Chapter 13 Silver City
SILVER CITY
KINGFISHER
I WAS READY for the bloodshed.
Carrion Swift was not.
Scores of iron-tipped arrows tinged off the heavy shield I held in front of us as we emerged from the quicksilver.
The sliver of metal that still clung to the rim of my iris cackled with delight as Swift let out a panicked yelp and grabbed hold of my leather backplate, almost unbalancing both of us and sending us back into the pool.
The Smart Mouth is not so smart now, it purred. The Smart Mouth sounds stupid.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit! We are definitely going to die.”
“You’re choking me, Carrion. Let go so I can move!”
The smuggler relinquished his hold on my armor. He staggered to the left, taking up position where I’d told him I would need him to stand earlier. We hadn’t had much time to make plans, so I’d made it very simple: “Stand right there, behind me, on my left. Follow me no matter what.”
This had been much, much easier the last time.
Madra’s guardians hadn’t expected anyone to come bursting out of the quicksilver then.
There had been only eight or so archers, and while that had been annoying, I’d overcome them quickly.
Now, there was a whole unit of archers firing on us.
And just to round things out so very nicely, I was also babysitting a jackass who was struggling not to trip over his own fucking feet.
The heat in the air hit me like a physical blow.
I ground my teeth together, throwing my shoulder into the shield, and I pushed forward. The second we’d made it out of the pool and the soles of my boots had hit the sandstone floor, I threw the world into darkness.
“My eyes!”
“I can’t see!”
“Where are they? Keep firing!”
Cries went up throughout the Hall of Mirrors.
My shadows filled the huge hall from floor to ceiling; the air hummed with my magic, blotting out the light, and suddenly, it didn’t matter that Madra had assigned an entire unit to guard the quicksilver pool.
Her men were human, and humans couldn’t see in the dark. One of their many flaws.
In fairness, the Fae couldn’t see when my shadows flooded their vision, either. I’d warned Carrion of this before we’d entered the pool and had told him what to expect.
There would be shouting. There would be large-scale panic. There would be a lot of scrambling . . . and then the dying would start.
To my eyes, the room was in monochrome, the chaos unfolding before me in different tones of gray.
Guardians fumbled around in their cumbersome armor, crashing into one another.
Those who fell to the ground were taken out by their inability to find their own feet again.
Archers shot at each other in the dark. Arrows cut through the air, aimed high, aimed at pillars, aimed at anywhere but us. I made sure of that.
It didn’t take much. A gentle nudge here. A little tap there. Bowstrings snapped. Guardians went down screaming, shot by their own friends. I led the way through the melee, deflecting any stray arrows that chanced to sail in our direction, and all the while, Carrion yammered away in my ear.
“What’s happening? What can you see?”
“Be quiet.”
“What’s that smell?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
“Ow! Oh, oh shit, I’m standing on something soft.”
“Pick up your fucking feet!”
“Fisher? Fisher. Are we nearly at the door? Ow, what the hell was that? Something hit my arm really hard.”
“It was my fist. Now shut. The fuck. Up.”
We reached the door in one piece, which I was less than thrilled about. If Carrion had taken an iron-tipped arrow to the ass cheek, that would have definitely shut him up. Trouble was, it would have shut him up for good, and Saeris would not have been happy about that.
For whatever reason, my mate didn’t seem to want the smuggler dead, and I had no choice but to let him live as a result.
Worse, I had to protect him now, and holy gods, wasn’t that just a kicker?
I shoved him ahead of me as soon as we were through the door that led out of the Hall of Mirrors and into Madra’s palace.
We didn’t need those gold-clad idiots busting down the door as soon as they realized we weren’t inside the hall with them anymore, so I urged a wisp of shadows into the lock and ordered them to stay.
The keyhole would no longer accept its key.
For a time, at least. The door itself was already triple reinforced, from what I remembered of it from my first visit, and there was no way they’d be able to kick it down. Not until we were long gone.
It was the middle of the night, but the long hallway ahead was washed in brilliant sunlight. Sunslight, I thought, correcting myself. I would never get over the fact that Zilvaren had two su—
What in all the gods’ names . . .
The smuggler was standing frozen in the middle of the hall with his hands outstretched, knees bent, ass sticking out like he’d shit himself.
“Why the fuck are your eyes closed?” I demanded.
