~ 7 ~

Like most creatures with magical sight, Yuk could not appreciate the extent of his invisibility. It simply did not work on him. As Toren led him and Lina through the human slums in search of safety, Yuk followed with his eyes in the mud. His two-toed feet – both, now that the other had fully regrown – flattened out V-shaped tracks in the muck, but unlike the magically-blind humans they passed, Yuk could see the glimmer of enchantment swirling across the surface of his transparent form.

Toren, as master, could see through the guise if he looked behind to where Yuk followed like a cowed dog, but none of the other mortals would see anything more than a third, alien pair of tracks appearing within the boy’s squelching footprints.

Yuk glanced up at the wretched population littering the streets of the slum. Few watched the kids go by. The kids, unburdened by the exhaustion of slavery in the elvish mines, moved quickly, alert and wary of danger. Lina carried the basket they’d used to keep Yuk contained, which they had filled with small, loose baubles Yuk didn’t bother identifying. Their curtain, sleeping mat, and stashed food weighed down Toren’s arms.

In another place or time, such duties of burden might have fallen to Yuk and others of his kind. Here, surrounded by fearful humans and their watchful elvish masters, Yuk’s only task was to remain unseen and, by extension, to keep their mother’s pearl necklace safely hidden.

The necklace on his neck nagged at Yuk’s thoughts. Its value to the children poked at him like an itching bug he couldn’t scratch—-or, more accurately, an itching bug he couldn’t tear apart and trample into the mud. Toren’s command to keep it safe and clean removed that possibility.

He was glad to have something of mortal value ready to trade, should he escape Toren’s grip, though. Perhaps it could purchase a minion of his own. The thought of an imp subject made his tail twitch with pleasure.

“What are we doing here?” Lina said.

“Getting help,” Toren answered.

Yuk looked up. A wall of misshapen tents cluttered the road around Dorst’s tower like so many hungry slugs. He quailed at the familiar sight of the ramshackle walls purely from instinct, only to remember that the only threat to him inside had been killed and ditched.

“But… the elves,” Lina whispered.

“You ever wonder why Dorst doesn’t have to go to the mines with all the other losers here?”

Lina shook her head, but Yuk knew what Toren would say before he said it.

“The elves aren’t blind to Dorst’s pathetic little empire here. They want him in power.”

“But why?” Lina asked as they circumnavigated the cluster of tents.

“The same reason a shepherd’s dog gets to sleep indoors. He keeps the sheep in line so the elves don’t have to. The elves let him keep whatever power he can scrape together because they know he’s loyal to them. Someone else might try to use their power against the elves – to rebel and cost them valuable slaves – but not Dorst.

“He’s still just a dog on a leash. Fortunately for us, dogs are predictable.”

~

The guards outside had been replaced, Yuk noticed. The new ones had clearly been informed of the context regarding their new jobs, and looked as if they were expecting violence at any moment. One, a square-faced woman with shoulders to match, stared straight ahead in her best impression of a statue. The other, a male, had eyes jumpier than embers in a hay stack. His attention snapped toward anyone who so much as spit.

Yuk wondered if this job was some sort of reward for their hard work in the slave mines. The woman would not have such loyalty if she were freshly captured, and the slums didn’t afford many resources for bulking up to a warrior’s build.

Toren said something to the guards, and the male sentinel led them to a waiting room on the second floor. It was as uninteresting now as it was then; the guard pointed Lina and Toren to two rickety, three-legged stools situated in front of an unadorned desk that, by the slum’s standards, might be considered luxurious. Half-length curtains covered the only window in the room. Cooking implements crowded a wall opposite the slum’s stockpiled food, no doubt doled out by Dorst himself.

An unfurled length of parchment affixed to the wall behind the desk reminded the waiting children of Dorst’s elvish sponsors.

“Wait,” the guard ordered. He positioned himself in front of the door and adopted a wide-legged stance with his arms behind his back. His eyes looked down his nose at the children, roving endlessly.

Wait they did. Lina fidgeted. Toren practiced his stoicism. Yuk stayed stone still, lest a shadow shifted peculiarly and revealed him to the guard. His talons were not particularly well-suited for sneaking across the hardwood floor in the silence of the dingy room, either.

Serving human masters, it seemed, involved a lot of waiting.

