Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL) (4 page)

“Don’t see you in here much, Father,” I said. “Seems like Empyr or the Dominion would be more comfortable lunch haunts for you.”

“I take lunch wherever I am most needed, Nouiomo.”

Instinctively, I searched for signs of emotion in his signature.
Just how angry was he that I’d run out on Jezebeth’s execution?
But, as usual, his signature eluded detection.

“How come I’ve never felt your signature?” I asked. “Are you
always
cloaked?”

“Yes,” he said peremptorily. And then something mildly shocking happened. He expanded his answer. “It wouldn’t do for the executive not to be heavily warded at all times.” His being so forthcoming prompted me to ask another question before I could think better of it.

“Who’s your Guardian Angel? I’ve never met them.”

To say Karanos glared at me would be giving his unblinking stare far too much emotion. “Noon, you only just declared your status as a waning magic user four months ago. There are a lot of people you don’t know yet.”

Alba sidled up to the table, looking pleased. However unpleasant this conversation might be for me, I couldn’t help feeling the least little bit happy for Alba. Serving the executive lunch (as well as retelling the story of it) would definitely put more money in her till. I’ll bet she wished she had saved that last black onion for him. Although Alba couldn’t know that Karanos had even less of a chance convincing my mother to return to her garden than I did.

“What’ll it be, Mr. Onyx?” she said. “Bread, soup, or fish?”

“Fish,” my father said and Alba left. It wouldn’t do to keep the executive waiting.

“You ran out on the execution today,” Karanos said. “Ari covered for you.”

I ground my teeth, but otherwise kept my expression neutral. It never paid to let my father see how upset he made me. Ari covering for me was the last thing I’d wanted, but my father continued his narrative of the morning’s events, unconcerned with my concern.

“After you left, Ari threw a blast that instantly killed Jezebeth. His actions weren’t merciful; they were . . . misguided.” Karanos paused, allowing the full impact of what he was—and wasn’t—saying sink in.

All Maegesters-in-Training were held to the highest standard of behavior. When you had the power to start fires with a thought or a touch and you theoretically had the power to control a demon legion, well, obviously the ruling elite took a close interest in your personal and professional development. Pursuant to both law and scripture, anyone born with waning magic had to declare it before the spring of their twenty-first year and then start training to become a Maegester—a demon peacekeeper or modern-day magical knight—because waning magic was the only kind of magic in Halja that could keep the demons in check. My Maegester career wasn’t a choice. It was prescribed by my birth, required because of my blood and my magic.

Waning magic users whose actions were considered rogue were killed. No one,
no one
, defied the Demon Council and lived. Which was why hearing my father speak of Ari’s actions as “misguided” sent a small fissure of alarm down my spine. He’d meant them to. I nervously twitched under his stare until our food arrived.

My soup turned out to be a creamy tomato flavored with the garlic I’d smelled earlier, as well as olive oil, vinegar, and sea salt. As Luck would have it, Alba’s was serving their fish dish whole today. Apparently the cook had been given free rein and had come up with a dish that might have tasted good, but looked grotesque. Karanos’ entire plate, save one tiny ramekin of sauce, was taken up with the body of a charred red snapper. I knew it was mesquite and not magic that gave the fish its blackened appearance and bulging eye, but still I blanched. My father, however, had no such reservations. He slit its back with a knife and then unflinchingly stabbed his fork downward, neatly detaching the skin.

“Where is Ari?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice steady. Gone was my false bravado when I had confronted Karanos earlier about his lack of signature and missing Guardian. Here I’d been nursing a grudge because Ari hadn’t come after me when I’d fled to Corpus Justica.

Was Ari in trouble?

Across from me, my father continued to peel the skin from his fish. He looked up at me, his black-eyed gaze meeting mine. Only Karanos could fillet something and not get a single speck of flesh on his impeccable suit.

“He took Ynocencia home,” he said matter-of-factly, peeling and slicing. “I ordered him to because I wanted to talk to you.”

I took a sip of my soup. It was ice-cold, which I wasn’t expecting—clearly it was meant to be served chilled. I made a moue of distaste, which Karanos saw. The corner of his mouth twitched in what may have been amusement or, more likely, derision.

“When I was young, I wanted to be a mechanic,” he said. I dropped my spoon in my soup and a few drops of orange splashed out onto my white paper place mat. I looked up at my father in surprise. The comment was so personal, so revealing. So unlike anything he’d ever shared with me before.

“Hmm? Oh, yes,” he said in a bland voice with a bland expression that was only a smidge away from facetious. “I spent all of my free time with Mark Grayson. The Hyrke mechanic who lives on the Petrificai estate?”

I nodded. I knew Mark, although we’d never had much to say to each other. Maegester magic didn’t mix well with machines.

“Grayson, and the Petrificus family, were gracious enough to let me onto their repair docks. Luck knows how much longer Grayson’s repairs took with me hanging about, but he never said a word. Everyone was always friendly, very accommodating.”

I swallowed, not wanting to say anything that might interrupt one of the only stories I’d ever been told of my father’s life before becoming the executive. Across the table, Karanos delicately deboned the fish. He placed the spine and rib bones on top of the pile of discarded skin. He stared at me then, and for just a moment the deadness of his stare reminded me of the snapper’s bulging eye.

“What happened?” I said in a soft croak.

“I grew up,” he said sharply. “I turned twenty-one. I declared.”

