mari and silas and fun fun fun

[failure]

can i just write ridiculously terrible "mysteries" where these guys solve crime for the rest of my life.



this will be the book cover. i predict it will sell billions.

---

Mari was as busy as Mari normally was when Silas visited, which is to say, not very. She was sitting up at her desk when he fluttered in, fully dressed and reading some sort of book. The book didn’t look interesting, so he decided to land on top of it. Mari watched with indifference as the pages she was holding began to smoulder, dropping the book and tossing a wine goblet over it. The goblet was, luckily, filled with water and the pages gave off wet smoke. “Hello, Silas. Been a while.”

“You really do not look very much different.”

“Get your nose out of my face.”

“It’s not a nose! It’s a beak!”

“Get your beak – get your beak away from there,” Mari folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, raising her eyebrows and smiling. “Why’re you here?”

“I was sleeping, but then I got hungry.” Silas touched his wing to his head. “And I was hungry and thought – I bet Mari is hungry and not sleeping! Maybe I should go say hello.”

“I never sleep, though. Not any more,” she looked at her hands. “I can’t sleep. No matter how tired I get. It’s a little bit annoying, actually.”

“Maybe if you eat something,” Silas suggested hopefully. If he had still been a dog his tail would have been wagging hard enough to thump a hole through Mari’s floorboards. This was what he wanted after all, Mari to come with him to hunt down a midnight snack.

“Hm,” said Mari, the corner of her mouth twisting wryly. “You think that’ll work?”

“I do! I do!”

“Alright. Let’s give it a shot,” she put her book down and stood up. “Come on, birdy. Let’s find you a steak.”

When he changed from bird to man, Silas’s legs always shook just a little bit, because they felt strange. He had good balance though and the lack of tail did not make him tip over. Mari’s balance was less good though. Whenever she tripped over in the dark, Silas would grasp her elbow and drag her to her feet and she would make snapping noises which reminded him of the little puppies in pack. After one particularly impressive trip which ended with her bouncing down several stairs and landing face first on the floor where the kitchens were, he had to pick her up and set her upright again. “Are you steady?”

“Yeah, I think so.” She was bleeding a bit but when she wiped her hand over the cut it disappeared and only the blood was left. She gave that to Silas, wiping it on his hand so he could lick it off.

“It never tastes as good when you’re a man,” he said thoughtfully.

“Really?” Mari was thinking about something, her eyebrows crinkling together. “I suppose it wouldn’t, no. How strange.”

“Strange?”

“Oh, no. Nothing, nothing. Any more death traps up ahead?”

“Do you mean stairs?”

“Yes. More of them?”

“No, I don’t think—“ There were three sounds that could make Silas go still in the middle of the sentence. The first was a threat. The second was prey. The third was danger. Which was also a threat. Alright. There were two things that could make Silas go still in the middle of a sentence: danger and prey. “Do you hear something?”

Mari raised an eyebrow. “Is that a really bad joke?”

“What?”

“What do you hear?”

“Rustling,” he said thoughtfully. “In the kitchen.”

“Someone probably got there before us. That’s funny, it is rather late. I’d have thought we’d be the only ones up.” Mari rubbed her chest and frowned. “I’m getting all nervous now. You’ve got me worried.”

“I’m sorry,” he looked ahead. “It’s probably a cook.”

“I’m really worried,” Mari mumbled, half to herself. “It feels like Moirine’s sitting on my chest.”

“Who?”

Mari stared at him, eyes wide and lips pursed. “Moving on,” she said when she couldn’t think of a good explanation that wouldn’t break the ‘please do not get into any more trouble’ thing he’d asked of her. “There’s someone in the kitchens. We don’t know who it is. We should find out who it is. That’s more important than whatever it was I said.”

“Yes, I agree!”

They crept closer to the kitchen. There was a torch burning, a figure moving about. Silas growled as best he could with a beak. It would be easier if he was still a dog! But he wasn’t. So he couldn’t smell the stranger to see where they might have come from. He was sure he did not come from the Hour, though.

Beside him, Mari went “oh, I know him.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah but,” she frowned. “Pretty sure he’s from the Citadel.”

The stranger looked up and looked about. They froze, watching. “He can probably hear us,” Mari whispered.

“Yes.”

“We should retreat.”

“Yes,” said Silas.

So they did. They walked back a few paces and looked at each other. “We should question him,” said Mari. “See what the fuck he’s doing here.”

