“No, thank you.” The demon inclined her head graciously.
“Pardon?” The knight blinked. He was not prepared for politeness from demons. It went against all his training. He swallowed the rising lump in his throat.
“To be clear,” he said, “are you refusing to surrender? Or refusing to move yourself out of that good woman and into this duck?” He raised his left hand. Peeping from between the fingers of his steel gauntlet was the downy face of a mallard duckling.
“To be clear, both.”
His training had not covered this eventuality either. Defeated demons submitted and were re-housed in harmless animals. The alternatives were, well, unpleasant for everyone.
“I think you ought to reconsider,” the knight said eventually. “It’s a perfectly nice duck.” He held the little bird up for inspection.
“Is that what you really want?” asked the demon.
An image of himself boldly cleaving the chest of the demon with his broadsword skittered across his mind, but the Code was explicit – the broadsword would have to be a last resort. Also, there was the duckling to consider. None of his training prepared him for how to slay a demon while holding a live fowl.
“It would be easier for you, wouldn’t it?” He lowered his voice, menacingly, or so he hoped. “Or would you prefer me to kill your host? That would leave you without a body.”
“Yes and no. I would not. And it would.”
The knight took some time to parse that. “Isn’t living without a host painful for demons? If it’s even possible?” He’d been top of his class in demonology.
“Extremely painful. You must have been studying.”
Swelling with justifiable pride – a compliment from a demon was still a compliment, wasn’t it? – he fell back on his prepared speech.
“The defeated demon shall submit or suffer disembodiment. Upon surrender, said demon shall be presented with a suitable alternative body. Every effort shall be made to spare the host.” He would have gone on to quote the remainder of the Code, but he happened to look the demon in the eye. He knew better – his textbook had been very clear – but really some things could only be learned through fieldwork and this was his first assignment.
“Why a duckling?” The demon asked when he eventually stopped drooling.
“Pardon?” The textbook had never mentioned a demon questioning the choice of alternative host.
“Ducks fly, you know,” she said helpfully. “Wouldn’t you rather offer me something relatively immobile? A sloth, say? Or a snail?”
“Sedentary creatures are preferred, but if unavailable then animals with a strong homing instinct can be substituted.”
“I suppose sloths are hard to come by here.” The demon looked out the shattered windows at the snow-covered peaks around her castle.
“Yes, ma’am.” Had he really called the demon ma’am? “I mean. Yes.”
“So you brought along a duckling? Such foresight.”
“It was a pigeon.”
“The duckling was a pigeon?” The demon looked at the little bird with interest.
“Yes. That is, no.” He had not meant to say any of this. She had led him away from his script again. “I brought a pigeon of the recommended dimensions, but it, er, departed yesterday when I was feeding it.”
“Flew away, did it? What a pity.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He cleared his throat. “We naturally endeavored to retrieve it, but it had already made considerable progress back towards the Citadel.”
“That strong homing instinct.” The demon smiled and the knight had to look away. “Forgive my curiosity, but where did you acquire the duckling if you didn’t bring it with you?”
The knight gestured out the window. The duckling squeaked in protest. “From your moat.”
“That’s my duckling?”
Was that outrage or excitement? The knight couldn’t tell. Really, the textbook ought to have a chapter about demonic conversational styles.
“Would that change your mind?”
“Not in the slightest,” the demon replied. “Enterprising of you, though.”
He nodded, the gracious motion he’d intended somewhat undermined by the tremendous clanking of his helm against his breastplate. “To get back to my point,” the knight was nothing if not persistent, “defeated demons surrender and are rehomed. I am willing to consider an alternate host, if there is one available. We are not barbarians.”
The knight felt something warm seeping into his boot. He glanced down, then stepped to the left to avoid the pool of blood spreading across the Axminster rug at his feet.
“Perhaps a koi carp? I believe the moat has a selection.”
He was almost sure this was a joke. His instructors had never mentioned a demon with a sense of humor, however, so he decided he was mistaken. “That would satisfy the regulations.”
The demon just looked at him.
He’d forgotten the eyes again. Annoyed, he turned his head away. “I did defeat you, didn’t I? We can agree on that, at least.”
