by Voss Foster
"N'Gutta of Droshheim. Office of Preternatural Affairs, back in the Mundane."
Again, no way to see this person's face, but there was a little pause that belied a less than pleasant response to that. "Well, this way." Cold voice also gave away just how much the guards didn't seem to like that. Guess it wasn't just the royal family.
But the two guards stepped aside and let us pass. I was all about letting Gutt go on this bridge first. It was basically a slick ramp leading up the ten foot ascension to the palace doors bobbing and floating in the distance. And it was quite a distance there. It had to be, otherwise it would have been impossibly steep. Once I saw it not buckle under his three hundred some-odd pounds, I figured I was pretty safe to head over.
About halfway across, Gutt started talking again. "Don't let the demeanor of anyone in the palace throw you off. Most of them are no more put off by humans than you are by preets, but they know that the king and queen will be unhappy about this meeting. We get to leave them here all riled up. The palace staff have to deal with them once we've left."
It made sense, and when it came to palace life, Gutt may not have been a firsthand source, but he knew a hell of a lot more about it than I did. Triply so when it came to the Hidden Kingdoms.
We made it to the palace. The glass here had been sculpted into rough shapes of faces. Couldn't tell if they were screaming or shouting praises to the skies. Or hell, maybe they weren't faces at all and I was just looking into it too deep, trying to find something. Just like seeing faces in TV static, back when we actually had TV static.
As we stood there, the two massive glass doors swung open. Fine, sparkling dust flew up where the doors scraped against the floor. I covered my eyes, knowing that ground up glass would be nothing but bad news. But still, I peeked. I shouldn't have, but I did, and I watched the diamond snow falling down. This was one hell of a sight, and still not what I thought I would get from a desert kingdom.
Once it finished opening and the fine razor-dust settled, I dropped my hand. That powder covered the bridge and the plateau in front of the doors, spilling slightly inside the palace.
And inside the palace was a whole different level of insanity. Still all glass, still all sorts of different, intense hues, but if I wasn't staring directly at them, they seemed to shift and spin, a fluid color pattern spread around a truly massive foyer.
Gutt shrugged. "Wait until you see the throne room."
He walked in, and I followed behind. I figured he had to know where he was going. Within the glass, I was expecting the sweltering heat to multiply ten-fold. Instead, it was cool and slightly humid. A nice change, even if the desert wasn't nearly as horrid and oppressive as I'd expected.
The doors slid closed behind us, a high-pitched scraping. It was only then, focusing on the vibrations traveling through the floor, that I remembered we were floating. But props to me, I didn't throw up and I didn't shit myself. We weren't sinking from the weight of two extra people, the glass wasn't cracking underfoot. It seemed like this palace was actually a little bit more sturdy than it should have been. Ten points for magically created glass.
Gutt walked to the left, bypassing the free-floating stairs that spiraled up and out of sight in the center of the room, and going for a rather understated door of deep, cobalt blue. This one definitely had been formed, delicate flowers festooning it. Even the knob was glass.
"Is it smart to just walk in unannounced?"
Gutt snorted. "We passed those guards five minutes ago, and the doors opened before us. We are officially announced."
He turned the knob and pushed forward. I'd assumed this was the throne room, but the two conjoined thrones on the far wall kind of eliminated any potential doubt. The room itself was fairly small, not the purely massive affair of the royal palace as a whole. Maybe twelve foot ceilings, vaulted, shifting subtly from indigo at the top to a pale cornflower blue at the floor, all the way into a scar of bright white glass moving dead center from the door to the space between the two thrones.
Or one throne? The backs of the chairs flowed into a rainbow arc that connected them into a single unit. And a pair of figures sat on the two joined thrones. Finally, there was something not glass in the palace. The king and queen sat on golden cushions, and they were draped from head to foot in equally golden brocade. She sat on the left, a sorceress with fine lines around bright green eyes, and skin that flaked, papery and dry. He sat on the right, and I couldn’t place a race to him. Long, black hair that ran down his front in two braids. His skin was a charcoal gray, eyes bright gold to match the robes covering his body. And smoke. Smoke rose in faint white wisps from his body, leaving the air around him slightly hazy.
