Death's Mistress

by Karen Chance

  “Please don’t squeeze,” I said thickly.

  She let me go, and I sagged back against the concrete for a moment, waiting to see if my stomach planned an encore. It was cold but reassuringly solid, a nice, hard surface against my back that damn well stayed that way. There was no horrible shifting and sliding into something completely—

  “I guess there’s a reason we’re not all dead?” I asked, to cut off my own thoughts.

  “Manlíkans are just wards encasing an element,” Claire told me distractedly. “They were used for war games back in Faerie, like practice dummies, and—” She waved frantic hands. “Why am I even talking about this? I disrupted them.”

  I rolled my eyes up at her. “Not to sound ungrateful, but you couldn’t have done that earlier?”

  “I thought if I started attacking them, the house wards might fall, too. And then it would take minutes for them to cycle back on and the Svarestri would get in—”

  “They were already in,” I said, and then wished I hadn’t as she burst into tears. “It’s okay,” I told her. “We’re all okay. Aren’t we?”

  “I can’t find the children,” she told me, her voice shaking. “I’ve looked everywhere! “They must have taken them—”

  “I don’t think so.” I pushed myself into a reclining position with my good wrist as Gessa trotted back downstairs. She had a blanket and a bottle of water, and I accepted both gratefully. I washed out my mouth and spit on the floor because, really, it couldn’t get any worse. Then I wrapped the blanket around me and tried sitting up.

  My stomach stayed more or less where it was supposed to be, but something crunched under my butt. I fished the remains of a fortune cookie out of my pocket and read the tiny scrap of paper inside: Your guardian angel got laid off.

  No shit, I thought, and started laughing, even though it hurt.

  I looked up to find Claire gaping at me, eyes huge and horrified. I sobered up, wiped my lips and levered myself to my feet. The room spun alarmingly, but she caught me around the waist. “Upstairs,” I told her, grabbing the banister.

  “They aren’t there! I looked everywhere. This was the last place I checked because I’d already been down here. That’s why I almost didn’t find you in time—”

  “But you did,” I reminded her, as the room steadied somewhat. “And I think I might know where the kids are.”

  Claire hauled me to the top of the steps, pretending that I was doing most of the work. I didn’t need the ego validation, but the supporting arm was nice. My throat was on fire, my legs were throbbing and I was soaking wet. But nothing else had come up, so that was something.

  The living room was oddly normal- looking, maybe because it still had a roof. That was more than I could say for most of the hallway. There were holes in the old wallpaper, and a miniature waterfall down what had been the stairs and three stories of destruction overhead. It was still raining, and a light drizzle filtered down to wet our hair and to splash on the already soaked floorboards. A clump of half-melted snow followed it, smacking onto the ground at my feet.

  I knelt and felt around until my fingers hit the indentation for the trapdoor. It was coated in a thin rime of ice, like the myriad pools that had collected in depressions here and there. But the heel of my hand broke through and the heavy piece of wood came free with a crack.

  I pushed it up, sending a miniature flood against the wall, and looked inside. And then had to shy back when a hairy little head popped out. Huge gray eyes blinked blearily at me, before the face cracked into a lopsided grin.

  “The smugglers’ hole!” Claire knelt and snatched Aiden out of the depths of the small space, hugging him fiercely. He was still clutching a chess piece, which fell to the floor and scampered away down the hall as fast as its tiny legs could carry it.

  “It seemed a good guess. They’d just seen it.”

  Claire ignored her son’s protests over how hard she was squeezing. From the look of things, it might take amputation to get him away from her. “I can’t believe they were in there through all that!”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about their recall,” I said cynically, watching Stinky trying to crawl out of the hole.

  Usually, he hopped around, over and up the furniture like a miniature acrobat, but not today. One long-toed foot made it over the edge and stuck there. He stared at it in some surprise, as if unsure what this strange new thing might be. Then the toes wiggled, and he broke down in helpless giggles, falling back against the rows of bottles he hadn’t yet drained.

