Chapter Thirteen: Tacenda

He meant it.

In the middle of the quest to save the village—while the night was ticking away and each moment brought Tacenda closer to losing her vision—Lord Davriel Cane took a nap.

After traveling a few miles from the priory, Davriel kicked Tacenda and the demons out of the carriage, pulled down the shades, then curled up in his cloak. Miss Highwater shut the door with a click, shaking her head and smiling.

“I can’t believe this,” Tacenda said.

“It’s two-thirty in the morning,” Miss Highwater said. “He’s a powerful man when he decides he wants to be one, but he’s still mortal. He needs sleep, and tonight his bedtime preparations were interrupted by a child with an improvised dagger.”

Inside the carriage, Davriel started snoring softly.

Crunchgnar and Miss Highwater moved to a hollow on the side of the road where someone had piled rocks to make a firepit. It was probably a common stop on the way to the Bog. She might have stopped here before herself, but her trips this direction had always been during the day—when she’d been blind.

The demons hauled over some wood, then Crunchgnar touched his forehead for a moment, igniting a small flame on his fingertip. Soon he had an inviting fire crackling in the pit. Miss Highwater sat with the lantern behind her, sitting primly on a stone and looking through her ledger, then writing some notes.

Tacenda sat down near the flames, and found fatigue creeping up on her as well. She was used to staying up through the night, but...it had been a long night. Exhausting, mentally and emotionally. She didn’t want to let herself nap, though—not when alone with the demons, particularly Crunchgnar.

Still, despite his twisted face, prominent horns, and blood-red eyes, even he looked somehow...human as he squatted by the fire, warming himself. “I’ve never liked the overworld,” he muttered. “Too cold. I don’t understand how you humans can live like this, half frozen each night.”

Tacenda shrugged. “We don’t really have much choice. Though I suppose, if we really wanted to go somewhere warmer, you’d happily take us...”

Crunchgnar smiled. “I doubt you would find the fires of hell to your liking, girl. Lesser demons like me are usually forced to give up our prizes to our lords. I have claimed the souls of eight people during my existence, but have only ever been fed a small portion of each one.”

“Don’t you ever feel bad about that? Empathy for the souls you’re taking? Guilt for what you’ve done?”

“It is what I was created to do. It is my place in the world. Why should I feel guilt?”

“You could be something else. Something better.”

“I cannot ignore my nature, any more than you can, girl.” Crunchgnar nodded toward the carriage. “He likes to pretend that anyone can choose their own way, but eventually even he will have to pay the debts he owes. And his ‘freedom’ will last as long as an ember separated from its fire.”

Tacenda shifted on her rock. The words felt uncomfortably like what she’d said to Davriel herself, earlier. I was chosen by the Bog. I must follow my destiny...

“You understand,” Crunchgnar said. Hellfire, those eyes of his were disconcerting. At least Miss Highwater had pupils, even if they were red. Crunchgnar’s eyes were straight crimson. “You are smarter than he is, for all his confidence.”

“I...”

“We could make a deal,” Crunchgnar said. “I must keep Davriel alive for another sixteen years, but perhaps we could find a way to stun him. Hold him captive. He acts mighty, but has no power of his own—only what he steals. We could imprison him, and you could become the Lady of the Manor. Rule in his place.” The demon stood, looming beside the fire. Lit by its harsh light, he cast a long and terrible shadow into the forest. “I would serve you and deal with any who question your rule. I would make no try for your soul; I want only his. In sixteen years, I would leave you. No tricks.”

Crunchgnar stepped closer, and Tacenda cringed before him. She bit her lip, then started humming.

He flinched at the sound of the Warding Song. “There is no need for that,” he snarled.

Tacenda hummed louder, and the strings on her viol started to vibrate.

“Crunchgnar,” Miss Highwater said, “Some creature is making sounds over to the north. You should go see what it is.”

“Think about my offer,” he said to Tacenda, then nodded toward Miss Highwater. “And ignore that one if she pretends to extend you a better deal. She’s barely worth being called a demon these days.”

“And you’re barely worth being called sapient,” Miss Highwater said. “But we don’t rub your nose in it, now do we? Be a good boy and do what I tell you.”

He growled softly, but stalked out into the underbrush. Once out of the light, he moved with a silence that surprised Tacenda. For all his bulk, there was a dangerous grace about him.

Tacenda let her song die off, and the viol fell still. “Thank you,” she said to Miss Highwater.

