Chapter Thirteen
Before they left the burrow court, Karai made one more stop.
He did not announce it. He simply changed direction halfway down a corridor and led them toward a narrower part of the palace where the courtiers thinned and the lights grew fewer.
Ina followed without question. Derran, who knew the burrow court well enough by now to recognize a spy route when he saw one, said nothing either.
Velor met them in a small chamber near one of the lower exits. He rose from a desk as they entered, dark-haired and composed as ever, though the sight of all three of them armored and cloaked and carrying velvet bags made his expression turn uneasy.
Velor had the look of a man who took his service gravely seriously.
Ina remembered him first as Derran’s valet in the sky court, quiet and competent and very good at being helpful.
Only later had she learned he belonged to Karai, service and loyalty both, and had been placed in the sky court for reasons less innocent than laundry and tea.
Yet, though he’d been a spy there, he seemed to have some loyalty left in him for Derran too.
Karai shut the door behind them.
Velor looked from him to Derran, then to Ina. “This is serious.”
“Yes,” murmured Karai.
He spoke quietly after that, plain and brief. He told Velor where they were going, what they had learned, and what they hoped to find. He did not waste words. He did not soften any part of it either.
Velor’s face hardened more with each sentence.
When Karai finished, Velor said, “Your Highness, with respect, have all of you lost your minds?”
It came out before ceremony could dress it. Karai only looked at him, not unkindly.
“This is not a search party,” Velor said, waving at the three of them. “It’s a foolish venture into a monster hole at dusk with too little information and too much haste. Send others. Send trackers. Send warriors. Send someone less difficult to replace.”
Karai gave the smallest shake of his head.
Velor took one step forward. “My prince.”
“No,” said Karai, and this time there was enough in the word to end argument if not concern. “There’s no time. And no one else knows enough.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“You can’t. Your duty is here. You know that, Velor.”
Velor’s jaw shifted. Ina had the sense that if she and Derran had not been present, he might have said a great deal more. Instead he looked at Karai for a long moment and then let the fight go, though not gladly.
“What do you want of me?”
“Watch the burrow court,” said Karai. “And the sky court while you’re at it.”
At that Derran glanced up. Velor did too. Their eyes met and Ina thought she saw a mild smile pass between them.
Karai went on. “If this reaches further than one stolen necklace, I want eyes in both places. Quietly. If word comes from the marsh court, I want it. If anything changes in the canopy, pass it through the light channels.”
Velor nodded once, grim-faced now. “It will be done.”
Karai held his gaze another moment, then turned toward the door.
Velor stopped Ina as she passed, saying low, “Your Majesty.”
She looked at him.
“Don’t be reckless,” he whispered.
It was not addressed only to her. Karai and Derran both heard him, and both looked away as though they hadn’t. That made it no less plain who Velor considered to be the most responsible for caution and prudence.
Ina answered, “Don’t worry. I mean to bring all of us back.”
Velor bowed, but his face said he had lived too long to place much trust in intention alone.
They left the palace by one of the lesser-used tunnels and flew north.
At first the land beneath them still bore the shape Ina knew.
Court pathways. Traveled forests. Familiar rivers.
Settlements set far apart but linked by custom and magic.
The four great palace cities had seemed to her, in recent months, the whole frame of the fairy kingdom.
Becoming queen had taught her better in theory.
Seeing it with her own eyes taught her the vastness of reality.
The world widened.
The known courts fell behind them, and the spaces between things grew larger.
Fields spread in pale gold and green, broken by streams that flashed in the lowering sun.
Forests rose and sank again. Lakes opened below them in long silver sheets, some ringed by reeds, some by stone, some so still they looked like bits of broken sky laid down in the earth.
They flew for a long time.
The air changed along with the daylight. It sharpened. The scent of damp woodland gave way to rock and high grass. Far ahead a line began to gather against the horizon, blue at first, then violet, then slowly darkening into the shape of mountains.
Ina had not known the kingdom stretched so far before it met its own bones.
Neither prince seemed inclined to conversation.
Derran kept pace on her left, easy-winged even over distance, though now and then she saw him glance toward her to make sure the long flight was not wearing her past sense.
Karai led, sure of direction in a way that suggested he had either been this far before or had the kind of mind that remembered maps down to the grain of paper.
By the time they reached the foothills, dusk had settled properly. The last of the light lay low and red along the western edge of the sky, while the mountain faces ahead had already gone to shadow.
Karai dipped lower toward a field of broken stone at the base of a rise. Ina followed him and saw, with some confusion, that he appeared to vanish under a rock no larger than her.
She landed beside it and looked at Derran.
