On the other hand, if Wes immediately and mysteriously figured out that the elite forces had found a way around whatever detection magic he was using and was ready for their supposedly fool-proof ambush, then questions would be asked. Not just by my father, but probably by the Horde leadership itself—especially if the Pit Knights were still able to resurrect like our own agents were.
If everyone had been acting normal the whole time, then they would probably just chalk it up to Wes pulling another miracle out of his ass. Maybe some magic, or him getting tipped off by a local or something.
But if I suddenly became unavailable right now, for as long as it would take me to get back to Avalon without being discovered, then they wouldn’t suspect a local.
If that happened, they would likely trace the information back to me.
And then I would die.
Which would defeat the entire reason I was helping Wes to begin with.
Priorities, I reminded myself. I just have to hope Wes can handle it. Even though he probably can’t, now that they’re finally taking him seriously.
“Well, okay then,” I said, still trying to sound calm, “that’s really good news. I’ll go ahead and pass the news along to my people.”
I turned to leave, then a thought came back into my mind.
“Travis, I have to ask, why are we meeting in the middle of an alley in broad daylight, instead of inside the headquarters?”
“Too many of our human allies refuse to spend long periods there,” Travis said with a shrug. “Something about all the new assassinations. I wouldn’t know; I would rather make use of the accommodations available to me as a Knight of the Pit.”
“What accommodations—hold up, assassination attempts?”
“That was what they told me,” Travis said with an indifferent toss of his head. “Our forces have noticed that your own have increased their efforts in locating the Chief Prey’s local Satellite. Shortly after that, they began dying in their sleep, no matter how secure the location was. I know you can all resurrect at least once, but considering your standing, Tyrant Prince, I thought it wise to take as few risks as possible. Therefore, we are meeting in a nondescript alley, one no different than dozens of others in this city.”
“Fuck my—I mean, thank you for that information,” I said, recovering quickly. “I’m surprised none of the assassinated men have said anything yet, but maybe they just haven’t resurrected yet. Either way, I’ll find out soon, I suppose.”
Travis’ eyes widened in surprise.
Just as my mind registered that fact, a soft, smooth, feminine voice spoke behind me.
“That’s right. You will.”
My peripheral vision caught the sight of black scales erupting over the Horde Knight’s neck, but I spent the rest of my attention on turning around and summoning a spite shield as quickly as I could.
The next moment, my mind registered the fact that there was a stabbing pain erupting from both my neck and kidneys.
I fell to the ground instead of completing my maneuver. My vital guard tried to activate and failed, over and over. My brain processed that the blows must have landed before I had even finished turning, before my assailant even finished speaking.
But it was over too quickly. My vital guard didn’t get a chance to activate, and something was keeping it from activating.
Just like something was making it hard for me to move, or think.
Or breathe.
As my body impacted the street cobblestones, I retained just enough focus to see a short, lithe form leap over me, one all garbed in black. Travis, now covered in black scales, leaped after it.
I had no idea whether he caught the woman, though, because my vision became blurry.
Then my chest began hurting immensely, and the very next moment everything went black.
When I finished blinking, I realized that I had died.
The shock of it all hit me the very next moment. Phantom pain pierced through my chest, neck, and kidney. Why had she bothered to strike my kidney? I wondered, figuring that the blow to my neck itself was enough to paralyze and kill me somehow.
Kill me…holy shit…
Stell’s Satellite—at least I assumed it was her—had managed to find out or track down our hidden meeting point, in spite of our efforts to stay hidden. Granted, I wasn’t exactly impressed with Travis’ spycraft in those moments, but it was still likely he hadn’t told anyone about our location. I refused to believe even his new Horde-induced insanity could have made him that stupid.
But the local version of Stell had figured it out all the same, snuck up on the both of us, and struck me down before I could even activate my vital guard.
As I struggled to get myself under control, the questions how and why battled it out in my mind.
Why won quickly, because I had to admit I had no idea how assassin-Stell had been able to find and take me out in a single strike—just like I had no idea whether Travis had been able to catch her as she ran away, if she was strong enough to fight him off, or if she even knew just how strong he was compared to herself. I didn’t have enough information to even start figuring any of that out, so that question would just have to wait.
But why she had chosen to attack me needed to be answered immediately. Had she chosen to attack me as a target of opportunity? That made some sense. No one killed in that city would have been able to return immediately. They’d either have to use our portal to the Golden Sands, or if they wanted to be safer, portal to another world, and then use the Pathways to help diminish the whispers we had all started hearing too loudly from the portals themselves.
