The Lady in Red. That’s what I instantly dubbed her in my mind, seizing on her dress—an elegant gown, cut high along one leg, like something a torch singer from the twenties might have worn. She had pale skin and piercing dark eyes, her hair a sculpted wave of midnight black. A key of antique brass dangled around her neck on a slender chain.
Circe dropped to her knees. Her fingertips brushed the dirt, her head bowed. Then the Lady in Red turned her gaze upon me, and every muscle in my body wanted to do the same. I only stayed on my feet by sheer force of will as my knees threatened to buckle. Her lips curled in a playful smile, and I realized she was toying with me.
“Circe,” she said, her voice rich and cold, “come to me.”
Circe rose and walked toward her on wobbly feet. She leaned close and whispered in the Lady’s ear. They both glanced my way, and the Lady murmured a question in response. Circe nodded, blushing.
“I understand,” said the Lady in Red, “that you did me a service. You’ve returned one of my wayward daughters.”
I shrugged. “Circe? She was in a jam. To be honest, I didn’t know what she was at first. Still not entirely sure.”
“Once upon a time, nine beasts emerged from the Shadow In-Between. Nine of my daughters, war-witches all, pledged to slay them. But they were tricked and led into an ambush.” Her hand played in Circe’s hair, affectionately coiling one lock around her fingertip. Then she yanked it tight. “Weren’t they?”
Circe winced. “Yes, my queen.”
The Lady chuckled softly as she loosened her grip.
“They were bound, trapped in the form of tools, their powers to be commanded by any man who wielded them. A calculated insult. But men die, and ages pass, and they slowly slipped across the wheel of worlds. Scattered and sleeping, their legend forgotten. I’ve been making efforts to recover them ever since.”
I thought about Ms. Fleiss. “I know where you can find another one.”
“So do I.” Her eyes twinkled, her smile sly. “But there is little time for talk. I know why you’ve come, and I can feel the blight of hell intruding upon my realm. They’ve chosen their battleground, and even as we speak, your lover is facing judgment.”
Terror surged up inside me, my throat going tight. “Is it close? Can I get there in time?”
The Lady in Red lifted one idle hand, the other still stroking Circe’s hair, and twirled her fingertips. I felt the world lurch under my feet—a sudden, dizzying shift—then it fell still.
“Now it is close. My gift to you, for saving my daughter. You’ll arrive in time if you follow the path. I wonder, though: what will you do when you get there?”
“I…I don’t know,” I said. “Naavarasi’s been in total control from the start of this mess. She hasn’t made a single mistake. She worked us all like puppets…there’s got to be a way to win, I just can’t find it.”
The Lady strode toward me. Imperious, the tail of her gown rippling behind her like gossamer on an autumn wind. My knees went rubbery again, and I fought to hold her gaze as her eyes met mine.
“Poison, as all of my daughters learn, is a witch’s most potent tool. There are many kinds of poison. Some ingredients can be found growing in the wild, some harvested from beasts, and some—the most potent—arise from cauldrons of carefully harvested words, mixed and heated to dark perfection. Words to blacken the heart with greed, with rage, with lust. So what sort of poison did your enemy use on you?”
I thought it over, walking my way back through Naavarasi’s game.
“She suckered me into a bad deal. I thought I had the upper hand, getting something I needed for a favor later down the line, but I was being conned from the jump. Then she played on my connection with Caitlin, using infernal law against us. I realized too late that what I thought she wanted was never the real goal.”
“I find it the sweetest irony, and highly amusing, to use an enemy’s own weapons against them. You should reflect on that.” The Lady raised her hand and pointed up the eastern branch of the crossroads. “Now go. That way, and stay to the path. Your battle awaits. I do hope you survive it.”
“Will you tell me your name?” I asked.
She loomed over me, taller now, and her eyes faded to orbs of inky black. Doorways into the depths of space where ancient stars shone, pinpricks of cosmic light.
“You know my name,” the Lady in Red replied. “You’ve only forgotten. When you remember it, and if you are brave, light a candle under the dark of the moon and whisper it to the wind. If you’re lucky, I just might answer. If you’re unlucky…I just might answer.”