The ceiling creaked overhead, followed by heavy footsteps descending the stairs. The guard stepped crisply to the side to admit the kingpin, then blocked the door once more. He had not bathed since last Yuk had crossed paths with him, judging from the miasma emanating from him.

“Children!” Dorst boomed, easing himself into the chair opposite them. “Shouldn’t you be in crèche?”

Lina flinched, though whether from the implied threat or from the volume of his voice, Yuk was not sure. She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it. Toren had forbade her from speaking unless spoken to, and good, obedient Lina no doubt wondered whether this was one of the exceptions.

“We know who stole from you,” Toren said. “Sir.”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Dorst’s eyebrow popped up. “Well, that’s more than my last hirelings could manage. Come on, now – out with it.”

Toren reached into a pocket and pulled out a silver necklace inlaid with emerald. Yuk recognized it from his earlier pilfering of Dorst’s rooms, but barely; it was just one among a dozen such items.

“A street rat was selling this, sir, down by market after curfew,” the boy lied. “Said he’d ‘found’ a whole stash of others like it.”

Dorst hummed and leaned forward to inspect the piece in Toren’s fingers. “And you bought the thing from him so you could bring it to me for—what? I’m not buying my own jewels back, boy.”

He snapped his fingers a couple times and pointed at the necklace. The guard stepped up to Toren, snatched the jewelry, and deposited it in Dorst’s waiting fist before retreating to his station at the door.

“No. I took it from him. Sir.”

Lina kept her gaze pointed at her grubby knees. For her part, though, she nodded subtly. Just enough, Yuk thought, to appear as though she were remembering the events as Toren relayed them. Clever little minion.

“So you expect some reward? Some elf-sweets, perhaps? A nicer tent outside for mommy and daddy?”

“No, sir. A favor.”

Dorst turned the emerald necklace over in his hands. The silver chain skittered and bounced on the scarred wooden tabletop. He did not raise his eyes to the boy as he spoke. “What’s that, then?”

“I want your help to kill the man I took your necklace from.”

Dorst shifted his attention from the neckpiece to Toren, as did Yuk. Lina kept her head lowered to avoid looking at Dorst and play the demure youngling, but from his low vantage point, Yuk saw the flash of surprise on her features. She hadn’t known, either.

“Now, what begets this sort of violence over some jewels, children? And on my behalf, no less.”

Toren took a breath, then launched into the story he’d fabricated. Yuk had to hand it to him, he was a natural. “It’s a little more complicated than that, sir. After our mom died, protecting my sister fell to me. People like that jewel-thief—he’s a rogue, you see. It’s not just that he was brazen enough to steal from you. Sir.

“It’s that he means to get at the elves, too. He said so. He didn’t have a plan, it was obvious, and maybe he was just being a braggart, but if he keeps it up, word will get out. And that endangers all of us.”

Dorst leaned back in his chair and dropped the necklace into a pocket in his vest. “What makes you think the elves care about some urchin bragging?”

Toren leaned down from his stool toward the bundle of belongings at his feet. Yuk heard the guard shift, but the quasit was too interested in what Toren might pull from the stained fabric to care.

The boy pulled something limp, midnight blue thing from the bundle and tossed it onto the desk with a weighty thud. A furry tentacle slid over the table’s edge. “Because he’s already destroyed something of theirs.”

Yuk grinned. The children couldn’t possibly comprehend the surprise on Dorst’s face over reuniting with his imp-catcher. Toren had no idea the cat had belonged to Torsten, only that he needed to remove himself from culpability somehow.

A stroke of accidental genius. Except for one little problem.

“Where did you find this?” Dorst bellowed. “What happened?”

Toren obviously hadn’t been expecting the kingpin’s concern over the dead cat. “When I, um—when I took the necklace, I, uh… Well, the creature, sir, it saw us fighting and tried to intervene, I guess. The thief stabbed it and ran off,” he stammered. “The elves, sir, it’s one of theirs, you know. He left me just standing there with it. They’ll think I was responsible, and take me from my sister. But if you help me—”

“You’re lying,” Dorst said.

“—I could—what? No, I—”

Dorst stood up, knocking the chair back. “I thought those useless clods I’d fired were making excuses to cover for their incompetency. You know what they said to me when I woke up and found myself robbed?”

“I—”

“Demons, they told me! Demons had gone through my room and absconded out the window with all of my jewels! I had them sacked for lying so flagrantly, but now it seems the truth has come knocking on my own doorstep!”

