TAMING MY KILLER DEMON

Sigil of the Borrowed Mouth

Chapter 8 

"—down," Kira said, and shoved me behind her, and the collar burned so hard I tasted iron.

The street went wrong.

Not dark. Corrected. The cobbles in front of us sorted themselves into a neat grid. The well's stones stopped being worn and became square. A shutter that had hung crooked for a hundred years straightened with a click, and a stain on the wall lifted off and vanished like a waiter clearing a plate.

And in the middle of the street stood a man made of arithmetic.

He was tall and thin and he was not quite there — his edges were too exact, his face too symmetrical, his coat the precise average of every coat I had ever seen. When he moved, he moved in straight lines. When he breathed, he breathed on a count.

"Third hour restored," he said. His voice was the voice of the herald and also the voice of the wax cracking and also, underneath both, a sound like a ledger closing. "Claim contested. Residue detected. Correction authorized."

"Residue," I said.

"You." He pointed, and his finger was too straight. "You are not the claimant and you are not the body. You are what's left in the coat. The Council does not permit leftovers."

"Odds I get a say," I said.

"Low."

He came at me in a straight line.

Zansho moved first. She stepped between us and put her palm flat on his chest — her bare hand, skin to coat — and said, "Look."

The Unit looked.

I saw it happen in his face. The death-sight went into him and he watched himself end, and for a moment something almost human moved behind his exact eyes. Then it stopped moving. Then he said, in the same flat voice, "Constructs do not die. Correction unaffected."

Zansho took her hand back. She looked at her own palm like it had betrayed her.

"Nothing," she said. "There's nothing in him to show. He's not alive."

"Correct," the Unit said, and his hand went through her chest.

Not through. Past. He reached into her and closed his fingers on nothing and Zansho made a sound like a woman who had been dropped into cold water, and her knees buckled, and Kirihime caught her.

Kirihime.

She had her hands out in front of her, the way she'd been holding them all night, and she was looking at the Unit with her grey eyes wide, and she said, "I'm sorry. I'm going to do something rude."

Then she reached into the Unit's head.

The sigil came out of her mouth — a spiral with a gap in it, drawn in something pale and cold, and it turned, and the gap in the spiral found the Unit's exact face and pulled.

"You are hunting a residue," Kirihime said. "You are hunting the wrong one wearing the body. You are hunting—"

And the Unit said, in the same flat voice: "You are hunting a residue. You are hunting the wrong one wearing the body. You are hunting—"

Then he stopped. His head turned. His eyes found me and slid off, found me and slid off, and his mouth opened and closed on a word that was not a word.

"Target lost," he said. "Target lost. Reacquiring."

Kirihime was trembling. Her hands had gone white. "I can't hold it. He's got no memories to forget. There's nothing in him. He's just — rules."

"Then we break the rules," I said.

The collar burned.

"Say that again," Kira said, from beside me, and her voice had gone very quiet.

"I said we break the rules. Odds it's the only way to fight a thing made of them."

The collar stayed hot. And then, very slowly, it went cold.

The Unit turned.

His head came up and his exact eyes found me and stayed, and something moved in his face that was not arithmetic. It was anticipation. It was the expression of a thing that had been waiting a long time to be allowed to look.

"There," he said. "There you are."

And my mouth moved.

I didn't move it. I want to be clear. I was standing on a cobbled street with my hand in Kira's and my side aching and my collar cold, and my mouth opened and said, in a voice I recognized because it was mine:

"Took you long enough."

The street stopped. Kira's hand went rigid. Zansho made a sound behind me.

The Unit bowed. Actually bowed — a straight, precise, exactly-angled bow.

"Residue," he said, "you are not authorized to remain."

"I'm not a residue," my mouth said. "I'm the deposit."

Then my mouth closed, and my tongue was mine again, and I could not breathe, and every part of me was cold, and I understood with a sick, total clarity that the thing I had seen in Zansho's vision — the thing that had been waiting in the body, the thing that had said now pay up — had not left. It had been there the whole time. It had been there while I sat on the floor. It had been there while I kissed her. It had been listening.

Kira turned me. Both hands on my face. Her eyes were wild.

"What was that. What was that."

"I don't know."

"Say it again."

"I don't know." The collar stayed cool. "I don't know what it is, and the collar says I'm not lying, and that means it's true, and that's worse."

The Unit straightened.

"Correction revised," he said. "Deposit detected. Deposit unclaimed. Deposit must be returned to the ledger." He turned and looked at Kirihime, and there was no malice in it, only procedure. "Witness. You will report."

Kirihime said, "I will not."

"You will report."

"I don't remember how."

The Unit considered this. His face did not change, but the street did — the neat grid of cobbles became neater, the well's stones became squarer, and the air went thin and dry like paper. "Then the Council will attend directly," he said. "Estimate: two hours."

He walked away in straight lines.

He did not use the door in the floor. He used the street, and the street let him, and when he was gone the cobbles stayed in their grid and I hated them.

I sat down.

Kira was down on the cobbles before my back hit the well, her hands on my shoulders, and her face was white and her jaw was tight and her claws had come out and sunk into her own palms.

"It listened," I said. "Whatever's in this body with me. It listened to every word. It heard me promise the ghost three days. It heard me tell you I'd stay. It's been sitting in me like a man in a tavern, and it only spoke when it wanted to."

"Then we cut it out."

"You can't cut what's wearing the skin."

"I'll cut the skin."

"Odds you mean that," I said.

"High."

I looked up at her. The count in my pocket had gone quiet. Zansho was on the cobbles with Kirihime's arm around her, and she was watching me the way she had watched me in the room — patient, and warm, and fifty years deep.

"Gambler," she said. "Two hours. That's what the Unit said. Two hours until the Council comes itself." She got her breath. "And you've got a ghost at your front door in three days and a deposit in your chest that just introduced itself. You want to know what I think."

"I want to know what you want."

Zansho smiled. It was not a nice smile, but it was an honest one. "I want to be bound," she said. "To you. Now. Tonight. Because I have watched four men try to outplay this world, and you are the first one I've seen who might actually have the hand for it, and I would rather be inside the bet than outside it."

Kira's claws came out of her own palms and went for Zansho's throat.

I caught her wrist.

"Don't," I said.

"Don't?"

"She's offering. That's the first honest offer anybody's made me since I woke up." My hand was shaking on her wrist. "And I want to hear the price before you kill her."

Kira stared at me.

Then she took my face in both hands and kissed me — hard, and furious, and underneath all of it frightened, and her teeth found my lip and opened the split again and she held me there in front of everyone, and the collar flared, and she pulled back with blood on her mouth and said:

"Then bind her with my hands on yours. Not yours alone. Mine on yours. Say it."

"Yours on mine."

"Say the whole thing."

"Bind her with your hands on mine."

The collar went warm.

And in my chest, under the claim-sigil, something that was not me said, very quietly, in the voice of a man settling a debt:

"Two hours. Let's make it interesting."