I backed away slowly, edging down the crossroads path. Turning my back on her felt like an unwise thing to do. Circe moved to stand at her lady’s side, offering me a tiny smile and a farewell wave.
Then a fog blew in, white and blinding, and washed the world away.
I walked through the mist, stumbling and lost, but my feet seemed to know the way. The fog grew sparse, dark shapes looming up ahead, and finally it cleared.
I stood at the edge of a vast marble chessboard. Stone pieces as tall as me lined each side, ready for battle. And behind the pieces, the players, sitting on thrones of ivory and black basalt. I was on the side of the white pieces and closest to the ivory throne. The player turned my way with an curious look, and I knew him in a heartbeat.
Prince Sitri.
He was tall and lean and perfect, every angle of his face and every cut of his vanilla three-piece suit delicate and precise. Sleek, androgynous, with a cool and feminine smile. His eyes were never the same color twice and never matched, shifting along a rainbow spectrum as he tilted his head and looked me up and down.
“Well, well,” he purred. “Look what the cat dragged in. This might be entertaining after all.”
On the far side of the board, squatting upon a basalt throne, sat Prince Malphas. He was the size of an elephant, his bulk cloaked in dirty ashen rags. A trio of heads poked out from under shaggy hoods: a crow, a ram, and a buzzard. All three sets of eyes flared scarlet as they fell upon me.
Royce, Prince Malphas’s hound, stood on one side of the throne. He wore his usual Armani best, the edge of a black thorny vine tattoo poking up from the collar of his tailored shirt. Nadine stood beside him, dressed like a fashion plate, her arm hooked around his. On the other side of the throne, Naavarasi fixed me with a glare of irritation and folded her arms across her chest.
My eyes were on the center of the chessboard. A pillar stood there, engraved with coiling white and black serpents, each devouring another’s tail in an endless wheel of destruction. And there was Caitlin. Standing hoisted to her tip-toes, her wrists shackled above her head and chained to a ring at the pillar’s summit. Her jaw dropped when she saw me.
“Daniel! You shouldn’t be here.”
I set foot upon the chessboard. It thrummed softly under my shoe, some dormant power buried in the stone.
“I know what you did, Cait. I know you’re trying to sacrifice yourself to save me.”
I shook my head.
“Can’t let you do that.”
“Too late,” Naavarasi snapped. “You’ve served your purpose, Daniel. Leave.”
I turned, staring her down. “Oh, yeah. I figured out your con. Have to give credit where credit’s due, you got us good. Everything fell out just the way you wanted it. But the game’s not over yet.”
She pointed at me. “I want him removed from this trial. He’s an outsider. He has no place interfering in court proceedings.”
I remembered what Nadine had told me. “The law was made to be exploited by the clever and the wise.”
“Actually,” I said, “I do. The only reason Caitlin’s here is because she filed a Writ of Claimance on me. Making me her thrall, ergo, making me a member of the Court of Jade Tears. Hey, guess what: I’m not an outsider anymore. Looks like I’m staying.”
Naavarasi’s lips curled in a predatory grin. Her eyes flooded with blossoms of tiger orange, like droplets of ink billo
wing in a glass of water, as she took a step toward me.
“Oh, are we educated now, Daniel? Are we a lawyer?” She snickered. “Fine. In that case, you’re a thrall who’s speaking out of turn to a noblewoman. In accordance with my rights, I demand that this insolent mortal be taken from my sight. I also want him whipped. One hundred lashes, I think, would suffice to satisfy my wounded honor.”
I needed a friend here, fast. And as I looked around for help, my eyes fell on the unlikeliest one in sight. Nadine. She hated Caitlin with a passion, but I was gambling, based on our talk at the nightclub, that she hated Naavarasi even more. She wanted to destroy Caitlin; the idea of her archrival doing it had to be eating at her.
Nadine caught my gaze and replied with a mischievous smile and a wink.
“Point of order,” she said, “Daniel is Caitlin’s property.”
“So?” Naavarasi demanded.
