by Jaida Jones
It wasn’t enough, but it was all they had. Einan balled her fists.
Cab at her side, his bruises still fresh. He’d been so stupidly brave that Einan had forgotten how much she hated the Queensguard. She couldn’t ask him for more. He’d given all.
Prince Somhairle, who’d visited her theater years ago, sweet thing, stood beside the fae named Shining Talon. Laisrean sagged, propped against the wall. Having a prince in the Resistance was always bound to be dangerous. I’ll pay the price, he’d told them, when the bill arrives.
They hadn’t protested. They’d needed their man on the inside, chosen not to dwell on his personal risk.
Einan wiped rain out of her eyes. White-hot energy crackled around the sorcerer, gathering, narrowing to a point, heading straight for Inis. Behind her, the kids. He’d tear them apart next. No question.
Einan started forward and shouted something brave like “Over here, you shitting son of a donkey’s rear end!” Not that it’d distract a seasoned sorcerer, or do a thing to stop the countless Queensguard from getting to her before she got to him, but.
Didn’t matter. It was the attempt that counted.
As Einan ran, the air around her changed, charged with new energy. She guessed it was part of Morien’s sorcery, but it was so warm. So friendly. It shocked her from fingertips to chest, and when it hit her heart, the Queensguard swords flew out of their hands and rose into the air.
Shooting straight toward her.
Einan froze, though she wasn’t frightened. She should have winced, ducked, run, anything to keep the blades from impaling her—only she was certain they wouldn’t harm her. The swords cut a song out of the air. It sounded like her father’s flute music, like the tinkle of her old jewelry before it had been taken from her and melted down into brutish Queensguard murder tools.
The swords formed into a single glittering shape as they flew.
A silver beast. A hound. Chipped and dented from years of practice, his hackles up, his eyes wild with stormlight.
Hey there, master! His voice, had to be his voice, lanced through her. Let’s cause some trouble, yeah?
Despite how very fucked they were, Einan threw her head back and laughed. Then, taking advantage of the general shock and the sudden lack of weapons in the Queensguard’s hands, she dove forward into the fray.
The hound moved like river water, fierce and drowning-fast. He jumped the first Queensguard with no hesitation or hint of his former existence, but then, a sword had no allegiance to its wielder, could switch hands and sides as easily as a tossed coin. The silver hound barreled over the first Queensguard, then the next, buffeting this way and that, landing on chests, knocking legs at the knees. Wherever he went, when the Queensguard went down, they stayed down.
Hope emerged from where he’d been mobbed, battered and bleeding. On his knees. Morien’s attention spun from Inis to the silver hound and the chaos he was sowing. Einan rushed into the opening, kneeling to drag Inis up.
“I’m dead.” Inis sounded matter-of-fact, like she couldn’t find a reason to mourn the thing once it had happened.
“If that’s true, then you’ve spawned a nightmare of an afterlife,” Einan replied.
She stopped short of touching the half-melted creature at Inis’s side, not sure what she could do for him, not wanting to harm him further.
Another crack of lightning split the courtyard. Annoyance followed a flare of pain.
Her dog yipped. Einan stood, Inis next to her.
This Lying One has got to go, the dog said.
Einan turned, not sure how to agree with him other than to act.
But it was Shining Talon who moved into position in a blur of gold, streaking toward the sorcerer. Einan’s hound broke away to join him, as did Prince Somhairle’s enormous one-eyed owl, missing feathers and a section of her beak. Cab’s lizard creature shot forward along the ground, and Inis’s silver companion coalesced, if vaguely, his limbs loose and limping but functional, in order to follow.
Been a long time coming, Einan’s dog said.
White heat scorched the ground where Morien stood. He’d erected a barrier around himself, a cocoon of living lightning. Shining Talon didn’t slow before he struck it. A ferocious crack. The stench of sizzling metal. Black burns ran up both the fae’s arms, but he kept his palms to the barrier.
He was moving through it.