“The song was hurting me too, child,” she replied. “Pity, as the music seems engaging. I’d like to hear you sing a complete song, something that wouldn’t seek to destroy me.”

Tacenda stared into the fire, remembering better days. Days when she had sung other songs, at Willia’s encouraging. Songs of Joy for the workers in the fields, or sung when she’d felt the warmth of her mother’s embrace. Songs now dead.

Tacenda leaned forward, warming her hands at a fire started with the heat of a demon’s flame. “Do you...do you agree with Crunchgnar? About your nature?”

Miss Highwater tapped her cheek with her pencil. Her eyes reflected firelight, seeming to burn. “Did you know,” she finally said, “that I was the first demon he summoned, once he reached this land?”

Tacenda shook her head.

“None of us had ever heard of him. We were newly free from our prison, where we’d spent what seemed like an eternity, though it was actually a relatively short time. Once free, we’d begun eagerly seeking contracts with mortals.

“I thought I’d make quick work of this dandy with the exaggerated clothing and the lazy way of speaking. I rushed into the contract, then applied myself fully to seducing him. But he barely glanced at me before sending me to count the currency in the former lord’s coffer. Over the next few days, I tried every trick I knew. But each time he’d see me, he’d give me another task.

“‘Oh, Miss Taria, there you are,’ he’d say—as if that were somehow my last name. ‘I’ve been looking over the receipts from the village taxes, and it seems that many of them have been paying in goods. Bartering does make my brain ache. Would you see if this ledger adds up?’” She shook her head, as if she still couldn’t believe that it had happened. “There I am—looking positively radiant—and he just walks past and hands me a list with the prices of livestock on it!”

“That...must have been frustrating, I guess?” Tacenda said, trying not to blush too deeply.

“It was absolutely infuriating,” Miss Highwater said. “I finally demanded to know why he’d picked me, of all demons, for this work. He’d summoned the Feaster of Men to balance his accounts? And you know what he did? He pulled out some papers. Copies of the contracts I’d done in the past. Demonologists make those, you know—they summon the contract, make a copy, and then read over the details to study their art.

“Well, he had about ten of my old contracts, and he absolutely mooned over them. Talked about how clever my wording had been, how neatly I’d ensnared my previous masters. To him, the contracts were the things of true beauty.”

Miss Highwater smiled, and there seemed to be real fondness in the expression as she looked toward Davriel’s carriage. “He didn’t care what I looked like. He summoned me specifically because he thought I’d be good at doing his ledgers. And he was right. I am good at contracts; I’ve always prided myself on that. It has made me an excellent steward.

“I’m not ashamed of what I am or how I look. But...it’s nice to be recognized for something else. A thing I’ve always prided myself on, but virtually every other person—mortal and demon alike—has ignored. So no, I don’t think Crunchgnar is completely right. Perhaps we were all created for a specific purpose, but that doesn’t prevent us from finding other purposes as well.”

Tacenda nodded and stared into the flames, considering that until a sound in the forest nearby made her jump. It was just Crunchgnar lumbering back into the light.

“Banshee,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder. “Doesn’t seem related. I frightened it off, but we may want to wake Davriel anyway.”

“Let’s give him a few more minutes,” Miss Highwater said. “That spell from the prioress will have been painful to absorb, and he could use the rest if we’re going to confront the Bog.”

“Are you sure,” Crunchgnar said, “he didn’t summon you to be his mother instead of his lover?”

“Fortunately for me, you’ve already taken the position of pet dog.”

Tacenda winced at the traded insults, but fortunately the demons fell silent as Crunchgnar added a few logs to the fire. They didn’t seem terribly concerned that a monster like a banshee was lurking out in the woods—but then again, who could say what would frighten a demon?

It didn’t feel right to be sitting here without making music. Though she’d spent many a night alone, lit by a lonely fire, she’d spent those hours at least plucking out a variation on the Song of Warding.

She’d first manifested that when protecting her family. It had come without her needing to learn it—it had simply happened. The songs were an instinctive part of her. Wasn’t that proof enough of her destiny? That the reason she existed was to sing that song?

That... a voice seemed to whisper within her. And more...

Eventually, Tacenda raised her viol and began to pluck a soft melody. Not the Song of Warding, but something more sorrowful, more solemn. Crunchgnar glanced at her as she began to sing, but this melody wasn’t meant to drive them away. It was a song she’d never sung, but one that felt right for the moment.