“So, the only person who can punish him is her.” Nadine smirked. “Would you like to release her from those chains and hand over her whip now, or wait until after the trial?”
Naavarasi’s eyes narrowed to burning slits. “When the trial is done, Caitlin will be my property.”
“Well in that case,” I said, “I guess my entire legal status is in question. I mean, property can’t own property. That’s just illogical.”
Royce shrugged. “The good chap’s right, you know. Speaking as a completely impartial observer—”
Malphas’s crow head let out an ear-piercing squawk. The buzzard head shrieked, “Silence!”
The chessboard fell into a deathly hush.
“No more delays,” the buzzard head croaked. “No more distractions. Let the trial begin.”
41.
Naavarasi paced the chessboard, circling the pillar, her hands clasped behind her back as she delivered her opening argument.
“Good princes, I—an esteemed noble, a loyal and faithful servant of the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers—have been wronged. I was formally owed a boon by this human, Daniel Faust. The boon was confirmed by Prince Sitri’s very own hound. To prove my case, I hereby call upon the sphere of memory. Witness, I beg you.”
From the mists surrounding the chessboard, a soap bubble—massive, fifteen feet across and rippling as if it might pop at any moment—floated into sight. It hovered over our heads. Sparks danced beneath its surface, shimmering and bouncing, slowly resolving into a three-dimensional picture. I looked up at a replay of our meeting at Blue Karma, when I’d gone with Caitlin, but seen from behind Naavarasi’s eyes.
“And yet,” I watched Caitlin tell her, “here I am. You should have known I’d be here, Baron. You chose to make this a formal matter between the courts. If my prince’s name is invoked as part of Daniel’s debt to you, then I will be present to oversee the discussion.”
The image froze.
“The debt was acknowledged,” Naavarasi said. “As you can clearly see, there was no question that it was a formal boon, subject to the laws of the Cold Peace.”
Malphas’s three heads bobbed as one. Sitri sighed, slouching in his throne with his chin resting upon his slender fist.
The image fast-forwarded. I watched myself picking up the photograph of the dagger, stepping away from the table with Caitlin, coming back again, all at high speed. Then the memory lurched back into focus.
“Maybe we can talk about that,” my image said. “After the job.”
“After the job,” Naavarasi’s voice echoed across the chessboard. “That’s a yes, then?”
“That’s a yes.”
The image froze again.
“And yet,” Naavarasi said, “after obtaining my property, Daniel refused to render it unto me. Making him just as guilty as the original thief.”
“Circe was never your property and you know it,” I snapped.
“Oh?” She looked my way, sneering. “Can you prove that?”
“I can’t prove it, because you shot my witness before he could testify!”
“A convenient story.” She turned her back on me, looking to the princes. “There is no ambiguity. The law is crystal clear. I have been wounded and I am entitled to redress. I ask for nothing more than the standard punishment. That the offender—or, in this case, Caitlin, as she is responsible for his deeds—be granted to me as my property, to do with as I see fit.”
“We must deliberate!” shrieked Malphas’s three heads in unison. They darted close, the hoods of their ragged cloaks brushing as they whispered. On the opposite side of the board, Sitri slouched further into his throne. His eyes had gone dark, like burned-out coals. The arch-manipulator, the chess master who thrived on plots and intrigue—and even he couldn’t find a way to save her.
It was all on me.
“You’re going to regret this,” Caitlin said to Naavarasi, her teeth gritted. “I promise you. If it takes a hundred years or a million, you will regret this.”
Naavarasi sauntered over to her, pitching her voice low.
“The first thing I’m going to do,” she murmured, “is take you to that delightful little nightclub in Vegas. And I’m going to parade you through it, on your hands and knees, wearing a leash. So all of your former friends and all of your court can witness my victory.”
My hands curled into fists. Nails biting into my palms hard enough to leave welts. I was running out of time. Seconds left on the clock, and I still didn’t have a plan. Naavarasi looked my way.
“I’ll make you an offer, Daniel. Join her. Give yourself over to me willingly, and I promise Caitlin’s treatment will be…merciful. You can make things so much easier on her. And you can still be with her. Don’t you want that?”
