When Demons Walk

6

Sham entered her room with a tired sigh. Without calling for the maid, as she knew was customary, she rapidly stripped off the blue dress and left it where it dropped. Tonight she was too tired to play Lady Shamera for the maid’s benefit. A nightdress had been left on the bed, and she slipped it on.

Something nagged for her attention and she frowned, staring at the mantel over the fireplace. She had a very good eye for detail and a memory that seldom failed her. The ornaments on the mantle had been moved. Someone had been in her room while she was gone.

Alert now, she noticed that the keys were in the lock of the trunk, as if someone had tried to open it. Sham stretched and deliberately relaxed her muscles. This was not Purgatory, she reminded herself—she was the only thief here.

The servants had been in to dust the mantel and moved a few of the figurines and the ornamental dagger. Jenli had probably tried to open the trunk to put the rest of the clothes in the wardrobe—not that she would have had any luck. Sham knew without looking that the fastening spell had not been broken.

Still, she opened the lid and dug through the remaining clothes to make sure nothing had been disturbed. The flute lay awaiting her touch, its call so strong she had to force herself to cover it again with her tunic.

Her knife and dagger were there, slim-bladed and honed to deadly sharpness. Her thieving tools were there too, neatly tucked inside a small kit. She fell naked without them, but they were hardly necessary in the rarefied atmosphere of court. Tomorrow she would begin searching the courtier’s houses, then she could wear them.

Sham closed the trunk and locked it again, first with the key and then with magic. She picked up a long-handled brass snuffer that was leaning against the wall, and started to put the candles out one by one.

She could have used magic, of course, but she always used it sparingly. A wizard who used her magic for little things was likely to have nothing left in time of need. With a demon on the loose in the Castle she was likely to need it—and she was convinced it was in the Castle. One of the talents said to be strongest in the seal-people was sensitivity to danger. If Kerim’s selkie said it was here, it was so.

As Sham stood on her toes to reach the small candelabra that hung from the center of the room, a strange shiver ran down her spine. It was similar to the sensation the shifted ornaments on the mantel had given her, but this had no such mundane cause. Casually she circled the fixture, scanning the shadows that cloaked the corners of the room. She saw nothing, but she was certain something was here with her.

Slowly, Sham continued darkening the room. Moving to the fireplace, she extinguished the three large candles placed on the far end of the mantel. As she moved, she forced herself to keep her hands steady.

Warding spells were effective against magical beings like demons and dragons only if the warding was around the spellcaster’s home and cast by someone who understood the exact nature of the creature. Even if she had been better-versed in demonology, she was caught fairly on the demon’s hunting grounds —and she was beginning to feel like dinner.

After she’d extinguished the last candle, Sham casually set the snuffer against the fireplace and stared at the polished floor as if in deep thought—the sea could freeze before she’d crawl into that bed with its hampering blankets while there was a plaguing demon in the room. It wasn’t the best time to remember that the demon was overdue for a kill.

Sham caught a bare glimpse of something as a light touch stroked her shoulder. She didn’t realize it had been an attack until she felt the warmth of her blood sliding down her arm. Whatever it used to cut her with was so sharp that she did not hurt initially—an oversight soon corrected.

Deciding that staying in character might have its advantages, she screamed for help. She hoped the walls were thinner than they looked, so Kerim might hear her. The demon had been avoiding a public display, for reasons of its own; Sham hoped that it would continue the pattern. She didn’t have the knowledge she needed to destroy the demon yet, though she had the Whisper looking for any wizard that might. Without intervention, there was a better than even chance that she wouldn’t survive the night.

Hand to her shoulder, she spun around, looking frantically for her attacker while carefully maintaining the mannerisms she’d adopted in her role as the Reeve’s mistress. The room was quiet and appeared as empty as it had before the attack. All she could hear was the harshness of her own breathing.

Just as in the Old Man’s cottage, the intruder wasn’t using conventional methods of invisibility. No matter how powerful a sight aversion spell was, a wizard who was aware of the spellcaster could overcome it—as he could any other illusion. Sham couldn’t see anything out of place. Warm fluid dripped off her fingers, but she didn’t look down at the growing stain on the floor.

It had fed its hunger only last night, so it had only come to watch the newcomer—although it had placed the dagger on the mantel for possible use. Weapons were difficult to carry in its own insubstantial form.

