“The three of us, who?” demanded Carmine. He sounded distinctly alarmed.
“You, me, the big man,” said Padraig, with a sharp look at him.
“I’m not fighting!” said Carmine frankly. “Look at Barric’s face! I’m not running that risk!”
Kako spluttered with laughter and launched herself from the window, wings fluttering into being and scales rippling over her body in the change. Rafiq followed close behind as Fancy said calmly: “He can’t fight to save his life.”
“Literally.”
“Yes, literally,” Fancy agreed. She withdrew her two long knives from the back of her jerkin, as slender and deadly as she herself. She smiled tranquilly at Padraig and Barric and added: “Carmine, climb out the window with Dion. In quarters this close, if I cut you it will almost be an accident.”
“This is why people aren’t sure you love me,” said Carmine; but he joined Dion outside on the roof.
“You’d better give me the shards, too,” said Fancy to Dion. “I don’t know how accurately that human is following us, but I’d rather they thought we’re all in the room.”
Barric set himself by the main door, Padraig by the connecting door that led down to the servants’ quarters, and Fancy took her stance in the centre of the room, her back just slightly to Carmine and Dion. Dion watched her sadly, envious of her strong, graceful stance.
“This ought to be good,” said Carmine, hanging blithely from the window frame. To Dion’s astonishment, he didn’t seem at all concerned about those of the group who were in the room.
“Why so glum, Princess?”
Dion stared at him. “Aren’t you afraid for her?”
“For Fancy? Have you seen her fight?”
“Well, yes,” admitted Dion. She knew exactly how well both Padraig and Barric fought, and she was still sick from terror that they would die this time. “But–”
“No buts,” said Carmine. “That’s the way to madness. Now I could be in there fighting, but I’d only be in Fancy’s way and that would annoy her. Out here I can worry, but I find it more profitable to take in the beauty of her swordplay. And so much easier on the heart, too!”
“I suppose,” said Dion. Still, Carmine’s eyes honed in on Fancy as soon as the sound of assault began on the first door. Her own eyes went immediately to Padraig, and then to Barric; sick, anxious, and not entirely certain which way to look.
Barric’s door was breached first. Dion jumped and made a small sound despite herself, but Barric only spun more lightly on his toes than anyone his size should have been able to move, sending the first Fae on through to Fancy. Fancy’s blades crossed in a swift, decisive moment, and a Fae head went rolling.
“Beautiful!” said Carmine appreciatively, but Dion saw crimson magic licking around the fingers that had clenched involuntarily. Outside, Kako and Rafiq wheeled against the sky, diving lightning-fast through the houses to snatch the guarding Fae from the streets one by one; silent and deadly. Dion didn’t see where they took the Fae, but this time there were no bloody heads or dismembered corpses dropping from the sky. The next time she looked down at the street it was empty of Fae.
The sound of splintering wood brought her attention back to the common-room: Padraig’s door had split. He ducked, avoiding flying splinters of wood and the longsword that swiftly followed, and battered the longsword into the wreckage of the door with his hammer. Dion heard the furious sound of Fae swearing as the Fae on the other side of the half-broken door tried to wrench his longsword from the ruins.
“That’ll teach you to bring a longsword to an indoor fight,” Padraig advised the Fae, through the splintered door. Dion, her gaze winging to Barric, saw that he hadn’t even drawn his massive greatsword: he was fighting hand to hand with a long knife and whichever of his throwing knives first came to hand. When neither of those was viable, he was punching the unhelmeted Fae. His knuckles were battered and slightly bloody, but Dion couldn’t tell if the blood was his, or that of the Fae he had hit.
The fighting was at first reasonably orderly: the doors meant that the Fae could only attack one by one, and both Barric and Padraig disposed of those tidy attacks swiftly. Then, as the Fae began to apply their magical talents to breaking into the room, portions of the walls began to disappear and Fancy began to work in good earnest, dancing back and forth between Barric and Padraig.
“I don’t want to watch this,” said Dion, in sudden decision. “Let’s go find the shard. Where do you think they’ve got it?”
