Liar's Island: A Novel Read Free Page A

neatly as the djinni had made his sword vanish. “We will consider the thakur’s kind invitation. Do convey my thanks.”
    The djinni turned to smoke and vapor, and Rodrick was briefly buffeted by a strong wind as the creature disappeared into or merged with or rode away on currents of air.
    â€œThat was unusual,” Rodrick said once the wind had died down. “Even by our standards.”
    Hrym briefly pulsed with red light and giggled, the sound of a demented child who was also probably possessed, and Rodrick winced. A skylight overhead cracked, but fortunately didn’t fall in. He aimed the blade away from him, toward a dusty corner of the warehouse, and a few icicles shot forth from the sword, smashing into a shelf and knocking it over with a clatter.
    The sword had spent some time the previous year in close proximity to an imprisoned demon lord, and Hrym had the ability to soak up sufficiently powerful ambient magic. He’d picked up some kind of demonic taint, which so far hadn’t proven too deleterious—he didn’t seem compelled to slaughter innocents for the sheer joy of spreading chaos, at any rate—but he had these little … episodes. Fits , Rodrick might have called them, if Hrym had been human. More and more, though, Hrym giggled horribly, and pulsed with red light, and when that happened, chaos and disorder seemed to spread. Vases broke, chandeliers fell from the ceiling, food rotted, wine turned to vinegar. And those were just the atmospheric effects. Lately the giggles had been followed by outbursts of icy magic, like lethal spasms.
    One such demonic fit had ruined their attempt to break into the little lord’s vault the night before. It was such a good plan, too—look tough, get hired to do security at the ball, slip away to the basement, freeze the guards watching the vault, turn the locks to ice, smash them open, steal the wonderful relics within, get on a ship before the little lord even noticed the theft, sell the loot to a not-terribly scrupulous fence named Skiver in Almas, enjoy ill-gotten riches, etc.
    But Hrym had one of his fits just as Rodrick was creeping toward the vault, his titter and the attendant crack of a roof beam breaking neatly in two overhead alerting the guards to their presence in time to yank a cord that set an alarm bell to ringing somewhere up above. Worse, Hrym had fired off spears of ice, seemingly as involuntarily as Rodrick loosing a sneeze, blowing holes in the wall and ceiling above and calling even more attention. They’d escaped and tried to make their way to the ship bound for Almas anyway, but the little lord’s men were there, and they’d pursued Rodrick and Hrym relentlessly through streets until they ended up here in the Coins.
    The worst part—all right, one of the many bad parts—was that Hrym wasn’t even aware of his condition. He had no memory of his giggles, or the chaos, or the ill-timed bursts of ice magic. As far as Hrym was concerned, the guards had just noticed them when they were sneaking up on the vault—it was pure bad luck.
    Rodrick hadn’t yet figured out how to tell Hrym he was demon-tainted. After all, who among us doesn’t have some little quirk or another? But the fits were becoming more frequent, and violent, and Rodrick was considering the appalling prospect of finding a priest and asking for help.
    â€œDid you hear something?” Hrym said.
    Just your terrible giggle and aura of destruction. “A shelf fell down, or something. Everything’s busted-up and broken in here. No surprise really.”
    â€œHmm,” Hrym said. “So. Do we get on the ship and travel to a faraway land?”
    â€œThere are pluses and minuses.” He put Hrym in the sheath at his belt, ignoring the sword’s protest—walking around the Coins with a naked blade, especially that blade, would draw too much of the wrong kind of attention. “Pluses include