Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (44 page)

I heard splashing as the Angels shifted in the water. But instead of attacking, the hellcnight pointed to my alembic.

“Is that full of waerwater?”

I raised my left hand to the partially crushed alembic. The catch was still in place. I had a sudden urge to rip it from my neck and blast it with fire.
Was the hellcnight’s question a trick?

And then the hellcnight shifted again. Into a man. An ordinary man. No one I had ever seen before. But someone I could have seen a thousand times before. The man standing in front of me could have been any man in the Shallows or any man in all of Halja. The hellcnight had intentionally chosen a less threatening form. But it was a calculated act of nonaggression.

“I want to confess,” the man said. I glanced at Rafe, who gave me a guarded look in return. Fara’s gaze was locked on the hellcnight. I had a feeling she was still feeling pretty angry about Ari’s betrayal and refused to be fooled again. She didn’t trust the hellcnight, even in its innocuous and nonthreatening form. I didn’t blame her one bit.

“Confess to what?” I said warily.

The hellcnight smiled. “I want to make a formal confession,” it said. “I will tell you my name. My real name. And your Angels will act as witnesses. I will confess to my sins here in the Shallows and then you will try me—with waerwater.”

I tried not to look surprised. I doubt I was successful. This definitely had to be a trick. Ari had said he’d seen “more than a few” demons die from drinking waerwater and none who had lived. Ari’s credibility might be somewhat shot now, but I doubted he’d have lied about that. Did this hellcnight just want a chance to die “honorably”? I didn’t think hellcnights were honorable. Maegesters were supposed to be the honorable ones. We were the ones descended from Luck’s right hand. Hellcnights were the demons that carried out the dirty work of Luck’s left.

I had two choices. I could either kill this thing now or I could allow it to confess and be tried with waerwater. Since I wasn’t too keen on killing in the first place, the second option seemed like the way to go. Sure, I’d likely have to hear all kinds of gruesome details (or possibly heartfelt excuses) about what had gone down out in the Meadow three months ago, but I’d have all my answers, the case could be closed, and the waerwater would nicely take care of the demon so I wouldn’t have to.

With a cautious glance at the Angels to make sure they were ready to move if necessary, I doused my flaming knife. It retracted with just the slightest bit of smoke. I reached up and unfastened the necklace’s catch. I held up the alembic, which swung suspended in the air by the silver chain. But I didn’t offer it to the hellcnight. Not yet.

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

“I am Beetiennik, Patron Demon of Springtails, Mayflies, and Water Beetles. The hellcnight who I hunt with—who you say is now dead—was Biviennik, the Patron Demon of Shipworms, Squids, and Slugs.”

Before Rafe could jump in, I made my own introduction, “And I am Nouiomo Onyx, future Maegester for the Demon Council.”

Beetiennik raised an eyebrow, no doubt at the “future” part of my introduction, but he continued with his confession.

“Three months ago, Vodnik and a group of his followers called upon Grimasca, the Grim Mask of Death, out in the Meadow near here. You can be the judge of whether the demon they called really came or not. After all, it all depends on who, or what, you believe ‘Grimasca’ to be. If you believe Grimasca to be death itself, then he came.” Beetiennik sneered evilly.

“Biviennik and I attacked Vodnik and his fishermen out in the Meadow that day. Why? Because we were hungry. Because we were tired of eating bugs and slugs. Vodnik and one of his followers were killed in the attack.”

“What about Stillwater, Vodnik’s gerefa? Why did you leave him there?”

Beetiennik barked out a laugh. “He was a surprise. We thought we got everyone. And then he comes out of the swamps two hours later, ranting about how
Grimasca
had gotten everyone.”

So Stillwater had been telling the truth. Luck really
had
saved him that day.

“What about Cephas? The fisherman who was bitten in the Meadow the month before you attacked Vodnik and his group?”

“That was Biviennik. Being too hungry to wait for the right time.” I narrowed my eyes. Beetiennik ignored me.

“We moved our catch down here,” he continued, “to keep it cold, and then Biviennik took over for Vodnik ‘upstairs.’ We didn’t want to spook our new school of fish with any big changes to their environment.” I was beginning to think waerwater would be too merciful for this demon. “And then we found out the girl had sent word to the Council—to you.” Beetiennik shook his head disappointedly. “So Biviennik took her out to the Meadow and I bit her there and dragged her back here.” He looked expectantly at me. I said nothing. “We knew you, or someone like you, would be heading out to the Shallows, so Biviennik kept watch for you while I stayed back here pretending to be Vodnik. Biviennik was the hellcnight that attacked you on your boat.”

“But you were the one who pretended to be Ebony that night at the Elbow,” I said.

“That’s right,” Beetiennik said.

“You were the demon that killed Burr.”

“Who?” Beetiennik looked confused. He also looked mildly aggravated with my continued questions. Like he couldn’t believe I would care about the identities of his Hyrke victims. His lack of compassion galled me. It angered me. It
enraged
me. That Beetiennik could end a life without even knowing the sort of person they were, good or bad, was incomprehensible to me.

“Beetiennik, Patron Demon of Springtails, Mayflies, and Water Beetles, I have heard your confession and find you guilty of murdering five human Hyrkes and an outpost demon lord.”

“And I appreciate your judgment, Nouiomo Onyx,
future
Maegester for the Demon Council, but yours is not the judgment I’m looking for. Lucifer’s judgment is what I seek. I demand to be tried by the absent king himself. I demand my right to a trial by waerwater.”

