A Study of Fiber and Demons Page 10

  Do you mean us harm? Please, be honest.

  Simple words might have been easy to ignore, but the desperation in the sentiment that Tailor relayed to him rattled his bones. Fright, distrust, a faint wish for hope. Their Authority begged its human guests to prove its doubts wrong.

  "No." It was the truth, but not the full truth, and Alim could not dismiss the Authority's plea for honesty. "But we don't know what our leaders might do if they found out about this place. Demonweave is valuable to us, and I suspect we may have only collected it in moderation so far because we have had no way to obtain more."

  Liam shot him a warning glare, and fearful rage quivered quietly through Alim's demonweave suit.

  Are we in danger?

  "No," Alim said. Liam's glare turned to something more questioning, but Alim kept his focus on the Authority. "We won't tell them about this place."

  "Alim."

  "He's right, Liam," Sylvestra said. "If Jack was willing to murder all three of us for extra credit on a research project, think of what he or the Directors' Board will do for the promise of an endless supply of demonweave."

  "We have to tell the Directors' Board something. If we come back empty-handed, we'll all be reprimanded—Alim may lose his job entirely—and this will only be after an arduous attempt to drag our findings out of us."

  ???

  Alim remembered that he was still wearing Scout's demonweave, too, and its concern pulsed in synchronicity with Tailor's wary anger, creating a harmony of startled confusion that tangled inside Alim. "Then we'll lie about our findings. You'll recall, Liam, that I'm quite good at that."

  "This is all assuming we do get back," Sylvestra said, leaning toward Liam. "Which we won't if we tell these demons that we're going to sell information of their whereabouts to the university, their own safety and agency be damned."

  Liam folded his hands before him, lacing his fingers as his face clouded in deep introspection. Alim looked again to the Authority, wishing he could read its expression.

  We have no ill-bearing toward humans. We wish to help you return home. But we must protect our own. If they search for demonweave, here is where they will find it. Will they rip it from our corpses? Keep us alive to harvest like crops?

  It chilled Alim to think of the same questions he and Sylvestra had asked each other so casually on the bench in the Kestler tram station. For as seriously as they had taken the ethical implications then, it was an entirely different matter to hear the affected party repeat those questions in raw dread.

  Sylvestra took a step closer to the table, putting herself as directly before the Authority as she could. "I will not reveal this location to Pinnacle. You can blindfold me on the way out, if you wish. I do not trust my kind with your people's safety, and I have no desire to be the harbinger of your doom. I will tell the university whatever lies necessary to keep this place hidden." She gave Liam a sidelong glance. "I don't care what they do to punish me. I am not harming these creatures."

  Alim saw something in her that he had never seen before—never seen on any Pinnacle academic. She held her head high, determined and driven. With her hair hanging in waves and the shimmering silver dress looking so much a part of her essence that she might as well have spun that demonweave herself, she could have been the subject of some classical painting of a merciless storm goddess. Her passion came forward as solidarity toward the demons, however, and Alim hoped that they could sense that, too.

  "I will not say anything to Pinnacle, either," Alim said. "Or we'll lead them off the trail, to keep opportunists like Jack from poking around to try to find more. We can tell them—I don't know, that there's some pheromone that you can excrete when endangered that will render the demonweave's magic null. We'll think of something." Relief beyond anything translatable into human words surged through both Tailor and Scout's links.

  Liam let out a heavy breath, one of resignation, but his hesitation put Alim on edge. A few hours of hardship together and Alim had nearly forgotten about Liam's years of unethical opportunism. Sylvestra had said that she was tired of being disappointed with herself, but Liam, in his stoicism, had expressed no similar self-doubts. And if he didn't at least play along with Sylvestra and Alim's resolve, the demons might not risk letting any of them leave.

  "This will have consequences," Liam said after a long stretch of silence, "but I suppose I'd rather deal with the fallout in our own domain than in this cavern. I would rather not endanger these beings, as well." He reached up one sleeve of his demonweave suit and withdrew a small bundle. The handkerchief of Fool's Gold fungus.

