Chapter 9 In Which Sahir Demonstrates Startling Versatility
In Which Sahir Demonstrates Startling Versatility
“Human?” I said, blankly. I stared at Milo’s door. There was no label underneath his name that said Human or Can lie.
This would have been a handy label.
I realized four things in quick succession.
First, Sahir thought that Milo had information to share with me—maybe about the Court or my captivity.
Second, Milo was a human.
Which meant that, third, instead of performing espionage like Sahir thought, or flirting with an interesting and very attractive faerie like I thought, I had been happily traipsing the corridors of the Court with some dude who grew up in Waco, Texas.
Who, fourth, could lie to me.
Sahir took me by the elbow and led me up the artery to the main hall. He didn’t say anything else.
The silence stretched and snapped. “You don’t tell me what to do,” I said, exasperated. “I do whatever dangerous things I want to. And Milo isn’t even dangerous, unless you mean dangerously hot.”
Sahir did not dignify this outburst with a response.
We proceeded in angry silence. I tried not to think about how uncomfortable I’d been with all of Milo’s touches.
“He’s a human?” I said, still reeling.
“Mostly. He claims some Fae blood, and I think a grandmother who was a banshee.”
I glared at him. “I’m sure he was going to tell me that.”
Sahir tilted his chin up in a very supercilious way, like an eleven-year-old boy preparing to explain an exciting bug fact to his friends. “I thought you cannot see the future, Lady of the True Dreams.”
I groaned and wrenched my elbow out of his grasp. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I was working. I took a break.” It sounded more defensive than I had intended. Sahir wasn’t my boss.
“I sensed your danger through our bond.”
“Bond?” I sputtered. And, “Danger?”
“Yes, for I am your knight, and sworn to defend you,” he said, sounding irritated at having to explain this, and not very knightlike at all.
“I don’t even think you’re a real knight,” I snapped. “You don’t wear armor.”
Sahir stalked ahead of me, his shoulders tense. “Who would wear armor to an office building, Miriam? An idiot. And am I an idiot?”
I growled and chased him down the hallway, running to catch up. “Just tell me what happened and why you thought I was in danger.”
“I was in a meeting about the release of a new green bond,” he started, “and I felt an abyss open in your soul, so I left the office and came to find you.”
“An abyss,” I repeated. “Sahir, I don’t—” I started, but he cut me off.
“I went to your room, and saw Gaheris and Lene on your bed with the cat. I was delayed in finding you because I had to close one of Gaheris’s portals, which had unleashed two-thirds of a swamp into your bedroom.”
“How do you know it was Gaheris’s portal?”
He gave me a withering look. “You think you have the only cat in this entire Court?”
I stared back at him, uncowed. “How do you know it was two-thirds of a swamp, and not just half?”
He sighed. I thought Sahir should probably just record himself sighing so he didn’t destroy his lungs, what with all the deep breaths and audible exhales. “Gaheris is so bad with coordinates that I sometimes wish somebody would invent a new type of portal magic for him.”
“That’s not very nice,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “We all have strengths and weaknesses. Gaheris is a fire faerie with death magic in his blood. If he persists in his architectural pursuits, he will undermine the integrity of the building.”
The smug superciliousness in his tone made me want to punch his other eye so he would have matching bruises.
And then I felt a wave of guilt. His eye was black because of me, and he apparently also felt random and disruptive emotions during the workday because of me. “Why do you think you sensed danger?” I asked. “At least I can try not to set it off again.”
Sahir pushed my door open, revealing the two faeries pretty much where I had left them, sitting up against the headboard with Doctor Kitten between them. Gaheris had extended his left arm as a sort of pin-cushion-slash-teddy-bear, and Doctor Kitten hugged it, claws out. I winced.
“Miriam,” Lene greeted me, sounding cheerful, if slightly surprised, to see me in my room.
“What’s up, Lene?” I said.
“The roof,” she said, pointing up. I glanced up at the striated rock and dirt on the ceiling.
“That’s a good point,” I said. “Thank you.” Doctor Kitten lifted his head and looked at me, his eyes slits. His loyalty had apparently shifted.
“Miriam—” Sahir started. I cut him off, shamed by my cat.
“Lene, when humans say what’s up, they mean what are you doing or how have you been,” I explained. Doctor Kitten blinked once in slow approval.
“Please,” Sahir said. “We have much to discuss.”
Gaheris nodded from next to Lene. “If I had known this, I would have explained it,” he said.
