After leaving the Grotto, Sky notices how quiet Three Rats is. The ward has always had numerous empty buildings due to the twisted, fused nature of many of them, resulting from the merger of two chunks of Reality into one ward. But those buildings that were lived in were packed full of lively, boisterous people. Even now at, he would guess from the stars, two in the morning, there should be shady characters on street corners, partygoers on their way home, gangsters and cops patrolling and nodding to each other in uneasy detente as they pass. Even if the ward is sensing that something big is about to go down – the average Three Rats dweller having an amazing nose for the smell of trouble brewing – he should have been able to hear the small sounds of families hunkering down, plaintive children’s voices asking why they had to be quiet followed by shushes.
But there is nothing but empty streets and empty homes. Quite a bit of vandalizing as well. Windows that look like the ragged-toothed jaws of beasts, and doors hanging from one hinge, discarded loot on the doorsteps. A few, very few homes look lived in.
Sky approaches Three Rats Station only to find it abandoned as well. In fact, there is no sign it has ever been used as a Guardia station. He enters by pulling aside a rusty corrugated-steel panel placed over the gaping doorway and discovers nothing but a shell of a warehouse with signs of someone having squatted there for a few days, leaving behind empty cans and water bottles. The squatter left three days ago, by Sky’s estimation of the stink in the corner, which the resident has used for a toilet. There is no sign that the interior walls of the station had been ripped out, either. Where Sky’s office had been, there are no scrapes or nail holes or anything to show that his office has ever been built.
Out back, the Burrow, Merri and Cherry’s bar and home to all the Bunnies, and to Alma and Dion as well, is also abandoned. The sign he gave them for Year’s End is missing. And the two screw hooks he put in himself to hang the sign from…gone. Never there, really. No holes. Inside he finds that yes, it is a bar, but that was the case before the Bunnies had arrived, an old former bar that they took over and made into a new one. There are no bottles to be found, no glasses, no dishes. Nothing left behind. No indication that these things had been taken away.
He does find something, though. A newspaper left behind, fallen behind the bar. He picks it up and sees the date of several months ago. From the yellowing of the paper he would say it was several months old, not years. A spark of hope begins to kindle as he starts to think that he has not disappeared for years after all. Yet the mystery of the empty ward remains. He leans against the bar, pondering.
This station was never a station, and the bar was never the Burrow. Bunnies have never lived here. He’s never been Inspector here. The Pearl has been stolen, but perhaps not twice. Perhaps only once, at the same time it was stolen in his memory. Only he and Alma and Gwydion had not been here to get it back and return it. And Doria, instead of being injured, had been killed.
Time travel to the past is forbidden by the Fates, powers greater than the greatest gods. Any being who attempts it meets a horrible end instead. And the newspaper shows he has not travelled into the past.
He forms a theory. He thinks it over again, then again, and can discover no flaws in his reasoning. It is still a mystery, what has happened, but the reality of the current situation is becoming clear.
And he remembers that Three Rats had, until just before his arrival, another Guardia station. A smaller one over near the border with Little Falls, back in the direction he’s just come from, not far from the Grotto. Machado and the other Guardia Popula had moved from there to here as the station was being expanded, when Sky had become the new Inspector. It seems that move never happened. Which means the old station could possibly still be occupied.
And thus he is now approaching the old station. He can see it at the end of an unusually straight stretch of road, and yes, there is a faint light within showing through the windows. It is only one story high, just a small block of brick and masonry. His heart beats faster. He wants to rush there, find someone he knows, perhaps Machado or Kaur or Lamore, someone who may never have met him but who can tell him something.
But he freezes. He is uncertain why at first. Then he sees something that does not belong. A bump at the top of a three-story building that looks down on the little station. He stands very still. The bump moves. And something else comes up from the shadow, a complex shape. A crossbow, being brought up and laid upon the edge of the rooftop. The head of the crossbowman – for the bump is a person’s head – shifts again, and Sky sees a shoulder to go with it. Whoever it is is taking aim at one of the windows of the station.
Sky slips into the shadows. Has he been seen? How many of them are there? Where are they.
