Bella interrupted my train of thought. “How do you hunt, er, monsters down when you can’t use magic?”
“I can, just carefully. And I can cast spells that are pre-made for me. Mostly, though, I’m just a sneaky son of a bitch.”
“Raven always told me, ‘never hunt in a straight line if you can hunt crooked.’” she said with a small smile. She missed the old spirit.
“Wise Uncle. And how long have you known him?”
She looked surprised. “All my life. Dad told me he was the first one to hold me after I was born.”
That explained rather a lot. Between Raven and Lavendar, this girl had a lot of patronage. She lived up to it, too, while remaining unspoiled. I didn’t think Court would change that, and if it did, it was my job as her retainer to smack her back down to size. Speaking of which.
“Ready for your first lesson?”
“I thought that was what the library was for?”
I shook my head. “All the knowledge in the world - which, knowing Alger, is about what you have in your head - isn’t enough without knowing what questions to ask. Come on, I want to show you something.”
Chapter 15 - Training in the Armory
She obediently got up and followed me out of the kitchen. Ellie had long since disappeared to her private quarters. They might be on my premises, but might not. I had never seen them, and I thought they were more likely in, or under, a tree.
I led her to the other door that was on the same wall. As I laid my hand on the knob and activated the unlocking spell, she looked interested. “I wondered what was in here. Ellie said not to touch the door, or an alarm would go off.”
“She’s mad she isn’t allowed in to dust,” I told her over my shoulder. “Anyway, not an alarm, but a rather interesting sticky trap that would keep anyone until I get there to deal with them.”
I led the way down a stone staircase, feeling it get cooler as we neared the bottom. At the landing, I opened a second door that also had an interesting spell locking it. One that was suitably more lethal than the entrance. Upstairs, an accidental mix-up could lead to some being trying the door. Down here, there could only be mal-intent.
Inside the basement, there were rows of racks, and she ventured from behind me to see what was on them. I could hear her chuckle. “Quite a toy box you have here, Lom.”
“Well, all these years of killing monsters and confiscating weapons.” I let my grin show and we shared a moment of amusement at my armory. “Yeah, it’s a big toy box, but a lethal one.”
She carefully didn’t touch, but looked closely. “I recognize a few things, but some are just... odd.” She pointed. “Like that one.”
I came closer to see. “Ah, that’s a troll-built crossbow. Ugly as it’s owner, but very functional. I think he made it out of railroad track and a leaf spring. I saw it put a quarrel through a cinder block wall.”
“I thought trolls were stupid?”
“This one was a freaking genius.”
She kept walking down the row of shelves. “Wow, these are tiny, and so detailed.” She was nose to nose with a shield and spear that were all of a few inches long.
“They aren’t toys,” I pointed out. “Those are Sprite weapons. There’s a bow and arrows, too.” I showed her the box I kept them in on a puff of wool. They were no longer than her thumb from tip to first joint.
“You fought a sprite?” She sounded surprised that I would pick on a being a fraction of my size.
“No one fights with Sprites if they can help it. Little buggers will swarm you until you’re a pile of bones. No, I made a deal with them. They got a home, and work, and I didn’t have to come back in a box.”
She cocked her head at me, “you lost?”
I laughed. “I won, and they won, not all battles have to end with the victor’s boot on his opponent’s throat, Princess.”
“I like that. Wish it could be true more often.”
I sighed, “So do I.”
She continued on down the aisle, and I stood still for a moment, remembering how I had acquired most of these weapons. I hadn’t set out to bring back trophies, more memories, and interesting pieces that had caught my interest. Like that LeMat pistol, enspelled to fire incendiary buckshot by an angry fairy with a grudge against a lady who was no better than she should be, and probably much more pleasurable than most. He’d caught the Court’s attention when his wild shots at her set the riverboat on fire, and it couldn’t be put out easily. Fortunately for me, he had been a terrible shot, and I was able to take the gun away from him. He’d sagged like a candle near a hot stove, and I think he was relieved to be taken Underhill again.
Bella had gone on to the next aisle, and I let her wander, trusting her not to touch anything, while I opened up the workshop. In here, I modified weapons, built in spells, and generally employed the tricks that kept me alive at what I did. In one corner of the long workbench that lined the far wall was a Mosin Nagant I had picked up dirt cheap, and was prepping to fire wooden bullets that were jacketed in frangible metal. Dryads can’t be killed unless you find and cut down their tree, and not always then, but they were vulnerable to wood from their own type of tree. They also can’t be transplanted once they reach maturity. I had been preparing to find a grove that was luring unwary passersby in a California park. I wasn’t in too much of a hurry, I figured that was a fate the eco-friendly would approve of, fertilizing trees.
I didn’t think I was going to get to them anytime soon, either. Or the ogres infesting Mt. St. Helens. I had no illusions about having killed any of the pack that had ambushed Bella and I. Knocking them off a bridge into a river was only a delaying tactic. The ogre she had blown up was surely dead, but the one with the log in his chest was doubtless holed up somewhere with a she-ogre licking his wounds. Someday, I would have to go back there and take care of them. First, though...
I turned as Bella walked into the shop. Her eyes widened as she looked around.