“Indeed. Castle stormed, followers defeated, ultimatums delivered. Or is it ultimata? I would ask the doctor.” She pointed to the woman lying on the carpet, trying to fashion a tourniquet out of her stockings to stem the bleeding from her leg, severed below the knee. “Her hobby is translating Horace, but she seems otherwise engaged just now.”
“Ultimata in Latin, but either in common parlance,” the doctor said through gritted teeth.
“Thank you, Janet. I never had much time for Latin. Only the Alchemists ever use it and I never needed to turn lead into gold.”
“You bleed the villages dry for it instead,” the knight fired up. He was back on solid ground now. Demons terrorized people, that was indisputable.
“I don’t remember doing that.” The demon tapped her chin with a slender finger. “Sounds most exhausting. They haven’t much gold in any case. I hardly think it would be worth the effort.”
“But this castle, the fine furnishings –” the knight gestured awkwardly with his bloody sword so as not to disturb the duckling in his other hand.
“Made rather a mess of it, haven’t you?”
The knight stood between the splintered remains of a glass-fronted bookcase and the shredded velvet of a settee. And then there was the carpet. He couldn’t deny the charge. “How do you pay for all this grandeur then? It’s well known that demons love luxury.”
“Is it?” the demon tilted her head to consider the knight. “But I am forgetting the excellence of your education. No doubt scholars have written treatises on the subject.”
The knight was sure this was true, although he had not actually cracked the cover of one. “You have forced the local villages to give up all their riches to you, in the way of your kind.”
“Have you spent much time in the local villages? Did you happen to notice any evidence of recent plundering?”
“We didn’t stop,” the knight explained. “Our orders were to travel here as swiftly as possible so as to subdue the demon. You, I mean.”
“With a duckling that was a pigeon.”
“How did you acquire this castle, then? Through force or coercion?”
“Oh, that.” The demon waved a hand languidly. “No one was using it after Ingrid’s grandfather died. Castles are expensive to run, you see.”
The knight found himself nodding in agreement but shook it off. “Who is Ingrid?”
“We are Ingrid,” the demon placed a graceful hand on her chest.
“The woman whose body you stole happens to own a castle? How convenient!”
“Not particularly. The roads up the mountain were crumbling and covered in snow most of the year, which is why Ingrid wanted the funicular –” the cultured voice fell silent. The only noise in the room was the spluttering gurgle of the man impaled on a spear stuck into the oaken mantelpiece.
The demon continued, “Ingrid wants you to know that she resents your phrasing. She does not consider herself a victim and would appreciate an apology.”
“Er, my apologies, Ingrid, if I offended you. But you must know better than anyone that demons are no better than parasites. They can’t live without bodies, so they steal ours and then terrorize people into worshipping them.”
The demon, or possibly Ingrid, shook her head sadly.
“She must have stolen your body. No, you must have stolen her body. That is –” How did she draw him off his script so easily? “How else would you be living in Ingrid?”
“Ingrid is glad you asked. She feels we ought to set the record straight.”
There was a brief pause. While the demon conferred with Ingrid, the knight tried to wipe the sweat from his brow but succeeded only in wiping the duckling across his blood-spattered helm. It did not sound pleased.
“Ingrid tells me that knights of the Order of Amber always travel with a medical team. Is this true?”
The knight nodded, clanking again. “Of course. In case we are injured subduing the, er, you.”
“Or, perhaps, whilst retrieving pigeons.” She swept an arm around the room, indicating the state of the resistance from Janet, down one leg, to the man on the spear, still softly wheezing. “Well, as we are now subdued and you are, I trust, unharmed, would you kindly send in your medics to tend the injured? Our own doctor seems to be bleeding out, judging by the size of that puddle, but one or two of the others might make it.”
“Too risky. They are in your thrall and would surely attack the medics.”
“Thrall? Goodness, how tedious that would be. Janet, would you diagnose yourself as suffering any sort of thrall? Oh, I’m forgetting. Janet is bleeding out.”
“No, I’m not,” Janet said. “And not thralled, either.”
“Capital,” the demon said. “Anything you want, dear?”
“Two working legs and a medical team for the others,” Janet said promptly. “And a cup of tea, no sugar.”
The knight could have sworn the demon winked at the doctor, but demons definitely don’t wink. Trick of the light, then. “They leapt to your defense! Why would they fight for you if not under your demonic command?”
