I blinked and looked at the others.
Choose wisely…
I looked at Russell and then at Nathan Vander.
Tarlia had winked at me, even before she had said anything. Come to think of it, this entire conversation might have been for show. Why bother questioning me? Arvalaeon had probably told her everything days ago…
And then I understood what Tarlia wanted me to do.
My hands started to shake with excitement, and I made them stop.
“Okay,” I said. “A boon. I need to ask for three things.”
Lord Mythrender scowled, but Tarlia inclined her head.
“Go on,” said Tarlia.
“First, I wish to ask for retroactive pardons for myself, my brother Russell Moran, and Riordan MacCormac,” I said. Tarlia raised an eyebrow. “Uh. We kind of did a lot of illegal stuff over the last year.”
“Just the last year?” said Tarlia.
I coughed. “And possibly before that.”
“Very well,” said Tarlia. “Exeter, a pardon.” The man nodded, tapping at his tablet. “And what are your second and third requests?”
I took a deep, ragged breath, and then pointed at Mr. Vander. “I want to borrow him and a dragon pearl for like five minutes, so he can cast the spell to cure frostfever.”
Vander blinked a few times and started to smile.
“That’s it?” said Tarlia. “That’s all you want? You wish nothing more for your boon?”
“Yes,” I said.
Tarlia smiled briefly, and I had the impression she approved.
“Lord Mythrender,” said Tarlia.
The Lord Marshal stepped forward, lifting a metal coffer.
He opened the lid, and I saw a dragon pearl.
It wasn’t big, no larger than the joint of my thumb. It blazed with fire like a miniature star, and I felt the power radiating from the pearl. It was elemental magic, fiery and potent, and one of the strongest auras I had ever sensed.
Did Mythrender just carry that thing around with him?
No. It was too valuable. The Lord Marshal had brought it with him because Tarlia had told him to do it.
Because she had known in advance what I would ask…
“Behold, a dragon pearl,” said Tarlia. “Though if I give you this boon, Nadia Moran, then you’re going to have to do me a favor.”
“A favor?” I said. “What kind of favor?”
She smiled. “Why, a favor whenever I need one, darling girl. You see, people don’t owe me favors. They do favors for me when I ask.” She rolled the vial of my blood over her fingers. “And I will ask you for a lot of favors. Competent help is so hard to find. So, Miss Moran, what do you say? Will you do me favors when I ask?”
And then all at once, I understood.
Tarlia had set this entire conversation up from the beginning because this was how she was going to punish Morvilind for the near-catastrophe in New York.
She was going to poach his shadow agent.
I took a deep breath and looked her in the eye.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I will.”
Her eyes glittered, and she smiled.
“Excellent,” said Tarlia. “Mr. Vander, proceed.”
“Yes, your Majesty,” said Vander. He crossed to Mythrender, offered a polite bow, and took the dragon pearl. It glowed in his hand, so bright that it welled through his hand and outlined the bones in his fingers. He walked to Russell and stopped, taking a few deep breaths. Blood-colored fire shone around his hand, mingling with the light from the dragon pearl.
“How long will it take?” I said.
“Like I told you back in Milwaukee,” said Vander, raising his hand. “Five minutes.” He looked at Russell. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” said Russell. “Nadia…I…I don’t know what to say…”
I smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Vander cast the spell.
As he said, it took five minutes. A cocoon of crimson fire wrapped around Russell and sank into him. He shuddered several times, the fire shining in his veins and eyes. Bit by bit the fire faded, and at last Vander stepped back, the pearl still blazing in his fingers.
“Is…is it over?” said Russell, rubbing his face. “That felt really weird.”
“It is,” said Vander. He grimaced and cracked his neck. “You are now cured of frostfever. God, that stings.”
“I don’t feel any different,” said Russell.