  “I don’t think they’re feeling any pain,” I told Claire.

  Her eyes roamed over the devastation before meeting mine. “For now.”

  “Now’s good.”

  She stared at me a moment and then nodded, still clutching her struggling son. He scrunched up his face, looking vaguely like Stinky for a moment, but not out of fear. He wanted to chase the escapee and didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

  I left the kids with Claire, and went to assess the situation.

  As I’d suspected, the house was pretty much unlivable, but the wards had held, including the glamourie that hid the destruction from casual passersby. From the street, everything looked perfectly normal—or at least no more dilapidated than usual. Except for the front yard, which was already becoming a swamp as the house started to expel some of the four feet of snow it had collected.

  I watched the overflow tumble into the water-slick street and drain down already busy gutters for a moment, pondering alternatives. But there really weren’t any. The fey didn’t seem to find human wards all that impressive, and I strongly suspected that the only reason they hadn’t been able to get in was the recent upgrades Olga had done.

  The house now boasted a combination of human and fey protection that would be hard to top anywhere. It might be a trash heap, but it was a damn well-guarded trash heap. We were going to have to make the best out of it, like it or not.

  I went back inside. The living room and the kitchen were the only areas on the ground floor that could be considered livable. Claire was in the former, but not bedding the kids down as I’d expected.

  She must have been upstairs, because she’d changed into dry clothes, a black T-shirt and jeans, and she had a small suitcase at her side. She was struggling to get Aiden into a rain poncho when I came in the door. But he wasn’t having it, fat little hands batting it away as she tried to push it down over his curls.

  “What are you doing?”

  She looked up, guilt and resolution in about equal measures on her face. “Getting out of here before I get you killed.”

  “And get yourself killed instead?” I asked, grabbing the suitcase.

  She grabbed it back. “I’m hard to kill!”

  “So am I!”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t see yourself down there. You didn’t—I won’t be responsible for that!”

  “I’m a big girl, Claire. I’m responsible for myself.”

  I don’t think she even heard me. “This whole thing . . . None of this was meant to happen,” she told me wildly.

  “I’d planned it all out—I was supposed to have a couple of days before everything went to hell. And then Lukka died and then—”

  “Life rarely cares about our plans,” I told her cynically. In fact, it had always seemed to delight in screwing up mine.

  “Life can suck it!” She started for the door, dragging Aiden after her, still caught in his plastic prison.

  I got my back against the door, which was stupid. Claire could move me—along with what remained of the wall—if she felt like it. But she’d seemed kind of upset at the thought of me dying, so I was trusting her not to squash me like a bug.

  “So what’s the plan now? Run off into a night filled with known enemies?”

  Claire gave me a frantic, frustrated look, and pushed bushy red hair out of her face. All the moisture in the air had turned it back into a huge fuzz ball. “I’m not stupid, Dory. They expended a lot of pow
er on that storm, and more making those damned things. They’re exhausted. It’s why I have to leave now.”

  She started to push past, but I didn’t budge. “They seemed to be doing fine until a few minutes ago. And if those things re-form and you’re gone, it’ll leave the rest of us defenseless.”

  Claire shot me a look that said she knew exactly what I was doing, and it wasn’t going to work. “They can’t re-form, at least not right away. Iron only disrupts the field, costs them time while they rebuild it. I didn’t do that. I drained away the power they need to make the creatures to begin with.”

  “So once it’s gone, it’s gone?”

  She nodded. “At least until they rest up. And considering how much energy creating that storm must have used, that will take a while.”

  “Assumingsubrand used everyone in the attack, which we don’t know,” I pointed out. “He could have left a few of his people out, hoping you’d panic—”

  “I’m not panicking!”

  “—and run, making their job easy.”

  “To do that, he’d have had to assume that his initial assault would fail,” she said impatiently. “Andsubrand is far too arrogant for that.”

  I couldn’t really argue that one, so I changed tactics. “So you run. Then what?”