“Oooh! Shiny!” she laughed. She looked at me with a raised eyebrow and I nodded permission to the unspoken question. Now she could touch, and she did, inspecting my reloading station. I guessed, given her upbringing, she was familiar with the process. She seemed to know what she was looking at.
“What!?” She stopped cold and held up a wooden stake. “Please tell me vampires aren’t real.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “No, but other beings react badly to organics, where metals won’t hurt them.”
“Next you will tell me the silver bullets,” she pointed to a small wooden box with neat rows of copper and silver cartridges lying in it, “aren’t for werewolves.”
“No, I won’t tell you that,” smiling, I went on with the lesson, “although a lot of the Folke are sensitive especially to silver, so I use that load more often than lead.”
She cocked her head slightly to one side, considering. With the fairy wings at rest behind her, and her hair pulled up in a loose bun, this made her look utterly sweet and adorable. I bit my tongue and reminded myself this was a woman who was deadly with a weapon and not afraid to use it.
“Score the barrels of your guns much?”
I knew she mean with the harder silver than the soft lead loads. “Yeah, I go through them. Fortunately, this job pays well.”
She nodded and looked around again, an encompassing sweep of gaze. “My cousins would be jealous of your shop, you know.”
I blurted out before I could stop it, “well, there are times I have thought about putting together a team.”
I had, too. Although the concept of bringing in half-fey Alaskan rednecks had never crossed my mind until that second. Now that I had said it, though, it was a way of being certain they were not double agents for Low Court. Or High Court, for that matter. I was struck by that, but it would have to wait. Bella brought me back to the present.
“What am I learning today, Lom?”
And this was why I couldn’t lose focus. She needed me all in the game, because she didn’t know what wa
s being played, much less the rules.
“Not firearms. Fairly certain you are solid on those.” We matched feral grins for a second. “No, I’m taking you to the spell room. We spent a lot of work making it into a safe place to try out magic.”
“I had never thought about it before the library,” she gestured vaguely at her head. I wondered if the full ramifications of what Alger had done had sunk in with her yet. I thought not, she would doubtless be... verbal... when they did. She went on, “where spells came from. Lavendar never really talked about it. I just realized days ago that it takes work to develop a spell that really works.”
“Working is easy,” I corrected her, “maintaining control is hard. Most fairies never bother to use anything new because it is much less risky.”
“So how do I learn,” she asked reasonably, “without killing myself or you?”
“Well, in here,” I opened a third door with effort. It was solid steel, and the interior panel was scarred and marked with soot. “We can test spells with powered-down results. This room has a massive damping spell embedded in the floor that holds magic release to a minimum.”
She eyed the big, empty room with a dubious expression. It was fairly dim and dark, lit only in a few places by weakly glimmering elf-torches. The magic for those globes of light common in Underhill homes was just not strong enough to endure for long in here.
“How safe is this?”
“Not completely. But it won’t kill you.” Now she did have a look of alarm on her face. I backpedalled quickly. “You know I have to deliver you safe and whole, still, Princess.”
“That’s not... terribly reassuring.”
I snapped back, “good training isn’t easy.”
She sighed and braced her shoulders, which did interesting things to her... wings. “OK, where do we start?”
“Come on,” I led her out into the middle of the room, closing the door behind me as I did so.
Once we stood shoulder to shoulder facing one wall, I instructed her, “close your eyes and think back to the troll on the bridge.”
She closed her eyes and I could almost feel her flinch a little. She was upset at herself for not having cued in sooner to the threat, I surmised.
“You had no way,” I reassured her, putting my hand on her shoulder, “of knowing that he was ambushing you. You weren’t expecting that kind of danger, and you are trained to help. He was using that as your weakness to get to you.”
She nodded with her eyes still closed. I felt her shoulder relax, and her chin came up. There was my hard-headed girl.
“If it happens again,” I went on, “what are you going to do as soon as you realize he is a threat, now?”
She took a deep breath. I stepped to one side to give her room to work. “My strengths are air and fire. Yours is earth.”
“Yes, go on.” I had nodded, and then realized she couldn’t see me, her eyes still closed.
“So I want to use fire,” she told me, “He’s too big for air to do much.”
“Fire at will.” I quipped.
“Um,” she got that distracted look I was learning to recognize.
“Toward the wall. Don’t worry about speed now, this is time to think, so later, you won’t have to.”
She held out her hand and I could tell she was summoning her wand. Then she flicked it at and released the spell, a glimmer that spun off the tip and slowly toward the wall. After a moment, a fireball splashed muddily against the sooty stones. I always got a kick out of the fire behaving like a liquid in the damper field, and from the look on her face, so did she.
“Good. Now, do it without the wand.” she looked at me, and I explained. “It slows you down.”
“How?” she asked.
“How to do it without, or how does it slow you down?”
She looked annoyed, “how to do it without. I see your point about slowing me down.”I knew I shouldn’t needle her, so I tried to tell her straight. “It’s a display piece. Mortals fear the wand as a symbol of magic being done, but you don’t need it to aim a spell.”
She nodded and tucked an errant lock of hair behind one ear, with a serious expression.
