April had been very, very clear that if she heard a word out of Alice that night, the dog would bear the consequences. It was a toothless threat—April had no interest in harming the animal, not when it was a passable hunter and terrific sentry, and a warm body when the desert nights crept up. But it was the only thing she could think of to keep Alice in line.
It seemed to be working, at least. April just wanted a few hours with silence in her head. The woman who had gotten flirtatious with her after a few drinks here in the relatively busy safe haven of Newark was just a surprise bonus.
The woman, whose name started with an H, had her own quarters and an air of confidence to her April found attractive, and was quite a handsome sight naked. It would have been nice, and April’s first real chance to forget things and enjoy herself in ages, had it not been for the fact that halfway into it she realized she could feel Alice’s intent curiosity. She wasn’t talking—she was being very careful of that—but she was there, a voyeur, a peeping Tom.
April’s partner was probably disappointed in the sudden shift in mood and a muttered excuse after she fumblingly managed to at least finish what work she had started. Then she was gone, red-faced and still wet between the thighs, with only the growing sensation of Alice’s inquisitiveness for company.
It was a long night after that. It went on long enough that after her third time of getting up to pace, April kicked a rock and asked aloud, “What are you?”
Silence.
“You can talk now.”
Oh, said Alice. Um. I don’t know.
“How can you not know?”
I just don’t. Did you know what you were as soon as you got made?
The worst thing about this question was its earnestness. April kicked another rock. “That’s different,” she said. “I’m human. You’re some kind of demon.”
Am not. I don’t know what I am but I’m not a demon. I’m not a devil either.
“There’s a difference?”
Yes. Everybody knows that.
April had not, but it seemed pointless to say so. “Then,” she said, “what are you?”
I don’t know, Alice said again. Before April could even get irritated at her, Alice launched into what had clearly been on her mind before now: Were you and that lady doing sex?
Fucking hell. “Yes.”
Ohh. Can she fly?
“What? No. Did you see any wings? No.”
It was rare to get the impression of annoyance from Alice, but without fail it came if she thought April had missed something obvious. April felt it now, like an evergreen bough scratching at her mind. I was only asking, Alice said. Is sex nice?
“It—yes.”
Why did you stop, then?
“I stopped because you were watching,” April snapped.
She felt the surprise and another wave of confusion coming off Alice, and wondered if getting stuck with a demon that wasn’t so fucking stupid would have been worth the trade in danger. It might have been.
The last thing in the world April felt like doing now was explaining exactly why she didn’t like to be watched screwing someone, and braced herself for the inevitable question. What came instead was unexpected. She seemed nice. I won’t watch next time if you want.
“I want you to leave.”
Silence.
April would never know how in the hell the woman found her again. She wasn’t even sure herself where she had ended up the night before, just that she had eventually fallen asleep behind someone’s stable, where bales of straw had been left out in stacks. As beds went, it was one of her better finds.
A shadow blocked out the encroaching morning sun, and April waited for the hollering that followed the discovery of a tramp. It didn’t come. Instead: “April? It was April, right?”
April lay rigid on the straw, blindsided. The woman smirked, that same smirk that had been so appealing the night before. The shine hadn’t faded with the morning, though she could see her more clearly now without the haze of a dozen smokers in a dim tavern. Human, with thick, black hair in tight kinks, skin the color of fresh-turned earth. Her eyes were green, April thought, but they were behind tinted goggles and a broad hat in the bright morning sun. Her lip was pierced in a way April almost recognized. “I could’ve pulled a hay bale in for you if that’s why you left.”
“No,” April mumbled, eyes cutting around her to get her bearings. Midmorning, her pack undisturbed, no one else with the woman. The dog was still here, investigating something unsavory on the path. Safe enough. “What do you want?”
“Coffee. I thought you might want some too, when I saw you.” The woman—H, Hayley? Harmony? No, Harper—Harper grinned, offering a hand. “And breakfast, you skinny bitch. Felt all your ribs last night.”
Free food was free food. April took her hand.
Ask her about flying, Alice said again. I want to fly! Maybe she can teach us.
“Shut up,” April hissed into her mug, and burned her tongue on the coffee inside. It took concentrated effort for her not to drop the cup.
“You say something?”
“No,” April said, and cast her eyes around the little outdoor cafe she had been brought to. “Um. Thanks. For this.”
“I’m buying your time is all,” Harper said pleasantly. She nodded to April’s axe, propped up against her chair between them. “And I’m wondering about that.”
“It’s an axe,” April said. “I didn’t steal it.”
Harper lifted a brow. “Do people think you did?”
“I steal a lot of things.” She put down her coffee and reached for the sugar. “Even if I didn’t, I look like someone who would.”
Harper seemed to consider this, and April began to regret taking this offer of breakfast. Alice kept prattling on about flying, which Harper clearly was not capable of, and she was fairly certain she’d already made Harper regret their aborted tryst. When the food came she would eat as fast as she could and make an excuse, and they would be glad to be rid of each other.
Only Harper hadn’t gotten the script, apparently. “I’ve stolen more shit than I can count,” she said, her fingers lighting on the back of April’s arm.