  “I have a lot of contacts in the auction business,” she told me, her color high. “If the rune is up for sale, someone has to know about it. I have to find out who has it before it ends up in a private collection somewhere and disappears.”

  “Fair enough. But you can’t do that with the heir to the throne of Faerie on your hip.”

  “The fey don’t know this world—”

  “But plenty of other people do! And nothing is easier than hiring a bunch of mercenaries.” I should know; I was one.

  She blinked, as if that had never even occurred to her. “I don’t think . . . I don’t think they’d do that. The fey handle their own problems.” But she didn’t look sure.

  I pressed my advantage. “Okay, setting that aside, do you know what Aiden would be worth in ransom?”

  “As soon as the shops open tomorrow, I’ll dress him like a human child. No one needs to know—”

  I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Look.”

  Aiden had freed himself from the grip of the poncho and curled into a sleeping ball on the rug. Stinky was resting his head on the princely bottom, staring at him with liquid eyes that reflected a soft golden glow. It spilled over the muted colors of the old Persian and highlighted the scuffed floorboards like lantern light. It wasn’t.

  “Human children don’t shed light shadows,” I said softly, and watched her face crumple.

  She put a trembling hand to her forehead. For the first time, what must have been months of constant strain showed. She looked almost haggard. “What am I going to do? They’re going to kill him, Dory. They’re going to kill my little boy, and I can’t stop it!”

  “No, they’re not.” I put an arm around her, feeling awkward because I’m not a hugger. But she looked like she could really use one. “The wards held, despite everything. And that was a pretty good test. I’ll talk to Olga tomorrow, see what else can be done. We’ll keep him safe, Claire. Long enough for us to find this rune of yours.”

  “Us?”

  “Well, now I’m all interested.”

  She stared at me for a moment, before breaking down into half-hysterical laughter.

  “You’re insane,” she finally told me, wiping her eyes.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “You’re only figuring this out now?”

  I don’t think I’d have won the argument, but Claire looked like she was ready to drop. We hunted around and found some blankets in the hall closet that were miraculously still dry, and used them to bed the kids down on the sofa. Stinky was snoring almost immediately, and Aiden never even woke up in the transfer. Then we went up to check out Claire’s room.

  It was about the same as mine, except the holes in the roof weren’t directly over the bed, and the mattress pad had kept the mattress largely dry. I helped her get the mattress downstairs, which mostly consisted of shoving it through a massive hole in the ceiling. It got a little waterlogged when it hit the river the melting snow was making out of the hall, but I didn’t think Claire cared.

  We dragged it into the living room and threw a few blankets on it, and then she dove in. “There’s plenty of room,” she mumbled, as I snuffed the lamp someone had left burning.

  “Thanks. I’ll be right back,” I told her, and shut the door behind me.

  I went back up to my room to rescue my cache of weapons. I was standing in front of the closet, wondering if I should take the swords or if they’d be okay in their scabbards, when my legs started feeling a little funny. I sat down on the waterlogged mattress for a moment, suddenly gasping.

  At first I thought it was blood loss. The wound in my thigh had bled heavily, staining my skin below in a red sheen that was starting to turn dark. I went to the bathroom for my first-aid kit and caught sight of myself in the mirror. My skin was waxy pale, my eyes and lips darkened as if bruised, the skin around my mouth crusted with something white and scaly.

  I wiped it off and sat on the edge of the tub to bandage my leg. The bleeding had stopped in my thigh, although the knee still dribbled a little whenever I moved. And being a joint wound, it hurt like a bitch. But I’d had worse, and with my metabolism, I’d probably be well on the way to healed by tomorrow. Yet for some reason, my hands shook as I taped my knee off, and my lungs kept dragging in more oxygen than I needed.