“You won’t,” said Vander. “Not at first.” He walked to Mythrender, bowed again, and deposited the dragon pearl in the Lord Marshal’s waiting coffer. “But your stamina will start to increase, and you won’t need the yearly cure spells any longer to stave off death. Your hair’s going to remain white, though, I’m afraid.”
“That’s all right,” said Russell. “Girls seem to like it.”
“Now, then,” said Tarlia. “That seems all quite satisfactorily resolved.” Her eyes glittered as she looked at Morvilind and Arvalaeon. “I trust my point is made?”
Neither archmage said anything.
Tarlia smiled. “Splendid.” Her gaze swung back to me. “I’ll be in touch, Miss Moran. We’re going to have a great deal of work to do, you and I.” She beckoned to the Royal Guard. “Come.”
“Your Majesty,” I said.
Tarlia paused and glanced back at me. “Yes?”
I hesitated. “What…what kind of favors will you ask of me?”
She paused, smiled, and walked to me. Most people were taller than me, but the High Queen of the Elves towered over me like a silver-armored cliff. She put one hand on my shoulder and started to turn me to face the Hudson River.
“Ashes and bones,” she said.
“What?” I said.
“Look at it,” Tarlia murmured. “Not at them, but at the city.” She turned me again, and then swept her staff before her, pointing at Manhattan and Brooklyn and Jersey City across the rippling water. “One of the largest human cities on Earth. One of the pinnacles of your civilization. Fifteen million people in the city, and many more south and north and west of here. And if not for you, darling girl, it would all be ashes and bones. I’ve seen that before, many times. I’ve caused it to happen.” Her voice hardened. “But I don’t want to see it again. And you’re going to help me to keep it from happening again.”
“Yes, your Majesty,” I said.
She smiled and stepped back. “It is always pleasant to converse with someone who can see reason. Lord Marshal, Lord Inquisitor, Mr. Vander, come! We have work to do. Dr. and Mrs. Marney, I will leave you with the Morans. No doubt you have a great deal to talk about. Be seeing you soon, Miss Moran.”
With that, the High Queen turned and strode back to her helicopter, her mind no doubt turned to the next problem of the day. Arvalaeon inclined his head to me and then followed her, as did Lord Mythrender, Vander, and the Royal Guards. Exeter stopped long enough to hand copies of official Royal Pardons to me, Russell, and Riordan, and then followed the other secretaries into the helicopters.
The rotors started up with a whine, and as they did, a strange surge of emotion unlike anything I had ever experienced boiled inside me.
All my life, I had tried to save Russell. I had spent a hundred and seventy-five years trying to save him from his frostfever. I had taken insane risks again and again, risked my life again and again, and had gone up against powerful and dangerous enemies.
And I had won.
By God, I had won!
Chapter 15: Duty
We watched the helicopters fly off toward the Skythrone.
“Well,” said Nora at last. “Wasn’t that something?”
“I never thought I would meet the High Queen,” said Russell, “but that was…that was…”
“Something,” I said. “I guess we’ll have to ride back to Milwaukee with you guys.”
Lucy blinked in alarm. “We don’t have a car.”
“No,” said James, reaching into his pocket, “but we do have plane tickets, four of th
em.” He held them out. “Exeter gave them to me before we took off from the Skythrone. I wondered why, but…”
“She planned this entire thing out,” said Russell. “The High Queen, I mean. This whole conversation.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess…I guess she wanted to recruit me and reward me at the same time. And she also wanted to punish Morvilind for…”
I trailed off and looked at Morvilind, blinking in surprise.
He looked…
Amused? Pleased? Even proud?
“What the hell is so funny?” I said.
“Perhaps I ought to congratulate you,” said Morvilind, “for your acceptance into royal service. Rusk!”
“My lord,” said Rusk with a hasty bow.
“Make ready to depart for Milwaukee,” said Morvilind.
Rusk hesitated. “Should…we offer transport to the Marneys and the Morans, my lord?”
Morvilind snorted. “They can fly on the High Queen’s largesse. Nadia Moran, after all, is no longer in my service.”
