Lena Graves's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The dagger would not go quiet. Days after the boy died, black smoke still leaked from its runes. Lena wiped the blade clean, but the dark essence had soaked into the steel. The jewel in the hilt flickered wrong. When she tested it on a drunk two nights back, the man's soul came out gray and spoiled, half-eaten before it reached her. Thirty-two souls toward one hundred, and now her tool was poisoned. Every kill risked rot. She needed the blade cleansed, and she knew only one place to try. The apothecary sat at the edge of the village, its windows glowing sick green. Rain slicked the dark stone. Lena knocked and let herself in. Shelves of jars lined the walls. She needed a cleansing agent, something to pull the dark from steel. But the shopkeep was gone, and a child stood behind the counter instead. She knew him at once. The boy she had killed had worn the same white cassock, the same shaved head. This one's wrists carried the same dark bruises. Her rings went cold. The dead boy's soul had not been human. Now his twin, or his kin, stood breathing in front of her. "You are looking for something for the knife," the boy said. His voice was soft. He did not ask how he knew. "Who are you?" Lena said. "Amos Pell. I sing at the chapel." He paused. "I used to. Three weeks now, not." He looked at her hand, where she gripped the hidden blade. "Someone takes my voice. I want to find who." Lena set the dagger on the counter. The smoke curled up. Amos leaned close and did not flinch. "That is the same wrong thing that lives in me," he said. He reached under the counter and drew out a jar of deep red sap. "Crimson oak. Brother Aldric used it on cursed things. I think. I am not sure it works." Lena uncorked the jar. The sap smelled of iron. She poured it along the blade. The smoke hissed and shrank. The runes cooled. The jewel cleared to clean light. The dagger drank the red and went silent at last. It worked. The blade was clean. She could hunt again without rot. Then Amos's face changed. His eyes went dull. His jaw dropped and his voice fell to a low rasp. He spoke the same words the dead boy had spoken, the language she did not know. The cleansed smoke she thought gone pulled from the jar and streamed into his open mouth. He swallowed it whole. His eyes rose to hers, now black. "You split my brother," the rasp said. "Half in you. Half in the bartender. I want both back." The dagger was clean. But the thing from the boy had found a body, and it had learned her partner's name.