"A djinn." Gutt whispered it to me as he started on his way up to the thrones. "Queen Levat married him after her father died."
We were now close enough they could hear us, so Gutt stopped talking. Once we made it to the foot of their dais, Gutt stopped and took a knee. I followed suit.
After a few moments, Queen Levat's voice rasped out, slightly wooden and gruff, echoing just a little in the wide-open throne room. With everything glass, the echo was slightly more musical than her actual voice, riding just south of being pleasant. "Visitors from the Mundane. Why?"
Gutt rose and, after hesitating a moment, I followed. "Your highness. I am N'Gutta of Droshheim. I work with the Office of Preternatural Affairs in the Mundane, and we need assistance from the house of Al-Sekar."
The king shifted in his seat, smoke billowing out of his robes when he lifted himself off the cushion. "Our assistance? With human problems?" His voice was just as wispy as the smoke coming off his body, so quiet it didn't echo, in spite of the massive room.
"Not human problems, King Shivan. Young elementals, and at least three of them originated in Al-Sekar."
"Children." King Shivan shook his head, eyes pointed down. "We'll certainly do what we can, but this is a problem on Earth, not in our Kingdom. Chief among the issues with our assistance is our lack of power in the Mundane. There is no reason for anyone to honor our rule outside of the Hidden Kingdoms."
"We just need information." Gutt nodded. "If I may be so bold, could we retire to your offices for this discussion? To be sure there's no interruptions. Some of this information is somewhat sensitive. And unpleasant."
The king and queen looked to each other, muttering so softly I couldn't make it out standing in front of them. Then Queen Levat nodded. "Our offices. Behind the thrones."
The two of them rose and glided their way to a small door in the back of the room. King Shivan opened it and gestured his wife through, then entered himself. The two of us brought up the rear. I closed the door behind me.
The offices were considerably smaller, but still half again the size of my first apartment. A large glass desk sat in the center of the room, and fabric-lined shelves wound around the room, displaying tomes and tablets and scrolls, each of them seeming to glow. Everything in the fucking Kingdoms glowed.
Gutt and I settled into the two chairs on this side of the desk, the king and queen already behind it. Surprisingly, the seats weren't all that uncomfortable. I guess magic plus royal privilege could get a hell of a lot done.
"Now, what is this about?" Queen Levat folded her hands gently on top of the desk. "Our people, and elemental children?"
Gutt nodded. "There has been a rash of kidnappings, as well as murders and attempted murders, of young elementals."
"And one of the surviving victims is the son of some of your…covert operations people." I sighed. "Which can't be good news for any of us."
“Covert operations.” Queen Levat's eyebrows met in the middle of her forehead, already rough and flaky skin wrinkling even more. “That seems as though it could be concerning. Is the child all right?"
"He's fine. He had enough control over the magic that he was merely afflicted with magical overload sickness, and he was able to recover." Gutt nodded grimly, letting that hang in the air. He could say it was "merely" magical ov
erload sickness, and it was great that Tekar hadn't succumbed to the worst of it, but everyone in that room—including myself—knew that wasn't good news. I saw what happened to Gutt when he had the same thing happen to him in Central Park. He was knocked unconscious, and that was considered a mild case. So hopefully letting it sit in the air would help drive home the severity, here.
But we also had a timeline, and God only knew when the kidnappers would move on from Vermont and make all of our jobs a hell of a lot harder. "Your highness, Queen Levat, we need to know if there has been anything going on in Al-Sekar lately," I said. "Any social upheaval or outside attacks or threats. Anything that could possibly link back into these children."
She shook her head. "Nothing that I am aware of, and I'm aware of most things that happen in my Kingdom."
"Any unrest at all?" Gutt leaned in. "It could be a quiet sort of thing at this point. But they are weaponizing the elemental children, your highness. Forcibly unsealing them in order to spread damage."
More smoke poured from under King Shivan's robes, and Queen Levat's already sickly, sallow skin went paper white, thin blue veins clearly visible across her forehead and down onto the apples of her cheeks. So they were at least paying attention.
