Chapter 18 In Which I Am Royally Screwed
In Which I Am Royally Screwed
Twelve soldiers in crimson jackets surrounded us. Sahir stepped in front of me. I covered my head with my arms.
“Get up,” someone said above us. I rolled my eyes up to the extent possible without moving but only saw a knee.
“Miri, get up,” Sahir said, slightly less rudely than the attacking soldiers.
I stood, staying behind him. This only mattered for those soldiers in front of us; there were still six at our backs.
The soldiers had found Gaheris and Lene. I knew this because Gaheris and Lene stood between two soldiers, their hands in the air, their packs on the ground, and their expressions more resigned than afraid.
I stared into the snake eyes of Kamare, my would-be poisoner. She was flanked by two other faeries, each of them wearing crimson clothing.
“That’s a fantastic uniform,” I said, going for bravado. I leaned around Sahir to smile brightly at Kamare.
Kamare glanced in confusion at Lene, who shrugged.
Sahir shoved me back behind him.
Kamare straightened. “Look who we have caught,” she said menacingly, apparently determined to have a monologue. “The human who cost me my place in the Princeling’s Court.”
I felt a pang of guilt, so sharp I couldn’t be afraid.
“You cost yourself your own place in our Court, when you tried to poison someone you’d been instructed to feed,” Sahir retorted.
Oh yeah.
I felt slightly less guilty.
“Details,” Kamare muttered, waving a hand. “It is no matter.” She paused, considering. “I should kill the human on sight,” she said, “and bring the rest of you to the Queen for tribute.”
I shot a look at Sahir, who had the good sense to look flustered.
Then I glanced at Lene, who shrugged, as if to say C’est la vie.
Even if it was la vie, it might not be my vie for very long.
And I’d just discovered that I had a lot to live for.
I turned to see three of the other faeries picking their way toward me over the jagged debris, swords in hand.
I very much did not want to die by sword.
I stared into the face of the nearest faerie, who stared back without interest or expression.
“She spared your life, Kamare,” Gaheris said. “You owe her a blood debt.”
The three faeries stopped—one midstep, a foot dangling in the air.
I whipped around to look at Kamare.
Kamare frowned.
“She cannot die by your hand nor by your order,” Gaheris pressed.
My friend was so afraid that the fires on his head had completely extinguished, and he looked small and strange without them—but he didn’t quail beneath Kamare’s stare.
“He speaks truly,” Sahir said. “You are bound by your honor and the gift of your breath.”
The soldier to Kamare’s left whispered something in her ear.
She deflated visibly, like the snake-balloon in Shrek.
“Come along, then,” Kamare said. “You will be a tribute to the Queen as well. But you may regret the choice to live that long.”
No one spoke. I frowned at Roman, who frowned back at me in an expression that mingled sympathy and resignation. He’d slipped the hand with the ring into his pocket.
“And do not think I’ve forgotten you,” Kamare said, turning her eyes on him. “I will inform the Queen of your… liaising.”
Roman shrugged. “She is not my Queen and I am not her subject. If she wills it, I can cease construction on your sacred sites. I doubt that she wills it.”
Kamare huffed. And with that witty retort, she led our merry band away.
To her credit, it took about twenty minutes for Kamare to start gloating.
She kept me and Sahir close to the front; me, as the star prisoner, and Sahir because whenever she tried to separate us he bit the other faeries, and they didn’t want to touch him anymore.
The faerie next to me had a full dental impression on his cheek that would probably be sufficient to construct a retainer for Sahir.
At the exact moment that the silence started to become boring instead of suspenseful, Kamare spoke.
She turned her head back to look at Sahir. “You know, when my contacts in the Court told me you were bringing the human into the woods with only those two, I thought they must be wrong. I did not think you could be so stupid.” Her forked tongue flicked between her lips, retreated in a pink dart.
This was clearly a dig at Gaheris and Lene. “There’s no one I’d rather have with me,” I snarled, but this only made her laugh.
“You are a bigger a fool than any of them,” she said, “if you value loyalty over power in a companion.”
“I’m really regretting saving your life right now,” I muttered.
She hissed at me. “That is the only reason you still breathe,” she said. “When ordinarily, I would have recourse to kill you on sight. I abide by the laws of my land and my magic, human. What laws govern you?”
“The Ten Commandments?” I said, mostly as a question.
Kamare did not condescend to a response.
I amused myself by trying to remember the Ten Commandments.
I definitely knew Thou shalt not steal and Thou shalt not murder.