“Or eat him,” said Silas.

“Hm, maybe.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Maybe, I said maybe. Let’s set up an ambush.” She pointed at a little alcove in the wall. “There are two entrances to the kitchen right? He’ll probably come out of this one. In fact I think he’ll definitely come out of this one.”

“Okay,” said Silas, nodding thoughtfully. “We’ll wait here.”

“Right,” said Mari. “Let’s find somewhere to hide. I’m sure we can be quiet until he gets out here.”

--

“You know,” Mari said as they lay on their bellies – rather, she lay on her belly and Silas sat in the wall sconce and pretended to be a torch – in the dark. “I had dreams about you, when I still dreamed. Not about you exactly. But Cwn Annwn. Hell hounds. I would be walking, walking along. And I would hear this horrible, awful howling. So loud it seems to shatter me. So I begin running but I cannot run far enough, fast enough. The howling and the barking sounds further away. But still I feel like perhaps there is something behind me, but I’m too scared to look. I run and I run and the barking grows softer and softer but I still can’t look behind me and all the time I feel as though there is something bearing down on me. It feels like there’s something ripping through my side,” she wriggled and rubbed her ribs, grimacing. “Like an arrow – but hotter, metal maybe. Something painful. And it feels white hot and painful. I can’t run any more. And there is something coming up behind me, but the barking has grown so soft it’s barely a sigh. I feel something like a wet nose shoving itself into my hand and I just feel calm, even though the Cwn Annwn has caught me. What does that mean?”

“You have good taste in dogs,” Silas said and hopped down, fluttering his wings but still landing wrong, falling on his side. He fluttered until he found his feet and rocked from scaly foot to scaly foot as he ran up to her. “To dream of hell hounds.”

“Maybe,” she said. Secretly, Mari preferred sheepdogs. Silas tapped his beak against her nose, amazed that Mari could be taller than him. He hopped further, behind her. “I can’t imagine why a Cwn Annwn would be interested in me, though. Besides you, I mean.”

“Well,” Silas paused as though embarrassed, unsure of how to explain, pressing his beak into her palm the way he would have pressed his muzzle into her hand. “You smell a bit like death.”

“That’s funny. I haven’t killed anyone today. Or, ever,” she added hastily. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Really?”

“Yes really! Why would I lie to you, my friend, best dog, and other compliments?”

“Oh, I did not think it was important,” Silas frowned. “How else would you eat?”

Mari took a moment to consider this. “Carrots?”

“Disgusting!”

“Lettuce.”

“Absolutely disgusting!”

“Leeks, softened in butter and grilled.”

“Sickening!”

“Now you’re just insulting my heritage. Lamb?”

“Delicious!”

“A nice rack of lamb with sauce made from mint and lemon.”

“Ah!” Silas’ mouth was watering, creating steam where his saliva met his flames. “That sounds delicious.”

“I agree,” Mari nodded, pleased with herself. “Er, oi. Where’s The Man?”

“The Man?”

“The one we’re ambushing.”

“Oh!” Silas flapped his hellpigeon wings and fluttered onto the wall sconce. “He’s not here!”

“No, he’s not,” Mari rubbed her chin with a frown. “Where the fuck is he? Did he go a different way?”

“That wouldn’t be nice of him,” Silas frowned, but hopped down the hall, looking for him. “He’s not down here.”

Mari had gone back towards the kitchen. “He’s not in here either.”

“Maybe he went the different way?”

“Maybe,” she rubbed her cheek and winced. The kitchen was now empty, so she ducked inside and found some cooked bacon for Silas. He turned back into a human in order to eat it. Birds were not good at chewing.

Silas felt quite offended by how The Citadel Man had managed to avoid their ambush. Mari looked offended too. But Mari often looked offended. “That was rude of him.”

“It really was,” she said going to the window and leaning out. “Look, there he is. That little man in the garden. He must have heard us talking and gone a different way out.”

“What? Where?” He leaned out over Mari so that he could see better. “Oh, there he is. The one going through Rowan’s garden?”

“Yes, that’s the fellow. How do we get down there?”

Silas looked out into the garden, chewing the bacon Mari had got for him thoughtfully. They were not too far up. If they ran to the proper entrance, he would probably manage to be out of the grounds of the Hour by the time they got into the garden. They were not too far up. There was a pile of straw beneath them. Silas could think of one way they could get down there quickly. His eyes slid to one side to look at Mari. She looked back at him. “Do you have an idea?”

