Page 190 of Brimstone
SAERIS
Total known dead: 4,769
Total infected: Unknown
Estimated infected landmass: 289 leagues and growing
THE SUN BLEDred across the horizon.
Scores of votive lanterns rose to meet the dawn, released by sleep-starved residents of Inishtar hoping to buoy their dead loved ones’ souls toward the heavens.
By the cliffs, gulls squawked, dive-bombing the satyrs who’d gathered there to work, angry that the commotion was disturbing their nests. We nearly didn’t make it in time.
“Wait! Wait,stop!” I cried. Two of the satyrs—males with thick, shaggy brown fur covering their legs and proud horns curving away from their brows—both wobbled precariously, nearly toppling over the edge of the cliff themselves as they clung to the body they had been about to toss over the edge.
“What the hell are youdoing?” the one on the right snarled.
“We need that body,” I panted.
“It’s one of the unclean. It doesn’t even have a head. What could you possibly want with it?”
“The ones . . . with the armor,” Carrion said breathlessly. “Are there any more . . . like that?”
“Yes,” the satyr on the left answered, no friendlier than his companion. “They’re all down there, though.” He jerked his head over the side of the cliff. “You’ll have to climb down the bairn’s track if you want them.”
I peered over the side of the cliff, my stomach rolling at the drop that stretched away from me . . . and then again at the sight of all the bodies that lay contorted into unnatural shapes on the black rocks below. The dawn light glinted off burnished golden armor—the very same golden armor that had started all of this. White foam rolled in, submerging the bodies from sight from a moment, then rolled back out again, revealing the macabre scene once more.
Carrion peered over the ledge, too. “You actuallygodown that path?” he said, eyeing the cliff face nervously.
“Wedo,” the satyr on the left said. “Youdon’t. This place wasn’t built for clumsy Fae feet.”
An oxymoron if ever I’d heard one. The Fae were far from clumsy. They were preternaturally light-footed in my experience, but it seemed the satyrs were nimbler still. I couldn’t even see a clear line that led down to the rocks below. The cliffs were fuckingvertical.
“Don’t eventhinkabout asking us to go down there for you,” the satyr with the curlier horns said. “We don’t hold with looting corpses. The fallen should keep their possessions. They’re death-touched.”
“We don’t want to loot them,” Carrion said, disgusted. “Weneedsomething from one of them. In your shoes, I can see how, well, no, wait, satyrs don’t wear shoes, do you. Let us check that body, and we’ll be out of your hair. I mean fur. I mean—”
“Carrion, stop talking.”
Carrion stopped talking.
I stepped forward, careful to keep my hood drawn up over my head. Thankfully there were few external signs that I wasn’t wholly Fae, but my skin did tend to smoke a little in direct daylight. The high bloods had rarely left the Blood Court—the people of Inishtar probably hadn’t seen one in centuries—but I didn’t want to risk someone spotting me and making assumptions about my intentions. “We’re not crows. We don’t want to take anything valuable. Not . . .traditionallyvaluable anyway. Can we please just see that body for a moment, and then we’ll leave you in peace.”
“Fucking Fae,” the satyr on the left hissed. Both males eyed us malevolently as they dropped the body they were holding; it hit the ground with aclang.
“Do as you like,” Curled Horns said. “But be sure to roll it over the edge when you’re done. We don’t want it haunting us because of somethingyoutook.”
The satyrs had strange beliefs. Turned out, they also weren’t very fond of the Fae. I bowed my head, agreeing to their terms, and the two of them darted away, expertly clambering up the rock face to the left.
“So mean,” Carrion mused. “How can you be so angry when you have a view likethatto look at all day?” He nodded toward the staggering sight of the ocean, but I trained my eyes on the guardian’s corpse at my feet, refusing to look at the vista. I couldn’t. Not with Fisher missing. Nothing was allowed to be beautiful in the world without him.
Carrion’s smile faded as we flipped over the body. As if he knew precisely what I was thinking, he said, “Wewillfind him, Saeris.” And then he let out an excited whoop that startled the gulls.
“Gods, Carrion, you nearly gave me a heart attack!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Your heart doesn’t even need to beat. And anyway, aren’t you happy? Look!”
We’d gotten lucky.Verylucky. The object we’d sprinted down here hoping to find was right there, still strapped to the guardian’s belt. The pious fucker had been stupid enough to carry around one of Madra’s ridiculous plague bags on his hip. Butshewas the one arrogant enough to believe herself a god. The plague bags were full of ashes from the sacrifices who were burned in Madra’s honor . . . but they also containedher hair.