“Yes, my lord,” said Rusk, and he hurried back to the vans.
“You still haven’t said what was so funny,” I said. Morvilind’s gaze turned back to me. I stared at him for a second. “My lord.”
“As vexing as it is to have my shadow agent taken,” said Morvilind, “I cannot help but admire the competence of the execution. Do you not see how neatly the High Queen orchestrated this conversation? How she planned it all out from the beginning? Probably from the very moment that fool Arvalaeon told her about you and the Eternity Crucible.”
“She was your student,” I said. “Wasn’t she? A long time ago.”
“Yes,” said Morvilind, watching the helicopters fly towards the Skythrone. “One of the early predecessor groups of the Archons killed her two older brothers, so she became the heir to the throne of Kalvarion. Her father the High King bade me to prepare her to take the throne after he died. I needed to make her strong, to make her ruthless, for mercy is a liability in a monarch.”
“Says you,” I said, but Morvilind kept talking.
“And did I not succeed beyond my expectations? See how she has kept her grip on power for three hundred years. See how she has trained your race to revere and obey her. Look at how the Marneys are uncomfortable with anything that might even be remotely critical of her.” Come to think of it, the Marneys did look uneasy. Even Nora looked unsettled. “And was it not admirably done? That fool Arvalaeon and I were both rebuked in front of each other. The High Queen rewarded you for your service and recruited you at the same moment.” He laughed, actually laughed, and for a moment he almost looked like a proud grandfather. “You thought me a challenging master, Nadia Moran? Perhaps after a few years in the High Queen’s service, you will look back with nostalgia on your time in my employ.”
“I really doubt that,” I said.
“No,” said Morvilind. “You will. You begin to understand.” He pointed at the ID tags hanging from my left wrist. “Just as Jeremy Shane understood. I told you once that you have power now, and you will need to consider the consequences your decisions will have decades or even centuries from this moment.”
“Yeah, like stopping Connor from nuking New York,” I said. I folded my arms across my chest. Some part of my mind was still shocked that I dared to speak so harshly to him, but I suppose we both had the same boss now. “Did you think about the consequences when you made a deal with the Forerunner?”
“I did,” said Morvilind, “and I judged them worth the risk. And I still would have made the same decisions.”
I snorted. “Someone didn’t learn his lesson.”
“Do you think so?” said Morvilind. “Fifteen million people almost died. But I play for the lives of billions, and trillions more yet unborn.”
All at once I was tired of him and didn’t want to talk to him any longer.
“Fine, my lord,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what I think of you, and it doesn’t matter any longer what you think of me.”
“Indeed not,” said Morvilind. “Goodbye, Nadia Moran.” He paused for a moment. “Tarlia was the greatest of my Elven students…but you, I think, were the greatest of my human ones.”
I was annoyed that I felt a flicker of pride at that.
“I wasn’t your student,” I said. “Goodbye, my lord.”
I turned to go, hesitated, and then turned back.
“Wait,” I said.
Morvilind said nothing.
“What was it?” I said. “What question did you ask the Forerunner? What was worth all of this?”
That cold, dangerous smile returned on his gaunt face. “The location of the nearest Trinity Gate.”
That meant nothing to me. Nothing at all. He had gambled my life and the lives of millions of others for some bit of obscure magical trivia.
To hell with him. It wasn’t my problem anymore.
I said nothing as Morvilind returned to his vans and his retainers and drove out of my life.
“Trinity Gate?” said Nora. “What’s that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “It’s not my problem.” I looked at Riordan and hesitated.
Later, that was what I had kept telling myself. I would deal with my feelings for him later, once the crisis had passed.
Later had just become now.
“We’ll give you a ride to the airport,” said Riordan. “Then Nora and I have to report to the Firstborn. We have many things to discuss with him.”
“Dear God, do we ever,” said Nora.
