Chapter 17 In Which I Learn About Myself
In Which I Learn About Myself
I woke to a sudden gust of cold air, so sharp my eyes flew open.
The faeries had taken the tent down around me instead of waking me up. Lene, standing by my side, held out her hand to me. I grasped it and she pulled me up. Gaheris and Sahir both knelt nearby, vigorously rolling swaths of fabric.
This appeared to be the unappealing back end of camping, wherein one discovers that one must clean up after oneself.
Gaheris smiled at me. “Would you like to fold your bedroll?” he asked, as Sahir performed a gesture that made both of their bedrolls shrink to half their size.
“Miri, I would speak with you,” Lene said, saving me from the terrible task Gaheris was attempting to assign. She grabbed my hand and pulled me away.
Lene took me a short distance into the trees.
“Roman may have knowledge from his own father,” she said, her voice careful. “But he may not. And he may not be… correct.” She’d unsheathed her front claws and started scratching at the tree trunk.
“What does that mean?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Faeries are not like these human lie detectors that Gaheris tells me about,” she said. “We can only tell the truth as we believe it. But belief is not fact. If Roman misremembers information his father shared, or forgets entirely…” She trailed off.
“If he’s wrong, I’ll die,” I translated.
Lene stared down at the splintered wood at her feet. “Would staying in Faerie be the worst fate?”
I cleared my throat, unsure how to answer. But she didn’t seem to expect anything more from me—she turned and led me back the way we’d come.
Sahir and Gaheris had disassembled the entire campsite and stood waiting for us, both staring at nothing. They already had their packs on, and expressions like mountaineers on their way to a pet goldfish’s funeral.
“Shall we?” I asked, aiming for cheer. Sahir frowned at me with absolutely none of the heat I remembered from the night before, and I resolved not to speak again unless spoken to.
“We must assume that the Queen will have more soldiers along this way,” Sahir said. “As these ruins are sacred to her, and Roman is not her subject.”
I nodded, jaw clenched.
“Are you… okay?” Gaheris asked me, clearly using the word in the hopes of cheering me up. “You look distressed.”
I attempted a close-lipped smile. Gaheris flinched.
“Just follow behind me,” Sahir said, with the resolve of a man expecting to be punched in the face.
He started toward the far end of the clearing. I filed behind him, with Lene and Gaheris bringing up the rear.
Our journey felt terribly slow: Sahir stopped us every few minutes to slip his pack off and scout forward. I never saw any sign of the Queen’s soldiers, or of any other faerie.
The treescape changed abruptly into something resembling a swath of palm trees. The ground beneath our feet was drier, sandier.
I opened my mouth to ask about it, but Sahir held up an imperious hand. He hadn’t even been looking at me. I closed my mouth again, recommitting to my vow of silence.
We came upon the first built structures without warning. There was no break in the trees, no change in the light.
The ruined pillars, in among the swaying almost-palms like so many more trees, rose up in two identical lines.
We stood at the first of them, staring down the rows at the place where sheets of familiar blue magic were strung across like banners hung on invisible walls.
I took a step forward, and Sahir caught my arm.
Lene and Gaheris separated, each creeping along the outside of one of the rows of pillars, their heads on swivel.
Sahir stood with his back to the ruins, staring the way we’d come.
I did my part, too: I tried not to move, breathe, or think.
I looked around for my friends, but they’d disappeared into the trees—presumably scouting for more invisible enemies.
I slumped, leaning against one of the pillars.
The scratchy edges of mosaic tiles pressed into my arm in the swirling colors of the undersea images the Gray Knight had shown me.
“Oi!” someone said, irate. “Get off that, you lug.”
I straightened, looking around.
The Builder who I’d met at the Princeling’s factory stepped between the two nearest pillars, picking his way over some of the larger stones scattering the sandy ground.
“You’re Roman?” I hissed. “You?”
Sahir appeared from nowhere. He stood next to me and bowed his head, his face impassive. “Builder,” he said in greeting.
“What’s this, then?” Roman asked, looking me up and down. “You’re that human girl the Princeling called lady.”
He sounded like a man who had, in childhood, seen a film where an American actor from New Jersey portrayed a Cockney chimney sweep, and then made that his personality.
“What’s a human doing in the Queen’s Court?” Roman continued, scratching his head between his two curling horns. He shook his head, jowls vibrating, and dislodged some dandruff from his scalp.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked that he’d been putting on airs for the Princeling. The accent was really throwing me for a loop, though.
