A Practical Guide to Dating a Demon, page 21
“Seems two-faced.”
“Welcome to politics.”
“Hm.” I picked at my food. The scent of the coffee wafted up, bringing with it thoughts of home and my family. I wondered what my parents would think of all this. I wondered if they’d ever hidden anything as big as this from their parents. “What was my dad like when he was my age?”
“Your father…” She looked out the window. “You remind me of him, in how curious you are.”
“Grandma and Grandpa didn’t want him to be a sailor, did they?” I’d never met my paternal grandparents, who’d died when I was twelve, still estranged from my father. He had returned to Talum for their shiva and made peace with his sister then. It was one of his greatest regrets, that he’d never reconciled with them, and that they’d never met me and my sisters.
“No. Our parents were…difficult. They had no money but plenty of pride.”
“How did you get into politics?” I’d never asked before, which embarrassed me.
“I went to the Lyceum for humanities, but I was frustrated by what the Sanhedrin of the time was doing, so I switched to government. I wanted to change the world.”
“And did you? Have you?”
“Have I?” She smiled wryly. “Not nearly as much as I thought I would have by now. It takes longer than I realized.” She looked back at her paper. “Won’t your classes be starting soon? Samuel will drive you to the Lyceum.”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. “I thought I’d take today off. Since. Yesterday was exhausting?”
Aunt Tirtzah put her coffee down. “You thought you would skip classes?”
And this was why I didn’t want to live with family. “I don’t have my books or papers or anything.”
“Then you should probably leave now so you have time to pick them up.”
* * *
~ ~ ~
Samuel drove me home to pick up my things and change, and from there to the Lyceum. Instead of heading to Intro to T3, I lingered by the brass entrance gates at the land bridge, which all students had to cross through to enter the peninsula. I’d knocked on Leah’s door at home, but she hadn’t answered, and I had to hope I’d beat her to school since I’d traveled by carriage instead of walking.
To my relief, I saw her a minute after Samuel dropped me off, and we collided in a hug. “Are you okay? What happened?” she demanded.
It felt like a hundred years had passed since I’d last seen her. “A million things.” Too many people were looking at us, so I looped my arm through hers and tugged her over to a bench beneath a willow tree, whose draping branches gave us some privacy.
“They’re saying Daziel’s a high demon. That he stopped the storm in its tracks at the Rocks.”
“It’s—sort of. He is a high shayd. That’s not the only reason the spell was so powerful, though.” I told her about the binding, the arrest. Going to the Sanhedrin, fighting. The kiss.
Leah listened, wide-eyed, affirmingly astonished. “How do you feel?” she asked at the end. “You kissed! Finally! But he lied. Do you like him? Do you hate him? Where are we at?”
I groaned. “I have no idea. I wish he would tell me why he was here. I believe he’s not here for my aunt, but what other reason is good enough?”
“I don’t know.” Leah screwed up her nose in thought. “Okay. What do we know?”
“He’s here in Talum,” I said. “More specifically, at the Lyceum. So—maybe he’s here for something we can offer?”
Leah nodded, tapping the toes of her silver boots against the ground as she thought. “The Lyceum has knowledge, I suppose that’s the most obvious. Students—professors. Though it’s not exactly like he’s kidnapped anyone. Neshem stores? Though I’m sure there’s more elsewhere.”
“Knowledge is interesting,” I said. “We could have something in the library…some book or something he wouldn’t have access to otherwise…”
“Does he spend much time in the library?” Leah said doubtfully. “Mostly he’s with you and playing knockball, right? And crocheting.”
“He goes to the opera,” I offered, falling back against the bench and staring up at the willow branches. “Maybe there’s a magical knockball he’s trying to find. But yeah, mostly he’s with me, and the only thing I do is…”
It slammed into me, so hard and fast and sickeningly right I gasped, latching my hand over the bench’s edge for support, the wood smooth beneath my palm.