The Chen Laut breathed deeply. The scent of the woman’s terror-inspired sweat was titillating—much too arousing to resist. She was so vulnerable, pitiful really. A millennium of evading human detection told it that it was taking unnecessary risks. Even a decade ago, it would have resisted hurting the human for fear of betraying itself.

But the Castle was held by fools who didn’t believe in magic or demons. And this woman played where she didn’t belong. It considered the crippled human that it could hear struggling to the wheeled chair on the other side of the door, and dismissed him with the last of its caution.

Upon entering the room, the demon had changed into its secondary form, counting upon magic to hide its body from the woman. As a noncorporeal entity, the demon needed a physical form to affect things in this world. The Summoner had provided two. The first form must be protected; without it the demon would be powerless, cut adrift here forever. But the second form, though infinitely more useful, was not necessary to survival.

Slowly Sham backed against the stonework and stretched a hand behind her, fumbling amid the implements that hung on hooks near the hearth. Her magic was unlikely to hurt it until she understood better what she was fighting, so she decided to try something else. The most obvious tool for a frightened woman to grasp was the poker. She had no intention of getting close enough to the demon to use such an ineffective weapon. Deliberately Sham knocked the poker loudly to the ground and snatched the small shovel instead, as if she had missed her target. She held the iron handle with an awkwardness that was not completely feigned; her shoulder hurt.

There was a soft sound to her right as if something hard scraped across an expanse of floor that the rugs didn’t cover. She was certain that the demon was as capable of masking sounds as Sham herself was. It was goading her.

The next sound was louder, and to her right again. She turned toward the fire and dipped the shovel in the hot coals. Continuing her turn, she cast the fiery lumps in the general direction of the second sound.

When she faced it, Sham saw the vague form of her attacker. Though magic concealed its face, it appeared to be a man. She must have hit it with some of the coals, because it shrieked in an inhumanly high tone. As the sound died down, she could hear someone rattle the catch on the door to Kerim’s room.

As Sham turned to the door, the intruder grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her towards the far wall. She landed on the polished nightstand, an improvement to the well-being of neither her nor the small, formerly sturdy piece of furniture. Used to street fighting, though no one had actually thrown her across a room before, she managed to roll to her feet, shaking off bits and pieces of wood as she did so.

The demon had summoned the shadows around itself, using the same spell that Sham favored in the dark streets of Purgatory. In the dark room, the unnatural shadows covered the whole area until the only things Sham could see were the coats that had landed on the bedclothes and started to ignite the cloth.

As she peered into the darkness, the demon surprised a cry out of her when it cut her bared calf. She looked down before it had completed its stroke, and she caught a glimpse of something metallic in the darkness: the pox-eaten thing was using a knife!

For some reason that turned her fear into fury. She was being attacked by a demon, a legendary creature of song and story—and it was using a knife like a common thief.

She crouched with a snarl, but the entire room was encased in the peculiar shroud of shadow and the demon’s presence was too strong to pinpoint. Smoke from the small fires amid the bedding and the rugs began to fill the room, making her eyes water, and she acquired another wound, this one on her thigh. Sham growled with frustrated anger.

A deafening crack echoed in the room, followed by an assortment of sounds, including the opening and closing of the outer door as the intruder escaped into the anonymity of the hall.

The demon ran cautiously through the halls until it was far from possible pursuit. The Reeve would be more interested in protecting his woman than finding her attacker. In the shadows of an unused room, it examined the body it wore. The damage the coals had inflicted was minor, though it would require a fair amount of power to return the golem to wholeness. The mild irritation it felt toward the Reeve’s mistress flamed to momentary rage. It calmed itself by deciding the woman would be its next meal, seven days hence. Until then, she could do little harm.

As the unnatural shadows dissolved, Shamera could see that the door by the fireplace had been split down the center. The half with the latch lay on the floor, tangled in the tapestries that had covered the doorway; the other half hung awkwardly from the lower hinge. The upper hinge clung tenaciously to the door, pale splinters of wood attesting to the force that had ripped it from the door frame.

She turned her gaze from the door to the Reeve, who was dressed in night robes with a wicked-looking war axe in one hand; his chair was placed sideways to the door frame to allow him to strike effectively. She gave him a grin of sheer relief.

“I’m glad you could make it,” she quipped, her voice not quite as steady as she wished.

“When you issue an invitation to your bedroom, it’s common practice to make sure the door is unlocked,” he returned without a pause. He looked beyond her and said, “It’s also common to wait until your partner’s here before you start getting the sheets hot.”

