Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
I woke up feeling sluggish and weary, like I’d harnessed vast amounts of war magic the day before. After a battle, it was good to sit in a window seat in the sunshine with a harp and play and recuperate, but I didn’t have that luxury because the war had only begun.
I dressed in my elven light armor, which was as clean and crisp as the first time I’d put it on. I pulled a kimono over it, because I was the music master, not some elven princess who was too prissy to eat sausage rolls with her fingers. Today I was hunting down an archangel.
I shook my head while I secured my harp on my shoulder, then patted Yaga where she roosted on the vanity post. “Wish me luck, Yaga. Not that I’ll need it.”
She opened one eye and then shut it. Yeah, that’s what I get for having a chicken sidekick.
I went out and almost tripped over Lanise who was sitting on the floor, legs outstretched, harp on her lap. She glared up at me, taking in my armor and outfit. “Stay. Teach. Safe day.”
I leapt lightly over her legs. “I’d love to have a safe day, but I need to hang the fliers in Song for the Jubilee. Tiago should have them ready. Maybe you should intern with him so that you can learn such essential skills as poster making.”
She snorted and rolled to her feet, gripping the harp like it was a weapon. She’d clearly used more than her fair share of weapons over the years. “Why not tired? Big magic. Big sleep.”
“I slept so well. Thank you so much for your concern, but I’m fine.” Particularly since I wasn’t going to do big magic for at least a month. I hurried to the stairs and went down quickly, then stopped abruptly at the bottom when I saw the ogre with white eyes in his extremely scarred face.
He bowed to me, then gestured towards the back door. “Car.”
“Ah. Lanise told you that I was going to the city,” or he was going to take me back to Rook again. I definitely didn’t have time for him when he wouldn’t answer any of my questions and would distract me with his pretty tusks. “What can I call you?” He had a lot of names, and I’d hate to use one that he found offensive, like, ‘Curse,’ or ‘Plague.’
He smiled, twisting his scarred face and showing off one broken-off tusk. “Driver.”
Well, that would work. “How fitting. Well, Driver, I want to stop by the respectable shops in Song and post my call for the Jubilee while Tiago takes care of Sing.”
“You in Sing. He in Song.”
“He has too much elven blood to go into Song by himself. He’ll accidentally go into war mode and kill everyone I’m trying to recruit.”
He blinked at me. “You war mode.”
I laughed and patted his arm like he wasn’t the most terrifying thing ever. “You’re too funny. I never apply more pressure than is necessary. Goblins need to see a show of strength or they won’t capitulate. Everyone knows that. Anyway, I have no intention of dealing with goblins today.”
“Wolves? Vamps? Ghouls?”
“Werewolves have extremely good voices, but no, I’m not going to directly focus on any particular species, just put up posters and talk to whoever I happen to meet. There are enough werewolves in the music hall already. We could certainly use more vampires, but they have trouble with the sunshine. I’ll have to arrange some heavy shade cloth to help the undercity civilians feel more comfortable at the Jubilee.”
“Forget Jubil. Stay safe.”
I studied him for a few seconds, the scars, the experience in every line and wrinkle. “Has anyone ever told you to stay safe? To me, that’s something you say to someone who doesn’t have work to do. Who doesn’t do work you value. You’re an ogre, so perhaps you don’t understand that music is a cause as serious to me as war is to you. This Jubilee will be a success, because I will make it so. It will bring out the voices of Song to mingle with Sing, and the city will be strengthened because of it. Everyone will be strengthened because of it. That is my war. And I will fight, because I am the music master.”
Three loud claps came from behind me, and I spun around to see Magr, the enormous ogre that I was going to make live eel soup for, and Tiago beside him, holding a scroll of posters.
Magr said, “Excellent speech. You are now warmed up for the day’s battle. Driver will go with you today, not Lanise. If he feels danger, he will bring you back here.”
I studied the huge ogre for a beat before I smiled brightly. “Of course. About the money from the goblins last night…”
“Cursed gold will need smelting.”
“Cursed gold?” I stared at him while my heart fell. “What kind of curse?”
He shrugged and held out a credit card. I stared at it, then at him. “What’s this?”
“Until I return gold, you need funds.”
I stared at him and then at the card again. It was gold with a pretty streak of blue through the center. “Funds?”
“Food once a week is not enough.”