King Shivan cleared his throat with a puff of flame before finally responding. "What numbers are you dealing with?"
Gutt sighed. "Dozens unaccounted for at the moment."
Shivan's hand raised to his mouth. Levat stayed still, barely even opening her mouth when she spoke. "Believe me, no one wants this fate. For those children, or for the people of Al-Sekar." Her voice smoothed into familiar, practiced tones. "Alas, we know nothing that could be of import in this matter."
Oh, she was playing a politician. When it came to catching the bad guys, I didn't have much time for politicians or their games. "Your highness, if there's anything you're not telling us—"
"I resent deeply that accusation, Agent Rourke." Her lips curled into a sneer, twisting her already frankly horrifying face into a visage of pure disgust. "To imply that I or my husband would hold back any information in this matter is appalling, and it speaks to the sort of behavior that so defines the Mundane. Perhaps you would allow such things to occur and say nothing, but we are…above that."
Oh. Now she was going to accuse me personally of letting harm come to these kids. "Listen, your highness. This isn't my first go around the block. I killed that stupid death snake you all decided to keep locked up. I'm not here to play games with you and your Kingdom." I kept waiting for Gutt to step in and save me from myself, but that didn't seem to be on his mind in the slightest. Honestly? Fine by me. "I think you're hiding something from us."
"And there's no way you could ever prove such an outrageous claim." She didn't once raise her voice, still spoke so calmly I wanted to just punch her right in the face. Wouldn't be the first time I'd put the smackdown on a sorcerer who annoyed me. She leveled her eyes straight at me, and there was something there, in the way her pupils widened and her eyelids shifted. Fear. She was afraid. I'd put money on that.
But nobody told her voice. "And I wouldn't brag about slaying Jörmungandr. We handled it civilly."
"Locking it up and waiting for it to break loose, knowing you had no way to bind it again. Perfect planning."
"Just because we do not have your penchant for violence—"
"Dash." Gutt's voice broke through the argument. I turned to see him holding a small wooden disk. It pulsed red in his hand.
I scooted in closer. "Magical lie detector?"
"It's an emergency communicator to get messages between the Mundane and the Kingdoms."
Shit. If someone had bothered to use that, something had gone very wrong. "What's the story?"
"They aren't that advanced. It's just means we need to return." He snapped his hand in a circle through the air and summoned the shimmering portal.
"Be careful in the Mundane," said Queen Levat, focused wholly on Gutt. "It's a dangerous place with dangerous people."
Thick hand on my shoulder, Gutt led me through the portal before I could retort. We landed back in the parking lot of the Burlington PD just in time to almost knock Swift flat on his ass. He stumbled back, then nodded. "Good. I won't have to call Zar."
"What's the issue?" Gutt displayed the communicator, still glowing. "Kimmy said we were needed."
"You are. We've got a situation in a preet community up north of here. Somebody saw an unaccounted for elemental child, and with the way things have been progressing, they decided to call it in."
Another kid. Maybe we could save them. Maybe we could catch whoever had them there. Maybe we could get some of the answers the royal family of Al-Sekar wasn't willing to share.
But we couldn't do any of that standing around here. "Let's go, then."
Chapter Eight
After a quick chat between Gutt and Swift, Gutt summoned us up a new portal, and in we went. The bright, beautiful colors of the Kingdoms gave way to a dingy, slightly run-down trailer park. Slightly run-down, very loud trailer park. People were shouting back and forth from porch to porch. Most of them were elementals, though a few other preets were sprinkled into the mix. Including a gorgon, and they almost never lived in Mundane society. They found a little too much prejudice. Or a lot too much prejudice. That whole Medusa thing, even unjustified, kind of put a damper on their relationship with humanity.
But then, this also wasn't really Mundane society they were living in here. Every trailer around me had vestiges of the Hidden Kingdoms. There were the obvious ones, where elementals shouted to each other on their porches and small decorations floated and sparked off energy, and the more subtle. A few flags bearing royal seals I recognized, or statues to various preet heroes tucked off in the corner of the lawn.
