Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  I could swear, though, that every time I turned around, there was another door and another room in the house. We weren’t even playing games with space and Between yet.

  That was an important point, too. I wasn’t quite sure how to start adding extra space to a building, but I knew enough to know that I could. The Calgary Court was hidden inside, roughly, one meeting room and a side corridor of the hotel Oberis owned. Its actual square footage encompassed half a dozen meeting rooms, what was basically a throne room, several offices…

  If I stayed in this house, I could already tell we were going to end up somewhere similar. I’d brought sixteen Hunters and Companions. Kristal and her fellows were another half-dozen Greater Fae.

  Talus had lent me a security detail as well, another half-dozen goblins and Fae.

  Exactly twenty-four hours after we’d moved in, I answered a knock on the door to find Barry Tenerim standing on my new doorstep accompanied by five other walking walls of muscle. Grinning.

  “Barry,” I greeted him. “You’re looking for Mary, I assume?”

  “More on the order of checking in,” he admitted. “Nice digs you’re putting my cousin up in, Jason. I might have to start approving of you.”

  I shook my head disapprovingly at him.

  “Come on in,” I told him. “If you’re staying around here, you get to arm-wrestle with the Wild Hunt for rooms. We’ll add more, given time, but right now, we’ve got about seven bedrooms to play with.”

  “You’ll…add more?” Barry asked as he looked around the massive open space occupying half the building. “With what, renovations? It looks pretty well done up already.”

  “I’m a Fae Noble, Barry,” I reminded him. “I’m not exactly bound by linear space.”

  He snorted.

  “I keep remembering the half-dead changeling we peeled off the pavement with a spatula after he leapt to Mary’s defense,” he said. “Times change, don’t they?”

  “They do,” I agreed. “Mary’s taking a shower. Coleman’s in meeting room three; he’s in charge of security.”

  “And what are you in charge of?” Barry asked with a chuckle.

  “Everything, apparently,” I told him, shaking my head. “But it’s starting to look more and more like I may be in charge of fighting a war.”

  The werewolf paused.

  “The Masked Lords?” he asked. “Like Andrell?”

  “Exactly like,” I confirmed. “You know the spiel by now, but it’s looking more and more like they aren’t coming directly at me. Sooner or later, I’m going to have to go hunting them.”

  Barry snorted again.

  “You won’t be counting Mary out,” he warned me, “so count me and my boys here in.”

  “It’s not your fight,” I said.

  “You’re Clan Tenerim, Jason Kilkenny,” Barry said with a smile. “Might not be blood, but you’re clan. It’s our fight.”

  I was fiddling with my office set up when Eric showed up later that day. It was a make-work project, really, since my “office” consisted of a desk and a laptop for the moment. I’d almost certainly upgrade it in the long run, but so long as I had a connection to the Fae-Net—the set of unregistered and magically concealed websites the Fae used as a dark internet—I had what I needed.

  “Coleman said you’d be in here,” Eric greeted me from the door. The office was on the main floor, exactly opposite the main entrance. There was a dedicated office included in the design right next to the entrance, but that was now a guard post and where Coleman usually hung his hat.

  The gnome looked around the room and at the single chair.

  “I thought Mikayla had done every room,” he noted. “This looks pretty sparse.”

  “She had this one set up as a bedroom, but we needed an office on the inside of the last layers of defenses,” I admitted. “Now we have a spare bedroom set in the storage downstairs, and I have an IKEA desk I pulled out of Between.”

  Eric snorted and pulled an overstuffed recliner out of Between himself. He dropped into the chair, crossing his legs to look even more like a child with gray hair and a beard, and studied me.

  “You sound tetchy,” he observed.

  “Coleman didn’t even need to argue with me on putting my office back here,” I said with a sigh. “I’m getting far too used to being behind security. And this whole place?”

  I gestured around me.

  “This isn’t a home, Eric. This is a fucking miniature Court.”

  “So is the office underneath Talus’s penthouse,” Eric reminded me. “Robert is still working on putting together his own space and allies, but his house has a security detail. Most of them are his father’s people, but he’s building his own team.

  “It’s what Nobles do, Jason. It’s part of the value and service you provide to the community, above and beyond simply being more powerful than most.”

  I sighed.

  “I’m still getting used to the idea of being a Noble,” I admitted.

  “So’s Robert. He has his father. You have Mabona, Ankaris and me,” Eric told me. “And given that the High Court only has so much time, most of the backing you up as you build your own space is falling on me.”

  “You’re saying you don’t help Robert?” I asked.

  The gnome chuckled.

  “Oh, I help Robert,” he confirmed. “But Robert has his father and Talus has as many resources as I do. Possibly more, though in the case of helping you, I have access to other resources as well.

  “It’s in everyone’s interest to see you in control of your own faction with your own resources and power,” he concluded. “Well, everyone except the Masked Lords, that is.”

  I nodded and pulled a bottle of wine and two glasses out of Between.

  “Drink? I think I need one.”

  “Sure.” Eric took a glass and I filled it for him.

  “What brings you here tonight?” I asked. “I can’t imagine you’re here just to remind me that, yes, I am supposed to be putting together a miniature version of a Court.”

