Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  I nodded slowly. “It seems that you were right. Some things are not so different to our world.”

  “Now you’re getting it. Anyway, the river is our best bet. We wanna avoid the la-di-da type of fey and hit up the villages, and most of them are built along the rivers.” He frowned and took one of my nuts. “I just wish we had something to trade.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a lot of things. The regular fey, they’re not opposed to some smuggled Earth luxuries, now and again.”

  “What kind of luxuries?”

  “All kinds. Our biggest sellers, though, the stuff that really got good value . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He shook his head. “You won’t believe me. Nobody does, not until they come with, and see for themselves.”

  “I’ll believe you.”

  “Okay, but I’m not talking nobles here. They’re a different breed. But the regular Joes . . . liked Little Debbies.”

  I blinked at him. “What?”

  He nodded. “Hand to God.”

  “Why?”

  “Think about it. This ain’t the kinda climate that supports sugarcane. Honey is what they use for a sweetener here, and it’s hard to come by. So, anything sweet is a big deal.”

  “But . . . Little Debbies?”

  “The highly spiced ones. Spices are expensive, too. So, sugar and spice together—that’s a luxury item right there. They mostly wanted the pecan cinnamon rolls, honey buns, and those pumpkin spice things you see around Halloween. I used to get the guys to take a van around and load up.”

  I tried to picture that, to wrap my head around the image of a bunch of vampires driving a van full of snack cakes, or standing in line at the supermarket with two or three shopping carts’ worth of them . . . and failed.

  “Did anyone ever ask why?” I said.

  He nodded. “Told ‘em the truth. Gonna trade it to some faeries for fey wine and potion supplies.”

  I laughed. “You did not.”

  “Well, I was drunk at the time. Hadda check the wine when it came in, you know, make sure it was a good batch.”

  I copied one of his favorite gestures and rolled my eyes at him. I also gave him back the remains of the trail mix. I was still hungry, but I might need a quick energy boost later.

  Ray packed it up in the blanket along with our other supplies, and stowed it in back of the raft. Then he carried me down to the waterline. Our new vessel did not look any better close up, but I decided not to mention that.

  However, there were some things that I hadn’t seen from a distance. Ray had made two indentations in the pile of sticks that I assumed were supposed to be seats. They actually worked pretty well, I discovered, after he lifted me onto the one in back. The sticks had been piled up high, giving me some support. They also curved slightly around me, like a half cage, so that I wouldn’t fall out, I supposed.

  He checked it anyway, rocking me back and forth to see if I’d shake loose. Only when he was satisfied did he get in the front “seat,” settling himself and causing the contraption to sag somewhat. That left my legs in water almost up to my knees, and to my surprise, it felt a bit cold. I could actually feel the chill of the current, which was more than I’d been able to do yesterday.

  I felt myself getting excited at the idea that perhaps my legs weren’t completely dead, after all. But I quickly tamped it back down. Dhampirs usually healed quickly, vanishing minor wounds within a day, and major ones within a week or so. But a week was a very long time in Faerie.

  Still, I decided to take it as a good sign. And then Ray reached back and pulled my feet up, tucking them into the briar patch of a raft and out of the stream, and I thought I felt that, too. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

  “What was that for?” I asked.

  “Same as this,” he said, and leaned over the side to pick up what looked like another pile of sticks, which had been floating in the water.

  I’d assumed that it was merely additional driftwood that had not been needed, or perhaps a trash pile that had accumulated against the rocks. It contained leaves as well as sticks, a few clumps of grass, and some fish carcasses, the latter of which I recognized as the remains of our meal from last night. Even the crab shell was there, perched on top like a weather vane on a house.

  And then perched on top of us, when Ray dragged the whole thing over our heads.

  “Ray!”

  “This is how we used to smuggle stuff,” he explained, working to arrange the thing, so that it formed a type of canopy. I could now see that it wasn’t flat bottomed, as I’d thought, but hollow, with the trash carefully woven across an archway of sticks.

  It was dim in here, but I could still see, especially when facing forward. The trash was thinner there, probably so that Ray could see to navigate. But there were also places along the sides where the riverbank was clearly visible.

  “Like I said,” he continued. “Getting around Faerie is dangerous, even when people aren’t chasing you. And when they think you’re smuggling, they usually are.”

  “But you were smuggling snack cakes—”

  “Well, they were more of a sweetener—ha!” he added, seeming pleased with himself over the pun.

  “You are good with humor,” I said truthfully.

  He glanced back at me and grinned. “Thanks. Anyway, food is always appreciated, ‘specially when it’s something you don’t get every day. I’d add a crate or two of honey buns or something to the delivery to get a better price. You’d be surprised how quickly people change their tune when you’re waving their favorite treat under their nose. I always used to suggest we have a sample with our tea, while we negotiated.”

  “Negotiated for what?” I asked, because it didn’t sound like Little Debbies formed the majority of his inventory.

  He shrugged and pushed us off from the bank with a driftwood paddle. “Weapons mostly, like we talked about last night, and wards—”

  “Wards?”

