“Neat trick, isn’t it?” said Kako, leaping lightly back onto the balcony. “That’s another thing I’ve got theories about, but what with the shards and everything, I haven’t had time to explore it. Come on, you two. We’re launching from the roof, if you don’t mind. I’m not as strong as Rafiq.”
Carmine and Fancy followed her effortlessly as Barric wedged himself behind Dion, his huge arms around both her and Padraig. Dion, her own arms wrapped so tightly around Padraig that they ached, lurched back into Barric’s chest as Rafiq began a crawling climb straight up one of the houses. When his wings were free, he sprang up and away from the wall, sending plaster and brick-dust showering into the cobbles below. Barric’s arms tightened briefly, but when Rafiq’s flight evened out, one of his hands spread wide across Padraig’s shoulder, covering bloody cloth and flesh alike.
Dion, her eyes still hot with tears, held Padraig tightly and watched as Barric’s magic flowed into his chest. It trickled out bit by bit, carefully and slowly, as Illisr passed swiftly beneath them in indistinguishable darkness.
When at last the trickle of magic cease, Dion tilted her head back to look nervously at Barric. “Is– is he–”
“He’ll live,” said Barric. “For now. There’s a little bleeding inside that I haven’t been able to stop, but I’ll look at it again when he’s rested.”
It wasn’t until long after the ache in Dion’s arms dulled to numbness that a twin gleam of sapphire in the moonlight caught her attention. Padraig’s eyes had opened a slit.
“You’re a pleasant sight to wake up to,” he murmured. “Cherry, did you rescue me again? Sure, I’m beginning to feel that I might be a damsel in distress!”
Dion dropped her head into his healthy shoulder, allowing the glad tears to catch warmly in his collar. “You are,” she said; and in her relief, with a burr in her voice that might have been either a laugh or a sob, she added: “It’s a good thing you’re so pretty.”
Padraig spluttered a laugh to the moon, and as the lights of the town behind them faded to a single speck of light, Fancy’s voice, carrying clearly, said: “Don’t try to cuddle me, Carmine; you smell like cabbage.”
Getting into Montalier unseen was difficult: Montalier’s army were clearly on high alert, and the borders were not only patrolled but properly guarded. Kako and Rafiq had to fly so high in an effort to avoid notice that their human passengers became dangerously cold and short of breath.
Getting into Montalier’s capital city was even harder: the guards were on the lookout for Fae, both Seelie and Unseelie, and it took a swift bit of magic on Dion’s part to bring Padraig through unnoticed. Barric, she saw, didn’t have a similar problem. Apparently it wasn’t just Dion who didn’t recognised his magic as Fae.
But it wasn’t until they had traced the shard through the city streets that the full difficulty of their situation burst upon them.
“Oh,” said Kako. “That’s really unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate!” Dion said, dropping her pack in despair. “The shard is in the castle. How are we supposed to get into the castle?”
“You’re a princess, cherry,” said Padraig, who was still rather pale. “Be regal. Demand an audience.”
“That won’t work,” said Dion, at the same time that Barric said simply: “No.”
“Of course it will,” Carmine said. He looked surprised. “They’re not the sort to stand on ceremony.”
“You didn’t see the letter my father sent Montalier when they invited me for a month-long visit,” Dion said gloomily. “Montalier has been the single biggest threat to the Fae invasion beside Avernse: I can’t see the king giving up their shard to the Princess Heir of the first country that dealt with the Fae. Why would they trust me?”
“And it’s no use looking at me,” said Kako. “My mother and elder sister have met the family, but I’ve never been here before. I haven’t even got a royal seal, if it comes to that.”
“And once they know we’re coming, we’ll lose our edge of surprise, think on,” said Padraig. “Dion’s in the right. We should try to steal it.”
“Hopefully without getting captured this time,” added Kako. “There are a lot of enchantments around the castle.”
“Dion and I will deal with those,” said Barric. He didn’t sound particularly worried; but then, he rarely did. Dion, who could also see the strength and the intricacy of the protective spells on the castle, was worried.
