Master of One

by Jaida Jones

  It had been half desperate plea, half pathetic command. Rags didn’t believe the easy agreement. He stared at the fae through narrowed eyes, waiting for his nerves to calm so he’d make a better showing. So he’d be slightly less of a screaming, flimsy human in the face of . . .

  This.

  Shining Talon of . . .

  Shit.

  “Shining Talon.” Rags poured confidence he didn’t have into his voice, an attempt to bluff a fae, like that’ll work, Rags, into believing he remembered the full name but couldn’t be assed to say the whole thing. The fae—Shining Talon, still a mouthful in shortened form—looked up, his face brightening. Was he glowing? Was the essential radiance of his being what lit these tunnels?

  The veins of light in the walls flickered with his movements, his breaths, indicating Yeah, maybe.

  “My lord Rags,” Shining Talon replied.

  “Right.” Rags had to brush that off, pretend it was normal. He stood straighter, as tall as he could in the small space, remembering Lord Faolan’s posture, as though Rags was the lord who Shining Talon, for whatever ass-brained reason, believed he was. “Where are the goods?”

  A tough exterior was one of the vital tools of living Cheapside. It wasn’t difficult if he told himself this was just another job.

  Even with all his senses snarling to the contrary.

  Shining Talon blinked, still expressionless. Impossible to tell his age. Was he supposed to be smaller? Rags had always pictured the fae smaller.

  “The . . . goods . . . ?”

  “Treasure chests. Spoils of war. Incredible piles of riches. Jewels. Coins. Precious metals. In there?” Rags stabbed a still-bloody finger at the ruins of the glass coffin. “Secret door? Next challenge?”

  “It may be that you hit your head upon your fall, my lord Rags,” Shining Talon said.

  “I definitely hit my head upon my fall, Shining Talon, but that’s the least of my problems with a sorcerer out there waiting for me to deliver. The. Goods.”

  Shining Talon’s brow furrowed briefly. The tattoos on his chest were visible through the open collar of his shirt, black ribs inked over his flesh, reminding Rags of armor. Gray boots in the shape of sylvan moth wings hugged his calves over black leggings of some impossibly soft weave. He looked out of place and big and unbelievable in the cramped tunnel. Because the ceiling was fractionally too low for him, he had to hunch to keep the top of his head from grazing dirt. The bad posture was all wrong, made no sense with his graceful body.

  Even when he did hit the ceiling, the dirt didn’t stay in his hair. Instead it showered off him, granting him the reverence he deserved—the reverence Rags couldn’t seem to muster, though he knew he should. The only reason he was staring was because there was a living, breathing, definitely dangerous, beautifully deadly fae in front of him.

  Probably Rags should have been flat on his face in front of the fae begging for mercy. But the pounding of his heart and the dawning suspicion that there might not be a treasure—or worse, that Shining Talon was the treasure, not an incredible but otherwise unrevolutionary stash of gold and jewels, and Rags was so, so fucked—made anything beyond panic impossible to summon.

  This was how he’d felt when Morien the Last had first appeared, only ten times worse. He’d discovered a secret that should have stayed buried. Stolen knowledge he couldn’t put back into the earth, that was now his burden to carry.

  Was he sure Shining Talon couldn’t go back into the earth?

  New plan. There was no way Morien and Lord Faolan were going to let an unreliable like Rags live. Going out into the world to blab about a living fae among them.

  No, the treasure had to be something else. Something less world-changing. Otherwise, Rags was going to die. He was a loose end who’d served his usefulness.

  Daring as ravens, Rags reminded himself. The slug that was his heart oozed down into his stomach and sank deeper as he looked back at the fae.

  “You speak of the Great Paragon?” Shining Talon asked. Rags’s throat constricted. Shock, then disbelief. Beneath that, wild hope. “The Great Paragon may be considered a treasure.”

  “Great treasure.” Rags laughed hoarsely. “Yes. A great treasure would be . . . great.”

  Shining Talon’s smile made the X tattoos dance. “A great treasure. It is here.”

  Relief making him dizzy, Rags waited.

  So did Shining Talon.