  “Touching base with you is always a good idea right now,” Eric told me. “But you’re right. I got a call from Pankaj Gupta. He wants to speak to you again.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “He told me he was going to try and track down information on the Asi Warriors, I suppose,” I said. “I didn’t actually expect him to do it.” I shook my head. Plus, why wouldn’t Gupta just email us?

  “Gupta didn’t tell me what it was about,” Eric said grimly. “I don’t like it, Jason. Something doesn’t smell right. The asura go silent suddenly, and then Gupta wants to talk to you?”

  Eric…was not wrong.

  “It’s not like I can turn him down, though, is it?” I asked. “We need whatever information he’s gathered. If he knows how to get these asura off my back…”

  “Then you’ve got to meet him,” Eric agreed. “That’s why I’m here. But…he wants to see you alone, which isn’t unusual, but somehow I don’t trust it this time.”

  “I’ll have a Wild Hunt team on standby and an alert on my phone,” I promised. “I’m not looking to get knifed in the back by an old Indian warlord.”

  “We don’t want to offend Gupta, but that makes sense to me,” the gnome told me. “If worst comes to worst, I think you can take him in his reduced state, but…I wouldn’t count on it, Jason.”

  “So, be ready to run,” I concluded. “I’m used to that one. When does he want to see me?”

  “Midnight tonight, at the same temple.”

  “All right. I’ll go see what our friend Gupta wants.”

  “So, you’re telling me you know it’s a trap and you’re going to walk into it anyway?”

  Coleman sounded more amused than anything else.

  “We need the information he’s offering badly enough to take the risk,” I told my Hunt leader. “I need you to have a fire team ready to drop into his temple through Between if this does go sideways.”

  “I a
lways have a fire team ready to go,” Coleman told me. “We haven’t finished relocating our main trap from the warehouse, but that’s in the process. We’ve got enough space for it here.”

  “And it’s even more isolated from civilians,” I agreed. We’d talked it over, at least. We’d probably end up putting the trap in a pit somewhere in the “backyard,” but we could keep it secure.

  “Agreed. What happens if Gupta expects you to expect a trap and accounts for it, though?” my subordinate asked.

  “I’ll take Kristal and Riley. They’ll wait in the car and get the same alert code you do,” I told him. “If he blocks Between somehow, I’ll still have backup on hand—and at that point, we’re in pure ‘get the hell out of Dodge’ mode.”

  Coleman chuckled.

  “I see you’re learning.”

  “I’m in charge,” I told him. “That means I have to. I need to meet with Gupta…but I also need to live through it. Think we can manage that?”

  “Yes,” he confirmed. “We’re the Wild Hunt, after all.”

  14

  The Hindu temple was even quieter when I arrived this time. There were no other vehicles in the lot as I parked the Escalade next to the entrance. The lights in the building were out and only the streetlights illuminated anything.

  “Okay, so, this is creepy,” Riley noted. “What do we do?”

  “Lock and load,” I ordered. “Stay in the car but watch for an alert. It looks like the place is closed, and the lack of bystanders suggests all sorts of ugly possibilities.”

  “Lock and load yourself,” Kristal suggested. “You were supposed to come alone, not unarmed.”

  “I’m never unarmed, and I doubt Gupta thinks otherwise,” I replied. Nonetheless, she was right. My sword, whip and pistol materialized out of Between, and I strapped holsters, scabbard and harness under my coat.

  In many ways, the weapons were almost less accessible this way, but it also made a point.

  “We’re out here waiting,” Riley told me as he checked the safety on his AUG. “You call us, we’ll be through the door in thirty seconds.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  I strode over to the main doors, my eyesight sufficient to see clearly even in the dim and snowy night. The doors were closed and locked, a chain on the inside rattling when I tested them.

  I shook my head and stepped Between, emerging on the other side of the doors and heading toward the office where I’d met Gupta before.

  The building was empty and dark. Creepy as hell, but nothing jumped out at me before I reached the deva-sura’s office and knocked on the door.

  It swung open instantly, revealing there was a light inside the temple. A single lamp on Gupta’s desk lit up the room in a mix of light and shadow that was more confusing to my sight than complete darkness would be.

  “Mr. Kilkenny,” he greeted me calmly. “Thank you for coming.”

  “I don’t suppose we’re going to turn a light on,” I answered. “Or is the creepy haunted house factor part of the point?”

  Gupta chuckled.

  “Allow an old man his foibles, Mr. Kilkenny.” He rose from his chair, revealing for the first time that he towered over my own near-six-feet in height. The old Indian warlord was at least six inches taller than me and he looked like a walking brick wall.

  “Come with me,” he instructed.

  “You asked me to meet you here,” I pointed out. “Care to explain?”

  “I have the answers you sought, Mr. Kilkenny,” he told me. “I know how to end your little war, but you need to trust me. I ask no more of you than I have of others tonight. This is not a safe game we play, you and I.”

  “And if I refuse?” I asked.

  “Then you leave,” Gupta replied. “You never find out why I called you here and you face your enemy without whatever aid I would provide. Does your fear overcome your curiosity, Mr. Kilkenny? Does it overcome your responsibility?”