He transforms. His skin, naturally dark, is still too visible in his human form, and shirtless as he is, too exposed. He may be far larger as a devil, but he is made for night stealth, not only with red-black skin but with an ability to cloak himself in shadows that cannot be seen through even by most forms of magic. He considers the quietest way to gain the heights. Flight, he decides, it the best route.
He retreats a block back the way he came and turns down a cross street, and with a powerful leap of his long, hoofed legs launches into the air. He flaps heavily to rise above the buildings, mostly two to four stories tall in this neighborhood, then glides quietly on leathery wings, dark-adapted eyes piercing the night. He is careful of the light from the one crescent moon that hangs near the horizon, making sure not to occlude it from the direction of the station.
He spots the crossbowman first, crouched at a balustrade on the roof of the building. And there is another, on a balcony. Another at street level, at the corner of a building. All three are holding crossbows, all three tense, predatory, ready to go. A barely noticeable shadow slinks down and leaps onto a first floor balcony. It raises something to its mouth, and Sky hears a quiet, momentary whistle. Two more shadows detach themselves from nearby buildings and head for the back door of the Guardia station. The one at the corner and two others advance in a diagonal line from a nearby building, headed for the front door. One of them looks like a human battle ram, so bulky and tall is he.
Eight. He counts eight. Too many to take out without bloodshed. Too many to shout, “Guardia! You are under arrest! Drop your weapons!” Not when they’re about to launch their kill mission. He’ll have to attack full force, no warning. And with no weapons…he’ll have to use his natural ones. He flexes his talons.
And there, they’re moving fast. He moves faster.
First the rooftop crossbowman. Glide, then swoop. At the last moment the sniper senses something behind him. He starts to turn, trying to bring the bow around, but too late. Sky flies just above him, both arms hanging down, palms forward, talons curved. A horrible, brief tug of flesh and cloth tearing, and Sky’s target grunts, flipping off the rooftop in a gout of blood that arcs through the air. He hits the ground just before Sky, wings folded to dive then snapping out to decelerate, lands with a heavy thud just behind another of the assassins, whom he blinds with a cloud of darkness. The darkness dissipates just as a bolt flies through it from the sniper on the balcony, but Sky is gone, leaving only a twitching body in a rapidly growing pool of blood. But the big guy doesn’t stop – he’s hitting the door, smashing it in with a huge crash and shatter of glass. A shadow swells from darkness and leaps upon him, swallows him, then the huge attacker is flying through the air, all the way across the street to land like a sack of wet oatmeal, skidding a bodylength before stopping. A crossbow bolt, again from the balcony, goes through the moving, ink-in-water shadow and hits the brick of the station, sticking into it.
The shadow fades in dissipating tendrils, and is gone, with no sign of Sky.
There is a smashing of a glass window. A scream, as a figure slips into the station through the opening. Three high-pitched voices, screaming almost in harmony. They sound familiar to Sky, but the circumstances bring no pleasure at the possible recognition. The screams suddenly increase in volume, another female voice adding to them, and at least one male scream of agony joining in. Impact, then again, and another lesser crash as a body enveloped in flame is knocked back out the window through which he entered. Sky palms his skull, greasy with boiling fat and flesh, and yanks him the rest of the way out, swinging the burning, struggling man and hurling him to impact the oversized thug who is trying to stand, knocking him down again and setting his shirt afire.
Sky hears an astonished curse and looks up to see the balcony sniper, frozen in the act of reloading across the street and two floors up. He is staring at Sky, who, having forgotten to wreathe himself in darkness, was illuminated by the flaming now-corpse. Sky knows what the sniper has seen: a creature the size of an aurochs, but long and bipedal, wolfish jaws, huge dragonish wings and a dragon’s tail. And an aura that just screams Hellspawn. Devil, demon, the sniper will not know or care. He sees Sky staring and drops his crossbow off the edge of the balcony and it clatters to the street. He turns, bashes into the frame of the balcony door, staggers, and runs into interior of the building.
Five, Sky counts. Two snipers, one dead one running. The three in front, two dead one struggling to put his clothes out. Got the two round back and the leader to deal with.
