Chapter 43
Truth and Consequences
The rendezvous with the fence Phinny had arranged for them was satisfyingly shady.
No fairy spires in sight, no glittering dust of any color, except for the back alley slow black Katu prowled along.
Parking Katu, Cha slid out, approached the smaller, human-sized door next to the big one for cargo rigs and knocked.
An eye-level window slid open and Cha offered the passcode Dy had sent.
She slipped through the barely opened door that turned out to be thicker than her body and greeted a cloaked and hunchbacked person of indeterminate gender who’d answered.
“Heya, Bandit. Call me Igor,” the person said, mostly shrouded in the filthy cloak, but showing enough of their pitted face for their wink at the ironic name to be obvious. “This way.”
As she followed Igor, Cha took in the busy shop, which appeared to be engaged in filing off the identifying characteristics of any number of magical artifacts.
It was dirty, painfully loud, and smelled of old food and unwashed humans.
Everywhere she looked, something illegal occurred, and Cha breathed a sigh of relief.
This was her element, where she belonged.
She’d been born a scruffy mortal, a problem child with a shitty moral compass and she didn’t aim for higher company than that. She was no Lenorae.
In the next room, Big Betty idled. Dy, with Warg draped over her shoulder so he drooled gleefully on the floor, seemed to be in deep conversation with Phin and a third person. A crew of disreputable humans in protective gear carried out the crates of Obsidian dust.
“We’re observing protocol,” Igor said in a scratchy voice, scraping back the hood of their cloak. “No one wants an accidental mutation.”
Cha eyed the sharp, piss-green ridge of spines protruding from Igor’s backbone. “No, I wouldn’t think so.”
Igor jerked their head at the spines. “Not accidental, obviously, but mine to keep, whether I want to or not.”
“I’m sorry,” Cha said with all sincerity, knowing them to be empty words.
“Eh, don’t waste good sympathy on me,” Igor replied, shrugging philosophically, which sent the spines rippling musically. “At least I made it out alive. I heard that Monat didn’t.”
It was almost a question, so Cha confirmed it. “I wish I could say otherwise, but I’m sure of it—and I nearly met the same fate, so I feel you on being glad to be alive.”
“And yet you made it out intact,” Igor observed, so neutrally—and hoarsely—that Cha couldn’t determine if they resented her for it. “Did you really go to Moonstone jail?”
The memory of that beautifully lethal, horrifying place hit Cha hard and she shook the memory away, then nodded when Igor looked puzzled.
“Yeah,” she answered. “I was there.” A real non-answer, but she found she really hated to say anything more, or even think about the place.
Or about how Azul had rescued her. Or those last words of his. No one.
“What’s Moonstone like?” Igor persisted.
Cha was already shaking her head. “I can’t really describe it.”
With a disgusted snort, Igor looked away. “That’s what Goldilocks said.”
Dy looked up then and waved Cha over, giving her a quick hug when Cha walked up, holding onto her shoulders and searching her face. “Everything go okay with Prince Charming?” Dy asked.
“Right as rain,” Cha answered cheerfully, turning away from Dy’s dubious frown, and holding out a hand to Phin. “Hi there Mama Bear.”
Phin surprised her by yanking her into a fierce hug. “I know you sacrificed yourself to save her and I’m grateful to you for the rest of my life,” she whispered in Cha’s ear.
Cha nearly squirmed in discomfort. “Remember that when I tell you how I lost all of your bribery gems.”
“What?” Phin screeched—right in Cha’s ear. She jerked back, but Phinny held on. “Arantxa Evermore, how in the seven hells did you use up that entire box of gems?”
Dy flashed Cha a look of sympathy. Clearly there hadn’t been time to tell the whole story. “I’ll tell you over ale and a basket of rosemary twists,” Cha told Phin, pinching her on the cheek.
The fence, who’d gone to check with the cargo supervisor, returned right then.
“Lucky Ducky,” he said by way of introduction, holding out a hand to Cha to shake.
“An honor to meet and fence for you, Bandit.” He dipped a chin at Dy.
“The tale of you and Goldilocks getting to Moonstone and back is making the rounds. If you weren’t famous before this, you would be now—and you’d have no trouble getting high-end gigs, even with Otto blacklisting you. ”
That was news. Dy rolled her eyes at Cha’s questioning look. “Yeah, somehow Otto got wind of us heading back and has vanished, but not before putting out the word that we fucked him.”