I blinked at him and felt tears prick my eyes. I blinked them quickly away, because the last thing I needed was for Driver to think I was too weak for this morning’s errand. It’s just that I’d been living on nothing but music for such a long time.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” I said, raising my chin. I could take care of myself. I’d done well enough in the past.
He bared his teeth at me and tucked the card in the top of my light armor tunic. “Take care of yourself, and I won’t worry. You are too thin to trust. Cooks shouldn’t look like they’ll blow away in a wind.”
No matter how much weight I put on, I’d look like a leaf compared to an ogre, but I just took out the card and secured it inside the pocket on my harp case. “I’ll return it once you give me the gold.”
He smiled, showing nice white tusks. “Yes. You will spend money on yourself, not just the music hall.”
I nodded and turned towards Tiago. He was looking at me with a slight smile that disappeared as he held out the fliers. “Are you ready for today’s fun?”
Was I ready to hunt down Gavriel? If things went sideways, I’d end up very safe, permanently safe, with my father. I nodded and smiled brightly. “Every day is a good day to recruit musicians.”
It was quiet in Song, and no one refused to take a poster as I made my way through the commercial districts. I skipped Wonderland, because Driver didn’t park the car there, instead, skipped to the next block. That worked for me. I was getting tired, and the real reason I was there was coming up very fast.
I got out of the car, letting Driver help me, and walked slowly to the bakery that Gavriel had come out of. It smelled nice. Maybe I’d buy something for lunch. As soon as I went in, Driver growled low in his throat. Immediately, the green-skinned ogre woman behind the counter straightened up, eyes enormous as she stared at my companion, looking like her doom had come.
I put a hand on his chest and nodded at him to stay there. “Don’t scare my potential musicians, Driver. Do you think I’m in danger?”
He broke eye contact with the woman and studied me for a beat before he shook his head no. “Now safe.”
“Perfect. I’m going to order something for lunch. Do you want anything?”
“Empan.”
“Empan? Right. I’ll see if she has that. You stay here and try to look like a driver instead of a death machine.” Oops, that had been one of his names. He only turned and seated himself near the window so he could see everyone coming in and going out.
I headed for the counter to smile at the woman who was still staring at driver and trembling. “Hi. I’m the Music Master. Would you mind if I put up a poster in your shop about the upcoming Jubilee?”
She met my eyes and then frowned as she leaned closer to sniff at me. Ugh. Driver hadn’t done that, at least not that I’d noticed. In fact, I’d almost forgotten how much I disliked it because it had been a while since any ogres had sniffed me. “You Music Master?” Her voice had a very pleasant tone, much lighter and sweeter than most ogres, even Lanise, who was supposed to be the musician.
“That’s right. Also…” I drew a line on the counter and hummed a quick strain so our words would be blocked from Driver. “I’m looking for an archangel. He was in your shop.”
She blinked at me while I prepared a spell of compulsion to force her to talk. It wasn’t strictly ethical, but I had limited time.
“Yes. Sleep upstairs.”
I blinked at her. She’d just told me that? What kind of landlord was she, just telling anyone where Gavriel could be found? Didn’t she care about his security? “Oh. Good. That’s great. Could I get two empan’s for Driver and something more human for me? Not made out of humans, just for humans.”
She smiled slightly and nodded, turning to make two plates, one with these meat pockets wrapped in crunchy crusts, and one that was cheesy and gooey and filled with something delicious. I hesitated a beat before I handed her the card. She took it and then froze when she saw it. She looked at me, and her eyes were hunted.
“Do you have a problem with it?” I sked.
She opened her mouth and closed it, frowned at the card and then holding it like it might bite her, ran it through her machine. It beeped and went through. She hurriedly pushed it back to me, like she knew who it belonged to and didn’t want anything to do with him. Mm hm. Sounded like a chieftain was working in my hall as a stone mason. The plot thickens.
“Do you know what time the archangel will wake up? I’d like to talk to him about the Jubilee.” I spread out the poster so she could see what I meant.
“You talk?” She dried her hands on a towel, glanced at Driver, then nodded at me. “Sit, Eat. I get.”
“I wouldn’t want you to wake him up…”
“No, no. I get. You sit.” She was awfully eager for me to sit down with my lunch while she disappeared to either get an archangel or just vanish until Driver left.
I took the plates away, breaking the sound spell while I walked over to Driver. “Here you go,” I said, smiling as I set the very full plate on his table. “Do you know much about cooking?”