“And then,” said Riordan to me, “I’ll come out to Milwaukee to see you.” He hesitated. “I think we have a lot of things to talk about.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at him. “Yeah, we do.”
Chapter 16: Number
Ten days later, on July 21st, I sat on the couch in the Marneys’ living room and dozed.
I hadn’t been idle the last two weeks. I had moved back into the Marneys’ house, which had been a surreal experience. Surreal, but it a good way. It was nice to see Russell every day, nice to see James and Lucy. I had moved all my stuff out of my old apartment and into storage, which had been a lot of work.
See, remember that bearer bond Nicholas gave me for a million dollars? It turned out to be genuine. Granted, I would have to pay taxes on it and stuff, but it was still a lot of money.
I was thinking about buying a house. Someplace with a big basement that I could turn into a gym and a workshop, a place where I could train and work. Because I needed to be ready. Sooner or later the High Queen was going to contact me for a favor, and I suspected those “favors” would be just as challenging as anything Morvilind had ever ordered me to do.
But I didn’t mind.
Ashes and bones, she had said. New York had almost become ashes and bones, and the kind of tasks Tarlia assigned me would help to keep that from happening again.
I still had nightmares on a regular basis, and sometimes the paranoia crept up on me, and I wasn’t sure if I was still in the Eternity Crucible or not. But I kept it together. I didn’t freak out, and I didn’t panic and hurt anyone. I suspected I would have nightmares and paranoia for the rest of my life, and while that wasn’t great, it could have been worse.
It could have been worse to the tune of fifteen million corpses.
And it took some effort not to think about getting caught all the time. My whole life I had been cautious, cautious, cautious, fearing that if the Inquisition or Homeland Security caught up to me, Russell would die of frostfever. Except Russell had been cured and I had an official royal pardon for all my past misdeeds.
It was a strange feeling.
But the good kind of strange. I thought I could get used to it.
Then again, I still kept an eye over my shoulder. Most of the Rebels had been gunned down in New York or nuked in Venomhold, but no doubt there had been others still on Earth. They might want to take a swing at me, along with the remaining Dark Ones cults.
If they wanted to try, I would
make sure they regretted it.
For that matter, I had to watch out for reporters. Turns out that if you’re on national television, a lot of reporters want to talk to you. I refused to talk to any reporters and threatened to sue anyone who stuck a camera in my face, and that made them back off. Mostly.
So, over those two weeks, I moved out of my apartment, exercised, and started looking for a house.
And I waited for both the High Queen and Riordan to call. Riordan texted me a few times, saying that Family business was keeping him in New York, but that he would come to Milwaukee as soon as possible.
I wondered if I would ever see Riordan again. Doubts chased their way through my mind. Maybe I had changed too much. Maybe I was too dangerous. Maybe he figured it was better to stay away from someone like me.
On the morning of the 21st, James, Lucy, and Russell went to some sort of church thing. A picnic or a barbeque, something like that. They invited me to come with them, and I almost did, but I declined. I didn’t feel like being around people, and they understood me well enough not to push.
Instead, I got in a good workout that morning. Weights, and then a six-mile run. After I took a long hot bath, making sure to drink plenty of water. (James Marney, MD, and Lucy Marney, registered nurse, had been lecturing me on the importance of hydration.) After that, I got dressed and ate a smoothie for a late breakfast, and then wandered into the living room and sat down.
I fell asleep on the couch.
The rumble of an engine jerked me awake. I blinked, got to my feet, crossed to the window, and saw a black pickup truck stop by the curb.
Riordan.
My heart skipped a beat, and I looked at my reflection in the glass. I was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, my hair a bit messy. I suddenly wished that I had time to put on something nicer, maybe to fix my hair. I settled for tying my hair back, taking a deep breath, and walking out the front door.
It was a hot day, so hot that I only felt a little chilly. Riordan got out of his truck and walked towards me. He was wearing a button-down shirt and jeans, and part of me noted the way that the shirt strained against the muscles of his chest and upper arms.
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