James Davis - Circle of Skulls

Quietly she cursed her own traitorous tongue as Briar returned with the books, laying them gently on the table. One of his eye stalks turned toward her, and she cursed under her breath again.

It is understandable, Briar said, his deft, little hands already turning pages in two books, his other eyes trained on the pages intently. There are few mated pairs among your kind that get the chance to reunite with dead lovers. Well, not without necromancy anyway.

Quessahn took a deep breath, hoping to squelch Briar's barrage of questions and advice before they truly began.

"I had unrealistic hopes. The man I knew-most of him-is dead. Jinnaoth, however similar, is a different person. Let's just leave it at that," she said matter-of-factly, though a pang of pain still coursed through her at the sound of her own words.

Of course, of course, I just-Ah, here is something, he said, interrupting himself excitedly, one hand tracing a line of text as another scribbled a note. Interesting, yes. But what I wonder is, will you be able to leave it at that? Are you willing to watch him, what's left of him, die again?

She considered the question quietly, her thoughts drifting dangerously close to memories that had seen too much revisiting since she'd seen Jinn at the House of Wonder. Absently she ran a finger down the spines of Briarbones's books, scanning the titles the avolakia had chosen for something to focus on besides the deva. One title caught her eye, and she stopped, pulling the tome free in confusion.

"This book," she said, turning the dusty tome over. "This isn't about history or spells." Her fingers slid over the raised image of a fiendish face in the old leather. "This is a treatise on prophecies of the Nine Hells."

Oh yes, the avolakia replied, his eyes and hands doing twice the research of several learned scholars as he spoke. I have reason to suspect that the Watch, while well intentioned, may be far out if its depth.

"Fools," Jinn muttered.

Curious eyes watched him from balconies overlooking Seawind Alley. He returned their furtive stares, seeing himself reflected in their scholarly spectacles as they fussed over strange instruments that spun and clicked, measuring the wind and tracking the stars. He wondered briefly if they knew of their counterpart, the old man-the thing-living beneath the alley itself, as close to its mystical phenomenon as they were.

They focused so intently on the cryptic whispers of what may be that they were blind to the world around them. He'd heard it said that devils resided in the details, as if tightly wound in the threads of a tapestry, and he agreed with the idea. The details so captivated the imagination that the overall design was often forgotten.

"A willful ignorance," he said under his breath, exiting the alley and heading east, angrily tossing aside the Winterfirst mask he had considered wearing to conceal himself in the streets. He cursed Quessahn's misplaced compassion as much as he respected her ability to maintain such conviction, and he cursed himself for being unable-or perhaps unwilling-to indulge in the same luxury himself.

He strode down the center of empty avenues, spotting only the occasional servant at back doors or swift-footed lamplighter returning home after the evening's work was done. Though he glared at any who crossed his path, yearning to draw his sword, he kept to back alleys and shadowed streets. He saw none of the order's soulless ahimazzi, and Watch patrols seemed more focused on main streets and wealthier blocks, where many of the murders had taken place. The ward was quiet, as if the streets themselves were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen.

Rounding a corner, barely two blocks away from where Tallus was said to reside, Jinn received his quiet wish.

"Hold there, deva!"

Jinn grinned at the sound of Dregg's voice and paused as four men in Watch uniforms stepped into the lamplight ahead. Five more approached him from behind, keeping their distance. Even so, Jinn could see the Watchmen's disheveled and dirty tabards. They wore scuffed swash-cuffed boots more suitable for dock work than Watch duty, and the weapons they had drawn were mismatched and nonstandard. There were nine of them, the increased patrol number set by Allek Marson before his death, but the men Jinn faced had never known the honorable rorden. He doubted they had any particular knowledge of the Watch at all save the dimensions of old prison cells.

"You couldn't hide for long, Jinnaoth," Dregg said, pacing behind the four men at the far end of the avenue, a depressing sight, seeing Allek's secrecy perverted and used to bring in hired thugs for Lucian Dregg.

"I'm not hiding at all, Dregg. Have you been looking for me?" Jinn replied, raising his arms and spreading his coat wide, sword clearly visible in its scabbard.

"You are a murderer, or haven't you heard? I imagine they'll make me a commander for bringing you in." Dregg smiled over the shoulders of his thugs.

"You're delusional, Lucian," Jinn said, though his thoughts drifted, old battles and duels flashing through his mind, the memories flooding through his flesh as they stitched his present to bits of his bloody past.

Rorden Dregg laughed, a deep, confident chuckle that lasted a breath too long, a note of uncertainty ringing in Jinn's ears as it faded.

"You'd be surprised at what a little coin and a good story can accomplish," Dregg replied.

"No, not that," Jinn said, lowering his arms and sweeping his coat over the hilt of his stolen blade. "I meant about you bringing me in."

Dregg ceased his pacing and glared at the deva. "Take him," he growled. "No need to be gentle."

Jinn drew his sword as the nine men approached, some forgotten instinct making him wave the blade's tip over the ground in a circular motion, an archaic duelist's ritual whose meaning had been lost centuries ago. Dregg's patrol of false officers swaggered as they neared, knowing smiles spread on their unshaven faces. They formed a crude circle around Jinn, their steps out of sync with one another as they revealed their inexperience in anything approaching a group strategy.

"No discipline," he muttered, keeping still and wondering which among them would break the circle first.

"Aye, there'll be discipline all right, bright-eyes," said their largest, a hulking man with a shorn scalp wielding a thick, jagged-edged blade. "First lesson, we teach you how to bleed."

The large man rushed in, sure on his feet and wielding the heavy blade with some skill as he anticipated Jinn's deft, quick slash and blocked it. Drawing the blade back to strike again as his grinning companions watched, the big man did not, however, anticipate the position of Jinn's feet. Jinn ducked low under the powerful stroke, his outstretched leg slipping between his opponent's and hooking one knee as he twisted toward the large man's back.

Unbalanced, the big man stumbled forward and caught a kick to the back of the head that sent him smashing facefirst into the cobbles. Using their surprise at the swift maneuver, Jinn spun into the others with deadly precision. Steel screamed as he struck forward, defended backward, and walked an invisible line where the thugs' circle should have been positioned, a careful offensive step that kept them on the move, stumbling over one another to reach him.

Three fell, clutching their stomachs, in Jinn's first pass. Two more fell as the other five attempted to join the fray, their swords tearing at only his cloak and glancing off of his leather armor, the luckiest strikes drawing thin, shallow cuts but little else. He attempted to return the wounds in kind, but ironically, as the number of his opponents diminished, their tactics grew stronger.

The remaining three thugs surrounded him more carefully, avoiding the groaning men on the ground and making use of the space they had available. Jinn glanced toward the rorden as the thugs studied him and each other. Dregg had slipped away, a disappointment that the deva hoped to rectify before morning.