I felt fairly confident also about Thou shalt not sleep with your neighbor’s wife even if she’s superhot and Thou shalt honor thy parents, ye ungrateful cretin, lest ye have a daughter JUST LIKE YOU.
I continued in this vein for the remainder of the walk, hardly noticing when the ground transitioned back to the loamy black soil of the American northeast. The trees around us sprouted more branches, and I felt the occasional side-sweep of an evergreen against my cheek or shoulder.
Lene managed to slip up beside me and slid her hand into mine.
Ever since I’d gone off on the Gray Knight in my bedroom, I’d had this coiled feeling inside my stomach, like a gutful of cobras. Whenever the numbness faded, I wanted to irritate people. Or I wanted to make other people uncomfortable. To make them feel as bad as I felt, trapped and powerless.
Kamare seemed like a great target for irritation.
“So, like, what are you soldiering about?” I asked, making my voice nasal.
Kamare made a hissing noise, her back stiff. To my surprise, she answered, a practiced cadence to her voice. “We should not open our borders to humans. They will bring destruction into our home.”
“Kamare, you have not seen the sun, as I have,” Sahir said. “And if I lose my life to human malice or mishap, I will not regret it, having had that warmth on my skin.”
The other soldiers crowded forward as Sahir spoke; I felt them at our backs. When I turned my head I saw Gaheris at the head of a knot of them, only a foot behind me.
I didn’t like the thought of Sahir losing his life. “But that’s not likely, right?” I asked.
Lene squeezed my hand once, then let go and stepped back to walk with Gaheris.
“Oh, it is quite probable,” Gaheris chimed in. “It would only—ow!”
Since Gaheris and Lene were behind me, I could only speculate as to what had happened. But I’d probably speculate correctly.
“It’s possible I tripped,” Lene said, confirming my suspicions.
“Ow,” Gaheris said again. And then, “Kamare, there are many Courts that will not allow humans at all. Our Princeling is an outlier. There is no need to engage in this crusade.”
“She might be bored,” I interjected. “Since none of you have anything to do all day.”
Lene made a soft yowling noise, and I regretted my comment.
“I am not bored,” Kamare snapped. “Our risk is great, Gaheris. Once a human has entered our realm, she may travel freely between the Courts, and poison anyone she meets along the way.”
“Is human sweat poisonous to you?” I blurted, rubbing the scratches Lene had left on my skin.
“What?”
“Well, if a human can poison anyone she meets along the way, maybe the faerie poison is sweat.” I fidgeted with my hands, with the lighter band of skin where my gold ring had rested on my index finger.
“No, human sweat is not poisonous to us,” Kamare said. She batted away a branch so hard that it snapped and fell to the forest floor. “That is utterly ridiculous. The Princeling implied that you were intelligent.”
“He did only imply it,” Gaheris mused. I shot a glare over my shoulder, missing him entirely. The faerie I glared at stopped midstep and hunched their shoulders like a prey animal appearing smaller.
I looked forward again, at Kamare’s back.
“So… is it human saliva?”
Sahir closed his eyes in a swift and silent prayer for release from this hell. Unfortunately for him, he’d signed himself up for a human lifetime of my company.
“No, it is not human saliva, nor any other bodily excretion,” Kamare said.
“So… is it some kind of textile?”
Kamare stopped in the path and turned around. “Can someone silence the human?”
I tripped again, and this time I fell onto the dirt. I caught the worst of the fall on my palms.
As was his wont, Sahir hauled me up by the straps of my backpack. He set me on my feet, his hands on my shoulders.
“Miri, I do not think we should play twenty questions with things that kill faeries,” Sahir said in my ear.
I nodded and mimed zipping my lips shut and throwing away the key.
Kamare’s eyes followed my elaborate gestures. “What is the human doing now?” she snapped. “Is this some arcane magic? Is she summoning a vision?”
I mimed unzipping my lips and said, “It’s a gesture humans use to indicate their silence.”
“Such an odd people,” Kamare said. “Imagine a culture where you speak so much that you must have a hand signal to indicate silence. Do they use the hand signal because others are talking at the same time?”
“Um.” I shrugged, Sahir’s hands still heavy on me. “Anyway, I won’t ask any more questions. I only hoped to understand the argument. It makes sense that you don’t want to let strangers into your home, but I don’t see why you would need to.”
Kamare turned her back to me. Sahir dropped his hands, and we all continued along the way. I thought she wouldn’t answer; she took several minutes before she spoke again.
“It is a fair exchange,” she said. “If we are permitted to enter your lands, so you should be permitted to enter ours.”