“Oh well,” said Carmine. He seemed to be highly amused, though Dion wasn’t quite sure why. “Why not, after all? It could be enjoyable to steal from Montalier.”
“Don’t enjoy yourself too much,” said Fancy, and Dion thought she heard an undercurrent of sharpness to the woman’s voice. What was that about?
“Fancy!” said Carmine, a bright glitter of delight in his eyes. “You do care!”
Fancy, her sensible face a little flushed, said: “Oh, just get on with the planning! Are we all to take part in this desperate venture?”
“The more the merrier, my darling; the more the merrier!”
“Yes,” said Dion. “Well, we’ll have to leave as soon as we’ve got it, won’t we? The Fae in Illisr said the fight in Llassar wasn’t going well, and we’ve already been too long about it all. We’ve still got another shard to find yet.”
“We stick together this time,” nodded Barric. “And if we’re to surmount the castle defences, we’ll need to take to the skies again.”
It wouldn’t have occurred to Dion that the wards around the castle would be any less stringent the higher they flew. Llassar—like Montalier, evidently—wasn’t used to the idea of aerial assault, and she was shocked beyond measure to find that there were gaps in the ward that birds could easily fly through. For all Dion knew, that’s what the gaps were for. But it was only the work of a few minutes to convince the wards that Kako and Rafiq were birds, albeit very large ones, and for the dragons to begin a silent descent toward the roof that was nearest to the shard.
“There’s a window open,” said Kako, when they were all safely on the roof.
“And a guard on the widow’s walk above,” Barric said softly. “Keep to the wall and keep your voices down.”
“Yes, but there’s a window open,” argued Kako. “Well, half a window, anyway; but if that’s not suspicious, I don’t know what is.”
“You sleep with the windows open,” pointed out Rafiq. “And it is the small half.”
“Yes, but I can turn into a dragon.”
“Maybe the person who sleeps in there can turn into a dragon,” said Carmine gaily. He had only grown merrier.
“It’s not a bedroom,” said Dion, who had been peering through the glass. “It’s more of a gallery.”
Fancy and Barric exchanged a glance, and Padraig said: “Suspicious, then. We’re agreed. Who’ll go in first?”
“I will,” said Dion. “No; listen to me. None of the men will fit, and if I get caught, well, like Padraig says: I’m a princess.”
“You might as well let her,” said Carmine. Of all the group, he was easily the most light-hearted. Dion wondered what he knew that the rest of them didn’t. “She’ll come to no harm in there.”
Barric thought about it while Padraig protested, and then said above Padraig’s objections: “All right. In you go.”
He lifted her carefully and helped her to slip through. Dion, feeling a lot less sure of herself than she pretended, looked back over her shoulder once. The sight of Barric’s huge shadow against the stars calmed her, and she stole further into the darkened room, her feet light against the carpeted floor. Where the single shard rested above her heart there was a decided warmth, a physical manifestation of the magical reaction she had been feeling ever since they had begun to seek shards. She stepped lightly across the floor, her senses open for both magical and physical traps, and passed through the door into the next room almost without pausing. The shard was further in. She was so intent on her steps that she didn’t feel the difference in the
air of the second room—the way that the darkness folded around a warmth in one corner—until a male voice said: “There’s nothing worth stealing in these rooms, you know.”
Dion started violently, her breath choking in the back of her throat, and gasped the first question that came to mind. “Then why are you here?”
She heard the sound of fingers snapping and the room lit softly from a globe that hovered above her head. The shadowed warmth proved to be a rather pleasant-faced man with kind eyes and dark hair that was silvering over his temples.
He said: “Althea thought someone would be along today. She didn’t want to frighten you, so here I am.”
Dion found herself coughing a small laugh. “I’m always frightened,” she said bleakly.
A smile spread over his face, making the same kind of lines by his eyes that Barric had. The twisting of fear in Dion’s stomach released its stranglehold at the sight of them, and she let out a shaky breath that she’d been holding.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “But we do have to talk.”
