Closer I get, though, the more I see it ent working. Mam’s aura is fuzzing a little at the edges where the Draw is greatest, but at its center it is bright, and serene. Running across the surface like a reflection on water, I can see the wards tattooed just under her skin in electrum ink.

  Then I take one step too close, and she turns her head, seeing me like I do her.

  Instantly the serenity in her aura is gone, and it is a wash of emotion as she leaps to her feet and goes to the wall closest to me, pounding it with her fists.

  Mam really can punch through rock, but not this rock, which sucks at her own magic to make itself stronger. I can see she’s shouting something at me, but I can’t make it out. I get even closer, reaching out to touch the wall. Maybe if I can feel the vibrations, I can hear…

  Suddenly Mam stops and starts frantically waving me off. I freeze, my fingers so close to the wall I can sense its crevices. Mam whisks her hand at me, and I can almost hear her shouting, “Shoo!”

  I pull my hand back, trying to make something out of her gestures. Mam seems to come to the same conclusion, putting her hands on her hips as she considers the problem.

  At last she comes to a decision. Pointing at me in an exaggerated gesture.

  You.

  She makes the shooing motion again.

  Go.

  She taps her nose.

  Sniff. Smell?

  She ent wearing skirts, but she reaches for an imaginary one, sweeping it about as she puts her nose in the air and struts about in perfect posture, pointing at things she does not deign to look at.

  I snicker in spite of the circumstances. That’s the easiest one.

  Aunt Leesha.

  Go sniff out Aunt Leesha.

  It’s an easy enough request, and the smart thing to do. Out of my depth in here, and Aunt Leesha always knows what to do.

  But I don’t want to leave Mam now that I’ve found her at last.

  I stare a long moment, trying to think of something to say. I see pain and sadness in Mam’s aura as she watches me. She points to herself, then to her heart, and then to me.

  I love you.

  This time I’ve learned my lesson, and say it right back. We stare at each other a moment longer, and then she claps her hands at me, and makes the shoo! motion again.

  * * *

  —

  Cavivat’s trail is as easy to pick up as before. Need to hide when he doubles back, empty baskets in hand, but I breathe a little easier as his sounds recede. I keep my cloak pulled close around me, but I don’t sense any corelings nearby.

  The next prison is nothing like Mam’s. Ent even got a wardnet. Just stone walls and a thick wood door. It’s so unspecial it feels like a trap, and I creep up cautiously, reaching out with all my senses.

  The woman inside ent setting serene like Mam was, and she ent struttin’ around with her nose in the air. She’s crawling on her hands and knees, feeling around for food that’s right in front of her on the floor.

  I can sense it through a wall, but without her crown and warded jewelry, Aunt Leesha’s blind as the Jechi Hosta here in the darkness.

  Stinks, too. Makes Cavivat smell rosy. Usin’ one side of the room as a privy, but I doubt the demons care to clean it, or give her something to wipe with or wash up.

  She’s dehydrated. Smells like she ent fed often, maybe just an offering basket once a month. I watch her aura through the wall, meticulously sorting the contents of the basket and laying them out in a precise row, with things that spoil quick on one side and things that last on the other. Don’t know how that pile could last anyone a month.

  Even lookin’ close, don’t think her prison’s anything more than it appears. Magic’s always been a part of me, same as Olive. Came to Mam later in life, but now that it has it ent something she can just get rid of, or have taken away.

  But Aunt Leesha ent got tattoos or alagai blood. She can’t draw wards without her wand. Can’t tell the future without her dice. Can’t even see without her crown. Why bother with a Bunker to hold her?

  Olive said the demon wanted to feed the magic-rich blood of his enemies to the new hive queen. Something of a demon tradition. But Aunt Leesha ent magic-rich. Demon’s keeping her for the queen to feast on out of spite. Out of hate.

  And that’s a lot scarier.

  Aunt Leesha lets herself eat a single, small tomato. She groans in pleasure as she savors it in her mouth, swallowing only reluctantly. Then she gets up and walks right toward me like Mam did. Like she knows I’m right there on the other side of the door.

