Page 41 of Queen Demon
He and Ziede had to make time for more witchcraft lessons; putting it off in favor of working on intentions was only exposing him to more situations like this.
Nightjar’s expression hardened into an opaque mask. “Perhaps we don’t.” She stepped back and started to turn away.
She was leaving? Kai was incredulous. And furious. “Take one more step and I will eat your life and send your body back to your sisters as a handful of your own dust.”
She stopped, her back a rigid line of tension. That threat hit home.
Kai said, “You came to this meeting thinking to take me prisoner? What, you’ve seen the expositors and their enslaved demons and thought what a good idea it was?” Belatedly, the memory of Hawkmoth’s reluctance to give her name hit him, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or set something on fire. “You thought that would work because I told you my name.”
She turned to face him, her posture now stiff with offence. “They say you were a demon in the Hierarchs’ lair and you took the power of an expositor to escape.”
“We didn’t escape,” Kai told her, his voice sharpening almost against his will. He didn’t want her to know the barb had hit flesh.We left the Summer Halls a ruin where the bodies of legionaries and Hierarch nobles rot in flood water,Bashasa had said at the Kagala. It was the truth, and it was the source of Bashasa’s power, the foundation that everything they had done since was built on. “We destroyed them. And if you’ve heard that version of the story, you’ve been talking to legionaries and servant-nobles.”
Her voice was cold. “We do not consort with Hierarch kind.”
“Neither do we. We kill them. We’re going to kill them all and drive them into the southern ocean.” This was pointless and he was impatient to get it over with. Clearly she hadn’t really come out here to negotiate. “Do you want an alliance or not?”
He expected a flat no, but that question seemed to annoyNightjar more than anything else, like it was a ridiculous thing to ask for. “Why do you want an alliance with us?”
“So we can kill the Hierarchs and expositors faster.” How could she even ask that question? What else was there right now? Did the dustwitches mean to hide out here in the grass and dirt forever, until the legionaries stumbled on them and slaughtered them all? “Why did you attack us? Why do you attack mortals?” Witches stealing from people was almost as unbelievable as Witches killing unprovoked, but Lahshar’s drovers had been right about that caravan. “Did you think you were going to steal from us?”
As if it was a child’s question, she said, “It is how we survive.”
Kai reined in his temper with effort. He didn’t want to disappoint Bashasa, to go back and say he had been too angry to talk to her. Because Bashasa was right, there was something very odd here. At least he had Nightjar talking, and apparently convinced his questions were ridiculous, so there was no reason to stop asking them. “What did you want with Amabel? The Witch you tried to capture? And the three mortal vanguarders?”
Something changed in her expression; Kai had struck some nerve. Had they been after Amabel all along? The dustwitches couldn’t know them; Amabel’s family had never been this far northeast. They didn’t even speak Arike.
Nightjar had said that stealing was how they survived, but she hadn’t said what it was exactly that they were stealing.
The dustwitches had killed the other vanguarders that Amabel had tried to save, but then took three alive. And someone had removed the deadly cantrip from Amabel after it had rendered them too weak to fight. The dustwitches had seen that Amabel valued the lives of the vanguarders, so they took hostages.Three hostages, so they could kill at least one or two if Amabel resisted, Kai thought.
The dustwitches might have originally crept up to the camp to steal food or supplies, not caring how many people they hurt inthe process. But they had encountered Amabel and decided to steal them, instead.
“We won’t attack again,” Nightjar was saying. “You need not fear us.”
She was trying to prod him into anger, but Kai was too interested in unraveling this puzzle now. “You never answered my question about an alliance.”
“We have no need for an alliance. We are strong, we—”
Kai didn’t want to listen to a justification. “Strong, like carrion birds and lizards. Feeding off helpless people.”
This time there was real heat in her voice. “And why do you care what happens to us?”
“Because you could be so much more.” The words came out almost without his volition. Kai wasn’t even sure he believed it or wanted to believe it, but it was Bashasa’s answer.
Nightjar huffed a breath that sounded like contempt, or despair. She turned sharply and walked away.
Kai allowed her to go this time. He stood there for a little, just enough to make sure it wasn’t a trap, that no cantrip would come at his back. Then he returned to Ziede and Tahren.
He would bet his life that that trick with the dust hadn’t been meant to kill him. It had been meant to catch him, like they had caught Amabel. How they meant to ensure Kai’s good behavior, he had no idea. But then they had thought that knowing how Kai’s name was spoken on the mortal plane gave them some power over the essence of a being born of the underearth. Even if names had some effect on Witches or mortals, which he doubted, it was ridiculous to expect it to have any effect on him.
Kai thought about the destroyed caravan that Lahshar’s drovers had seen, the rumors of more. Amabel’s family had come west from the borderlands, fleeing the Hierarchs. They wouldn’t have been the only ones to escape.
It was foolish to think that Amabel was the first Witch the dustwitches had tried to capture.
“Are you all right?” Ziede asked as soon as he reached them. She was frowning in concern and some frustration. Tahren’s level gaze was on Nightjar’s retreating back.
“I’m fine,” Kai said absently, still making plans. They couldn’t use the wind-devils; the dustwitches had taken control of them once already. Ziede was alert to that possibility now, but it still meant that the dustwitches must be able to tell when the wind-devils were near. “Can you make a chimera to hide us, and maybe some of the vanguarders? Something the dustwitches can’t see through? We need to find their camp.”