The little thief fellow cried out from where the fae children had gathered. Something dirty sounding. Einan didn’t know whether the knowledge was hers or the hound’s, but his name suddenly appeared in her head: Rags.
“That shiny idiot’s going to get himself killed!” Rags shouted.
His words galvanized Hope. One moment the fae was kneeling, panting, bleeding; the next he was on his feet, thrusting his hands through Morien’s barrier with Shining Talon. The silver animals threw themselves against it one after another. Each time, it crackled and flashed, a little less bright than the time before.
Einan held her breath, prayed to whoever was listening. Got no answer, except a silvery snort in the back of her head.
Not—enough—to make it, her dog snarled.
Einan started forward.
She wasn’t a fae. She was barely a decent actor. She didn’t know what she could do, only that she’d have to do it. Give her life to bring that barrier down, sure. Her greatest role yet. Her last one.
But someone grabbed her by the back of her shirt and pulled her out of the way. Stepped in front of her and blocked her path.
Sil, hair whiter than ever, so white it was practically translucent, skin thinner than wet paper, every vein showing beneath. No, those were her black bones. As Sil lurched forward, Einan understood that whatever she was about to do, she didn’t have the strength to do it. Not after performing two of those heart-saving maneuvers in a row. Not when she’d been so drained to begin with.
A human life is a short little thing compared to ours. Sil’s voice in Einan’s head. She’d never done that before. It had to be because of the dog creature that she could, borrowing their shared connection. But that does not mean it holds no value.
“No!” Einan jumped after her, had to stop her. Sil was exhausted and talking nonsense. Of course Einan’s life didn’t matter. Not compared to hers.
Thank you, Einan Remington, Master of Four. Sil’s smile, gentle as spring rain. With you at my side, I have seen more than I ever imagined.
Einan shouted, but Sil pushed her back a final time and took her place between Hope and Shining Talon.
I would not have this be your final performance. Goodbye, my friend.
Sil’s hands set against the barrier, Einan hollering, Rags hollering with her, and the Queensguard brought low not by their lack of weapons or the fresh assault, but by the blinding, endless, incinerating light—
It filled Einan’s vision. She had to throw up her arm to keep from going blind.
And then Morien was gone, and with him the burning light. The air stank of melted metal. Her dog growled at a black streak on the ground where Morien had previously stood, sniffing at it like he could find the sorcerer by scent alone, follow him wherever he’d escaped to.
The Queensguard around them were groaning, crying out, clutching themselves where metal armor had fused to their skin from the intensity of the blast.
None of that mattered.
Sil collapsed into Hope’s arms. Inis leaned against Einan for support, must have grabbed her sometime between Sil’s stupid, crazy, awful decision to sacrifice herself and Morien’s lightning burst. Einan realized she was sobbing and Inis was holding her back, Hope was howling, and—
And Sil was unmoving.
“Now,” Inis whispered hoarsely.
Einan shook her head, took a trembling step forward. Reached out for Sil, but Hope wouldn’t let go of her, bared his teeth at Einan and growled. Tears stained Shining Talon’s cheeks like the blood staining his injured arm.
“Now,” Inis repeated. Einan kept trying to shake the
noise away, to shake the truth away, but Inis gripped Einan’s wrist and squeezed. Hard.
It broke the spell.
Einan whirled on her, then softened when she saw the tension in Inis’s jaw, the blank, glassy sheen over her eyes. “What?”
“If we’re going to escape, it can only be now.” Inis gestured to the carnage. “They won’t be able to follow us—the Queensguard—and the Last is gone—we have to escape.”
She was right. There might be Queensguard yet capable of giving chase. And the Queen had more sorcerers than Morien at her command. They would follow the Queen’s enemies in Morien’s stead, now that he had disappeared. Einan sucked in a breath between her clenched teeth, shook off Inis’s grip, and rolled up her sleeves. (What the director used to do at the Gilded Lily when the actors were messing around during practice.) She raised herself to her full, short height.