  Only she doesn’t. She kneels and raises her arm very precisely, tracing an impact ward on the door with the tip of her fingernail, over and over in the exact same spot. I smell dried blood, and wonder how long she’s been at this. Long as she’s been in this cell, I reckon.

  I can sense the groove she’s worn. The ward has taken on substance, but there is nothing to power it with. Without magic, it’s just some squiggly lines, and the hive ward regulates almost all the ambient magic in these tunnels. The bit that’s left would take years to charge a ward big enough for a jailbreak.

  I go right up to the door. “Aunt Leesha.”

  On the other side, she stiffens, turning her ear to the door like she’s not sure she heard.

  “It’s me, Darin Bales,” I say as loud as I dare. “Step back. Gonna slide under the door.”

  She moves back so fast she stumbles, landing on her bottom with a thump. Her heart and breath quicken into the beginnings of a full-on panic.

  I let myself go slippery, squeezing under the door easy as a mouse. I drop to one knee beside her, reaching out to take her arms. She’s shaking, and so very thin.

  “Darin?” She croaks my name, and I hear the skin splitting on her cracked lips.

  “Ay, it’s me.”

  She lets out an awful sound that hurts my ears, and throws her arms around me, squeezing tight as she shakes and weeps, even if she’s too dried out for actual tears.

  Hate cryin’. Hate hugs most of the time, too. Never used to mind them from Aunt Leesha, though she never used to smell like a demon ate her and shat her back out.

  But I’m so glad I found her, so glad she’s okay, I hold my breath and squeeze back until I feel her wince. She hasn’t atrophied, but her muscle tone is gone. She’s all skin and sinew and bones, like old Favah.

  I pull back and press my waterskin into her hands. “Drink. Breathe. Gonna figure out a way to get you out of here.”

  She’s so dehydrated I expect her to throw her head back and empty the skin, but she takes just one sip, swishing it around and swallowing. “Do you have charcoal? And a clean cloth?”

  “Ay, ma’am.” I produce a cloth and a charcoal writing stick. Leesha takes a moment to gather her wild, tangled mass of hair and wind it together, tying it off with a bit of string. Then she wets the cloth and starts washing her face like a cat.

  “Maybe I should…” I begin.

  Aunt Leesha holds up a finger. “Patience, Darin.”

  That’s the Aunt Leesha I remember, and something inside me unclenches as I wait. Wouldn’t call her face clean when she’s done, but she’s gotten off most of the muck and grime. She takes the bit of charcoal and quick as if she was signing her own name, draws sight wards around her eyes.

  She closes her eyes and breathes a moment, then reaches out, feeling around until she finds my hand. Slowly, she lifts it until my fingers just barely brush against the symbols.

  It’s enough for them to Draw a bit of my magic, and instead of sucking in, I let it happen. The wards begin to glow, and Aunt Leesha inhales like she’s just been kissed. She opens her eyes and looks around, seeing the chamber she’s been trapped in all these months for the first time.

  “That’s better.” Something of the duchess’ old tone of voice returns as she takes another sip from the waterskin. “I’ll need tools. Do you have any demonbone? Electrum? A warding kit?”

  All business, Aunt Leesha. Not so much as a How d’you do? or a What in the core are you doing here? Might be why I’ve always liked her. Don’t have to do a dance to get to the point.

  “Ent got any of that,” I say.

  Leesha sighs. “Your father would have.”

  Starting to understand why Mam doesn’t much like her. “Ay, well. Ent my da.”

  Aunt Leesha tilts her head and it’s like she can see right through me. “Oh, sweet Darin. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  She lays a hand on my arm, and it’s hard to stay shady at her. But then she reaches down, pulling the pipes off my belt. “What’s this? You said you didn’t have any electrum.”

  She means the tiny electrum shell Inevera made me, to amplify the sound of my pipes. I snatch them back before she knows I’ve moved. “Pipes are mine. You can’t have them.”

  Leesha frowns and I can see her readying a lecture, but I ignore it, reaching into my jacket. “But you can have this.”