His expression changed, only for a second, but apparently he hadn’t expected the question. “Some.”
“How do you make eel soup?” I sat down across from him and unwrapped my fork from its paper napkin and checked it to see that it was clean enough.
“Eel soup?” He raised a dark blue brow, darker than his blue skin. “Why?”
“I’m making Magr dinner to thank him for saving my life. He said that he wanted eel soup, with live eels. Where would I get live eels?”
“River dock.” He studied me with a different kind of intensity. “Magr said eel soup? Why? Is hard dish.”
“I guess he likes it.” I shrugged. “Also brain yams and a lamb on a spit, and bone salad.”
He flashed a smile, showing his broken tusk. “You make brain yam?”
“With purple yams. He was very specific.”
He patted my head, which was such a weird thing for an ogre to do before he settled back down to his Empan. “I help. All hard dishes. He play you. You win.”
“Um, thanks?” The enormous ogre was messing with me? Giving me dishes too hard for me to make? Well, I’d show him. Thanks to Driver, if the former commander actually knew how to cook.
The door behind the counter opened and Gavriel came in, dark wings catching on the doorway because they weren’t neatly folded against his back. His hair was also disheveled, dark waves a rat’s nest that he hadn’t bothered to comb, like his wings. I’d never seen him look anything other than perfect, but he’d left the lions when I was seventeen, to serve our allies in various wars all over the world.
When he saw me, he froze and gulped, like I was a ghost. Had he also run away from his duty? That was impossible. He was the most noble, responsible, super stickler Richard called a friend, but things happened.
“Oh, good. There’s an angel. I’m going to talk to him about the Jubilee. You can stay here, and I’ll just sit at this other booth.” I beamed at Driver and then slid into the next booth and began a sound spell around the place.
Gavriel stopped staring at me long enough to rake the rest of the room and the street outside. He narrowed his eyes when he saw Driver, but he didn’t flinch. He certainly knew him by reputation, but didn’t see him as a threat. He walked slowly towards me while I took a large bite of my cheesy stuffed roll. Mm. Ogre or not, this was good food right here.
“Helia told me that a musician wished to speak with me,” he said stiffly, standing beside the booth and looking at the table instead of at me.
“Yes. I’m working with the mayor and the city paper to create a jubilee to celebrate the diversity of Singsong City and its many inhabitants. Please sit.”
He slowly lowered himself onto the bench opposite me, where he could keep his eyes on Driver, and Driver could watch him.
I smiled at Gavriel brightly before I took another bite. He watched me eat, analyzing me with the intensity of an archangel. If I hadn’t been raised with them, I would have broken out in a cold sweat long ago. As it was, I found it difficult to swallow with those intense dark eyes boring into me. I finally finished my bite and asked, “How long have you been in Singsong? I haven’t seen very many angels.” Which was one of the reasons I was here.
He glanced out the window, checking once more on my safety, and then he brushed his hand over the table, bringing his own sound barrier spell to life. “Miracle. It is you, isn’t it?”
I blinked at him. Well, no sense delaying the inevitable. “Yes, but these days I go by Mirabel. Miracle is kind of pretentious. Like I’m a miracle? A miracle of chaos. It’s good to see you, Gavriel. I’m not actually here to talk about the jubilee, although if you were willing to play or sing, or do a flight show, I certainly wouldn’t turn you down. I actually want to talk about the goblin attack that I survived the other day.” I shuddered at the memory of the itching, also the fear and pain, and Cutter’s dead body. I didn’t like dead bodies, or I’d still be in the HARPs.
“I see.” He focused on me with even greater intensity than before.
That’s all he said. Right, because I’d come here to talk to him, so he wasn’t going to fill anything in unless I specifically asked. I’d forgotten what talking to an archangel was like. And I’d had the biggest crush on him, wanted to marry him and everything.
I licked my lips and stared at him. “There have been two attempts on my life, and both times, I was saved by ogres. I’ve lost contact with my dad, or I’d ask him.”
