by Karen Chance
These didn’t strike me that way, and not just because of the size. The adolescent trolls I’d met had a cheerful innocence about them, like Ymsi with his flowers or Sven with his sword practice, which had caused even the jaded royal guards to crack a few grins, although they usually stifled them when they saw anybody watching. But the point was, the twins were endearing.
These guys . . . I wasn’t sure what vibe I was getting, but I didn’t think “endearing” fit.
I led them to the dining room, because it had the only furniture likely to support them, a sturdy old hardwood dining set built back when craftsmen took their jobs seriously. And because I wanted to check them out before I let them loose on the rest of the house. Not that I didn’t trust Olga, but she didn’t usually have an entourage.
I was glad I’d made that call when I suddenly found myself confronted with a strange group of large, scary-looking fey.
And one small one.
“What’s with him?” I asked Olga, as the little guy was deposited in a chair by the troll who’d been carrying him.
I guessed he was a troll, too, although it was hard to tell. He was smaller than me and scrawny, like a deflated balloon. Where there should have been bulging muscles, there was just loose skin. Where there should have been bright, round eyes, there was only a pair of slits, cloudy and vague looking. And where there should have been a nice greeny brown skin tone, there was a dull ashen color, with patches that looked almost black.
Bruises, I realized.
I hadn’t known trolls could get those.
“Escaped from slavers,” Olga said, taking Stinky from me. She used to babysit him, and had a soft spot for the little guy. But today she looked like she just needed someone to hug.
“Be back in a sec,” I told her, and ran off to find Claire.
She was where I’d left her, yelling something at Caedmon that I didn’t bother to listen to, because I was afraid we were about to have a corpse on our hands. “Got your kit?”
She stopped, mouth still open, and blinked at me. “What?”
“Troll, half-dead. Or maybe more than half. Olga just brought him in.”
Claire blinked again, and I could almost see the transformation. From harassed mom with in-law problems to competent nurse on a mission. “Where?”
“Down the hall.”
She grabbed a bag from a cabinet, and was on my heels in a second flat.
We entered the dining room to find the trolls seated on groaning chairs; Stinky with his chin propped on his bear’s head, watching everything with inquisitive eyes; and the little troll out cold, facedown on the table.
“Help me get him up,” Claire muttered, and I hurried to comply, a little worried about just how easy it was to lift this particular troll. He felt like a bag of bones, and looked it, too, after we laid him on the table and Claire ripped open his shirt to reveal little more than a lattice of ribs. And—
“Fuck me.”
That was me, of course. Claire is usually able to convey emotion without profanity. But she wasn’t saying anything at the moment. Just looking down with the kind of expression you hope to never see from your doc.
“You help?” Olga asked, looking from me to Claire.
Neither of us answered. Claire was busy examining the little one, her mouth pinched almost to nonexistence, while I was realizing why my hands were wet. The dark patches I’d noticed on his arms were a black lake on his chest, one composed of old, caked blood and some fresh. I wiped my hands on my jeans and left greenish black smears behind. And looked up to see Claire’s face mirroring what was probably on mine.
“There’s no open wound,” I said, looking for some kind of hope.
“It’s internal. Trolls bleed through their skin if it’s bad enough,” Claire said shortly.
“And it’s bad.” It wasn’t a question.
She looked up at me, answering with her eyes the question I hadn’t asked. She couldn’t help him. And if Claire couldn’t, nobody could. Her last name was Lachesis, and she belonged to one of the oldest and most respected families of healers anywhere.
They’d once been known for something else, back when poisoning had been the nobility’s favorite pastime. But over the centuries they’d grown out of their dodgy rep, into a respected family of potion sellers. Not that their concoctions would help the fey, who did not respond well to human medicine, if at all. But Claire hadn’t specialized in human illnesses.
Even before she’d found out about her own . . . unusual . . . genetics, she’d been drawn to the fey. She’d worked in R & D, looking into the potential healing properties of fey flora, which was one reason we’d ended up as friends. She was the only person I’d ever met compassionate enough to want to help a half-mad dhampir.
Which was probably why she was tearing up now—and rooting around in her bag, I guess for something to ease the little one’s pain, at least.
Until she suddenly stopped, and just stared at the wall for a second. Before dropping everything—literally, the bag scattered its contents of precious bottles and handmade plasters all over the floor—and running out the door. And before I had a chance to go after her, to ask what the hell, she was back.
And hell had come with her.
Or so you’d have thought, when a tableful of massive trolls suddenly surged to their feet, and a dozen weapons flashed under the dining room’s dim lighting. One of them was close enough to have given me a shave had I been the type to need one. That was happenstance, though, because the weapons weren’t aimed at me.
They were aimed at Caedmon.
He stood in the doorway, shimmering softly, because he’d drawn down the glow that the Light Fey tended to have in our world. Not that it helped. I’d always heard the expression “You could have cut the tension with a knife,” but in this case it would have taken the sword gleaming by my eye socket, because it was so thick I could barely breathe.
