Page 37 of Monster Married
I took a deep breath. “Wait, can I help? Can you use me instead of them?”
He looked over at me and rolled his eyes. “You mean you want to hold them when I sacrifice them instead of letting me end them quickly, princess?”
I sucked on my bottom lip. The sight of this was making me queasy, and I was glad I hadn’t seen Vergis do a lot of magic before if this was what it took.
“Can’t you, I don’t know, do what you did back at the Stone? You didn’t have to use your knife then.” My plans for becoming a trophy mate were about to be derailed, I could feel it in my bones. But I couldn’t just stand by while this was happening.
Inkiri clicked. “You said that magic hurt you, Sadir.”
Vergis opened the hatch and pulled one of the fluffy ligua out. “Right. We got lucky there. We should figure out what exactly you are before I start using you to strengthen an entire city wall.” He walked back to the circle with the ligua. The white fluffball squirmed in his hand, but he wasn’t letting go. There wasn’t the slightest bit of hesitation when he brought his knife down. The bagu in charge of the cart gave me and Inkiri a curious look, but kept quiet. “One more, then you get to watch some actual magic,” Vergis said.
Before the actual magic happened, we got to watch another ligua struggle uselessly against Vergis’s iron hold. Objectively, this wasn’t worse than any other type of butchering. The religious commune back on Earth had butchered livestock. They’d cut the heads off chickens. It hadn’t been my thing. At all. The screams, the panic, the blood…
I put my arm around Inkiri’s waist. Maybe all the ghosts on the moors were the ghosts of however many small and not-so-small creatures had been sacrificed to make the magic of these walls. Inkiri clicked at me, putting a warm hand on my side.
“Okay, here we go,” Vergis said, then he added something in Lugarra and motioned for the cage warden to take a step back.
I forced myself to look at what Vergis was doing. There were seven little corpses at evenly spaced points around the circle’s circumference. The circle itself was filthy with gore now, but underneath that, it looked pretty well maintained, the lines of it neatly carved into the stone. Inside the circle, the carvings resembled the script I’d seen all over town.
In the center of the circle was a smooth, round stone, and Vergis put his left palm on it. The little corpses, the blood, the circle itself, they all lit up brightly.
The light had an ephemeral quality to it, and I felt heat radiate from it. It reminded me a lot of all my other experiences with magic, except for the ligua corpses.
Vergis, midnight dark and focused on what he was doing, looked pretty impressive in the scorching light that surrounded him, the dark center of a supernova.
When the magic ebbed, the circle’s light dimmed as well, and where the small corpses had been, only flurries of ash remained, ready to be swept away or carried off by a strong breeze from the moors, the ghosts calling to their new siblings.
“That’s two sections down, two more to go,” Vergis said. When he stood and wiped his hands, there was only ash sticking to his fingers, all the blood turned to magic. “Are you guys coming along? I’m headed to the library after. Maybe they have a book on unusual magical properties in humans. They’ll have proper testing devices for conduits too, or that’s what I’m hoping, at any rate.”
Inkiri frowned. “You said he wasn’t a conduit.”
I swallowed. “And you… I mean, you gave me that bug jar.”
Vergis waved vaguely at me. “That wasn’t a proper test, just the best I could improvise. And you can do some of the things an active conduit might be able to do. The more I know about where you don’t match up with the expectations, the more I can zero in on what you are. Or at least that’s the plan. Because, frankly, I’m kind of out of theories where you’re concerned, princess.”
“I would still prefer he rest.” Inkiri, my absolute hero, looked at me with loving eyes. “He’s so fragile.”
I nodded. “I am.” Was the eyelash batting too much? “Didn’t you want to get me another scarf, Ink?”
The other bagu with the ligua cage cart clicked. Maybe I had found my ideal audience.
Vergis groaned. “Oh, come on, are you for real?”
Another click from Inkiri. “Hush, Vergis. Rory is right, and doubly right to tell me his wishes.”
Gran would’ve told Vergis that his eyeballs might pop out if he kept rolling them around in his skull like he was doing, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t have made him stop.
“You’re shameless, princess,” he said.
I’d never been spoken to like an understudy, because I’d never made it that far, but I’d heard the leads talk down to other understudies, so I tried to embody that.
I heaved a dramatic sigh. “I’ve had a long two years, that’s all.”
“Yeah, no kidding. And I’ve had a long few days since I met you. But fine. Be a tourist.” He looked at Inkiri. “If I need to borrow stuff from the archives, I can give them your name, right?”
“Yes, of course. Whatever you need from the Raiken.”
“Cool. I’ll try not to take advantage of that, but no promises.” Vergis sheathed his knife, and waved the other bagu along.