The scrolls.
Daziel was a high shayd. Which he’d kept hidden so he drew less attention. Betrothed to a girl working on scrolls. Scrolls under the authority of a professor who didn’t like shedim. Scrolls no one could guess the content of.
Something that looks different, he’d suggested. Something you could recognize without needing to know the characters themselves. By recognizing a pattern.
A pattern like a palindrome.
I looked back at Leah, who was regarding me with matching horror. “It’s the scrolls, isn’t it?” she asked. “He wanted to know about the scrolls.”
“He knew what was in them.” I felt sick. “He essentially suggested I look for a palindrome in Language X. Which we found; we found the word ‘Ziz.’ How did he know Ziz would be there? No one knows what the scrolls are about.”
Leah’s face was filled with empathy, her voice soft. “Maybe Daziel does.”
“I have to go.” I scrambled to my feet. “I have to talk to him.”
Leah grabbed my hand, her eyes wide and worried. “Are you sure? I’ll come with you.”
“No, it’s okay. And—” My voice cracked. “I’d like to confront him alone.”
She squeezed my hand. “Do you think it’s safe?”
You trust too easily, I heard him say. Still. “He’s a liar,” I said, my voice trembling. “But I don’t think he’s dangerous.”
Leah gave me a sad smile. “This doesn’t mean he lied about everything.”
“It doesn’t mean he was telling the truth, though,” I said, then excused myself before I burst into tears.
I took the tram to the Society Hill stop, then walked uphill for half an hour past the grand gardens and estates. At least the burn from the climb distracted me from the tightness in my chest. I studied the endless bugs and beetles on my walk. Without the birds, the populations had exploded.
“The councilwoman is gone for the day,” her housekeeper said when I came back, regarding me skeptically. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”
I smiled tightly. “I wasn’t feeling well.”
The woman softened. “Have a cup of tea, then.”
I took the chamomile to the courtyard garden. At home, farther to the north, nothing bloomed at the end of winter, but here, color had started to arrive. Almond trees had small pink-and-white flowers; delicate pink blossoms covered pear and apricot trees; even the cherry tree flowers had begun opening. I breathed in the fragrance, trying to clear my head, and set the white porcelain tea tray on a decorative wrought iron table, my hands shaking.
“Daziel,” I said, his name tasting bitter. Why had I even expected to find him here? Maybe he planned to spend the whole day with Talum’s elite. “Daziel. Daziel.”
“Hello, yonati.”
He stood framed between two cherry trees. His outfit was even more extravagant than usual, as though along with throwing off the deceit of being a wild shayd, he also no longer cared to fit in with the student aesthetic. Green silk pantaloons were tucked into embroidered boots; a brocade jacket framed a ruffled cravat.
“Wow,” I said, brutally aware I wore the same rumpled trousers I usually did, and a boring brown shirt, my hair pulled back in a severe braid. “Fancy.”
He smiled cautiously. “Like it?”
I shrugged, consumed with self-loathing. How had I ever thought he was a wild shayd? Even with his black eyes and talons, he radiated the kind of confidence and presence that only came from growing up with far too much power.
“Apparently, the current fashion is for high-waisted pants with a broad band, as set by Mr. Wasterstein, who is considered the arbiter of men’s grooming.” Daziel slung off the jacket and loosened his cravat. “I am less certain about the cravat, but I’m willing to give it a go.”
I caught the whiff of a delicate lady’s perfume. Is that recommended by the arbiter of men’s grooming too? I almost asked but resisted. “Is that what you were doing today? Learning about fashion during your breakfast with the grand duke?”
“Partially.”
“What was the other part?”
He opened his mouth as though to say more, then paused. Cocked his head. “Why did you call me?”
I studied the almond tree before me, breathing deeply. I had to do it. I addressed the pale pink blossoms. “I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” he asked, stroking a rose on the bush at his side like I might pet a dog, for comfort. The flower curled up toward him, yearning, as though he was the sun itself.