“Stop,” Olga said suddenly, because nothing intimidated Olga.
Something that sounded like a cross between a word and a growl came from a huge specimen on the far end of the table. He could only stand while bent over, despite the high ceilings of the room, which flattened the top of an impressive mane of white hair and allowed braids the size of my arms to brush the tabletop. And he was so heavy with muscle that he was the only one at that end of the table, because no one else would fit. He wasn’t speaking English, and nobody felt like translating, but I didn’t need it.
His expression was . . . eloquent.
“Caedmon can help,” Claire said, which didn’t.
“Claire.” I licked my lips, having seen what a bunch of pissed-off trolls could do and not wanting to see it again. “Why don’t you take Aiden and—”
But Claire wasn’t budging.
“Gessa!” she yelled unnecessarily, because the little au pair was never too far away. In this case, she was already peering in the door worriedly.
She was another relative of Olga’s, on her late husband’s side, who had been a forest troll like Fin. Also like Fin, she was tiny, only a little over three feet tall, and cute, with big brown eyes—for a troll—and a mop of brown curls that always seemed to go everywhere. She’d been brought on board after Olga got her business up and running again, and hadn’t had time for babysitting. Then Aiden came along, and now she cared for them both, with a gentleness that belied her ability with a double-headed ax, if anyone threatened her charges.
She was looking around now, like she was thinking of getting the ax, until Claire took her son from Caedmon and handed him over. “Take the boys outside,” Claire told her. To where my guards are remained unsaid.
Gessa nodded.
Stinky didn’t want to leave, but a firm pat on the backside from Olga and a stern look from me, and he loped off with Gessa, one small hand in hers and the other dragging the huge bear.
L
eaving just us grown-ups.
Except for the small troll, who didn’t look that old to me.
Or to Claire, I guess, because she moved toward the forest of blades before I could stop her. “He’s a child, and he’s dying!” She stared around the table, green eyes flashing. “What is wrong with you?”
“You help,” Olga told her again, subtly getting between Claire and the male trolls.
“I can’t help!” Claire said, shoving frazzled red hair out of her eyes. “You should have come to me sooner—”
“Just found.”
“He’s your nephew?” I asked, because I really hoped not.
“No. Slave. Ran away last night, after fight.”
“What happened?”
“Slaver’s men found. Tried to kill.”
“So he couldn’t rat them out,” I guessed.
She nodded. “We find, but they find first. Killed them.” It was nonchalant.
Good, I thought.
I’d find some more to question.
Ones who hadn’t tried to kill a child.
“Listen to me,” Claire said, looking around the table. “I don’t have the skill for this. Do you understand? I need help.”
Nothing.
Nobody moved; nobody breathed. A bunch of humans would have had tired arms by now, holding weapons that heavy that still for so long, but the trolls hadn’t so much as blinked. They looked like some kind of Renaissance tableau—a deadly one, with small, dark eyes reflecting the overhead lighting, which also glimmered on the swords and axes and knives. And on the scattered pieces of armor that some of them wore, despite the fact that I’d rarely seen trolls think they needed it.
“Listen!” Claire said again, because it didn’t look like anyone was. “I can’t help your friend. But he can.”
She pointed wildly at her father-in-law, who also hadn’t moved, not so much as a finger. He was still in the doorway, hands loose, weapon still in its sheath. Not that it mattered. Every damned person in the room knew how quickly that could change, which probably explained the standoff.
Well, partly explained it.
“I thought you guys were okay?” I asked Olga, looking from her to Caedmon. They’d seemed to get along at a dinner party they’d attended at my crazy uncle Radu’s recently. Who was absolutely the kind of guy to put Dark and Light Fey at the same table and think nothing of it. Yet, somehow, everything had worked out.
More or less.
But the less hadn’t been because Olga and Caedmon were at each other’s throat. They might not be friends, because fey didn’t really understand that term the way humans did, but they also weren’t enemies. At least, I hadn’t thought so.
“We okay,” Olga agreed, and several of the nearest trolls growled.
This did not appear to faze her.
“He not hurt us,” she pointed out, with a little more liveliness than I was used to from Olga.
And got an almost shockingly long comment in return from White Hair. I couldn’t understand it; I don’t speak troll. But compared to the one-, two-, and three-word answers I was used to, it was positively loquacious.
It also wasn’t appreciated.
“She can’t help,” Olga said, using the language everyone understood, because she had manners. “He can!”
“No!” This was another troll, shorter but even more well muscled than the last, with a shock of gray hair and a face that looked like it had been dragged behind a truck at some point. Some point a long time ago, because it had healed and scarred over, yet still had little bits of gravel embedded in it, all along one side. They glittered in the low light, reminding me of the big guy from the fight, the one with all the scars, except this one lacked the exotic coloring. He was the same greeny brown as the rest, but looked like he’d lived a harder life.
Much harder.
And he wasn’t having it.
Which sucked for him, because Olga was.