“Yes,” said Silas immediately. He scratched his head, feeling a little bit guilty. “It might be dangerous.”

“Whatever it is, we should do it,” Mari decided. “I can’t think of anything. Your ideas are better than nothing.”

“We should do my idea?”

“Absolutely. Just get it done.”

“Okay.”

Mari was very tall but she was also quite small at the same time (due to not hunting enough in Silas’s opinion). So he just picked her up and threw her out of the window. She landed on straw quite hard, making a great big ‘whump’ noise, like all the air going out of something. Silas went back into a bird and flew down and smiled the best smile a beak could hold to try and make her feel better. Mari coughed up a mixture of spit, mud and straw. She said something, but he only caught the ending of it because of how her mouth had been stuffed up: “—ucker”

After that Mari didn’t get up for a moment. Silas turned back into a man and crouched down, hoping he would not have to pick her up again. After a little while, Mari rolled over to look up at him.

“You have the warm friendly eyes of a shark,” she said.

“Thank you!”

“You have all the smarts of a…a leaf. This leaf. This one, right here.”

“Thank you!”

“You have a real nose for sarcasm.”

“No,” he frowned. “I don’t think my nose would be very good at sarcasm.”

“I think I broke something,” she tried to stand up and fell flat on her back like a deer on new legs. “Nope, no. Just cracked my dignity. Didn’t think I had any of that left.”

“Is that a very important bone?”

“I feel as though I do without it most of the time,” she pushed herself off the ground gingerly, and pulled on his leg to help herself climb back onto her feet. Mari paced up and down the alley, just to make sure her legs weren’t completely fucked. Her gait was similar to a drunken sailor, which was about half right. Uncorking her hipflask, she took a swig to take the edge off of the fall. “Alright, now. This…intruder. This Citadel dog!”

“I don’t think he is a dog.”

“This Citadel beast.”

“Man,” said Silas, helpfully. “He is a man.”

“This Citadel man,” Mari said, giving up on grand insults. “He should be around here somewhere.”

“I’ll sniff him out!” But his nose did not work well as a human. It didn’t work well when he turned into a bird either and he perched on Mari’s shoulder, every inch a dejected hell pigeon. The flames that came off him burned through her dress and made her yelp, but she healed so that was good and after a while she stopped jumping up and down and sticking her fist in her mouth and making muffled ‘auuugh’ noises when his dejected pigeon sighs accidentally set things like her arm on fire. “You are a very good pack member,” he said. “It is important to be able to carry one another.”

He could not see her face but he felt Mari heave a huge sigh. She walked on, into the darkness the gardens held. The Hour loomed over them, the old building casting a shadow so dark they could not even see the moon. “Good girl,” he said, helpfully.

Mari picked him up off her shoulder with both hands and after a while they both smelled burning flesh. She looked into his bird eyes even as her palms blistered and burned. “I’m going to have to resew my dress because of you. You’ve burned through it.”

“There is nothing wrong with being naked. As a dog I am naked all the time! I do not understand why people get upset about it when I am a man. Humans are strange. I’m even naked now!”

Mari dropped him very suddenly, continuing to walk, walk away from him.

Feathers literally and metaphorically ruffled, the hell pigeon pouted after her. He wriggled and jumped up into the air, flapping until he caught up with her.

He flew along at ear level, wanting a shoulder ride. After all, she’d healed the skin there already; he could see her bare shoulder through the hole he’d burned in her dress and it looked fine! But he was a good dog so he did not ask for one. Instead they flew in silence, watching for the man they had seen before, the man from the Citadel. “Mari,” Silas said after a little while. He could not really whisper as a bird. His beak just clacked quieter than usual. “Mari?”

“Yes?”

“How do you know he is from the Citadel?”

“Ooh,” she said. “I saw him there.”

“Yes, that is my question: what were you doing in the Citadel?”

Silas saw the muscles in her back tighten ever so slightly. “I wanted to see what it was,” she told him finally. “Let’s not talk about it.”

“If you say so,” he said but that answer didn’t make much sense to him. He didn’t know why. There was just a niggling in the back of his mind, a little voice telling him that something wasn’t quite right.

Silas flew on ahead and lit the way forward, the brightness of his glow pushing the dark away. Mari followed behind him, mostly wishing she was back in bed and Rhys was there too, or if not him then Moirine, or Marijke, or Janus. Or Janus’s brother. Or Janus and his brother? “Wow that’s a long list.”

