by Jayne Faith
I’d let her know, and then she could decide what to do with the information. She was already planning to go to Finvarra, anyway. It was better to let Marisol handle it. This was her job. That was what I told myself, anyway.
I went back to my apartment to quickly shower and change. Nicole was away, probably working on her magic or some other aspect of her indoctrination into Faerie.
As I stripped off my clothes in the bathroom, tiny pieces of straw floated down to the floor. Yes, I’d spent the night in a barn with a fake unicorn and the unknown son of Unseelie High King Finvarra. My life was nothing if not bizarre lately. I jumped under the stream of steaming water, washed quickly, and got out.
Dressed in fresh jeans, a pale gray V-neck T, and a light leather jacket, I twisted my damp hair back into a loose bun and went to the kitchenette. I opened the fridge and grabbed the first container I saw. It held leftover steak and mashed potatoes, which I didn’t bother to heat up.
Ten minutes later, I was out the door with Mort on my back, heading toward a courtyard with one of the less-popular doorways in the fortress. I wanted to step over to the other side of the hedge to touch base with Gus, my boss at the Mercenary Guild, to check on the status of my suspension from bounty work to see if my capture with Gretchen was going to get me reinstated.
I was just about to push the door open and step out into the midday Faerie sunshine when I heard shouts from down the corridor. Then there was a shrill scream.
I knew, even before I’d turned and started running toward the noise. It was another servitor attack.
I reached for Mort and drew magic, sending violet flames licking down the blade. Skidding to a stop at an intersection, I whipped my gaze left and right, trying to discern which way the sounds had come from. Hollers and crashes echoed down the hall from the left. I pivoted that way and took off at a sprint. Others were running toward the commotion, too, with swords drawn.
Another swell of magic washed over my skin as I summoned my rock armor. Fatigue hit me immediately, but I pushed it aside.
The noise was coming from a residential part of the fortress, an area of larger apartments where young New Garg families lived with their children.
“Get back inside!” I hollered as I ran past a teenage boy who’d poked his head out of a doorway.
I reached another intersection, this one a wide space where tricycles and other children’s toys were lined up against one wall. There were sofas, and storybooks were piled on end tables. It was clearly a play area, and thank Oberon, I didn’t see any children.
But it was full of ogres, like the ones I’d encountered with Gretchen, except these ones were larger. Their bodies were taller, and their battle axes heftier.
Anger exploded through me like spitfire. Had there been kids out here playing when the servitors appeared, it would have been a tragedy beyond comprehension.
The metallic clang of weapons rang through the air, cutting through shouts and panicked cries. I ran at the nearest servitor, whose broad, soft-armored back was turned toward me.
Fueled by my outrage, I gripped Mort with both hands and rammed the end of the blade down into the creature’s upper back at an angle to pierce its heart. It screamed and arched, and I pulled Mort free before the ogre collapsed.
Whirling around, I attacked the next ogre, cutting off its head with a heavy swing. Then I was on to the next, and the next. I swung and drove Mort into flesh, my magic licking out to add razor slices to the damage of the blade. My anger became a cold burn in my muscles as my focus narrowed down to the enemies around me. In the trance of the fight, I mowed through horned, beady-eyed bodies until they were all still.
My chest heaving and my brow dripping sweat, I lowered Mort and turned a slow circle. The corpses began turning black and then shriveling like burning paper. They shrank and then winked out, disappearing one by one.
I happened to glance down at my clothes, and ogre blood streaked the fabric. It didn’t seem to be dissolving away.
I released my magic, and the familiar ache rushed across my skin as my rock armor receded. The pain centered on the spot on my lower back where Darion had cracked my armor in the battle of champions. Other, lesser pains broke into my awareness. Upper arm, back of a knee, side of one hip. I’d taken axe blows that I hadn’t even noticed.
I sheathed Mort and scanned the floor again, letting out a breath through pursed lips when I found that none of the bodies were our people, only those of the ogres who were quickly dissolving into thin air. The place was filling with soldiers.
