Grave War

by Price, Kalayna

  They clearly realized those facts.

  “And how are we supposed to do that, little Sleagh Maith?” one of the fae sneered. I wasn’t even sure which one at this point.

  I considered the fae around me. Typically when I saw fae in the mortal realm, they wore their glamour, but very few of these faces were glamoured. I didn’t think it was because they were trying to be intimidating, but simply that these fae rarely glamoured themselves. The court fae working in the FIB office kept their glamour up as insulation against the tech and iron in the mortal realm. Independent fae like Caleb kept their glamour up because they lived and worked among humans. But the independents around me were likely not fae who lived in suburban neighborhoods and worked in Nekros. These were fae from the wilds, the untamed areas of the world where myths and legends roamed. These were the fae of fairy tales who led travelers astray when they journeyed too far off the beaten path or lent magical assistance for prices often hard to pay. These were the wolves who talked to little girls in the woods, and the women who could be heard singing from the depths of still waters. These were the helpers that toiled in the night, unseen, and the mischief-makers who played pranks on the unwary. They didn’t have cars to jump in and drive to a new court. They weren’t likely to board a plane and fly to some other winter territory.

  “I . . . I will work on an evacuation plan for the fae,” I said, because wasn’t that my job? These were the people I’d taken this job to help.

  “And who are you, Sleagh Maith, to help us?” This question from a woman with skin the texture of bark and naked twigs for hair, her foliage having fallen for winter. The way she said “Sleagh Maith” was practically a slur. Considering it was nearly synonymous with court fae, and not only that, but nobility among the court fae, I knew why she didn’t think I’d help the wild independents. But she didn’t know me.

  I opened my mouth to say that I was the agent in charge, but I’d shown up here not knowing my agents had closed the damn FIB building. How in charge was I? Didn’t seem like very in charge at all. And how the hell was I going to evacuate this many fae?

  “Everyone out of my way!” a booming and accented voice said from the other side of the crowd. An accented voice I recognized.

  Tem, unglamoured, pushed his way through the crowd. Even in this group, he was taller and wider than most of the gathered fae. Some grumbled, but everyone moved aside as he moved through.

  “You all right there, Craft?” he asked as he reached my side.

  I gave a small nod and followed him out, Roy on my heels. No one grabbed at me this time or got in my face, though several called out questions at our backs. A few of the fae looked ready to stop us, to demand more information. I had to force myself not to hold my breath—passing out while walking out of this throng would be bad—because if just one of the fae decided to make a scene, more would join in and there were a lot more of them. Tem was a big guy, and trolls had fearsome reputations, but he was still only one troll. I breathed a little easier once we broke free from the thickest part of the crowd, though I still felt gazes on us as Tem led me around the side of the building.

  “Now would be a good time to be unseen,” he whispered.

  “Uh . . .” Crap. He meant he wanted me to glamour myself invisible, which should have been easy enough for pretty much any fae. Except me. I couldn’t use glamour to save my life. “I can’t do that.”

  Tem frowned at me, his wide mouth pulling downward around his tusks. Then his gaze flickered over my head, back the way we’d come. I knew what he was looking at; I could hear the movement of fae following us. Tem grabbed my hand—which actually meant his fingers wrapped around my hand and a portion of my wrist and arm as well. And then I felt his magic slide over me.

  It wasn’t a bad sensation, just weird. I hated the feeling of other people’s magic on my skin, and glamour was a heavy magic. It crawled up my arm, attempting to cover me in the invisibility he desired. I tried to ignore it, to pretend I didn’t even notice it, but my magic and glamour didn’t mix.

  The glamour had barely reached my shoulder when I felt the magic splinter, sloughing back off my skin.

  “What the fuck, boss? My glamour just broke,” Tem muttered, his jaw falling slack as he stared at me.

  Yeah. That had been happening recently.

  “Let’s just get inside.” I wasn’t even sure where the back door was. If it was also glamoured, we might be in trouble.

  Tem didn’t argue or hesitate, but led me around the back of the building. The door was thankfully not hidden behind a glamour, simply out of the way. Tem unlocked it quickly and ushered me inside, flipping the bolt as soon as it shut behind us.

  The sound of the fae outside cut off as soon as the door was closed, the dark room I’d been escorted to feeling too still and silent compared to all the frightened excitement. They’d asked who I was to help them. It was a good question. I’d ducked behind a troll bodyguard instead of even answering. Dugan was wrong. I was most definitely a coward.

  Chapter 16

  Tem led me through the silent FIB building. Far too silent. The bulk of the squad had slept here last night; the place should have been bustling. Instead it was still and quiet, the air having that undisturbed quality of an empty building.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked as Tem headed for the hallway to my office.

  “Gone.”

  “Gone?” I sounded incredulous, even to my own ears.

  “Loaded up and took off just after dawn,” Tem said, pausing as we rounded a corner. Someone had left a cart full of files pushed up against the wall. It wouldn’t be a problem for most people, but Tem barely fit in the hallway as it was. He seemed to consider the cart for a moment, and then his glamour slid into place, changing him from hulking to simply a hugely big guy. He still had to turn sideways to step around the cart. “Nori and I are the only ones left.”