When she called for the rest to follow her, Cab was the first to fall in line.
87
Somhairle
With the sound of Laisrean’s ragged breath roaring in his ears, Somhairle did his best to keep the story going.
He didn’t know where they were headed. It didn’t seem to matter.
Don’t think I’d let you stumble into anything dangerous. Three’s voice, deep and musical, high above. She was surveying their path from beyond the tree line, looking ahead with her bird’s-eye view.
Like a rebellion against a remorseless sorcerer and a mother too proud to die? Never, Somhairle agreed.
Properly chastised.
Let’s never be apart again. There was a hint of no-nonsense in Three’s tone that reminded Somhairle of Inis, but that was the only overlap between his silver fragment and his strongest friend. Inis was more serious than fae silver, glittering and clever and laughing not at pain, but at death itself.
Thank you for coming back, Somhairle replied.
Thank you for letting me go.
It had to be done.
It had to be us, Three agreed. Because you have lived with pain every day of your life, like me. Like our Creators. Your shape is different, but no matter. We do not fear pain, not like those who haven’t lived inside it. We are pain.
Somhairle let his eyes close for a breath. The broad beat of Three’s wings, the warmth of an undercurrent in the air keeping her aloft. Was Three right? (I’m always right, she reassured him.) Was it possible he’d found the one, the only thing that might be easy for him?
Strength in a role other than the kindly, suffering cripple. To be Somhairle first, not Somhairle’s weakness.
They were soaking wet from their escape. A dead sprint through the courtyard had ended in a dip in “Old Drowner,” as Rags had called it. They had floated down to a more secluded spot to avoid the main roads, then swum to the desolate shores of the bank, where only blind beggars and starving urchins marked their passing. From there, they clambered out of the dirty water and into a scrubby forest too bare for the Queen’s men to bother hunting in.
Somhairle stuck to his brother’s side. Laisrean was heavy, and Somhairle couldn’t let Shining Talon bear his weight alone.
He had finally come off the shelf, to live as he wished. Or not at all.
His stiff right leg ached all the way up to his hip, where bright-hot pain lanced in rhythm to his steps. Somhairle longed for a soft bed, a place to sit. Neither awaited him. No matter where they were headed. With every sag of his eyelids, damp golden hair trickling water into his eyes, Somhairle recalled the crack of lightning through the sky.
He saw it strike Inis, again and again.
At the time, he’d cried out, electric heat scorching his throat bone-dry. He’d imagined he was looking at a dead woman, the statue erected in a martyr’s honor, the silver and human shape of the only best friend he’d ever known.
But Inis lived. Two and Three lived. Somhairle lived.
And what of Faolan? He shouldn’t have, but Somhairle wondered.
Limping along, he took stock of the group. The fae girl who had freed Rags and Inis from the mirrorcraft had stopped breathing back in the courtyard, but the fae named Hope still bore her in his arms. He wouldn’t release her, or allow anyone close enough to suggest it.
They were a sorry, sorrowful group.
Somhairle’s fine boots were soggy; everything was sore. Stray branches slapped and stung his face as their path cut deeper through the wood. He watched Laisrean out of the corner of his eye. Was this like a hunting trip? He’d never gone hunting with his brothers.
Laisrean caught him looking.
“I warned you, little brother.” His grin was a wince. The sweat coating his dark skin suggested he was feverish. Somhairle could teach him how to weather fever and missing parts. The phantom aches, the night sweats, a body that wouldn’t obey. “Life on the Hill is too exciting.”
Exciting wasn’t powerful enough for what Somhairle had found. A group of strangers who could be friends. A group of friends who might become heroes.
They’d lost the fae girl who could save them from Morien’s mirrorcraft. Without her, it was up to Somhairle to find a way to free Faolan from the shard in his heart.
If the Head of House Ever-Learning still lived.
Who could say how long he’d been Morien’s instrument?