Sahir lost what remained of his composure and exploded into tendrils of brown smoke, tangled like the branches of creeping wisteria.
“We need to talk, Miriam,” the vaguely human-shaped smoky mass of vines said. I saw an arm try to coalesce and fail.
“Okay! Of course,” I said, pretending not to be terrified. My dad says I’m good in a crisis, I’d told the Gray Knight. And I was good in a crisis. I kept my voice steady and calm. “Let’s talk.” I reached toward him, palm up. “Just… just hold my hand, and we can sit down and talk.”
One tentative vine crept toward my hand, and then around my palm, solidifying as it did so.
The smoke tickled, and it was a relief when it coalesced.
Within seconds, I had a living wooden glove.
I exhaled, a loud, steady sound, as the tip of the vine crept over my wrist, at the pulse point.
I lowered myself to the floor, and the vine came with me.
“I have not seen him sublimate in decades,” Gaheris said, peering down at us. “Not since he had just come to Court.”
“That’s a great vocabulary word,” I said, keeping my tone even. “Sahir, what do you want to talk about? It seems like you’re a little overwhelmed.”
The disembodied voice came again. “You cannot just trust anybody who speaks kindly to you, Miriam. People will want to take advantage of you, of your naivety. The Princeling has raised you up, but there are faeries who want him to fail.”
“Fail as in, people don’t like me?”
“Fail as in, faeries kill you,” Lene chimed in, helpfully.
“Which is why my friends came to spend time with you today,” Sahir said, his voice remarkably stern, given its source.
I stared at the mass of half-corporeal vines that was Sahir. A few more vines solidified. The one holding my hand had started to sprout leaves.
“Well,” I said, “they were fantastic company.”
This didn’t mollify him. “And yet you fell into danger the moment I left,” he said, sounding as melancholy as an indescribable vine monster can.
He paused for effect. “There is even a betting pool.”
“A what?”
“A bet, for the remaining days of your life.”
I filed that horrifying thought away for later.
I immediately unfiled it and examined it again because it was highly unpleasant but also a little bit interesting.
Who was participating? Would people try to protect me so that I’d live until their chosen day?
Then I shook my head, like that would make it go away.
“What do faeries even bet? It seems like everything is socialized,” I said, because the financial system and associated social safety nets of Faerie were apparently things Adult Me cared about more than my safety.
“Favors,” the vines intoned darkly.
“Okay, well, I appreciate the warning, Sahir. You’ve done me a service in letting me know.”
The solidity crept up his arm, the vines wrapped around my hand taking on the shape of human fingers.
“What else do we need to talk about?” I asked, forcing my eyes away from the transmutation.
“We must manage our bond. I did not know my oath would have these consequences.” One of the vines near his shoulder started to writhe, and I put a hand on it, trying to channel soothing thoughts.
“Haven’t you made an oath like this before?” I asked.
“You can only make that oath once,” Lene chirped. I nearly jumped; I’d almost forgotten the two of them on the bed. “And most of us never make it.”
Doctor Kitten jumped off the bed, apparently interested in the swirling shadows on the ground. He swatted at the nearest one, and vines twisted into existence there, too.
What I wanted to say was Why in the sweet barbecued hell did you do this, then?
But the guy was literally made out of vines, and I couldn’t make myself reprimand him further.
Instead, I looked at the place I imagined Sahir’s face to be. “Thank you for honoring me with your oath, Sahir. I would repay you in kind, if I could.”
At that moment, to some extent, I meant it.
He seemed to realize that as well. The rest of his torso coalesced, and he sat on the floor, still twisted and knotty, but human-shaped. I looked into his eyes, deep-set under bark brows. Doctor Kitten climbed into his lap.
“I must apologize, Miriam. It has been a stressful few days.”
“Is this, uh, your normal form?” I asked. I glanced over at Gaheris and Lene. I’d thought they looked inhuman.
He sighed, which meant he’d recovered his composure enough to engage in his favorite hobby. “Faeries have preferred forms, Miriam, but our appearance is tied, to some extent, to our mental state.”
“Cool,” I said, and lay down flat on the floor, our hands still entwined. “I think I’m done for the day.”
“We have resolved nothing,” he said. His skin looked rough and cracked but was starting to knit into something more fleshlike.
“I know,” I groaned. It felt so good to lie down. We disentangled our hands.
Sahir looped his arms around his knees and looked down at me. His nearer elbow had a little pink flower sticking out of it. “You said you were poisoned last night? Were you ill?”