Chapter Twenty-One
They lost more time in the bath than they meant to. Not much, by ordinary measure. Enough, by the measure they now lived under. Certainly more than the hour they had promised.
It was only when Ina looked up and saw the windows black with full night that the softness flew out of the room instantly. The warm water, the laughter, the brief illusion that they had stepped aside from danger rather than merely paused inside it, all of it thinned.
She straightened in the pool. “How late is it?”
Derran followed her gaze to the windows and swore quietly. “Late enough to stop pretending we have the luxury of rest.”
They climbed out quickly after that. Towels, dry shirts, laces done in haste, hair only half dealt with.
The easy peace between them did not vanish, but it folded itself away under necessity.
Ina knelt on the floor near the open balcony doors while Derran gathered the velvet bag of weapons and strapped it to his belt with the speed of long practice.
“What are you doing?” he asked, though he had an inkling.
“Trying something better than guessing.”
She sat cross-legged on the floorboards and let her hands rest on her knees. Then she reached outward with her mind, seeking animals.
The way she had done before, when she needed their help. It had been long enough since she had needed a bird or fox to carry her from court to court, what with having her own wings. But now they needed speed, and more than fairy eyes alone. She meant to use the eyes of the world at large.
She sent the question out.
Bird. Hare. Owl. Even the snails and ladybugs. Anything that had seen a fox where it should not be, a mirage creature or a fairy where only forest animals ought to pass, a glint of diamonds where moonlight did not account for it.
The first answers were useless. Confused impressions. Hunger, burrow, damp roots, feathers, seeds, the small concerns of beasts who had better things to do than map the movements of murderous enchantresses.
Ina kept reaching.
A badger answered in a mood of offense and had seen only its own tunnel.
Two crows sent her overlapping pictures of bright objects, none of them the right sort.
A deer gave her a sense of unease in the lower forest and then no more.
She pressed farther, wider, until the effort began to strain behind her eyes.
Then something larger noticed her. The mind that met hers was broad and slow and full of earth-smell and old bark and the steady confidence of a creature that did not ask permission of its world. A bear.
Ina held still and offered the question.
Fox, she asked silently. Necklace. Fairy. Where?
The answer did not come in words at first. It came in image.
A large tree at the edge of the canopy forest, its roots twisted high above the ground. A dark opening beneath them. The smell of fox. Fresh disturbance in the earth. A shape slipping down into it, and glittering light drifting out from the opening, casting strange shadows on the tree above it.
Then the thought itself, heavy and simple. There.
Ina’s eyes flew open.
Derran was already beside her. “What is it?”
“I know where she is.”
She described the place as she rose, the image still clear in her mind. Derran did not waste time asking how certain she was. He only nodded once and took her hand.
“Come on.”
They flew fast.
The sky court dropped behind them in a rush of cloud and dark air.
They crossed into the edges of the canopy lands with moonlight caught pale on the upper leaves and the forest below black and silver where the wind moved it.
Ina held the bear’s memory in her head as they went – the shape of the tree, the bend of the ground, the open line of roots.
When she saw it below them, she knew it instantly. A great tree stood just beyond the thicker forest edge, near enough to the burrow court lands that no one would notice one more den in the dark. Its roots rose above the ground in thick ridges, and beneath them yawned the mouth of that fox den.
They landed without speaking. The entrance was half-concealed under hanging moss, but not well enough now that they knew to look. Derran drew one of the wind-discs from his belt and held it ready. Ina put a hand on the den wall and felt faint warmth from magic somewhere deeper within.
“She’s there,” she whispered.
Derran nodded.
Together they went in.
The tunnel opened into a low chamber cleverly reinforced with roots and branches, larger than the outside promised. Zuri had made it into a hidden working room. A small lantern glowed on a shelf. Fine tools lay spread over a flat stone. Scraps of paper held notes in quick narrow writing.
And on the central table, atop a white cloth, lay the necklace. Or what was left of it.
Several of the diamonds had already been removed.
Tiny filings glittered across the tabletop.
The great red center stone still sat in the necklace’s heart, and Zuri, bent over it with a knife and some finer instrument in hand, was testing its enchantments with the absorbed cruelty of a patient torturer.
She looked up when they burst in. For the first time since Ina had met her, surprise truly reached her face. Derran moved before she could recover, throwing magic at her, fierce and practical.
A coarse hood of woven fiber and metal mesh tightened over her head and face, rough as burlap and cinched hard behind her skull so she could neither see nor properly fix on anything before her.
She snarled under it and thrashed, but the mirage did not come.
Sight was her entry point. Karai had said so.
Deprive her of that and you deprived her of the worst of her strength.
Vines came with the hood too, driven from cracks in the floor by a burst of Derran’s magic. In the same breath, thin bands of metal shot from his hand and wrapped through the green, binding Zuri hard and fast where she stood. The force of it drove her backward off balance and onto the ground.
Ina was at the table in two strides. She snatched up the necklace.
The moment her fingers closed around it, the center stone pulsed once with a strange hot-cold sensation that ran through her hand and up her arm.
The piece of Lugo’s heart, still whole. Still held together by the magic of the diamond.
“Got it!” she shouted.
Zuri fought like a wild thing. The vines strained. The metal bands bent under the power she threw against them.
Derran kept one hand out toward her, maintaining the bindings, and said through gritted teeth, “Ina.”
“I know.”
She crossed to the tunnel mouth and called outward with her magic, as broadly as she could, and with pointed urgency.
A raven answered her call.
Come, she commanded.
It took only seconds, though every one that passed made her heart pound faster as the mirage fairy’s struggles worsened. A black shape swept down from the upper branches outside and landed at the den mouth, head cocked, bright eye catching the lamplight.
What have you done now? the raven asked, because ravens were incapable of arriving at a crisis without curiosity.
“We need help taking her to the marsh court,” said Ina. “Please.”
The raven looked at the bound, hooded Zuri and seemed, somehow, delighted. That I can do.
Derran hauled Zuri upright with the vines still binding her.
Between his control and the raven’s pecking assistance, they got her moving out of the den, fighting every inch of the way.
The necklace stayed in Ina’s hands. She did not trust it out of them now, not even to a prince or a raven or the earth itself.
When they cleared the forest edge, the raven gave a shrill cry that summoned two more of her kind from somewhere above. Together, with much complaint and black-winged efficiency, they took charge of Zuri’s bound form.
“Do not let her see anything,” Derran warned.
One raven clicked her beak. We are not fools.
No, added the first. Merely insulted by being mistaken for pigeons.
Ina relayed the messages to Derran, who grinned faintly. Then the ravens were off, hauling Zuri between them through the night sky toward the marsh court.
Ina and Derran followed as fast as they could.
The place was not asleep when they reached it.
Light burned in far more windows than the hour deserved.
Guards waited at the outer court in visible tension.
Word had clearly spread that something monstrous had been uncovered and that the queen, a prince, and perhaps half the kingdom’s sense had all gone racing after it.
Inside, they found the throne room full.
Lugomir stood with Jasenka at his side, neither seated.
Karai was there too, pale still from the earlier fight and wound, but standing upright, rigid with waiting.
Eogan stood not far away, arms crossed, looking as though he still expected disaster and was displeased by the inconvenience.
Jasenka’s remaining lady was present as well, standing beside her with the same comforting presence.
The room’s collective breath seemed to stop when Ina entered holding the necklace.
No one spoke for a moment.
Then Jasenka made a sound Ina had never heard from her before, small and broken and relieved all at once.
And behind Ina, dragged in bound, hooded, and snarling under Derran’s grip, came Zuri.