He made a slight movement that showed how much he believed that.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, I ran away because I couldn’t cut it as a HARP, and I didn’t want to get married off to a lion. Happy? Now I’m in the middle of some political issue between ogres and who knows who, and I don’t know why. The ogres won’t tell me anything. I thought you’d have some insight. Is something going on with the HOSTS that would explain someone wanting me dead? If you don’t know, I’d like to hire you to find out. I don’t currently have money unless you want a bag of cursed goblin gold, but eventually…”
I stared at him while he thought, dark brows lowered over dark eyes. He was running through the logistics, the probability, the ethics, the moral implications, and apparently there were a lot. I took a forkful of deliciously gooey heaven and ate while I waited. I needed to put some meat on my bones or Magr wouldn’t trust me to cook him eel soup. Yeah, he was too picky for an ogre. At least Gavriel hadn’t taken one look at me and then stretched his wings and launched at me, carrying me through the windows and back to my dad. Could he make the flight to the coast where my dad’s fortress was located in one stretch? Probably. His wings had only filled in along with the rest of him over the years.
He finally looked over at the ogre woman and gestured to her. She hurried out with a plate of what I was having and put it in front of him before she retreated, glancing at Driver as she went. I looked over my shoulder, and he was still there, still eating, and watching Gavriel with the intent eyes of one who thought he could stop an archangel from stealing a musician.
I turned back around and watched Gavriel take a large bite, then I followed suit. He could think while he put something delicious away, maybe to fuel up before a long flight to the coast, carrying extra baggage. I should be heavier, so it was more of an obstacle to carry me away.
Finally, he put down his fork, having eaten much faster than I had, and focused his dark eyes on me. “I will tell you why. You don’t know what you are? I thought that’s why you ran, but you truly don’t know?”
I stared at him. “What?” I finally asked, feeling like an idiot.
“Your mother, she was half elf, and half ogre.”
I stared at him while he stared back at me. I finally shook my head. “That’s impossible.”
“When I told your father my intentions to make you my betrothed, he showed me your lineage, at least as far as he knew it. What elf was your grandfather and what ogre your grandmother was a mystery until fairly recently.”
I stared at him while my ears buzzed and I felt like maybe someone had dropped a bomb on my lap. “I’m not an ogre. Not possible. My mom was elf and human. Ogres can’t have angel babies. She would have…” Died in childbirth. Which she had. I put a hand on my forehead, wondering if I was feverish and hallucinating this entire conversation. “My father wouldn’t ever have married the enemy.”
“He didn’t know, not until later.”
I gripped the table while a wave of nausea went through me of my dad waking up one morning to discover that the love of his life was an ogre. Not just an ogre, an ogre-elf. He didn’t entirely like either species. Elves were too filled with treachery and deception, while ogres were vicious brutes without any morality whatsoever. He would have killed her, which is exactly what he’d done when he’d knocked her up with his angelic seed. Me. I would have poisoned her from the inside, with my toxic blood.
I shook my head as I studied Gavriel. He was an archangel who never lied, but this was impossible. “Supposing I believe you, not that I doubt your honesty, but you may have misunderstood things. How does my mother’s blood have anything to do with goblin assassins and ogre intervention?”
“You were kidnapped when you were a child, or at least got lost on a battlefield and were found by ogre sentries and taken to their camp, yes? Ever since then, they’ve known that the precious Miracle that the Commander would pay any price to recover is a quarter ogre. Since then, one of the ogre factions has used your existence, an ogre in the ranks of the angels, as propaganda to push his own agenda, that of putting ogres in positions other than war.”
“Rook.” Could any of this be true? Could all of it be true, including my own skin being green or blue right beneath the surface?
“I’ve heard that he’s one of the party, but the leader is someone else.”
“One of the tribe chieftains.”
He flashed a grimace that was more expressive than most things he showed. “Unfortunately, no. The prince heir, which means that he has several chieftains working beneath him.”
“Oh.” My headache from trying to read angel runes came back and hit me hard. Come to think of it, ogre blood would explain my difficulty with angelic runes. I took a deep breath while the world spun around and I put my head down on the table.
Gavriel broke the silence spell the moment before Driver put his hand on the back of my neck, checking my pulse, that I still had one.
“I’m fine,” I said, flapping my hand at him without lifting my head. I wasn’t finished with this conversation. I needed to find out who wanted to kill me. Finding out why ogres didn’t want me to die was just dandy, but it didn’t actually help. And it wasn’t possible. I’d have some signs of being an ogre, but I looked absolutely angelic, with slightly more pointed ears than the average angel, thanks to the elven blood.
“We leave now.” Driver pulled me off the bench and into his arms, carrying me away from Gavriel and out of the bakery.
Gavriel watched me go with a frown on that handsome face that needed a good washing.