Maxen arrived, and our eyes met briefly before I let myself get lost in the growing crowd. I had to get out before the fortress went into lockdown again. I’d changed my mind about going with Jasper to see Finvarra. If Finvarra really was behind these attacks, I wanted the chance to throttle his neck with my bare hands for sending servitors into our family quarters.
Everyone else was going toward the scene of the fight, and I got a few odd looks as I moved hastily in the other direction. My heart was still pounding with adrenaline from the battle and anger that the attack had put children at risk. When I reached the courtyard and found the doorway, my hand shook as I drew the sigils in the air and whispered the words that would take me to the place where Jasper wanted to meet.
The netherwhere spit me out in a meadow. I stood under a carved wooden arch. It was positioned in the middle of a clearing in the vaguely minty-smelling knee-high grass that waved in the slight breeze. I was in the Cait Sidhe kingdom, and it struck me that I had no idea why Jasper would have chosen this location to meet. It was the realm of the cats, a smaller Seelie kingdom whose leader was more into the social scene of Faerie than the politics.
It seemed an extremely unlikely place for the Unseelie High King to have landed. I shaded my eyes and squinted, looking at the Cait Sidhe fortress in the far distance and the village surrounding it. The nearest edge of the village was probably a couple of miles away. There wasn’t much nearby. As I looked around at the peaceful surroundings, I suddenly realized something seemed off.
I frowned. And where was Jasper? There was no clock nearby, and my cell phone was useless in Faerie. I was probably early. I didn’t like the idea of hanging out there for some unknown span of time until he showed up.
Just as I’d decided to return to the fortress and come back to check for Jasper later, the grass began to rustle.
As if on some unspoken cue, forms began to rise from the grass in unison. They were furry. Tall. Feline.
“Oh, shit.”
I’d strayed about ten feet from the doorway as I’d been looking around. Wheeling around and drawing Mort, I sprinted for the arch. The grass rustled all around me as the man-sized cats pounced, clearing several feet in one leap. I sent magic over my skin to form rock armor.
I switched Mort to my left hand and began drawing the sigils and speaking the words as fast as I could. Knowing it would be stupid to turn my back on the cats, I stood sideways, brandishing my sword. The giant felines were stalking across the clearing at me, hissing with their heads slung low. One of them leapt at me a split second before I catapulted myself through the arch.
The teeth-grinding scrape of claws over stone was the last thing I heard before plunging into the void.
I emerged in the fortress courtyard. Twisting, I reached one hand over my other shoulder and pulled at my jacket. Yep, exactly what I’d expected. The back of my jacket, my shirt, and even the straps of my bra had been shredded by parallel claw tracks. The cat’s claws hadn’t sliced through my scabbard but had shoved it off-center.
Cursing Jasper’s name, just because I needed someone to be pissed at, I sheathed my sword, righted my clothing as best I could, and stalked into the fortress.
I stopped the first blue-vested page I saw.
“What’s the time?” I asked.
“Five ‘til noon,” he said.
I pressed my mouth into a grim line. Only five minutes before the meeting time Jasper had specified. I hadn’t
been very early after all. Was it a set-up? I suddenly wished I’d saved the note.
I took lesser-used hallways back to my quarters, where I quickly shed my torn clothing and dressed in a nearly-identical fresh set. Then I went to the picture of the San Francisco skyline that hung on a wall, swung it to the side, and opened the wall safe the artwork hid. Inside, there were several items—small vials of potions, my merc I.D., some jewelry that had belonged to my mother. I pulled out my little used wax and stamp, closed and hid the safe, and then rummaged around in drawers until I found a piece of paper and a pen.
I showed up a little early at the Cait Sidhe doorway you specified and nearly got torn to shreds by a bunch of huge cats. I’m not sure why you wanted me to go with you to Finvarra, but you need to come up with a different meeting place, or you’re on your own.
