Look how much good that had done her.
She didn’t speak.
Merris looked into the space between Sin and Mae. For an instant Sin thought she was regretting the distance between them, but then she realized that Merris was looking through the open door of her wagon.
Those tar-black eyes reflected nothing, but Sin knew as surely as if she’d seen the setting sun in them that night was coming, and Liannan with it.
“I believe you have both seen Celeste Drake,” Merris said, her voice unhurried, as if the sun and her own body were not slipping away from her.
Celeste Drake was the leader of the Aventurine Circle, the big London Circle that had joined with the Obsidian Circle, which the Goblin Market had just fought. Sin did not think she could ever forget Celeste, and how she had appeared in the midst of the battle when Sin had just started to truly believe they could win. Celeste was small and very fair, wrapped in white, and she had swallowed their victory so casually, as if it was a plum she happened to fancy.
“Yeah,” Mae said warily. Sin just nodded.
“Did you happen to notice the black pearl she wears?”
“Yes,” said Mae, as of course she would. Sin didn’t want to lie to Merris, so she said nothing. Maybe Celeste had worn a necklace, dark against the pallor of her clothes and skin; Sin hadn’t taken much notice.
“It’s supposed to be enchanted to wholly protect its wearer from demons,” Merris said. “No demon charisma can touch you, none of their words sway you: They have no power over you at all. No matter what.”
Sin touched the talisman at her own throat: It warned you of magic coming, protected you from possession unless a demon managed to get it off, shielded you from some spells. The pearl sounded a lot more efficient.
“No matter what,” Mae repeated, and Sin looked sharply over at her. There was a new note in her voice that Sin couldn’t quite understand: Her hands were clasping the arms of her chair too tightly, her whole body straining forward a little.
“Call this the final test,” Merris said. “Whichever of you takes Celeste Drake’s pearl wins.”
“She’s the leader of the Circle trying to kill us!” Sin exploded. “It’s impossible.”
“It’s not meant to be easy,” said Merris. “Nor is taking over the Goblin Market.”
Sin was sure taking over the Goblin Market was not actually impossible, not like infiltrating a stronghold of magicians, any of whom would kill her on sight, and taking a priceless treasure off the most powerful of them all. This was just throwing away their lives.
“Of course,” Merris said, eyes on Sin’s, “there is an alternative. Give up.”
“What?” Sin demanded.
“Either one of you could surrender your claim,” Merris continued as calmly as if Sin hadn’t spoken. “Either one of you is free to give up, and swear to follow the other as their leader.”
Sin glanced at Mae, whose face was set in determined lines.
Mae wasn’t the type to give up on anything. Sin had liked that about her once, the way Mae could go around with that candy pink hair, being as short as she was, and shove her way into being taken seriously anyhow.
She would still like it, if Mae hadn’t been trying to shove her way into Sin’s place in the world.
“No,” Sin said. “I don’t think either of us will be doing that.”
Merris nodded as if they were all in agreement, and Mae uncurled herself from the chair, murmuring something about helping Ivy and Iris with their back catalogue. The silent sisters, who had traded their tongues for the ability to read any language ever written, had taken a real shine to Mae.
Sin had once accidentally landed on top of a lot of papyri when another dancer had thrown her too hard during a rehearsal. The sisters still acted as if she’d landed on a baby.
Sin did not take the chair Mae had vacated, even once she had left the room. She remained standing by the desk, and Merris pushed her chair back and stood as well. They were exactly the same height. That still startled Sin sometimes.
Merris went over to the window of the wagon. There was a crescent moon carved in one of the shutters she opened, and the setting sun filled her hair with red.
It wasn’t just the sun. It was the demon closing its claws around her, her black and silver hair starting to twist in the air like reaching hands, changing as it moved until it was the color of blood.
Sin could not see her face clearly any longer. She was glad.
“I did not understand the bargain I was making, you know,” Merris said quietly.
It was so unexpected that Sin had no idea what to say. Merris had refused to discuss the demon’s bargain she’d made with anyone. Sin had begun to think she’d been a fool when she’d believed Merris felt anything like affection for her at all.
Merris had agreed to be possessed, but it was meant to be different with her. Other people were made into shells animated by demons, but she had her body half the time.
It had been clear from the first that it was not that simple.
“Demons always take more than you can afford to pay,” Merris continued, the alien note in her voice growing stronger. “I knew that. But I thought, if what I received in return was my life…I thought it would be worth it. Only it’s not my life now. It’s hers.”
“Liannan,” Sin breathed, as if she was a magician, as if she could name the demon and control its power.
Merris nodded, hair tangling in on itself like a nest of snakes.
“She’s in here with me, always,” Merris said. “Coloring everything. Wrapped up in everything. Whispering to me, as if she was my own heart. Soon I will only want what she wants. Do you know, when I was a girl, I never wanted anything but to dance? I wouldn’t have wanted to be a leader, at your age. I didn’t even want to be part of a Market. But when I couldn’t dance anymore I made this Market my whole life, and she wants to leave. Every morning I wake up in a place farther from it, farther from you all, and every morning I think to myself that I could stay gone.”
