Chapter Twenty-Two
I didn’t know how long I was unconscious that time, but it wasn’t long enough. I wasn’t chilled when I woke because Pritkin was draped around me, but I still felt like hell. I decided to just lay there for a while.
“What did we just see?” I croaked when I could.
He didn’t answer for a moment, but when I turned over, he wasn’t asleep. He had that look on his face instead, the one that said that he was debating whether to reply, which wasn’t okay. I needed answers, and I’d been getting basically none of them all day.
“If Faerie showed us that, she had a reason,” I rasped, wishing I had some water. Or an aspirin. Or a stiff drink.
“The reason seems to be to kill you,” he whispered, but it was savage, and the hand on my arm clenched harder, just to the edge of being unpleasant. “Which this damned fool quest of hers has almost done a dozen times!”
“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to push myself to a sitting position and somehow missing the floor. But I didn’t have time to lie around, so I tried again, slower this time. And for a wonder, the room behaved itself. “But that can be fixed,” I added.
“Fixed? Fixed how?” Pritkin’s tone said he already knew he wouldn’t like the answer.
“I’m not connected to you anymore,” I reminded him. “I can’t borrow your link to Faerie, and she seems to be having trouble communicating without it. But if you put Lover’s Knot—”
“No.”
“—on us again—”
“No!”
“Why not?” I asked, confused. “You can cast it on just the two of us, and while it won’t give us access to Mircea’s power, it will help in other ways. I can borrow your link to Faerie and you—you could even use the Pythian power when it cycles around again and get us out of here!”
I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that before because, yeah! That would work. I knew it would as he’d borrowed it before, as had Mircea.
I might be too tired to channel it, but Pritkin—he was drained, but he was stronger than me, and it was a short hop. Just getting us to the other side of this damned wall might be enough!
But he looked at me as if I was crazy. “You know damned well why not! If I die, and we’re linked, so do you!”
“Pritkin, we’re in a cell. We’re not going to die—”
“We’re in Faerie , so you can’t know that!”
He abruptly got up, leaving me colder and bewildered on the floor. “I’m talking about a few minutes,” I said. “You can take it off right after. We just need long enough—”
“For that fey bitch to give us more marching orders,” he seethed, making me blink again. Because yeah, that was the idea. Faerie knew what was going on around here, who we could trust, if anyone, and who was gunning for us. She probably knew all kinds of information that could give us an edge, and she wanted us to win.
“She’ll be back anyway,” I pointed out. “She wasn’t done; she just lost her grip—”
“And if someone comes in here while we’re both mentally absent? And butchers me as they’ve been trying to do since I arrived? Tony might be after you, but the rest are after me. If we’re linked—”
And for a moment, he really did look demonic: red of face, dark of eye, and with bunched fists sparking with little tendrils of power that curled up his arms as if searching for someone to throw it at. He looked like he could eviscerate said person from here by sheer force of will, which was when I started worrying. Because sure, Pritkin was overprotective sometimes, but not like this.
He had never been like this.
“No one is coming,” I said softly as if speaking to a mad bull. “And Faerie needs us. She’s not going to let anything happen—”
“And when she doesn’t?” It was savage.
I frowned. I didn’t like trusting a vengeful goddess any more than he did, but what was the alternative? Because without her and the information she’d provided, we’d have already lost.
She had given me a lot of help getting out of Aeslinn’s camp of horrors, help that had allowed me to make it to the portal and then through it. And the information she’d provided after that had let me stop Zeus’ plans and live to tell about it. I doubted she cared for us, as we weren’t her creatures, even Pritkin, whose fey blood was thin.
But the enemy of my enemy was a friend or at least an ally, and I’d take that.
But he wouldn’t.
It was in every line of his body, in the way he was pacing when he never did, in the contour of that jaw, which, if it got any sharper, could cut something. I’d thought we’d settled this; he’d even been talking to Bodil about us replacing her champion. Which might keep the assassins off our butts in between challenges but would still leave us vulnerable in the contest itself.
That was a risk I was willing to take, and he had been, too, just a little while ago. But all of a sudden. . . It was like I was talking to a different man.
I decided to change the subject and let him calm down since I still had about a thousand questions he could answer, assuming he would.
“Okay,” I said, and he looked at me in surprise as if he’d expected an argument, one that he probably had the answers for already prepped. So I asked one that maybe he didn’t. “Why did it look like a cook was leading some kind of rebellion?”
Pritkin narrowed his eyes at me, but I guessed he preferred this topic to the other because, after a moment, he came back over and sat down.
“Rhosier isn’t just a cook,” I was told. “He and Bodil have been working together to get some of the humans out of here and back to Earth for years. The servants in the royal household act as his eyes and ears so that he knows who has incurred the wrath of someone important, and she has access to the portal. They’ve sent through many hundreds at this point without anyone being the wiser. The rumor is that the missing people ran away to join the dark fey, which has happened occasionally.”
