personal night. After a moment, Shadow, too, sat. Ator poured a thin stream of brown-gold tea from a pot on the hearth, adding mint to the glasses. It was sharp, refreshing. Shadow listened while Gremory and the man talked, discussing people and places whose names she did not know in a kind of staccato, sparring shorthand. It had the tenor of a fencing match; Shadow felt that it would be wiser not to play. Wiser, in fact, not to open her mouth at all, given that Ator had already demonstrated an ability to worm information out of her. When they had finished the tea, Gremory stood.

“We’ll stay. For a few hours, then move on.”

“As you wish.”

Shadow felt the weight of his yellow gaze as they walked to the door: the sunshine should have hit her like a blow, but somehow it felt cooler and sharper.

“Guest quarters are down there.” The demon pointed to another hut, set among a grove of trees. Scrawny sheep meandered among the limewashed trunks. As they took the path that led down to it, out of the main compound, Shadow said in the low voice, “Your friend. Ator… ”

“No friend of mine.”

“I don’t think it’s sensible to go to sleep anywhere near him.”

Gremory swatted away a buzzing fly. “Him? He’s not allowed to leave the compound.”

“But-”

“Trust me. He can’t. He’s bound to it. That’s what annoys him so much.”

“Why?”

“If he comes out, he changes back. Forever.”

“And that would be to-?”

“What he was before,” the demon said, and marched down the path.

Shadow had not been expecting the demon to take a siesta, but there were two pallets in the guest hut, in a reasonable state of cleanliness, and Gremory lay down on the first without ceremony. She crossed her hands over her breasts, and her face stilled into expressionless marble. Shadow watched her for some minutes, but the demon did not blink and after a while, watching her began to feel intrusive, so she took the second pallet. She was not expecting to sleep, but the fatigue produced by recent events overtook her and she dozed off, awaking with a start some while later.

The sun had moved round, casting long shadows across the doorway of the hut. Something had woken her, with a note like a bell, and after a moment it came again: a cuckoo. Its two-note song fell upon the air. Shadow felt suddenly wide awake. She rose from the pallet and went out through the door, leaving the demon motionless within the hut.

The sheep had moved on, up the valley. She could hear the distant clank of a bell as they grazed. The sun was skirting the edge of the Devil’s Ears; she judged that it must be close to five o’clock. She looked back at the compound but there was no sign of movement. Then the cuckoo called again and she swung round. Someone was standing motionless on the other side of the valley. It was a woman, dressed modestly in black, with her face concealed.

“Who are you?” Shadow called, but the woman did not reply. Instead, she raised a hand and made a gesture in the air that Shadow could not interpret: it looked as though the woman had written a word. Then the figure was gone, abruptly, as if snuffed out.

Thoughtfully, Shadow went back into the hut to meet the demon.

Thirty

By midnight, Mercy and Perra had found two more rifts, besides the one leading into the Southern Quarter. One led into the east and was visible; when Mercy put her eye to it, she saw a formal garden, with a carefully arranged tableau of stones and pebbles, and a small bridge over a lily-fringed pool. Nothing could have been more serene, but Mercy didn’t trust it. She lingered, but could not see anything that posed an immediate threat, so she reported the rift to security. Nerren had gone home, complaining of an entirely justifiable headache.

The third rift was an anomaly: it didn’t seem to go anywhere. She could see the crack in the air, a dark line with a bright knife-edge, but she could not see anything through it, nor could she hear. Eventually, with some trepidation, she cast a revealing spell at it to see if that did any good. The crack did not widen, somewhat to her relief, but a fragment of text appeared in the air, glowing briefly before fading out:

… tells all things, both past and future, of hidden treasures and the love of women…

Well, that was helpful. It looked like a passage from a grimoire to Mercy, but she did not recognise which one. At a certain level they were all much of a muchness.

“Mean anything to you?” she asked the ka, but Perra shook its head.

As the text faded, the rift narrowed until it was no more than a single dark-bright point of light. We will, Mercy thought nonetheless, be keeping an eye on you.

After the events of the last few days, Mercy kept the Irish sword by her side as she left the Library. No more public transport from now on, either; she planned to walk home. It was now after midnight and the stars were gathered thickly over the Citadel, with the constellation known as the Crown high in the heavens. The lamps were soft and hissing in the summer dusk. Mercy, with the ka at her heels, headed down the quiet stone streets to her home.

She was weary, but too wired to sleep. She made tea and sat in the window seat, then, after a moment’s pause, got up and moved to somewhere less noticeable from outside. The ka watched her, with unblinking golden eyes.

Then she realised, with a clammy sense of dismay, that she could feel Loki in the room. The impression was so vivid that she turned to look over her shoulder: there was nothing there. But it was as though she stood in the grove again, with the old god watching.

“Perra!”

“Yes?”

“Do you-feel anything?”

The ka’s tail twitched. “I do not.”