The Demon's Covenant

There was a stall full of different-colored and labeled lamps. One looked like an old-fashioned lantern, black iron bisecting the light into four steady beams, and had the words BEACON LAMP written on its label. Another was rose pink and tiny, like a rosebud that glowed; it was labeled LIGHT OF LOVE.

“Gives off just enough light to see love by,” the stall owner called out to Mae. “If you can see love in this light, you know it’s true!”

Mae laughed and walked on, promising herself she would stop at that stall next time. She couldn’t allow herself to stop now.

Then she stopped.

There in the busy throng of people buying and selling, dancing and laughing, she saw Sin’s little brother Toby.

Gerald was here, in the very heart of the market, holding the child in his arms.

She strode over to him, her heart pounding too hard in her chest. “Do you want me to tell everyone who you really are?” she demanded as she drew closer. “Then I could have the pleasure of watching you being torn limb from limb.”

He whirled and started as he recognized her. He didn’t draw back from her as she stepped in, though.

“You do seem to turn up a lot, don’t you?” Gerald said.

“I could say the same about you.”

They stood together in one of the spaces of shadow in the Market, just another young tourist couple. Gerald could freeze her right now, hold her trapped in the air like a dragonfly in amber, and maybe nobody would notice.

Mae reached out over the tiny distance that separated them.

“Give me that child,” she said, and tried to make it sound commanding.

She snagged her fingers on the front of Toby’s little shirt, curling around the material, and then slid an arm around the child, even though that meant having her arm trapped against Gerald’s chest.

He did not let go of Toby. Mae looked down at his arm and saw a shadowy mark on the inside of his wrist, but before she could make out the mark Gerald smiled, and his sleeve slithered down past his wrist as if it was alive.

He spoke, and she felt the vibration of his low voice starting in his chest, then soft in her ear. “He was wandering around alone and I picked him up. I don’t wish any harm on a child. And I don’t wish any harm on you. You’re Jamie’s sister.”

“How very reassuring,” Mae bit out. “I know who the child belongs to. Give him to me.”

“If I do,” Gerald said, “you won’t go making any rash announcements to the Market?”

“He is a baby!” Mae hissed. “Not a bargaining chip.”

Gerald was silent. Mae looked away from his face, thoughtful and pitiless in the half-light, and into Toby’s. Toby seemed happy enough caught between them, big eyes staring back at Mae, mouth forming a loose and wondering O.

“Okay,” Gerald said finally, and pushed Toby into her arms.

He was unexpectedly heavy, and she had to shift him awkwardly around to get him at any sort of reasonable angle. Gerald backed away.

“I have somewhere to be, anyway,” he said, uncomfortable as she’d never seen him before, as if displaying mercy was an unforgivable breach of good manners and all he could do was get away and pretend it had never happened.

Then he was gone. She was fairly sure he’d used magic to do it: Nobody really disappeared like that, swallowed up by the air as if it was dark water.

Nobody else seemed to have noticed.

“Necklace, lovely lady?” asked an Asian guy with a grin like a skull and twinkling dark eyes. “Necklace for the pretty baby?”

He looped a necklace over Toby’s head with swift, clever hands, clicking his fingers as he did so.

“Are those bones?”

“Finest bones, lady,” said the man with a hint of reproach. “Rat for brains, bird for song, fox for cunning and— just between you and me—a little human bone to bind the spell.”

“You’re just like a fairy godmother of death,” Mae snapped. “Do you know where I can find Trish? She’s meant to be looking after Toby.”

“Oh,” the man said, his face changing. “Sorry, lady, didn’t know you were one of the Market people. I’m pied, you see.”

“You’re pie?”

He smiled. “Not Market, then. I’m a pied piper. We make the music for the Market, but we’re not Market people ourselves: We use magic. I can start a tune and make children, animals, or pretty young things follow me anywhere.”

Mae grabbed the two blossoms from her pocket and waved them under his nose. “That must be a useful skill. Where’s Trish?”

The piper grinned. “Didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “Honestly, you’re not my type. And I haven’t seen Trish.”

Toby blew a bubble of saliva into Mae’s ear. “Great.”