  I stopped. “You’re the only two left out of the entire agency?” There had been nearly thirty agents here when I left. “Where did they go?”

  “South. To winter territory,” Nori said, stepping out of a doorway up ahead.

  “Obviously. But they shouldn’t have just taken off.” I mean, I knew we needed to move all the nonessential fae to somewhere Faerie would actually keep them alive, but shouldn’t my agents have, I don’t know, checked in with me before they left? I was the agent in charge here, right? Some boss I’d turned out to be. Three days in and my entire squad had fled. “Abandoning Nekros won’t fix the issue. And I’m sure more agents would have made the evacuation of the local fae easier.”

  Nori lifted a shoulder. “This land isn’t tied to winter anymore, so they are no longer bound to serve it.”

  “The fae here are still our responsibility.”

  She just stared at me, and I twisted and pointed toward the mobs she’d locked the doors against.

  “Independents have no true loyalty to crown or court,” she said and it was my turn to stare at her, disbelief mixing with a rising anger.

  “So you’ll just abandon them?”

  She made a sound in the back of her throat, something between derisive and dismissive. “What is it you think our job is, Craft?” she asked, but she didn’t give me a chance to answer before continuing. “Let me give you a hint. We aren’t here to make sure all fae live happy fairy-tale lives. Our job is to secure the interests of the winter court in the mortal realm. Most of the time that means making sure relationships with mortals remain positive and keeping the peace among the fae in our jurisdiction so that the crown does not have to deal with them directly. Independents are the hangers-on of our society. They contribute little to our court and are tolerated only because their presence in this realm reminds mortals of our existence and increases belief magic.”

  “Yeah?” I said, placing a fisted hand on my hip. “So then they do more than a lot of fae, because Faerie fades without belief. Al
l those fae who can’t be bothered to mix with mere mortals are the real leeches.”

  “That would accurately describe the Sleagh Maith,” she said, her tone pure acid.

  “Then how come I’m the only one who cares about all the fae gathered outside our door!”

  “Because blooded true or not, you are no fae.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said and turned on my heel.

  “Where are you going, Craft?” she called after me.

  I didn’t even know, but I wasn’t going to get any help from Nori, that seemed certain. “If there is no reason to stay, then why are you still here? Shouldn’t you run off like everyone else?” I called back over my shoulder.

  “Because my loyalty was to Falin while he was still knight, not yet even the king, and he wouldn’t want Nekros abandoned.”

  That made me hesitate.

  “I know you’ve never held me in much regard, but I do care about my court,” she said, and I could tell from her voice that she was moving closer to me.

  I had the choice of continuing to storm away or to turn and face her. I turned slowly. She’d dropped her glamour and was hovering a foot off the ground, moving slowly forward. Her blue face and large insect eyes were alien, but not threatening. Once I would have found her frightening, but I no longer did. I met her multifaceted eyes.

  “You’re saying it’s my fault we don’t get on?”

  She cocked her head to the side, her antennae twitching with the movement. She looked different without her glamour, but her voice was exactly the same. “I don’t like you, Craft. I don’t make any attempt to hide that fact. You don’t fit in our world. But I admit you see things I don’t see, and I don’t mean your planeweaving. You approach things more as a mortal than a fae, and that perspective is something the king appreciates. I hate to admit that I’ve seen the value of it, but I’ve seen your results, and I understand his position. I still don’t think you belong here, but here you are, when no one else is. And I admit, I would have left too if I hadn’t thought you would show up here today, planning to fix things.” She landed in front of me. The movement was awkward, the shape of her hips in her true form more suited for flying than standing upright. “But how do you plan to fix things?”

  And wasn’t that the question.

  I turned to Tem. The big troll was staring pointedly away from us, looking like he wanted to be anywhere else but in the middle of this conversation.

  “And what about you?” I asked. “Why are you still here?”

  He lifted a large shoulder. “King charged me with watching over you. So I’m here. But you stay here too long, you start to fade, and I’ll be dragging you out of here.”

  Good to know. So I had a babysitter who would also become my jailer if he deemed things too dangerous. It was a good warning to have. What went unsaid was that if Tem suspected Falin had lost the court, all bets were off. That was good to know as well. At least I knew the line of his loyalty.

  “These are your new allies, Al?” Roy said, shoving his hands in his pockets and shaking his head. “I’m not saying turn them away, but, man . . .”

  Yeah, not my ideal choice of who to have at my back. I found I was more happy that Roy was with me than the two fae, though the ghost definitely wouldn’t be my first choice in a fight.

  I walked to my office, stepping over files and roses still scattered across the floor from the earthquake. The safe where I’d stashed the fire spell we’d found on the remains of the amaranthine tree hid in the corner of the room. I placed the spell, still in its triple-sealed magic-dampening box, in my purse. Then I searched out the map I’d studied on my first day. Unrolling it, I spread it across the piles of scattered paperwork littering my desk. Then I stared.

