by Karen Chance
At least, they had once. But now . . . I’d never make that mistake now. Only I wouldn’t have to worry about it, would I? Those other Pythias would never listen, not in time, not with me dragging Rosier so far back, with the possibility for us to screw up time multiplying exponentially every year. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t thought of that, too, wasn’t like I didn’t know how dangerous this was. But did it matter? Did it matter if I screwed up the world when Ares was about to come back and set it all ablaze and I couldn’t stop him and Pritkin—
I made a sound in my throat, and Rosier looked down to stare at me. But I was too upset to care. If they caught up with us tonight, it was over. I just didn’t have anything left.
“They won’t find us,” he told me, after a moment.
“How can you possibly know that?”
He made a broad gesture that took in the whole expanse around us. “Wales.”
“That doesn’t answer anything.”
“On the contrary, it answers everything. Rome’s legions vanquished empires, their governors made kings shudder in fear, and their sprawl swallowed a good portion of the known world. Yet they took thirty years to conquer Wales, and even then, they never held it easily. The legions found it too damned hard to fight in these mountains, and far too easy to die, with bolt-holes behind every rock and tree, and wild men constantly dropping out of—”
“The Pythias aren’t Roman legions,” I told him unsteadily.
“No, but they still can’t fight what they can’t find. And they can’t find us. I laid enough false trails, did enough circling around, and hacked my way over enough mountaintops to see to that.”
“But . . . dozens . . .” The very idea was overwhelming. Dozens of Pythias. How could anyone stand against that?
“Potentially dozens,” he amended.
I looked at him. “What?”
“Well, that other one, what was her name? The one before you?”
“Agnes?”
“Yes. She didn’t show up in Amsterdam, did she?”
“I—no. But—”
“She must have felt us pass through, so to speak, but she let the Pythia of the day handle it. We only faced two Pythias in Amsterdam due to London following us out of her own era. Now, there may be more Londons out there, but it seems to me that more will likely stay where they are and let the local girl take care of it. Whoever that may be.” He glanced around.
“But . . . but you just said—”
“Yes, well, I was playing with you, girl.”
“Playing—” I stared at him.
“And giving you the worst-case scenario,” he said, a little defensively. “Technically, they could all end up here. However, I think it more likely that they will only show up if the current Pythia fails to find us. Which, with the amount of territory she has to cover, and if we refrain from putting a spotlight on us by using magic, should buy us a few—look!”
I jumped, my head whipping around, my heart in my throat. But the moon was barely a sliver above the trees, and I couldn’t see anything. And the starlight only managed to make every little hill and rut in the ground into a lurking enemy.
“What?”
“A flame!” Rosier went to his knees, hands cupped protectively around something in a pile of moss. I almost passed out.
Playing, I thought dizzily, watching him hunch protectively over a flicker in the dark. His cheeks swelled up, and he started feeding it tiny puffs of oxygen. After a moment, a glimmer of light danced in his eyes, making him look even more diabolical than usual.
I was going to kill him, I decided unsteadily.
Just not right now.
I lay back down.
After a bit, I heard him move off, probably in search of more wood for the hungry little flame. I didn’t bother opening my eyes to check. Everything hurt. Every. Thing. It felt like I’d managed to sprain my entire body and possibly my brain, too.
And on top of that, I was starving.
“Did you bring any food?” I asked when I heard him return.
“What? Oh yes.”
Something hit me in the chest. I opened my eyes to find myself looking at one of those little packs of crackers and cheese. Not the good kind. The kind you get at gas stations when you’re hungover at two a.m. and aren’t that picky. The kind where the cheese is half-liquefied neon yellow goo.
I ate them anyway.
“Isn’t there an inn or something?” I asked.
“What?”
“An. Inn. You know, a medieval Ramada?”
He snorted. “Are you in for a disappointment.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that if you’re looking for the majestic, flag-topped fortresses of Camelot, you’re going to be looking awhile.” He chuckled to himself.
God, I hated that man.
“I didn’t ask about fortresses. I asked about an inn. Somewhere inside,” I said pointedly, as a raindrop hissed on Rosier’s cheerful little blaze.
He looked skyward, scowling. But it appeared to have been a lone sentinel, because no more were forthcoming. So he turned the scowl on me.
“They didn’t have inns, either.”
“Then where did travelers sleep?”
“Most people didn’t travel, and those who did stayed at monasteries, some of which would put you up for a night or two if you said nice things about whatever bit of saint they had tucked away.” He waved a hand. “But in this period in Wales they’re mostly down by the coast.”
“So what does anybody do who ends up inland?”
“Find an accommodating farmhouse if no one’s looking for them.”
“And if someone is?”
“Camp.”
I closed my eyes. Wonderful.