“Downstairs, I suspect,” said Carmine. He hissed between his teeth as a Fae dagger came far too close to Fancy’s left eye, his fingers white about the windowsill. “If you’ve got a mind to find it, I’ll come with you.”
“All right,” Dion said. The common-room was rapidly descending into a tight, mad, dangerous melee; and each time she saw Fancy slip a little in the blood that was slicked below her soft boots, she wondered if this was the moment she would throw up.
“After you, Princess,” said Carmine. He offered Dion one arm and carefully lowered her until she could drop to the ground, then followed swiftly.
They re-entered the inn by the kitchen door. It was empty and in a state of considerable disorder, as though the maid and cook had been chased out in something of a hurry. As they approached the swinging door to the taproom, Dion caught at Carmine’s sleeve and whispered: “It’s in there.”
Even without her own shard to pinpoint the other, she could sense the unmistakeably strong Fae magic that emanated from the taproom.
Carmine was already nodding. “I know,” he said. She saw a brief flash of uncertainty in his eyes, but it was gone almost immediately. He winked at her and threw open the swinging door to the taproom. There were two Fae in the room; one of them sitting at his ease with the shard resting on his knee, and the other squarely between his companion and the door. There was no sign of the human who had led them, and Dion was caught between hope that they had merely sent him on his way and dread that his corpse was lying somewhere around the inn.
“Just imagine!” said the Fae who was standing. “The banished princess of Llassar, here in Shinpo!”
“I’m flattered, but should you invest in a pair of glasses?” said Carmine. “I may be beautiful, but I’m not quite feminine.”
The seated Fae gave them both a look of disgust. “You fool. Have you tired of living?”
“That’s a question you should be asking your friends upstairs, I think,” said Carmine. He was making small, flicking motions behind his back at Dion, his fingers dripping with scarlet magic. Instead of heeding them, Dion took her place beside him.
The seated Fae smiled at her, his beautiful face cold and smooth. “You shouldn’t have wandered from home, daughter of Ywain. Have you heard the reports of your sister? The skirmishes are not going well for her, but there are consolations. They’re calling her Aerwn ferch Pobl, daughter of the people. Even if events turn as you wish, she’s stolen your throne.”
“It never was mine,” said Dion. “And you’re the fool if you think that matters. Give us the shard.”
“I think not,” said the Fae who was standing. There was a steely slither, and his gold-tinted Fae blades were there in each hand, light and comfortable. He didn’t give either Dion or Carmine a chance to react; he simply lunged, point high and deadly. Dion threw up her hand, manipulating the air currents to tilt it higher still, and it hissed past her ear. The other blade slicked back toward them, but it met Carmine instead of Dion. Dion, stumbling back from a decided shove from Carmine’s crimson magic, saw it slice along his abdomen, severing shirt and skin alike, and heard the groan he gave. It made her realise that the shuffle of the Fae’s feet, the sweep of his blade, and Carmine’s panting breath were the only sounds she had heard since the Fae had first struck. The clanks and thumps from upstairs had ceased entirely. Dion threw a sharp edge of magic, turning aside the Fae’s blade as he brought it back on Carmine, and ducked beneath the attack he directed at her. The Fae ha
d on magic-repellent armour, which made her feel queasy; but when it occurred to her that neither of his swords were protected, she threw them toward the ceiling.
The standing Fae was thrown to the ceiling with his swords and pinned there by their hilts. He spat a series of poisonous spells at Dion, who deflected them with a spinning web of magic that caught each one and flicked it away safely.
The other Fae stood at last, gracefully, his beautiful hands spread from his sides. He had no armour on at all, and no weapons except a small dagger. Dion experienced a sinking feeling that suggested this Fae only bare of weapons because he didn’t need them.
Carmine seemed to have the same idea. He murmured: “Offence or defence?”
“Defence,” said Dion, and threw up a shield just in time. The Fae’s magic struck it with shattering force, throwing her backwards, and Carmine caught her around the waist.
“We’ll dance another time, shall we?” he said. And then: “Oh, just in time! Reinforcements!”
