I Only Summon Villainesses

The claw came out of the big man about four inches under his ribs, and it was not in any hurry about it.

It went through his coat first. Then through him. The point of it stood out from his front with a bead of him hanging off the tip, and it stayed there, unbothered, the way a nail stands out of a plank.

Behind him there was nothing. Dark, and the mouth of the cavern, and the dark going back into the cavern, and no arm attached to the claw at all.

’...’

’No.’

Bren was three feet from him with the water skins over her shoulder. Light had the rag in his hands. The silent one was at the rock, looking at the wyvern the way he had been looking at it since the wings came up, and none of them moved, and none of them stopped, and none of them looked.

The big man shifted his weight off his bad hip, the way he had every few minutes for eleven days.

Then he tipped his chin at the wyvern.

”It can fly.”

He sounded pleased. He had the flattest voice of any man I have ever met and there was pleasure in it, small and plain, the kind you get out of a person who has not had anything go right in a long time.

Bren followed where he was looking and let a breath out through her nose.

”Took its time.”

I am going to put down exactly what my body did, because I want a record of it somewhere that is not just my head.

Nothing. My body did nothing. I stood in the mouth of a cave with my arm still half out where Ilse had come off it, and I watched two people have a conversation over a hole in one of them.

’Wren.’

She came in immediately, and there was none of last night in her voice.

Yes. I can feel it.

’You can feel it.’

Through the floor. It is eleven feet inside the cave mouth and it is not moving and it has been there for some time. Cade, it has been there since before you came out.

’Since before—’

Since before.

That did more for me than anything else could have. My own eyes I had stopped trusting somewhere around the fourth time I came back with firewood. A sword that hears through stone was not going to lie to me for fun.

I moved.

”Get away from the cave!”

Four heads came round. Four. All of them looking at me, which meant all of them looking past him.

Light’s hand went to his sword out of pure habit, and he put himself in front of Bren without deciding to.

”What is it.”

”Behind him. Behind him, Light, look at him—”

Light looked at him.

I watched a man look directly at another man with a claw through his stomach, and I watched his face do absolutely nothing, and then I watched him look back at me with the beginnings of the careful expression you put on for somebody who has started shouting at weather.

’Oh no...’

’Oh, no, no, no.’

Death Sense went out of me before I told it to. It costs nothing and it has kept me alive since the flood, and it went out across that shelf like water going over a flat stone.

I got Light. I got Bren. I got the silent one, small and folded up the way he always reads. I got the wyvern, enormous now, blazing. I got Ilse behind me, and Ilse came through so hot and so loud that she nearly drowned out the rest of the shelf.

I got the big man, going out the way a lamp goes out when you cap it.

And where the claw was, all I got was blood. It was coming out of him faster than a man can spare, running down the front of his coat and off the buckle of his belt and pooling dark on the rock between his boots, and the man looked at me with kind eyes, not particularly feeling anything.

”You seem to be worrying over nothing.” He shifted off his bad hip again. ”Are you perhaps stressed?”

I blinked at him. Then I looked at the rest of them. Light with his hand on his sword and his careful face. Bren with the water skins. The silent one, who had not taken his eyes off the wyvern once.

’Am I the only sane person here?’

Behind me, Ilse breathed in, and out. The heat was still coming off her hard enough that I could feel it on the back of my neck, but she was breathing like a person again, which was far better than she had been.

And she was looking straight past it too, the same as the rest of them, like nothing was happening at all. I had seen hexes. This was on a whole different level.

’Perhaps we will have to do this alone?’

’Looks to be the case.’

I hit Feather Step and put myself between the big man and the dark, which achieved nothing, and then I did the only thing left, which was to grab him.

I got a fistful of his coat and the meat of his arm under it, and I hauled.

And Bren screamed.

She screamed like something had been taken out of her, and she went down on one knee with the water skins still on her shoulder, and she had her hand out toward him, and she was seeing it. Because of me. Because I had hold of him and she had been half a step behind my shoulder when I took it.

Light saw her see it. He turned. His face finally changed, a beat behind hers, and he got his blade out and came.

And it stopped being interested.

The claw went back the way it had come, exactly as unhurried going as it had been coming, and the big man came off his feet and went into the dark the way a coat goes off a hook. The coat went out of my fist like it had never been in it.

There was no sound, no cry or manly grunt from him. Nothing dragged, nothing struck, nothing tore. A man the size of a door went out of the world in front of four people, and the loudest thing in that cave was Bren’s knee hitting the rock.