Chapter Seven
B esides us, there were two big tables on the raised expanse and three smaller ones. Of course, “smaller” meant maybe fifty people each, whereas the biggest had to hold several hundred or more. All of whom were glaring at me as if they’d understood my threat.
And maybe they had. I hadn’t been addressing a fey, so my translator hadn’t kicked in. But if anybody in Faerie could speak English, it would be the Alorestri.
One of them, I was sure could, a surprisingly golden-haired guy in the middle of the most extensive table, in a mass of silver robes embroidered with tiny blue carp. He had on silver blue eyeshadow because the Alorestri noblemen seemed to wear as much make-up as their women, but he didn’t look effeminate. In fact, he looked like he might be part human, with a more muscular build than most of the fey could boast and a strong jawline.
He looked like he’d be more at home in Malibu on a surfboard than here, but maybe the Alorestri had those. I mean, why wouldn’t they? Too bad he was drinking wine and pretending he couldn’t see us.
But his hand, sporting the largest sapphire I’d ever seen, had just clenched on the bowl of his goblet, so I was pretty sure he’d heard me. He wasn’t ordering us off the platform, though, so I supposed that was something. I glanced at Pritkin.
“Feltin, Nimue’s old lover,” he told me in a low voice. “He’s part human, too, although he denies it. She plucked him out of obscurity centuries ago and elevated him to royal favorite. He enjoyed a good deal of power when she was alive and isn’t happy about losing it.”
“Is he challenging?”
“No, he can’t. He has no standing without a blood tie. But whoever he backs will have a definite advantage.”
Probably shouldn’t be antagonizing him then, I thought, and looked away.
I didn’t have a chance to ask anything else, as the momentary silence was interrupted by the arrival of Lord Bling. At least, I assumed that was his name; if not, it should have been. And like all true showmen, he made an entrance .
There was a blast from some guys with huge, sea-shell trumpets, who I’d noticed framing the main doors when we came in but who hadn’t made a peep for us, and there he was, pausing on the landing at the top of the stairs so that we could all feast our eyes. Or gouge them out because the light coming off him was blinding. And not just because he was covered in about an acre of emeralds, aquamarines, and sapphires.
But because all the chandeliers had suddenly turned to spotlight him.
Guess he knew the magic worker controlling them, I thought wryly.
The light show left the rest of us in shadow, even on the dais, and him in dazzling solitude. Frankly, he deserved it, considering that his Liberace outfit made even Antlers down there look shabby. For a moment, I just took it in.
As usual around here, he had opted for a caftan open to the waist to show off his nice chest muscles. But his weren’t pierced, tattooed, or draped in jewels like half of the guys’ here. They were bare and were literally the only part of him that was.
Other than for that vee of perfect skin, he might have been some jeweled creature come to life because he glittered . Besides the fantastic caftan, which was so heavily encrusted that I couldn’t even tell what material was under there, he had on see-through gloves spotted with precious stones, a sash around his waist with huge, clear cabochons of some crystal that clustered together gave the appearance of seafoam, and then there was the cape. Or no, that wasn’t right.
It was a cape . It was at least fifteen feet long, and unlike the rest of the outfit, which was designed to mimic the colors of the ocean and the breaking surf, the cape was fiery red since it was covered in golden crabs with ruby-encrusted shells. It was held up by six-page boys, three on each side dressed as mini-me’s in short but equally jeweled tunics, probably because it weighed a ton.
Several looked to be having trouble just heaving the thing in the door.
Their boss posed like a supermodel for a long moment, giving everyone time to take in the magnificence before slowly beginning to descend the stairs. He took it easy to allow the spotlight to follow him, but not easy enough. The crabs were spelled to move about, I guessed to make their stones glitter even more since that was definitely what that outfit needed, but they got a little too feisty.
They kept crawling onto the pages, several of whom started batting them back down, which ruined the elegant effect somewhat. And not just for me. I heard tittering in the audience, who had forgotten about us in favor of making fun of whoever the hell.
“What is that?” I asked, as the vision was tripped up by some of his crabby accessories but recovered just in time. The titters grew. Pritkin drank wine.
“Lord Algaut. Wealthier than Croesus and about as lucky. Not a problem.”