Barric was looming, huge and deadly, behind the Fae. He must have come down the stairs. Dion saw the Fae smiling just before he whirled, a deadly shaft of magic singing from his fingers at Barric, and screamed. There was an instant between her understanding and the moment she felt the burn of death magic searing her fingertips, unasked and unexpected. A shard of obsidian sliced through the Fae from navel to neck, tearing his torso in half. He made a rather peculiar noise, and dropped to his knees, in a splattering of blood and gore.
“Oh, beautifully done!” said Carmine, with relish. “Whoops, down, Princess!”
Dion was tackled to the ground, the hair on the back of her head prickling as a sharp-edged spell ripped past. Instinctively recoiling from the body of the Fae she had killed, she saw Barric tearing the other from the ceiling by the neck. There was a sickening kind of snap that seemed to stick in her mind, and then Padraig was lifting her to her feet.
“Cherry? Cherry, are you well?”
Dion looked into his concerned eyes and then down at her hands. It felt like they should be burned, but they were only shaking. “Yes. Um. I killed him.”
“Beautiful job, too,” said Fancy, observing the dead Fae with an impartial eye. “A bit messy, but effective. Carmine, you’ll have to take your shirt off.”
“Darling, you had only to ask,” said Carmine immediately. He was bleeding a little, but not seriously. To Dion, he said: “You’re a trifle pale, Princess.”
“S-so are you,” said Dion, fighting with a sob that wanted to come out. “Thanks for saving my life.”
“Let’s just say I was repaying the favour,” Carmine said, winking at her. “For all the good it did me– at this rate, I’ll be the only one without a kill to my name.”
“You can have mine,” said Dion, shuddering. “I don’t want it.”
“Lively things, these shards,” said Carmine. He had put on another shirt, but as usual it wasn’t properly laced and he was looking very heroic and pale. “Following us around wherever we go.”
“It’s all rather nice, isn’t it?” said Fancy. “We could have stayed where we were and the shards would have come to us. A bit of inconvenience, a few scratches–”
“Scratches!” said Carmine, almost beside himself. “My darling cactus, I refuse to have my life-threatening wound dismissed as a scratch!”
“Oh, but it makes you look so dashing!” Fancy said, grinning.
“Only if he goes around shirtless all the time,” Dion said dispassionately.
“He does,” said Fancy and Padraig at the same time.
“Time to go,” said Kako, popping her head in around the door. “Fae corps are closing in fast from the next town.”
“Where next?” said Padraig, when they were all on the street. Everyone seemed to take it for granted that Dion and Kako were leading; and they had each started out in the same direction without so much as a shared glance. “We shouldn’t be out on the streets, think on.”
“There’s another shard toward the north-east,” said Dion, and Kako silently assented. “In Illisr. But if the Fae have started using human guides–”
“We’re going to have to be more careful.”
Dion, exchanging a glance with Kako, said: “What about the other one?”
Barric frowned. “What other one?”
“We can sense another shard: Montalier, I think,” said Kako. “It’s stronger than the other ones. Don’t you think, Dion?”
“It’s stronger,” agreed Dion. “Montalier or Illisr first?”
“Illisr,” said Kako and Rafiq together.
“Why Illisr?”
“It’s quicker,” said Rafiq. “Not if you travel by land, but on the wing it’s quicker to go from here to Illisr and then on to Montalier.”
“What I want to know,” said Kako; “Is why everything is so wonderfully convenient? My shard didn’t start being attracted to other shards until about five weeks ago, which coincided marvellously with the attack on the castle. I suppose what I’m really wondering is, is this another Fae trick? If they can use the shards to find us by using humans to track us, could it be that they’re the ones who made the shards so suddenly easy to find? I find it highly suspicious that the shards only became drawn to each other when we began to search for them.”
“So do I,” said Fancy, but Padraig said: “It wasn’t the Fae. The shards began to be attracted to each other as soon as Dion came of age, isn’t that right, cherry? Your seventeenth birthday fell five weeks ago just before I met you in Bithywis.”
