Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  “I have no idea,” I said, before blowing lightly on a promising spark.

  “Nobody has any idea, that’s the problem.”

  “Have you told the senate about this?” I asked, looking at him over my shoulder, because he had backed up, out of the spark zone.

  Ray barked out a laugh. “The senate don’t seem real interested in my opinion.”

  “But . . . it’s important information, isn’t it? They’re always saying that the war is hampered by the fact that they know so little about Faerie, yet you seem well informed—”

  “About the common folk,” he said sardonically. “They don’t care about the common folk. Some villagers’ problems don’t mean a damn to the high and mighty senate.”

  “But Dory—”

  “I told Dory. And she tried to inform them, but nobody cares. If it’s not about the nobles or the court, they’re not interested.” His mouth twisted. “It’s another thing our worlds got in common.”

  I thought about that. It seemed shortsighted on the part of the senate, but maybe it was simply that they found Faerie overwhelming, too. There was so much we didn’t know, and what we did seemed so fantastic . . . perhaps it was easier, focusing on the actions of a few people at court, rather than the masses beyond.

  “Simpler ain’t smarter,” Ray said, and then he paused and pointed. “Ha! Ha, ha, ha!”

  I looked back at the would-be fire to find a small flame flickering in the middle of the kindling. I held my breath, waiting to see if it would last, and another gust of wind threatened it. But I hunched my hands around it and the small fire held. Ray came over and slowly added larger and larger sticks, until he had a teepee of them, burning merrily.

  Then he sat back and sighed in relief. “I hate camping.”

  I thought it was rather fascinating, so far.

  He just shook his head. “You ain’t done it enough. You might feel differently by the time we get out of here.”

  I thought that entirely possible. Although I also thought that he might feel differently, too, had he seen her. But he had seen only the fluttering of images in his mind.

  They had apparently been much clearer and more vivid than those I had experienced, perhaps because they had been aimed at him. They had blocked him from interfering in my and Nimue’s conversation, and essentially stunned him. Of course, we had traded memories since, but I was too tired to do a proper job of it. Yet what he’d shown me had been wonderful, just wonderful!

  He had seen deep, underwater caves filled with almost no light, except for massive, bioluminescent fish. He had seen waves crashing onto distant shores above shallow lagoons, where the spears of sunlight from above made the coral reefs almost as bright as day. He had seen enormous flooded castles filled with treasures beyond imagining, guarded by people with the same fish tails that she had offered to me.

  He had also seen other things that had made no sense, and which he’d only glimpsed: shipwrecks and storms and a mass of people with air bubbles magically affixed over their heads, holding those same energy spears we knew so well. They had been swimming downward, and swimming hard. But a kelp forest, as vast and dark as anything on land, had suddenly engulfed the scene, hiding them from view.

  “Do you think Nimue was attacked?” I asked. “That perhaps that is why she left?”

  But Ray only laughed.

  “In water? Not unless somebody’s got a death wish!”

  “Or help,” I pointed out. “You said her courtiers are fighting over her throne—”

  “Yeah, because she’s AWOL. They toed the line as long as she was there, believe me.”

  “But perhaps they resented it?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You want this to be some epic story, like the ones the fey tell, but the truth is usually simpler and grubbier.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as an already unstable queen goes nuts and fucks off to play with seashells.” He had laid down, and now he moved around, as if trying to get comfortable on the bare rocks. It did not seem to be working.

  “Instead of a fishtail, she coulda offered you a damned tent!” he said.

  “We have shelter,” I pointed out, looking up at the fingers, which were starting to glow once more. But he shook his head.

  “I didn’t mean a regular tent. Fey nobles, when they travel, use a special kind.”

  “How special?”

  “Very. It seems tiny, just a regular old thing on the outside, but when you go in . . .”

  “Yes?”

  He grinned, probably because he knew he had me. I was quickly becoming fascinated with Faerie. I wanted to know about everything, even their tents.

  “It’s like back at Dory’s house. You ever been in one of those little two-man things the fey parked in the garden? The ones they act like such martyrs over—oh, no, how could anybody be so cruel as to make us sleep outside?”

  I shook my head. I assumed he was talking about Claire’s fey bodyguards, who had indeed been banished to the garden, because the house did not have room for them and they were messy. They had pitched small tents back there, bivouacking in in the backyard.

  “Well, I have,” Ray said. “Not that I needed to; I recognized the type. I knew this orc chieftain once, and he’d taken one off some Green Fey idiot who’d ventured into his lands. The boy had a bet with some friends that he’d bring back an ogre’s tusks. Instead, he didn’t come back at all and the ogre ended up with his tent. I was there to trade and I guess the chief wanted to impress me, so I got the grand tour.”