Carrion cracked one eye open, looking up at me. As soon as he realized we were on the other side of the door, he exhaled, standing up straight, brushing himself off. “I don’t know! It was weird, not being able to see anything. Closing them helped.”
He was the strangest male. “Okay. Sure. That makes perfect sense,” I said.
“All right. No need for that tone. I’d probably have felt a little braver if I’d had Simon with me.”
Lorreth had called his god sword Avisiéth.
A fine, strong name for a sword. Carrion had called his Simon.
Maybe that name meant something impressive in Zilvaren, but as far as I had been able to glean thus far, it did not.
“For the last time, we could not bring two fucking god swords back into this realm. If Madra got a hold of one of them—”
“I know, I know.” He waved me off, pulling a face. “She could have used one of them to still the quicksilver again.”
“I don’t like being here without my sword any more than you do. Trust me. But I am not getting trapped in this hellhole. Now come on. We need to move.” I didn’t give him the opportunity to say anything else. I set off running down the hall, and to his credit, the smuggler kept up.
We passed door after door. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades as I pumped my arms, pushing harder.
Ten.
Nine.
“Wait,” Carrion panted.
Eight.
“The plan. Why didn’t you tell me what came after the hall?”
Seven.
“Because I knew . . . you wouldn’t like it,” I grunted.
Six.
Five.
“Fisher?”
Four.
“Fisher, why are we sprinting straight for that window?”
Three.
He started to slow, but I grabbed him by the back of the armor Renfis had lent him, and I held on tight.
Two.
“Pick up your fucking feet, Your Highness,” I snarled.
One.
I threw him out of the window.
Howling, dry wind ripped at my clothes as I launched out of the damned thing after him.
“Fuck you, Fisher!” Even hurtling toward the ground at a rate of knots, the smuggler still didn’t shut up.
I reached for Carrion and a rope made of smoke and flashing black sand erupted from my hand, zipping through the air and lashing around the male’s ankles.
Below, the tops of faded red tents rushed up to greet us. Grains of sand stung my eyes, but I kept them open so I could judge when to act.
The fall was easy.
Quick.
Sixty feet from the ground, I reached for my secondary magic and prayed that it answered.
It was fickle and often off wandering when I called.
Luck was on my side today, though. I pictured a vast net stretching across the wide street below, and the crosshatched rope began to lash and twine across the gap.
It anchored to the roof of the building on the left. One corner of it anchored to the building on the right—
Shit.
Carrion hit the net. The rope sagged in the middle, cushioning his weight. By the time I landed after him, the anchor point on the roof of the right building was hanging on by a thread.
It snapped.
I fell straight through the netting, through the canopy of the bleached red tent beneath it, and landed with a hard “Ooof!” on something very uncomfortable.
The sound of rotten, creaking wood reached my ears, and a second later I was deposited unceremoniously onto blistering hot sand. Stale bread rolls thumped down on top of me.
Swift appeared in my field of view, his auburn hair backlit and glowing like a sunset on fire. “That was not okay,” he said in a flat tone.
I blinked sand out of my eyes. “Ahh, quiet. I broke your fall, didn’t I?”
“My cart! Bastards! You’ve destroyed my—” The shout cut off when the old woman took in the two miscreants who had destroyed her property.
Carrion had lived in Zilvaren for lifetimes, but he had done so as one of them.
Glamored. He’d been tall and broad for a human, but now he was hovering near seven feet and possessed the pointed ears of the Fae.
As for me? I was a sight taller than Swift.
Significantly better-looking, too, but that was beside the point.
I flashed my canines at the sunburnt woman, giving her a broad smile.
“Apologies, madam. We had a little argument with gravity. Looks like gravity won.”
I acted fast. It would have been smarter to glamor us as soon as we’d left the Hall of Mirrors, but there hadn’t been time.
I dove deep into my magic and cast it over myself and the smuggler, the change taking effect in the blink of an eye.
I didn’t feel any different, per se, but the layer of illusion clung close to my body like a second skin—an itchy one that I immediately wanted to shed.
When I looked at Carrion, he was shorter again.
Rounded ears. Shoulders narrower. Stubby, ineffective teeth.
He looked human. I tried not to think about what I looked like, masquerading as one of them . . .
The stall owner righted her lopsided hat, rubbing her forehead. Was she about to pass out? She had just seen us morph from Fae to human, which accounted for the confusion on her face.