“Ready?” I prompted. Without a word, she made a gesture, and again fire splashed against the wall.
“Excellent!” I really was pleased. She caught on very fast, and had a lot of power, this wasn’t tiring her out at all.
She beamed. Literally lit up with happiness. This startled her.
“What just happened?” She was holding onto my arm, now, with both hands.
“Um, you’re a fairy. You sparkle.”
She backed away, her face a mask of horror. “Oh, no. No, no, no... I will not sparkle. Please don’t tell me I leave a trail of pixie dust like Tinkerbelle when I fly.”
I choked back the laugh. “Bella...”
I must not have succeeded in wiping the amusement out of my voice. She headed toward the door. “I can’t do this right now, please let me out.”
“You need to practice. I’m... “ I caught up with her, started to catch her shoulder, and changed my mind. She was liable to rip off the arm that touched her right now and use it to club me to death with. I changed tacks. She had one hand on the door handle, and I knew better than to try and physically stop her. She might not be able to kill me, or really want to, but she might hurt me without realizing what she was doing.
“Bella.” That tone stopped her. “You’re acting like a child. This isn’t about you not liking your appearance, what is wrong?”
Chapter 16 - Delicate Flower
“I want to get out of this place.” She spat it out, like I was going to argue with her. “I want to go home, spend long, quiet days with my spotting scope and a cloud of mosquitoes. I do not want to wear anything but denim and plaid. I most definitely do not want to become a delicate, sparkling, damned flower!”
The curse startled me. I knew she was under a lot of stress and hadn’t been feeling well, I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten.
“Let’s go upstairs and talk?” I suggested, still not wanting to have my head ripped off. She growled, but nodded. I let us out of the training room and she headed into the room I thought of as my warehouse.
“Lom.” She had stopped in front of a cannon that had teeth marks all around the muzzle, like something had grabbed on and used it as a chew toy. “How long have you been collecting trophies?”
“Well, I don’t think of them as trophies.” I reached out and trailed a finger through a deep gouge in the brass, and she did the same once I had touched it. I was really appreciating her restraint with the objects. Some of them were still bespelled, or in the case of the goblin weapons, fouled with filth and venoms that would act even through skin. “If they were trophies, they would be upstairs over the fireplace or what-not.”
She patted the snout of the cannon and looked back up at me, her eyes still shiny with unshed tears. “Good point. But you are doing it again.”
“What?” I pretended innocence and affected a shocked tone. Her smile told me I’d overdone it.
“How long?” she repeated simply.
I sighed and rolled my shoulders against the tension building up there. “Let’s go upstairs, get some coffee, and I’ll answer questions.”
I put the coffee on, and indulged in something I rarely did unless I was alone. It gave me something to do with my hands and an excuse to stall. I started a pipe, finding more comfort in the motions of packing, lighting, and relighting than I had expected. My routines and home were upside-down, too. I’d never anticipated this little errand would become so complicated. It was supposed to be a straightforward pick-up and delivery. I’d show up, she’d sign papers, we’d fly to Seattle, rent a car, drive to a main gate Underhill (it was in a tiny used bookstore that mundanes loved, never guessing the real reason it was able to stay in business) and present her at court. Mission over.
Reality had been a fighting retreat from her home and state, a journey that had taken far longer than
planned, an oath of fealty I was not going to back out of even if she didn’t seem to understand its gravity, and no signature on the papers lying forgotten on my bedroom desk. I was also stalling on taking her to the shark pool that was Court. I’d gotten soft, I mused silently. Bella just sat still and watched me. She had kicked a troll in the ‘nads, maintained a cool-as-a-cucumber demeanour through a midair furball with a roc, and blown an Ogre the hell up. I would confess I was a little afraid of her, especially with Alger’s gift still unwrapping inside her head.
“You wanted to know how long I’ve been doing.. what I do.”
“Monster hunting?” she supplied curiously.
I winced. “I don’t call it that. Not all the beings, things, whatever, I go after are monsters. So I usually say bounty hunter, if pressed to it.”
She nodded. I went on, “I started after I’d fully recovered from the elfshot that almost killed me, and left me, as a Pixie magician’s apprentice...” The corners of her eyes crinkled, but she suppressed her smile. “Useless. I was in my young adulthood, what humans call late teenage years developmentally now. You know how boys that age are.”
She gave me a rueful smile. I was willing to guess that with all her cousins, there were stories there. But we didn’t have time, now. “I wanted to prove my value, and I didn’t want to be Underhill very much. So we took on a small commission as a favor for the King.”
She didn’t question the we, and I found out later she’d assumed I meant Alger. “How did you work around not using magic?”
“I could risk triggering pre-made spells, and I learned to, as Raven put it so well, hunt crooked, There were some pretty close calls in the early days.”
But we had been going after small prey, then, my partner and I, looking for the minor disruptive elements in human realms that were very close to our own. A brownie craving the old days. A changeling left in the wrong household, that could leave an angry mob hunting us to the very doors of Underhill. Back then, humans still had memories of where the major doors were.
I finally answered her question, speaking softly to try and lessen the impact. “Bella, that was two hundred human years ago.”
Pixie Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 1) Page 13
