Chapter 2 A Bit of Hot Goss
A Bit of Hot Goss
“Yo, Bandit!” Soaking wet, Garaile shouted across the tournament arena and jogged toward her through the still-settling clouds of scintillating white pixie dust, harmless now that it was separated from the ley magic. “Hold up, Bandit. I have news.”
Cha climbed out of the jag parked at the terminus of the ley line, making sure to jump onto non-magical ground—people tended to get careless on the slow-moving parking leys, paying a fast and ugly price—and patted Katu’s steaming hood.
Accepting a towel from one of the arena-workers, she pulled off her goggles and mopped her face and hair clean of lake water and yellow ichor.
The crowds still roared for her victory, calling out her handle and sometimes her name, the die-hard fans even shouting Katu!
while waving giant gloves with jaguar claws.
They dispersed from the arena slowly, reluctant to leave the excitement of the race for their shops in town or the outlying farms that made up the six human principalities of Torocca.
The win felt great—especially as today’s steeplechase had been particularly challenging with that last trickster of a hazard—but the prize money felt even better.
The purse would nearly double her dwindling hoard.
Even as the reigning champion of quasi-legal racing, she didn’t earn anywhere close to what she and Dy had once raked in on their smuggling runs.
It wasn’t like she had expensive habits, either.
But the big races like this one only happened every so often, and the fae—and their human business flunkies—raised prices and taxes a lot more frequently. Each coin stretched thinner every day.
Cha didn’t blame Dy for retiring and going legit with a steady job, what with the wife and kids to support, but the tournament gig left a lot to be desired—in income, the excitement of real danger, and having a purpose besides titillating the crowds.
Maybe if Cha had ever found anyone she liked enough to settle down with, she’d be okay with the rest of it.
She might as well wish to meet a fae prince and be crowned a faerie queen, however.
“Good news or bad?” she asked Garaile as he skidded up. “And nice showing out there. You would’ve won by taking the ramp if that tentacle hadn’t snagged you.”
“Hurt like a manticore sting, too.” Garaile grinned ruefully, kicking his boot at the shoulder of the ley line and sending up a puff of sparkling motes. “Kind of you to say, but I know I ate it on that one. How’d you know not to take the ramp?”
Cha tapped her temple. “The wisdom of experience.”
“Comes with age, I guess,” he allowed, oblivious to Cha’s huff of indignation.
It didn’t help that the prideful straightening of her spine made it twinge.
She was only thirty, which was not getting old.
“Kidding, Bandit,” Garaile continued with a charming, dimpled smile.
“It’s a privilege just to be in the race with a legend like you.
And Katu.” He stepped back to admire the jaguar race-carriage. “He’s got sexy lines, just like you.”
Garaile was attractive, no lie, with his big shoulders and obvious hero worship. Still, while Cha might not be actually old, he couldn’t be more than twenty, which was certainly too young for her. Probably. “Thanks.” She kept the easy grin on her face. “News, you said?”
“Oh, yeah.” Garaile’s grin faded. “The bad kind. Monat got arrested.”
“Damn.” That was bad news indeed. Monat was savvy at her job, with a big-rig transport carriage that had eluded the authorities in any number of the human principalities, and even the occasional run to the first fae realm, Obsidian. “You got details?”
He pulled off his hat and cast a wary glance around them.
With the final, climactic race of the tournament over, the other ley riders were dispersing, their race-carriages returning to animal form as the riders pulled them off the ley lines.
Aware she should be setting a good example, Cha called Katu off the parking ley and onto neutral ground, mentally tapping the sequence that triggered the enchantment from being a carriage capable of traveling the ley line and carrying a rider and back to his natural, animal form.
Magic shimmered in a wave, the light-bending properties of the fae enchantment creating a prismatic effect.
The carriage gave a last cooling purr, then shivered into the jaguar that was his original body.
The metallic scales of the jag’s shell clicked smoothly back into glossy black fur, the carriage compacting into feline form, legs extending and becoming big, soft paws that touched ground.
The big cat settled happily onto his haunches at her side, Katu panting lightly from the race.
