Chapter Twenty-Eight
P ritkin moved so quickly that it almost looked like he’d cloaked, only he didn’t have the strength for that. Or for this, I thought, as the challengers mounted their rides, some of them making come-on gestures at the crowd as they did so as if asking them to be even louder. And the onlookers obliged, with shouts that would leave them hoarse after this and with noise from the various ungodly instruments they’d brought with them, all of which made a vuvuzela sound like a softly whispering brook.
I couldn’t hear a damned thing as a result, and thanks to the pennants people were waving everywhere, I couldn’t see much, either. Except for one thing: maybe a minute after Pritkin left, the royal guard did, too. Jumping down from their perches high over the crowd and surging ahead.
All in the direction he had just taken.
Shit.
He’d had to drop his disguise because no rando from the audience would be allowed to participate in the royal race, which was what they’d been waiting for. And he couldn’t hope to win if they assassinated him before the pistol went off or whatever the fey were using to start this thing! I tried to shift because I could feel the Pythian power surrounding me—
But I went nowhere except staggering forward a few feet from the pain, as if I’d sprained my whole body.
So I began doing what everyone else was, not that I had much choice. The crowd was suddenly on the move and sweeping me along with it, right across the people who had been here all night, judging from the makeshift encampments scattered around the stairs. But their seats were getting overrun, with fights breaking out on all sides, orders that no one could hear being shouted across the crowd by the authorities, and people getting trampled if they weren’t impolite enough to climb over everyone else the way I was. The only good thing was that the crowd was impeding the royal guard, too, who were lashing out, beating everyone around them with clubs and fists and trying to throw them out of the way.
I was getting battered, too, only not by them. The crowd was doing that well enough on its own, and with so many tall people surrounding me that even looking down from a height wasn’t helping anymore. I couldn’t see Pritkin; I couldn’t see anything!
And then I felt the Pythian power leave me, not that it mattered since I couldn’t use it anyway. I’d used up my part of the pilfered power on the way here. Only . . . it didn’t just vanish.
It spiraled overhead instead, a glittering golden scarf that only I could see, shimmering against the vivid blue sky like a stray sunbeam. I didn’t know what it was doing, but it hadn’t been cut off. The portal was wide open and pointed at Earth, giving it all the power it needed.
But to do what?
I followed it across the sky, as difficult as that was as I was being carried down the hill now as everyone rushed toward the pool where something was about to happen. But through the forest of heads, I saw it circle overhead once, twice, three times, and then dive—straight at Alphonse. Who I’d almost forgotten about, but of course, he’d be here—it looked like the whole city was.
Only he wasn’t fighting the crowd along with me. He had found a perch on top of another outcropping of rock, this one in the middle of the stands, leaving him a couple of stories above everything else with an excellent view. But he wasn’t looking at the racers.
He was scanning the crowd instead, and he had someone with him.
“Radu?” I said aloud, and the handsome brunette, who looked so like his brother Mircea that it broke my heart, jerked his head.
Impossible, I thought, staring. He couldn’t have heard that. I couldn’t even hear it.
But then, I wasn’t a second-level master vamp, either. Radu wasn’t as powerful as his brother, but he wasn’t the weakling he liked to play, either, the inoffensive, eccentric, somewhat flamboyant Basarab that you didn’t need to worry about.
You worried about all of them if you were smart, but many people weren’t. Even people hundreds of years old who ought to know better. For myself, I’d learned a while ago never to underestimate that family.
“Radu!” I screamed and saw his head whip around and those dark eyes get closer, but they were still sweeping over me because—
Because I had the damned hood up!
I tore it off and screamed again, at the top of my lungs this time, to the point that I could feel my vocal cords being stripped raw, but I didn’t care. And it worked. A second later, Radu’s eyes met mine across the crowd, and he gripped Alphonse’s arm and pointed.
And then they were jumping down, I assumed to come this way, although I couldn’t see them anymore. And no, no, no, I didn’t need them here! I didn’t want them here!
“Go to Pritkin!” I screamed loudly enough that a fey beside me gave me a dirty look. Although why his eardrums weren’t already ruptured, I didn’t know because mine were. And now I was being swept off course!
Pritkin’s ride had been bobbing gently in a stall to the far right of the pool, but the crowd was carrying me to the left. There was more room to maneuver there because it was a little too close to the drop-off into the surrounding sea than most people were comfortable with. And that included me!
But people had busted past the safety ropes and were surging ever closer to the edge, pulling the crowd that way. And I couldn’t change direction because my feet weren’t touching the ground but maybe half the time. I was shoulder to shoulder with everyone else and being dragged along by their momentum, and if I tried to change that, I was afraid that I’d disappear into the human tide and possibly get crushed to death.
And then those damned trumpets sounded again.
