The Demon's Covenant

people pay to have them restrained, and pay extra to stay with them and watch them die slowly.

Judging from what Mae had seen of Mezentius House, she made them pay a lot.

Sin grabbed a fistful of Gerald’s sandy hair and held her long knives clasped in one fist, both blades sharp against Gerald’s throat.

“I lived a month last summer in that house,” she said, soft. “My mother died there. I know who I serve.”

Gerald looked in Merris’s direction, ignoring the knives that shifted dangerously as he moved.

“I’d like to offer you an opportunity,” he said. “Send them all away, and we can talk. I have some things to say that you might find interesting.”

“If he continues to talk like a door-to-door salesman,” Merris said to Sin, “cut his throat.”

Sin smiled. “With pleasure.”

Merris’s voice had been deep and measured, completely without emotion as far as Mae could see, but Sin’s glance upward was at once fond and pleased, as if she had just been praised by an adored teacher.

“You trust her,” Gerald said. “That’s nice. Be nicer if she trusted you, of course.”

“Shut your mouth,” Sin snapped.

Gerald did no such thing. “Did she tell you when the pain started, Sin?” he asked, voice soft and impossible to stop as the wind blowing in from the sea. “Did she tell you what the doctors said? Do you know how sick she is?”

It might not have worked, if Sin hadn’t been looking at Merris.

Mae, watching Sin and Gerald, did not see Merris’s face, but she saw the change that swept over Sin’s.

Gerald struck.

He seized the moment of indecision and broke backward, rising to his feet and into Sin’s body. He knocked her off her feet and whirled on her, magic streaming from his palms in two bursts of light.

She made a small, choked sound and hit the ground hard.

“Well,” said Gerald, wheeling on Merris, his hands still blazing with power. “I imagine you’ll be willing to talk now.”

Mae was holding Toby so hard he was whimpering softly in her ear. She looked desperately at Merris.

Merris was smiling.

Gerald collapsed on the ground with a knife in his back.

“You always say you want to talk,” Alan said, walking out of the shadows of the hills with a new throwing knife already in hand. “And then you attack people. It doesn’t make me feel very chatty.”

From the night-dark grass, Gerald let out a low groan and then twisted, raising himself up on one hand. He pulled out the knife and let it drop, bloody, to the ground.

“I might point out that she was the one who pulled her weapons on me,” he said.

Alan stopped by Sin where she lay in a tangle of torn silk gone gray in the moonlight, mouth pulled tight in agony but trying to sit up. He offered her his free hand; she glared up at him and shook her head. Alan shrugged and limped forward to Gerald.

“You invaded our market for purposes of your own,” Alan told Gerald. “You did not ask permission. You trespassed, and you thought you could do so without fear of retribution because you’re stronger than we are.”

“I am stronger than you are,” said Gerald. “I took down your precious brother, didn’t I? You have no idea what I can do to you.”

He rose slowly to his feet, slivers of magic glinting through his fingers as if he was running gold coins through his hands and they were catching the light. There was a snick as Alan popped his left wrist sheath and suddenly had knives in both hands, and one of them lifted to Gerald’s throat.

Gerald laughed. “And a knife won’t stop me.”

Mae didn’t see Sin move. The first thing she saw was Sin standing pressed up against Gerald’s back and lacing her knives with Alan’s, until it looked like Gerald was wearing a sharp-edged and gleaming collar that caught moonlight and drove him to his knees, held him afraid to move.

The first thing she heard was Sin saying in Gerald’s ear, “How many knives will? Because we have a selection.”

Alan looked into Sin’s eyes and gave a small nod.

“Deal with one of us and the other one cuts your throat,” he said. He looked like a young priest, serious and well-meaning, and then he flicked his wrist casually and Gerald’s head was pushed back against Sin’s knives. “If you want to strike, be very sure you’re fast enough. Or maybe you can tell us what the hell you meant about Merris.”

“What have you done to her?” Sin demanded.

“I didn’t do a thing,” Gerald said. “It’s just one of those things that happen … that come creeping into your body like an intruder, like a mindless demon. Bone cancer. Too advanced for any of your small magics. I guess you could try having Alan’s demon cure it: His magic’s about as subtle as a battering ram, and the disease is bound up with every bone, threaded throughout every part of her body. At least when he shattered her into a thousand pieces, it would be quick.”

“No demon is going to lay a hand on her!”

“Then she’ll die slowly,” said Gerald. “You ready to lose her? Ready to lead the Market?”