Savage Saints (Monsters of Saint Mark's)

I skim through the contents, trying to figure out how things are organized in the world of magic bags, and discover that it is more about the contents, and the magic required to contain them, than the bag itself.

I flip through, looking for anything about rings, but pause about a third of the way through when I get to the one about breath.

“Huh,” I say out loud. “I didn’t realize magic breath was a thing.”

It’s my thing, obviously. But I have always been under the impression that I was unique. I’ve used it on occasion over the centuries. But to be honest, I never thought that magic was very reliable. Who knew that the container mattered?

This makes me think about the little amulet Pie made to protect her from Sheriff Roth and how I breathed into it. I page through, looking for leather in this section on breath, and realize that you can’t capture magic breaths inside a leather pouch.

No wonder it didn’t work. You have to contain it inside glass tubes or jars with corks and wax or attach it to letters stamped into metals like silver, or pewter, or gold.

Which is kind of obvious, now that I think about it. Leather pouches aren’t airtight.

“Never mind this shit, Pell. Stay focused,” I chastise myself.

Right. I’m looking for rings.

I page through again, skimming the pictures, get momentarily distracted by the section on moths, but force myself to keep going. Rings are the very last chapter and it comes with a poem.

Rings and bags are hard to tame

They must be sealed with dragon’s flame

Blackened iron, ammolite

Nuts and bolts and smote and smite.

Fuck, I hate poem spells. They’re the worst. If someone takes the time to hide a recipe inside a poem, it’s a sure sign that shit is about to go sideways. I mean, what the fuck? Sealed with dragon’s flame? Which is wonderful, by the way. Since my personal dragon has suddenly turned into a human chimera. And what the hell do you do with the iron and ammolite? Smite and smote it with nuts and bolts?

How is iron, and stone, and nuts, and bolts a bag?

I fucking hate cryptic people.

But. As annoying as this little poem is, I did get a partial answer.

The velvet bag isn’t enough to keep the rings hidden.

Apparently, I need to make something of iron—which I have plenty of around here. You can’t take two steps in this place without running into some iron. But ammolite? I scan the room, squinting my eyes to see into jars. There might be some ammolite in here somewhere. I don’t know much about it, but I do know this. It’s not easy to get. Even though it’s flashy and colorful it’s not actually a crystal. It’s a fossil.

Nuts and bolts I can do, and smite, in this context, probably means to pound.

I read the poem again and again, letting my mind wander with ideas. I guess I could make a bag of chainmail. And even though I actually do know how to do that, picturing the amount of work involved kinda pisses me off. I will have to cut wood. Lots of it. And go looking for the forge and other blacksmithing tools, which I have not even seen in several hundred years.

Stupid bag of rings.

Then I get an idea. This can’t be the only way to deal with magic rings. There must be something else. That’s when I see the footnote at the bottom of the page. Ring lore is ancient magic and is presided over by the god, Portunus.

Portunus. Portunus. Why don’t I recall a god named Portunus?

“OK.” I get up with a sigh and walk back over to the shelves. There are dozens of books about ancient Roman gods in here, that I know for sure. I scan the shelves, find one with a gold-leaf spine, and pull it down.

I go back to my couch and flip through to the P’s until I find Portunus.

“Ah, yeah.” I remember him. He was an asshole. There’s a full-page illustration, but… no. That’s not a great likeness. He had dark hair, I know that for sure. And a crooked eye he often covered with a patch. In fact, he was downright ugly.

Reluctantly, I have to accept the idea that I might need Portunus to take care of my little ring problem. Which means I will require a trip to the upstairs hallways.

I could go now, but I imagine Pie might like to come along. So I’ll just keep the bag of rings on my person. Which means I will require pants.