In a flash said fingers were sitting on the table. “Don’t touch me,” April said, the motion and words coming before she had a chance to interrogate them. This, if nothing else, usually pissed people off enough to make them leave her alone. It was fine. It was all fine.
But Harper just carried on like nothing had happened. “Anyway,” she said, “I wanted to find out if I had upset you last night, and if I could make amends. I don’t like to have bad blood hanging around, intentional or not.”
“Why do you care?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“I’m just some ratcatcher you found in a bar.”
Once more April felt the silence more than heard it. She didn’t like it. It made her feel examined, scrutinized. She would not hold up to close inspection.
Ask her if she eats bugs.
The chair screeched as she stood up, hard enough and fast enough that it made the last of her coffee jump in its mug. The dog leapt out from under the table in alarm. She grabbed for her axe, and snarled when Harper’s hand shot out and wrapped around the haft, just above her hand. “Let go.”
“I will,” Harper said mildly. “And I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want. But if you’re a ratcatcher, I have some rats for you.”
Coin was coin was coin. The ten silver in April’s pocket was an advance, with another fifty later if she supplied her services. It sounded like easy enough work, and it was: be firepower if things went south in Harper’s negotiations. Easiest silver she had made in a while, since said negotiations seemed to go smoothly. She wouldn’t have noticed the troubled look on Harper’s face as they stepped out from the tent that had housed some kind of moneylender business if not for Alice demanding to know what was wrong.
“Didn’t go well?”
“Too well,” Harper said, voice low. “Don’t look at me, and don’t be obvious. Be ready to draw your weapon. These yuan-ti only honor bargains as long as they’re in their favor—”
The arrow that slammed into the wooden post two inches from April’s shoulder made the next course of action easy.
Three dead snakefolk later, and April stood watch as Harper rifled through drawers and desks back in the tent. April was fine. Harper had been bitten, and the fact she wasn’t doing anything about it was slowly driving April crazy.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she said at last, after a particularly loud curse from her new employer. “You know you were just poisoned, right? If you don’t find a healer you’re going to die.”
“I’ll be fine. This is more important,” Harper snapped back. “You could help me look, you know.”
“I can’t read.”
“Well, watch the street, then. Ha!” She pulled out some kind of ledger. “I’ve got it. Let’s go!”
Another twenty minutes and they were back in the lodgings of the night previous. The dog sniffed around eagerly, and April had her eyes firmly fixed on the festering bite in Harper’s arm. “That’s going to kill you,” she said.
“I’ve got a first aid kit.”
“Does it fix venom?”
Harper made an impatient gesture, though even with her black skin April could see the pallor rising as the toxin took hold. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” April snapped. “Get up. We’re going to find a doctor.”
“Not yet. This is time-sensitive—oi!”
April tightened her grip on Harper’s shirt as she pulled back. “If you’re dead, I don’t get paid. You—”
She’ll be okay, I think. Don’t make her mad, I like her.
The confusion on April’s face must have been evident. Harper yanked away. “Look,” she said, pulling down her goggles “I’ll be fine. Really. If you want to make your coin, take this—” and she shoved a stack of paper into April’s arms—“and take it to a man named Dimitri at the White Tree. Where we met last night. Tell him I sent you. And bring me an antivenin potion if you really want.”
Then April was out the door, trying to figure out what had just happened.
The papers are weird. How come she stole debt records?
The fact Alice could read was perhaps her only redeeming feature. It gave April pause, halfway down the street from her destination. “I don’t know,” she said beneath her breath. “It’s not my business.”
The top one says—ooh. A demon wrote these.
“What?”
April stopped cold, looking down at the swimming mess of ink she could not comprehend. In her head she felt flashes of things going through Alice’s mind: interest, confusion, annoyance. Uh-huh. I think so. Not a very smart one though. Umm. It says stuff about money but if you read the things between the words it says if they can’t pay the money after a little while they have to give up their souls. I dunno any of the names.
The twisting letters and symbols looked as arcane as anything to her, but Alice had never lied.
April tucked the papers under her arm and turned around.
“Harper!”
Gods fuck it. It had to be demons. It had to be the one thing she couldn’t stand by for. April stalked past where the dog had been when she left, and hoped Harper hadn’t decided to make a blood sacrifice out of him or something.
She checked kitchen and sitting room and found nothing, though Harper’s shoes and goggles remained by the door. It would have been strange for her to leave them. This left only the bedroom, where April had walked out on her the night before, and the door was closed. She growled and threw it open. “Tell me what’s on these,” she said, rounding enough to see the dog safe and sound and curled up on the unmade bed. “I don’t work with—demons—”
The thing on the bed, one hand in the dog’s fur, might have been a demon, but it didn’t really fit her idea of one. It was human sized and wore a pink housecoat, though this was modified to account for the broad, leathery wings that replaced its arms. The animal head would have been more alarming had it not been for the large ears and huge eyes that peered at her over a foxy snout. Dusky orange covered its bare breasts and stomach. The bat shifted carefully, pulling a healstone from the yuan-ti’s puncture wounds. “Well,” it said, in the same clipped accent that had invited April to bed the night before, “lucky you. I’m just a big bat.”
Ask her if she eats bugs! Alice said, delighted.