Cruel Beauty(62)

Pain lanced through my head. I gasped, again dizzy with the fleeting sense of phantom recognition.

“Don’t worry,” said Ignifex. “I’m the demon lord, remember? They cannot seize you against my will.”

“They managed it quite well a few nights ago.”

“Yes, but now you’re in my arms.”

“So already seized by a demon,” I muttered. “Hardly an improvement.” But I still relaxed in his embrace.

Then a shadow fell across my face. I looked up, and caught my breath in wonder. The latticework of the Demon’s Eye loomed overhead, but what I—along with everyone else in Arcadia—had always taken to be a figure painted on the parchment sky was in fact the framework of a vast garden hanging in the air. What from the ground looked like a thin strands of knotwork were actually broad walkways sixty feet across, covered in grass and snowdrops. Marble statues of young women, their face worn half away, stood at the points of the design as if they were caryatids supporting the sky. At the center was a round pool of water with benches beside it, and as we swooped past, I saw great gold-and-silver-splotched carp swimming in lazy circles.

A huge iron chain, its links as thick as a man was tall, hung down from the dome. It seemed to hold up the Eye: but thirty feet above the pool, it faded into thin air, and we flew under it without a whisper of resistance.

Ignifex landed on the far side of the pool and set me down. I took a wobbling step, still a little dizzy; I expected the ground to sway beneath my feet, but it was firm as a rock. If I ignored the vastness on every side and looked at the grass between my toes, I could pretend that I was safely on the ground.

Pretending, though, would have been a waste. I didn’t quite dare to stand on the edge, but I walked as close as I dared, then spun myself in delight, because there was wind on my face and grass beneath my feet, and I had never thought to feel either one again.

When I halted, I saw Ignifex sitting sideways on one of the benches, leaning back on his hands, one knee pulled up. The wind ruffled his hair; he looked faintly amused.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“It’s your reward for not dying,” he said.

I took a step forward, resisting the urge to twist my hands. “Yes. About that. Can I—if I could talk to Shade—”

He growled.

“You don’t understand.” I didn’t understand either, not entirely, but I thought that if I saw Shade again I might remember. “I know what false kindness is like, because I’ve been smiling and lying all my life. Shade isn’t like that. Long ago, he was truly kind. I think some part of him still is, but he knows something that makes him willing to murder five women. If we knew—”

“And if it was that sort of knowledge, perhaps we’d murder each other and save him the trouble.”

“Or perhaps we could find a solution.” I took another step toward him. “I thought you wanted to know your name and the truth about your origins.”

“Maybe I changed my mind.”

“Maybe you’re contradicting me for the fun of it.”

“You do make it fun.”

I nearly yelled at him, but I knew that was not the way to defeat him.

“Almost every day I’ve known you,” I said slowly and clearly, “you’ve told me how you despise the people that come to you, because they won’t admit their sins even to themselves. Are you content to be such a coward yourself?”

He tilted his head back to stare at the sky. “There’s one advantage to being a demon, you know—”

“Besides the power to cause terror and destruction?”

“Besides that and possibly more important. Yes.” He looked at me, his face turned deadly serious. “Demons know alternatives. I have spoken with the Kindly Ones face-to-face. I have handed out their dooms for nine hundred years. I don’t deny what I am, but I know what I could be if I knew too much truth. So yes, I am a coward and a demon. But I am still alive in the sunlight.”

Looking into his eyes, I remembered the Children of Typhon crawling out of the door. He had guarded that door and commanded those monsters for nine hundred years. If I had done the same, maybe I would think as he did.

But I had not, and I crossed my arms over my chest. “The philosopher said that the virtuous man, tortured to death on spikes, is more fortunate than the wicked man, living in a palace.”

“Did he put his theory to the test?” Ignifex was back to smiling.

“No, he died by poison. But he faced that death because he would not give up philosophy, so he was at least in earnest when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living.”