  A wonder Alim had not smelled it tucked away on Liam's person before then.

  Liam stepped closer to the Authority and held it out. "A token of peace. I fear it's a bit damp, but this fungus is rare for my people to find and valuable. I hope yours appreciate it, as well."

  The Authority reached out tentatively, grabbed a crumbling bit of the fungus, and slid it through the slight opening in the lips of its carapace mask.

  !!!

  Satisfaction surged through Tailor's demonweave—a translation of the Authority's—paired with Tailor's increasing relief. No one present wanted the humans to bring harm to the demons, and now that that had been established, Alim and the others stood a chance of leaving the demon city and returning home.

  When Liam returned to stand by Sylvestra, she shook her head. "How did you know it would eat it?"

  Liam, the smug ass, didn't bother to hide a smirk. "As I said, Fool's Gold has regenerative properties as well as magical ones that are not entirely unlike demonweave. It's so valued in the Biomagics department because we've been trying to research it to see if it could be used as an alternative to demonweave. Given the similarities, I thought the demons might value it, as well. I did not entirely expect they would eat it, however."

  Tailor again translated for the Authority. We have been rude to eat without you. You have been promised food. We will all feast now, together, in peace. When Alim looked back to the Authority, its face—of course—remained unchanged, but he got the sense that it was smiling.

  *~*~*

  The rest of the meeting with the Authority went remarkably similar to any university fundraiser dinner party. Demons brought out dishes of other fungi, kelp, and tiny sea salt deposits carved like little candies. Alim could have used a hot meal, but the fungi were filling enough, and the demons were gracious hosts. As they ate, the Authority explained the plan to return them home.

  You will rest first. Tomorrow, Scout and others will lead you back to shore. There is a way, through tunnels under the ocean. Alim had nearly choked on his seaweed at that. What a relief it would be to see the sky again, after all this being trapped under earth and water. The claustrophobia was beginning to fray his nerves. You will be blindfolded, as you agreed, so you will not be capable of betraying your word to us. Apologies for the distrust, but we must safeguard our people.

  The humans had no quarrels with the Authority's plan, and after the meal concluded, the Authority was gracious enough to allow them to wander the demon city at their leisure, escorted by the demons who had spun their clothes. Alim took this opportunity to revisit the platform he had seen on the way to the Authority's dome, and Scout tagged along with him and Tailor.

  Alim had expected some kind of animal, but the creature penned in on the platform was at once more wondrous and more mundane than his imagination could conjure.

  "What is it?" he asked Scout as his demon companions led him into the pen.

  Across the bracelet's bond, Alim felt a response that did not quite compare to anything he was familiar with but came close to dragon. The dragon, as tall as the amethyst dome, bore some resemblance to a giant moth, with spindly legs and hind quarters that were reminiscent of a thorax. It turned its head—covered in slick, shimmery fur—and blinked at Alim with segmented eyes before returning its attention to a pile of food pellets laid out at its feet. As it moved, light sparked off the surface of its wings.

&
nbsp; "Why is it in a pen?" Alim asked, stepping closer to it. The dragon ignored him, neither unnerved nor excited by his presence. "It's domesticated?"

  Tailor answered. Yes. Used for transport through the deep tunnels, trade with other demons.

  "There must be very wide tunnels between your settlements, then."

  Yes. The earth has many veins, and very thick. Alim thought again of the weight of an ocean over these underground pockets and quelled the unsettling notion.

  "May I pet the dragon?"

  Scout hovered closer to him, seeming enamored with the concept, but irritation from Tailor overrode any delight coming from Scout.

  It is a beast of burden—practical, not a toy.

  "Well, you're no fun." Tailor bristled and lingered closer to the pen wall while Scout led Alim up to the dragon's mound of food, prompting him to grab a pellet and offer it to the dragon. Although the dragon had the entire pile at its disposal, it glanced at Alim with dull interest when he took a sample and held it out. Playing along, the dragon stretched out its neck and extended its insect-like tongue to wrap around the pellet in Alim's hand. The texture of its tongue was sandpapery, but given the serpentine length of the muscle, it was not comparable to a cat's. Still, the dragon was much cuter and more sociable than Tailor gave it credit for.

