by Karen Chance
Except for the one who had just pulled a knife.
“And forfeit that amount of coin?” Rosier asked, his eyes on the blade. “She’s powerful, as long as she has me as a focus. You stand to make—”
“Nothing, cur. She doesn’t belong to me!”
“But you could claim her—”
“Not until they chop off that lying bastard’s head! And even then she’ll be the queen’s prize, to do with as she likes!”
“They’re not going to kill him,” another fey said. He was sitting, with his feet on the table, peeling an apple.
“How do you know?” the first one demanded.
Apple Boy looked up sardonically. “Don’t you know who that is?”
“Who?” the second fey asked. “The veslingr?”
“A wretch,” the other agreed, “but not so powerless. That’s Nimue’s grandson.”
“What?” The other two stopped torturing Rosier long enough to stare at him.
He nodded, obviously enjoying the attention. “I was there when they caught him. He was trying to recover some of the magic he spent on the wards by using his slut, when he lost control and dropped his glamourie. I got a good look at his face before they hauled him off.”
“Grandson?” The second fey was still looking confused. “You mean one of the princes—”
Apple Boy laughed.
The first fey looked like he’d just figured something out. And from the disgust on his face, it wasn’t something he liked. “You mean great-grandson.”
The fey at the table nodded. “Now you’ve got it.”
“Got what?” the second fey demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“The polluted one. That half-demon thing Nimue should have killed at birth.”
“Gods,” the second fey said. If he’d been Catholic, he would have crossed himself.
“Why didn’t she?” the first fey demanded. “Anyone else—”
“But she’s not anyone else, is she?” Apple Boy asked, eating a piece of fruit off his knife. “The law is for peasants like you and me. The great ones do as they like.”
The first fey bristled. “I’m no peasant. My grandfather—”
“And who was your grandmother, again?”
“Leave her out of this!”
“Why? She’s the reason you’re here, isn’t she? And not only you. It’s getting difficult to find a trueborn anywhere these days.”
“I’m trueborn! I—”
“If you were trueborn, you’d be sitting in the ducal palace, instead of guarding a bunch of kerlingar.”
“But to let such a thing live,” the second fey interrupted, obviously still appalled. “What was she thinking?”
Apple Boy shrugged. “Probably whatever she’s thinking now.”
“What?”
“He’s in with her. Him and those witches.”
“Maybe she’s about to rectify a mistake,” the first fey said, viciously.
“Rectify?” Rosier suddenly piped up. “What do you mean, rectify?”
“I told you to shut up—”
But Rosier wasn’t shutting up. Rosier was grabbing the bars of his cage, looking a little crazed. “What do you mean, rectify?”
The fey smiled, and jerked him out. “Here. I’ll show you.”
Shit.
“The lanterns, down the hall,” I told my knives quickly. “All of them. Go!”
They leapt up, always ready for some mayhem, and a second later the fey were leaping, too—and in the case of boots-on-the-table, almost falling on the floor—as the corridor behind them practically exploded.
They ran out, swords drawn, and I scrambled forward to grab Rosier. “Where’s Pritkin?”
“About time!” he said shrilly. “I could have been—”
“Where’s Pritkin?”
“—killed, where the fuck—”
I shook him. “Pritkin!”
“They took him to see Nimue,” he said breathlessly. “That’s all I know.”
“And she’s where?” Because the bizarro house was starting to feel like it should have filled half the damn valley.
“What part of ‘that’s all I know’ did you not understand?”
I let go of him and started rifling through the cabinets, looking for a handy diagram I didn’t find. But I did find my stuff, jumbled in a basket. I threw Billy’s necklace over my head, grabbed my ward, tossed the pack on my back—and jerked my head up at the sound of the guards thundering back this way.
“Well?” Rosier shrieked.
“There’s nothing—”
“There has to be!”
“There isn’t!” I slammed the last door, and he looked around frantically.
“The cages!”
“What?”
“Let them out!”
And then we were scrambling to release the familiars, all of which took off down the hallway. I took off after them, Rosier on my shoulder, because hopefully they knew where their mistresses were. But even if not, I liked this corridor better, since it was going in the opposite direction from the guards.
Who sounded pissed.
Damn, I wondered what my knives had been up to.
I didn’t worry long, because it took everything I had to not get lost in the mazelike layout of the place. We thundered down the hall and through a door at the end at a dead run. Then turned into another, slamming into the wall on the curve, before immediately diving into a third. After that, I didn’t even try to keep up with the twists and turns, because what was the point? It wasn’t like I knew where I’d been to start off with.
But I knew where I’d ended up. Because if anything had ever said “queen’s private chambers,” that was it. I braked and jerked back behind a wall.
But the herd didn’t.
They went barreling through an elaborate antechamber, full of rich fabrics, beautiful woods, thick carpets, and elaborate mosaics, yowling and barking and knocking things over. And a moment after that, the two guards who had been bookending an arched doorway were cursing and running after them. Rosier and I followed, through the door and into another line of small, interlocking rooms.
