Ch.7
The festival smelled like fried dough and sugar and crowd sweat baking in the sun.
Ganesha Familia had set up stalls along the main avenue, banners strung between lampposts, musicians on every corner playing different songs that blurred into each other. The colosseum at the end of the street was massive, Ganesha's elephant-headed statue looming over it with both arms raised. Inside, the crowd noise was a living thing. Monsters fought each other in the arena while an announcer shouted himself hoarse. Tame monsters, supposedly. Controlled demonstrations.
I knew better.
Hestia had been dragging me through the stalls for an hour. She was happy, genuinely happy, the smile reaching her whole face, bouncing when she walked. She'd bought a paper flower for her hair, tried on three pairs of sandals without buying any, and was currently pulling me toward a food stall with the single-mindedness of a goddess who hadn't eaten since breakfast.
"Jagamarukun!" She pointed at the stall. "They only make them during the Feria. Bell, please, I need one."
"You need one?"
"Need." She tugged my sleeve. Her ornaments jingled when she bounced on her toes.
I bought two. She ate hers in four bites, got crumbs on her chin, and looked at mine like she was considering stealing it. I handed it to her. She took it without argument and ate it in three bites this time. Her chin had crumbs on crumbs.
"You've got-" I reached over and brushed the crumbs off her chin with my thumb. Her eyes went wide and she stood very still for the half second it took. Then she turned red from the collar up.
"I- thank you. I knew that. I was going to-"
"Sure you were."
She punched my arm. It didn't hurt. She weighed ninety pounds and her fists were the size of plums.
We walked. She linked her arm through mine and pointed at everything and talked about which stalls were overcharging and which gods had the best taste in festival decorations (Ganesha, she insisted, had terrible taste, and the elephant statue was proof). A kid ran past us trailing a pinwheel on a stick. An old man selling magic-stone trinkets had fallen asleep in his own booth, his chin on his chest. A cat climbed on his table and batted a pendant onto the ground. Nobody woke him up.
I was watching the colosseum. Freya was going to charm a monster during the Feria and aim it at us. The Silverback. I'd watched this episode. I knew it was coming.
It hadn't happened yet. The demonstrations were still going, the crowd still cheering, Hestia still talking about sandals. But it was coming.
The roar was what told me.
A sound from the colosseum that cut through the festival noise. Deep, enraged, nothing like the controlled grunts from the arena fights. Then screaming. The crowd in front of the colosseum scattered, people running in every direction, and through the gap I saw it.
Big. Bigger than the Minotaur, broader, covered in dark fur with long arms and a barrel chest. It vaulted over the arena wall and hit the street at a run. The Silverback. Its eyes were wrong, a faint violet sheen over the irises. Charm. Freya's Charm.
It locked onto Hestia.
"Bell-"
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her sideways into a cross-street. "Run."
We ran. The Silverback crashed through a stall behind us, sending wooden beams and meat skewers flying. It was fast for its size and it was tracking Hestia specifically, swinging wide around obstacles to maintain line of sight. The Charm had given it a target and it was going to reach that target.
I pulled Hestia through an alley, around a corner, across a small plaza. The park. Open ground, stone paths, a fountain in the center. I needed space. In an enclosed street the Silverback could just bull through walls. In the open, I had room to move.
We hit the park and I stopped. Turned around. The Silverback was rounding the corner behind us, closing fast.
Hestia's hand found mine. She was breathing hard, face flushed, and she was reaching into her dress with her other hand.
"Bell. I wanted to give this to you properly, but-"
She pulled out a knife.
The blade was white. Mithril, inscribed with hieroglyphs that ran the length of the blade in fine divine script. The handle was black and the pommel had a small blue stone. It was shorter than a sword but longer than my beginner's knife, and when she put it in my hand, it was warm.
Warm like her. Warm like her hands on my back during the Falna update. The blade hummed against my palm, a vibration so faint it was more temperature than sound. Living metal. Her hair and her ichor in every atom of it.
Two hundred million valis. Thirty hours on her knees. All of it in my hand, warm and alive and waiting.