“Yes,” Dion agreed. “You said there’s nothing to steal in here, but you were waiting here. And you didn’t give me a proper answer, either. You know I came to steal the shard and I know the shard is here. Who are you?”
He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I really feel like I should be the one asking that question.”
“I’m Dion ferch Ywain,” said Dion baldly. “I’ve committed treason against the Crown and my sister is at war with our own parents. Stealing the shard from Montalier didn’t seem so bad after that.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t,” agreed the man. He bowed just deeply enough to indicate equal acknowledging equal. “I’m Markon. I’m the king around here.”
Dion’s mouth dropped open slightly and she scrambled into something that was half-curtsey, half-bow. “Oh! I’m s-so sorry! But we have to have the shard, your majesty! We can’t seal up the land without it!”
Markon’s face seemed to lighten. “I see. In that case, it’s probably best if you speak with my wife.”
“The enchantress,” said Dion, her throat a little dry. Her father had told her about the Avernsian enchantress– but then, he had told her a lot of things that weren’t true.
“That’s right. I’m afraid I can’t offer much help myself: I’m not very well educated when it comes to magic.”
“That’s quite all right,” Dion said, inanely polite. “I mean– is she awake?”
“I’d be surprised if she wasn’t listening from the next room, actually,” said Markon. He called out: “She’s supposed to be resting more than usual, but I’m not quite sure she knows how. You can come in now, dear.”
There was a dignified silence before the handle in the door behind him turned. A very pregnant young woman stepped briskly into the room, surprising Dion with her youthfulness. Dion glanced back at Markon in time to see the softer light that sprang to his eyes at the sight of the woman, and the deep delight of his smile. He looked as if he hadn’t seen her all day– or perhaps all week. Althea gave him back a prim look with her dark blue eyes dancing.
“Isn’t it lucky I was passing?” she said. She looked Dion up and down frankly, while Dion became very horribly aware of the Fae magic that curled tightly within Althea, then said unexpectedly: “It’s all right. It’s not mine. Well, it is, but I’m not Fae.”
Dion looked again, fascinated. “How? It’s– I mean, I can see it now, but how? How do you have Fae magic when you’re human?”
“I killed a Fae king and ran away from Faery when I was eighteen.” Althea stopped with a rather peculiar expression on her face, and pressed a hand to her side. When Markon stepped swiftly forward she smacked him in the stomach with the back of her hand. “Ow! Your daughter kicked me again.”
“She’s going to be just like her mother,” said Markon amiably. Dion was amused to see that he seemed to be quite used to being hit.
Althea, unashamed, continued to gaze at Dion. “So you’re Alawn ap Fane’s daughter.”
Dion grimaced minutely. “No. I’m Ywain’s daughter.”
Althea’s eyes rested on her thoughtfully. “That’s understandable, I suppose. I tried to arrange to visit you when I found out how much of Ywain’s magical line had passed on to you. Your father wasn’t very accommodating.”
“No, he isn’t,” said Dion slowly, remembering a night—almost faded to ancient nightmare now—when she had listened the same voice she had heard and loved for years declaring her guilt and judgement.
“It’s unfortunate,” Althea said. There was a line between her brows. “Very unfortunate. I’ve made a bit of a study of the shards in the last couple of years, and I have to say that the whole business seems to depend on very strict timing. How have you trained? Ywain’s daughter you may be, but if you haven’t been trained sufficiently before you try to seal up the land, it will probably do more harm than good to give you the shards.”
“Shards?” Dion, startled and joyful, knew a fierce relief. There wasn’t one more shard to find: Montalier had the last two! “You have more than one!”
Althea looked at Markon. He looked back at her and shrugged. “I’d like it to be remembered for posterity that I wasn’t the one who gave it away.”
Althea, with great dignity, said: “I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret. Dion has every right to know where the shards are. Do you have all the others?”