“But instead, they ran to Earth?”
He nodded. “Bodil never agreed with Nimue’s practice of capturing or luring human women here. Although I think that was initially more about the purity of the fey bloodline than any moral misgivings. But over time, as she saw what was happening to them—”
“Like Enid,” I said, seeing that half-beautiful, half-destroyed face again.
“Like Enid,” he agreed. “They are treated like cattle and abused as easily. It’s one reason their hybrid children are taken from them early and sent to the frontiers to be raised as warriors, so they don’t get attached to their mothers and cause trouble. But Rhosier’s magic came in late, causing the fey to suppose him weak.
“They discharged him from military service, and he became a spit-turner at the palace instead. He moved up through the centuries to head the kitchens, having inherited a long life from his father.”
“And found a hobby?” I guessed.
“A dangerous one.” Pritkin grimaced. “He started using the portal, sneaking people through with the help of some of the guards on duty, who were also part human. At first, he concentrated on those who had incurred the wrath of someone powerful enough to cause them trouble—which, for a slave, could be almost anyone. But later. . .”
“Later?”
“I told him it was foolish. But he was determined, and he’s extremely difficult to reason with—”
Like somebody else I knew, I thought.
“—and has been telling the slaves, not just here but those in the villages as well, to have their children fake incompetence. He’s shown them how to fail the tests they used to vie with each other to pass.”
“What tests?” I asked because I still knew so little of this place.
“The guards on the frontiers live well—for as long as they do live—and have some status in fey society. The part-humans who can’t pass do not. As a result, the slaves’ children do everything possible to be taken by the army. Their mothers even encourage it, knowing what their lives will be otherwise.”
“I thought they were returned to Earth otherwise,” I said because that was how all those part-fey children had ended up dumped in old Wales.
“Once, but not for centuries. When the Silver Circle, with Caedmon’s help, shut down the slave trade and most of the portals making it possible, the Alorestri retaliated by refusing to send back any more part-humans. I think they planned to use the threat as a bartering tactic, but the Circle readily agreed. They didn’t like the trouble the Returned made and were happy enough to leave them here—”
“That’s why you said Jonas wouldn’t help us,” I said, understanding a bit more.
“Among other reasons. But the covens were willing to take them in, as it was largely their blood, their sisters, who had been stolen. And thus, the children were their descendants.”
I nodded, remembering when I’d visited one of the witches’ hidden enclaves in the desert outside of Vegas.
They’d established a small network of such places as a defense against the Circle and its laws in the 1500s when the two groups had been at war, but it had grown through the centuries to span the globe. The enclave I’d seen had been filled with strange and wonderful magic—and fey, lots and lots of fey and part-fey hybrids. I remembered their candy-colored hair and peculiar clothing but hadn’t thought much about it then.
The covens regularly traded with Faerie to evade the Circle’s prohibitions on the import of various potion ingredients. Those hit the covens harder than anyone else, as their magic was derived from that of the fey, and they needed their resources for many spells. I’d naturally assumed that the people I saw there were traders, and maybe some of them were.
But not all, it seemed.
“Rhosier managed to sneak out a dozen or so at a time,” Pritkin added. “Mostly children, the ones the fey didn’t care about as they had already been passed over in the selection process.
“They were seen as fit only to till the fields or serve in the great houses; no one much cared if they ran away to join the dark fey, died of an illness, or were attacked by wild animals—all of which were excuses he made up over the years. The only problem was that there weren’t many guards willing to risk helping him, and those who would were rarely stationed together. It caused a bottleneck, and then Bodil caught him one night red-handed. Fortunately, they reached an agreement.”
“Lucky him.”
“Yes, he has always been that, which is needed considering that he is also reckless, stupidly brave, even foolhardy—”
“Pot, meet kettle,” I said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Who did you say his father was again?”
“I didn’t,” Pritkin shot me a look.
“Does that mean you don’t know, or—”
“His father was a fey nobleman named Leiknir, a giant of a man even by fey standards, which is where Rhosier gets his height. He had many human mistresses before his death in battle against the Svarestri.”
“And his mother?”
“Was born here. She did not have her son’s longevity and passed some time ago.”
“His grandmother, then?” I persisted. “Or great-grandmother?” Because Pritkin knew an awful lot about some random cook’s background.
“His great-grandmother was brought here as a pregnant slave, and yes, the timeline fits. But that doesn’t mean—”
“The timeline fits? Meaning that she was brought here in the sixth century?” I said. Because Pritkin’s dad and Rhosier’s possible namesake had been prowling around Wales right about then, looking for part-fey, part-human women who might be able to bear him an heir.