I’d already figured that out by the fact that he’d tripped up two more times just getting to ground level or sea level or wherever we were and was now snapping at his train of boys about something. Probably the fact that the small, jeweled crabs had broken loose from whatever enchantment had bound them and were now crawling everywhere. Including over the lord himself, where they were pinching his aristocratic skin.
“Then what was that entrance for?” I asked as the servant girl came hurrying back with cutlery, better plates, and fine golden goblets that she exchanged for our sad pewter things.
“Politics.” Pritkin shot her a smile and she blushed to the roots of her fire-engine red hair. And curtsied before being summoned by an unhappy voice from a nearby table.
“Politics?”
He nodded and leaned closer so that I could hear him. That was harder than you’d think because the crabs had spread to nearby tables, causing a ruckus. Some lady with pale, silver-green hair, which made me wonder what she was doing with the upper crust, started screaming; the pages were running around, trying to scoop the bitey miscreants back into their own smaller capes; and a few men were attempting to crush the escapees underfoot, which wasn’t easy shoeless and was making Lord Algaut even less happy as he’d probably paid a lot for those.
“This isn’t just a contest,” Pritkin told me. “It’s an election. The contest gives people an idea of who they want to vote for. Consider it a very bloody stump speech.”
“I don’t understand,” I said because I really didn’t.
“Take Algaut over there,” Pritkin said, nodding at the angry fey lord, who had lost all dignity and was scrabbling around on himself, trying to throw the crabs off. Only they’d gotten under his magnificent caftan and appeared to be trying to eat him. He screamed, but nobody went to help him save for his beleaguered pages.
“Somebody tinkered with the spell to have that happen. To embarrass him and make him look a fool in front of the rest of the nobility.”
They got value for their time, I thought, as Algaut gave up, ripped off his priceless attire, and went running back up the stairs in the fey version of tighty-whities, namely a very unblinged-out loincloth.
“Why bother?” I asked as he disappeared back through the door to raucous laughter. “You just said he wasn’t a problem.”
“In the Challenge, no. But anyone that rich is always a threat. He might have bribed his way to the throne had things gone differently, but now that he looks a fool, without even enough magic to counter some enchanted crabs—”
“Anyone who votes for him might as well be waving a banner saying ‘I was bought.’”
“Exactly. Someone just removed a threat for the price of a few minutes of spell-binding.”
I narrowed my eyes at him because the tone of that last comment had been verging on smug. “Or paid someone else to do it,” I said.
“Of course. They could have done that.”
Unless they were a war mage and an expert magic worker and didn’t have to, I thought, wondering if I’d underestimated my partner. Pritkin didn’t help me decide, being too busy smiling at the servant girl again, who had returned with a whopping platter of fish in some brown sauce. She smiled back, and she smiled big.
My eyes narrowed a bit more.
And then widened to roughly saucer-shape when I saw who was behind her and had just paused by the third chair at our table. “What the—”
“Hey, sweetheart. Mind if I join you?”
I just stared, my mouth hanging open in a way that probably didn’t help with the badass, but I didn’t care right then. “Alphonse?”
“The one and only.” He started to sit, but Pritkin put out a hand.
“No offense,” he said because Alphonse was a vampire, the approximate size of a small mountain, and mean with it. He was also ugly enough to have some of the fey currently staring at us start doing the look-slide thing that the flunkies had tried on the Horror Twins because he offended their delicate sensibilities. Several even looked like they might lose their expensive dinner.
It made me warm up to Alphonse, which was not an easy task.
“Offense taken,” Alphonse growled. “You got a problem with me, war mage?”
“No. But sitting here might be dangerous. You know what it means?”
“What does it mean?” I asked before Alphonse could.
“It means,” Alphonse said, removing Pritkin’s hand from his arm with the very deliberate motions of a man who could have just as easily ripped it off. “That I’m signing on. Which I am.”
His butt hit the seat, and he smiled at me, which did not help matters much. Alphonse was the guy normies envision when somebody says “vampire,” only not as suave. Or as sexy. Or as wealthy or influential or—
You get the idea. But the tall, dark, and brutal thing? He had that in spades and at least eighty pounds of added muscle that vamps didn’t need.