  "Isn't this picturesque?" Alim spun to see Liam step into the pen with Seamstress. While Seamstress floated over to Tailor, Liam approached Alim. "I thought serene moments like this only existed in pastoral paintings."

  "Oh? Have you not heard of my nymph-like kinship with nature and all its creatures?" He knelt and picked up another pellet, handing it to Liam. "It's quite gentle. Essentially a giant, flying mare."

  "I hope not. My uncle in Olgtir Valley keeps horses, and one of his mares nearly kicked my skull off when I was a boy. Good thing I was much shorter back then." Scout drifted back as the humans spoke, perhaps irritated by their vocal speech, but Alim didn't feel any particular emotion coming through the demonweave.

  Despite his jokes, Liam took the pellet and offered it to the dragon, who again lapped up the morsel with its curling tongue. For all his teasing, Alim had to admit that there was something a bit magical in tending to this massive, alien beast, so much so that even Liam looked tender as he participated. He was nearly unrecognizable garbed in sparkling demonweave and his eyes shining in curious wonder, nothing like the gruff stoic that hulked about in ill-fitted university uniforms back on campus.

  In that moment, Alim was almost sorry to be going home, away from this unusual hidden city and all its marvels and back to the stuffy institution that regarded him as a disgraceful inconvenience. He had seen another side to both Liam and Sylvestra down here, and he would miss that as well.

  "Something catch your interest?" Alim jumped, realizing that his mind had wandered. Liam was watching him.

  "You mean the dragon… moth… thing?"

  Liam arched an eyebrow. "You were staring at me. An interesting choice amid all this demon culture."

  "Well, you're not hard on the eyes. Perhaps because you don't sparkle so much as everything else here." Liam smiled, and a satisfying warmth spread through Alim before turning sickening. "Oh, hell, I'm not flirting with you, am I?"

  "I'm afraid it appears you might be. I'm terribly sorry."

  Alim groaned and combed back his hair with his fingers, resting the heels of his palms on his forehead. "Blazes, how long have we been awake, anyway?"

  "Hard to tell without a sun or any clocks around, but I'd estimate something like twenty hours at this point."

  "Well, no wonder. I do tend to run my mouth when I'm tired." Liam reached for Alim's wrists and pulled them down.

  His face was close enough Alim could feel his breath, and for a moment Alim felt as though he had stepped into another life, one where Liam had never destroyed his career and reputation, where Alim had never harbored years of resentment, where perhaps neither of them had known anything other than this peaceful, mystical underworld.

  "Sylvestra has already gone back to the guesthouse to rest. As much as there is to see here, perhaps we should join her."

  Alim sighed, glancing back at the dragon. "A shame we couldn't stay longer. But I suppose it's for the best—we humans could certainly stand to mind our own business." The dragon groaned then and stretched its spindly front legs, flexing its wings with the movement and shedding a drifting cloud of shimmering dust, coating Alim and Liam's heads and shoulders. "Oh, how lovely. I wonder if its organic byproduct has magical properties, too?"

  Grimacing, Liam brushed some of the dust off Alim's shoulder. "More likely it's just dead skin."

  Alim winced and tried to brush off more. "Ugh. That's probably enough wonder for the day, then. Let's head back."

  *~*~*

  The demons led them back to the guest house but did not follow them in. Sleep well, Scout said to Alim before departing with the others, and it almost pained Alim to think that soon he would be separated from that dear creature. No one had regarded so tenderly to him since he and Farrah were children in their mother's home.

  Alim entered the room where they had waited their turns for the bath, not thinking whether any of them had assigned chambers or where his might be. Sylvestra wasn't there, but Liam followed him in.

  "Oh, did you have a claim on this one?"

  Liam paused just inside the doorway, looking abashed. "Ah, no, not as far as I know. I just wanted to make sure that you're well. Today has been… an ordeal."