She closed her eyes and let herself be absorbed into the music. In that state, the songs seemed to come through her, as if her soul were the instrument, and the viol merely an amplifier. Time, place, and self bled together as the song begin to vibrate the strings on its own.

She sang of loss. Of death and the progress of time. Of unchanging woods that watched villages rise and fall, faiths burn bright and die, children grow to ancients, then be forgotten as generations piled on top of one another and infinite fires burned to ash. Of a girl who had been forced to stop her joyful music, and instead start singing only for the night.

The song expanded from her, and the viol wasn’t its only receptacle. The limbs of the trees vibrated, the stones hummed, the carriage rattled as a quiet percussion. Her song found any available path, and she was no more capable of controlling it than she would be capable of controlling the wind or the moon.

But slowly...it changed. Inched closer to that song she’d once known: that one her sister had loved. Tacenda reached for it, but found...found nothing.

She trailed off, the remnants of the song echoing inside her mind. She sighed, then looked up.

The demons were gaping at her. Miss Highwater’s ledger had tumbled from her fingers and fallen unnoticed to the ground. Crunchgnar stared at her, his jaw slack.

“What happened?” Miss Highwater asked. “I felt I was flying...”

“I...” Crunchgnar whispered. “I was kneeling in the molten pools of Dawnhearth, and the fires...the fires were going out...” He felt at his body, then looked around, as if surprised to find himself in the forest.

The door to the carriage slammed open, and Davriel scrambled out, leaving his cloak behind. He stalked toward Tacenda, his eyes wide.

She shrank back as he seized her by the shoulders.

“What was that?” he demanded. “What did you do?”

“I... I just...sang...”

“That was no simple warding,” he said, and she saw his eyes blur with white smoke. “What are you?”

Something slammed into Tacenda’s mind. An overwhelming force. She felt hands reaching into her brain, taking hold of her soul. She felt—

NO.

The music surged in her, and she shouted. A burst of light flashed from her—spraying fragments like sparks into the night sky—as it slammed Davriel away from her. He was flung backward some ten feet before crashing into the side of the coach, splintering the wood. He dropped to the forest ground with a muted thump.

Crunchgnar stood up, hand going to his sword—but it was Miss Highwater who arrived first, pressing a cold dagger to Tacenda’s throat.

“What did you do?” the demon woman hissed.

“I...” Tacenda said. “I don’t...”

Davriel stirred. He lethargically pushed himself up from the ground. Leaves sticking to his shirt, he shook his head.

Tacenda sat in a rising panic, a knife at her neck.

Davriel stood up and dusted himself off, then stretched. “Ouch,” he noted, then looked at his carriage. “Miss Highwater, I do believe I have marred this wood with an indentation made by my skull.”

“No surprise,” she replied. “It’s always been obvious to me which of the two was harder.”

She didn’t remove the knife from Tacenda’s neck.

Crunchgnar belatedly drew his sword. “Um... Should I kill her?”

“As amusing as it would be to watch her magic rip you apart,” Davriel said, “I might still have use of you. So no.”

He strolled up to Tacenda. She felt so nervous, she was certain the forceful beating of her heart would cause Miss Highwater’s knife to slip and draw blood.

Davriel nodded faintly to the side, and Miss Highwater whipped the dagger away, making it vanish into a sheath at her belt. She picked up her ledger as if nothing had happened.

Davriel, however, knelt down before Tacenda. “Do you have any idea what it is that lurks inside your mind?”

“The songs,” Tacenda said. “You tried to steal them! You tried to take my powers, like you did to those hunters!”

“For all the good it did.” Davriel snapped his fingers, dark green smoke coloring his eyes. A small light flashed, forming a kind of glowing green energy shield above his hand. “I stole a simple protection ward, which is what I expected to find inside of you. But as I touched it, I found something behind it, something deeper. Something grander.” He eyed Tacenda, making the shield vanish. “I repeat. Do you have any idea what it is?”

She shook her head.

“Has it spoken to you?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she said. “Unless...unless you count the songs. They seem to speak through me.”

He frowned, then stood and turned back toward the carriage.

“Davriel?” Tacenda said, rising.

“I don’t remember giving you permission to use my first name, girl.”

“I don’t remember giving you permission to reach into my mind.”

He paused, then looked back. To the side, Miss Highwater chuckled.

“Do you know what it is?” Tacenda asked. “The thing that you say you sensed inside of me?”

He climbed back into the carriage. “Come. It is time to visit your Bog.”