Lina looked up at last, confusion stamped too believably over her face to be part of the act. She caught Dorst’s eye, and he signaled his guard. The man reached her in two quick strides and pinned her arms at the wrist with one broad hand. A hand clapped over her mouth before she could so much as scream.

“What is it you think imp-catchers are for, boy? For keeping us lowly humans in line? Just little watch-dogs? Ha! These beasts are good for one thing—sniffing out magic. The only thing my imp-catcher would have bothered you for is if it had caught you practicing sorceries.”

“Sorceries like summoning an accomplice to steal for you.”

“No, sir, wait—” Toren said, and for the first time Yuk saw fear in his eyes.

“What did you use, hmm? A homunculus? What? A—a—a spirit familiar? Some sort of fae? Something invisible, obviously. What, then?”

The guard pulled Lina off her stool and toward the stairwell. In the commotion, Yuk slipped away to the edge of the room.

“Where are you taking her?” Toren demanded. The resolve in his voice was gone, and he seemed now of an age like his little sister.

“You killed my cat. You killed it to protect yourself and whatever trick you pulled with your illegal magic. What was your plan? Get me on your side against this imaginary thief so you could use my resources to flee the slum? Risk a journey through the forest?”

“Please! Don’t hurt her!”

The other guard—the woman—arrived at the doorway, too large to fit inside the doorframe without squeezing but plenty big enough to block it.

“Oh, your sister will be fine,” Dorst said. “It’s you I’d be more worried about. You’ve heard what the elves do to lesser races that transgress their laws for magic, haven’t you? Oh, they’ll reward me a pretty piece, no doubt! I hear the younger mages are particularly useful, if we could even call you that much.”

Yuk blinked his eye-films in surprise. Dorst was going to hand Toren over to the elves. Elves who hated demons and anything aligned with them. Elves who would destroy Yuk—not just banish him back to the Abyss, but truly kill him.

Permanently.

The quasit made to dash past the guard and out of the room, but even as he lunged for the gap between her calves, he felt a sudden snap in his bond’s tension like a rope pulled taut.

“The demon is still yoked to me!” Toren cried out, fists clenched. “If you don’t let us go, I’ll call upon it to destroy you!”

Dorst had moved to leave the room, but Toren’s threat gave him pause. “You… a demon? You brought a demon here? You fool… you idiot! Fe Sun, take him. I must contact Elisenir immediately.”

Demon, stop him! came Toren’s command.

Yuk leapt forward. He screeched, claws splayed and teeth gnashing, before Dorst had taken two steps toward the door.

Dorst staggered in surprise, facing Yuk but unable to see him. The skin on the man’s hairy chest tore open in narrow gashes, widening as Yuk rent at the soft flesh again and again.

Dorst swatted a broad hand at his unseen assailant, but this time Yuk avoided the strike. Skin and cloth alike ripped as the quasit clambered around to the man’s back. Dorst flung his hands at Yuk, trying to reach, as Yuk reached for the man’s neck.

“Get it! Get it!” wailed Dorst.

The big woman—Fe Sun—was on them in an instant, but the poison in Yuk’s claws had already seeped into Dorst’s wounds. Shrieking in agony, he stumbled away from Fe Sun and toward a nearby wall, turning so he could crush Yuk against the wood.

Yuk dropped just as the man threw himself against the flimsy panels, causing the whole room to shudder before he fell to his knees, gasping and groping at his bleeding chest.

Well, Yuk thought, I stopped him.

Fe Sun cast her eyes about, looking for the invisible demon. Yuk froze a second too late. He cast a glance toward Toren, who had seen the depressions of Yuk’s passing in the carpet at the same moment Fe Sun did.

“Find her,” Toren pleaded to the demon. "Give her the necklace."

“Got you,” Fe Sun growled.

Yuk pivoted aside just as Fe Sun’s booted foot kicked at the spot he had been standing. He shifted to bulltoad, catapulted himself into the air, then transformed again to take wing and fly out the door.

“It’s leaving!” Dorst whimpered, stumbling toward the doorway on hands and knees. “Forget the monster, grab the boy!”

Yuk’s sensitive ears caught Dorst’s growled threat even as the quasit burst from an open window and into the stagnant air of the Dregs.

“You’re about to meet the real demons now, boy.”