  "Well, I'm not dead, despite Jack's best efforts. Silver lining and all that." Liam shifted his stance, his fingers curling as he held his hands at his sides. Alim was too drained to have any patience for his sudden shyness. "I can tell you've something to say. There's no point in being coy—you aren't any good at it."

  Liam stepped closer, his brow drawn as he scanned Alim's face. "If we come back without findings, the board will hold us accountable. Sylvestra and I will be humiliated for it, but you don't even have that much to lose. They will toss you on your ass."

  Alim was surprised that the cold pulse that rippled through his chest was one of disappointment. The demons were no longer unseen theoreticals that provided useful raw materials from time to time; Scout had rescued them even knowing they had helped Jack steal away with its friend's corpse. "You can't honestly think that I would willingly endanger these beings? If the university has a lead to the demons, they'll destroy them for their own cold profit. And what would I get for it? The approval of a bunch of administrators who already don't care what happens to me or my career?"

  Liam took another step closer. "I don't think that. I meant that I admire your principled stance, and Sylvestra's. It reminded me of why I value scholarship to begin with, and why I ever got into academia. To understand and preserve the beautiful things in this world, rather than consume them." He cast his eyes downward, and the open vulnerability paired with his general hulking stature and brusque nature would have been ridiculous if Alim didn't find it so attractive. "I see now that you and Sylvestra both are more scholars than anyone else at Pinnacle. It makes me ashamed to know that I hurt you both in the name of ideological purity."

  His contrition would have been satisfying if he hadn't brought Sylvestra into it. Alim crossed his arms. "I'm not sure what's 'ideologically pure' about plagiarism."

  Liam smirked, a self-deprecating turn of the lips. "My logic as a younger man may not have followed conventional wisdom. I had reasoned that knowledge was meant to be shared, and as such, the knowledge Sylvestra had uncovered regarding the silk sacs was rightfully free for the taking. I did not want to acknowledge that I was also taking her labor, knowing full well that credit for such would come with material reward.

  "I told myself this lie for many years. And I've told myself other, similar ones for other transgressions. Eventually, I was spending more time as an academic constructing justifications for my endeavors than actually studying or researching. For the past few years, when I look in the mirror I
can only see the kind of politicking opportunist that corrupts our university's integrity. Like Sylvestra, I miss the idealistic young scholar I used to be."

  Alim wanted to offer comfort, but he wasn't sure how. He didn't think that he had ever heard such an open, deconstructive self-evaluation come from anyone sober. "Why are you telling me this?"

  Liam lifted his eyes. "Sylvestra's career was not the only one I upended."

  The conversational shift toward Alim brought a weight down upon him like an avalanche. Was Liam trying to apologize? Or simply seeking absolution? Either way, Alim didn't have the reserves to play along. He had almost been murdered that day, and he didn't care to savor his nearly-lost life by dredging up the pain that had haunted him for the past five years—especially not if defending the demons rendered that pain all for naught. Alim shrugged, saying, "Well, I did break the rules, to be fair. You wouldn't have any weapon against me if I hadn't handed it to you."

  "You were hardly the only one embroiled in corruption. I knew of others, higher-ups who would have retaliated if I had tried to expose them. It would be disingenuous to say that I didn't go after you because I knew I could, that I didn't know exposing you would result in my gain. It was never about doing what was right or honest."

  Irritation plucked at Alim. He was not used to his snarky deflections being met head-on as though there was serious sentiment behind them, even when there was. "I'd rather not talk about it, to be honest. You said it yourself—my career is dead when I go back without a lead on any profit, assuming the board doesn't credit us for that cadaver Jack took off with. So perhaps it's time I cut my losses and never dwell on my failed career again."

  "Do you hate me?"

  The question stunned Alim. Not that he didn't wonder himself, but why would Liam ask such a thing? When he was not quick enough in providing an answer, Liam reached forward to brush his thumb along Alim's jaw, and he then understood why. Liam was, indeed, no good at being coy.