But both of those options would delay me from returning by a couple of days at the most. If I was anything more than an ambassador, that would have mattered. But as it was, killing me just didn’t seem worth the Satellite’s time—not when she was already organizing a rebellion, hiding from Cavus, and trying to link up with Wes.
Come to think of it, she should have already gotten much closer to him. She shouldn’t have been screwing around with Dad’s operatives at all.
And why wait until our meeting was done?
She had shown with her words that she had caught the tail end of our conversation. Even if she hadn’t heard all of it, she had to know the message had been delivered, and that I was on my way out anyway. Killing me would have just sent me out the door even faster.
Did she know that? I wondered. She had to have known that.
She had actually been killing Dad’s operatives for decades in that world. In fact, she had used that as a threat to force an uneasy truce, to establish consequences whenever they got too brutal.
It allowed my father’s operatives to make use of the world’s resources, but the people there were definitely better off than they had been in the Woadlands and the Sun-Jeweled Seas.
She had to have known that, I decided.
But did she recognize me?
And if she did, did she know I was a double agent now?
I really wasn’t sure about that last one. On one hand, I hadn’t spent a lot of time in her world, and I had only revealed myself very recently. But Stell was supposedly traveling to all her different worlds, maintaining brief bursts of contact with her Satellites.
She could have filled this one in—Anahita, I finally remembered her name—and let her know that I was a double agent. That I’d be passing info on to Wes, at the very least.
But if she had known that, she had still killed me anyway.
Which meant that either Stell hated me so much her Satellite risked herself to make a useless team kill, or…
I was still lying on the ground, processing this fact as well as the trauma of my recent death.
I finally noticed the grass between my fingers.
Avalon.
That was right.
My primary body was still on Avalon.
I had switched it out for my projected body. Used that to travel around, so that I wouldn’t die permanently if something went w
rong.
That changed everything.
No one suspected that I had my original body on Avalon. The unsanctioned portal that my scientist had rigged prevented people from tracking me here, and Dad had instructed me to keep the location of my original body a secret. And since I had just died, I couldn’t send my projected body anywhere right now, anyway. Not for a day, at least.
Stell’s Satellite had given me both the perfect opportunity and the perfect alibi to help Wes, either on purpose or as a happy side effect of her significant hatred for me.
And if I wanted to save my own skin, I had better make use of them.
I got up, took a single step forward, and fell back down as my mind began screaming about the fact that I had just died.
Get it together, I told my shaking limbs and neurons, you can push through it if you have to. Just get it together! Or you’ll die for good!
I repeated that last line several times, reminding my subconscious that we still had to preserve ourselves. That we still had something to lose if we didn’t get our shit together.
In the end, it was enough for me to push the recent experience to the back of my mind long enough for me to get back to my feet and begin running again.
And it had only taken a few minutes, meaning I had gotten back on my feet far more quickly than any of my father’s operatives.
And probably faster than Wes had on his first death, I let myself reflect smugly, before turning my full attention to the run. My long-term survival was still dependent on my nemesis’ long-term survival.
Avalon’s forests and meadows usually looked unfamiliar, but I had left my original body in a well-marked place. It wasn’t far from Wes’ magical mansion-keep, which meant it wasn’t far from anyone I needed to talk to.
“Hold up!” a tiny voice squeaked at me, and I turned to see a little blue light float up to me.
“State your business—oh!” she caught herself. “It’s the broken-rooster-guy. What’s up? Got another message for Lady Guineve?”
“My rooster’s not—nevermind,” I decided, realizing I was about to debate my alleged impotence with a woman currently less than six inches tall, “yes. I need to speak with Lady Guineve. Right now. Or people will die.”
“Passing on your message,” the fairy said in a now-bored tone. “Alrighty,” she said a half-moment later. “She’ll see you in the first room on your right. Go on ahead, but don’t do anything stupid. We’re all taking bets on your chances of survival with her, and like everybody will lose candy if she kills you today.”
I didn’t even know how to reply to that, and the fact that I had wasted a second or two trying to figure out angered me. So I ran past the little brat and across the drawbridge—suppressing the urge to grumble at Wes for having a goddamned moat—and inside the building.
I slowed to a walk inside, and nearly stumbled on a new rug some asshole had put down. Something about the near stumble reminded me of my last fall, and my last fall had happened just before my death, which reminded me of the fact that I had just fucking died.
My traumatized mind locked up again for a moment, reliving the sensations of something sharp sliding into both my neck and kidney, and then being completely helpless the next moment, unable to even breathe, before darkness took me.
