Chapter Nineteen
T he journey ended in a rush of water that surged onto a dock ahead of us like waves crashing onto a pier and splashed a group of dignified-looking types who were slightly less so after being drenched. Seahorses stopped on a dime, but the wave didn’t and also soaked me pretty well with the backwash. Maybe it’ll help the smell, I thought, as I labored up some stairs after Rieni.
Who was being roundly chewed out by someone.
The people here looked more like the polished perfection of those in the palace and less like the beaten-down workhorses in the kitchen. I didn’t see anyone who couldn’t have bought a house with what they were wearing. A big house.
The robes that weren’t drenched were in fluttering silk so gossamer-fine that they looked like a captured breeze. Gems, rings, and shiny things decorated the robes and the people wearing them, including enough strings of pearls to make a jeweler weep. And there were elaborately braided hairstyles on men and women alike, which had weathered the dunking pretty well and made me wonder if that’s why braids were preferred here.
People did seem to get soaked pretty often.
But none of them looked happy to see me, making me wonder if taking rides with random nautical babies had been my best move. But then I spied Pritkin. He was heading for us down a wide corridor to the left and being trailed by the Brain, who had flushed a darker shade of blue than usual and was all puffed up like a pissed-off bouncer.
That probably explained why everyone was giving them a wide berth.
Pritkin looked like he’d just come from the fight himself, with the blingy scuba pants torn, his hair rumped, and what looked like slashes of dried blood on his bare chest. I hoped they were someone else’s and weren’t covering wounds, but I didn’t get a chance to find out. Because I was suddenly swamped by more people I didn’t know coming out of the same girthy tunnel.
They’d exited alongside Pritkin, but I’d been too relieved to see him to notice. Until they surged ahead, flying at me like overdressed bats all in black, and had me backing up toward the edge of the pier and Pinkie lashing out and thumping them wildly with his stubby “arms.”He hit pretty hard, I thought, as a couple of courtiers who had gotten in the way went stumbling backward.
A voice cut through the din, saying something in a low but penetrating tone that my translator didn’t know, and the black-clad army peeled off. And reformed into a muttering wad a little way off that I couldn’t see too well because the darkness of their robes seemed to absorb the light around them, leaving them looking like a bunch of fey-shaped black holes. But, judging by the occasional flash of weapons, they were probably guards.
“Well, you shouldn’t have been standing on the edge, should you?” Rieni was saying to someone, her voice matter-of-fact and unperturbed by the chaos. “You know how Starlight is.”
“Starlight,” the tall man standing near her huffed. “I know how you are, and you took your sweet time!”
“She wanted to see the stables,” Rieni said before being led off by the ear.
“Are you all right?” Pritkin asked, coming up alongside me.
“Think so.” I managed to keep my voice level. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Long story. Don’t kneel.”
“What?”
But that was all the help I got before being sized up by a woman I immediately understood was A Big Deal. At her arrival, everyone else fell silent and got out of the way, even when having to move faster than dignity allowed. And then they all went down on one knee, except for me and Pritkin, which made me feel awkward and somewhat ill-mannered.
But if I’d learned anything since arrival, it was to do what Pritkin said.
So, I stood there, dripping in my smelly armor, and wondered if smiling was also off the list.
I decided against it since she wasn’t.
She looked like someone who didn’t use those particular muscles too often, but I had to admit it worked for her. She was tall, slender, and darker skinned than Rieni, almost like the beautiful face had been carved out of a piece of ebony. Her features were lovely, but it was her hair that really drew the eye, being drawn back from her face in tiny braids that were grouped into a ponytail that cascaded to the floor.
All the way to the floor.
And then some.
I had never seen hair that swept the ground, especially not after being braided, and found myself trying to figure out how long it must be for that to work before snapping out of it. Damn it, Cassie, this isn’t a joke! Her clothes alone told me that much.
They were beautiful even for this place, although there were no elaborate, seed pearl bedecked robes here. Or even the diaphanous, only sort-of-there gowns I’d seen at dinner. She was wearing armor of the tightfitting, leather variety I’d seen on fey archers who wanted protection that didn’t impede their range of movement.
That type was usually spelled for added protection, which I assumed was true here, as little round cabochon stones of a milky hue decorated the suit at the joints and around the collar, all of which abruptly flashed red when she approached me.
She glanced at some near her wrist and then back up at me. “Stand away from her,” she told Pritkin, and to my surprise, he did, backing off about ten steps.
The lights didn’t change, except to start blinking rapidly as she approached.
I held my ground, knowing a test when I saw one but not knowing what it was. Other than freaky when she put out a hesitant hand and paused. And then, as if steeling herself, she grasped my shoulder firmly.
The lights abruptly went solid gold, and the crowd gasped theatrically as if rehearsed. The woman, however, did not. If anything, she looked resigned, as if she’d expected that.
Her hand dropped, and she shot me a look that could only be described as venomous. “You don’t look like your mother,” she said, then abruptly whirled and walked away.