It wasn’t just a cruel taunt. Naavarasi was more cunning than any of us thought, pulling this off, but she couldn’t help reaching a little too far. There was real greed in her eyes as she made her pitch. A crushing victory wasn’t enough for her: she still wanted more.
And then I knew exactly what to do.
It all came to me at once. Nadine’s admonition that hell’s law was made to be twisted. The way Naavarasi had used our own natures against Caitlin and me, finding the perfect openings in our armor to manipulate us into her trap. And the Lady in Red’s parting words, her lesson on the uses of poison.
“We are prepared,” Malphas’s heads screeched, “to render our verdict.”
“As am I,” Sitri sighed. “We are, I’m sorry to say, in agreement. The law is clear. We must—”
“Wait!” I shouted.
The demon princes fell silent, both of them staring incredulously at me. I gathered they weren’t used to being interrupted.
“Caitlin,” I said, “challenge Naavarasi to a duel.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Emma told me you can challenge her to a trial by combat. Do it.”
“She doesn’t have to agree,” Caitlin said.
“Please,” I said. “Just do it.”
“Very well.” She gave me a curious look. “Naavarasi, by my authority as the hound of Prince Sitri—”
“Save your breath,” Naavarasi said. “Denied. Why would I possibly grant you the slightest sliver of hope when I’ve already won? Besides, how are you going to fight me with those manacles on? Kick me to death?”
“Can I fight in her place?” I asked.
No one spoke.
I looked to both sides of the board. “Can I fight in her place?”
“You may,” Nadine said, her eyes bright and curious. “If unable to fight, the challenger can appoint a champion of their choosing.”
I held up my hand. “I volunteer. I’ll be Caitlin’s champion.”
“Preposterous,” Naavarasi said. “You forget, Nadine, he is a thrall. Or an outsider. Whatever we’ve decided. In either case, he’s utterly beneath me. I’d lose face by fighting him.”
Prince Sitri rose from his throne. Faint sparks of color had returned to his shimmering eyes, like the rainbow flecks of a polished opal.
“What if he wasn’t?” he
asked.
Everyone turned his way.
“I find it unseemly,” Sitri observed, “that my hound is sharing her bed with a mere thrall. It reflects badly on both of us. He should be a knight of my court, at least.”
Naavarasi took a step back, halfway between confusion and outrage. “But…but he—”
“You could duel him then,” Sitri said. “A perfectly honorable battle.”
“A battle I have declined,” Naavarasi said.
“What if I sweeten the pot?” I asked her.
She pursed her lips, studying me. “I’m listening.”
I took a deep breath. Time to make the biggest gamble of my life.
“Double or nothing,” I said. “You pick the battleground, I pick the weapons, and we go at it until one of us taps out. If I win, Caitlin goes free, my debt is canceled, and we’re square. If you win, you get Caitlin and me.”
“Daniel,” Caitlin said, “she’ll kill you. You’ve seen Naavarasi fight. You can’t win.”
Naavarasi trailed her index finger along her lip. Thinking. Sorting through my proposal, looking for a trap.
“She’s right,” Naavarasi said. “I’m faster than you. Stronger than you. Superior in every way. Why would you make such a reckless bet?”
“Because of what you said. Your offer.” I swallowed hard, looking to Caitlin, selling the bluff with everything I had. “You’re right. More than anything in the world, I want to be with Caitlin. Doesn’t matter where. Doesn’t matter how. So it’s not really a gamble, not for me. Even if I lose, I still win.”
“That’s adorable,” Naavarasi said, putting her hands to her heart as she dramatically swooned. “Except you’re a neophyte trickster still trying to beat the mistress of the game. Did you think I wouldn’t catch what you oh-so-casually inserted into your terms? You pick the weapons, for both of us? I think not. You’d pick a broadsword and give me a Wiffle-ball bat. How about this: you choose your weapon, and I choose mine. Still game for a duel?”
Double or Nothing (Daniel Faust Book 7) Page 26