I signed my name and folded the paper into a small rectangle. Then I broke off a piece of the soft wax and stuck it over the seam. As I held the metal stamp that was magically connected to me and me alone, I closed my eyes and pictured Jasper’s face and whispered his name. A quick gesture to form the sigil that would keep the note invisible except to the intended recipient, and then I pressed the stamp into the wax. It heated under my fingers, sinking into the wax and leaving the imprint of a P that overlaid two crossed swords. A ring of stars enclosed the whole design.
I wrote Jasper’s name and kingdom on the outside of the note and then returned the wax and stamp to the safe.
I could have dropped my message in the fortress lobby, where the mail handler would queue it to be taken by messenger raven, but I wanted it touching as few hands as possible. So instead, I left my quarters and made my way deeper into the fortress.
The fortress was once San Quentin prison, a structure that had been part of the Earthly realm before Marisol acquired it and had the interior transmuted into Faerie. Some of the structure had been altered significantly, but the large enclosed yard where prisoners used to be let out for fresh air and exercise remained. Now, it was our training and practice yard.
There were still guard towers overlooking the yard, two of which were used for messenger ravens—one for those arriving and the other for those departing.
Ravens had their own doorways through which they could go from location to location within Faerie as we did through our doorways. They were the only animals who could do so, which was one of the many reasons they were so ideally suited to carry mail between kingdoms.
I climbed the stairs to the north tower, where the birds departed with messages. On the way up, I passed a page with an empty message bag slung over his shoulder. At the top of the stairs, the door to the actual guard room was permanently locked, but there was a slot where messages were slipped inside. The outer windows of the guard room, inaccessible from the stairs or walkway, had been removed so ravens could freely move in and out.
There was a steady stream of birds flying from the south tower, where they’d just dropped messages, over to the north, where they would pick up those to be delivered to other kingdoms. It was a constantly running system that I’d always more or less taken for granted. But I watched the birds with new appreciation. Their efficiency and trustworthiness were remarkable. I’d often wondered how they knew where a message should be delivered, but apparently they had magic all their own that gave them that knowledge.
I slid my note to Jasper into the slot and watched through the glass in the guard room door as ravens alighted on a window sill, hopped to the floor, and plucked up notes in their beaks. I stayed there until I saw a raven take mine.
Then, remembering that I’d wanted to step out and check in with the Guild, I made my way to the fortress lobby. I expected to see soldiers from the battle ranks blocking the way, but by the look of things the most recent attack hadn’t brought a full lockdown. Maybe Marisol had realized that locking the place up wasn’t helping. From the accounts across kingdoms, the servitors were showing up at will, and no one had yet discovered how to keep them out.
I exited through the main doors. Crossing the invisible barrier between Faerie and the Earthly realm, I was met with a hazy San Francisco day that was about fifteen degrees cooler than the temperate perma-summer on the Faerie side of the hedge.
I powered up my phone, and instead of calling the Mercenary Guild, I tapped Lochlyn’s number. She was part Cait Sidhe, and I was hoping she could shed some light on my cat attack.
She picked up on the third ring, accepting my request for a video link.
“Petra,” she exclaimed, clearly glad I’d called. Her heart-shaped face suddenly scrunched in distress. “I’m sick of couch surfing! Did you get your job back yet, or what?”
I made a grumbling noise in my throat. “The disciplinary board hasn’t even gotten to my case yet.”
She echoed my groan. “That blows. How’s life in the fortress?”
I pushed my fingers into my hair. “Restrictive,” I said, my voice tight.
“I think I’m going to end up back in Faerie myself. I’m not having a lot of luck finding steady work. I really shouldn’t have screwed up that gig I had.”
Lochlyn was part Cait Sidhe and part banshee, and that combination had somehow gifted her with a shockingly soulful and beautiful singing voice. She’d had a well-paying job singing in a high-end chain of restaurants not long ago but had screwed it up when she decided to party around the world with some mogul. It wasn’t particularly surprising. Cait Sidhe were known to be flighty, and although she was one of the most loyal people I knew, the flightiness aspect of her heritage seemed to crop up regularly in her work life.