  I’d guessed what I would find, but my gut still twisted at the sight of the entire North American continent devoid of any color where the four seasonal court colors had stained it the last time I’d seen this map. So all four courts really had lost their doors. Rolling the map back up, I began to tuck that into my purse as well, but paused as a folder underneath it caught my attention. Pretty much all the other folders left on the desk were askew, their contents spilling in all directions, but this one was neatly placed on top of the chaos, dead center on the desk.

  I snatched the file from the desk and flipped it open, my brow creasing as I read over the handwritten report. “The agents we sent to the floodplains, they found the fouled pond,” I said as I scanned the short summary. Nori stepped into the room, walking over to glance around my shoulder at the file.

  “It had a pocket dwelling under the water.”

  Which fit with Jenny Greenteeth’s lair. “It won’t be there now,” I said, cursing under my breath. All the pockets of Faerie had moved at sunset. “She was in Nekros.” But was she still?

  “So what do we do now, boss?” Tem asked from the door.

  I considered the file. If Jenny was—or had been—back in Nekros, that was further evidence that Ryese’s scheming was behind the destruction of the door. Would he have stranded his ally on this side, though, or were they all safely tucked away back in Faerie? I shoved the file into my purse. I now had four aspects of this crisis vying for my attention, and as much as I was tempted to run out to the floodplains and search for Jenny, I had doubts she’d still be there. I should have done it before her lair vanished with the rest of the pockets of Faerie.

  I did need to meet up with Martinez from the Anti-Black Magic Unit and see if she could discern anything from the fire spell. Most likely the only thing her team would be able to learn was that it was fae magic—which I already knew—and if they tried to track it, the spell most likely wouldn’t lead anywhere, as the caster was probably back in Faerie, but it was still worth looking into. My gut said Ryese was behind this, but solid proof would be good. Hell, maybe I could take that proof to the High King, or at least the other seasonal monarchs and we could chase Ryese out of his safe little hidey-hole in the light court and hold him accountable for his crimes.

  The most important thing was to secure a new door for Nekros, but that was also the most complicated. I already had Dugan looking for the sapling. I had no clue what more to do on that front, or even where to go for advice. Was there a way I could get an audience with the High King? Of course, I’d likely need to be in Faerie to do that, if it was even possible. I wasn’t foolish enough to think he was the Santa Claus of Faerie and I’d just ask him to fix the doors and show him any proof I’d gathered as to who was behind it and he’d magically fix everything. Real life didn’t work that way, regardless of magic and legends.

  My gaze moved to the front of the building where I knew the independents were still gathered, confused, scared, and angry. There was also the independents to consider. They were our responsibility and we’d been doing a piss-poor job with them during this crisis thus far. That needed to change.

  “We need to evacuate the independents,” I said. I almost asked Nori how fae normally traveled, but I knew the answer. They just used the doors to Faerie. That wasn’t an option, so what else was there?

  I had a moment of imagining booking several international planes and filling them with the fae, but I knew that wouldn’t work. Even if the lot of wild fae could glamour their way through TSA to board the planes, I couldn’t imagine they’d be able to stomach the flight. It was painful to spend time inside a regular vehicle because of the metal content. Flying in a huge metal cylinder in the sky? Yeah, that might kill fae.

  How did my father travel? Surely as governor he had to from time to time. Did he have a private plane? Something made primarily with plastics and fae-safe materials?

  I glanced between Nori and Tem. “Have either of you ever met the governor of Nekros?”

  Chapter 17

  There is only so much mass displacement that reality will accept from glamour. Tem had glamoured himself as small as he could, but he
still didn’t fit comfortably in my little convertible. He should have ridden with Nori, but he insisted that he stick by me while we were on the job and I wanted to keep my car today. We ended up with the top down despite the cold January air because Tem had to keep most of his natural height to make himself narrow enough to fit in the passenger seat. He still ended up hunched forward, leaning over his phone as he tried to make himself short enough for the windshield to block some of the frigid air whipping around us. Roy, who couldn’t actually feel the cold January air, thought it was great. He whooped and hollered from the tiny backseat while I shot him menacing looks in the rearview. It was not a fun trip out of the Magic Quarter.

  I considered going straight to the statehouse, to make this frigid trip as short as possible, but ultimately I decided to first make a quick detour to Central Precinct to drop the fire spell off with Martinez and the ABMU team. Nori was opposed to turning over the spell, which she made vocal at every possible point, but what were we going to do with it? Neither Nori nor Tem had any magic that would help them track the caster. I did break the seals and try to feel out the spell, but the best I could do was get a sense of the caster’s signature. Then the thing had started sparking and I’d slammed the lid back down on the box and put the magic-dampening seals back on. If I ran across other spells by the same caster, I’d likely recognize the signature, but that wouldn’t help me track him. So I turned the spell over to the ABMU and hoped they got something more from it. Then we headed for the statehouse.

  The last time I’d stood inside the office of the governor, I’d snuck in after hours to search for evidence on a bodythief. This time I had a badge and an official title, but if I’d thought that would be an instant ticket inside, I was badly mistaken.