Ten for Dying

Chapter Thirty-three

Everyone knows that demons breath darkness, which is why they need to keep to the shadows during the day, and why if one ventures into a demon’s lair it is best to do so during the daytime.

This common knowledge was the reason Dedi didn’t wait for night before invading Antonina’s mansion. He felt safer relieving its guard of his key and strolling through the back gate in the middle of the afternoon.

The guard was slumped on his stool making wheezing, grunting noises, dead to the world thanks to the potion the Egyptian magician had easily dropped into the inattentive fellow’s wine jug, the same potion he’d used to drug the doorkeeper of the mausoleum. Magicians were well practiced at sleight of hand.

As soon as Dedi was inside he slipped through the shrubbery around the exposed, sun-drenched courtyard. From outside, the trees visible above the high walls had made it obvious most of the grounds behind the mansion consisted of gardens. He peered out at the courtyard. Short as he was, there was no need for him to crouch to keep his head below the carefully trimmed greenery. A servant emerged to empty a bucket of water.

Dedi loped away, keeping to the shelter of ornamental bushes, flower beds, arbors, and clusters of tall, frond-like grasses. Scattered vegetation cast light shade here and there, but insufficient for a demon to breath properly. He was not surprised to see Antonina’s garden featured a large collection of satyrs in all shapes and sizes, in granite, marble, bronze, copper, and porphyry, every material imaginable except flesh and fur. Or so he hoped.

What resembled a miniature Greek temple jutted from the back of the house. The roses blooming nearby did not quite conceal the smells of herbs, incense, and smoke emanating from the peculiar structure. There were other odors, strange and pungent, evidence of substances that Dedi knew should never be coaxed into existence. This no doubt was Antonina’s workshop, where she brewed the nostrums she gave to her wealthy friends-and also practiced her magick.

Dedi’s fish-like mouth puckered in disapproval. Why did the rich insist on dabbling at what others needed to do to earn a living?

Not far away, he located the servants’ entrance to the main house.

This was the place he needed to access, the servants’ quarters, where the demon disguised as Tychon lurked.

He pulled a small clay pot from his robe, unstopped it, and shook some of its contents, a fine gray dust, in the doorway. Then he knelt and traced an intricate pattern in the dust with his forefinger while reciting an incantation.

Dedi had concocted the magickal substance by burning Tychon’s woven belt, stolen at the baths, and combining the ashes with several ingredients. The ingredients, it was true, could be purchased at any number of shops along the Mese, but one needed to know the precise amounts and combinations and the guttural words of the incantation had never before been heard in Constantinople.

At least by human ears.

When he was finished Dedi stood and scuffed at the pattern, obliterating merely its physical presence, then moved silently into the house. There was no sign of anyone, so he continued to cast spells in each doorway he came to until his pot was empty.

Laughter shrilled from around a corner of the corridor.

Dedi tucked the pot back into his garment and skittered off, unheard and unseen.

Now he only needed to wait. As soon as Tychon passed through one of the doorways, the spell would encircle him as surely as the belt had encircled his waist and the demon would be in thrall to the diminutive Egyptian.

Dedi found a well-concealed spot beneath a huge clump of rose bushes, lay down on the soft earth, and dozed.