With a single neat motion, Karanos sliced off the snapper’s head and pushed the plate toward me.

“Jezebeth was guilty and deserved to die,” he said stonily.

We stared at each other for a few moments. The deliberate conversational hum in the room became more forced. Hyrkes couldn’t sense my magic heating up, but they could see the flush in my face and my clenched hands on the table. But then Karanos got up, dropped his napkin in his chair, and walked out.

Just before he left, he called over his shoulder, “The snapper is for you. I remembered how much you hate filleting them.”

I wanted to remind him that I hated eating them too, but I knew he remembered. That’s why he’d ordered it.

A
fter the snapper incident, I had no appetite, but I didn’t want to offend Alba so I ate half my bread and managed to choke down the rest of my soup.
Damn
my father, I thought viciously. We were all damned anyway, or so some believed, but saying it helped keep my anger in check so I didn’t burn down the Black Onion. I left an enormous tip that included Alba’s dollar and enough to recompense for the untouched fish, grabbed my books, and headed back to Corpus Justica. I stayed at the library until close, reviewing doctrines, defenses, and demons because, in one very important way, survival at St. Luck’s was no different from in Halja as a whole.

Ignorantia legis neminem non excusat.
Ignorance of the law excuses no one.

When I returned to my dorm room it was after midnight and Ivy, my roommate, was already asleep. I dropped my backpack as quietly as I could, stripped off my clothes, and slipped into bed without even brushing my teeth or washing my face. Why bother when I’d be up again before the sun anyway? But five hours later, when I awoke feeling completely unrefreshed, I thought better of my mini rebellion and scrubbed and brushed extra hard. Heading out into the warm, humid air of a midsummer morning, my skin glowed, my teeth shone, but my eyes were still bleary and bloodshot. Nothing short of a spell could disguise the tired, haggard look of a St. Luck’s law student.

Manipulation class, the class that taught us how to manipulate our magic and control our demon clients, was starting at the Luck-forsaken hour of 8:00 a.m. All future Maegesters were required to take it. Manipulation was held in Rickard Building, where all of our other classes were held, but the classroom was on the fourth floor, an unoccupied, almost forgotten section of the building, furnished with decades-old desks, lithographs, and inkwells. Not that anyone actually used the inkwells these days. The rationale for such an old-fashioned venue was that visiting demon clients (who were sometimes centuries old) would feel more comfortable there, but I thought the real reason might have been to keep the Hyrke students happy. Most Hyrkes worshipped a demon or two but not many would actually want to meet one.

I entered the classroom as I always did, tense. Even if my own client had not tried to kill me in this very room last semester, the room, its occupants, and what we discussed here still would have made me tense. I concentrated on keeping my signature in check. I’d learned a lot about how to control my magic, but unfortunate accidents still happened from time to time.

Quintus Rochester, our professor, was leaning against the front of his desk, his bulk nearly hiding it, glancing at his watch. I had sixty seconds to get to my seat or I’d be sure to be his first victim.

Why didn’t I get here earlier?

Because I couldn’t stand to be in this room for longer than what was absolutely necessary. I nodded to Mercator, the only other student in the class besides Ari who would nod back at me, and scooted into my seat. The seat next to me, Ari’s seat, was empty. I guess he hadn’t made it back yet from escorting Ynocencia home. I couldn’t imagine how horrible that assignment must have been, making sure the lover of the demon he had just killed made it back safely into the arms of her abusive husband. But Karanos wouldn’t have seen it that way. After Ari’s protocol breach yesterday, Karanos would have viewed the escort assignment as the perfect test of fealty.
Huh.
Now that I thought about it, I was surprised my father hadn’t demanded that I
eat
the snapper he’d ordered for me. But as it turned out, my father had a far greater test planned for me.

If revenge is a dish best served cold, then knowledge is a dish best left untouched.

“Ms. Onyx,” Rochester’s gravelly voice erupted from his mountainous being like a lava spill, slow moving but unmistakably deadly. “Define duty.”

Ugh.
My mental musings about fealty and my father had inadvertently brought about the very thing I’d sought to avoid: Rochester’s attention. It was tempting to blurt out something about
ad valorem
taxes or import duties in an effort to misdirect the discussion, but such an attempt would be academically disadvantageous, as well as completely ineffective. Rochester always got right to the point and he expected his students to do the same.

“A duty is an obligation that one person has toward another.”

“So a duty is the same thing as an obligation?”

“Not necessarily. ‘Obligation’ implies that something was received in return for the duty owed.”

“So all obligations are duties, but not all duties are obligations?”

“No . . .” Jeez, I was losing ground already and Rochester was only two questions in. To my left, Brunus Olivine, a nasty, lecherous, repugnant Maegester-in-Training whose signature always made me think of rotten cabbage, snickered.

“A duty is something that’s owed,” I said, correcting my earlier answer.

“Why would someone owe something for nothing? Isn’t one of the basic tenets of contract law consideration?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, thinking, “but duties can be imposed by all kinds of things, not just a contract.”

“So all contracts are duties, but not all duties are contracts?”

I nodded. Rochester stared. I swallowed. I knew he would have preferred an unequivocal “yes” to a nod but my analysis felt shaky. To my detriment, I’d glossed over the duty readings last night in favor of the demons and defenses. Little wonder why, but now I’d pay for my poor choice. As if on cue, Rochester started windmilling his massive arm in an attempt to get me to answer faster.

“And how does that work?”