“You battered down the door and ran at us, screaming bloody murder and waving your giant sword,” Janet pointed out.
The knight considered. He had done that. Perhaps these people had really believed they were under attack. “They aren’t in your thrall?”
“Not that I know of,” the demon replied.
“Oh.” The knight worked his way through the Code in his mind, but it was rather long. He didn’t want to lose control of the conversation again. He was almost sure it wouldn’t tell him what to do about medical treatment for un-enthralled victims anyway. Nothing about this demon encounter was by the book. He looked around. Only Janet seemed conscious, and she was in no position to stand, let alone attack.
“I suppose I could call them in,” he said. He started to set the duckling down so as to reach the horn hanging at his belt, remembered the pigeon and thought better of it. He set his sword carefully on the settee instead, leaving a smear of congealing blood on the pale velvet. Three long blasts of the horn, then three short.
“Medics should be here shortly. They have a bonemender with them,” he added, looking down at Janet.
“I thought they might,” the demon said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” the knight replied automatically as he picked up his sword again. “Er, where were we?”
“You wanted to know how a body-snatching parasite like me came to inhabit a good woman like Ingrid.”
“Yes, that’s right. I did.”
“Then I shall tell you,” the demon said graciously. “We met by chance at the Ellesdon market. I had apparated nearby and caught a lift with a farmer bringing his flock to auction.”
“You stole a farmer’s body, too?” The knight was furious, but he should have expected this. Demons! Now he’d have to find the farmer. Only a complete exorcism could remove all traces of demonic residue from a human soul.
The demon sighed. “In one of the ewes, if you must know.”
That was unexpectedly good news. Animals shed demonic residue quickly, not having souls the same shape as humans’. He gestured with the duckling for her to continue.
“Ingrid was returning from the doctor’s surgery when she happened to catch my eye.”
The knight remembered to look away from those eyes and caught sight of Janet. The bonemender had arrived and was already dragging the severed portion of leg towards his patient. A long string of gristle that was snagged on the carpet pulled loose with an audible snap.
“Not me,” Janet said, looking up from her leg’s progress. “My predecessor.”
“He had confirmed what Ingrid already knew. The tumor in her breast was growing rapidly and likely incurable. For a human, that is. I offered to try my luck with it in exchange for room and board, as it were. She asked some sensible questions about musical tastes and preferred foods before agreeing. Decades later, we’re still together and I, for one, don’t miss mushrooms. I consider them a very minor sacrifice.”
“Ingrid is well? The tumor is gone?”
“Fit as a fiddle,” the demon agreed.
She certainly looked well. Middle-aged, to be sure, but lithe and graceful with only a handful of lines across the forehead and round the eyes, the hint of silver at her temples accentuating the deep chestnut of her luxuriant curls.
“Still, I’d rather hear it from Ingrid,” the knight said, “if it’s all the same to you.”
The demon inclined Ingrid’s head and fell silent. Then, “I’m afraid she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Why not?”
“She says you maimed her doctor and slashed her favorite settee to ribbons.”
The knight looked at the doctor and waved this off. The duckling squeaked. “Janet will be good as new. Nearly.”
The bonemender’s hands smoked as he melded the two parts of Janet’s leg back together. The knight found the procedure both gruesome and compelling. He’d never seen a bonemender at work, this being his first field assignment. Another medic wrapped a blanket round Janet’s shoulders and handed her a cup of steaming tea.
“Right as a trivet,” Janet said, admiring her newly unsevered leg. Largely functional and only slightly charred. “Pity about the settee, though.”
The knight stomped his foot, the clang of his armor not quite masking the squelch. He’d forgotten to step to the left of the rug. “Never mind the settee. What about Ingrid?”
“What about her?” the demon asked.
“Is she really still in there?”
“Of course.”
“Then she should tell me that herself.”
“How can she do that without talking to you?”
The knight tried to look authoritative – some demons responded to direct commands. “Let her speak.”
“With all the will in the world, but she really doesn’t want to.”
“I don’t trust you.”
“Your instructors must be so proud,” the demon sighed.
He nodded. This was true. “I was the first in my class to be elevated to the Order and granted my Gift.”
“Ah yes, the Amber Knights and their Gifts,” Janet piped up. “What’s yours then? The ability to draw a perfect circle? A sense of smell acute enough for truffle hunting?”
