Chapter 173: Father

I kept the strand of hair in my fist all morning.

It felt wrong to put it down. It felt like putting down somebody’s hand. Every few minutes the pull in my blood would tug, soft and warm and patient, and I’d find myself staring north, over the black ridge, toward a place I couldn’t name.

"Say it," Kaelen said.

She was sitting on a boulder, honing her axe with a flat stone. Tamsin leaned against the cave wall beside her, peeling a bit of dried fish into tiny strips and watching me over the top of it.

"Say what?"

"What you’ve been chewing on since you picked that thing up." Kaelen didn’t look away from the blade. "You have a face like a man holding a dead bird."

I opened my hand.

"The Doctor wrote me a note," I said. "He said a gift was coming. A girl. He said she’d been told a lot about me." I let the hair slide through my fingers. "I think she’s here. I think she’s close. And I think she’s walking toward us."

Nobody said anything.

"The Ninth Demon Lord made her," I said. "She carries his enemy’s heart, and she has my blood. She’s a weapon. She’s probably a very good one." I swallowed. "She’s also about fourteen."

"Fourteen," Tamsin said flatly, "and a weapon."

"Yes."

"And you want to meet her."

"I don’t *want* to." I closed my fist. "But she’s coming anyway. I’d rather pick the ground."

Kaelen looked at me for a long moment. Then she put down the whetstone, stood, and swung the horn-bound axe up onto her shoulder.

"The ridge," she said. "Black stone. The grass can’t climb it."

---

We saw them late in the afternoon.

Two figures on the north path, small as ants against the grey. One, thin and black-coated, walked in front with his nose in a book. The other came behind. She was a slip of a girl, barefoot, in a white shift, with hair so pale it looked like a trail of light.

*Valerian,* Aurelix whispered, very still against my neck. *Oh, my darling.*

"I know."

*That’s the Eighth’s heart. I can feel it from here. It’s like standing at the foot of a mountain that’s learning how to breathe.*

"I know."

*It’s looking at us.*

It was.

The girl had stopped. She was staring straight up the ridge, straight at me, and even from three hundred feet I could see her go perfectly still. The thin man glanced back, followed her gaze, and a slow, wet smile spread across his face.

"Governor Valerian!" he called. It carried like a bell. "How *delightful.* You’re far ahead of schedule!"

"Back off," Kaelen hissed, and I realized I’d taken a step forward.

"The Master sends his warmest regards," the man called. "He has also sent you a gift. I would ask you to be *very* kind to her. She hasn’t had much practice with strangers."

He pressed something small and black into the air. The girl’s head snapped around.

I watched her face change.

It happened in an instant. The silver in her eyes drained out, and red poured in behind it, thick as blood. Her small mouth went slack. Her whole body jerked upright, like a puppet whose strings had been yanked, and the thing in her chest *roared.*

"*Down!*" Kaelen screamed.

---

She crossed three hundred feet in four seconds.

I’ve fought things bigger than her. I’ve fought things faster. I have never fought anything that moved with so little *wasted* effort. She struck the ridge in a single leap, bare feet slapping on black stone, and then she was in the middle of us, and the air shrieked.

Kaelen’s axe met her fist.

I heard the horn-bound haft *crack.* Kaelen flew twelve feet backward and hit the cliff with a sound like a dropped sack of grain. Tamsin spun, a vial already in her hand, and the girl backhanded her without even looking. Tamsin tumbled across the rocks and didn’t get up.

"*Stay down!*" Kaelen was snarling, blood in her teeth. "*Valerian, run!*"

I didn’t run. I didn’t have the staff. I didn’t have the coat. I had one thing the Doctor didn’t know about, and I had a guard on my arm that would let me burn three minutes of power per night.

I opened my hand and *cut.*

The blade came from my own palm. A thin red line, then a fountain of crimson that stretched out and hardened in the air into a sword, a Blood Art, the oldest trick of the house. The girl’s fist came for my face. I turned it with the flat of the blade, and the impact rang through my whole arm, and then I was falling backward, with her on top of me, and her eyes were *red,* and her small hand was around my throat.

