Page 48 of Odder Still
The wind-whipped splendor of our salt in the shallows,
intermingling on the altar with the sweat and the tears.
A perfect surrender of our joy and our sorrow.
I SNATCH LILIAS’S KNIFE off the floor. “How did you know that wasn’t me?”
Tavish’s chest heaves once. He brings his cane down, resting it pointedly in front of him. “Her, I can hear.”
She groans, struggling to pull her elbows under her, but I shove her onto her stomach, yanking both her arms behind her back. “There’s a bundle of cord on the couch to your right—no—no farther. Not that far.”
Tavish grumbles under his breath, launching the spool of mechanical wiring at me. It nearly sails over my head, but I catch it and wrap it around Lilias’s wrists and ankles. She’s still off-kilter and blinking when I set her in a chair, but she finds the energy to glare daggers at us both.
Her gaze rips into the parasite on my neck, her lips twisted and orange hair splayed across uneven shoulders. “So, you’ve managed to hold on to it. I thought for certain the Findlays would lock you in some dark hole and rip it from your bones piece by piece.”
I twist another chair around and sit in front of her. Tilting forward, I stare at her, expressionless and lingering, before releasing both weapons from where they’re tucked against my back. I covertly set the pistol behind me and withdraw Tavish’s knife, holding it between us to examine the hilt. Its blade nearly nicks Lilias’s chin as I twist it around, but she doesn’t flinch. I relax, crossing one leg over the other. “You say that as though you had planned to do any different.”
“I need the aurora.” Lilias scoffs. “It’s consuming you anyway. How much longer do you think you have? A week? Days?”
I flip the knife. My left hand slips, my fingers not quite grasping through the feathering rope of my fishnet gloves, but my right makes up for it, faster and stronger beneath the parasite’s black ripples. A crest of color shines within each dark groove. How longdoI have? How many more times can I fail to resist the parasite’s lure before all that’s left of me are the parts that entwine neatly with its presence and conform perfectly to its will?
Lilias tracks the flow of my blade. One side of her lips catches in a smile so bitter it draws metal in the back of my mouth. “Or maybe you’ve only got hours, by the look of those fingers.”
“What would you know?” I snap my hand closed around the knife hilt. My fishnet glove snags on it, ripping.
She grins, all bite and no glimmer. “Nothing more than you do. Doesn’t it gall you that in a city of the most advanced minds in the world, the only person helping you is a blind philanthropist who isn’t even liked by the people he claims to aid? Maybe they ken something you don’t.”
Her words sting.‘Princeling’repeats in my head, the parasite nudging me into it, egging me on. I bare our teeth. “I would shut your mouth if I were—”
“No, Ruby.” Tavish’s words cut through my ire. His hand appears on my shoulder, his little finger brushing the side of my neck, tickling against the parasite.
It curls its warmth toward him, drawing up the happy thrums of my precious felines.‘Princeling.’
“She’s right,” Tavish continues. “The people don’t like me, and they’re justified. I threw money at charity projects, and maybe that’s done some genuine good in the moment, but at the end of the day, I left this place so I could huddle within a family who continued to quash the less fortunate just to build themselves up.”
“What more could you have done?” I realize those are the wrong words the moment I utter them.
Tavish’s features fall. “Nothing, I suppose. If I had existed outside my corrupt family, perhaps, or if I had possessed the courage or the ability to demand our company change its nature from the ground up instead of simply patching their wounds after the fact.”
Lilias’s head plunks against the back of her chair. She stares at the greening ceiling, and a scratchy cackle leaves her. “Are you fucking kidding me?” she grumbles. “Rubem Veneno, befriender of great crocs and jaguars and mer-snakes and now a damned Findlay. You have no standards. Or very strange ones.”
The parasite laughs at her wordage, and it comes out my mouth. I cut the sound short, letting it flow into my voice instead. “You know, that was never really my surname.” I return to flipping the knife, watching the silver and blue swim as it switches places. “But yours—Lilias Erskine? Is that what you want them to shout in the streets when you take down the big seven? Or is that the name they’ll curse when the upper city crushes them?” I tip the blade toward her. “Or maybe it’s the name that’ll be spoken before an execution sentence for playing a part in the murder of two Findlays and the framing of their innocent brother.”
“This revolution will come,” she snaps. “Even if you turn me in to the BA, the lower will just burn them down. Whether I’m the central blaze or the spark that ignites it, it won’t make a difference once the big seven are all ash.”
Her conviction flings me back to those images of Lilias as savior instead of destroyer. But this rebellion, as righteous as it might be, doesn’t deserve to come at the cost of the Murk. If Lilias’s rebels want so badly to make a better city, they should have joined someone who wants the rest of the world to be better, too. “That was your partner on the phone, wasn’t it? The one who slit Ailsa’s throat? Who is he?”
Lilias tips her head to one side, her eyes moving down my face. “Unlike you, I don’t betray my own.” She clicks her tongue against her teeth. “Now, this has been a fun chat, but I have an appointment with a man about a cow.”
Her boots screech as she lurches out of her chair, ramming aside my knife with her bound wrists.
I let her rise just enough that her forehead comes to rest perfectly against my pistol. She freezes in the presence of the cold barrel. All color but red drains from her freckled cheeks. Slowly, she sits back down.
I keep my aim steady. “Tavish, would you be so kind as to fetch more of that wiring from the chair beside you? I don’t think the gate guards will appreciate being delivered a half-escaped predator.”
Through his slight confusion, amusement quirks at his lips. “Aye, Ruby.” He traces down the chair and grabs the spool.
Lilias leans toward me with such cautious movements that the determination in her eyes seems to be a part of a whole separate person, as though she, too, is trapped between herself and a parasite. “We chose not to kill your precious Tavish,” she hisses. “He’d never be condemned for the murders the way they would someone from the lower districts. Maybe they’d put him in a posh, little prison, but he’d never suffer the way we have. He’d even be safer there once the fighting started.” Her voice comes faster by the end, almost desperate. Soft. “We killed the villains, Rubem. We killed the villains.”