***
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Pritkin said, his voice low, as we were hustled down the same wide tunnel in the rock that everyone had come out of. “Lady Bodil didn’t like your mother. Don’t bring her up.”
“I wasn’t planning—wait. She knew my mother?”
“She knew them all, the gods, that is,” Pritkin said grimly. “She’s one of the oldest here at court.”
“She doesn’t look it.”
“She has god blood, but not Nimue’s. She can’t vie for the throne as a result. She has a champion, but he isn’t doing well, and nobody thinks he’ll win. We’re up for his replacement.”
“What?” I asked, startled. “Why?”
“I’ve been able to talk her into considering the idea—”
“ You have?” I said, slightly startled, because Pritkin had many gifts, but diplomacy wasn’t one of them.
“—but the outcome is still in the air. We have to—”
But I didn’t find out what we had to do because we were suddenly there, branching off the hallway into an expansive room that not only wasn’t a throne room but looked more like a stable. Only without the straw on the ground because these horses bedded down in the canal outside. Yet everything else was pretty much what you’d expect.
A row of the unusually long seahorse saddles was hanging on the wall, and another was either under repair or in construction on a tall wooden frame. Rough wooden tables held leatherworking tools, piles of bridles and reins, and lengthy, fishing pole-type things with shiny crystals on the end that I couldn’t name and that nobody felt like explaining. Stalls were scattered about the walls, why I didn’t know as I didn’t see any land animals here, except for an Earth-like cat in a corner who couldn’t be bothered to do more than yawn at us as we all streamed in.
And went toward a small area in the back with a beat-up-looking desk, a couple of chairs, and a small wooden half-wall separating it from the rest of the room, like an office for the stable master. Who took her place behind the desk and attempted not to glare at me. She mostly failed but I was used to that by now.
“We have to come to an understanding,” she began, but I wasn’t having it.
I’d just woken up, I was exhausted, still hungry, fairly cold, and very uncomfortable in my smelly armor, not all of the stank of which was Pinkie’s fault. Not to mention that nobody had explained a damned thing! I was also wondering why we needed to risk our lives to put a woman on the throne who I didn’t even know when we already had Pritkin.
But I decided to start with something a little less combative.
“Where are Rhosier and the others? Are they okay? And how did we get out of the kitchen? And who were those men who attacked us? And why did they attack us? I thought challengers were supposed to be off-limits!”
Bodil looked at Pritkin, and he looked back. “I said that it would simplify things if she was here when we talked,” he commented, pretty mildly for him.
“You know damned well why she wasn’t!” Bodil’s hand hit the desk hard enough to make a baby bridle slide onto the floor.
“I’m not my mother,” I said, forgetting Pritkin’s advice. And immediately regretted it when her dark eyes flashed fire.
Like, literally. They went red momentarily, and I didn’t back up only because I was sitting down.
Shut up, Cassie, I told myself. Just shut the hell up.
“And I know that how?” she hissed. “From what I hear, you may as well be!”
“And what does that mean?” I asked because my mouth wasn’t obeying my brain’s frantic signaling. My mouth had woken up and chosen violence. My mouth was going to get us killed because there was no way I could shift us out of there.
Pritkin must have thought the same because his hand clenched in warning on the one I had resting on the chair arm. But to my surprise, Bodil just answered the question. “You look like a human,” she said, her eyes raking me up and down. “Soft, weak, young. Not much older than my daughter’s daughter, yet all dressed up in dragonscale like a warrior. How many years have you?”
“I’ve already told you,” Pritkin said. “That doesn’t—”
“It matters to me!” she turned on him fiercely. “What you’re asking—”
“Wait, you asked for this?” I said, looking at him. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Green eyes blazed into mine, showing that he wasn’t as calm as he appeared. “You were almost assassinated—what? Five times in less than a day? We need protection! Bodil can guarantee our safety—”
“Outside of the challenge,” she specified.
“Which is all we could ask,” Pritkin said as if this was a done deal.
“Five?” I frowned. “It was twice—”
“It was more than that just in the damned ballroom! Not to mention that creature when we came in—”
“You can’t count the Not-Whale. That was a challenge—”
“The what?” That was Rieni, coming in with a large brown leather bag held loosely in her arms and sitting on the edge of the desk.
“The thing we fought in the first challenge,” I said, glancing at her. And then watching the bag she held, which, disturbingly, appeared to be moving. “Or when I came in, Pritkin was already here—”
“Who?” she looked confused.
“Uh, Prince Emrys, and why is that . . . squirming?”
“Babies,” she said, as if that explained anything. “And are you talking about the Cetus?”
“The what?” It was my turn to be confused and disturbed because something was peeking.
I scooted my chair back a bit.
She laughed and plopped the bag in my lap. “It’s okay. You can babysit for a while.”
“Rieni!” her grandmother—at a guess—snapped.
“It’s okay; she likes them,” the girl said, skipping out.
I was getting the impression that Rieni did whatever the hell she wanted and got away with it because the fey had children approximately once every millennium and tended to spoil them. Although the Green Fey had rigged the system with all the humans they’d imported as breeding stock. Only maybe she wasn’t half and half.