Another scream within. A cold female voice, telling them to shut up.
Sky slips around the back, rapidly reverting to human form. He is big for a human but he moves like a cat when he needs to, light and silent. He is glad for his bare feet, so heavily calloused from this stolen form’s shoeless childhood that even small pieces of glass do not bother him. He sees the rear door, forced open, a shape in the doorway. Another member of the strike team, left there to watch, but looking the wrong way at the moment. Sky is on him as he turns, no talons or teeth now but just a pair of big, strong hands. One seizes the man’s crossbow, clenching the foregrip and pinning the bolt against the flight groove so that it cannot be fired. The other hand is around the man’s throat. Sky looks into the man’s eyes as he squeezes both hands as hard as he can. The eyes bug out. Sky feel the larynx collapse, the vertebrae pop as they separate. There is a slight splintering of the crossbow. Sky lowers both to the ground man and weapon to the ground, silent.
He enters the station’s kitchen. Through the door to the main room, he can see the leader, cloaked, holding someone. Holding a knife to someone’s throat. Hostage. Beyond her, in the lit room…
Somrak is the first he makes out. Somrak standing crouched, ready, one of his long knives in one hand, the bunched up shirt of an attacker in the other. The attacker is dead or unconscious. Somrak took him down, so Sky assumes dead. The knife is red and slick with blood.
Sky cannot see the whole room from here, but he sees Gwydion, looking terrified, his arms protectively around two frightened Bunnies, Mayumi and Rosemary. And just behind his shoulder is Cherry, holding a bundle that squirms. A sound like a cat’s scream suddenly erupts from it. No, not a cat. A baby.
“Lower that hand, Matchstick!” the cloaked figure demands. “I start feeling hot, the lady here is getting her throat slit with an ichor-laced blade.”
The voice freezes Sky in his tracks as he creeps closer. He knows the voice instantly. Only its owner is dead.
Somrak lets the body fall to leave his other hand free, but he lowers both that hand and the one holding the blade. “You’ll never get out of here alive, assassin. Unless you give up now.” He is not looking at Sky. His eyes stay focused on the one he calls ‘assassin.’ But Sky knows that Somrak must be able to see his heat signature in the shadows of the kitchen.
Alma’s voice, choked by an arm across her throat, terrified, begs, “Please! What – what have I ever done to you?” Sky can now see her feet encased in tiny, delicate shoes, in front of the assassin’s flexible boots. The rest of both assassin and captive are still hidden by the cloak.
Alma’s voice but…different. Had he ever heard Alma beg? For anything?
“Nothing, hon, but I do need to make a living. Now stop squirming.” The hostage-taker takes a step back, keeping Alma off-balance, dragging her toward the kitchen and escape. “And you stop mumbling! If I hear one magic word, she’s dead.” This last makes Dion freeze, eyes wide, horrified.
Sky stays where he is, not breathing, willing himself to be unnoticeable. Not here, not here, there is nobody here. He learned the technique so very long ago from a native scout when Sky was training the mortal’s people how to use repeating firearms, and in return he was trained to be even sneakier than he was. He stands so she will be in the doorframe when her back touches his chest. But he knows who this is. Her voice is harsher than he’s ever heard it except when she was killing Margrave, and being killed in turn by minor demons biting and tearing her. He knows how deadly she is. He knows she could kill Alma if he is not very careful.
That is why he does not wait for her to step on his foot, or for her back to touch his chest. He stops wondering why Alma is begging instead of casually disarming Saira, for thought Saira is deadly, she is no Guardia Dei who was trained by the Fencer. He just reaches a hand around Saira’s hood with the speed of a rattlesnake and grabs, intending to seize the assassin’s hand. But even he is not quite fast enough. Instead of her hand, he feels the sharp edge of the blade slicing the skin of his fingers. He does not hesitate, gripping the blade with all his strength. He ignores the sting of the razor edge cutting through muscle to the bones, instead happy his little finger has caught the handguard. She won’t be able to simply pull the blade out of his grasp.