  “Yeah, ‘specially any big enough to hide a barn so that an enemy couldn’t burn it down. Or to camouflage a safe house stuck somewhere out in the woods, where a family could retreat if needed. Wards were a big seller.”

  “But I thought Earth magic didn’t work in Faerie.”

  “Oh, it works,” he said, aiming us toward mid-stream, where the current was swiftest. “Just not for long. Earth talismans can’t gather magic from Faerie—”

  “You could use a fey talisman,” I pointed out, but he shook his head.

  “Yeah, but then the magic it collects will be fey, too, and that only runs fey spells. When the whole point of buying from me, or other human smugglers, was to get something different. Something their enemies wouldn’t know and might overlook. Or that might blow them away because they never seen it before.”

  “I see.”

  “I made out better than most ‘cause my stuff lasted. I got some coven witches to do the spells, and coven magic is basically a cross between human and fey. So, their talismans will work here, only not as well. But a little help is better than none at all.”

  “Yes,” I agreed and looked down, to where some small fish were attempting to nibble at my toes. They were silver bright and shining in the sun dappled water, and followed us for a minute before realizing that they couldn’t quite reach the tempting morsels. They gave up, darting after easier prey, as our speed increased.

  This world was so beautiful, I thought, looking around. Like Earth in many places, but an untouched Earth, with clean water and old growth forests. Yet, just like back home, all anybody seemed to want to do was fight.

  “It is a shame that the fey only wanted weapons,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, you prioritize, don’t you?” Ray asked. “They might like other stuff, but they need things to keep them and their families safe. This place has been deteriorating for a while.”

  The current caught us a moment later and we took off, the few leafy branches on our strange canopy flapping in the breeze above our h
eads. The cover worked surprisingly well structurally, with its weight supported by some of the larger limbs that stuck up from the main body of the raft. It probably worked as camouflage, too. Unless someone looked very closely, we could easily appear to be nothing more than a shaggy patch of trash that had collected and was floating downstream.

  And I didn’t think that anybody was likely to look that close. The river flowed roughly as fast as a person could run, ensuring that we made good time. Even better, it required very little effort on our part. Ray had to occasionally use the paddle he’d made to push our craft off of some stones, or to steer us clear of the shallows. But for the most part, the current did the work.

  After a while, I began to enjoy myself.

  The forests, deadly though they might be, were also beautiful. The high, rocky banks often covered them from view, but at times they would drop to show huge, verdant swaths of trees, mostly still green but some with brilliant yellow or red tops. Some of the closest of these had roots as big around as old oaks back home, which dipped down into the water or scrawled along the bank in wild tangles, while their branches shed early autumn leaves on us, like multicolored rain.

  As we proceeded, the river started to move a little faster, heading downhill and gushing over miniature falls anything from a few inches to a foot or so in height. The bed slanted enough to show long stretches of waterway, with blue gray mountains receding into the distance, while in between the trees I occasionally caught glimpses of windswept grasslands or mysterious caves. There were also some furry creatures that looked somewhat like large squirrels, but had flat, beaver-like tails. They ran through the trees with ease and chittered at us from overhanging branches.

  “Don’t let ‘em get too close. The little bastards bite,” Ray warned.

  “Good thing we have the canopy then.”

  He grinned at me over his shoulder. “It’s an added feature.”

  We traveled a bit more, but while the current was loud in places, especially when gurgling over stones, it was easily quiet enough to talk. So, I did. I had many questions.

  “You said that the villagers were different from the nobles—”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “How are they different?”

  Ray glanced over his shoulder. “Why you want to talk about that?”

  I shrugged. “We fought some fey nobles yesterday. We are being stalked by others. I would like to know more about my enemies.”

  He thought about it. “Okay, but this is gonna sound stupid. Mostly because it is really, really stupid. But maybe it’ll help.”

  I nodded.

  “There are two kinds of fey. Unless you wanna count the dark fey. But they’re a lot more like the villagers, the light fey common folk, than anybody would like to admit. So, basically, you got two kinds of fey: the nobles and everybody else.”

  I nodded again.

  “Normal fey want comfort, ease of living, security. They want to dangle a grandbaby on their knee before they die, maybe leave something to the kids. Have somebody shed a tear when they go.”

  “Like people everywhere,” I said.

  “Yeah. But the nobles . . . they already have all that, or can easily get it. It don’t mean the same.”

  “What do they want?”

  He shrugged. “Adventure, challenge, adrenaline. See, their mythology is really messed up, but it has some stuff in common with the old Greek way of thinking. Maybe that’s even where the Greeks got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “The hero myth. The idea that you’re a hero, or you’re nothing. That the only life worth living is one that gets songs sung about your deeds long after you’re gone, that has kids looking up to you, woman wanting to f—uh, date you, and guys wanting to be you.”

  “What about women heroes?”

  He shot me a look over his shoulder. “I don’t think the Svarestri have women heroes.”

  I frowned.