“Well, someone slotted you into the prophecy very nicely!” said Kako, unerringly leading the way through a thin gap between someone’s house and an orchard wall. It opened onto a stretch of flat, soggy ground that was more than slightly squishy. “Just like a handy little cog in a big, complicated machine.”
Fancy looked slightly horrified, but Dion laughed. “It is a bit like that.”
“Come now, cherry,” said Padraig, swinging her hand. “Surely not a cog! The heart-mechanism, think on!”
“Yes, but that doesn’t work so well as an analogy,” Kako pointed out. “Cogs can be slipped in and out. The heart-mechanism doesn’t get slotted in: it’s worked on in the machine and can’t be removed.”
“Then I stand by my remarks,” said Padraig loftily.
“As far as I know, I could be removable,” Dion said. “Suppose I’d died before my seventeenth birthday? Aerwn is Ywain’s daughter, too: wouldn’t the prophecy just slot her in instead of me?”
“The real question is, why didn’t you die before your seventeenth birthday?” said Fancy unexpectedly. “If I were the Fae, I wouldn’t want a potential little Ywain’s daughter running around.”
“Do you know,” said Dion slowly; “I think they didn’t. But I think they thought Aerwn was Ywain’s daughter. She was the one always pushing and rebelling, and she was the one they always went after. They had us thinking she was mentally unstable for years!” She stopped at the thought, a fresh poniard of horror and self-blame lancing her heart. How much had Aerwn suffered not just because of Dion’s inability to believe her, but because of Dion’s self?
Padraig’s blue eyes glanced at her. “Aerwn is mentally unstable,” he said, with an easy grin. “She turned out remarkably well for it.”
“What’s done is done,” said Barric: the first he had spoken in some time. Dion wondered anxiously if he had been made to feel uncomfortable by the comparison of herself to a cog, considering his part in the prophecy and her involvement in it; and had another twinge of self-blame. “You didn’t die and the prophecy will be fulfilled. There’s no use trying to change the course of history.”
“Oh, that’s rich!” said Carmine, his eyes dancing. “A Guardian saying that there’s no use trying to change history!”
Barric gave him a look. “We’d best be taking to the sky. Time is not our friend.”
“Oh, and that reminds me,” said Kako. She looked perfectly innocent, but both Barric and Carmine looked at her narro
wly.
“What reminds you?” asked Carmine, with deep foreboding.
“What Barric said about not being friends,” explained Kako. “Well, neither is Illisr. Not to Rafiq and me, anyway. I slightly killed one of their princes while I was trying to get Rafiq out of his clutches, so Illisr isn’t the best place for him to be. Once we’re within sniff of the border patrols we’ll have to change back to our human forms. It’ll take longer to get there, but at least you won’t find yourselves captured because of us.”
Barric nodded. “Is there anything else we should know about Illisr?”
“Apart from it being a nasty place to stay and peopled by a race only just less inclined to think themselves superior to everyone else than the Fae? No.”
“And are there any other countries that want to capture or kill you on sight?”
“Wait, I want to know how you can slightly kill a prince,” protested Fancy.
“No,” said Kako sunnily. “Everyone else adores us. Well, they adore me: they love Rafiq. That’s what happens when you’re ridiculously good looking and the only exotic man in a three-country span.”
To Dion’s huge delight, this matter-of-fact statement sent blush winging across Rafiq’s face. It was difficult to see against the darkness of his skin, but she saw it rising in his neck and in the glow of his face, and when he saw her watching he immediately began to change to his dragon form.
Kako only laughed. “That’s the quickest way I know to make him change,” she said.
“Do we have to compliment you, or will you change by yourself?” asked Carmine.
“Oh no,” said Kako, with a rather dragonish grin. “You only have to make me angry.”
Barric’s scar pulled sidewise in a brief smile. “Are there any other complications we should know about?”
“We should be fine, so long as we stay out of the capital,” said Kako, beginning to ripple into her dragon form in an iridescence of scales. “But you know what they say about the Unprepared being the Fools of the Court of Reason.”
Shards of a Broken Sword Page 36