“The nerve,” Cha commented.
Lucky Ducky cackled. “Best advertisement he could put out there. Everyone knows Otto got Monat done for and the fact that he ran rather than pay you or take you to task for supposedly screwing up his shipment speaks volumes. At any rate, you two will be able to pick and choose, because guess what was hidden in those crates you picked up in Obsidian?”
“Which crate?” Cha asked, privately betting it was one in the very back.
“All of them,” Lucky answered.
“All?” Dy echoed. “But we saw dozens cracked open in Moonstone and the fae never found a thing.”
“They didn’t know what they were looking at. Come on, we’ll show you.” Lucky gestured for them to follow.
The four of them trooped over to where a group of workers clustered around an opened crate, and accepted ventilation masks from one very short gal who grinned manically.
“I’m Nerd Girl,” she said, “scientist and sorceress. Lucky Ducky brought me in to analyze your cargo.” She waved a hand at the crate on a draped table.
As opposed to the puttoes’ wanton destruction back in Moonstone, this operation had been conducted with surgical precision, the lid delicately pried open and the seething, living pixie dust within exposed.
“What are we looking at?” Cha asked, perfectly willing to be the ignorant one of the bunch. “I see a bunch of Obsidian pixie dust, which we already knew was there.”
“Is that all you see?” Nerd Girl drawled. She pointed at Dy. “Use your sorcery. What else is in there?”
“It’s agnicurna,” Dy said in tone of hushed awe. “All through the pixie dust. Now I understand.”
“Well, I don’t,” Cha told her. “They said they were looking for astra, remember?”
Dy gave her an impatient look. “Did you really ditch the entire semester on the Fae Wars?”
“Pretty much,” Cha admitted. “Can you learn my ignorant ass now?”
“Astra means weapon in the old language,” Dy explained. “It’s not specific. The Moonstone fae were worried about a weapon being smuggled in.”
That’s what Azul had said, Cha recalled. I don’t actually know what the astra is. That’s a generic term for something quite politically tricky within the fae realms and you are better off knowing less than more. “And this invisible agnicurna is the weapon?”
Dy nodded somberly. “But it’s not invisible. Agnicurna translates as fire-powder. Black powder that can be used as an explosive. It’s mixed all in with the Obsidian pixie dust—almost the same color—and the ambient magic of the dust obscures it unless you know what to look for.”
“And looking with the correct lens,” Nerd Girl agreed, tapping her temple. “Gotta have the right smarts.”
“So,” Cha said slowly, thinking hard, which kind of hurt her brain, “Otto was being paid to smuggle a human explosive into a fae realm. To what purpose?” …something quite politically tricky within the fae realms and you are better off knowing less than more.
“Nothing good for them,” Nerd Girl answered solemnly.
“And what’s bad for the fae is usually even worse for us,” Phin noted glumly.
“Because of the wars between the various fae realms?” Cha asked. “But those don’t involve us.”
Everyone gave her sardonic looks ranging from gentle to incredulous. “You mean,” Dy said with raised brows, “except for the ones that shattered the veils between worlds to begin with and allowed the fae and their magic into ours, making humans a conquered and oppressed people?”
Oh, yeah—there was that. Cha’s brain continued to churn away, Azul’s words, the ones he’d made her promise she’d keep in mind, going around and around.
Politically tricky. What else had he said about that?
That’s right. It was a politically tricky situation, he’d said as a non-answer, when she’d asked why a fae wedding would take place in the human realms. And he’d told her to keep the Moonruby wand, to remember the order of the fae realms and their relative power.
Was Azul somehow in the middle of this? Marrying someone affiliated with Ruby and allying Amethyst with them?
Shaking the thoughts away, she focused on the now—and on the sinking feeling in the part of her that measured the value of coin and shipments.
“I’m guessing this agnicurna is worthless in our realm,” she said, and they all nodded.
“Worse,” Dy said, eyes somber above her mask, “the contamination makes the Obsidian dust worthless.”
“And the box of gems is gone, too,” Phinny said, rubbing her belly as if it pained her.
“At least we have the deposit gold and what it bought us,” Dy replied, looping her arm around Phinny’s considerable waist. “Though we owe Cha her share.”
Lucky Ducky cleared his throat.
“After we pay you all, of course,” Dy agreed. And they set to haggling.