Part of me felt like a coward, handing over the waerwater. I’d told myself before Jezebeth’s execution that I hadn’t wanted Ari to throw my stones for me. Well, giving Beetiennik waerwater to drink was letting Luck throw my stones for me. Still, the only alternative was to become a lawbreaker myself. Definitely not something I wanted to do. I wasn’t entirely sure I believed in the divining power of waerwater—wasn’t sure that I believed it really was Luck passing judgment on the accused—but since the outcome would be just, I wasn’t going to quibble with the method.

Not trusting the hellcnight enough to get close to it, I tossed the alembic to it. Beetiennik caught it and wasted no time. He unfastened the catch and, after only the briefest hesitation, tipped back his head and poured the contents of the alembic down his throat.

The effects were as awful as I’d been led to believe they would be. Beetiennik immediately shifted back into his true hellcnight form—a horridly pale demon with bloodred eyes and an oversized jaw—and collapsed into the water shaking. I resisted my first instinct, which was to help him. He’d asked for this “trial.” He thrashed in the water, making horrific squealing noises, clutching at his throat and bashing his head and limbs every which way on the rocks and debris. Before our eyes, he seemed to shrink like a plum left in the sun. His claws grasped at the air and he struggled for breath. The water around him bloomed like a crimson rose. We could see the stain of the demon’s blood in the water even in the half-dark room. Eventually, Beetiennik’s squealing ended. But then the truly horrific thing happened. I thought he would stop thrashing and lie there, dead in the water. But instead, he got up. He wasn’t laughing. Instead he was panting and wheezing, but he was alive.

Beetiennik was alive.

What did it mean? That he was innocent?
I didn’t believe that and wouldn’t no matter how many divination tools told me otherwise. Did the fact that Beetiennik lived really mean that Luck had saved him? Or that Luck was still testing me?

When Beetiennik’s wheezing subsided and he could finally speak again he said, “You are free to go now, Ms. Onyx. You’ve come to the Shallows and completed your assignment. You can go back to New Babylon now. The Boatman should be here in a week or two. Your Angels can bear witness to both my testimony and trial. There are no further crimes that need to be tried here.”

Was he mad?
Of course he was mad.

I couldn’t leave him here! And wouldn’t. I didn’t care that Luck may have deemed him innocent. I realized then that even if Beetiennik promised to go somewhere very far away, I wouldn’t let him do it. It was blasphemous to put my judgment before Luck’s, but I was too afraid Beetiennik would do it again. To another Hyrke—or even another demon—somewhere else. And what would that make me? As guilty of that future murder as Beetiennik would be.

I took a deep breath, because what I was contemplating was so very grave. I wanted to make sure I could live with my decision. If I executed Beetiennik now,
I
would be the one committing a sin, arguably against Luck himself.

“You’re free to go,” I said to the Angels. I didn’t want them to be witnesses to anything they didn’t want to be a part of. To anything that could get them into serious trouble later, should the truth come out. But they didn’t move. Instead they readied two blue bolts of Angel light.

For this execution, however, I was going to strike first. Because if anyone was going to take the blame for casting the first stone against an “innocent,” it was going to be me.

I reshaped my magic from a filleting knife into a huge amorphous blast—exactly the kind of blast both Rochester and Delgato had warned me never to throw. Because, though they are hot and blinding, they are almost never deadly. Beetiennik laughed, an odd warbling gurgle that sounded like a bubble being dislodged from his throat. He thought I’d made a mistake. But I hadn’t. I knew, without the element of surprise, my magic wouldn’t kill this demon. It was far too powerful. So while the demon laughed over my apparent magical miscalculation, I unsheathed Burr’s knife and stepped close. Just as its laughter was fading, I plunged Burr’s knife, his real one, deep into the demon’s heart.

Beetiennik had been prepared for magic, but steel worked just as well.

“
Now
, you can blast it with Angel light,” I said, stepping back. I didn’t want a slow death. It wasn’t torture I was after. And, truth be known, it wasn’t justice either. I wanted an end.

Beetiennik shifted several times before he died, convulsing in ghastly paroxysms from the black, slithering water serpent Ebony to the moss-bearded Vodnik to Ari and then Athalie, as I’d first seen her in the Meadow. Only it hadn’t been her. It had been Beetiennik. Or Biviennik. It had been them all along.

When the creature finally died, I found myself staring at myself. The hellcnight’s last transformation was into Noon Onyx.

Rafe’s mother had said Grimasca was the one demon you never wanted to meet. The one demon you were deeply afraid of. Well, Grimasca wasn’t real. But hellcnights were. So how fitting was it that this hellcnight had died looking like me, the one “demon” I’d never wanted to meet? Again, the first conversation I’d ever had with Rafe came back to me. The one we’d had at the
Carne Vale
when I’d taunted Sasha for hiding behind its “pomp and circumvention.” Rafe had asked me if I ever would, or could, kill an accused in cold blood.

That’s what you’re telling him, right? That he ought to put his magic where his mouth is? So, what about you? Would you do it? Could you do
it?

I hadn’t wanted to know the answer then, but I knew now.

Luck, how I wished I didn’t.

I
t took us until morning to move all of the victims out of the bottom of the keep. There were twelve in all, including Athalie and Antony Rust. The Shallows settlers soon discovered what had happened. Everyone was in a state of shock. Many were overjoyed that loved ones had been found alive, but that joy was tempered by the knowledge that their loved ones had been bitten by hellcnights and now were in a deep state of sleep. Everyone knew about Delgato, who was still resting in the med shack, and no one had forgotten poor Cephas. And the relatives of those whose bodies were not recovered were, understandably, near inconsolable. Zella and Athalie’s father had not been one of the twelve. Honestly, if I’d not had the recovery effort to focus on, I might have succumbed to hysteria or grief-induced apathy myself. To say the situation at the Shallows was depressing was as much of an understatement as saying Armageddon had been a small skirmish.