  “What responsibility?” Fear wasn’t really the issue. Caution, definitely, but I wasn’t afraid of Gupta.

  “The world has changed in the last seventy-two hours, Mr. Kilkenny. Have you felt it?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told him.

  He snorted.

  “Then if you do not come with me, you may doom not only yourself but the High Court you are sworn to serve. Tell me, Mr. Kilkenny. Are you prepared to risk that?”

  “You could be a lot clearer about what’s going on,” I said. “Then I’d be much more willing to play.”

  “I made a promise, Mr. Kilkenny. I will keep it. I will promise you this: you will not be harmed by my hand or my inaction. Does that suffice?”

  If Gupta was as powerful as Eric implied, his protection would be enough against many problems.

  “All right,” I allowed. “Lead the way.”

  Gupta proceeded out of his office and through the unlit corridors with an easy confidence that told me he had even less need for light than I did. We passed through the main worship area into a set of private cubicles, where he proceeded into one of them and pulled aside a tapestry depicting several of the Hindu gods having a discussion around a fire.

  There was, unsurprisingly, a door behind the tapestry. He produced a key that unlocked it and held it open for me.

  “Creepy dungeon basement. Right. And you want me to go first?” I asked.

  He sighed.

  “Fine.”

  Handing the door over to me, he went down the stairs first and I followed. For all that the space was at least somewhat hidden, it wasn’t quite as bad as I assumed. The stairs were still the same tile as the main floor and had safety grip lines. There was a railing and even lights.

  The lights were off, but that had been par for the course tonight.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a midsized storage room, filled with furniture, carpets and tapestries. Since I doubted that Gupta wanted to show off his collection of fine Indian carpets, I followed him deeper through the maze of debris, to another door.

  This one was also locked, but when he opened it, there were lights on the other side. I followed Gupta through and instantly realized we weren’t alone.

  It took me a few moments longer to realize that the other man standing just inside the door, clearly illuminated by the lights, was Raja Venkat Asi.

  I went for my whip—and found myself frozen in place the moment I had the weapon out.

  Gupta had a hand raised at me. He also had a hand raised at Asi, and I could feel his power suddenly dominate the room. If this was a deva-sura reduced by lack of access to the sacred waters of the Ganges…I didn’t want to meet one at their full power.

  “You are both powerful men, warlords of the supernatural with Gifts and armies at your command,” Gupta said harshly. “But I am deva-sura. And I command you to listen.”

  I waited a few moments, to demonstrate that I wasn’t struggling, then sheathed my whip while I studied Asi.

  “You told me you had a way to end this fight,” I told Gupta. “I’m guessing this has something to do with it.”

  Raja Venkat Asi exhaled. He wasn’t wearing his suit jacket from earlier, so the motion was very visible in his bare and well-muscled chest.

  “Our fight is over,” he said flatly. There was something else to his voice, some tone that hadn’t been there in our previous conversations. He sounded almost…broken.

  “That seems a little out of the blue,” I pointed out.

  “You were never my enemy,” he told me.

  “You tried to kill me. That seems pretty enemy-like. Plus, you did kill a lot of people trying to get at me.”

  He closed his eyes, almost wavering on his feet.

  “Bhagavan Gupta, may…may we sit somewhere?” he asked. “This is going to be hard enough.”

  “If you two promise not to draw on each other,” Gupta replied. “I have promised both of you your safety. Even if I hadn’t, I will not permit violence in this place.”

>   “I’ll hear him out,” I promised slowly. “I can’t offer more than that.”

  “It’s…enough,” Asi said. “I mean no one here harm anymore.”

  There was quite the complex underneath the Hindu temple, as it turned out. Raja Asi had been waiting for me in the main entrance hall, and he now led us to a side office. I got a glimpse of a well-lit corridor and what looked like small dorm rooms along it.

  I could also see other asura down that corridor, broad-chested men and long-haired women with noticeable golden auras over their skin. Somehow, I knew this hadn’t been where they’d been hiding when they’d been launching their operations against us, but they’d retreated here at some point in the last few days.

  Asi dropped heavily into a chair and studied me.

  “Your enemies, Lord Kilkenny, are evil,” he said quietly. “Understand that I have seen and spoken to many that others would call evil. Some were evil. Some were…simply focused.

  “Some would argue that our own mercenary ways were evil. But these Fae Lords, these Masks…I would call them evil.”

  “Is this supposed to be news to me?” I asked.

  “No,” he admitted. “But I will admit that we regarded a civil war among the fae as…not our problem. We were prepared to take their money. Had you approached us first, we would have taken your money. Temples and fortresses aren’t cheap to maintain, especially if you must be prepared to defend against any mundane or supernatural power of the world.”

  Gupta busied himself in one corner of the room, and it wasn’t until a warm scent of spices and milk drifted back over to me that I realized what he was doing.

  There are rules that cross supernatural communities, ones that were never formalized in Covenants but are even more ironbound because of that. If Gupta was making tea for the three of us with his own hands, I was safe.

  I’d been relatively sure of that already, but the extra reassurance was helpful.

  “Why am I here, Asi?” I asked. “If we’re done…then go home.”