She turned and noticed that the smoldering blankets had begun to flame. Fires were the second magic that an apprentice learned, since fire is the easiest element to call into being. The first magic was how to extinguish them. She jerked the covers to the floor beside her. Given Kerim’s disbelief in magic, she assumed that he would think that she smothered the fire with the weight of the blankets.

To her continued astonishment, Sham liked the Reeve, Cybellian that he was—but she didn’t know if she could trust him. Twelve years ago she’d learned that fear was a brutal enemy, and she decided not to give him proof of magic’s existence for a little while longer.

“Sorry,” she quipped lightly. “I’m not familiar with the etiquette required of a mistress. Next time I’ll make sure that you’re in the bed before I throw hot coals at it.”

Kerim grunted in approval and swung the axe in a short arc that connected with the remaining hinge. The second half of the door dropped to the ground. By the simple expedient of grabbing both sides of the doorway and heaving, he pushed the awkward chair through the cleared opening and into her room.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You remember the demon that Talbot and I keep talking about?”

“The hypothetical one that’s the reason you’re here?” he said, rolling his chair slowly up to her.

She nodded. “That’s the one. It decided to check me out. It didn’t seem to care for more company, and so it left as soon as it became obvious that you were coming in.”

When he was close enough to see the blood in the shadows of the room, he said, “How badly are you hurt?”

“Not much, unless the cut on my shoulder is worse than it looks.”

He reached up and pulled her hair aside so that he could get a good look at her shoulder. “I’ve seen worse, but it’s deep enough to warrant stitching. Dickon’s pretty good at it.”

“Dickon?”

He laughed at the disbelief in her tone.

“He was a soldier before he was a valet, and he sews torn skin better than most of the healers.” He looked again at her shoulder and his brows lowered in thought. “It looks like a knife wound.”

Sham nodded her head. “A plaguing sharp knife at that.”

Kerim laughed. “From your disgruntlement I assume that you were hoping for claws and fangs?”

She smiled, closing her eyes to relieve the dizziness brought on by loss of blood. “Guess I was at that.”

“Come with me and tell me what happened.” He wheeled back to the doorway and pulled his chair back over the door sill.

“Have you talked to your stablemaster about modifying that thing yet?” asked Shamera, following him into his room.

“He and one of the carpenters are working on a new chair,” answered the Reeve, He gestured toward a seat. “Sit before you fall down. I’ll go get Dickon and you can tell me what happened after he has taken care of you.”

She complied gratefully and lowered her head to her knees. Dickon must have been sleeping nearby, because the Reeve returned with him shortly. She didn’t know how Kerim had explained the wounds, but Dickon was as contained as ever as he cleaned and mended the cut on her shoulder with small, even stitches. Determining the slice on her thigh was superficial, the servant bent down to get a closer look at the gash on her calf.

“My Lord says the magician last night was skilled in alchemy,” said Dickon as he pulled the skin of her calf closed.

“There’s a white rock, mined north of the glass desert. If it is mixed with water, an open flame held near it will ignite the surface of the water,” said Sham, trying to ignore the tug of the needle. “I didn’t get a clear view of the urns, but it seemed to be the kind of fire the white rock produces. I don’t know what the purple smoke was.”

Dickon paused briefly in his sewing to look at her in surprise, then a slight smile crossed his lips at her peace offering. “I’ve heard of the pigeons in the pot, but I’ve never seen one large enough to house an osprey.”

“There must have been some magic at work,” offered Sham, tongue in cheek.

Dickon snorted in disbelief, tying off the thread tidily. He produced bandages from the kit he’d brought in and began wrapping her calf.

“I’ve yet to see any magic that cannot be duplicated with a little work,” said the valet as he wiped his hands fastidiously clean.

Sham nodded congenially. “I’m sure that’s true.”

Dickon shot her a suspicious look, and she smiled.

“Will that be all, my lord?” he asked Kerim.

“Please see that the covering for Lady Shamera’s bed is discreetly replaced and the burned covering destroyed.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Dickon?” said Shamera. “Thank you.”

“Very good, my lady.” Dickon bowed himself out of the room and shut the door.

“How did you explain the fact that your mistress needed stitches in the middle of the night?” asked Shamera, pushing her hair out of her eyes with a hand that shook slightly.

“I didn’t. Are you steady enough to tell me what happened?”

