I Only Summon Villainesses

I could not catch him.

That is the part nobody tells you about carrying a woman heavier than you through six hours of broken rock. You do not get to choose your speed. You get the speed your knee gives you, and my knee was giving me the speed of an old man in a bad winter.

So I did the only thing left and shouted into the dark.

”HEY!”

The word went out along the tunnel and came back off four different walls, the way sound lies down here, and I stood there with Ilse’s head under my jaw and listened to my own voice arrive from the wrong direction three times.

Nothing answered.

’Wren. Find him.’

’I’m a sword.’

’You’re a sword with range.’

’I’m a sword with opinions. Put me on the rock and shut up.’

I got down on one knee, which took a negotiation, and laid Wren flat against the stone with Ilse still in my other arm.

’...Anything?’

Ahead. A long way ahead and not moving.

’Not moving?’

Sitting, Cade. He’s sitting down.

I found him an hour later beside the lake he had stolen from a monster.

He had a flat stone in one hand and he was skipping it across the water, and the water was black and still and took every stone without a sound. Beside him sat a cup. An actual cup, tin, dented, the kind of thing a soldier carries. He had filled it and set it down and left it there.

Ten years of digging a trap so he could have water. And a cup he had not drunk from yet.

’...’

’Wren, why is that the saddest thing I have ever seen.’

Because he is savouring it. Say nothing about the cup.

’I wasn’t going to—’

Say nothing about the cup.

I came down the shelf with Ilse in my arms and my breath going like a bellows, and I put her down as gently as a man in my condition can, which was not gently, and she made a small sound and I hated myself for a moment.

The boy kept his eyes on the water.

He skipped another stone. It went four times and stopped.

”You came back.”

”I need your help.”

”Yes.” He set another stone spinning off his fingers. ”People usually do, when they come back.”

I got myself upright.

”She’s dying.”

”I know.”

”Then—”

”I knew before you left.” He turned his head at last, and those amber eyes came round with the green glow sitting in them, and there was nothing in his face that I could put a name to. ”You did not ask me then. You went to kill something instead.”

’...Ah.’

’Well. That’s the whole of it, isn’t it.’

I had no answer, so I gave him the true one.

”I thought killing it would fix her.”

”It did not.”

”No.”

He turned back to the water.

”Then you have learned something,” he said, and skipped another stone. ”That is more than most people get down here.”

For a while the only sound in that cavern was the small dry click of stone leaving his hand.

I ran through what I had. It took no time at all.

I had no essence, no coin, no summons, no information a man ten years down here would want, and a sword that did not belong to me and would have opinions about being traded. I had a wyvern that was not mine and a rival lying unconscious six hours back with the marks fading off his throat.

I had absolutely nothing to sell.

So I did the stupid thing, which by now you will recognise as my only real technique.

I sat down beside him.

Not close. Three feet off, on the same shelf, with Ilse laid out behind me and my ruined knee stretched out in front because bending it had stopped being negotiable.

”I’m not going to threaten you,” I said. ”I can’t. You’d kill me and I’d stay dead, which is apparently a thing that only happens to some of us.”

His hand paused over the water.

Then it went on.

”And I’m not going to beg, because I’ve watched people beg and it never works, it just makes the other person feel worse about saying no.” I put my head back against the rock. ”So I’m going to sit here. And every so often I’m going to make sure she’s still breathing. And if you decide to help, I’ll be right here, and if you don’t, I’ll still be right here, because I’ve got nowhere else to be and nothing else to do.”

He skipped another stone.

Four hops. Five. It sank.

”That is a kind of begging,” he said.

”Yeah. It’s the version where I don’t have to look at you while I do it.”

Something happened at the corner of his mouth. It was gone before I could decide what it had been.

I checked her. I did that about every twenty minutes and I am not going to pretend it was rational, because there was nothing I could have done about the answer either way. Two fingers to the side of her throat, and count, and put my ear an inch off her mouth.

Her breath came out cold on my cheek.

’...Still going.’

’Still cold.’

The boy watched me do it the third time.

”Her name.”

I looked up.

”Ilse.”

”Ilse.” He tried the word out and put it down again. ”Is she yours?”

”She’s not anyone’s. That’s sort of the whole problem with her.” I sat back. ”She had a summon for nine years. I took it. Not on purpose, but I did, and she’s been walking beside me ever since anyway, and I have not worked out why.”

”You have not asked her.”

”She can’t talk right now.”

”You had weeks.”

’...’

’Okay, that one landed.’

I looked at the black water for a while.

”Yeah,” I said. ”I had weeks.”

Another stone went out. This one went twice and dropped like it had been shot.

He picked up the cup, finally, and held it without drinking.

”Do you know what happens to a person who cannot die?”

’Oh, here we go.’

’Careful, Cade. He’s opening a door. Do not be funny in it.’

I kept my mouth entirely shut, which for me is an athletic feat.

”They stop being asked for things,” Devant said. ”Nobody needs saving by a man who will still be standing tomorrow whatever they do. They need saving today, by somebody who might not be. So they go to the ones who can die, and they beg those ones, and the ones who can die say yes, and the ones who can die get buried.”

He turned the cup slowly in his fingers.

”I have been very useful, in ten years. I have never once been needed.”

’...’

I kept my mouth shut and let that stand there and be what it was, and every part of me wanted to fill it, and I sat on my hands instead.

He set the cup down again without drinking from it.

”You are going to ask me for a favour,” he said.

”I already did.”

”You asked me to help her. That is not a favour, that is a request. A favour is a thing that has a price and both people know it and neither of them says the number out loud.”

’Now that is dangerous...’

”Fine,” I said. ”Then I’m asking for a favour.”

The boy stood up.

He did it easily, the way he does everything, and the tattered ends of that purple scarf swung and settled, and he came over and crouched down beside Ilse and looked at her for a long moment without touching her.

Then he put the back of two fingers close to her mouth and held them there while she exhaled.

He stayed like that for three of her breaths.

”Hm,” he said.

’That’s a hm. What kind of hm is that. Wren, what kind of hm—’

Cade. Be quiet.

He straightened up, and he looked down at her with those amber eyes, and for the first time since I had met him beside this lake, the cheer went out of his face entirely.

”She is not poisoned,” he said.

”What?”

”Everyone thinks it is poison, because of the blood. It is not.” He was already turning away, back toward the water, back toward the cup. ”Poison I could do nothing about.”

I got to my feet, and my knee screamed, and I did not care at all.

”Then what is it?”

He stopped at the edge of the water with his back to me.

”Her fire has gone out,” Devant said. ”And that is a different problem entirely, and it is the only kind I happen to be good at.”