I took her hand. Squeezed once. Let go.
Turned around.
The Silverback was close and closing. Its breathing was heavy and fast behind me, its feet hitting the stone path. It was focused on Hestia behind me but I was between them now and it was going to have to go through me.
The Knife sat in my hand like it had been made for it. Because it had been.
I moved.
The Silverback swung first. A wide right hook that would have taken my head off if I'd been standing still. I ducked under it and came up on the monster's left side. The Knife cut a line across its ribs. The blade went through the fur and the muscle like they were paper. The Silverback screamed and swung back, catching me across the chest with its forearm.
I went flying. Hit the ground, rolled, came up on my feet. My chest burned where it had connected.
I circled. The Silverback turned to follow, blood running from the cut on its side. It was angry now, the Charm's focus competing with pain and rage. It charged again, both arms wide, trying to catch me in a bear hug.
I waited until the last second and sidestepped. Ais's footwork. The pivot she'd drilled into me on the wall, the weight transfer from the hip. I turned and slashed across the back of its thigh as it went past. The Knife opened the muscle and the Silverback stumbled, its left leg buckling.
It spun, faster than I expected. The back of its fist caught my shoulder and slammed me into the fountain. Stone cracked. Water sprayed. My shoulder went numb from the elbow up.
I stood. Shook the arm. Partial feeling came back, pins and needles, enough. The Silverback was limping but it was still standing, still coming. Blood from the thigh cut mixed with water on the stone.
It swung. I ducked. It swung again, a wild overhead that cratered the path where I'd been standing. I rolled sideways and slashed at its wrist on the way up. The Knife opened a shallow cut and the Silverback yanked its hand back, shaking it like a burned child.
I was breathing hard. My chest ached. My shoulder was functional but I didn't trust it for much longer. The Silverback was hurt worse but it was also four times my size and the Charm kept driving it forward past the pain.
Come on. Come on.
It charged. Limping, slower, one arm leading. I watched the arm. Watched the shoulder drop that preceded the swing. Ais's voice in my head: you hold back at the last moment. You pull your strikes.
I stepped in. Inside the swing. The arm went past me and I was against its chest and the Knife went up through the underside of its jaw. The blade sank to the hilt. The Silverback's eyes went wide, the violet sheen flickering. Its mouth opened and no sound came out.
I twisted. The Knife turned inside its skull and the Silverback shuddered, the whole body seizing, and then it went still. The weight came down on me and I braced and let it slide sideways off the blade, hitting the ground with a thud that shook the stone path.
I stood there. The Knife in my hand, dripping. My shoulder screaming, my chest bruised, water from the broken fountain soaking my pants. The Silverback dissolved. The magic stone clattered onto the wet stone, larger than any I'd collected, dark and heavy.
The park was quiet. The festival noise was distant, muffled by the buildings between here and the main avenue. A pigeon landed on the fountain's broken rim and stared at me like I was the one intruding.
I looked up. The rooftop where I'd caught gold hair between dodges was empty now. She'd been there. She was gone.
Then Hestia hit me.
Arms around my waist, face pressed into my chest, her whole body shaking. She was crying. Her hands fisted in my shirt and she pulled herself against me and the sound she was making was half sob and half wordless relief.
I put my arms around her. Both of them, even the one that ached. She was so small. Her head fit under my chin and she was shaking against me and crying into my shirt.
"You're okay," she said into my chest. "You're okay, you're okay, you're okay-"
"I'm okay."
"Don't ever- don't you ever-"
"I know."
She held on. I held on. The broken fountain dripped behind us and the magic stone sat on the ground between my feet and the Knife was still in my hand, warm against my palm, warm like her, and her heartbeat was hammering through her chest into mine.
My arms hurt. My shoulder was going to swell. My ribs had taken their second beating in two weeks. And I was holding a goddess in a park full of broken stone, and the weapon in my hand was alive with her blood, and Freya had aimed a monster at us from wherever she sat and watched to see what would happen.
I'd deal with Freya later. Right now I held on.
I held her until the shaking stopped.