“Yes,” Dion said, nodding. It didn’t occur to her to hide anything from Althea. “We have all but your two.”
Markon folded his arms across his chest in interest. “Who is we?”
“There are seven of us. Two humans, two Fae, one Guardian, and two...well, I’m not sure if they’re dragon or human, actually.”
“Speaking hypothetically,” said Althea slowly; “what else would you need if we were to give you the last two shards? How do you intend to rejoin the blade?”
“We’d need the use of a forge. We bought our own blacksmith with us–”
“Coinnach’s son as well? Goodness me!”
“And I’ve been training since I was a child,” Dion added. Althea’s doubts had stung a little, despite Dion’s own insecurities.
Althea looked decidedly speculative. “Alawn’s daughter taught how to bind Faery? How did that come about?”
“One of the Guardians taught me. He’s– well, I’ve known him for quite a while now.”
“Oh, this just keeps getting more interesting!” cried Althea. “I can’t do anything with the shards, you see; it’s this Fae magic of mine. Not at all compatible. Well, you’d better invite the rest of your group in: I’m sure we can find somewhere for them all.”
“Invite– well– they’re–”
Markon, taking pity on her, said: “I think what Dion is trying to say is that the rest of her desperate ruffians are just outside the window in the other room.”
“They might as well come through the window, then,” said Althea practically. “It’ll be quicker than going around by the front entrance, anyway. You’ll have to tell me all about how you got past our security, by the way. I think Sal will be very interested to know about our gaping holes in security.”
“Well, that’s one way of putting it,” said Markon, starting across the room. Dion instinctively froze, and though she immediately flushed and corrected the rigidity of her stance, Markon slowed his pace. “Will you lead the way, or shall I?”
Ashamed of herself, Dion said: “I’d better. Barric will be worried if he doesn’t see me first.” She turned her back on them very deliberately: it would have been rude in any other context, but she was quite sure that Althea and Markon would see it for the expression of trust that it was. The rooms didn’t seem quite so large or so dangerous now that they were gently lit, and Dion was back at the window in mere moments. She jumped herself up onto the windowsill, half in and half out, and looked around anxiously.
“Barric?”
“I’m here.”
“We’ve been invited
in.”
Barric stared at her, a line between his brows; then nodded. He disappeared back into the shadows, and Dion opened the larger, lower part of the window in readiness. A moment later Kako trod lightly along the ledge, Rafiq a dark shadow close behind her. She nodded at Althea and Markon as she slipped through the window, entirely at her ease. The king and queen took the invasion with unimpaired good humour, but when Carmine entered the room with a cheerfully irreverent: “What a delightful surprise for you! Isn’t it nice to see me again?” there was a noticeable stillness to the air. Dion saw Althea stiffen and Markon frown; but as Althea’s eyes travelled over Fancy, she smiled suddenly and said: “You’re keeping better company of late, Carmine.”
“I always keep good company,” said Carmine, making way for Fancy. He gave Fancy a glinting, flirtatious smile and added: “But it seems to be getting better and better, I’ll admit.”
Markon, his frown quickly dissolving into deep amusement, said: “Lady Halme, I believe? We met several years ago.”
“That’s right,” said Fancy. “I was going to try to break Parrin’s curse.”
“You’re the one Carmine wouldn’t give up,” said Althea, her smile growing. “Carmine, you sneaky, slithery Fae!”
“That’s no way to talk to an old friend,” Carmine said. “I’d offer to kiss you but I’m not certain your husband wouldn’t hit me, and I know Fancy would.”
“Do you mean to say that you knew the king and queen after all that?” demanded Padraig indignantly. “What do you mean by making us sneak about through windows and over roofs?”
“The sheer fun of it all,” said Carmine. “They stole something from me once and I wanted to repay the favour.”
“Now that, I want to hear about,” said Padraig. “What did you steal from him, your majesties?”
“I’m beginning to wonder that myself,” Markon said ruefully. “I’m beginning to have the feeling that we never stole it at all.”
Shards of a Broken Sword Page 38