He holds on as she grunts and tries to pull it free. He holds on even though he feels that she was not lying about the highly illegal demon-ichor poison that is coating the blade. This much entering a god’s bloodstream would have brought the god to his knees, potentially with death to follow. For Sky is merely hurts, like fire burning through his veins and up his wrist and forearm. He is, after all, a being of Hell. His own bloodstream is, essentially, this very poison in a less-concentrated form.
His other hand grabs the back of Saira’s cloak, yanking her back, hard. As she was doing to Alma, keeping her off-balance so she could not easily try to fight back, Sky shakes Saira like a terrier with a rat, and steps back into the darkness of the kitchen. She lets go of Alma, who falls with a thud to the floor, landing on her derrière, undignified but free.
Sky knows Saira will have another weapon in her free hand in a heartbeat. He makes no attempt to stop her, instead bringing his right arm around her throat. He is still holding her blade, but she lets go as she realizes she cannot extract it from his grasp, nor does she have the strength to stop him from applying a choke. She tries to slip free, but he has her, pulling her from the floor, holding his right forearm with his left hand. She kicks his legs, trying to break a knee. She tries to wriggle away. She pulls another blade and stabs it into his forearm.
None of it helps. While it is true that a highly trained smaller opponent can easily overcome brute strength, when the stronger opponent is almost as fast and is just as highly trained with ten times as many years of experience, and when sharp kicks to the knee and fingers slashed to the bone and demon-ichor poison and a dagger in the forearm all amount to little more than scratches and bites from a cat, the result is inevitable. Saira is one of the best, but she is mortal, and Sky is already constricting the flow of blood to her brain as his forearm and bicep press against her carotid arteries. She does considerable damage to him in the five seconds she has before she blacks out. But she goes limp nonetheless.
There is a moment of silence. Sky releases his choke hold and makes sure Saira is still breathing. But then as if a chip falls, screaming starts. Shockingly, it is not a Bunny, but Alma filling the station with terrified screams. Sky drops Saira faster than he should, regretting the thud of her unconscious body on the wooden floor, but nearly panicking. His first thought is that one of the Bunnies or Dion or someone was just killed by the sniper that ran away, but no…from the kitchen he can see that Alma, clutching at her chest, is scrambling to her feet and rushing into Dion’s arms, holding him like a stone in a raging stream, sobbing. Though they too look shaken, though they too have tears in their eyes, Merri and May are comforting her, as if she were the child and they the mothers. Sky catches Cherry looking at her weeping mother and sighing in mild exasperation. He thinks she almost rolls her eyes.
“It’s all right, my little lamb. It’s all right.” Dion, patting Alma’s back, looks up from where he sits to ask Somrak, “What-what happened, Sergeant?”
Somrak, who is keeping his eyes on the kitchen, watching Sky’s body heat in the shadows, says, “Well, my partner was on the job, after all.”
Sky looks at his right hand, the one that Saira’s knife cut deep into. The demon-ichor rages within, though he is metabolizing it. But the fingers are talons, the skin red-black up to his elbow. He cannot walk out there. His left forearm has a dagger still sticking out of it. He carefully extracts it and tosses it into the kitchen sink, wincing at the loud clatter that cuts off Alma’s screams, leaving only sniffles.
Lovely. “There are two more. One has fled. Perhaps the other as well.” His voice is frighteningly deep, monstrous. He grimaces at how everyone in the main room leans away from the dark kitchen door, eyes widening. Everyone except Somrak, who narrows his eyes in concern.
Sky squats and pushes Saira’s unconscious body from the kitchen into the light. “I will…” He clears his throat, struggling to get it to return to what he thinks of as normal. “I will hunt them. Stay here. Disarm this one and put her in a cell. Be careful – she’s very good. She will have many hidden weapons and tools. But do not kill her, whatever you do.”
And with that, Sky goes out the door, ignoring Somrak’s protest.
神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎
About fifteen minutes later, Sky returns. He notes that five bodies, one of them burnt, are stacked neatly in the alley behind the station. Somrak or the Popula must have gone out and fetched them. Sky approves. A station surrounded by bodies is rather conspicuous.