He looked back at her flatly. “I so enjoy when he becomes theatrical without warning.”
Then he crouched, ducked beneath the stone, and disappeared as well.
Ina went after them.
The space under the rock opened farther than it should have, enough to tell her magic had been laid there to deceive the eye.
A narrow tunnel sloped downward, cut neat and round, built to the size of burrow fairies or clever animals and lined in old root-fiber reinforcement where the earth had wanted extra holding.
Karai waited a little farther in, one hand lifted with light to guide their way.
The tunnel did not go far. It ended at a small chamber with a second opening in its far wall, and beyond that opening stood a little house.
Ina stopped.
It was a proper little cottage, tucked into the mountain’s hidden pocket as though it had grown there from necessity.
The roof was made of fitted bark shingles darkened by age.
The walls were packed earth and stone, reinforced with timber.
One tiny window showed black with no light behind it.
A little shelf by the door held an old lantern and two clay pots, both empty.
Karai said, “One of the burrow safe houses.”
Ina looked at him, then back at the house.
That explained more than he had said. Long enough ago, in the sky court, Derran had left her in his chambers while he went in search of a suitable safe house to hide her in, when they both feared the burrow court coming for her.
At the time, she had taken it as one more strange courtesy in a world full of strange courtesies.
Now she understood it as system rather than improvisation.
Safe houses. Hidden routes. Secret shelters.
Of course each court would have them. A kingdom that old and that full of rivalries with the outside world would have had need of escape for centuries.
Derran, reading some of this on her face, quipped, “The sky court’s are prettier.”
Karai opened the door. “That’s because the sky court cannot bear practicality without glitter.”
Derran only scoffed indignantly in response.
Inside, the house proved simple and sound.
One tiny kitchen room, another equally small one for sleeping.
A narrow hearth sat cold in the wall. A small table.
Four armless wooden chairs. Shelves holding jars long emptied and tins of dry stores that had gone stale into uselessness.
Everything wore a fine, even coat of dust.
No one was there.
Derran ran a finger across the table edge and looked at the dust left on it. “Do you not keep guardians at each of your safe houses?”
Karai shrugged and set down his bag. “We burrow creatures can dig a hole wherever we choose. These are so rarely used it seems unnecessary to have someone sitting in them year-round, just waiting for disaster.”
Derran made a face that suggested he found the logic distasteful and convincing in equal measure.
Karai looked toward the door, where the last of the dusk had gone to full shadow. “We should stay here tonight and seek out the cavern in the morning.”
Derran nodded slowly. “Agreed.”
Ina had no desire to argue. The long flight had worked into her bones, and whatever waited in the mountains beyond would not be improved by meeting it tired in darkness.
She set down her own bag and lifted her hands, stirring a careful stream of wind through the room.
Dust rose from the table and chairs in a soft gray sheet, spun once in the air, and swept out the door in a narrow funnel before it could settle back over everything.
She did the same for the shelves and the glasses by the wash basin, leaving the little house smelling of old wood and mountain air rather than neglect.
Derran watched this with approval. “Nicely done.”
“I know,” smiled Ina.
Karai was already unpacking what food they had brought. Not much. Dried fruit. Hard little rolls. Cold slices of roast root and salted potatoes wrapped in leaves. A small round of white cheese. They ate sitting close around the table, the lantern lit now and throwing amber light over the low room.
No one spoke much. Hunger and weariness had more claim than talk.
Once Derran asked whether she thought the safe house had always been this dusty or whether Karai had arranged it to improve the charm of the evening.
Ina said she believed all burrow romance was conducted under a layer of dirt.
Karai said that if either of them wished to sleep outside under the rock, he would happily allow it.
That was most of the conversation.
When they finished, the question of sleeping became less amusing. There was only one thin bed, tucked into the next room under the slant of the roof. Wide enough for one fairy and no more. The rest of the room held only bare floorboards.
Ina looked at the bed. Then at the two princes. “We can fit badly.”
“No,” said Karai firmly.
Derran shook his head at the same time. “You take it.”
“I’m not making you both sleep on the floor.”
“Yes, you are,” said Karai. “That is, in fact, one of the privileges of monarchy.”
Derran added, “And if tomorrow leads where I suspect it will, we need at least one of us to begin it having slept properly.”
There was enough sense in that to make argument difficult.
In the end, Ina climbed into the bed while they settled themselves below, each with a folded cloak under his head and a blanket drawn from a small storage chest at the foot of the bed.
She lay awake longer than she liked, listening to the faint sounds of them shifting on the floorboards beneath her, the occasional whisper of mountain wind outside the hidden window.
The bed was narrow and the pillow too hard.
The floor, she thought, was probably the better choice.