“Signing on to what?” I asked, thinking that maybe Pritkin and I should have done more than “take a shower” while we’d had the time.
“To team Cassie. And this guy,” he added, hiking a thumb at Pritkin when I opened my mouth to protest. “But mainly you.”
“Me?” My eyes tried narrowing again, but they were still too shocked. “Why me? And what are you doing here? You realize we’re in Faerie ?”
“Yeah. All the pointy ears kinda gave it away.” He tucked a giant napkin into the front of his very Earthly tuxedo. With his oily, slicked-back, dark hair, his pockmarked face, and his cauliflower nose, he looked like a mafia don who had somehow wandered into the land of the fey, which wasn’t far off.
He had been second-in-command to the mafia don.
And, suddenly, something started to make sense.
“Hold it,” Alphonse’s huge hand covered mine and pressed down hard enough to keep me in place. But not to keep me from looking around wildly, trying to spot—
“Where is he?” I demanded.
“You need to calm down, okay?”
“You calm down!” I turned back to him, my eyes furious. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. That’s why I’m here. I tracked him to Faerie and—”
A trumpet sounded somewhere behind us, or maybe a couple of them. It was deafening, probably announcing another contender who had waited to make a grand entrance. I didn’t know, didn’t care.
“ You tracked him?” I said furiously, leaning over the table. “All the way here? You expect me to believe—”
“I frankly don’t care what you believe. All I know is that that fat fuck is here somewhere, and now so are you. And he has a major hate on for you. So, I figure he’ll turn up sooner or later, and as long as I stick to you—” he made a meaty fist and crashed it into the palm of his other hand, thus releasing me.
I didn’t go anywhere. Because the image of that huge fist pounding the face of the vampire I’d once called master was so seductive that, for a minute, I could almost see it. And I wanted to see it.
Antonio Gallina, better known as Tony and even better known by a series of expletives as long as my arm, was a massive piece of shit. The kind that sees a little girl who just might grow up to be a valuable seer someday and grabs her, and the fact that he had to kill said girl’s parents to make that happen. . . Well, for Tony, that was just Tuesday.
He’d also killed my governess, Eugenie, one of the only people I’d had growing up who gave a damn about me because he thought she knew where I went when I fled from him. She didn’t know anything, but again, did he care? Ripping her apart was a good way to alleviate the fury he couldn’t take out on me.
These days, I had my own fury and the power to do something about it. But Tony had done a disappearing routine before I could get my hands on him to join the other side in the war, or so I’d heard. Faerie was vast and treacherous, and searching for him could take months, even years, which I didn’t have right now. And that was assuming that it hadn’t done what it usually did with outsiders and eaten him alive.
Possibly literally.
But no, he’d survive. Snakes like that always did. If the good died young, Tony would live forever, or at least for as long as it took me to find him.
Alphonse had been watching me, those sharp dark eyes shrewd behind surprising long lashes, a strangely beautiful touch on a face that even a mother couldn’t love. But someone had once. Or had made him believe that she did.
Before Tony killed her, too, or at least helped with the process.
“Yeah, I know what it feels like,” he told me softly as we thought about Sal, Alphonse’s old flame. She’d technically been killed by one of Mircea’s vamps who was trying to protect me, but she’d only been after me on Tony’s orders. And for someone as weak as Sal, her master’s commands were little less than mind control.
She hadn’t had a choice, and so she’d died, a tragedy that I still regretted and that Alphonse. . .
Well, regret wasn’t what he knew how to do. Or grieve or process this in any other normal human way. Alphonse hadn’t been a human in centuries, and I frankly doubted he’d been normal even then.
Alphonse knew how to kill, how to hunt, and how to brutalize.
I felt a small smile curve my lips.
“Yeah,” he said, seeing it. “I want him every bit as much as you do. Maybe we can help each other out.”
“Or maybe you can die trying,” Pritkin said flatly. “This isn’t Earth—”
“I know what it is, war mage, and I die only if you lose.”
“What?” I said, jolted out of the trip down memory lane. And then said it a few more times because what?