“You were in the Princeling’s Court a few months ago!” I exclaimed.
“I am aware,” Roman said.
Sahir stuck his elbow so far into my ribs that it came out the other side of my body.
“I have come to see you, Builder,” I said, adopting the title and an attitude of serenity.
Sahir took a half step in front of me, so I had to peer over his shoulder. He seemed tense.
Not for the first time, I wondered how much stress I had avoided in life simply by failing to grasp the consequences of anything happening around me.
After another bow, Sahir spoke. “Builder, I am sent by my good-brother Aram. I bring with me my lady, the Lady of the True Dreams, and two companions, who have gone to ensure our safety while we speak with you.”
Roman squinted at him. “Aram,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Aram…” He frowned, thinking. “You’re Rijska’s brother?”
Sahir inclined his head in acknowledgment.
“Fantastic woman, that sister of yours,” Roman said. I was flabbergasted and bamboozled; he spoke more like a human than anyone I’d met at the Court, barring Chad and Milo.
He waved his hand in a curling gesture; at the apex of each curl, a sheet of blue light sprang from his palm and floated above him. He flicked his index finger, and the blue lights began to spin around us in rapid rectangles. “And now we can speak freely.”
I raised an eyebrow at Sahir, to ask him why he never used a ward against eavesdropping. The face he made back told me that he wasn’t able to create wards against eavesdropping, but thanks for making him feel inadequate.
“Why’d you bring a human to the Queen’s Court? To be killed?” Roman asked, still staring at Sahir and not at me.
“I brought her here to beg a boon of you,” Sahir said.
Roman crossed his arms and sat on a stray hunk of stone. “A boon,” he repeated. “That’s an odd word, for the Fae.”
“Aram grants me leave to call in his favor,” Sahir said, changing tack.
“Feels like I should be allowed to call in the favor,” I muttered; they both ignored me.
“What, then, do you owe him?” Roman asked, smirking. It seemed like he didn’t get out much, like maybe this was his socializing for the month.
“He has been in my debt for many years,” Sahir said. “It was my blessing that ensured his happiness.”
“Oho.” Roman glanced at me. “Interesting.”
Tired and frustrated, I sat on another hunk of stone, staring at Roman. If he wanted me to move, he could just say so.
Roman said nothing. Instead, he gestured at Sahir to continue.
Sahir sat as well, his eyes still on Roman. He shrugged out of his pack, two thin lines of sweat down each side of his chest. I kept my own pack on in case someone tried to stab me from behind.
“Your father built the passageways between the worlds,” Sahir said.
Roman’s attitude changed slightly; he straightened on the stone and squared his shoulders. When he spoke again, he sounded more like the Builder I’d met previously. “Your blessing meant more to Aram than it does to me. For this favor, I grant you questions three,” Roman replied.
“Then let me be brief.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. We didn’t even need three questions, did we?
No questions were asked. I opened my eyes. Sahir was staring at me.
“Miriam may have my questions,” Sahir said. “As she will bear the consequences of your answers.”
I inhaled. “Thank you,” I said.
Roman’s eyebrows had disappeared into another pocket dimension. His smirk was wider than the English Channel.
“How does faerie food prevent humans from leaving this realm?” I asked.
Roman sounded amused. “The same way as faerie gold and faerie fools,” he replied.
This did not illuminate anything for me.
I hoped desperately that Sahir understood more than I did.
I could hardly look at either of them. I stared instead at the rapid whirling of the magic Roman had erected around us, so different from the silver-rain umbrella of the Gray Knight’s ward or the green brambles of the Princeling’s.
“Why will I die if I step through a portal?” I asked.
Roman looked down at his hands, twisting a hunk of stone between his fingers so it flowed and changed.
“I cannot divine why anyone will die. Am I a god, to be so wise?”
Sahir and I exchanged a glance. I had only one question left, and Roman wasn’t playing nice.
“Will I die if I step through a portal?”
“You will die if you step through a portal, and you will die if you do not. We all die, in some way and at some time.”
Roman must have looked at my face and seen his own imminent death, because he stood hastily.
He bowed his head again, more perfunctory than polite. With a lazy finger, he dissolved the spinning blue wards around us.
“Wait!” I said. “Why does everyone think it will kill me?”
Without the wards dazzling my eyes, the entire clearing felt gray.
Roman stared at me steadily. “I owe you no questions, child,” he said. “What will you give me?”