She shrugged and immediately regretted it as the stitches in her shoulder pulled. “It’s more painful than damaging, I’m fine. I was snuffing the candles when something attacked me from behind.”

“You’re still sure that it was a demon? One that used a knife?” He sounded as if he were willing her to answer rationally.

Shamera sighed with more exasperation than she really felt. It would have been unfair to expect him to accept her view without allowing him evidence that true magic existed.

“I told you,” she said, “I don’t know enough. It looked like a man, but I didn’t get a glimpse of his face.”

“Why are you discounting the possibility that the killer is human?” He sounded honestly curious.

She felt guilty for deliberately misleading him with the truth, but she had never let a little guilt alter her course. “Because it picked me up and threw me across the room. I’ve been in a lot of fights, some of them with men bigger than you are. This thing was much stronger, and faster. I couldn’t see it.”

“It was dark,” he said patiently.

“So it was,” she agreed with equal patience.

“You said that it looked like a man—” he paused significantly, “—in the dark.”

“It did.”

“But it was a demon.”

“Yes.” Sham closed her eyes and yawned.

She could hear the squeak of the chair’s wheels as the Reeve moved around, but she was suddenly too weary to see what he was doing. He had a substantial presence that relegated demons to the realm of stories, despite the throbbing in her shoulder. She smiled to herself and started to drift off to sleep when a flash of memory caused her to sit up and open her eyes.

“The knife was in the room when I entered this evening.”

Kerim had been balancing the broken pieces of door against the wall. At her speech, he paused and looked up. “What knife?”

“The one the demon used. It was lying on the mantel next to the silver and porcelain dog. I noticed the ornaments on the mantel were altered from this morning, but I didn’t realize the dagger was new.”

Kerim pushed his way back into her room. He came back shaking his head. “There’s no knife there now. What did it look like?”

Shamera closed her eyes, trying to visualize it clearly. “It was ornate, like the swords on display in the hall—not inconsistent with its use as an ornament. The hilt was wooden. There was a dark stone set in one end. Ruby ... no, sapphire. A dark blue sapphire as big around as my thumb.”

“With etching on the blade?”

“You know the knife?” she asked, startled. “Who does it belong to?”

“My half-brother,” he answered with a tired sigh. “I don’t think that your attacker was a demon.”

Sham felt her eyebrow rise at his acceptance of his brother’s guilt. “It wasn’t Lord Ven,” she snapped before she thought.

Kerim turned to her. “Oh?”

“Look—” she said finally, rubbing her hands briskly on her cheeks in an effort to wake up, “—whatever it was that came into my room did it without opening the door. The hinges on the door creak and I would have heard it if someone opened them.”

“There is a ‘secret’ passage into that room, similar to the passage in this one.”

Sham shook her head. “I was next to the fireplace when it came in. All of the doors were closed.”

“You think that something used magic to enter your room.”

She hadn’t realized just how easy it was to make such a small word sound like something obscene. “Yes, I do. There is no way that the thing that attacked me was your brother.”

The Reeve closed his eyes briefly. “It’s too late at night for this.”

Shamera yawned and started to stretch before she remembered the skimpy silk shift that she was wearing and cursed her pale skin as it heated, though she hadn’t seen any sign that Kerim had noticed her state of undress. “I’m going to sleep. Do you need any help getting back to bed?”

“I can manage,” he replied. “I think that we ought to keep tonight’s attack quiet. I don’t want to spread panic any faster than it is already propagating.”

Shamera nodded and started back to her room, giving the disabled door a wry glance as she passed it. As much as she hated to admit it, she was glad to give up her privacy in return for the security of Kerim’s presence. Crippled or not, the man was a warrior.

“Good night, Shamera,” said the Reeve behind her.

“What’s left of it,” she replied, trudging on to her bed.

Shamera woke the next morning to the sound of a gentle tapping on the door.

“A moment,” she called as she threw the covers back and sat up.

If she’d been in any doubt of the events of the night, the soreness of her various wounds would have eliminated it. A moment of thought had her cloaking her wounds with illusion. Dickon’s niece might very well be trustworthy, but if Kerim wanted to keep the attack quiet, the fewer people who knew about her bruises the better. She glanced in the little mirror to make certain that she’d gotten all of the blood washed off last night. Only when she was satisfied that she looked no worse than usual did she bid the maid to enter.

When Jenli came in, she was not alone. Three husky footmen carried a trunk and two baskets into the room, keeping their eyes carefully averted as they set their burdens near the door and left. The last one was blushing furiously.