Sin swallowed. She had been able to accept Merris’s bargain because she had thought it was the only way to keep her, because the Market needed her so badly.
That was a demon’s bargain, though. They took more than you could afford, and they gave you back nothing.
Merris had not been saved for the Market, not really.
“But if I had that pearl,” Merris whispered, “I think I could silence her. I think I could stay here, and be myself again.”
Hope was harder to swallow than horror. Sin felt like she was choking, at how the stakes had been raised, how the impossible had now become something that absolutely must be done.
Merris continued talking.
“You know, in all the tests I devised for you Mae has achieved much better results, has shown herself able to be a stronger leader than you could be. You’re too close to the Market, I think sometimes. You have to be able to step back and see it as a business. And something to die for: that too. Maybe you have to be a stranger. I was a stranger here once myself.”
“No,” Sin said.
“I wish it wasn’t true,” Merris told her. “You walked into Mezentius House and back out again unbowed. You know how I feel about you.”
Sin had thought she’d known.
“What good would it be, giving you the Market?” Merris murmured, and Sin drew closer, came to stand at the window by her, and Merris reached up and touched her hair as she’d used to. “If I gave it to you and the Market was destroyed, or you were destroyed by it, what use would this demon’s bargain be? I have to choose right, and I have to choose fast. I wish I could choose you. But I don’t know if you’re the right one: I don’t know if you can bear more responsibility than you already have, if you can turn life and death into a business. If you bring me this pearl, we would have time. I would have time to teach you. I want to believe you can be the leader this Market needs.”
Sin bowed her head under Merris’s lightly stroking hand. She wanted
to cry, but she knew Merris wouldn’t appreciate that.
“I am the leader this Market needs,” she insisted past the knot in her throat that wanted to become tears. “This is my place.”
When she looked up, deadly pallor was rushing over her leader’s face, terrible beauty claiming it the same way shadows were claiming the city below as the sun retreated.
From lips twisting into a shape not their own, Merris whispered, “Prove it.”
3
Throwing the Fever Blossom
THERE HAD BEEN A GREAT FOREST BY HORSENDEN HILL ONCE.
The houses of Wembley lay spread at the foot of the hill like a glittering carpet now, but the trees enclosing their Marketplace were tall and strong, the survivors of the ancient forest. Every arching branch bore a lantern swaying in the wind, throwing bright beams of magic against the long grass.
Merris might be lost to a demon, Mae might be impressing the silent sisters, but the night of the Goblin Market had always belonged to Sin.
Tonight was her chance to remind everyone that this was her rightful place.
“Welcome to the Market,” Sin murmured to the first rush of tourists, who were milling about the stalls, watching her.
There was a full moon, a bright circle like a pale, open flower against the dark sky, and Sin had dressed for it. She was wearing black with silver lines shot all through it like spider-webs, silver that caught the moonlight and turned her from shadow to gleaming ghost and then back again, mocking, elusive, the only point of color about her a crown of crimson flowers.
Mae might be smart and she might be cute enough, but she did not know about performing. She didn’t know that if you made a performance good enough you made it true: that by playing a queen Sin could transform herself.
“It takes you awhile to learn the ropes here,” said a tourist walking with his girl, who judging by her wide eyes was here for the first time. “Helps if you’ve got magic blood in you, of course. My mum’s Scottish, so that helps. Very mystical people, the Scots.”
“Good to see you again,” Sin murmured to him as she went past, and he stood and stared after her in pleased bewilderment, thinking she remembered him.
That was part of the performance, making other people feel special, until dozens of people were thinking of you as special. Sin was good-looking, but it took belief to make you the most desirable woman in a crowd. It took an audience to be beautiful.
“Welcome to the—oh, it’s you,” said Sin, almost colliding with a broad chest and tipping her head back to see Nick.
“We thought we should make an appearance,” Nick drawled. “Since we’re meant to be allies.”
It was a jolt to look into his black eyes, after Merris’s. But there was no human struggling in there, Sin reminded herself. There was just this boy she’d known for years; there was just this demon, eternal and cold, and nothing else.
She didn’t know what that meant.
She did know that he was dressed all in black, for dancing, and whether he was boy or demon, he was the best partner she’d ever had.
Sin smiled at him. “Welcome to the Market.”
He looked down at her, dark lock of hair falling into his eyes, mouth curving. He looked like the perfect partner for tonight.
“Did you save me the first dance?”
Beyond Nick’s shoulder Sin saw Alan lingering at Carl’s stall, bright head bent over an array of bows and arrows. She waited for a second, but he didn’t seem aware of the weight of her attention, didn’t look up to catch her eye.
Alan presented a problem, but for the first time Sin had an idea how to solve it. Before the attack at school, it would not have occurred to her that Alan might appreciate a performance.
“Better than that,” she told Nick. “I saved you the last one.”
Sin took a time-out from dances and accepted a plastic cup of water from Chiara. Then she noticed the slice of fever fruit floating in it.
“You’re just basically a bad person,” Sin told her, and sipped.
Chiara gave her a serene smile, which changed into a slightly more wicked smile at a hovering tourist. Sin took a gulp of water, laced with a taste that raced down her throat burning sweet and strong.