It wasn’t the same one Pritkin and I had been in. That had been done up in greens and browns, while this one was water hues, every tone of blue and white and green imaginable. But it had a lot in common with the other, like the fact that it was full of places to hide.
I dove behind a pierced screen as the two guards came back, carrying a pack of very unhappy runaways.
They passed by, the birds cawing and flapping, the dog snarling, the cats hissing and scratching the hell out of one guy’s ear. And I picked up a blanket to cover Rosier and walked quickly in the other direction. Nobody looked at me twice, not even the duo of guards near the end of the line of rooms, because of course they didn’t.
I was just a slave.
And then we were in.
“I asked the same question.” It was a man’s voice, but I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see much of anything; there were too many butts in the way. “They say their population is growing and they need more food. They also hinted that they enjoyed the idea of weakening you. They worry about a possible alliance of you with the Dark Fey.”
“The Dark!”
That was a woman—or a female, anyway. The voice was too lyrical to be human, although the scorn took the edge off slightly.
“You have common cause,” the man argued. “The Svarestri’s expansion is squeezing both of you. If you were to ally, they fear their ability to hold against such a union, one bolstered by the army of half humans you’ve built for yourself.”
“They say.” The scorn was dripping now. “And you believe them.”
“What I believe is that they are willing to hold the borders for a regular shipment of food. No
slaves. They don’t use them, Nimue; they never have. And if they’re as strong as you—”
“Are they? Are you sure about that? You had best be, Arthur. Betray us and you’ll have more than the Saxons to worry about!”
Arthur?
My head came up.
The butts belonged to guards, who ringed the room ahead. I was in a small antechamber, dim because their bodies cut off most of the light, and unable to do anything to improve the view because of two more guards on the door behind me. They were facing the other direction, but might notice if I started climbing around on the furniture. Like the ones in front, standing in front of two pierced screens on either side of a small opening, could decide to turn.
And then someone did, but only to shift slightly, giving me a narrow view of the room through the gap. And of Pritkin, kneeling in the center, naked except for his trousers, with those powerful arms bound behind him. And balancing on the balls of his feet as he watched a dark-haired woman argue with a mirror.
Okay, I guessed she was actually talking to the man in the mirror, big and blond and red-faced, and rapidly getting redder.
“I’m not betraying anyone,” the man—the king—said as I stared at him. “I have given you options; you choose not to take them. What do you expect?”
He did look like Arthur, I thought. Or the myth, at least: golden hair held in place by a shining circlet, close-trimmed blond beard, the weathered skin of a warrior, but with jovial crow’s-feet at the eyes. But there was fey in him, too, if you knew where to look: eyes too blue to be human, movements too liquid, a voice that was almost an independent entity, with power behind it, rebuking, cajoling, entrancing . . .
Well, except to Nimue, who didn’t appear impressed.
“I expect you to be sensible!” she snapped. “You are my blood, yet you ally with my enemies?”
“You sound like I’m joining them in making war on you—”
“You may as well be!”
The man’s blue eyes flashed. “You say that to me? To me? When it is my people’s blood that has made you strong? How many would you have in your army if not for our women? How would you feed them if not for our grain? Yet you demand more?”
“A temporary measure, owing to the recent war—”
“There’s always a war, Nimue! It’s one thing my father taught me! You’ll never be free of it, he said—but he tried. For his people, he tried, and made that damn treaty with you—”
“Which you repudiate!”
It was thunderous, and the tension, already thick enough to be tangible, kicked up another few notches. I glanced over my shoulder, and, sure enough, the two guards behind me had twisted around this way. Luckily, they were still ignoring me, but I didn’t know how long that would last.
I started working off my bracelet.
“What are you doing?” Rosier hissed.
“The plan,” I said softly, and nodded to the row of women on their knees behind Pritkin—the coven leaders, I assumed. And our only possible allies.
“The plan failed spectacularly,” he hissed. “And now the witches are in there. We are out here. What exactly—”
I held up my chameleon, which as usual when off the body was a small gold trinket. “You can get in there.”
It took him a second. “I can’t!”
“You can. It’ll hide you—”
“It isn’t designed to hide a person. It’s designed to hide things. Small things—”
“You’re a small thing!”
“But I’m not a crazy thing! What am I supposed to do? Crawl over and give the witches the wands—”
“Yes!”
“And then what?”
“And then they cause a distraction. And . . . and we get Pritkin out. . . .”
“You can’t even convince yourself!”
“You have a better idea?”
“Anything is a better idea! Do you think the fey are just going to stand there while the witches cast a spell to unshrink their weapons, and another to untie their hands, and another to—finally—do some damage?”
“Again—you don’t like the plan, come up with a better one. I’m open to suggestions!”