The knight sniffed. “You’d be surprised how useful Sir Bethany finds her sense of smell.” Standing a little straighter, he added, “I can tell whether someone is lying.”
“Impressive,” Janet acknowledged. “Much better than that knight who knows if water is hot just by looking at it.”
“Not just water,” the knight shot back.
“How does it work, your gift?” the demon intervened.
“I don’t know exactly,” the knight admitted, “not yet anyway. But I can just tell whether you mean what you say. Liars never do.”
“And I?” the demon asked. “Am I a liar by your reckoning?”
He considered. The Gift’s mental alarm bells had not rung once. “So far,” he hedged, “you seem truthful.”
“Then let’s leave Ingrid in peace, shall we?”
“For now,” the knight agreed. But another question occurred to him. “Why do all these people stay with you if they aren’t in your thrall? Why don’t they rebel? Rise up against your demonic overlordship – overladyship – and take the castle for themselves?”
“I give them what they want,” the demon said.
“You mean you trade them useless magic promises for their eternal devotion.”
“Who told you that?” Janet asked. “Disgruntled suitor in Ellesdon?”
It had, in fact, been a disgruntled suitor from Enderby, the next village along the road. His sweetheart had been taken by the demon and never returned. The knight had read the original demon complaint form several times in preparation for this assignment.
“What of it? You force his village to sacrifice one of their virgins to you every year! And this year it was his sweetheart. Of course he’s disgruntled!”
“I should never dream of inquiring about anyone’s sex life,” the demon demurred. “How terribly rude that would be!”
This brought the knight up short. How did demons know whether their victims were virgins or not? And the Ingrid demon was right, asking would be awkward, not to mention impractical if there were loads of virgins to screen. Or potential virgins. Would you ask them all individually? Or did they swear some sort of collective oath? He pulled himself back from this tangent with a jerk. “You don’t deny the rest of the charge? You do demand human sacrifices!”
“Nonsense,” the demon shook her head firmly. “This is how rumors get out of hand.”
“Then you don’t demand a – a child – from each village in tribute every year?”
“Certainly not. There are seventeen hamlets in these mountains. We’d be inundated.”
“We’ve had multiple reports! I read the complaint forms myself.”
“How many reports?”
“There were three,” the knight admitted. His Gift had the unfortunate side effect of rendering him completely truthful.
“Did you speak to these alleged victims?”
“Er, no.” The knight thought he knew where she was going. “But they can’t all be lying.”
“Why not?”
“Never mind that. Have you, or have you not, taken – um, children – from the local area each year to serve your demonic whims?”
“That is a very loaded question,” Janet pointed out, the color coming back into her cheeks as she sipped her tea. “It’s every third year. And we never accept children. Only adults. That’s in the rules.”
“Old enough to know what they want from life,” the demon added.
The knight thought this sounded poetic and unlikely. He plowed doggedly on, “Even so, every three years, you force the villages to hand over a vir– a person? Whatever their age. How can you justify that?”
“They keep petitioning for more, I know, but really it’s so fatiguing to give them all what they want. I must draw the line somewhere.” The demon sighed. “Also, Ingrid points out that too much of that sort of thing would blunt their own initiative. She’s very keen that our neighbors should still strive for excellence on their own. She says it’s character building. I’m sure you agree.”
“I suppose so,” the knight said, thinking of his own efforts at demonology and livestock management. The latter had not come easily.
“So we’ve limited ourselves to one person from each village every three years. That keeps the numbers manageable for us, and seems to inspire the young people, too.”
The knight asked the first thing that came to mind. “How do you choose?”
“There’s a competitive application process, naturally,” the demon explained. “Anyone may submit a proposal, and the previous recipients select the next winners.”
“That sounds fair,” the knight said, thoroughly at sea now. He’d had to beat seven other candidates into bloody pulpitude just to win a place at the Order’s training academy. The death rate for prospective initiates hovered at just above one in three. He’d been very lucky to survive. Not totally unscathed, but at least fully functional. He did sometimes miss the smaller toes on his right foot, but only when running quickly over rough terrain. As when chasing down homing pigeons.
“Oh, yes. All very transparent and above board,” the demon assured him. “Janet organized the process for us and it’s really so much easier to manage now.”