“Question for you,” I said. “Do you know anything about giant attack cats in the Cait Sidhe realm?”
Her eyes popped wide. “You were attacked in the kingdom of cats?”
“I went through a doorway before they could do major damage, but they seemed to want to rip me to shreds.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” she said, truly dismayed. “Wait, they were unnaturally large?”
“Yeah, like seven feet.”
“Those weren’t Cait Sidhe,” she said. “Someone has been impersonating the cat shifters.”
Lochlyn didn’t inherit the ability to shift into cat form, due to some quirk of her mixed blood, but many Cait Sidhe could shift. Usually they could only take the form of housecat-sized felines. A few very powerful Cait Sidhe could take larger forms.
“Daoine Sidhe?” I asked, naming a race of Fae that could shift into many different animal forms.
“Yeah, must be. I don’t know who else could turn into a giant cat,” she said. “But I haven’t been in touch with anyone in Faerie in a week or so. I’m not the best source of info.”
We chatted for a minute more, mostly lamenting about our mutual fates and how we missed our old Boise apartment, dumpy as it was.
After we hung up, I tapped the end of my phone against my lower lip. The Daoine Sidhe rivaled the Duergar when it came to powerful Unseelie kingdoms. Fae with enough Daoine blood could shift into almost any mammal. And who just happened to be Daoine Sidhe?
Finvarra.
Not only was he the High King of the Unseelie, he was nearly pure-blooded Daoine Sidhe. He was behind the servitor attacks; I was almost sure of it.
I shouldn’t have sent that damn message to Jasper because I’d changed my mind again. I did want an audience with the Unseelie High King, even if it meant fighting through a field of giant cats.
My hand was on the door, ready to jerk it open so I could stomp back in and write another note to send to Jasper, when someone called my name.
I turned, and through the San Francisco gloom strode just the man I’d wanted to talk to.
Chapter 15
“WHAT THE HELL?” I demanded, throwing my arms up in the air. “You sent me into a trap!”
He’d gotten my note quickly. Extremely quickly. Maybe he had some deal with the messenger ravens for express delivery.
“I sent another message warning you not to go,” Jasper sai
d, his tone annoyingly calm. He stopped a little farther away than was necessary, considering our history up to this point. Clearly, he was reluctant to get in the way of my sputtering wrath. “You must not have gotten it.”
I huffed and dropped my hands to my sides. He moved a couple of steps closer.
“There was an attack on the fortress,” I said. “That probably caused some delays.”
I’d likely disappeared through the doorway to the Cait Sidhe kingdom before anyone could find me to deliver Jasper’s second note.
“What happened in the kingdom of cats?” he asked.
I recounted how I’d nearly been attacked by giant felines. I also relayed what Lochlyn had told me about the unnaturally large beasts being imposters. I should have realized they weren’t true Cait Sidhe. The cat Fae could be many things but weren’t generally aggressive, especially not in packs like the one that had surrounded me.
“So, you heard Finvarra is behind the servitors?” I asked. I pressed a hand into the middle of my stomach.
“I’ve heard whispers, and it does make sense. Finvarra is very powerful, and he’s Daoine Sidhe. Perhaps his magic combined with his shifter blood gives him the unique ability to control so many servitors.”
I’d basically come to the same conclusion.
“That’s means you’re Daoine Sidhe,” I said. There was an accusing tone to my voice that I couldn’t hold back. I was still pissed. “You can’t shift, can you?”
He laughed sharply. “No, not that I’m aware. My mother is mostly Duergar and New Garg. I obviously take after her.”
I peered at him, suddenly more wary than angry. “How did you know that I shouldn’t go? What tipped you off?”
“I had ravens watching the Cait Sidhe doorway,” he said.
Okay. I should have thought of that on my own.
I crossed my arms. “And why would we go to the Seelie kingdom of cats to meet with the Unseelie High King?”