He hadn’t had any luck with demons, whose infertility eclipsed even that of the fey, and had switched his attention to humans. But none had proven able to survive the birth of a half-demon child, who had sucked the life out of them from the womb, killing both mother and fetus. Until Rosier met Morgaine, whose mixed heritage allowed her to carry Pritkin to term.
But what if there had been another? One who had been carrying a child whose magic had also come in late, thus allowing the mother to survive? If she’d stayed on Earth, Rosier would have found her again, as he had carefully tracked the births of his children. But what if she hadn’t?
What if she’d been grabbed by the fey, who were snatching up witches left and right since their magic made their offspring stronger? Nimue’s people wanted the most potent blood they could find to produce their battle fodder, and they needed guaranteed fertility. A pregnant witch would, therefore, be a prize, one that might have found herself kidnapped to Faerie before the demon lord she’d had an affair with could return and take the child.
Pritkin looked like he was following my train of thought and didn’t like it. “We’re not related,” he said flatly.
“You sure about that?”
“And it wouldn’t matter even if we were. You heard what Rhosier said to Enid. Bodil is his patron; he won’t risk angering her and jeopardizing their arrangement.”
“Not even for you?” I tried to cock an eyebrow, but as usual, both went up. “The servants in the kitchens seemed pretty darned fond of you, almost like they look on you as a savior.”
Pritkin gave his short bark of a laugh. “Hardly.”
“Could have fooled me!”
He leaned his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “Everyone is worried about what happens when a new ruler takes the throne. That’s as true of the servants as it is of the loftiest courtier. There hasn’t been a change of power here for time out of mind. The only force to be reckoned with that most people remember is Nimue. And while she was as changeable as the sea, there were certain rules she didn’t violate.”
“Such as?”
“Such as those that govern the servants. They don’t have many protections, but she wasn’t going to risk her precious breeding stock to a noble’s whim, and she came down hard on anyone who attacked them.”
“But Enid—”
“Was disfigured, yes, but not killed, not blinded, not maimed.”
“That’s a damned low bar!” I said, outraged. “Beat them all you like, scar them for life, terrorize the hell out of them, just so long as they can still work and have babies for the war machine!”
“Essentially, yes.” Pritkin’s voice was quiet but steady. He seemed more his old self, as if the conversation was calming him despite its subject. “It’s a brutal system, and its protections may seem barbaric to you. But they are protections. And to people who have no others, they are important ones.”
“Yes, but—”
“And the servants are afraid to lose those protections if the wrong heir wins. As I told you, most have no way out if conditions here worsen. Rhosier and Bodil send through a few at a time, the ones in greatest need, because laws can be disregarded, and a slave can be killed quietly. But thousands? Much less tens of thousands, as the laws also govern those on the frontier?”
“Tens of thousands ?”
“This has been going on for centuries, Cassie, and the fey have been actively trying to breed more soldiers. I don’t know the true number, but it must be at least that. In any case, the servants hope I will win and protect their limited rights, hence the reception you saw. They don’t see me as a savior so much as a maintainer of the status quo. They don’t dare to hope for anything else.”
“Then they should! This isn’t the Middle Ages!”
“In Faerie, it may as well be. When people live for thousands of years, social change comes at a crawl when it comes at all.”
Great.
“And they trust you just because you’re human?” I asked.
“They trust me because Rhosier trusts me. I put him in touch with the covens after he and I met on one of my early trips.”
And okay, that made more sense. Pritkin’s mother had died trying to stop the slave trade on Earth; I couldn’t see her son not getting involved in this somehow. He liked to pretend, even to himself, that he was a rule follower and a stickler for a sane, sensible course of action.
He lied.
He was usually more reckless than I was; he just had the power to get away with it most of the time. And helping a rogue cook smuggle kids to the humans in a reversal of the fey stealing them from us? Yeah, that sounded about right.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“The walls have ears, especially here, and it didn’t seem relevant.”
“Not relevant ?” I stared at him. “When there are tens of thousands of soldiers who—my God, maybe we really don’t need the army! I mean, we already have it, right? If all those kids are being sent to the frontiers, the long-lived ones, the powerful ones, we could just—”
“Do what?” Pritkin said. “Undo hundreds of years of conditioning? Persuade them to go against every oath they ever swore? And throw in with us against literal gods ?”
Okay, it didn’t sound as good when he said it.
“We have to try,” I insisted. “Give them a chance, and us, too. Trying to win this way is—” I caught myself, but not in time.
“Foolish?” And there went that damned eyebrow again. “In other words, what I’ve been telling you?”
“Then why are you here?” I said, exasperated.
“Because you asked me.” It was stark. And looking into his eyes, it was also the truth. “I owed you that much, at least, after what I put you through. And I didn’t think you were coming—”
“Yeah! Because I’d just leave you here!”
“—which was foolish on my part. But now that you’ve been here, you must see—”
Nothing. Because the world abruptly fell away again, and we went tumbling through the void. Right into the middle of—
Feltin’s office.