TAMING MY KILLER DEMON

Sigil of the Third Hand

Chapter 9 

"—her hands on mine," I said. "Both of them. Palm on palm. And if she tries anything, you take the arm at the elbow and I'll apologize later."

Zansho was sitting on the well's edge with her feet out of the water and her sleeves rolled up, and she was watching Kira the way a woman watches a storm decide which field to ruin.

"Elbow's fair," she said.

Kira did not answer. She stood behind me with her arms around me, and her chin was on my shoulder, and her hands were out in front of me with the palms up, and her claws were out, and she was breathing very steadily and very close to my ear.

"Say the words," she said.

"Odds this works," I said.

"Low. Say the words anyway."

I put my cut hand into Zansho's cut hand. Kira's palms came down over both, one on top of the other, and her claws drew a shallow line across the backs of our hands, all four in one stroke, and the blood came up and mixed in the cup of our joined palms.

The sigil was three circles and a line through them. The same mark as the collar. The same mark as the one on my ribs. Zansho drew it in the blood with the tip of her tongue, which I did not expect and will not describe further, and it caught with a sound like a knot pulling tight.

Zansho gasped. Her eyes went white, then grey, then her own.

"What did you see?" I said.

"Everything." Her voice was thin. "Every death I've ever shown, all of them at once, and every one of them was me." She blinked. "That's not how it works. That's not—" She stopped. Looked at her hands. "I'm bound. I'm actually bound. It's been fifty years and I'd forgotten what the inside of a bet felt like."

"Then here's the bet." I kept hold of her hand. "The Council's coming in two hours. You're inside the tent now. What do you know that you couldn't say from outside?"

Zansho's mouth curved, and it was the first time I'd seen her smile without the teeth in it.

"The Council cannot come itself," she said. "It never does. It's not a thing. It's a tithe — a habit people keep. When the Unit said the Council will attend, it meant it will send the highest thing it has, and the highest thing it has is a Collector. And a Collector can be gamed, because a Collector is a ledger with a face, and ledgers have to balance."

Kira's chin pressed into my shoulder. "Balance how."

"A Collector takes an item and gives a receipt. The receipt is the only thing the Council recognizes as real." Zansho squeezed my hand. "So we don't fight it. We short it. We give it something it wants more than the deposit, and we make sure the receipt says we paid."

"The deposit," I said. "It wants the thing in my chest."

"It wants the ledger to balance. The deposit isn't the item. It's the discrepancy." Her eyes came up. "Gambler. That thing spoke through your mouth. That means it's got a claim. And a claim can be bought."

The collar burned.

"You're lying about something," I said.

"I'm omitting something. There's a difference and the iron knows it." Zansho let go of my hand. "The omission is this: I've seen what happens to a man who buys a claim off a deposit. It happened eleven years ago. It's why I've been watching for eleven years."

Kira's hands tightened on mine.

"Whose claim," she said.

Zansho looked at the well. Then at me. "Your body's previous owner. The ghost. He didn't walk into his death by accident." She stood up. "He walked into it because he'd made the same deal I'm about to offer you, and it worked, and then it kept working."

I sat very still.

"He bought his claim off a deposit," I said.

"He bought a claim off a deposit and the deposit said thank you and moved in." Zansho pulled her sleeves down. "That's what's in your chest, gambler. That's the thing that said now pay up. It's not a demon. It's not a ghost. It's the balance — the leftover arithmetic of a deal that was never closed. And it will speak through your mouth whenever the ledger needs it to, and one day it will speak through your mouth and not give it back."

The count in my pocket chimed. One hour.

Kira turned me around. Her hands were shaking again, the way they did when she meant it, and she put her forehead against mine and stayed there.

"I'm not letting you buy it," she said.

"You're not letting me do a lot of things tonight."

"I'm not letting you buy it." Her voice cracked on the word buy. "I don't care if the odds are good. I don't care if it's the only hand. You don't get to make a deal with the thing wearing you."

"Odds you'd do it," I said. "If it were you."

"That's not—"

"Odds you'd do it in a heartbeat."

Her jaw worked. She did not answer.

"Then don't ask me to be better than you." I put my hand on her collar, the iron at her throat, and she flinched and did not pull away. "I'll make one deal tonight. With you. Not with the deposit. Not with the ghost. With you."

"Say it."

"Whatever I am in an hour, whatever's speaking through my mouth, you don't believe a word of it unless the collar burns. Not one word. Not if it sounds like me. Not if it begs."

The collar stayed cool.

Kira's claws came up. One of them touched my lip, right on the split, and dragged, slowly, and the collar flared white-hot and my knees gave and she caught me against her hip and held me there.

"Deal," she said, and bit down on my mouth.

It was the fourth kind of kiss and I was running out of theories. This one was an oath. Her hand was flat on my chest over the claim-sigil and her mouth was on mine and there was blood on both of us and the iron was singing, and behind her Zansho said, dry as old paper, "I'll take the third circle. Might as well be useful," and Kirihime said, "I'll witness, if I remember to."

And then the street went white.

Not the Unit's correction. Not the Council. A light with no edges, coming up out of the cobbles, and in it was a door, and in the door was a woman I did not know, holding a bundle, and the bundle was crying.

Kira's hand closed on my collar so hard I felt the iron bite.

"What is that," she said.

The woman in the light looked at me, and she was tired, and she was gentle, and she said, "He's yours now. You said you'd take him if the deal went through." She held out the bundle. "Take him, gambler. Before the Collector comes and counts him."

The collar burned.

"Odds that's my child," I said, and my voice had gone very flat.

The collar went cold.

Kira said nothing at all. She just stood there with her hand on my throat and her claws out, and her eyes on the crying bundle, and her whole body going quiet in a way I had learned to fear.

Zansho said, softly, "That's not a child. That's the receipt."

And the bundle opened its eyes, and they were the color of old milk.