“You’re luckier than you know,” he told me. “Medieval inns, when you could find one, were universally terrible. Flea-ridden, lice-infested, and teeming with thugs who would as soon shiv you in the side as look at you. And don’t get me started on the food! I think they deliberately tried to poison me on more than one occasion.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“The same reason anyone comes to this miserable little world.” He looked around malevolently. “Power.”
He didn’t seem interested in explaining that, which was fine with me. If I never talked to the man again, it would be fine with me. “Did you bring sleeping bags, at least?” I asked, trying in vain to find a comfortable spot.
“No.”
“No? If you knew there weren’t any inns, then why—”
“I didn’t know you were going to land us in the middle of the damned wilderness, did I?”
I choked down a few dozen comments about him being lucky we’d made it here at all, and instead focused on the pack he’d smacked me in the face with every other step. “Then what’s in that?”
“Clothes, mainly. Or did you plan to go to court dressed like that?”
I looked down at my shorts and T-shirt, and then what he’d said registered. “We’re going to court?”
“Such as it is.”
“You mean . . . Arthur’s court? We’re going to Camelot?”
Rosier looked like he was about to say something, and then clamped his lips shut. “Yes. We’re going to Camelot. Happy?”
“No!”
“Why am I not surprised?”
“Why can’t we wait for Pritkin somewhere less . . . public?”
“Because, my dear, unlike you, my son bothered to learn something about his magic. Magic I do not have, remember? Approaching him on the road would be a very bad idea.”
“But he knows you. Oh, wait. I see what you mean.”
“He doesn’t know me yet,” Rosier snapped. “All he would see is someone who had disguised themselves as him, who was also trying to hex him!”
&nb
sp; “And he won’t see the same thing at court?”
“No. You’re going to go in and lure him out. I’ll hide and render him unconscious while he’s busy with you—”
“Yeah. ’Cause that worked so well in London.”
“—and then use some human drugs to keep him that way. No magic, see?”
I just looked at him.
“Do you have a better idea?” he demanded.
“Anything is a better idea. Trying to coldcock someone with Pritkin’s reflexes—”
“My own aren’t that bad, either!”
“—and why do I have to lure him out? Why can’t you just go inside and—”
“I’ll never get inside; there’s too much security. People are paranoid here, and for good reason. Place makes your Wild West look like Disneyland.”
“Then how am I supposed to—”
“Damn it, girl! You’re an attractive female! That’s a pass into virtually anywhere, if you know how to work it.”
I looked at him some more.
“And I will help you,” he said heavily. I started to comment, but he held up a hand. “You’re making this harder than it is. We go to court. We lure him out. We take him down. Getting here was the challenge; the rest is going to be easy.”
Chapter Fifteen
Easy, I thought mockingly, slopping along some “road” the next morning in the “shoes” Rosier had provided to go with my “dress,” all of which were ungodly ugly and didn’t even fit. And that included the “road,” which clung to the side of a mountain like it had been cut to go somewhere else.
Like somewhere that wasn’t at a forty-five-degree angle and located next to a cliff.
“I thought . . . Wales was supposed to be . . . chilly,” I panted, feeling sweat drip down my neck.
“Do you always whine this much?” Rosier demanded, slip-sliding his way through the mud. And barely managing to avoid a rapid descent into the valley below.
“I was making . . . an observation. And this damned wool doesn’t help.”
“It’s what people wore in this era. Wool and flax—”
Rosier cut off when he abruptly went down on his ass, which was funny. And then started sliding toward the cliff, which was not. I grabbed him and jerked back, but forgot about the mud—and my lousy excuse for shoes with nonexistent traction. I ended up going down myself, and planting an elbow in his stomach, or possibly something slightly lower, as we thrashed away from the edge, rolling and cursing and covered in mud.
But we ended up over beside the cliff face, so I guessed that was something.
Furious green eyes met mine, out of a slimy brown mask.
“So couldn’t . . . we have had . . . some more flax?” I asked him after a minute.
“Why has Emrys not killed you? Why has everyone not killed you?”
“They’ve tried.”
“Not hard enough!”
• • •
“I thought you didn’t believe me,” he said when we stopped under a dripping tree to gulp down some water. How it could be simultaneously rainy and hot in Britain, I had no idea. But it was managing. And slowly steaming us inside our lovely wool.
“About what?”
“About your mother.”
“I don’t,” I told him, wiping my mouth on my dress, because it wasn’t as if anybody was going to notice. I’d slipped in the mud three times, the last one face-planting, and the garment was beyond filthy. And I had a rock in my “shoe.” I sat on a really uncomfortable root and pulled it off, shaking the thing.
“Then what was that quip?” Rosier demanded.
“What quip?”
“About me using my son!”
I shrugged. “Just that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t react like Mom’s the Antichrist for supposedly trying to use me, and then turn around and declare yourself lily white when you’re doing the exact same—”
“I am not doing the same thing!”