“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” Alphonse shot Pritkin a sly glance. “That’s what traditionally happens to challengers and their retinues who fail. At least those that are still in the contest by the last round. It’s a way of making sure that the next monarch don’t have a bunch of butt-hurt wannabees around to plot against him or her.”
He ate some of the fish off my plate.
“Mhmm, nice. Too bad it’s poisoned,” he said, tapping the china with the tines of one of the weird, two-pronged forks they’d given us. “I’d decline if I were you.”
“What?”
“Poisoned?” Pritkin stood up and started toward the tables behind us, but Alphonse pulled him back.
“Save it for the Challenge. Attacking the challengers outside the arena is a quick way to get disqualified, remember?”
“How the hell do you know that?”
Alphonse looked at him calmly. “I know a lot about this stupid fight. It’s all anyone talks about around here, and my ears work good. Specially with that nice translation spell I paid a mage way more than it was worth to conjure up for me.”
“You don’t conjure—” Pritkin began automatically, but Alphonse waved him off.
“My point is, I know what I’m getting into.” He switched his gaze to me. “Do you?”
“She’s Pythia, dark fey friend and ally of Caedmon, the Blarestri king,” Pritkin snapped. “They wouldn’t dare touch her.”
“Is that what you’ve been telling yourself?” Alphonse asked, a dark eyebrow going up. “They just served her poison, but okay.”
“That was meant for me!”
“And that’s better? ‘Cause I gotta say, your chances aren’t looking too good. There’s,” he paused and ostentatiously counted, “two of you—”
“We have two more in our room,” I said, glaring at Pritkin. Who had forgotten to mention that this was a duel to the death.
“So I heard.” Alphonse chuckled. “And you guys think that’s gonna help you? Bringing two demons to court? Well, two and a half,” he shot another look at Pritkin. “You know you can win every challenge and still lose if everybody votes against you, right?”
“What?” I said, upping the glare. Because it seemed there was a damned lot I didn’t know!
But Pritkin didn’t look too disturbed as he sat back down. “In theory, yes.”
“In theory? ”
“Look.”
He didn’t tell me where to look, but I discovered it didn’t matter. There was another preening popinjay on the landing, which I guessed was who the trumpets had been for. He was in a silver-white get-up that glittered in diamonds and looked like he was cosplaying Poseidon.
With a million-dollar budget.
A cape of silver and white, with the loose weave evoking fishing nets, hung from his shoulders, with tiny diamond fishes dangling from the webbing. He wore silver-colored armor underneath that was every bit as nice as mine and maybe nicer since it was set with more sparkly stuff, as were the silver tattoos or maybe makeup on his face. He was nonetheless frowning, possibly because nobody in his entourage had told him that boots were déclassé at court, which was why no one else was wearing them.
Or maybe because of us.
Yeah, it was us, I thought, catching that lordly gaze.
But I barely noticed because I was too busy adjusting my worldview and, therefore, also wearing a scowl myself. Each table behind us and the many spread out below, including the ones sitting hundreds, was now a competitor. I felt my stomach knot itself into a tiny, hard lump.
At least I couldn’t eat the poison that way.
“After every round, they have a banquet like this one,” Pritkin said. “Supposedly to celebrate, but in reality, it’s a vote. People decide who they think will be the likely winner and join his or her table. As the contest continues, the smaller tables shrink to nothing as their members join the larger groups. By the end, there’s only a handful left standing, and the final night is the final vote.”
“And there are three of us!” I said, suddenly seeing Alphonse’s point.
“Yes, but tides change quickly, and no one wants to be on the losing side.”
“How can you say that when we’re the losing side?”
“Look again,” he told me, and I did because I didn’t know what else to do.
But this time, I saw what he meant. No one else was paying attention to us anymore because they were too busy scowling at the newcomer—and everyone else. The factions in this court hated each other, probably as much or more than they hated us.
We were the nasty, tainted outworlders, but looking at the vengeful, prideful, superior faces, it looked like there were old grievances and long-standing feuds that cut far deeper. I understood that as much as anyone, although my personal vendetta hadn’t had the centuries to fester that many of these probably had. But it was nonetheless hot enough.
Which was why I was on my feet again a second later at the sight of the fat face poking out from behind the latest blinged-out backside.
Tony.
Son of a bitch .