I scoffed. “They were a bit hard to miss, yeah. It’s like nature is actively trying to take over the whole world and drag it back into the jungle.”
“So I have heard,” Nigellus offered. “It does make one wonder what happened to alter the balance.”
I shot him a glance. “You mean it wasn’t always like that?”
“Indeed not.”
I pondered that for a moment, but I had no way of knowing what might be going on behind the scenes in Dhuinne to piss off the local plant life.
“What about Hell?” I asked instead. “Was it always so desolate?”
“Always, yes.” Nigellus looked around, as though soaking in his surroundings. “Demonkind requires little in the way of either amenities or sustenance. That being said, it is true that these past few centuries, we have had a larger than normal number of mortals residing in Hell. That does tend to put a greater strain on the existing resources.”
Gravel crunched beneath my shoes. “How many humans are here, anyway?”
Nigellus lifted a shoulder. “I’m unsure of the exact number. I daresay they outnumber the demons at this point. Fae are a long-lived race, with a correspondingly low birth rate. But even so, they’ve been sending the Tithe for a couple of centuries now.”
I let the conversation lull as I thought about that. Given the circumstances of the humans’ arrival here, I really wasn’t sure what to expect. The cluster of buildings we were heading toward looked more like a rustic village than a jail, but were these people denizens of Hell, or prisoners of it?
There was only one way to find out.
Nigellus left me to my thoughts as we hiked down the slope and into the valley. I gathered he spent most of his time on Earth, and I wondered if he missed this place. The idea of being truly immortal was a hard one to take in. Even if Nigellus had spent the entirety of human civilization on Earth, it would still be only a tiny fraction of his lifespan to date.
Nope, even with a demon grandfather, I wasn’t going to be able to wrap my mostly human brain around that one anytime soon. I’d barely been able to grasp the idea of someone being born in the Middle Ages—
Aaand... now I was thinking about Rans again.
Fortunately, we’d crossed the final distance to the closest of the buildings, and were starting to attract attention. A boy of perhaps ten years of age poked his head out of one of the small huts. He had freckles and messy brown hair, his plain clothing covering him from neck to knee. His eyes were wide and blue.
“Run and find someone on the Council,” Nigellus told him. “Tell them that there is a new guest, and we will meet them at the hall.”
The child nodded and hared off without a word, bare feet slapping against the dirt road.
I gazed after him. “Who takes care of the children?” I asked. “There must be a fair number of them, if most of the tithelings are babies.”
“Demons cared for the first arrivals,” Nigellus said. “But human children grow to be human adults in scarcely the blink of an eye. And, the problems on Earth aside, I’ve found humans to be a generous species by and large. Subsequent tithelings have been adopted and cared for by those who came before.”
I nodded, but I still wasn’t sure I understood the point of continuing the Tithe from the demons’ perspective. They’d wanted Fae children, but the Fae had outmaneuvered them. Why take on the responsibility of caring for all these people?
“Are these people all demon-bound?” I asked, because that might explain things. Grow your own power source right in your backyard, where no one had to worry about the pesky treaty provisions regarding interference on Earth.
“No,” Nigellus said, surprising me. “There’s no specific rule against it, but to bind them as a matter of course always seemed... crass, I suppose you’d say. They’re already the victims of other races’ political machinations. Why add insult to injury?”
“Hmm,” I replied in a noncommittal tone, wishing I could get a better read on this whole situation.
Nigellus cut a sideways glance at me. “In case I didn’t make it clear before, your father is welcome to live out his days here in safety. It’s a simple life—far simpler than most humans find life on Earth to be. However, not everyone considers that a bad thing.” He paused as we approached a larger structure—long and narrow with adobe walls and a tile roof. “But soon you will see for yourself, and be able to craft your own opinions.”
He gestured me inside the open door, and I gathered this was the meeting hall he’d referred to earlier. The inside was cool and shadowed, lit only by natural light from the windows, as far as I could tell. There was a table at the far end, large and rectangular with more than a dozen chairs set around it. A matronly female figure leaned hipshot against the table’s edge, her head cocked as she examined us.
Her skin was olive and her black hair was streaked with gray. She had a strong forehead and heavy eyebrows, her appearance making me think she was probably of Indian or Pakistani descent. She pushed away from the table as we approached, tipping her chin up in greeting.
“Brought us another, have you?” she asked Nigellus. “The rest of the shipment arrived more than a day ago.”
I wasn’t too keen on hearing human beings—my father among them—referred to as a shipment, but there was nothing cold or hostile in the woman’s voice. Merely curious.
“Zorah is not part of the Tithe, Fatima,” Nigellus said. “Though her father is.”
Fatima looked at me with new interest. “Is that so, child?”
I nodded. “Yes. I’d like to see him as soon as possible. Is he well?”
She regarded me, her brows drawing together. “We don’t get many coming in as adults,” she said carefully. “Being held by the Enemy is hard enough on the