The castle cat wandered in and wove himself between the knight’s armored legs. The knight teetered slightly, favoring his toe-less right foot. He caught himself before he fell, stabbing the tip of his sword into the parquet for extra stability. Untroubled by these maneuvers, the cat sauntered off to sniff interestedly at the blood pooled under the mantle before setting himself the task of cleaning it up. The medics had removed the spear, and the man on it, covering him with the remains of a tapestry. Some injuries even bonemenders can’t melt back together.
“Ansel, really!” Janet said. “Behave yourself.”
The cat ignored her completely and continued lapping. In a matter of moments his whiskers were covered in gore.
“We do still get the odd recruit, off cycle, like Ansel here, but what can you do?” the demon shrugged.
“What do you do?” the knight asked.
“I give them what they want,” the demon said.
“And I’m to believe that Ansel wanted to be a cat?”
“It’s a nice life. No responsibilities, plenty of naps. Suits Ansel down to the ground, doesn’t it, Ansel?”
The cat looked up at the demon, blinked twice and returned to his meal.
The knight stared fixedly at the demon. This simply could not be the truth, and yet – Damn those eyes.
Reeling slightly, he set down his sword to search for a kerchief. Not finding one in his armor, he nearly used the duckling to mop the dribble from his chin. Cats must be immune to demon eyes. Probably something to do with the shape of their souls.
“Here you are, dear,” Janet said kindly, handing him the cleanest of her tourniquet stockings.
Demons were persuasive, he knew that. They tricked you through lies and deceit. If those didn’t work, they attacked with brute force or magical assault. All his instructors agreed. But this demon was telling the absolute truth and hadn’t offered the slightest threat of violence or sorcery. Although there was still a mystery left unsolved.
“What happened to the girl?”
“Which girl?” the demon asked. “As you pointed out, there have been quite a few over the years.”
“The one with the suitor in Enderby. Abducted – er, reported missing last autumn.”
“Ah, yes. She hoped to attend the Academy of Art, I believe.”
“Excellent proposal,” Janet put in. “Her portfolio of watercolors was most impressive.”
“And to avoid a persistent and unwelcome suitor,” the demon added.
“What did you do to her?”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Janet asked. “Perhaps I should test your hearing.”
“You sent her to the Academy of Art?”
“It was what she wanted,” the demon explained.
He could hardly believe this, and yet the demon definitely had not lied. Moreover, the girl’s whereabouts could easily be verified. He could send a letter by pigeon back to the Citadel. Or, actually, he couldn’t. But a courier would do almost as well.
Even if the girl was alive, happily painting landscapes in the Academy, a demon was still a demon. He ought, in good conscience, to make another attempt to contain this rapidly disintegrating situation.
“You really wouldn’t consider removing into this duck? I solemnly promise to find the nicest possible pond for you.”
“Do you really think I deserve that?”
He didn’t, not really. If he was honest, and his Gift made any other approach impossible, he couldn’t see any reason why this demon should be forced into a duck. Ingrid was free of cancer, Janet had her medical practice and her Horace, the girl had her watercolors. Even Ansel seemed happy enough, carefully cleaning clots of blood and lung tissue off his whiskers with a curled paw. The Code didn’t cover this particular situation – he was beginning to think the Code was severely lacking in detail – but it did require the Knights of Amber to act justly, as far as they were able.
“No, ma’am,” he said eventually. “It wouldn’t be just.”
“Perhaps you have an alternative plan in mind? We are still very much at your mercy, you know.”
The knight considered. He didn’t want to leave it like this. Nor did he want to return to the Citadel. How could he write up this encounter in a report for his superiors? They would never believe him. Even if they did, how could he admit his abject failure? He had lost the pigeon. He hadn’t talked the demon out of Ingrid. He hadn’t even rescued the girl from Enderby.
How could he extricate himself from this disaster of a mission? Anything would be better than going home to be jeered at by his fellow knights, to face censure or even banishment. He sighed, absently stroking the duckling’s downy head. Just for a second, he wanted nothing more than to live out his life in peace, free of demons and knights and Codes. He imagined himself swimming alongside this little fellow, feeling the wind lift his feathers as he glided across the sun-warmed waters of the moat.
The demon smiled. “Done.”