He does not have the other two with him. The big one was easy enough to catch up with. He turned out to be a minor demigod of strength of somesuch, and his blows could have been deadly to Sky if any had landed. Sky punched him hard in the side of his bullet-head and discovered that he did not have any special resistance to damage. The skull crushed, the unfortunate demigod collapsed like a cheap building in an earthquake, never to move again.
And the other had seen Sky’s true form. Sky found the sniper cowering in an alleyway and asked him a few questions, which the assassin begged to answer. What Sky learned fit logically with the hypothesis he had formed. He considered the possibilities of keeping the man prisoner, but he knew they would have to move quickly and that there would be no facilities for locking him up where they would go.
Death was quick and almost painless.
In the dark kitchen again, he watches the main room of the station. Machado is there, talking to Kaur. Dion is sitting on a sofa, his arm around Alma. Protective. Alma holds the baby, calmer, whispering and cooing. Merri is next to her, fussing with the baby’s blanket, and Cherry is leaning over the back of the sofa, making funny faces at the infant.
Sky notices that Alma’s eyes are the beautiful blue that they were when he met her. They have not been transformed into strange pupil-less pearlescence. He shudders at the memory which flashes into his mind, of Nua the Necromancer torturing innocent mortals to death just to break his will, mortals she had reshaped to appear to be Alma, Dion, and Saira. Nua had not known that Alma had become the Spinner, and in so doing that her eyes had changed.
But here, now, this fits with everything else. This is Alma. It is no trick.
But she is not his Alma.
He looks past the little family, who look so much like his family, and he sees Somrak, looking at him in the shadows again, having sensed his return. Somrak with the scar across his handsome face, his mouth pulled into a slight permanent smirk by it. The scar not erased by Lyria’s healing. And next to Somrak is Mayumi, also watching him. Her ears are perked forward – naturally she heard him moving around in there. Her face is just as beautiful as his Mayumi’s. But…it is different. She looks younger, softer. She doesn’t look like someone who would ever be interested in joining the Guardia. More like Mayumi’s party-loving, beach-going twin.
He considers the blood on his arms and elsewhere. The Bunnies will be disturbed by the smell, and everyone else by the sight. He turns to the sink and begins washing himself off.
He hears the sound of a footstep behind him and most of the light from the station is blocked. Glancing back, Sky sees Somrak leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Lose your uniform?”
Sky continues wiping down his chest and limbs with a wet rag that is turning red with blood. “I had an…encounter. The threat is neutralized. How’s the prisoner?”
Somrak just watches him for a moment, but then says, “Locked up nice and tight, stripped down to her undies. I let the Popula woman, Lamore, do the cavity search. She’s watching her now. Prisoner was coming around when I left them a couple minutes ago.”
Sky drops the rag in the sink and walks to the door, pausing as Somrak does not move aside. The fire god looks Sky up and down. “That was some scouting jaunt,” he says with a low, accusatory voice. “You slaughter most of an assassination team and you seem to know the only surviving member personally. You show up here in nothing but a pair of tights. And…you’ve lost weight, partner. You’re thinner than I’ve ever seen you.”
Sky takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it out. “I’ll explain when I’m certain what’s happened.” He talks low but adds, “The Bunnies can hear every word we’re saying.”
Somrak rolls his eyes up toward the stars above. “Of course they can. Don’t take too long with that explanation, pal. You know I don’t like being kept in the dark.” He straightens and moves to let Sky through.
Sky looks around the room. Everyone is looking at him. Alma looks as if she wants to say something, while Gwydion looks…intimidated? And like Mayumi, he looks soft, more literally so. Alma as well. And despite the baby in her arms, Alma looks like she is barely out of her teens, while Dion seems almost patriarchal – a little heavier, a little more…dad-like. The way Cherry hangs over his shoulder carries not the slightest hint of flirtatiousness, and Dion reaches up to take her hand, to comfort her in the face of the looming, shirtless, barefoot, scary-voiced killing machine standing before them all. Mayumi moves to sit by Dion, leaning against him in a daughterly way that Sky could hardly imagine her doing with anyone except Alma.