"Kill him," said a voice, out of nothing. Deep. Slow. Satisfied. "*Kill him, little heart.*"

Her fingers tightened.

I looked up into her face.

That was my mistake, or my miracle. I couldn’t tell which. I looked up into a pale, small, terrified face with red eyes and tears running down it, and my blood, the blood in *her,* the blood that came from *me,* sang out like a struck bell.

I’d never felt it before. I understood it right then, the way you understand cold water. Every drop of Sanguis blood in the world answers the Prim. She was *full* of mine.

"*Stop,*" I said.

Her hand froze.

---

It wasn’t a command. I hadn’t meant it as one. But the blood heard it anyway, and for a single heartbeat the whole fight hung in the air like a held breath. The girl’s fingers trembled on my throat. The red in her eyes flickered, and underneath it, a thread of silver.

"...*Father?*" she whispered.

My heart cracked in half.

"I’m here," I rasped. "It’s okay. I’m here. You don’t have to—"

"*KILL HIM.*"

The voice hit her like a hammer. She screamed. The red surged back in her eyes, her hand clenched, and I felt my windpipe start to give.

Something whistled past my ear.

It was a dart, a tiny black needle. It took the thin demon in the throat as he came racing up the path with a knife in his hand and a look of purest alarm. He stumbled. He clutched his neck. Behind him, on the rocks, Tamsin had pushed herself up on one elbow, bleeding from her scalp, with a hollow tube still pressed to her lips.

"Eleven," she croaked. "*Twelve,* now."

Mister Thistle opened his mouth to speak, and *melted.*

It started at the dart. His neck went soft, then his jaw, then the whole front of his face slid off his skull in long, dripping strings. He tried to scream. He couldn’t. His coat collapsed on top of him in a wet black heap, and a small dark bead rolled out of his sleeve and clinked against the rock.

The voice from the bead stopped.

The girl went rigid.

---

She fell on top of me, shaking.

Her hand slid from my throat. The red drained from her eyes, and the silver returned. For a moment she only lay there on my chest with her cheek against my collarbone, hair spilling around us like moonlight, a small, hot, trembling weight that seemed far too light for a thing that had thrown Kaelen across a ridge.

"Grathul," she whispered. She was crying, in a stunned, dazed, childish way, the way you cry when you’ve forgotten you’re allowed to. "He picked me a fruit. He picked me a *fruit,* and the trees... and Thistle *knew.*"

I put my arm around her. I didn’t decide to. It was the most natural thing in the world, like catching someone who’d tripped.

"I’m sorry," I said. "I’m so sorry."

"Are you my father?"

"I..." My throat was raw. "I don’t know. I think part of me is. Your blood is mine."

"I can *feel* it." She hiccuped. "It’s warm. It’s the only warm thing."

Behind her, Kaelen had staggered upright, clutching her ribs, the cracked axe hanging from one hand. She stared at the girl with the look of a woman who’d just watched a thunderstorm curl up in someone’s lap. Aurelix had slid out of my collar to the stone beside us, the size of a cat now, ears flat, and she was very quiet.

*Valerian,* she said at last, in a thin, strange voice. *The bead is still glowing.*

I turned my head.

The black bead lay in the puddle of Thistle’s coat. A faint red light pulsed inside it. Slow. Steady. In time with the thing in the girl’s chest.

*Thud.*

*Thud.*

*Thud.*

"I wonder," murmured a deep, slow, smoking voice, *out of the girl’s own mouth,* "if you’d kindly hold her still."

Her eyes snapped open.

They were red. Both of them. And in the center of her thin white chest, through the cloth of her shift, a bright, cracked line of crimson light began to split her skin open, like an egg.

"Thank you, Governor," said the Ninth Demon Lord, in a pleasant, patient voice. "She had to be close. She had to be *warm.* Now, little heart."

A long, bright crack ran down her sternum.

"*Bloom.*"