  Rags waited a few moments more, but Shining Talon wasn’t blinking, had his eyes fixed on Rags with such intensity that something needed to be done to stop him. “Here where, exactly?”

  “Here.” Shining Talon touched the wall at his side with veneration. “In this earth and on this earth. A weapon to be found piece by piece by those who are worthy, led by one who is worthiest.” Another blank, impenetrable, yet somehow expectant look. Silver pools of eyes unblinking and fixed on Rags.

  Like Shining Talon thought . . .

  Like he thought—

  “Ha ha ha,” Rags said. “You can’t think . . .” You can’t think any of that applies to me. He squeezed his eyes shut tight—forget that. “What’s this Weapon, exactly?”

  “You . . . do not know of the Weapon?” Rags shook his head. “Built as a gift of alliance, given by the fae to humans, only to have them turn it against us?” Again, Rags shook his head. “So that we were forced, in our final days, to scatter it throughout this world, so it could not be used for cruelty again?”

  Rags shrugged. Shining Talon gave him a sharp look.

  “But you are holding a piece of it in your hand.”

  Rags looked down at the lump of—rock? He’d been sure it was metal ore a second ago, but in the dim lighting of the tunnel, he couldn’t be sure. The only rocks and metals he knew were ones that’d already been set and stamped by a jeweler.

  “This is a rock.” Rags held it up in reply.

  Shining Talon shook his head. “It is but the first piece of a greater whole, my lord Rags.”

  Rags shrugged helplessly. “Sounds crazy to me, but—”

  Pain in his chest, faint but warning, and Morien appeared at Shining Talon’s back. It should’ve been impossible. Rags hadn’t called him.

  Or was Morien able to force his way into any room, so long as Rags opened the door first? Was that the only invitation Morien required?

  No time to wonder about that. Shining Talon’s face darkened when he saw who stood behind him, and Rags’s fingers hurt, and suddenly his back did, too, since he’d been thrown to the ground.

  Shining Talon’s golden face twisted in a feral snarl. He stood as shield between Rags and the sorcerer. Furious heat rolled in waves off his skin, like the way Cheapside tar streets reflected the burning punishment of a cloudless sun.

  He’d thrown Rags away from danger.

  “Lying One,” Shining Talon said, the first hint of emotion registering in his voice. Dark as a storm. Darker than Rags had the scope to describe. Fae dark, and terrifying. “Leave this place. I require neither lance nor sword—I shall tear you asunder with hands and will alone.”

  14

  Rags

  Shining Talon had dropped into a crouch, one arm flung out to keep Rags in relative safety behind him. His bulk stood between Rags and Morien like a living shield—not that it mattered, because Rags was bound to the sorcerer by mirrorcraft. Morien could snap his fingers and slice Rags’s heart open from the inside out.

  The only good thing about the situation was that Morien hadn’t done it yet. And there was a fae in the mix who might be able to prevent the heart slicing from happening.

  Or he might cause further, unfathomable damage.

  It was impossible to read Morien’s face, hidden behind swaths of red cloth. But he definitely didn’t look as shocked as he should have to see a real live fae standing next to Rags.

  Standing in front of Rags, to be more accurate.

  Rags slipped the rock into his pocket. The instinct to hide what he could was still stronger than fear for h
is life.

  “Rags,” Morien began, “you should have called—”

  “Silence,” Shining Talon said. The word rippled through the air, twisted it into something solid, like it too could be used as a weapon. “My lord Rags, I shall protect you from this foul creature with my life, if necessary.”

  That might be useful. Rags thought of his assets, and the fact that the fae seemed fonder of him than of Morien was going in the plus column.

  Morien took a step back, holding up gloved and empty hands. “It will not be necessary. Rags and I are friends.”

  “Lord Rags would not trust a Lying One with his oath of friendship and alliance.” A pause. Shining Talon’s shoulders tightened at Rags’s silence. “The Lying One speaks false, Lord Rags?”

  Rags wet his dry lips with his tongue. “It’s a complicated situation that, uh . . .”

  “Oh.” A hint of sorrow beneath a wealth of anger. “The Lying One has bound you to his cheating will with wicked mirrorcraft.”