The blast was the same as before, but the reaction from the crowd was even more intense. They all but leaped forward and, in doing so, shook me free. I hit the ground then, whether I liked it or not, and was immediately battered on all sides as the whole mountainside made a push to reach the pool.
It looked and felt like a fleshy avalanche. I screamed because someone had just kicked me in the ribs, then had it cut off abruptly when the same thing happened to my head. Or maybe I took an elbow there; I couldn’t tell, but the whole world went swimmy.
And then somebody grabbed me.
I looked up, fearing a guard because I’d been less than subtle, yelling my head off. But when my eyesight cleared, I realized he was far too pretty for a guard, even a fey one. Radu, I thought, as he lifted and carried me through the crowd, the people almost magically getting out of his way.
Or maybe that was because of Alphonse, up ahead, beating the heck out of anyone dumb enough to provide an obstacle.
I watched him lay waste with what looked like one of the guard’s clubs, which made sense as he also wore one of their uniforms. This was likely why nobody was making a fuss about the beatings they were taking. Radu was wearing one, too, I realized, a purple and gold tabard over a shiny set of armor he didn’t need because vampire.
I didn’t know what those two had been up to, but it looked like they’d been having their own adventures. Only I couldn’t ask because I couldn’t hear myself think! But I could suddenly hear Radu doing so straight into my head.
—from Mircea , he was saying when I managed to focus.
“What?” I yelled, and he winced slightly.
I can hear you without that , he reminded me. How much did you manage to hear from me?
“Not much. Someone kicked me in the head.”
Radu sighed and tossed his own. His silky dark hair, at least as long as the average fey’s, shone in the sunlight. It wasn’t purple dipped, but other than that and being a paltry six foot in height, he could have passed for the guard I assumed he’d disposed of somewhere.
I’m sorry I didn’t reach you sooner , he said, but I only arrived last night. There was some trouble finding the thing, you see, as Mircea thought he’d put it in the safe at our Paris house, but it wasn’t there. Or the one in Rome or the chateau in the Alps. I finally found it in a desk at Hawk’s Nest—
“What?”
—and then had to make my way from the Cascades to Upstate New York the old-fashioned way, as the Senate blocked the portal system after that raid on the Circle’s HQ—
“Radu—”
—and then once I finally arrived, the damned—excuse me—our lovely consul wouldn’t let me go through. Her portal is still open, of course, but she’s angry that Mircea disappeared into Faerie and isn’t taking her calls—
“He’s lost in another world!”
Yes, so Dory tells me. I contacted her when I finally won through and heard all about her adventures. And now you and Mage Pritkin seem to be having a spot of bother here. I told him, nothing ever goes according to plan in this infernal—
“Radu!”
I guessed I finally yelled loudly enough to get his attention . Cassie, I already said you don’t have to scream.
Yeah, only I did; I really, really did. “What. Are. You. Doing. Here?”
What? Oh, didn’t you hear that part?
I gritted my teeth. I’d forgotten what talking to Radu was like. “No.”
Oh, well, just a moment. He began searching in a silk and velvet purse he wore clipped to his swordbelt, which didn’t look to be of fey make. But then, it didn’t look like the motheaten, tattered old relics in museums back home, either. It was a legit Renaissance-era purse that Radu had probably had in his wardrobe because he wore whatever the hell he liked.
I don’t know why men ever stopped using purses, he told me, casually reading my thoughts. They’re so useful. Pockets , he sneered. You can’t fit anything in those.
“Satchels are starting to come in for guys. Basically man-purses,” I told him, surrendering to the insanity.
Oh, yes, I’ve seen them. Huge, bulky, crossbody things, or else the dreaded “fanny pack,” he shuddered. Ruins the lines of any outfit you’re trying to—ah, here it is.
He held something up.
It flashed in the sunlight so brightly that, for a moment, I didn’t know what it was. And then I did, but I still didn’t understand. “What is it?”
The Ring of Water, Radu said, as though I should know what that was. Mircea sent it to you, or more accurately, to Mage Pritkin. He said it should help.
“Help how?” I asked, watching a sizeable sapphire glint in the sunlight. It was a pure, bright blue with no inclusions that I could see, and probably worth a mint, being set in a heavy gold band. But it meant nothing to me.
I’d never seen it before.
He didn’t specify. Just that he came across it long ago in England, and that it was one of the great relics of the ancient covens there. Oh, and there was something about stealing it from a vengeful witch; I don’t know. But it’s supposed to give the wearer great facility with the water element, which seemed appropriate here.
He looked around with some distaste.
At any rate, he called me mentally some time ago and asked me to locate it and bring it to mage Pritkin. But as I said, there was a spot of bother—
“Did he say how to use it?” I interrupted as it hit my palm because Radu could go on forever. It was as heavy as it had looked but just lay there, as inert as any other ring.