Sky looks over at Machado and Kaur. The uniforms are the same. Sergeant – no, it’s Corporal Edison Machado, according to his pips, who looks no different, though he hasn’t shaved his head or cheeks in a couple of days, resulting in a shadow of black stubble peppered with grey on his pate and lower face, except for a large bald spot on the crown. With yet another shock, Sky notices that Aliyah has shorter hair, only to her mid-back. The Constable-sometimes-Corporal Aliyah Kaur he knows does not cut her hair, in keeping with her family’s Sikh faith, and it is braided in a queue the end of which taps against the backs of her knees as she walks. There is not much of her faith that she holds to, but apparently this Aliyah does not hold to that rule.
Alma, Gwydion, Machado, Kaur – these are all his officers. Well, not anymore, not since he was tortured. But depending on the Commander’s decisions, perhaps one day again. And all of them and the Bunnies and Somrak, they are all family. But no, only Somrak knows him here. All the rest are wary of him.
“Sergeant Machado, I’ll speak to the prisoner now,” Sky says. “And…I don’t know what kind of stores you have, but if you happen to have any clothing that might fit me, I would greatly appreciate it.”
Machado nods after a moment. “Sure, Sergeant. I think there might be a shirt, at least.”
Sky nods at him and Aliyah, then goes toward the holding cells. Alma, as if suddenly coming to a decision, a determined look on her face, abruptly stands, surprising everyone with her on the station sofa. She scurries over to Sky as he places his hand on the door to the cells. Partially obscured by a tall filing cabinet, she whispers to him, “Sergeant? I… May I have a word with you?”
He looks down at her, taking in her lace-trimmed silken blouse that manages to be demure and at the same time reveal the cleavage of her full, motherly breasts. He is not certain, but he thinks she is a little shorter than his Alma. His eyes focus for a moment on the baby, which smiles with plump cheeks at him. “Yes, of course. What is it, Alma?”
She looks a little scandalized at his words, not in the humorous way her mother Lyria pretends to be scandalized, but truly so. Then in a shaky voice that is trying to be brave, she whispers, “I know I asked you for a big favor, Sergeant, but I do not believe it merits such intimacy of speech between us.”
He blinks at her, his face still, to hide the surprising flash of hurt at her objection. “Forgive me…Lady Alma. The recent violence has shaken me. Are you all right, by the way? Were you at all hurt?”
She shakes her head, looking subdued now that their social boundaries have been reestablished. “No. I was just…shaken. It was the first time someone held me at knifepoint. But I am all right. Thank you. For saving my life.”
“I hope I shall never have to do it again,” he says, “but I will gladly do it a thousand times if necessity requires it. Now, this favor you asked of me…” He trails off, hoping she will fill in the blanks about some favor he has only just now heard of.
“Yes. I did not want to ask about it in front of my husband and your partner – forgive me but he has been so ill-tempered with us since you both were assigned to protect us. I was afraid you would somehow get in trouble for it.” She looks expectant, almost pleading. “Did you find it? The Grotto?”
He pauses, his mind racing with how best to reply. “Yes. Yes, I found it. And…a pool. A pool that glimmered, and was filled with swirling colors. Is that what you expected?”
She nods, her breath quickening. “That is what my dream showed me! Did you find the answers there for how we may be saved?”
He thinks furiously, his hypothesis further bolstered by this, and starting to see more implications that come crashing down on him like the Grotto’s waterfall. “Perhaps. I…I’m still trying to understand it all. You had a dream, you say? Was there anyone else in this dream?” He sees her look of confusion. “It’s just…I was hit, in the fighting. On the head. Things are a little muddled.”
Her eyes widen in concern. “Oh you poor soul! And your hand is wounded as well!” She shifts the baby to her left arm and takes his hand, pulling him to a desk chair. “Here, come and sit down for a moment. I will take care of those wounds before you go speak to that dreadful assassin character.”
Sky sits, glad that the chair has no arms. From the picture of a bearded father and smiling mother on the desk, he knows it is Constable Kaur’s. “Thank you. I…I could hold the baby,” he offers, realizing he wants to and hoping she will let him. “What is his name?”