  I hold out a fountain pen. Leesha takes it eagerly, but her emotions ent changed. She thinks she needs that shell more than I do.

  “And this.”

  I hold out Mam’s knife, and that pulls her up short. Mam’s knife is a legend in Hollow. A foot of razor-sharp warded steel with a bone handle that runs deep with emotional resonance. Ent made of hora, but it glows with power anyway, and Aunt Leesha can see it. She takes the weapon reverently, running a finger along its edge and shivering.

  “Oh, yes,” she breathes. “Yes, this will do nicely.”

  * * *

  —

  I’m eager to move on, but Aunt Leesha takes her sweet time, as Mam would say.

  “Tell me everything,” she says.

  Getting good at this part. Hary says every time you tell a story it gets smoother, easier, better. I’ve been tellin’ this one a lot. I start with Olive’s disappearance, and quickly run through everything up until now, leaving out the part about where Olive is now, just in case the demon’s been inside her head. Only say Olive’s duch of Hollow, and building an army.

  Aunt Leesha listens to it all rigidly, her emotions in check as she absorbs the information. While I talk she cuts away her sleeves and wipes her arms clean, then goes at them with the pen, covering her arms in sleeves of interlocking wardwork, then penning more on her hands and feet.

  Can’t follow what it all does, but I see the net activate and start Drawing power. Ent much in the air around us in the cell, but they’ll charge quicker in the tunnels, restoring her strength, at least for a while.

  She’s careful not to Draw directly from Mam’s knife. It has more than enough power to restore her, but the magic in Mam’s knife ent the happy kind. Full of hate and pain, shame and anger. Reckon Drawing its power inward would be like experiencing all that pain like you lived it yourself. Mam might call Leesha a busybody, but it seems she doesn’t want a peek inward at the dark parts of Mam’s life any more than I do.

  I expect Aunt Leesha to use the knife to power the ward she scratched into the door. Blow it right off the wall. Instead she walks up to it and fits the blade into the seam of the doorframe. The cutting wards along the blade glow as she presses it right through the hinges and bolt like they were blocks of cheese.

  “Be a dear and slip outside,” she tells me, “then suck in and brace yourself. Pushing the door over onto you will cushion the impact, so we don’t make too much noise.”

  I look at the big heavy wooden door, banded with steel. “Won’t that squash me?”

  “Nonsense,” Leesha says. “You can withstand far more pressure than that when you’re sucked in.”

  I cock my head at her. “How do you know my powers better than I do?”

  Leesha sniffs, and there’s the duchess again. “I’ve been observing you and Olive since you were born.”

  “Like we’re some kind of experiment.” Startin’ to understand how Olive feels about her mam.

  “Life is an experiment, Darin,” Leesha says. “Observing. Learning. Evolving. That is how we survive. It doesn’t mean I loved either of you less than any mum.”

  She means it, and if I’m to tell honest word, she’s making a lot of sense. I think again of my missed moment with Rojvah. “Love you, too, Aunt Leesha.”

  I hold my breath as she hugs me again, then turn slippery and slide under the door. I brace my back against it and suck in. “Ready.”

  “Now,” Leesha says. I hear the knife swish through the air, and the impact ward activates with a thump! I try to brace the door and let it down slowly, but it’s too heavy and the impact too sudden. Door weighs a couple hundred pounds and comes down on me hard, but like she said, it ent heavy enough to harm me.

  I turn slippery again, sliding out from under as Leesha steps from her cell.

  * * *

  —

  I give Aunt Leesha my cloak. She made it for my da a long time ago, and I can see she feels safer with it around her shoulders.

  “What about you, Darin?” she asks.

  I hold up my pipes. “Got this.”

  I begin to play, using the magic shell to limit the music to just the hall around us. Occasionally we pass cave demon guards patrolling the ceilings, or worker drones going about their tasks, but they take no notice of us, even as they instinctively move out of our path.

  Leesha looks at me when she thinks I don’t notice, and under all the layers of stink, she smells nostalgic.