  “Anyway, it all goes back to their myths,” he continued. “The Greeks thought only heroes ended up in the Elysium Fields after death—their version of Heaven. Everybody else either went to Tartarus, if they were really bad, or the Asphodel Meadows if they were just meh. Neither was a good time. The old Scandinavians thought the same. Heroes went to Valhalla or that other hall, the one Odin’s wife had.” He snapped his fingers a couple of times. “I forget. But, anyway, the ticket to ride was always the same: big deeds. Hero stuff. Kind of good didn’t cut it.”

  “And the fey nobles feel the same?”

  He nodded. “Only more so. They think their future reincarnation depends on their actions now. Be legendary and you come back as a king or a noble. Be courageous and maybe you get to be a warrior. Be basic and you’ll be grubbing in the dirt for eternity, which is why they don’t think much of the common folk. Be a coward and, well, you might not come back at all.”

  “So that is why Aeslinn fights? I heard it was for more . . . present rewards.”

  “Oh, well, it’s different for him. He’s already a king. There’s not much higher he can go. Except the obvious, I guess.”

  “The obvious?”

  “Well, Hercules became a god, didn’t he?”

  “But he was already a demigod.”

  “Well, what do you think Aeslinn is?”

  I blinked. “Really?”

  The dark head nodded. “According to rumor, all three of the leaders of the great princely houses are children that the gods had with fey nobility: Nimue was the daughter of Poseidon, or Neptune or Njǫrd, whatever name you wanna call him. Caedmon was the son of Zeus—or Jupiter or Odin—the original sky god.”

  “Zeus?”

  “Yeah, he’s fighting against his own father, again according to rumor.”

  “And Aeslinn?”

  “Hades.”

  I supposed that made sense, in a way. “So, the three divine brothers of the Greek pantheon are still battling it out, only by proxy.”

  “Yeah, only they didn’t win, did they? Artemis did. The underdog defeated them all, just like we’re gonna do.”

  I smiled.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Dorina, Faerie

  The river became wider after an hour or so, and faster, with the little drop offs not quite so little anymore. But landing anywhere wasn’t possible. The woods grew thick and close to the waterline here, hedging the flow so tightly that it almost looked like the trees were wading out to meet us.

  “I been in spots like this before,” Ray said, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of rushing water. “They usually don’t last long.”

  I nodded, and then continued to do so as we juddered over some rocks, hard enough to make my head bobble. But the occasional glimpses I had ahead, as the river snaked through the trees, was less the smooth green ribbon we had been traversing and more a mass of leaping white water. It was not encouraging.

  And neither was that, I thought, as a bird cried high overhead.

  My eyes turned upward, but for a moment, I couldn’t see anything. I squinted and focused on a black dot silhouetted against the sun. It was so high and so small that it would have been easy to overlook had its call had not sounded like an alarm.

  And had it not been fluttering in my face a moment later.

  It was just outside the cage of branches, its wings moving almost as fast as a hummingbird’s, although it was much larger. But it had the same bright coloring, with a crimson head, a blue-green neck, and an iridescent green body. And a pair of intelligent black eyes.

  Too intelligent.

  Shit, as Dory would say.

  “We’re going to have company,” I told Ray, as the bird’s wings battered against our camouflage.

  “What?” It was another yell, because the white water I’d glimpsed through the trees was almost upon us now, and deafening.

  “Company! We’ve been spotted!”

  The bird soared away, far into the sky, its mission accomplished. Some of the light fey had the ability to see through the eye
s of animals, including birds. They called it farseeing, as it was often used to spy on places that they could not go themselves. Or to cover a large area, as had probably been the case here.

  The fey had not known of the hidden crevasse that Ray and I had used to escape them, or how we had managed to ditch our vehicle and exit the cave. But they had known that we must still be in the area. So, they’d sent their creatures to find us.

  And they’d chosen one with far sharper eyes than they had themselves.

  “We have to get off this river,” I told Ray. “We have to get off it now.”

  “Not good timing!” he yelled back, gesturing at the high banks and thick forest cover beyond them.

  “It is going to be worse in a moment,” I said, and once more, I tried to launch my spirit form.

  There was a chance, I thought, that my recent difficulties lay in attempting to use the combat version of my ability, which had manifested only recently. But there was the other, much less taxing type of projection, the one that was more mental than physical. The same type that the fey had just used.

  I threw my mind outward, trying to find a bird of my own, or any creature whose body I might borrow for a moment. I wanted to see how much time we had, and the direction of the coming attack. It wasn’t much, but it was the only way I could help Ray, who was battling to keep us upright as we approached true whitewater.

  I latched onto one of the beaver-like creatures, intending to send it scurrying for the higher treetops, and give me a view over the forest. But something went wrong—very wrong. I had it for a moment, looking down through its eyes at our paw, and the fat grub we had just fished out of a tree. The insect was squirming, but we were gripping it determinedly, feeling satisfied and anticipatory, all at once.

  But then something happened, and instead of one pair of eyes, I was suddenly looking through dozens, maybe hundreds.

  Furry things were waddling through tunnels or nursing tangles of bright-eyed babies in burrows. Others were chewing through acres of wood, sending fresh smelling chips flying. Still more were running along the high branches of trees, their tails thwap thwap thwapping along the bark behind them, the ground dizzyingly far below as they leapt from limb to distant limb.