“What is?”

“Ah, nothing. Making a list of all the good deeds I want to do when we find this fellow.”

“You can be very nice.”

“Yes, I’m fairly generous.”

“What will you do?”

“Oh, I don’t like talking about my good deeds. It involves bones.”

“For me?” Silas fluttered happily.

Mari patted his head, setting her hand on fire briefly. “It’s a surprise.”

She patted her hand against her side to make it go out and looked ahead. The Citadel Man was somewhere near here. Actually he was very close. He was behind them. He had heard them talking again and sneaked up behind them. They weren’t very good investigators. He jumped out from behind some convenient trees with a knife and a yell and plunged the knife right into Mari’s chest. The result was not as he had expected.

“’Wow Mari,’” said Mari. “’Why did you turn yourself into an Other? Gosh I just can’t understand’ because this keeps happening. People keep trying to kill me Moirine!”

“I’m not Moirine.”

“Sh, boy,” Mari tugged the knife out of her chest and tossed it to one side, pushing her hair off her forehead and turned to face and glare at the Citadel man. “What the fuck, Citadel Man! What the fuck!”

“A werewolf has been feeding on those in the Grounds,” the Citadel Man said, voice reedy and uncertain. “I thought if I poisoned all of you, at least non-lethally…”

“Non-lethally,” Mari’s eyebrows had raised to become part of her hairline.

“The effects would only have lasted a few days,” he continued, looking as though he might fall down and faint at any moment. “It would have proven, once and for all whether or not one of the monsters the Hour keeps is responsible for the deaths in the Grounds.”

Mari scratched her head. “Werewolf in the Grounds? That’s just Cristo.”

“Cristo?”

“M- The little lord,” Mari frowned and threw a look at Silas the bird, resting on her shoulder. When had all of her closest friends become dogs? Tigers weren’t supposed to have dog friends. Dogs and cats didn’t get along! Tigers were fearsome, lone beasts that stalked the night and hunted their prey unrelenting. She was a great big scary tiger! And since her prey was Silence the Assassin and Silas had nothing to do with that particular animal as far as she knew, Mari and Dogs shouldn’t really have any crossover. But here she was, apparently a part of Silas’s pack and friends with another canine. Oblivious to the fact that the closest she got to tiger was either tabby cat or cub, Mari put her hands on her hips and glared. “The ex-Lord Sabreme. You know, the one that went wolf and tried to eat a bunch of people. He’s probably hanging out in the Grounds, eating people.”

“Oh,” said The Citadel Man.

“And I’m calling the guard.”

“Oh,” he said again.

“Yeah,” she said. “Shouldn’t have messed with us. You didn’t know you were going to get the best dog in the Hour sniffing you out, did you?”

The Citadel Man stared at them both, confused. “That’s a bird and you’re a human.”

“No!” Mari pointed at first Silas, then herself. “He’s a dog! He’s a great big, fearsome hellhound. And I’m a tiger! Wait,” oohhh that wasn’t one of the out loud things, was it? She wasn’t supposed to say that in front of people. “No, I’m a human. But he’s definitely a hell hound!”

“Yes I am!” Said Silas.

“I don’t think so,” said The Citadel Man with the condescending kindness usually reserved for small children. “I think that’s a bird.”

“Oooh,” Mari folded her arms angrily. He was too a big hell hound! A big hell hound who’d told her to tell a werewolf he had first dibs on eating her. Maybe he was better as a hell pigeon sometimes. Just not when she needed him to intimidate people. “Just grab him will you Silas?”

“Yes!” Added Silas. Triumphant at having caught the villain, he flew towards him, his wings beating the air and sending flickers of flames out into the night. Close to the face of the Citadel Man he switched back, all the better to hold him and keep him from running away.

The Citadel Man jumped back in fright and simply disappeared. Perhaps, not so simply. The ground beneath him had just crumbled away into nothingness. He fell and they heard a crack as his neck broke on impact. “Oh,” said Mari.

“Ah,” said Silas.

“We should probably tell Magister Jones we found that pit trap he lost.”

“Yes,” said Silas.

Mari looked at Silas. Silas looked at Mari. The dead body didn’t look at anyone.

“Good dog,” said Mari.

“Can I have the leg?”

“Absolutely,” she said and patted him on the head and said: “what a good boy.”

Which Silas liked.