It wasn’t her state of undress that had done that, for the boys had not so much as glanced at the bed. Sham frowned thoughtfully and glanced at the fireplace implements scattered around the rugs that, like the floor, were covered with bits of porcelain and splinters of wood. A tapestry had been rehung over the opening to the Reeve’s chambers. While it provided privacy, it didn’t hide the fact that there was no door there anymore.

This little investigation was really going to have an interesting effect on the Reeve’s reputation, thought Sham with amusement.

“Delivery from your dressmaker, lady,” said Jenli, indicating the luggage. A smile fought to make itself seen, as the maid took in the damage done to the room with wide eyes.

“Good,” said Sham assessing the new arrivals thoughtfully. “I told Kerim I didn’t have a wardrobe suitable for court and he generously provided the means to acquire one.” She didn’t want Jenli questioning why her wardrobe consisted only of new items.

She chose a dark green velvet dress heavily encrusted with glass gems and pearls. It was an old dress from several decades past that she had glimpsed hanging in the dressmaker’s storage area waiting to be stripped of the reusable finery.

The velvet had been worn threadbare where the sleeves and side of the dress had rubbed together; she’d directed the fabric removed and the edges finished in gold braid. The dress left her sides bare from underarm to halfway down her hip, relying only on the weight of the fabric to keep from revealing more than was acceptable. The skirt was artfully sliced in a similar manner.

She ducked cautiously under the tapestry and into Kerim’s chamber, more worried about how much the dress revealed as she bent down than she was about who would be there. She made it through without displaying anything untoward and smiled at Dickon, who waited alone in the room with a covered warming plate containing her breakfast.

“Good morning, Lady Shamera,” said the servant, with no sign that he had sewn her shoulder for her the night before. “The Reeve instructed me to tell you he will be meeting with various claimants on his time today, and regrets he will be unable to entertain you. He thought you might be interested in visiting with the courtiers, and he will join you for your evening meal.”

“Good morning, Dickon. Thank you.”

After Dickon left, Sham ate, then ventured into the wandering halls alone. Her sense of direction served her in good stead, and she had no difficulty finding the public room on her own. These Eastern nobles were an idle lot if all they did from dawn to dusk was practice at court intrigue. With a mental shrug, Sham fixed a bright smile on her face and ventured into the room.

Lord Ven, Kerim’s brother, was the first to approach her, bowing low and kissing her fingers. “Ah Lady, you put the stars to shame.”

Shamera fixed a puzzled expression on her face and shook her head, “I didn’t mean to. I like stars.”

He paused briefly before straightening. “I meant only than your beauty is brighter than the stars.”

“Oh,” she said, then smiled in comprehension, “You like my dress. Isn’t it beautiful? And it only cost ten gold pieces. Kerim didn’t mind. He likes my dresses.”

Lord Ven was looking slightly distressed. Sham supposed it was the public mention of the cost of her dress.

“Did you eat something that disagrees with you?” asked Sham, thoroughly enjoying herself. “I find that wintergreen oil makes me feel better if I eat something that makes me sick.”

Lord Ven was saved from further babble by the advent of a young man whose blond coloring proclaimed him a Southwood native. He was, Sham estimated, a good decade younger than she.

“Ah, fair lady, do me the honor of walking with me. My Lord Halvok asked me to entertain you, since he has been forced to rob you of the Reeve’s company this day.”

Sham treated him to a bright smile. “Of course. Did I meet you yesterday?”

The young man shook his head. “No. I am Siven, Lord Halvok’s fosterling, Lord Chanford’s youngest son.”

Sham let the boy led her away, noticing that Lord Ven left the room unobtrusively behind her. She set her arm through Siven’s, chatting with him about inconsequential things.

He left her speaking with Lady Sky on the nature of fashion, but when the pregnant lady excused herself to retire to her rooms, a second fosterling attached himself to Sham. Lord Halvok and his cronies had apparently decided to keep her out of trouble when she wasn’t under the eye of the Reeve. Only good could come of having a Southwood lady as the Reeve’s mistress.

There was a note waiting for Sham in her rooms when she returned to them before supper. It was sealed with wax to prevent any of the servants who happened to be able to read from peeking. She smiled with satisfaction as she read the information the Whisper gave her on the nobles of the Court. Tonight she would visit three or four dwellings and see what she could discover.