“Why you’re here.”
He stilled. “Did you.”
I took a deep breath and plunged onward. “It’s because of the scrolls.”
He looked at me. Not a look of confusion or realization or surprise. Just a steady, even gaze. Which meant I was right.
Which meant he knew what was in the scrolls.
And if he knew what was in the scrolls, if he was here because of them, he hadn’t coincidentally become betrothed to a girl attempting to decipher them.
“No lies or games,” I said. “Tell me the truth, Daziel. Why are they so important?”
He inhaled deeply, steadying himself. Then he focused on me. His gaze was direct and unwavering. “Because,” he said, “we think they contain knowledge about how to cure the Ziz.”
Twenty
This was not what I’d expected to hear.
“I’m sorry,” I said blankly. “We’re going to need to back up.”
Ever since I’d started at the Lyceum, I’d heard—and participated in—speculation around the scrolls’ contents. People hoped for all sorts of things—strange and powerful spells, the diaries of kings. When my cohort was overworked and exhausted, we joked it’d be grocery or to-do lists.
No one had suggested it might be a cure for a divine beast.
Why would a divine beast even need a cure?
Daziel looked upward, where clouds drifted like ships setting off. In the distance, I could hear wind chimes clanging. “The winds aren’t behaving like normal. There’s always been atmospheric disturbances—hurricanes, cyclones, heavy swells. But storms are becoming unpredictable, destructively so.”
His dark eyes returned to mine. “We don’t know why the winds are changing. But we do know what has shaped the winds for millennia. The Ziz.” Daziel’s voice was even, as though he’d had this conversation many times. “The Ziz is one of the three stabilizing forces of natural magic. Natural magic is malfunctioning. Given how the winds and air storms are most strange, we think it’s the Ziz who is ill, or hurt.”
I pictured the Ziz, depicted in children’s books as a giant bird with the body of a lion. A wingspan great enough to block out the sun, went the saying. So tall it can stand in the middle of the ocean and the water only reaches its ankles. Once it dropped an egg, which flattened cities.
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my temples. Here in my aunt’s garden, surrounded by manicured plants and with my chamomile tea still steaming on the round table, his words seemed preposterous. “Are you trying to tell me the Ziz is a real, physical creature that can get hurt?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I replied. My brain simply couldn’t handle this. The Ziz was a legendary, eternal beast. Legendary, as in…maybe not corporeal. Eternal as in forever. “The Ziz is real?”
Daziel sounded puzzled. “Did you think it wasn’t?”
“No…” I drew out the word, uncertain. “I believe in the power of the Great Beasts—like that they can impact a ship’s passage or whatever. But maybe I thought of them more as—a force? Like gravity? Or sunsets?” This didn’t seem like the point. “How can the Ziz get sick if it’s eternal? Where do the beasts live?”
“I don’t know.”
I frowned. “That’s not very helpful. How do you know the Ziz is real?”
“How do you know gravity is?”
“Because if I drop a mug, it falls.”
“And if you hurt the King of the Birds and the Air, all the birds go to their wounded ruler’s side. And the air starts malfunctioning.”
Okay. He had a point. “What about the increased earth tremors in Ilthalit, or the maelstroms? Those aren’t air.”
“I suspect the Ziz being injured affects the other two Great Beasts—and their domains of land and sea. I think it could get worse if we don’t figure out how to cure the Ziz.”
Unease skidded throughout me. All three of the primordial beasts were affected? This seemed very bad. “Worse—how? The land and sea and sky—that’s the whole world.”
He met my gaze. “Yes. It is.”
My chest tightened and my head spun. The whole world couldn’t be in trouble. This was starting to feel too big. “Maybe something else is the problem.”
“Maybe. But the only records I could find back home about similar problems with the winds ascribed them to the Ziz needing to be healed, and said human mages at Zerach had the spells to do so.”