What Somhairle remembered most was the wild light in Faolan’s eyes that night in the Ever-Land Manor before the door had slammed shut on Somhairle’s nose. His curiously cheerful demeanor after Morien’s fit of pique.
His wasn’t a fight anyone should have to soldier alone. Faolan didn’t have a fragment to share his burdens, so it was all the more important to bring him to their side.
Or at least allow him to have a real choice.
Somhairle let Laisrean lean on him, let Three lead them onward; and despite the weariness in his bones, he didn’t stumble.
88
Rags
Rags didn’t know where they were going. He also didn’t know how they kept moving when they were probably already dead.
Then he told himself to quit grousing. How dare he make light of living, no matter how painful it was, when there were some among them who weren’t alive? He’d share a bed with goats and wouldn’t complain, he swore it, if only his hand would stop throbbing.
If only Tal would look at him again.
He’d lost track of the time when he felt lithe fingers against his damaged palm. The cool touch soothed the burning and aching left behind by Sil’s rushed mirrorglass removal. He startled, nearly slapping the hand away.
He looked down instead, met two silver eyes staring up at him from the innocent face of a fae urchin. Another nipped close on his other side, the braver children in the group coming forward to cluster around him.
Rags wrestled with the urge to tell them to get lost. To look to somebody else. But the truth of the matter was, there wasn’t anybody else. The stronger fae had other burdens, and all the stronger people had someone weaker leaning on them. One of the silver animals would’ve made a better nanny than Rags, but he couldn’t bring himself to shake the kids loose after they’d reached for him specifically.
He’d fucked up by watching over them during the fight. They thought he was a brave warrior, a hero.
He couldn’t even figure out the fragment in his pocket. Some hero that made him.
“You all right?” Rags asked the nearest fae kid. Boy or girl, he couldn’t tell. They all had long hair, black streaked with white, and beautiful, blank-slate faces that’d make your eyes swim if you stared at them too long, like gazing directly at an eclipse. The other fae, the fragments, and the children’s desperation explained how they could possibly trust any human to help after everything humans had already done to hurt them.
“The castle walls told me of the sky at night,” the little fae explained, “but I have never seen the stars for myself.”
“Lucky you.” If Rags could spin this into something positive, could make them feel better, then he could spin gold out of shit. “There’s
a whole mess of them up there to discover.”
“Of course.” Another little fae, the one holding Rags’s other hand. “Because we could not see them does not mean we did not believe they were real.”
“But they are so much brighter than we had hoped,” the first fae said.
Rags decided he was going to call that one Happy and the other one Smartass. He focused on them instead of on Tal, his broad back and powerful shoulders, his bloody arm and his inability to meet Rags’s eye. Or the way his own right hand kept twitching unbidden, something damaged deep in the muscle tissue.
“I call that one the Big Asshole.” Rags jerked his head toward one of the constellations.
“What is asshole?” Happy asked.
Smartass didn’t have a clever explanation. He stared at Rags expectantly. “Yes. What is the meaning of asshole?”
Rags cleared his throat. What would Dane have said? “Not important. Forget that word. Uh, I call that one Ugly Dog Without a Tail. And that one’s the Dirty Spoon.”
He kept them moving, chatting about the stupid stars, distracted from the big mess they were in. They were weak and kept stumbling, so if they could laugh at Rags’s babble, it was better than nothing.
Plus, they had to keep walking.
Rags was pretty sure his feet were bleeding, but there were cool hands clutching his, a swarm of fae kiddies looking to him to get them through.
They stayed on their feet, pushing onward and away from the castle, straight through another dawn. Rags couldn’t tell one kind of tree from the next, but he suspected they were in what he thought of as the Badwoods, although its official name was the Forest of Never-Leaving.
Since people only ever went in, didn’t ever come out.
Good thing they were traveling with fae and the fragments. The trees didn’t attack or try to eat them or whatever it was they usually did. In fact, Rags could’ve sworn that the trees were bowing aside, leading them toward something.
Somewhere?