This was…the little Kingdoms. A weird little Vermont Chinatown specifically for preets. Admittedly, I was from Rhode Island. We didn't have a ton of preets there. But I'd never seen anything like this, and I'd only ever heard about it in places like Minneapolis, where they first came through in the US.
But here it was. And I was in it. Little old human me with no magic to speak of and just a gun in a holster if shit really went wrong.
Swift came out behind me, and Gutt in the rear to close up the portal. Swift immediately scanned the area. "All right, nothing obvious." He squinted at one of the houses nearby. 'That's where the call came from."
We all looked at each other and nodded. Gutt took the lead, and he held his hands at his sides, fingers slowly curling and uncurling in waves. The subtle scent of ozone tickled my nose. He was ready to fire off some magic if need be. Which was good, because I sure as hell wasn't. I kept my hand near my Glock, but hopefully not so near that it would set anyone off. The preets in this area already didn't trust law enforcement. If we came at them armed, we were fucked.
Gutt rapped on the bright red door. "This is Agent N'Gutta of Droshheim from the Office of Preternatural Affairs. We are responding to a call."
The door flung open on a satyr. He had black fur and deep brown skin, streaks of silver running through his hair, his beard, and partway down toward his rump. I knew I was supposed to be here for all preets, and I would do my duty no matter what…but those goat eyes always freaked me out.
"You came. Good. Good." He clopped out on well-polished hooves and pointed down the road and across to a small white trailer with brown trim. Completely innocuous. "I think I saw a plant elemental going that way. A young one. He seemed…drunk. I don't know exactly, but there was something not right with him." His voice quivered, and neat white teeth chattered off themselves. Goosebumps raised on his shoulders and neck. "There's been so much happening with them…"
"You made the right call." Swift, if he was bothered at all by the goat eyes, didn't show it. All calm, all aloof, all professional. "Get back inside. We'll see what's happening."
The trailer off in the distance quivered. The walls bulged out. "Guys. We have a situation." I was already on the mov
e, but just to punctuate my comment, a huge green vine burst through the nearest window, shattering glass across the ground as it snaked up and around the house like a giant boa constrictor.
The footsteps behind me told me I at least wasn't going in alone. I pulled my gun from my holster as I ran toward the house. More vines burst through, but it was slow. One here, one there. There were only half a dozen through the walls when I got to the door. I shouldered my way in. I knew, once again, this was a stupid decision. Dying to try and…do nothing, really. I couldn't stop the magic, and if Gutt didn't know how to unseal an elemental, no way he knew how to seal one either. For a fleeting moment, I thought I might have to shoot the kid, but I pushed that aside. I wouldn't. I. Would. Not.
Flowering vines covered the floors, the walls, and they continued to writhe and grow and spread even as I walked through them. Gutt was directly behind me, but when I looked back, he was struggling to even move because of the vines and his sheer size. And he blocked the doorway so Swift couldn't get through. "Just go, Dash! Go!"
I didn't need telling twice. I passed one body, vines piercing through the elf's chest and abdomen. Bloodied vines, still growing through the corpse. That was a hell of a lot worse than the ice, that was for damn sure.
A vine writhed by my ankle and I jumped away, heart in my throat. In the thick of the magical underbrush bullshit, my decision somehow looked even stupider than it had before. The trailer was sparsely decorated, from what I could see. Other than the creeping death vines that kept tickling my ankles. I rounded the corner into the kitchen and…
The kid, probably about thirteen or fourteen, struggling, scratching at his chest and his abdomen through a pinstriped button down, face screwed up in silent agony. His legs quaked, knees vibrated. I almost didn't look around the rest of the room, it was so…chilling. His moss green skin wrinkled and cragged while vines sprouted in a circle around him. Like something was physically sucking everything out of him.
But I did finally take in the room, and I saw it. I saw them. I saw him. Obviously a preet, if only because he was obviously not a human, but I couldn't place the race for the life of me. Hell, he could have been a she, or some other gender entirely. But built like a human male, probably five foot eleven, broad shouldered, wide-set stance. And his eyes. I locked onto his eyes, stared into the acrid yellow iris and the pupil that just wasn't quite round. More like someone had dropped ink from up high and it splattered, leaving the edges wavy and variable.