And Zerach was where the scrolls had been found. “You think the scrolls tell us how to cure the Ziz.” I let the words sink in.
He shrugged. “Those scrolls were preserved for a reason.”
“What are you expecting? We decipher the spell and then—what? Go heal the Ziz?”
“I wasn’t going to suggest you, personally, heal the Ziz,” Daziel said dryly. “But yes, I was going to take the spell and try.”
I started pacing, gazing at the almond trees like their pink blooms would offer answers. This was bonkers. No one had expected the deciphered scrolls to have any bearing on anything besides scholarship. Also—“If this is so important, why haven’t you been trying to speed up the decipherment?”
“Haven’t I?”
I paused, nonplussed. Then I reevaluated the past five months. He had sped up the decipherment. Not only had he suggested I look for a pattern, but he’d let me use his magic to re-form the scrolls and given me the idea for the spell that remade them in the first place. He’d been instrumental.
And I’d just thought he was interested in what I was doing; I hadn’t realized he had an agenda. I hadn’t realized how much I was being led. Disappointment and sadness welled in my throat, and nausea stirred my stomach. “But—why didn’t your people send in one of your own expert cryptographers?”
“We don’t have one,” Daziel said testily. “In this case, the Lyceum had the best chance of solving the puzzle.”
That made sense, except…“Why didn’t you ask us?” I cried, frustrated. “Why didn’t you work with us?”
“With whom? Your professor? Who thinks so little of me?”
“Our people have a treaty. Go over his head. Have your leader go to ours.”
“There was no time to waste if your people refused to work with us.”
“Really?” I asked, coldly skeptical. “You don’t think instead of spending months lying to me, we could have spent them untangling red tape?”
“It wasn’t worth risking when I didn’t think it would make the work move any faster.”
“Oh,” I said, fury starting to build. “I see. Put aside how it might have fast-tracked the project by giving us more resources—you decided it wasn’t worth the risk of telling me? I didn’t deserve to know the truth about why you were here?”
His shoulders hunched, and his thumb flicked against his signet ring, spinning it endlessly. He looked like he was searching for an answer, or like he had one but didn’t know how to say it. When he spoke, he sounded miserable. “I didn’t know what you’d do if I told you. I knew if I kept lying, you’d let me stay.”
I reeled back. That was honest, at least, more honest than I wanted, and probably exactly what I deserved. “You’re right,” I said, my voice hollow. “It worked. Congratulations.”
“Naomi—”
“What now?” I stepped back. The wind picked up, the almond tree branches fluttered, a few of their pink blossoms floating down around me. “You expect me to be your own personal code breaker? To keep this a secret from everyone?”
He sounded wry. “As if you could. The second you see your cohort, you’re going to tell them, thinking it’s not fair to withhold this information since they’ve been working on the scrolls longer than you. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
I flushed. Wow. Ouch. This did, in fact, sound exactly like what I’d do. I hadn’t realized how well he knew me. It shocked me, how clearly he could predict my behavior. “Is that such a bad thing?”
“What do you think the others will do when you tell them? Rule-abiding Yael. Nervous Gidon. Loose-tongued Stefan. You think they’ll keep this a secret?”
“Why should it be a secret?”
“I’m afraid of losing access.” His jaw worked. “What if you’re taken off the project? What if it’s deemed too sensitive for student hands, and you don’t get to see the deciphered spell? I don’t trust your government to tell mine their findings.”
His words punched a hole through me, and I wrapped my arms around my stomach as though it would hold me together. He’d only wanted me for access. “Why me? You could have targeted Yael or Gidon or Stefan.”
“I considered it.” His voice was pained. “You left an opening.”
My stomach hollowed out with horrified hurt. “Because I said I was betrothed to the demon Daziel,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“But—but how…” What were the chances Daziel needed an in with one of just a few people, and one of them dropped his name as their betrothed? “Did you use a spell on me? So I picked your name.”