“—that’s the point of the tournament,” Arthur was saying as Rosier glared up at me. “Come to court, Nimue. If you are as strong as you say, you will defeat the Svarestri and gain all that you wish. But if you’re too afraid—”
“Too smart, you mean, to wager an advantage I already have. Renew the treaty, Arthur. Increase the tribute to the amount I have asked for, and you will have the peace you seek.”
“Or?”
“Or I will take your women, all your women, and leave you to see how long your men follow you without them!”
Arthur drew himself up, blue eyes burning, all hint of joviality gone. “Do not threaten me, Nimue. You won’t like the outcome if you do.”
“Neither will you,” she said, turning around for the first time.
And for a moment, I forgot everything, even why I was there. Because she was beautiful. No, I thought, in stunned amazement, she was beautiful, achingly, heartbreakingly, unbelievably so. Raven-dark hair, flowing like a river almost to the floor, eyes like a sea storm, blue and gray and glinting in anger, a face so perfect it hurt, like a force of nature carved in flesh. Blue robes that flowed about her like waves when she moved and grabbed one of the witches.
And slit her throat.
Chapter Twenty-six
I stared at the dying woman, thrashing in Nimue’s arms, and a horrible sense of déjà vu slammed into me. Her hair was long and half gray, and I couldn’t see her face. But, for a second, it was Rhea all over again. A fact only heightened when Nimue looked up.
And the beautiful blue eyes flooded black.
Black like the endless night sky, without any stars. Black like the pitiless depths of the sea. Black like the eyes of a monster, a monster I’d seen before, a monster that—
Eating you, he’s eating you. He’s—
The room seemed to telescope, and that horrible feeling I’d kept having broke over me, freezing my limbs, tightening my throat, keeping the scream that was building trapped inside.
Until Nimue grabbed another victim.
And I made a sound that the fey didn’t seem to notice, but that had Pritkin’s head jerking around. Our eyes met, and suddenly, everything was happening at once: Arthur bellowing, women screaming, Pritkin out of his bonds and lunging, the room dissolving into chaos as a mob of fey jumped for him and he jumped for Nimue—
And wrenched something off her neck.
“Ohshit!”
I started, because all that had taken a couple seconds, and suddenly something was streaming at me over the heads of the crowd. Something on a fine gold chain, something that gleamed in the lamplight, something I would never catch in a million years, because I had the coordination of a clumsy two-year-old. Something that my hands plucked out of the air anyway, at the same moment that Nimue looked up.
And our eyes met.
“Vlva,” she spat.
“Sybil,” the spell dutifully translated.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
And then I turned and fled.
“Get the girl!” someone yelled as the room exploded in spells, and the two guards on the door sprang at me.
“Protect!” I gasped, and my knives all but leapt off my wrist, with no restrictions this time, because I didn’t have time for any. I didn’t have time for anything, except running like a madwoman, my weapons sending the guards staggering back as I pelted down the connecting chain of rooms, with no idea what I was doing.
Until I looked down.
And saw a bright silver key resting in the palm of my hand.
Okay, I knew what I was doing.
I just didn’t know where—
“Secure the pr
incess’ chamber!” someone yelled.
Yeah, but where was it?
“No, you dolt. To the left!”
Thanks, I thought wildly as my knives caught up in time to send two more guards diving out of the way. I ran out of the queen’s chambers and took a hard left. And kept on going, my weapons weaving a deadly web across the corridor behind me, while what sounded like every guard in the world thundered after me.
There were no little cat feet here. It was boots on stone, loud, echoing, deadly. Like the arrow that passed on either side of my head, cleaved in half by one of my weapons. Like the energy bolt that sizzled through the air, dissipating one little knife like steam. Like the bola that wrapped around my legs, sending me hurtling painfully onto stone, and then staring behind me at the crowd that was launching weapons—
That went over my head, since they were aimed at the space where I’d just been, and hit a group of guards coming from the other direction.
Six of them fell around me as my remaining knife sliced through the strings on my ankles, before throwing itself, kamikaze-style, at the warriors behind me. Six of them, I thought, scrambling to my feet, nose running, terror pounding in my ears. Six of them, as I scampered down the hall, blood splattering the wall beside me, as someone reached for me and lost a limb. Six of them, like the number supposed to be around the princess’ cell, so that meant—
“Princess! Princess!” I was screaming, because there were doors, doors, so many doors, and I had no idea—
A heavy hand grabbed me, my knife cleaved it to the wall, I tore away, and someone yelled, “Here!”
But I was already slamming the key home, hands steady—and how the hell were they steady? And turning the lock and falling in, a wall of fey at my back, my last knife going up in smoke deflecting a vicious curse. But it bought a second for strong hands to grab me, for them to jerk me inside, for the door to slam in the fey’s faces—
And for a woman’s voice to say: “I hope you brought a better weapon than that” as I thrust my wrist in her general direction.
My hair was in my face, my breath was coming hard, the massive oak door was thud, thud, thudding behind me, to the point that I could barely think. Certainly not well enough to explain the situation, to introduce myself, to do anything but gasp: “There’s . . . a wand—”