Get it together, I reminded myself, forcing myself to keep walking through the first door on my right, which was only a few feet from the keep entrance, and probably would double as a trapping point during a siege, judging by the murder holes and other small openings I could see on the ceiling.
Stell’s voluptuous Satellite was standing next to what was probably the plainest wooden table in the entire keep, with two unadorned chairs next to it.
“Good afternoon, Chris,” the tall woman said in the cool tone she normally addressed me with. “I wasn’t expecting you this early. I apologize for not having anything prepared for you,” she lied blandly. “Would you like to take a seat?”
“Yes, please,” I said as respectfully as I could, trying to keep myself from shaking. Guineve raised an eyebrow as she looked at me.
“Are you alright, dear?” she asked, still using a cool, bland tone. “You look a little shaken.”
“Yeah, well I just died,” I said, biting back the bitterness in my tone as I sat down. With all of my concentration focused on my speech, I couldn’t keep from wincing as a brief burst of phantom pain washed through my neck and back. “Your fellow Satellite in the Golden Sands assassinated me while I was undercover.”
“Oh?” the stately woman said, blinking in surprise.
Which meant, since Stell’s primary Satellite didn’t know, then this likely wasn’t a planned event.
“Yeah,” I said, shifting in my chair as the pain passed. “Got me completely by surprise. Wasn’t even expecting her to be at the meeting.”
“Really?” the dark-haired woman said brightly. “Well, then. That’s sweet of you to let me know, Chris. You didn’t have to come by just for that.”
I grimaced, but bit back a sarcastic reply.
“I didn’t,” I finally said in what history had better record as a super-patient tone, “that was just to answer your question regarding my pained expression. I’m actually here on account of the meeting itself.”
“I see,” Guineve replied, becoming serious again. “Were you able to get all the information you needed before your untimely accident?”
“Untimely—yes,” I corrected, wishing I didn’t have to talk with this woman so much. “And it’s bad news. They’ve got a new way to track Wes. The last ambush was just a way to gauge his strength and come up with a way to track his location. The new Horde incursions are just to help isolate him, and ensure his support is busy fighting them. But the next time he’s vulnerable, the Pit Knights are going to ambush him, using the Pits themselves to bring a crack team of elite Malus and Horde with them.”
“And you’re confident they can handle him?” she asked, her pale face in a calculating expression.
“I have no idea,” I admitted, leaning forward to rest my head on my hands. God, getting killed sucked. “But they are.”
“They have been quite confident in the past,” the regal woman pointed out coolly. “And they have been consistently, amusingly wrong.”
“Yeah, that’s why the Horde Pit Knights have insisted on taking command of this one,” I said darkly, “and they sacrificed a Dark Icon just to get a read on Wes’ strength. They should have at least a basic understanding of his abilities now. And from what I can tell, they’re determined to strike him with as much overwhelming force as they can bring to bear. And since Wes doesn’t know the Pit Knights can use the Pits now like he can use the Pathways, he’s going to get all that overwhelming force completely by surprise. Unless we can get a message to him somehow,” I added meaningfully.
The mist-clad woman looked me in the eye.
“How soon do you think they will strike?” she asked deliberately, holding my gaze.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, meeting her eyes confidently, “but they’ll strike as soon as they can, though they’ll have to travel through the Pits and they intend to wait until he is recovering from a previous battle. So, probably after he begins resting from his next big engagement.”
She nodded a half-second later, seeming satisfied with my sincerity.
“I’ll pass the word immediately,” she announced. “And thank you, Chris, for passing on this message so quickly,” she said in what was perhaps the lightest tone she had ever used with me. “Especially after having such a difficult experience. Now I imagine you won’t be able to make a projected body any time soon, so why don’t you drink some coffee and rest for a bit?”
I was about to say that there wasn’t any coffee for me to drink, but when I looked down I saw that she had set a steaming mug, complete with saucer, stirring spoon, creamer, and sugar bowl.
A peace offering, if I ever saw one.
And one that scared me far more than her open hostility, shou
ld I ever disappoint her now.
CHAPTER 16: NEXT MARK
Wes’ Perspective
“She’s still not moving,” I said to Breena.
We were all still sitting. We had just finished breakfast, and the good news was that this morning hadn’t started off with an excessive amount of sexual tension between myself and the fey body of my multi-bodied, possibly abstinence-practicing girlfriend.
The bad news was that, according to the Breath, the other body of my possibly-abstinence-practicing girlfriend still wasn’t getting any closer to me.
At least I think she wasn’t.
The impressions from her own Breaths were shallow, and strained. The only emotion I could sense from her was a desperate tenseness.
Knives in the Night Page 24
