Page 17 of A Serpent in the Garden

“There’s more than one way to fight the wicked,” he said as he rinsed the blood from his hands, wearing the sort of smile that would send the girls in Monde’s End swooning.

At the back of my mind, It ruffled leathery wings, sighing long and loud. I wanted to smile, but I hid my face in a rag instead, patting myself dry.

Is this what you find attractive? It said, as though vaguely disappointed in me. This sanctimonious clot?

He’s sweet. I paused, considering. He’s objectively good looking. I’m not saying I’d like to marry him. He was attractive, that was all. I’d be blind not to notice.

Maybe he’ll read to you from the Good Book later. Really get you wet.

I felt a screamingly scarlet flush stain every white inch of my skin. If you had a face, I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, I would slap it.

Its only answer was a laugh.

A snatch of birdsong rode overhead on a wisp of white fog. The sound was cold, funereal, and sent a few fingers of my own mortality drifting up my spine. If the birds were waking, dusk would find us quickly. I glanced around the wood. Stirring animals would be on their way to their water source soon enough.

I cast another nervous glance up at the boiled gray sky. “We shouldn’t linger much longer.”

“We should rinse these first.” Serich flicked a hand at the lumps of soiled clothing.

I wouldn’t, It said. Keep the blood. They say it has healing properties. You might need it at some point if you insist on seeing this through.

For all Its rude comments, I was glad of its return. With Its guidance we moved swiftly, though it led us in circles for a while.

I haven’t gone looking for it since I was a child, It said irritably when it sensed a question rising. For all I know it’s caved in and you’ll have to build a nest up in a tree.

That It had ever been a child was difficult to reconcile. I’d always sort of figured it had burst into life fully-grown, irascible and impertinent. But It knew of a small cave that would be our best chance of shelter for the night. I didn’t give voice to my growing fear of the steadily darkening air, the chirps of awakening birds, but I had never been able to hide much of anything from It.

Not much further, now. Its voice may have been frighteningly inhuman but I felt a comforting sort of chill in my blood all the same.

The terrain grew wilder, knotted with vines that snarled over our boots and rattled like bones when we shook them off. We trudged through mud, brush, nettles, and thorns over a shaggy rug of dead leaves. Shadows, contorted and flickering, chased after us. Branches snapped, brambles clawed as we shrugged through the overgrowth. White lichen colonized this little-trod section of the wood, and tree bark pressed in around us from all sides, silvery and sloughed off, like shedding snakeskin.

And there it was when the entangled wood spat us out into a tiny clearing, a dark hole hewn into black rock, the opening draped in a veil of greenery. Judging the depth proved impossible. Whether it was currently occupied was another matter entirely.

Serich must have been thinking the same. “Will it be empty?” He slung his satchel to the ground, squinting down the cave’s black throat.

I felt It shrug. Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll have to check.

“I’ll do it.” Serich took his falchion in hand after I related the news. “Stay here.”

You’re better with a blade than he is, It said as I watched Serich disappear inside. Yet he’s so quick to dismiss you.

I’m not that great in close quarters. I can throw them all day but I’ve not had much practice fighting intimately.

Is it petty of me to hope he’s wandered into a nest of murderous rabbits?

Yes.

I resign myself to pettiness.

I loosened a blade from my belt in case I had to run in there after Serich, but his assessment was a quick one. “It’s very, very small,” he said, ducking out from the hole. “We’ll be cramped.”

“I’d rather be sore and uncomfortable in the morning than dead.”

Serich started off back the way we’d come, calling over his shoulder, “I’d feel better with a bit more cover at the opening. I’ll grab some of those boulders from around the corner.”

I gazed around at the clearing, revolving on the spot. The ground beneath my feet was a soggy mulch of dead leaves and twigs, the rock our cave was hewn from glimmering wetly even as the light died. You came here a lot as a child?

Sometimes. To hide from one of my brothers.