That likely wasn’t a good sign. If a talisman was powering it, I should have felt something, if only a background hum. But there was no sign of magic at all.
I tried to get more information , Radu fretted, but it’s difficult to communicate between worlds, even for us, and I assumed he would mention it when you were together at that dark fey city. You know, the one that blew up?
“He didn’t.”
Well, I suppose that was understandable. He thought you were going to stay with him, didn’t he? But that was before he went through the portal to that other place. What was the name again?
“Jotunheim.” I felt the usual hand around my throat whenever I thought about it.
You’ll see him again , Radu told me kindly. We both will.
“You sound sure.”
It’s Mircea , the shrug was in his voice as well as on his shoulders. Now, don’t you think you should get that ring to the mage?
“How?” I asked, and it was a question. Even with the help of Radu’s height, I couldn’t see anything over the crowd or much ahead of us except for the swath carved by Alphonse’s viciousness.
Which had just been joined by that of someone else.
A bunch of people were abruptly raised into the air and tossed aside like Moses carving a path through the Red Sea. An invisible path that people washed up against on both sides in a working mass of limbs and furious faces but didn’t break through. Maybe because this path led to a witch who specialized in shields—and fury.
I wondered briefly what Enid looked like when she wasn’t pissed off and if I would ever find out.
Not today, it seemed.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, screeching loudly enough in my face that I had no trouble hearing her, even through the sustained trumpet blast deafening everyone in sight.
“Trying to find Pritkin,” I yelled back. “Where is he?”
“There!” she screamed and pointed to where the riders on their strange mounts were circling the middle of the pond like rubber duckies around a drain.
It must have been a really big drain because, suddenly, there were fewer of them, as several popped out of sight. I could see them briefly under the water’s surface, like vague, rippling shadows, for a moment, and then even that much vanished. And they didn’t come back up again.
“What happened?” I asked, grabbing Enid as Radu let me down. “Where did they go?”
“To the race! But they’re not alone! The Queen’s Guard went too, supposedly for security—”
Yeah, the security of their master, I thought furiously, catching sight of some of the purple-haired assholes.
Enid kept talking, and from her expression she was thinking the same thing I was. But I couldn’t hear her because the damned horn sounded again, drowning her out. And giving me a migraine because we were almost on top of one of the trumpeters.
But several more riders had just disappeared, and they were all speeding up. Round and round, like racing in a bathtub, but at every revolution, another one or two vanished from sight, including one of the Queen’s Guard. Leaving no fewer than four more, all jostling for position near Pritkin.
“Grab him!” I said to Enid as the latest blast cut out. “Don’t let him go!”
“I can’t! No one can enter the pool on pain of death save for the challengers—”
“And their crew?” I demanded because some of those strange mounts were carrying two.
“Yes, but—”
“Can you ride?”
She looked at me like I was mad. “What does that have to do with—”
I shook her savagely, which was likely not a wise move considering her hair-trigger temper, but I was past caring. “Can you ride?”
“Yes! But what difference does—”
I held the ring up in front of her eyes. “I need to get this to him if you want him to win or even survive! So, are you with me or not?”
She stared at me wide-eyed. “I—I—I’m a slave . I’m not part of your team—”
“You are now.” I looked at Alphonse. “That’s all it takes, right?”
A huge shoulder shrugged. “As far as I know. But you won’t catch him, not carrying two. And not on that thing,” he added, nodding at the stall where Pritkin’s mount had been a few moments ago.
It held another, although it was obviously a case of the palace being funny. Or maybe they thought that, given my lack of expertise, it wouldn’t matter if they gave me an old, decrepit-looking nag that even my inexperienced eye could tell was on its last fin. That thing wouldn’t catch Pritkin swimming alone, much less carrying two.
But there was no other choice. I couldn’t ride and Enid wouldn’t be allowed in the race without me. So we were going to have to figure out a way to make this work, although I didn’t see—
And then I did.
“Come on,” I told her, because another mount had been left behind, one which had just thrown off its rider.
Her eyes got even bigger as she followed my line of sight. “You can’t be serious!”
She was actually backing up until Radu, who hadn’t said a word in all this, proved that he was a Basarab, after all. “I can’t blame you,” he said diffidently. “I wouldn’t touch that thing, either, and I’m freeborn.” He looked at me. “You expect too much from a slave, Cassie. Alphonse will go with you.”
“Alphonse will?” the man in question asked.
But Alphonse didn’t. Because the next thing I knew, a furious redhead grabbed my hand and dragged me over the railing, through the middle of a bunch of startled-looking, peacock-armored guards, and over to the stall where Galygos was tossing his pretty head.
His pretty huge head, because damn. I’d forgotten how large he was, even compared to the other mounts. Which, for the record, was a lot.
Well, here goes nothing, I thought grimly and grabbed the reins.