She swallowed and said, “What does everyone think about Alan Ryves?”
“I never think about Alan Ryves,” said Chiara.
Matthias the piper, thin as his own instrument, came by and stole the cup right out of Sin’s hand. “Personally, I like him.”
The dancers en masse gave Matthias a very startled look.
Matthias gestured to his throat and said appreciatively, “Beautiful voice.”
“Do you care about anything but people’s voices?” Chiara asked.
“Yes,” said Matthias, considering. “But I can’t think of any-thing I care about half as much.”
Tonight’s theme for the dances, the ones intended to attract tourists who might then stay to pay for answers from demons, was fire: September had come in cold, and the tourists could huddle around the lines of flame and see dancers catapult through them, dance along them, juggle lit torches enchanted to draw scenes on the air. More Market people had come to watch than usual because of the beckoning warmth of the flames.
Nick was taking his own break from the dancing and sitting with Alan on a log by one of the banked-up fires. Alan was talking to Nick and laughing, his hands making shapes of shadows against the firelight.
“Tell you what I’d do,” Chiara concluded after a thoughtful pause. “I’d take them both. That might be fun.”
“They’re brothers,” said another dancer, Jonas. “That’s sick.”
“No, it’s okay because they’re not actually related,” Chiara argued.
“That’s a demon,” Matthias observed mildly. “Nothing about it is okay.”
Everyone fell silent at that reminder. Nobody wanted to think about demons these days, to admit that if demons were unspeakably corrupt, then they should not let Merris lead them. To think about what lay behind Nick’s eyes was admitting that they were all treading on black ice.
Everything had been so much simpler when Sin could just hate both brothers.
Except she had not been able to hate Nick for long, only from the time when she’d learned what he was until she’d met him again.
She’d always found it easy to hate Alan. But she couldn’t do that, either. Not anymore.
“We made a bargain with them,” Sin said. “The Market always keeps its bargains.”
She remembered Merris’s face, and how demons kept their bargains. That did not stop her from swinging to her feet, taking another drink of fever-touched water, and going over to the spot by the fire where Nick and Alan were sitting. Nick was stretched out like a portrait in charcoal, all black and white in lovely lines, and Alan animated and firelit in red and gold.
They looked up as she came toward them, identically wary.
“Time for our dance?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” said Sin. “And I wondered if Alan might like to sing for us.”
Alan stared. Sin widened her eyes at him, schooling her face into a picture of innocent inquiry.
“Are the dancers going to play nice?”
“If you are,” Sin said. “Maybe.”
She didn’t know what she expected, but it wasn’t for things to be easy, after years of being at daggers drawn, as if all she’d needed to do was reach out once.
She reached out and Alan took her hand. She was startled by how that felt: Alan’s hand strong and gun-calloused, but holding hers rather carefully, as if he was worried he might hurt her.
It was ridiculous to be startled. She knew Alan was usually gentle. She’d been watching him play with children for years. And she’d seen Alan kill whoever got in his way, whenever he had to.
She’d just never really thought about the contrast of how he presented himself and who he actually was. Not until he’d stepped between two armies and taken her brother and a magician’s mark.
Sin looked away as he levered himself up from the log—surely he didn’t want her to see him struggling—but she didn’t let go of his hand when he was up. She led Alan to where the dancers were talking, Nick stalking in their footsteps like a jungle cat on bodyguard detail.
“Alan’s going to sing,” she announced.
“Cool,” said Chiara, who knew a cue when she heard one.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” Matthias told Alan.
Alan slid his fingers easily out from between Sin’s, watch glinting in the firelight under the frayed edge of his shirt cuff. He hesitated briefly and then curled his fingers around one of the belt loops on his jeans, as if he felt he should do something with his hand.
“Didn’t you try to throw me to the magicians last time we met?” he asked Matthias.
“Sure,” Matthias replied, flashing his skull-like grin. “But I didn’t mean anything personal by it.”
“That’s all right then,” Alan said, sounding truly amused. He smiled by degrees, like a stage curtain being opened by someone who knew how to do it, making you wait just long enough.
Most of the dancers thawed enough to smile back, and Sin was startled to realize that she had been wrong all this time when she’d assumed Alan was winning over all the old guard of the Market just by being an enormous nerd. He had charm.
He’d just never bothered to use it on Sin.
“We have the exact right guitar for you,” Matthias said, trying to usher Alan away to the other pied pipers. “Don’t ask me how I know. I always know. I’ve been watching your hands.”
“I feel very reassured,” said Alan. “Also a little violated. There is that.”
More than a few dancers laughed as he limped past on his way to the pipers, and Sin was still lost in amazement that it was all so simple: that Alan could make them laugh like he was any guy.
She’d never had a problem charming other guys. There had to be a way to reach this one too. She had to be able to thank him somehow.
Sin was still thinking this over when the drums started a new rhythm and the tourists all took notice. Sin exchanged a glance with Nick, then reached out and took his hand. It felt different, Nick’s fingers strong enough to break her hand and nothing about his still face to make her think he wouldn’t.