Slip Song (Devany Miller Series) (16 page)

Be tough. “We cool?”

She hissed. Hers wasn’t laughter. More like that sarcastic noise bad guys made right before they shot you in the heart. “You have power.”

“
Yes.” And don’t you forget it.

Behind me, one of the fleshcrawlers screeched. The queen answered. Then she waved an imperious hand, her eyes always on mine. If I blinked, would she kill me?

Before I could find out, one of the fleshcrawlers swam between us. The one who had talked to me. She flashed me a grin full of teeth and I gave her a nod in return. She’d saved me from the staring contest, though I wasn’t sure why.

Two more fleshcrawlers swam in carrying a glowing rock between them. Yellow light suffused the water around it but it was the power radiating from it that made me want to hug it close and absorb it all for myself.

I restrained myself after seeing the reverence the fleshcrawlers paid the rock. “The Source will fuel our ritual. This will aim it, guide it, direct it into place.”

I nodded like I knew what the hell she was talking about. Oh, I could guess, I mean, I wasn’t stupid. It’s just that “in theory” and “in real life” were so different that one lived on the South Pole and played with penguins and the other had Santa as its neighbor.

They settled the rock on a curved pedestal I hadn’t noticed before, hidden as it was by the waving seaweed. The queen chanted in her screeching voice, the noise rising and falling like any other language, though I couldn’t pick out anything that sounded like an actual word. Since I didn’t know what to do, I dropped my gaze to my shoes, wary of closing my eyes again.

‘
Okay,’ I told myself. ‘Focus on a giant bubble of protection around this whole swamp. Huge, giant bubble. Impenetrable. Inviolate. The creatures living in the swamp can enter and leave but nothing foreign can enter. No witches, no Skriven, nothing but the creatures indigenous to the swamp.’ I formed it in my head, picturing a giant, gleaming bowl of magic over the whole swamp, curving down into the planet to make a complete sphere that encompassed everything in the queen’s realm.

The screeching continued but from a distance, as I continued working on my imaginary protection bubble. I had no idea how large to make it since I’d only seen a tiny part of the swamp so I tried to imagine it being attached to the smell of rotted flesh. Surely that smell didn’t extend all over the rest of Midia.

The sound in the room changed. The voice went silent. When I raised my eyes, the queen was staring at me. The council, too. She bared her teeth at me. “What have you done?”

‘
I don’t know,’ didn’t sound like a good answer, so I said, “Protection. For the swamp.”

“
Yes. I feel it.”

Pride tipped up the corners of my mouth. I did it. Yes.

“We didn’t want protection. We wanted to fade from the memories of those on this planet who want to harm us.”

Oh. “So? Protection will work.”

“The witches will see it and be attracted to it. That’s not what we wanted.” Her voice hummed with anger and made me want to swim away from her. “We wanted to Fade!”

“
I’m sorry, I’ll try again.” People and their picky shit. Protection, invisibility. Did she ever say she wanted to be invisible? No. No she didn’t.

“
It’s too late.” She pointed down at the rock. It had split into four pieces and wasn’t yellow anymore.

“
Can’t we use another one?”

“
We don’t have another one.” She began screeching at the council. Some of them hissed, some screeched back. I had a feeling they were discussing my death and I wondered if I would be able to do the light thing again and stun them long enough to get away.

Yeah, probably not.

The noise stopped. The queen’s dead eyes fixed on mine. “Despite my objections, the council has voted your act was not one of deliberate malice. Therefore we will allow you to live. However, if you are not able to Fade us within a year, we will release your souls into the hands of any Skriven who comes looking for them. For even they will be able to sense the protection around the swamp and wonder why it’s here. Then there will be those who hammer away at the circle. If they manage to break it, then too will we release your souls.”

“
You didn’t tell me what you wanted. I just want that on the record. You said you and Ravana had a pact. You never told me what it consisted of or how she’d extended her protection.” I made a point of looking at each council member, not knowing if they understood me. “If you keep me in the dark, you can’t expect me to give you the results you wanted.” I was going to have to have that engraved on my gravestone. Story of my life.

The first council member who’d woken and laughed, screeched. The queen screeched back, looking none too happy. To me, Queen Anyang said, “One year.”

What had the other fleshcrawler said? That one looked at me and smiled. I tried to return it but my stomach hurt and a heavy cloak of doom had settled around my shoulders.

The queen left, swimming away without a look back. The others left, flitting away into the gloom until I was alone with the laughing one. We studied each other and then she swam at me, her hand wrapping itself around my arm before she began to swim upward.

“I’m Nephele.”

“
Devany.”

My ears popped as we moved through the water. Nephele greeted a few of the passerby as we swam, not through the dark tunnel Queen Anyang brought me through but higher, via another opening near the top of the cavern.

“My queen is angry. But do not let this frighten you. She has been angry since losing our king.”

Nex. “I like him.”

She gave me a look of surprise. “You know him?”

“
Yeah. Though I guess he’s not your king anymore.”

“
No.” Her voice sounded wistful. I wondered if she and Nex had a fling but wasn’t going to ask. Knowing my luck, it would insult her and she’d rip my head off or leave me to flounder in the water forever. “I know where there’s another
rashn
.”

“
Ration?”

She pronounced it for me again. “The rock, concentrated Source.”

“Really?”

“
In the Wilds, half a day’s journey from Casttown. There’s a cave with a murk pool. The
rashn
is at the bottom.” She shot me a look half sly, half hopeful. “If you could bring the
rashn
back, you could try again. My queen would be forced to forgive you and our world would be safe from the witches. I would help you formulate the pact.”

