Chapter Twelve #2
Karai went to the armor, on a stand at the back of the room. The pieces caught the low light with a muted gleam, nearly black at first glance, though when he lifted a plate free, threads of something brighter moved under the surface.
Ina stopped and watched.
Karai set the plate against himself, then the spiked shoulder pieces, then the layered guards for his arms.
He buckled them on without flourish, testing each fastening with quick, competent hands.
The metal did not sit on him as ordinary armor would have done.
It woke under his touch. Little sparks flickered through the seams.
The plates shifted almost imperceptibly, buckles vanishing, metal drawing closer to his frame until it seemed made for him and no one else.
Derran glanced over and raised an eyebrow, looking Karai up and down, mildly impressed.
By then the armor had fully settled on him. It was not showy, though Karai could not have worn anything without carrying some degree of menace into it. The dark metal made his skin look paler, his eyes even deeper in color. There was enough there to be impressed by.
Karai did not notice, or he pretended not to.
He summoned Ina to him with a wave of his hand, and began outfitting her as well, selecting pieces for her with unnerving speed.
A fitted plate, smaller and lighter than his but worked in the same dark metal.
Shoulder guards shaped to allow for wings.
Bracers. A belt. He fastened one thing, then another, stepping close to adjust the line of a strap or the lay of a clasp.
His hands were brisk and impersonal, until they were not.
He knelt in front of her with a pair of greaves.
Then, with a smirking glance up at her entirely devoid of innocence, he ran his long fingers in a light, tingling caress along the back of her calf.
She drew in a sudden breath.
Her eyes flew to Derran.
Thankfully, he was still occupied and appeared not to have noticed anything beyond the fact that Karai had reached the lower half of the fitting.
Ina looked back down at Karai with daggers in her eyes and all the displeasure she could muster in silence.
He returned the look with his mouth pulled into a thin line that was supposed to pass for composure and did not. It only proved he was trying not to smile wider.
She considered kicking him in the shin and decided against it, mostly because that would bring too much attention.
When he had finished with the greaves, he rose and stepped back, placing two fingers on her shoulder.
For a moment the armor only sat on her, cool and close-fitted, heavier than she wanted and less comfortable than she’d hoped. Then the sparks came. They ran through the seams in quick silver glints, touched every clasp, every edge, every overlapping plate. The whole thing altered around her.
The weight went out of it. Her body no longer braced against it.
The metal hugged rather than burdened. The shoulder pieces lifted with her arms as if they had been waiting to learn the shape of her movement.
Even the breastplate, which she had expected to resent most, settled so well she might have been wearing some very cunning second skin rather than armor.
Ina looked down in alarm, half expecting the plates to have vanished.
They were still there.
She flexed one hand, then lifted an arm, then twisted at the waist. Nothing pulled. Nothing dragged. It all simply moved with her, like it was made of elastic instead of metal.
She let out a quiet breath of awe. “Extraordinary.”
Karai smiled in earnest that time, both in pride and at her wonder.
“You’ve done this before,” she murmured, not quite a question.
Karai shrugged, a little too nonchalant.
Derran looked over then. “Of course. In two centuries, we’ve all fought more than a few battles.”
He said it lightly, but not so lightly that the meaning went away.
Ina felt the questions burning in her immediately. What battles? Against whom? When? How many? Enough to make armor like this feel familiar in their hands, enough that neither prince needed more than a glance to know what to carry into a mountain full of monsters.
She wanted badly to ask.
She did not.
This was not the hour to begin opening old wars like cupboards.
Derran got himself into armor as well, then went back to the weapons. On one tray lay tiny metal balls, dark and dull, no larger than seeds. Karai picked one up and held it in his palm.
“Fire charge,” he said. “Throw with fire magic and it explodes.”
Another tray held thin coins stamped with a star design.
“Wind discs,” said Derran. “You cast them flat. Wind wakes the edge into large spikes.”
He flicked one lightly with a finger, and the rim gave off a whisper of steel so fine it made Ina pull her hand back.
There were hooks shaped to catch in cloth or flesh and not let go.
Glass thorns full of smoke shields, and others full of liquid metal to repair armor.
Fine chain wound around carved bone spools.
Pins tipped with mirrored stone. Vials of powder that changed color when held to poison.
Coils of wire. Folded silk nets weighted at the corners.
No blades, not really. No weapons recognizable from human stories at all, shrunk to their size. Ina wondered at that.
Karai took down a small velvet bag from a hook and began filling it with a practiced economy that made clear he knew the use of every shelf in the room. Derran did the same from the opposite side, selecting different things, faster and with slightly less organization.
Ina stood in the middle of it and felt the reality of the situation settle more firmly on her shoulders than any speech about monster caverns had managed. This was no longer a matter of court suspicion and elegant promises. This was a hunt.
She looked at the velvet bags in their hands. At the small explosives. At the wind-cutting coins. At Karai’s spiked armor and Derran checking the cork on a vial as if he could tell what it was by shape alone.
Then she crossed to the wall, took down a bag of her own, and began copying what seemed wisest.
Derran glanced over. “Take more fire charges.”
“I know.”
He rolled his eyes. “You do not.”
“Well, I know now.”
Karai handed her a few of the sharpened coins. “These too. Don’t throw them unless you mean it, Ina.”
“I wasn’t planning on throwing them for fun.”
“Good,” was the only reply.
Ina slipped them into the bag.
A little later she looked down at what she had gathered and thought, with a clarity she could have done without, that she had passed from queen to quarry-hunter in less than a day and had not once been given the courtesy of pausing to object.
Still, if the necklace truly lay in a cavern full of monsters, objection was unlikely to help while duty kept calling.
She pulled the velvet drawstring tight and said, “All right. Now what?”
Derran cinched his own bag and hooked it to his belt. “Now we go find out why someone thought monsters were a good hiding place.”
Karai shut the cabinet behind him. “And whether they were right.”
The iron door closed with a heavy sound that stayed with Ina even after they left the room.