Elizabeth Bear - Book of Iron

“It’s over,” Maledysaunte said to the guardian. “Go back from whence you sprang.”

She let the hammer drop from her hand.

Riordan carried Dr. Liebelos’s body from the cave. Prince Salih leaned on Bijou, but he walked—and Kaulas and Salamander walked also, supporting one another. Maledysaunte went first, alone.

Bijou thought it was so she would not have to look at anyone.

“What about the blood?” Salamander asked, the only words anyone spoke as they came up out of the belly of the earth, their way lit by many electric torches now that there were no concerns about conserving the batteries.

“It summons myrmecoleons,” Kaulas answered. “Maybe if we’re lucky, we were too far underground for them to notice.”

“And if not?”

“Another fight,” Prince Salih said tiredly.

No one spoke of Kaulas’ attempt to rob Maledysaunte during the battle. No one spoke of Maledysaunte’s killing of Dr. Liebelos. For one terrible moment, Bijou had been afraid that Kaulas would offer to bring her back for Salamander—but apparently even he could read that much in the wind, and he kept silent.

Leaving the cave seemed to take three times as long as coming in, even though they simply followed their own footsteps back.

When they came out by the water, the dead stallion awaited them. Over his protests, Prince Salih was installed as the animal’s rider, as he was the most-wounded. Bijou knew it was the right choice when he slumped with exhaustion on its back, even his iron will insufficient to the task of keeping him erect.

Night had come again in the depths, or at least twilight. But against it, Bijou could see the hunched, scuttling shapes of myrmecoleons lured from their dens by the smell of something wounded. They had humped, chitinous ant-bodies and fierce-toothed cat-heads wreathed in shaggy, sand-matted manes.

“Well,” Kaulas said. “At least it’s not a manticore.”

“I’ve got it,” Salamander answered. Using Kaulas as a prop, she crouched low and scratched her fingertips across the earth at lakeside. Whatever she muttered, Bijou did not make out the words.

But the myrmecoleons withdrew, and made a ragged honor guard for them as they left.

“Nice work,” Bijou said.

Salamander stared through her, but didn’t shake off Bijou’s hand when Bijou put it on her arm, ignoring Kaulas as if he were no more than a convenient prop.

Bijou gave her a squeeze. She felt Salamander lean back.

Somehow, she didn’t think the white Wizard would be going back to Avalon with the necromancer who had killed her mother.

They trudged past the myrmecoleons and began the hasty journey back to the trail in, racing the killer light of the suns.

“Kaulas,” Maledysaunte called from the front of the line.

He went up. Salamander leaned more heavily on Bijou, now that they walked alone. Maledysaunte didn’t look at Kaulas as he walked beside her, and made no effort to lower her voice when she spoke. Bijou heard them clearly.

“There is no secret,” Maledysaunte said. “I was born this way. Perhaps my half-brother and I were the bastards of a god, as has been rumored. But if so, that god has never chosen to identify himself to me. And he has been content all these centuries to let the old King take credit for his begetting. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Kaulas said. He had the dignity not to offer a spurious apology.

“Next time,” Maledysaunte said, “I will kill you.”

He walked beside her in silence for a little, until it became obvious that she had no more to say. Then he fell back to walk with Bijou and Salamander again. Bijou let him take over: as for herself, she joined Maledysaunte with a few quick strides. Ambrosias’s cymbals chimed as he scurried to keep up.

“The Book makes me see things,” Maledysaunte said without preamble. “Usually, I manage not to look.”

Something burned by overhead, a cold streak of greenish light. A meteor, a shooting star. After a moment it was followed by another.

“You’ll be fine,” Bijou said. She heard the unspoken request for reassurance under the plain statement of fact. “You’re strong.”

Maledysaunte grunted. As they made their way toward the waiting skeletons of ass and camel, the dusty violet sky overhead was lanced with meteor after meteor, tearing down through the heavens to light the world below with fire.

Later—after the damage to the prince’s upholstery (he managed to drive, but Bijou had to sit beside him and shift); and after Kaulas abandoned his animate skeleton among the rocks; and after baths and food and sleep—later, Salamander told Maledysaunte and Riordan she would not be returning home with them. Maledysaunte nodded understanding. “If you ever need me,” she said.

“If you ever need me,” Salamander replied.

Both, Bijou thought, knew the other had no intention of asking.

Maledysaunte and the bard took their leave of the others, including Prince Salih with his dishdasha draped awkwardly over the sling and cast confining his arm. Now they walked away, and Salamander stayed behind until the messenger had led them out of sight.

Then, without a word, Salamander turned and left as well, going deeper into the palace as Maledysaunte and Riordan had walked out. Prince Salih walked beside her as if they had planned it in advance. Bijou imagined they hadn’t.

When they were out of earshot, she had something she planned to say. But Kaulas beat her to it.

“I wanted to make you jealous,” he said. “Do you know what you’re like? It’s like trying to hold a cloud, Bijou. Like clutching at mercury. Nothing ever touched you. Nothing ever pierces you.”

Bijou watched Salamander’s receding back, stiffly erect as she walked beside the prince. He would see her settled, Bijou knew. When he had accomplished that task would be time enough to trouble him for new rooms of her own.

“And you wanted to be the thing that put holes in me? How romantic you are.”

He said, “I did.”

She said, “You didn’t succeed.”

She meant more than the jealousy. But Maledysaunte and her dead man were gone, already vanished down the corridor to the prince’s waiting car. She couldn’t send a significant glance after them.

He glanced at her, sideways and down. “Not this time, my love.”

Bijou had expected silence from Salamander, at least for a little while. She had a sense that the other woman would prefer to nurse her grief alone, and up to a certain point she would respect that. Bijou the Artificer was not the sort to make other people’s choices for them, or assume that she knew what was best for anyone. Even, she thought bitterly, her own self.

Because if she did, she realized now, she never would have gotten involved with Kaulas. Her own loneliness notwithstanding, she didn’t have it in her heart to be the thing he needed. And it had been unfair of her to allow him to delude himself for as long as she had.

Unfair, and unkind.

Knowledge was not always courage, though, and she didn’t find it in herself to move her things out of their shared room. She knew he was giving her space, hoping she would circle back to him. And she—she didn’t have the strength to sever what she was coming to think of a dead limb.

When she sought Salamander out, it was for her own solace, not that of the white Wizard.