  They’d been doing it downstairs, too, like they thought there might be another shortage soon and needed to stock up. But it was worse now, to the point of making me dizzy. It took me a moment to realize that I was close to hyperventilating. I sat there, struggling to calm down, and wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

  I’d come that close or closer to death more times than I could count, with many of them more painful and a lot more messy. I’d woken up from fits covered in my own and others’ blood, with broken bones still reknitting, or burned flesh still sloughing off. Then there had been the memorable incident of coming back to consciousness only to interrupt the feeding of the vultures who had mistaken me for a corpse.

  Sometimes I still had flashbacks to that one, the feathers dragging over my skin, the claws digging into my flesh, the beaks tearing. Yet I’d beaten them off, retrieved my weapons and stolen one of the horses of the men who had tried to gut me to get to my next job. I was used to dealing with the aftershocks of near disaster: the taste of blood, the scent of death in the air and the quiet that followed.

  But, I realized slowly, I wasn’t nearly as accustomed to the disaster itself. Most of the time, I was out of my head when the mayhem happened—a fact I’d always dreaded. I had never realized before how much I’d also relied on it.

  It had been terrifying but also strangely comforting to know that death for me would simply mean failing to wake up from one of my fits someday. It meant knowing every time I heard the familiar rushing in my ears that this might be the last time, but it also meant being pretty sure that I wouldn’t see the end coming. Yet I’d almost seen it tonight.

  And this is how you deal with it? I thought angrily. Five hundred years and this is the best you can do? Freaking out because your damn weapons failed? Because you finally met an opponent you don’t know how to kill?

  I got up, furious with my body for its weakness, with myself because I hadn’t anticipated this, hadn’t realized after getting my ass kicked by the fey once before that it damn well might happen again. I didn’t know their magic, didn’t understand their weapons. A weapon to me was the reassuring weight in my hand, a sword, a club, a gun; how the hell could I fight people who had the very Earth and sky on their side?

  I didn’t know, but I knew one thing. Ifsubrand was alive, he could die. And I really, really wanted him to die.

  Chapter Eight

  I awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coff
ee and frying bacon, which was impossible. But since I needed to get up anyway, I rolled out of bed—and fell three feet to the floor. I hit with a thump that didn’t do the crick in my neck or the knots in my back any good.

  My eyes crossed, focusing on a huge pair of smelly socks. They reeked badly enough to act as a kind of smelling salts. I sat up, fully conscious, and bumped my head on the underside of a table.

  In front of me was a wreck that I vaguely identified as the living room. Blankets and old quilts had been thrown everywhere, clothes and bags of personal items had been piled in a heap by the cellar door, and a trail of huge, muddy footprints led from it to the hall. They obliterated most of the rug but skirted a waterlogged mattress.

  The footprints had three toes each, pretty standard for mountain trolls, so I relaxed. I assumed they belonged to the large lumps curled up in a couple of wingback chairs in front of the fireplace, snoring loud enough to bring down what remained of the rafters. I ignored them for the moment, and stood up, my back cracking like old knuckles.

  The edge of a quilt trailed off the tabletop, and I recalled what I’d been doing up there. Claire had been sprawled in the middle of the mattress when I returned last night, and I hadn’t had the heart to move her. I’d failed to find a dry patch of floor, so I’d piled some bedding onto the felted surface we used to play poker. It was only about four feet around, which explained the knots, and had a two- inch lip, which explained the crick.

  After some much-needed stretching, I checked myself out. The wounds in my thigh and knee had ripened to purple with green and yellow around the edges. The knee was also puffy and tender to the touch, swelling up like bread dough when I peeled off the bandage. But both wounds had closed over, and my throat no longer felt like I was being choked from the inside. My wrist still hurt like a bitch, but overall, I’d woken up in worse states.

  I wandered over and took a quick peek under the first lump’s blanket. A small green eye opened and regarded me unhappily. “Sorry, Sven.”

  He grunted and went back to sleep. I didn’t check the other one, but it was probably Ymsi, his twin brother. They were a couple of Olga’s boys, second cousins or something, who acted as muscle in the business. It looked like word had gotten around that we might need a little added protection.