  As opposed to the really good mirrorcraft that had tried to eat him in the glass maze, Rags thought.

  Recognizing the potential value of not speaking up in the situation, he kept his lips buttoned.

  “I effected an act of security against my interests, to which Rags agreed,” Morien said.

  In a manner of speaking.

  “Against this I cannot protect you fully,” Shining Talon told Rags. “I am no master of the lying arts. I am a warrior only. If I could protect your heart—”

  Nope. First things first. If they were on the same side, that meant Rags needed to make Shining Talon stop talking. He was only going to get the pair of them into trouble. “Not necessary. Heart in one piece currently, so if you’re dead set on helping me, you could start with more specific directions to the Great”—what was it called?—“Paramour?”

  “Paragon.”

  “Right, the treasure . . . thing,” Rags agreed. “It’s the deal I made with the Lyi—the sorcerer. The issue here is if I don’t deliver.”

  “For a Lying One to possess the Great Paragon—”

  That sharp pain again. On the other side of Shining Talon’s devoted collection of coiled muscles, Morien had a hand lifted in the air, tracing invisible symbols. Commands. Rags’s heart answered by slowing, shuddering, stopping. His face paled, his fingertips turning blue. The blood that still oozed lazily from his open cuts dried up at once, and he pitched forward into Shining Talon’s back, gasping for breath that didn’t answer his call.

  Rags gurgled a wordless sound, begging despite himself. He’d made it through all those fucking doors, had been so clever, and what did it matter? At the end there was no treasure, only a pissed-off sorcerer, and Rags was the most likely target for said sorcerer to vent his frustrations.

  No, it was smarter than that. He was being used. No one in the Clave would’ve stopped to spit on him if he were dying of thirst, yet here he was, tormented by mirrorglass in his heart into forcing a fae to give up his fae secrets.

  There was no way Shining Talon would fall for—

  “Very well. I will lead you to the Great Paragon, however I am able,” Shining Talon said.

  Rags’s pain vanished.

  “But it will be perilous,” Shining Talon concluded.

  “Anything worthwhile tends to be,” Morien replied.

  “What hasn’t been, lately?” Rags muttered.

  “And Lord Rags will be required each step of the way,” Shining Talon concluded. “Alive.”

  Moment of surprise at the stipulation aside, Rags liked the sound of that part.

  “I accept,” Morien agreed. “You may return the mirror and the blindfold,” he said, holding out his hand to Rags, “and I will accompany you the rest of the way out.”

  15

  Rags

  Shining Talon led the two of them through the ruins of the fae complex—underground palace, vault, bathroom, whatever it used to be—with veins of light blinking into existence on either side of him as he went. He took a new path, one Rags hadn’t fought his way through. Everywhere Rags looked, massive arches supported the underground tunnels. The more he studied them, the more they reminded him of bones. They really could be the rib cages of the Ancient Ones, for all he knew. They gleamed white and mysterious, threaded with silvered vines.

  The lump hung heavy in his pocket. Shining Talon had told him it was a piece of the Great Paragon, but he hadn’t mentioned it to Morien.

  Which meant they were keeping it a secret. Rags didn’t know how he felt about that. They couldn’t trust each other, what with Rags being a liar and Shining Talon’s entire people being known for their deceptions.

  Their alliance was doomed.

  He just wasn’t planning to be the first to tell Morien about the rock.

  Rags and Morien followed Shining Talon in silence, Rags not asking where the Queensguard were, Morien not mentioning how he’d recently tried to kill Rags.

  Shining Talon was aware of, and capable of commanding, doors that previously hadn’t existed. They weren’t there at all until Shining Talon glanced meaningfully at a bare wall, and a door oblingingly appeared. Rags couldn’t catch the trick, couldn’t figure out how he was doing it. Shining Talon’s light found invisible entrances and opened them, and Rags understood with dawning amazement that they were traveling through the remnants of a structure larger than any human palace, bank, or amphitheater. It was the shape of a tower in reverse, burrowing deeper into the earth rather than rising upward from it.

  “Stay close,” Shining Talon warned only once. “It is dangerous here.”