He sawed a hoarse greeting and shoved his head under her hand for ear skritches.
The track manager gave Cha a salute of thanks for her effort.
The ley lines in the arena were maintained by hired mages and expensive to keep active.
The magic workers were already busily sealing the lines for the day.
These weren’t the locally and principality-maintained black ley lines governed by stable enchantments and regularly serviced by government mages employed by the human realms. No, to get the power and flexibility needed for high-velocity races and regularly tweaked obstacle courses, the arena owner paid out the nose for these ley lines, as well as for the Moonstone white pixie dust to keep them working at maximum speed.
Not to mention paying out the hefty bribes required to make sure the fae rulers turned a blind eye to the humans’ entertainment escapades.
“I got details,” Garaile promised in a low voice. “Got any ale?”
Cha jerked her head toward the changing rooms. “Walk with me.” As reigning champion, she rated a private room.
Catching the anticipatory gleam in Garaile’s eyes, she shook her head to herself.
These young bucks all seemed to think an invitation to her room meant they’d get to bang her.
To be fair, sometimes it did mean that. Not today, though. Probably.
She palmed the lock spelled to respond only to her touch, gestured Garaile through the doorway, and pointed at the ratty couch. Private didn’t mean posh. Katu strolled to his oversized pillow and flopped down, tongue lolling pinkly.
“Spill,” Cha instructed Garaile, while she moved to the cooler and extracted a carafe of ambrosia.
She poured a healthy draft into a bowl, the honeysuckle-sweet scent of it just a little too cloying, and set it before the cat.
The enchanted carriage-beasts could live on regular food, like the animals they’d been born as, but to transform to and run as carriages, they needed the fae fuel to keep going.
Humans called it ambrosia, because of the nectar smell and how much the animals loved it.
The fae, never fond of talking to humans, much less sharing secrets, wouldn’t ever say where ambrosia came from.
They simply sold the bottled liquid, along with other magical elements like pixie dust, for extortionate prices.
Those imports had become key to human society.
Once upon a time, the fae had existed only in stories.
Then the Fae Wars had exploded, weakening the once-impassable boundaries between the fae realms and the world of humans.
Those walls between separate realities had fractured, becoming porous.
In some areas, they disintegrated entirely.
Humans were suddenly able to enter the fae realms—not a good idea today any more than it had been in the old fairy tales.
Likewise, the fae invaded human lands, bringing with them arrogance, arcane magic, and monsters from myth.
They easily conquered the pitifully vulnerable nearby principalities of Torocca.
As with all conquests, nothing had worked quite so effectively as introducing luxury goods to the newly oppressed population.
The fae brought magic to the human world, enchanted conveniences that put an end to the misery of disease and starvation, and now no one could live without them.
Which was good for Cha, because those needs—and the illegal methods for satisfying them—had kept her in coin. At least, until Dy went legit.
Garaile caught the iced bottle of ale she tossed to him with a grateful nod. “Monat was bringing a load of contraband pixie dust back here to Rockton,” he said.
Damn and damn. Monat was an old friend. Dy would hate to hear this—so much so that maybe Cha wouldn’t tell her. “Well, it won’t be the first time Monat has had to talk her way out of a little jail time and a fine.”
“Not this time. Apparently, she got the dust from a source on the other side of the border, and got picked up there.” Garaile waggled his brows in titillated horror.
Cha winced. Lots of smugglers ran the risk of illegally transporting goods from the closest fae realm of Obsidian. It was no party, dealing with the fae hounds of the law. “Obsidian jail is no picnic,” she conceded. “Still, Monat is a pro. She can handle it.” At least, Cha hoped so.
“Not that side of the border. The other other side, you know?”
Cha waited for him to explain, but Garaile only nodded significantly and tipped back his ale.
“The other other side of the border…?”
“Yup.” He counted on his fingers. “Not Obsidian, but the second one. Is that Citrine?”
Spare her Garaile’s slow wit. Cha took a bracing swig from her own bottle. “Moonstone is the second fae realm,” she told him patiently. “Are you sure Monat went to Moonstone?”