  It doesn’t take Aunt Leesha long to figure out how Mam’s prison is warded up. ’Course it doesn’t. This is why Mam sent me to fetch her first.

  Even the door to Mam’s prison is a bare slab of stone fitted into grooves in the wall. Would take a rock demon to lift it.

  It’s too thick for Leesha to cut through with the knife, and the Bunker might drain the knife’s power if she tried. Instead she uses the charcoal to draw a large ward circle on the door.

  “How are you going to power it?” I ask.

  “I’m not.” Leesha never takes her eyes off her work. “I’m going to tap into the Drain and use its own magic to power the circle.”

  As she draws the final shape, the circle lights up with magic. Then it seems to start spinnin’. Don’t know if the circle is really rotating, or if it’s an illusion of the magic streaking faster and faster around the wardnet.

  The wards get hotter and hotter, brighter and brighter. I can smell the stone beginning to melt, the air starting to burn. I turn away from the light and put my attention back on my music.

  Nothing to see here, my song says. Everything’s normal.

  The light and smell get so strong, accompanied by a loud hissing that dulls my music. I’m startin’ to worry I won’t be able to hide it from our captors when there’s a final flare and I feel air from within the prison.

  I turn and see a perfectly round window burned into the door slab. Inside, Mam gets a running start, then dives through, landing in a roll that would do any Jongleur proud.

  She’s on me before I can reorient, wrapping her arms around me and hugging me harder than the falling door. “Darin Bales, you’re just as reckless and brave as your da ever was.”

  “Ent,” I say. “Just doin’ what needs to be done.”

  Mam only squeezes tighter. “Ay, that’s exactly what he would’ve said.”

  I squeeze her back, burying my face in her hair. Mam don’t stink like Aunt Leesha. Benefit of being able to turn slippery is dirt and grime slide right off. She just smells like Mam, and for the first time in nearly a year, I feel like everythin’s going to be all right.

  “You all right, Leesha?” Mam asks over my shoulder. Two of them never much liked each other, but there’s no sign of it, now.

  “I’ve been better,” Leesha admits.

  Mam lets go of me, walking over and extending her hands. Aunt Leesha takes them, and gasps as Mam pulls in a bit of her aura, Reading it.

  “Rude!” Leesha’s brows tighten and she focuses her will, Drawing back stronger than you’d expect from someone it don’t come naturally to. She gets a bit of Mam’s power in return, lighting up the fountain pen wards on her skin. Her aura brightens. Already I can see the magic at work on her body, healing and strengthening.

  “Sorry, Leesha.” Mam lets go and takes a step back. “Had to be sure he din’t get inside your head.”

  Leesha crosses her arms. “And?”

  Mam shakes her head. “You’re clean. Think messing around in someone’s mind makes the brains taste awful, and he’s lookin’ forward to eating ours.”

  “Sunny.” Leesha holds up Mam’s knife. “I suppose you’ll want this back?”

  Mam’s eyes widen, and there’s a flare of fear in her, quickly burned away in anger. “Where did you get that?!”

  “Darin gave it to me,” Leesha says. “I couldn’t have freed you without it. But I wasn’t rude about it.”

  Mam calms at that. She turns to me, and I smell sadness, and regret. “Knife’s heavy, Darin. Must’ve been hard, carrying it around all this time.”

  We both know she don’t mean the weight. Dark memories embedded in that bone handle. Could feel ’em, even if like Aunt Leesha I resisted the urge to pry. “A bit. But needed to get it back to you, din’t I?”

  Mam smiles and lays a hand on my shoulder before turning back to Leesha. “Keep it for now.”

  “All right, Darin,” Leesha says. “Take us to where they’re keeping the others.”

  Mam turns to me in surprise. “Others?!”

  The alamen fae are all calling me Erram now, even Kriva and Havell. The fae can’t sense magic as I can in crownsight, but they see the csar responding to me as it once did my father, and it seems that is enough.

  I don’t entirely know if Erram is an honorific, like Duch; if it’s a religious title, like Deliverer; or if they truly think I am Everam the Creator, walking among them.