“They’re supposed to be eight-foot-tall killing machines. Do you really think chickens would work?”
“I don’t know that it’s been tried.”
Caliban contemplated this for a few moments. “This all assumes we can make it to the city at all, now that there’s a war in the way.”
“That it does.”
“Canwe make it?”
She grinned, looking almost like Brenner for a moment. “Do you believe in miracles, paladin?”
He grunted.
They ate in silence for a while. Caliban had another glass of wine, and poured her another one too. She frowned at it.
“So how does one get to be a guerilla accountant, anyway? What’s your family like?”
Slate stopped frowning at the wine, and frowned at him instead. Caliban almost smiled. Despite a full day, and seeing several other women, the mobility of her face still intrigued him.
Slate took a swallow of wine, as if to fortify herself. “Not much to tell. My mother was a very high-class courtesan who counted her fertile days by the moon. Her beauty was impeccable, her math skills were not.” She swept a hand at herself. “And here I am.”
“And you became an accountant.”
“She could afford very good tutors. Since my beauty wasnotimpeccable, I made sure my math skills were above reproach.” She took another slug of wine.
There was an old hurt there, Caliban could tell. It wasn’t hard to decipher. He wondered if she thought she was hiding it.
“The rest is the usual story,” said Slate. “Got married when I was too young to know better. It lasted about six months, and then he went off with a blond from the Weaver’s Quarter and I went off to Anuket City. And came back eventually, of course.”
“What an idiot,” said Caliban, because that was what you said to this sort of thing. “You’re well rid of him.” Privately he wondered about the wedding-ring scar on her hand. Had she tried to burn the ring off? Slate did not strike him as the sort for impractical romantic gestures, but one never really knew.
“It made things easier,” she admitted. “So. That’s me, anyway.” Slate set the wineglass down. “So what’s it like to slay demons?”
He grunted. “Messy. Someone comes into the temple with a report, and you ride out to find it. If it’s in an animal, you kill it. Usually it’s an animal. If it’s in a person, though, you try to convince them to go back to the temple. Usually they’re fighting it, and they’re happy to go along. Sometimes you have to kill them.”
“How do you know if they’re possessed, and not just…?” She trailed off and waved a hand to indicate any number of options.
It was a fair question. Caliban stared into his wine. “Most of the time, demons are pretty stupid—they start babbling in no earthly language, or levitating or something. The smart ones are a lot harder, some of them speak the language very well, have experience puppeting a body around, but they’re rare, and you get a feeling—they usually have a kind of accent, and they don’t move right. But it can be hard. You learn to do it after a few years, but the old ones, the smart ones can still catch you out. And if the human host works with them willingly, which does happen sometimes…well, they’re nearly impossible to spot until they make a mistake.”
“Not a lot of sword work, then?”
“Enough of it. If they realize what’s happening and don’t come quietly—or if they get a big animal, like a bull or a boar—well, it gets ugly.”
That was putting it mildly. The last bad demon he’d dealt with had taken a draft horse, and had killed two men before they’d sent him out after it. Running around a field with a solid ton of demon in hot pursuit, panting out the ritual of exorcism and trying to cut the thing’s legs out from under it one by one…no, “ugly” didn’t quite cover it.
“How can you tell if there’s one in an animal, if it’s a matter of accent?”
“They’re generally not good at hiding it. You ever hear a cow speak in tongues?”
She giggled. He hadn’t actually been joking, but he’d take the giggle. It was much better than having her frown all the time.
She sobered. “So that voice yesterday, in the Captain’s office—”
“Ah. Yes.” Now it was his turn to fortify himself with wine. “It talks sometimes. The demon’s dead—genuinely dead, the temple certified it—but the body’s still in there. If that makes any sense.”
Slate frowned. “Anactualbody?”
“More of a metaphorical one, although it’s quite real nonetheless. It’s hard to explain. It’s definitely not alive, it’s…ah… decaying, after a fashion, I think. But magic shakes it up, makes the flies come buzzing out, and then I start…err…muttering a bit.” He took another swallow of wine. “It doesn’t happen that oft en.”