  Rags held up his hands, spattered and bloody to the sleeves. “I noticed.”

  “Yet more dangerous with a Lying One in tow.”

  Rags wished Shining Talon would stop calling the sorcerer that. Morien couldn’t appreciate the name, and anything that made Morien cranky made him more likely to exercise his power over Rags. That wasn’t in Rags’s best interests.

  Didn’t mean it wasn’t funny.

  Then Rags remembered the way Splints the Obscure, an old street acquaintance, had died: loss of blood from a run-in with the Queensguard had made him giddy, giggly. He’d laughed all the way to his last breath, but he wasn’t laughing when they shoved him into Old Drowner and set his soul drifting.

  The memory put a stop to Rags’s good humor.

  A moment later, when Shining Talon threw out one solid arm to halt their progress, Rags regretted not having more padding as he collided throat-first with the fae’s elbow.

  “Be still,” Shining Talon whispered.

  Rags found himself captivated by the hard, unforgiving tension in Shining Talon’s body. He wondered if that was natural for all fae. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now that he had, he couldn’t stop noticing it.

  Rags had heard, in a secondhand city dweller’s way, about the beauty of wild things. He’d never understood what was being described until now, though it was still impossible to think of the fae as anything other than a nightmare creature.

  As Shining Talon disabled a series of whisper-thin blades descending from above, Rags lingered behind to examine one where it dangled, harmless, against the wall. It had sliced a growing root system into sheets of veggies delicate enough for a queen’s salad. The blade resembled a musician’s instrument string but thinner, spider-silk supple. Nearly invisible, until it was too late.

  “Keep up, thief,” Morien said. “We wouldn’t want any accidents to befall you.”

  The way he said it made Rags shiver, and he hopped to.

  He wanted to thank Shining Talon for preventing them from being cut into flesh ribbons, but when Rags drew closer, the set of the fae’s jaw, the steely glint in his eyes, were enough to make Rags’s insides curdle.

  To witness Shining Talon leading a sorcerer through the old fae ruins was like looking into the deadened gaze of one of those newly bridled stallions, freshly broken from the wilds of Ever-Land—which was as close to lost as one could get without ventur
ing into the Lost-Lands and never being heard from again.

  Only a matter of time before a horse like that bucked and broke his master’s noble neck. Shining Talon had the same glint in his eye.

  Living on the streets, Rags had learned young how to read people, and everything about Shining Talon screamed danger. Not a matter of if, but when.

  Sorcerers had defeated—destroyed—his people. And now, because of Rags, he was being forced to lead one through a place the fae had once called home. Forced to guide him to the fae’s greatest treasure.

  Rags didn’t think a quick thanks would do it.

  “This your home?” His mouth ran out from under him as usual, driven to distract by the spike of tension in the air.

  Remnants of pennants tangled with overgrown roots. Carvings on the walls and floors flashed blue light in acknowledgment of Shining Talon’s presence.

  Shining Talon seemed surprised Rags was talking to him. Rags was a housefly starting a conversation with a human about the furniture.

  “No.” Shining Talon’s hair shimmered like black rain, hid half his face as he shook his head. “My brothers, my sisters, and I were raised in the Bone Court. The days were warm and the nights lasted twice as long for festivities.”

  The words seemed to cast a spell. Rags felt sunlight on his face, heard laughter and footsteps clattering down the hall.

  Morien grunted and the spell was broken. Rags couldn’t tell if he’d done it on purpose.

  Decided he had.

  “Uh, sounds great,” Rags offered. Couldn’t stand the silence, though it would’ve served him better. His words were dust motes settling in the ancient ruin. He turned to Morien and offered his biggest shit-eating grin. “You’re not impressed, obviously. Just another day in the Queen’s service, twice-long nights and a living fae to tell you about them.”

  “As a sorcerer to the Queen, I have witnessed many miracles,” Morien replied. “When Lord Faolan presented his plans for the expedition, I knew it was only right that I should be the one to see them through.”

  They passed an otherwise empty chamber holding only a toppled tall chair in the center, and door after door after door, all the same shape, with an onion-top peak and no knob or handle.