I Only Summon Villainesses

”Her fire.”

I said it out loud to make sure I had heard it.

Devant crouched by the black water and rinsed his hands in it, working the grey dust out from between his fingers, taking his time about it the way he takes his time about everything.

”Drakonir burn from the inside. Even the half ones. Especially the half ones, because there is less of it, so it has to work harder.” He shook the water off. ”That is what keeps them warm in places like this. It is also what keeps them alive in places like this. A full one could stand in that stench for a week and come out complaining about the smell. A half one gets one hour, and hers ran out somewhere in the fourth.”

”So it’s out.”

”It is very low.” He stood. ”Out is a different word and I would not use it yet.”

’...Okay.’

’Okay, that’s a yet. I can work with a yet.’

I looked back at her. Flat on the shelf with her braid come apart and her mouth open a little, and every breath she let go fogging pale in the green light like anybody else’s.

”What relights it?”

”Heat.”

”That’s it? Heat?” I heard my own voice go up and could not stop it. ”I can make a fire, I’ve been making fires since—”

”Your fire is white and it burns corruption and it will do nothing at all.” He said it without any unkindness in it, which somehow made it worse. ”She does not need a fire near her. She needs to be somewhere that is warm, all the way through, for a long time. There is a difference between a lamp and a summer.”

’...Ah, damn.’

Because there is no summer in the Precipice. There is no sun, there is no season, there is a green glow on wet rock and cold that gets into the seams of your boots and stays there.

I have been in this place for weeks and I have not once been warm.

”There’s nowhere down here that’s warm,” I said.

Devant picked up his cup.

He turned it a couple of times, looked into it, and then, finally, after ten years, drank about a third of it.

He made a face like a man who had expected better.

’Oh no.’

’Ten years and it’s just water.’

”There is one place,” he said.

The way he said it put my hands on Wren before I had decided to move them.

”Go on.”

”Down.”

”Down where?”

”Down.” He tipped the rest of the water out onto the stone, which after everything I had just watched felt like something a man does when he has made a decision. ”Two layers, maybe three, I have never gone the whole way and come back the same day. There is a place where the rock still remembers being liquid. Vents, and a red seam in the dark, and air that hurts to breathe if you sit in it too long.”

’...’

”And that would relight her.”

”It would give her something to relight from.” He set the cup down beside the water, neat, upright, the way you leave a thing you intend to come back for. ”Whether she takes it is her business. I have seen that place put warmth back into a Drakonir. I have also seen it cook one. There is no version of this where I promise you anything.”

’Of course there isn’t.’

’There never is.’

I made myself ask the next one properly, and it came out flatter than I wanted.

”How far?”

”Eleven days. Twelve, with her on somebody’s back.”

”She doesn’t have eleven days.”

”She has more than you think and less than she needs.” He looked at me sidelong. ”Which is why we would be leaving now, rather than sitting here discussing it.”

’...We.’

’He said we.’

’Wren, he said—’

I heard him. Do not make a thing of it. He will take it back.

So I let it go.

I got my hands under her instead, and this time I got her up cleaner, because I had learned the shape of doing it wrong. Her head came in under my jaw and her cold breath went out against my throat, and I stood there in a cavern beside a stolen lake with a boy who could not die, and asked the only question I had left.

”What do you want.”

Devant had already started walking.

”I have not decided.”

”That’s not—” I went after him, which cost me. ”That’s not how a favour works. You said it yourself, the price is a thing both people know and neither of them says. So know it. Pick something.”

”I have not decided,” he said again, ”because I do not yet know what you are worth.”

’...’

’Now that is dangerous...’

”And when you do?”

”Then I will tell you, and you will pay it, because by then you will be a great deal further from that lake than you are now.”

He said it pleasantly. He said everything pleasantly. That is the thing about him that I have decided is the actual horror, and not the part where he walks out of a room he should have died in.

I stood there with a dying woman in my arms and did the sum.

It was a short sum. It always is, lately.

Down was where I was going anyway. Down was where my villainesses were, at the bottom of a debt of essence I could not pay standing still. Down was where the pull had been coming from since the river. And now down was the only road with heat at the end of it, and the only person who knew the way was a boy with no price and no expression and no ability to be killed.

Every single thing I wanted was in the same direction.

’...Yeah.’

’And how convenient that is. Again.’

I have noticed that this keeps happening to me. I have noticed that I keep being handed a version of the right thing to do that also happens to be the thing I already wanted, and I keep taking it, and I keep telling myself I noticed.

Noticing is not the same as paying for it. I am aware.

”Fine,” I called after him. ”Deal. Unnamed price, no promises, twelve days. But we’re not going yet.”

He stopped. He turned around with actual curiosity on his face, which on him is an event.

”You have a dying woman.”

”I’ve got a dying woman, a man with a wyvern, four people who’ve just woken up in a room full of corpses and don’t know what year it is, and no food.” I hitched Ilse higher against my chest. ”So we’re going back for them first.”

Devant looked at me for a long moment.

”They will slow us.”

”Yes.”

”Two of the four will die on the way regardless.”

”Probably.”

”And you have eleven days of walking for a woman who may have twelve.”

”I’m aware of the arithmetic. I’ve been doing arithmetic all week and I’m sick of it.” I started walking, past him, up the shelf toward the tunnel, because if I stopped moving I was going to have to think about it. ”Come or don’t.”

For about ten paces there was nothing behind me.

Then there was the sound of a boy picking his cup back up off the stone, and putting it somewhere inside that filthy scarf, and following.

He fell in beside me. He walks quietly. I have never once heard him arrive anywhere.

”You could leave them,” he said.

”I know.”

”It would be the sensible thing.”

”I know that too.” My knee went on the third step and I caught myself on the wall with my shoulder and kept going. ”Look, I’ve had this argument with better people than you, and I lose it every time, and I keep doing it anyway. At some point you have to admit that isn’t a decision. It’s just what I’m like.”

Devant thought about that for a while.

”Yes,” he said. ”I noticed.”

And we went back up the tunnel together, the two of us and a woman going cold in my arms, toward a room full of unconscious animals and four strangers and a man I had spent a year trying to kill.

’Wren.’

Mm.

’Twelve days.’

Eleven.

’He said twelve with her on somebody’s back.’

He said eleven, and then he said twelve, and then he said she has less than she needs. Cade. He was being kind.

’...’

’Damn.’