The next thing I knew, she was up on the table, crossing the expanse of shining mahogany faster than I could blink. And, okay, that did not help the tension any, I thought, as the other trolls stiffened. But she didn’t pull a knife, didn’t have any weapons that I could see at all. He did—a short sword, which in this case meant slightly less than the six-foot length of some of the others’, and it was out. But he didn’t turn it on her.
I waited, but nothing was said for a long moment, as they faced off. Literally: there wasn’t so much as a millimeter between the two of them. It was nose to nose, eye to eye, and while it might not sound like much, just two people looking at each other, it was somehow more intimidating than any of the chest-beating and wall-thumping I’d seen last night.
Suddenly, I could barely breathe, my arms broke out in goose bumps, and my hands flexed, wishing for a weapon, any weapon. I glanced at Claire, and she didn’t look any better. Her face was flushed, her eyes so green they almost looked electric, and her hands were gripping the back of the nearest chair, like she was thinking of throwing it at somebody. But then the bigger troll looked away, even turned his head slightly. And while nothing was said, the tension snapped like a rubber band, hard enough to stagger me.
I had no freaking clue what had just happened, but I didn’t have time to worry about it.
Because Caedmon was doing something.
He didn’t touch the little troll, or even move out of the doorway. But a light suddenly shone through the cracked and darkened skin of the small one, as if he’d been lit from within. It was soft at first, gentle, visible only because the room was dim.
And then it flashed outward, shining up through pores and mouth and eyes, turning the skin translucent and highlighting the too-fragile bones and organs beneath.
It was almost as good as an X-ray, a truly impressive display that danced on the ceiling and everyone’s faces. It was also useless, because there was nothing left to save. The internal organs were all but pulverized, from a beating so savage that even a couple of the trolls made noises. The slavers who had done this hadn’t just intended to kill; they’d intended to write a message in his pain: come after us again and this could happen to you.
But Caedmon must have helped a little, because the small eyes opened after a moment, and a hand raised, trying to grab Olga’s.
She’d shuffled back down the table, to squat by the little troll’s head. She took the hand. His jaw was fractured, off-center and sagging, but he managed to whisper something anyway. I didn’t catch it, and wouldn’t have understood if I had, but Olga did better.
“Yes.” Her fist hit the middle of her chest. “Swear.”
He nodded slightly and said something else, and her expression grew confused.
Then the light died, and the small face went slack, and I thought that was it.
But I’d reckoned without fey stubbornness, and I don’t just mean the trolls’. Because a second later, I was knocked aside by someone glowing like a small sun. The sudden radiance eclipsed the electric lighting, caused the trolls to throw arms over their eyes, and prompted Claire to make a sound of distress, probably worrying that somebody was about to attack her father-in-law.
But no one did. Even when he got his hands on the child, pressing them into the little chest, almost hard enough to crack it. And then all that light, all that power that had allowed a fey king to fight his way to a portal in enemy territory, that had practically seared our shadows onto the walls, that had caused havoc all over the house because it needed a place to go—
Found one.
It poured into the little body, a flood of power that looked like it would rip him apart, but instead did the opposite. I stood there with my mouth hanging open, because it was like watching a film move backward: rebuilding tissue, plumping muscle, brightening eyes. Which opened in pain and panic and confusion halfway through, with only Olga’s hand on the boy’s shoulder stopping him from g
etting up and trying to flee.
But he didn’t.
He just lay there.
And I continued to stare, as healthy color flooded over gray, as the cap of scaly skin on his head sprouted with hair, as blood dried up and flaked off, and ribs, cracked and scattered and broken, began working their way back into some semblance of order under his skin.
Then the light cut out, not fading away, but all at once, like a switch was flipped off. Caedmon staggered and almost fell, but Claire and I caught him. And Olga stepped protectively in front of him, palms out and arms extended, because showing weakness is never a good thing among the fey.
But nobody tried to take advantage of it.
Nobody, in fact, was looking at him at all. The other fey were gathering around the child, who was still sprawled on the table and looking far from well. He had some very unnatural dents and bumps in his chest, some mottled skin on his hands and arms, and a jaw that still didn’t fit quite right on his face. But he was alive.
And, like me, nobody seemed to quite know what to do with that. Until Olga threw her head back, and spoke for us all. And roared.
Chapter Ten
“Well, that was intense.”
I’d given up on dinner, and was hanging off the back of the porch, a longneck in one hand and an ice pack in the other, because my head hurt.
Olga nodded. She was in the porch swing with her own beer, which looked entirely inadequate in those huge hands, but it didn’t matter since I’d brought a bucket full. It was sitting on the weathered boards between us, along with a pillow, some blankets, and half a dozen apples, because there was every chance I might not get up again today.
I hated convalescing, but if you had to do it, this was the place.
The late-afternoon sun slanted across the backyard, glinting off the ice in my bucket and striping the blanket where the boys were supposed to be playing, only they were running after fireflies instead. Or, rather, Stinky was, his long arms making the chase at least somewhat competitive, while Aiden was mostly falling on his ass. But he looked like he was having fun.