“
If your queen had deigned to help me, we could’ve gotten it right the first time.” I was grumbling, I knew, but it got so damn old to always be left in the dark.

“
She doesn’t want us to be safe from the witches. She’s been spiraling out of control since she lost her husband. She was old when they married. Now she’s ancient and without the king, she has been growing more and more despondent. I believe she wants the swamp to be overrun.”

“
Why not just kill herself?”

Our heads popped through the surface of the water. Nephele swam behind me and jerked her fists into my diaphragm. Water shot from my body in an ugly, painful stream. She pumped my stomach again and I threw up more water.

My first breath of air hurt like a motherfucker. I loved every minute of it.

“
To answer your question,” she said, tugging me away from the vomit, “she is tired of life so therefore we all must be tired, too.”

“
Lord save me from suicidal maniacs.”

She hissed, smiling. “I must go back before she wonders why I’ve tarried. Remember, the
rashn
would fix this. Your souls would remain safe. If she kills herself, the barrier will fall anyway. The pact was between her and you. Whoever takes her reign might not wish to treat with you.” With the grace of a dolphin, she leapt out of the water, turning her lithe body in the air to dive underneath the surface.

No elegant strokes for me as I paddled toward the shore. My muscles shook with fatigue and when I got close enough, I let Jasper and Tytan pull me from the water.

My hand went to my neck. Gills still there. Damn it.

“
What in the hell did you do?”

This from Tytan. I collapsed on the ground despite the smell and despite thinking there might be thousands of bugs crawling around under the leaf litter. “I fucked it up. Of course.”

Tytan laughed and a grin spread across his face. “Of course you did. That’s my Devany.”

-THIRTEEN-

We trekked back through the swamp after I discovered I couldn’t hook while in the bubble of protection I made. We’d decided that Tytan would work on locating the
rashn
. Nex, Jasper, and I would travel to the last place Jasper remembered being held to see if we could find out where Cyres was taken. Jasper and Tytan weren’t growling at each other anymore. Somehow that worried me more than the blatant hostility.

“
I’ll check back in a day,” Tytan told me before disappearing into the Slip. We were a lot more vulnerable without him. I hoped we could stay out of trouble.

“
Ready?” I asked Jasper. He nodded and Nex floated closer. “What you need to do is close your eyes and picture the place in as much detail as you can.” I pursed my lips. Looked at Nex. “How is this going to work?”

“
I can project his thoughts to you, perhaps.”

“
Ah. Okay.” Yet one more brain invasion to give me the heebie jeebies. I nodded to Jasper. “Go.”

He shut his eyes. I reached out to touch Nex’s face before I closed my own. Jasper’s hand was warm in mine, a stark contrast to the clammy feel of Nex’s cheek. In eerie stop motion, a town formed in my head, its dusty red streets and squat, tan buildings strangely Earth-like. I formed a hook and guided us through—

—A shout on the street had us scrambling to the side as a low-riding, flying car buzzed by. Well, I assumed it was a car. It was boxy-shaped and held two witches gawking at our arrival from thin air. They almost ran into another vehicle coming toward us and had to jerk hard to the right, nicking the corner of a building before wobbling out of sight.

The dirt streets made me think Old West but the flying/floating cars threw me for a freaking loop. “This is wild.”

“We’re at the edge of the Anwar. The witch regulations don’t extend beyond the border and the magic exists out there, unbounded.” Jasper’s voice was strained and his words clipped. “The witches are terrified of it, which is why they live in protection spheres and never step outside Banishwinds.”

Hearing the fear in his voice, I squeezed his hand and gave him a reassuring smile. “Do you want me to take you somewhere else?” Was I a horrible person for hoping he would say no? I didn’t have the time to take him anywhere else, nor a place safe enough for him to stay.

“No. I’ll be all right. It fills me with bad memories, seeing these streets.”

“
In and out as quick as we can. Okay?”

He nodded. He led us down the road, dust puffing upward with each step. We passed by storefronts with signs that hung from eye bolts screwed into the porches that extended over the storefronts. In one store, bright lights sputtered and spat across the window. Jasper saw me staring. “The magic doesn’t always work right out here, not this close to the Anwar. It’s why most people do without magic unless they’re in a protection circle.”

In another window I saw tiny dolls, each one dressed and painted with loving detail. I paused a moment, wishing I had the right kind of money to buy one or two for Bethy. To my delight, the dolls started dancing and twirling in herky jerky motions.

A stout woman in a flowered muumuu barged out of the door and stared at me, hands on her hips. “No using magic on the toys unless you want to buy them.”

“Oh, I didn’t—”

Jasper gave the woman a nod and dragged me around the corner.

“What are you doing? Stop it!” I jerked my arm away from him and glared.

“
You’d been about to say, ‘I didn’t mean to,’ weren’t you?” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “If they even suspect you’ve been tainted my wild magic, they will put you in chains.” He put his hand on my back and propelled us forward almost at a run.

We stayed away from the stores and wove our way through the business section of town until we arrived at a small tavern that sat squat and frog-like in a puddle of shadows. Its roof sagged to one side like the point of a witch’s hat, and a dirty red carpet lolled out the door like a tongue. “Traders hang here. I remember them talking about this place. It’s where you find guides through the Anwar.”

The smell that hit us when we walked in was redolent of charred meat and sage. My mouth watered and I tried to remember when I’d last eaten anything. A fire burned in a giant hearth along the left side of the building, filling the space with an oppressive heat. No one paid us any mind until Nex floated up beside me. One by one, heads turned toward us and the whispers began.