“Oh no. Of course not.” We’d somehow gotten onto the subject of Pritkin’s mother, and Rosier had gotten defensive. And so, of course, he’d started to attack mine. But considering everything, I didn’t think he had much cause to feel superior. “You just impregnated some woman you knew was going to die—”
“I did not know that!”
“Because the last fifty dying in childbirth after their half-incubus kids drained them dry was a coincidence?”
“It wasn’t fifty, and women died from childbirth all the time in this era!” he said irritably. “Along with a thousand other things. At first, I thought I was merely unlucky.”
“Unlucky?”
“I didn’t have anyone to tell me otherwise. It’s not as if anyone had tried this!”
No, I didn’t suppose so. Incubi, like all demons as near as I could figure out, tried to improve their line by mating up the power chain. So demon/human crosses were actually pretty rare. It would have to be a pretty sad excuse for a demon to find a human a decent match.
Of course, this was Rosier we were talking about.
But he hadn’t been after Pritkin’s mother for her power, had he?
“But when you finally noticed, you didn’t stop,” I pointed out.
“No, I looked for a woman I thought would live!”
“Because of a tiny bit of fey blood?”
“It wasn’t tiny, and why do you know about all this?”
“Pritkin told me.” Rosier glared at me. “What? It’s his story, too.”
He looked away, and his jaw tightened. “He never talks to anyone. Not about this. He doesn’t talk to me about this.”
“Did you expect him to?”
“Yes! He makes assumptions, and always—always—I am the villain!”
“You could correct him—”
“That’s not my place!”
“—unless, of course, those assumptions are right. . . .”
He started to say something, and then stopped, lips tight. And then decided to hell with it and said it anyway. “You have no idea what it’s like at court,” he spat. “None! The plotting, the scheming—it never ends. The only way out is to die, or to get enough power that no one risks challenging you. But I can’t absorb enough on my own to build up that kind of surplus, not when I am constantly having to expend it to break up feuds and maintain order—”
“So you decided to give yourself a backup.”
“I wasn’t supposed to need one! I was never supposed to have this position so young. Until your mother decided otherwise!”
He trudged ahead, stabbing at the ground with the makeshift walking stick he’d crafted out of an old tree limb and not looking at me. Although that could have been because of the treacherous terrain. I scrambled to keep up.
It was hard to imagine someone who was probably older than the pyramids as “young,” but I guess it was relative. And he wasn’t wrong about my mother. Not entirely, anyway.
She’d been the last goddess left on earth because she’d kicked out all the others, and the gods, too. I’d known that for a while. What I’d only just found out was how.
She’d done it by hunting demons, the oldest, strongest, and most powerful—including the ones that the other demons called “ancient horrors” and shuddered when they mentioned them. And Rosier’s father, who hadn’t been one of the above, but who had had the bad luck to get in the way. Then she used what she stole from them, energy collected over countless millennia, to kick out her fellow gods and to slam the metaphysical door behind them.
No one knew for sure why she did this. The Circle viewed her as the savior of mankind, because the gods had been doing a pretty good job of destroying the new world they’d found prior to their abrupt departure. It was why the Silver Circle took that name, why it was still their symbol: a circle of light, like the full moon on a clear night, like the a
ge-old symbol of the best known of mother’s many names: Artemis, goddess of the moon, the great huntress . . .
Of course, as the son of one of those she’d hunted, Rosier had a slightly different take. Namely that she’d kicked out the other gods in order to rule supreme on her own. Only they had resisted more than she’d expected, leading to her expending most of her newly acquired strength in the battle. And that had left her vulnerable to payback from all those outraged demons—if they could have found her.
They never did.
But they did find me. And naturally assumed that some nefarious plot on my mother’s part had led to my conception. Rosier especially was a big fan of that idea. Recent events had mitigated the council’s view somewhat, but Rosier . . .
He was still in tinfoil hat land, and showed no sign of coming back.
“It was a different age then,” he told me, looking off over the spread of mountains. “My father strode the gaps between worlds like a colossus, magnificent in his power, breathtaking in his influence. In his era, incubi were respected, admired, even coveted. Our people were considered ornaments to any court, valued councilors, trusted spies, functionaries, diplomats . . .” He trailed off.
“And then?” I prompted.
He shot me a glance. “And then came the dark times, and the world we knew shattered and broke. Everyone was set adrift as courts scattered and people fled and my father—we never recovered.”
“So Pritkin was supposed to help you reclaim lost glory?”
“He was supposed to help me survive!” Rosier said, slashing at some gorse bushes that had grown over the “road.” “That’s all any of us have done ever since. And it was damned hard, girl. Our specialized abilities, honed to a fine sheen over countless centuries, were suddenly useless. Beauty, luxury, flattery—none of these things mean a damn when you’re scratching and clawing for survival! When your very civilization is coming down around your ears!
