I questioned the huldra. It was silent, unhearing.
I sought Darla.
Shadows flew. The scene changed. I saw another warehouse, on the other side of the Brown. This one slanted down toward the river. Water ran from the back wall and across the floor and out the front. The roof showed light in half a dozen places.
And there, beneath it, lay Darla.
I shouted. Thunder broke. I charged toward her, a sudden flurry of shingles and loose timbers in my wake. She was alive, bound and struggling but alive, unless the huldra showed me a lie-
I slowed, demanded the truth from it. It grudgingly and with some confusion confirmed what I saw. Darla had not been killed. The body I had held had been made to appear as if it were hers. By whom, the huldra could not or would not say.
I went to her. I diminished as I walked. The huldra grew cooler, its words fainter, and I realized that as my hurt and rage lessened, so did the power of the thing I held.
I found myself across the Brown, alone, my boots sinking into mud and cowshit, the rain beating on me like it meant to not only kill me but wash away my corpse as well. I squinted into the night, made out a few lanterns swinging on the wind, what might have been light from a few windows, what might have been a fire burning under a shed roof a stone’s throw away.
Before me was a leaning warehouse, probably used to store hides or hooves or who knows what for the tanners upstream. And in there, somewhere, was Darla, alive and whole.
But surely not alone.
I had a wax-sealed tortoise-shell bent on devouring my soul. I reached for my army knife, but it was gone, lost somewhere in the rain. A smart man would have waited for Evis, would have gone for help.
There was no light in the warehouse. It was just a blur in the beating rain. I waited until lightning showed me the way to a door, and then I made for it, leaving my right boot behind, gripped fast by the greedy sucking mud.
I listened at the door.
The place was quiet, aide from the beat and roar of the rain and rolls of angry thunder echoing within. I hoped the din of the storm had concealed my squelching one-booted march, then dismissed the thought entirely-what good was stealth to a man about to face vampires or sorcerers or hairy old Troll gods with nothing but a single faint hope and a boot full of rain?
I shrugged.
I knocked.
Sometimes simplicity is the best approach.
“I know you have Darla Tomas,” I said, in a shout. “Maybe you know what I have. Maybe you know what just happened to the boys downtown. If it’s true that bad news travels fast, then this news should have been here for hours, because it’s about as bad as news can get-”
The door opened.
Helpful lightning flared.
Father Foon himself glared at me from inside. Behind him, lanterns were hastily uncovered.
At his back were maybe two dozen men in red and black Church armor. Their swords were bloody, and some of their old-fashioned breastplates sported big dents. I could see at least two pairs of armored feet laying toes-up and still on the wet floor.
Father Foon stopped gritting his teeth long enough to speak.
“You,” he said.
“Me,” I agreed. I pushed my way past him, smiled at the ranks of assorted gleaming blades that turned swiftly my way. “Where is she?”’
“Where is who?”
The huldra stirred, and I felt a tingling creep up my spine.
“The brunette. Tall thin lady. I imagine by now she’s used bad language, and has probably made numerous suggestions as to what you can do with your mask and your swords.”
Father Foon began to gobble out a denial, but the huldra whispered to me, and I parted the ranks of soldiers with a single quiet Word and brought my Darla, kicking and trying to scream around the gag in her mouth, up through the floor in a burst of warped, wet planks.
“Hello, darling,” I said, as I drew her to my side. “Have these persons been less than polite to you?”
Father Foon was pale. Pale as he watched Darla float and glide, pale as he saw the huldra in my hand, paler still as I let him see the light beginning to burn in my eyes.
“I threatened you with damnation earlier.” His voice was suddenly quiet. “I did not expect to see it take you so soon.”
I laughed and made the gag fall away from Darla’s mouth, made the ropes at her wrists loosen and drop. She touched me, wrapping her arms around my waist, but then she drew them back, as if stung.
“You did indeed,” I said. “Not so very long before you went forth intent on committing murder.”
“This was not murder. We exterminated a nest of vampires.”
“You exterminated the wrong nest.” I met Darla’s gaze, and she frowned. “The main party was downtown. Practically in the shadow of your steeple. How long have you known, Father? Was it just not worth getting your hands dirty until Hisvin got involved?”
“We knew nothing until yesterday.”
“Nothing? Nothing at all? Why, Father, isn’t lying one of the sins you and your masked ilk are always babbling on about?”
“Believe what you will,” snapped the Father. “We would not have borne such an abomination to continue, had we known of it. They used the sacraments of the Church, they will pay, rest assured they will pay.”
I smiled. “Oh, they have paid. Priests and halfdead alike. By my hand, Father. By my hand.”
Father Foon rocked on his feet, exchanged looks with a soldier, swallowed.
“And what of her?” I asked, motioning to Darla, who stood close but refused to touch me. “Why was she not released from her bonds, after her captors were slain? Seems an odd way to rescue someone, leaving them tied and gagged. Unless, of course, you decided the best way to ensure her blessed and eternal silence was with a few swift blows from a churchman’s sword?”
Father Foon blustered. The huldra whispered, showing me things, and I chuckled at the image of all his soldiers boiling in their armor.
Darla caught my arm.
“Markhat,” she said. “Look at me.”
She pulled me close, wincing, as though my touch caused her pain. Later she would tell me it had, that my skin burned and moved under her hands, that as long as she touched me she heard strange echoes and snatches of odd words and long, lingering screams.
“You fool,” she said, and she reached up and stroked my cheek. “Oh, you fool, what have you done?”
“What I had to do.” My throat grew tight. “Had to make them pay.”
“Pay?”
“You were dead,” I said. “They killed you. Hurt you. I had to make them hurt.”
Darla regarded me with confusion for a long moment. Father Foon looked on, uncertain, and I could see him weigh the worth of having his soldiers strike us down where we stood.
I heard a shout, from outside. A shout and a flash of dim light.
Then there were torches. Torches, and voices, and Evis, and his men, all his men, quiet halfdead and panting, soaked humans alike.
“I am not dead,” said Darla. She spoke slowly and carefully. “They did not hurt me.” Evis moved to stand at her side, and then I heard Mama wheezing and slogging through the mud, heard her cry out Darla’s name.
“They took me. Held me here. But I am alive, Markhat. Whatever that thing is in your hand, whatever you thought you had to have-you don’t need it anymore. I’m alive. You’re alive. It’s over. We can go home now.”
I knew what she was saying. I understood it. But I also knew she had died, I remembered that too, remembered that her blood still flecked my desk, remembered telling the huldra my name, my secret birth name, that no one save my dead mother ever knew.
“Boy,” said Mama. She had my missing boot, wrested from the mud, and I remember thinking what an odd thing it was for her to have. She was bawling, hair slicked with rain, tiny Hog eyes sparkling and red in Evis’s torchlight. “Boy, listen to her, she ain’t dead, never was.”
The huldra spoke again. It showed me again my grief, my anger, my need to take the world by the throat and throttle it until every last bit of life fled it, my need to raise up a wall of flames and burn all that I hated to powder and ash.