Sarah Brennan: The Demon’s Surrender

The rising note of indignation in Alan’s voice was good, Sin had to admit. Damn good.

Just in case Ms. Popplewell’s eyes strayed either to the cuts on Sin’s cheeks or Mr. Tall, Dark and Homicidal, Sin decided to attract attention by covering her face and saying in a fraught whisper, “It was just so loud—”

“There, there,” Alan murmured soothingly, patting her on the back.

“I didn’t know what was going on!” Sin exclaimed. She let her shoulders go up and down once, but decided that sobbing might be a step too far.

“Has this happened before?” asked Alan, sounding scandalized.

“No!” Ms. Popplewell exclaimed, her voice harried and not suspicious at all. “Cynthia, perhaps you should go to the nurse’s office. Don’t worry about missing French.”

“Thank you,” Sin offered piteously.

Nick spoke for the first time.

“Can I go to the nurse’s office too?”

Ms. Popplewell looked at him. It obviously took her only one look to decide. “No.”

“I’m traumatized too,” Nick claimed, his voice completely flat.

“He’s a delicate flower,” Alan said under his breath.

Sin started to wend her way obediently toward the nurse’s office just in case those two brought the whole house of cards down on their heads. She made sure to keep her shoulders a little sad and hunched, lest Ms. Popplewell look after her as she went. The key to a performance was in the details.

She did cast one fleeting glance back, caught Alan’s eye, and sent him a small smile. In a flicker almost too brief to notice, the corner of his mouth turned up in response.

That evening Sin slammed into the wagon that Merris used as her office whenever she was traveling with the Market. Merris looked up from a tablet on her desk, her eyes filled with blackness. The chair on the other side of Merris’s desk was occupied by someone who had got there before Sin.

Neither of these things did much to improve Sin’s mood.

“I was attacked today,” Sin announced without greeting either of them.

“Well,” Merris murmured. Her voice always had a different inflection now that she was carrying a demon: almost like a foreign accent, a flavor of some faraway and terrible land. “We are at war.”

“Which I’d understand, if I’d been attacked by magicians!”

Merris’s office was set up to impress, with heavier furniture than a wagon should have, a charm set up on the desk that changed colors depending on whether the people in front of her lied or told the truth, and wall hangings depicting scenes from old books. One was all black strokes on red paper, and it showed a crowd of beggars trying to fight a genie, uncurling from its prison and looking murderous. Sin did not think that would go well for them.

Sin was not in the mood to be impressed. She strode across the floor and threw a small, grubby knot of ribbon down on the desk before Merris’s clasped hands.

“I know what a magician attack looks like. And I know what the necromancers can conjure up. You sent a necromancer’s sharp-edged little plaything into my school! Someone could have been hurt.”

“I take it nobody was,” Merris said. “Well done.”

Sin took a deep breath and said what she’d been burning to say for weeks.

“These tests are crazy, they are a waste of time, and they have to stop now.”

There was a silence. Sin stood at the desk because there was no chair for her and waited for the consequences. She knew what this looked like: It looked like she was weak.

She’d thought it was a joke when Merris first suggested that Mae Crawford might inherit the Market instead of Sin. It wasn’t a good joke: It was insane, offensive and hurtful, but Sin hadn’t been able to think of it as something that could actually happen.

The Davies family had traveled in the Market for four generations. Sin was the best dancer in the Market. Mae was a tourist girl who was really good at dancing for a beginner, and that was all. She didn’t know enough, she didn’t belong, and she’d been brought to the Market, by the Ryves brothers of all people, barely five months ago.

Sin hadn’t been worried.

Now she was.

Merris had set them problems about the economy of the Market that Sin hadn’t really understood. Mae had not only understood them but had come back with suggestions for improvements. A few weeks ago Merris had asked them to choose a spot in London to move the Market to, and while Sin was still asking around, Mae had got on the Internet and then on the phone. She’d chosen the location on Horsenden Hill where they were settled now, which had enough open space to house all their wagons under concealing charms. It was surrounded on two sides by a canal, and was on the site of an ancient hill fort. It was the ideal choice.

Sin knew that understanding real estate and finances wasn’t really important, was nothing more than glorified homework. She knew that it was the heart and the soul of the Market that mattered, something Mae could never touch. She just didn’t know if Merris would see it her way.

“They have to stop now?” Merris repeated, her voice crackling in weird and terrible ways. “I was under the impression I gave the orders here.”

Merris would have died if she had not let the demon Liannan into her body on the basis that she would have control during the day and the demon would take the nights. Sin knew that.

It did not make it any easier to look into her dark-brimming eyes, to hear that voice. It did not make it easy to trust Merris, especially when she no longer seemed to trust Sin.

“I agree with Sin,” said Mae from the depths of her chair.

Merris’s attention turned to Mae, both eyebrows rising. Mae did not flinch at the cold look.

Mae looked small curled up in the chair, the back rising half a foot above her pink hair. She was wearing it in pigtails today.

It was ridiculous that a tourist girl was causing Sin so many problems. This was Sin’s place.

“It’s not good strategy to keep us at each other’s throats,” Mae went on. “You said it yourself, Merris. We’re at war. Stunts like the creatures today—”

“What?” Sin snapped, and grabbed at the desk. “You sent something after Mae? She can’t fight, she’s a tourist. She could have been killed!”

“If she is going to be the leader of the Market,” Merris said, and Sin felt a chill wash all through her body in case Merris was indicating she had made a decision, “then she has to know what it is like to face danger. She handled it all right.”

“I sprayed it with a fire extinguisher,” Mae told Sin, her mouth tilting into a rueful, dimpled smile. “When it slowed down, I hit it with the fire extinguisher. Then I hit it again. It was a triumph of mind and fire extinguisher over matter.”

Sin had to resist the urge to smile back. Then Merris spoke, and Sin no longer felt any temptation to smile whatsoever.

“Of course,” she said, her voice sleek with satisfaction, like a great animal curling up after a good hunt and a feast of flesh, “you did both have help.”

Sin flashed Mae a look of inquiry and was irritated to see Mae directing the same glance her way. She didn’t have to answer to tourists.

She did have to answer to Merris.

“Alan Ryves happened to be there and shot at it. I didn’t ask for his help, and I didn’t need it.”

“Nick worked out what was going on and came to help me,” Mae said, and Sin remembered Nick’s sudden request to go to the nurse’s office. “I didn’t need it either. And it doesn’t matter. The point stands. We have to devote all our energy to stopping the magicians. Can’t we put off this contest?”

“This contest will give you both an edge,” Merris told her. “I want you to push each other to be the best you can. I want you to be motivated.”