“Gwyeu,” she says with a voice filled with love. She looks just a little nervous, but she leans forward and carefully hands him over, and Sky holds him with tenderness, his face overcome with an expression of bliss as he smiles at the child. He almost doesn’t hear her as she asks, “Is he not the sweetest, most adorable baby you have ever seen? Looks like a miniature version of his father.” She strokes the baby’s nose, looking as if her heart is melting before she perches on the edge of the desk and takes Sky’s hand. “Now, this may hurt a little before it starts feeling better.”
His hand closes around hers. The flesh has mostly knitted back together from his own healing. His ability to transform himself has come with an unexpected benefit: the divine self-healing that nearly all gods have seems faster than before, as if the newfound ability to control his body includes repairing it. But the muscles will still take time to regain full strength without help. He unconsciously squeezes her hand before noticing that he’s doing it, forgetting, as he makes amusing faces at the baby, that this is not the Alma he knows.
“You seem to have a way with children,” Alma notes, as she suffuses Sky with preliminary healing energy, scanning his whole body for wounds. “Do you have any of your own?”
“Long ago,” he says in a soft voice. “I haven’t held a godling this young in…years. A few years.” Not since a mission to retrieve an infant stolen by a malevolent fae. But she would not want to hear about that – it had been dark and bloody. “He is indeed adorable.”
Alma smiles at his words, but then frowns. “You were hurt in more places than just this hand. And…the scars.” Although actual scars, like that on Somrak’s face, are rare in gods, still traces can remain of healed wounds, recent or terrible, that leave shadows on the flesh and spirit. Alma starts healing him, her magic pouring into him, and he is surprised, for in this she is stronger and somehow more self-assured, more efficient at healing. Closer to her mother Lyria’s level of expertise. But this also makes the healing hit him harder and faster before the relief comes. He closes his eyes at the intensity of it, but he does not allow the baby to be disturbed at all.
“There. All done,” Alma says. “Such horrible poison… I wonder how they even find such terrible substances in nature.”
He opens his eyes, his breathing a little faster than before. The demon ichor, of course, was almost gone from his system. “Yes, well, that is something I will ask our prisoner about. Such poisons are very much prohibited.” He pauses. “Now, I don’t think you mentioned…was there anyone else in your dream?”
Her energies, softer, wash through his body again, checking for anything needing healing that she might have missed. “No, just a voice. Feminine. Pleasant. Old perhaps.” Alma looks at him, helpless. “I worry that I may have done nothing but waste your time and put you and ourselves in danger by asking you to go. But it felt so ominous… I had never had such dreams before.”
“Well, you mustn’t think it was useless,” he says, mulling over her words. The Oracle? Is that who she heard? He himself had been sent a message by Nevieve in the past, telling him where Alma, Dion, and the Bunnies were and that they needed help. “If I had not been sent out, I would not have noticed the team of assassins. They could have succeeded, otherwise. In a sense, your prophecy has already come true.”
Alma gasps in shock, which almost makes him laugh. In such dramatic gasping, she sounds distinctly like Merri. But before she can say more, Gwydion comes around the filing cabinet. He looks almost suspicious. It is an expression Sky has seen before, on the Gwydion he knows, who was, for a time, jealous of the friendship Sky and Alma shared, thinking it carried a romantic element. “My dear? I was looking all over for you. You mustn’t disappear like that. The children were worried.”
Sky knows it is Gwydion who is worried, and that ‘looking all over’ is ridiculous in this tiny station. “She was healing me…Lord Gwydion,” Sky says, assuming that if Alma goes by Lady then Gwydion must have an appropriately equal appellation. “And a most impressive healer she is.” He gently hands the baby back to Alma. “I thank you, Lady Alma. Now I had better interrogate our prisoner.”
“You will speak to this…mercenary? But she nearly killed my wife just now!” Dion looks confused an expression that seems comfortable on his face. “Why would she even bother to speak to you when she was obviously sent to kill us all?”
Sky stands up and shrugs. “People often open up to me,” he says. “I just have one of those faces, I suppose.” He nods toward both of them, then turns and opens the door to the holding cells, and ducks through, careful not to bash his skull on the doorframe.
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