Those didn’t tend to dress so well.
“Some do,” Bodil said, sitting back in her chair and not even trying to hide that she could hear my thoughts. “And yes, I can read you—partly. One of the perks of being a half-breed,” her lips twisted.
“Didn’t get that one,” I said distractedly because the “babies” were squirming on my lap. I was never so glad to have armor on, I thought, wondering if they were venomous. And then wondering how I could have thought so when one stuck out a tiny, adorable snout.
“They’re dangerous,” Pritkin warned.
“Not at that age,” Bodil said, watching as a dozen more little faces joined the first, having pushed back the bag’s flap and begun peering out curiously.
They couldn’t have been more than an inch or so tall, to the point that I could have wrapped one around my finger as a ring. But they were every color of the rainbow, colorful baby seahorses that I was pretty sure should be in water somewhere, only nobody seemed bothered about it. Or about the fact that they were now climbing all over me, hopping from the pouch to my armor, where they paused to stare at their reflections curiously.
“Um,” I said. “A little help?”
“You want our army,” Bodil said. “For your war against the gods.”
It came out of nowhere, although she had warned me that she was a mind reader. Having spent plenty of time with Mircea, who was far more proficient at that sort of thing than he let on, it didn’t surprise me. But it was annoying.
“Aren’t they going to dry up or something?” I said a little desperately. I did not want one getting under my armor. I did not!
“She’s using the diversion to read your thoughts, Cassie,” Pritkin said. “It’s easier when you’re distracted.”
“So, get them off me, then!”
But he was too busy staring down the ancient fey. “This war will come to you, sooner or later. Better that you have allies when it does.”
“So says the man desperate for troops he can use as cannon fodder!”
“Don’t put your sins on us,” Pritkin snapped. “And you know your people cannot stand against what’s coming. If the gods return—”
“They’re already here, it would seem,” she hissed, staring at me. I was too busy scooping little runaways back into their rather slimy pouch—and why was everything slimy—to look up, but I could feel the weight of those eyes on me. “You expect us to gamble everything on a war led by one of their spawn—”
“Careful,” Pritkin warned.
“—when there’s no way of knowing she’s any better! Her mother wanted to rid herself of the competition, too, so that she might rule alone, queen of all she surveyed! Why should I believe the daughter to be any different?”
“Because you have eyes?” Pritkin said, disbelieving. “Look at her!”
They both did.
I looked up, more than a little frustrated, with a tiny seahorse dangling off a curl in front of my eyes because the things jumped like baby frogs! I tried to look harmless, which shouldn’t be too hard at the moment. But Bodil wasn’t convinced.
“Good camouflage,” she told me with a vicious smile. “But your reputation precedes you. Killer of great Apollo, of even mightier Ares, and now of Athena, or so I hear. Oh, yes, whispers from the dark fey lands reach us, even ones from the outer world. They tell stories that I did not know whether to believe until I met you.”
“I thought I was a child playing dress up,” I said because she didn’t get it both ways.
“So did I until I peered into your mind.”
“Then you should know—I didn’t kill the gods, not any of them—”
“Not directly. But a general doesn’t strike the final blow, does he? He makes the battle plan and leaves it to others to bear the risks—”
“I don’t ask other people to fight for me!”
“Yet you’re asking us,” she snarled. “Or expecting to command us when the fey princeling you’ve found and wrapped around your finger wins the kingdom for you. But he won’t. My champion will—”
“Your champion will get himself killed!” Pritkin said. “Out of the water if not in it—”
“He hasn’t been targeted!”
“Because nobody thinks he’s a threat! I wouldn’t target him, either!”
Those amazing eyes flashed red again. “But you would target me. Suborn me to get the help you need to win it all, and then what? Tell me, Pythia,” she turned on me suddenly like a striking viper. “Where are those who did kill the gods for you? What happened to them?”
I blinked at her but didn’t try to lie. I wouldn’t have anyway, but it was impossible with those eyes on me. They held something, a weight, a power, or maybe just so much pent-up emotion that they were hard to meet.
“Ares killed Apollo,” I said. “Or was in the process of it when a man—a human—sent one of his own spells back at him. As you should know.”
And she should; the Green Fey had known the man in question well. Old Wales had been one of their favorite hunting grounds for slaves, where a lively magical community provided seemingly unlimited witches for their breeding program. And where a king named Arthur had been trying to stop it and failed, although he had stopped Ares.
One could argue that that was worth his legend alone.
“I did,” she said dryly. “And now he’s dead—”
“That was hundreds of years ago!”
“He was taken down by members of his court years after the battle,” Pritkin added. “You know that—”
“What I know is that I do not intend to share his fate or that of others who have helped this sweet little thing to cut a swath through her enemies and paid the price for it. Take them.”
That last was said with the same cold indifference of most of her conversation, even when furious, to the point that I was surprised when the black-robed guards swamped us.
Not again, I thought, right before the lights went out.