  “What was it like?” I asked eagerly.

  “It was freaking awesome,” Ray said, his eyes shining in the firelight. “First, ‘cause they’re not really tents at all. They’re the entrances to portals—”

  “That go where?”

  “Nowhere. That’s the point. They fold back on themselves, creating a stable little pocket in non-space. The same kind that supernatural Hong Kong exists in, you know? They phased that thing so they could park it in the same space as regular old Hong Kong. But the two never touch—well, almost never—cause one is in real space and one in non-space, like the ley lines.”

  “Or Louis-Cesare’s Veil.”

  “Yeah. Or a fey tent.”

  “So, what do they put in there?” I asked curiously, lying down beside him.

  “Anything they want. Most of the time, its just to give ‘em more space, like a lot more. But some really slut ‘em up. The ogre had lucked out and ended up with a mansion with a couple dozen rooms, all of them filled with gorgeous fabrics, finely made furniture, crystal stemware, and opulent dishes . . . you name it. He even got the kid’s wardrobe. Of course, none of it fit . . .”

  I laughed.

  “But he paraded around in it anyway, until the predictable happened.”

  “His trousers split?” I asked.

  Ray turned his head to blink at me. For a moment, his expression reminded me of Nimue. “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, I mean, they probably did, but that’s not the point. A portal is like any other spell: it needs magic to keep running. I guess it had some kind of talisman powering it, but those are just long-term batteries. They can soak up magic from the natural world, to extend their lives, but sooner or later, you gotta replace ‘em or they stop working.”

  “What happens if they stop working?”

  “Nobody knows, ‘cause nobody that it happened to ever came back to tell anyone. But most think that it’s one of two things: either the whole thing collapses and you’re compacted into a tiny, tiny speck of dust, or . . .”

  “Or?”

  “Or the portal closes up, but the room inside remains in a bubble of non-space, only with no way out. Leaving whoever is in there trapped and floating around forever. Or, you know, until the air runs out.”

  I thought about it. “I think I would like a fey tent.”

  “And take the risk?”

  “I would remember to change the battery.”

  Ray l
aughed. And then his expression faded to something more serious. “I thought you didn’t want things.”

  I looked up at the fingers. They were glowing gold again, giving our tiny encampment a cozy feel. The fire seemed to banish the winds, enveloping us in warmth. It made me sleepy, something I could hear in my voice when I replied.

  “I did once, when I was young.”

  “Young as in, before the split, or . . .”

  “Both. Before the split I mostly wanted food. Venice had all sorts of wonderful food, but we couldn’t always afford the better cuts of meat, or all the candy I would have liked. Which was just as well, or I’d have no teeth left.”

  “And after?”

  “Freedom. Being able to go where I chose, when I chose. I wanted to see so many things, but I could only go where Dory did.”

  “But you were in control sometimes, too, right?”

  “Yes, but never for long. Only when she was in serious danger, and her grip over her mind and emotions weakened. Panic was a conduit for me, and fear. But that meant that there was always a fight waiting when I emerged.” I rolled my head over to look at him. “I do not mind fights, but there were times . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  It was embarrassing. But he had been honest with me. “There were times when I wanted . . . to go shopping.”

  Ray blinked at me. “What?”

  I nodded. “Or to a café. We were in Paris once, long ago, and I saw this café. It was so beautiful, with a wisteria vine growing all over it. It was as big as a tree, as if it had been there for centuries. I remember wanting to sit at one of the tables and drink coffee and watch the people go by.”

  “Why couldn’t you? Didn’t Dory ever do that?”

  “Perhaps, but I was asleep then. I’d woken up that night because she was fighting a group of mages who had been stealing magic and making the deaths look like revenant attacks. They thought no one would notice that their victims had died from being drained of all their magic, if their corpses were also savaged. If you are missing much of your torso, people do not look far for another cause of death.”

  “Yeah, I guess not.”

  “Dory, who specialized in revenants, had been brought in by the French authorities to investigate and find the killer,” I added. “She had done so, and the mages did not like that. They ganged up on us and we were surrounded. I woke up in time to fight them off, but it’s strange. I don’t remember much of the fight at all. I was killing mages, but I was looking at that little café. It was closed, it being the middle of the night, but I was imagining myself in a pretty dress, sitting in the sunlight, drinking coffee . . .”

  I trailed off. Ray didn’t say anything for a long time. That was all right. I found that I enjoyed his company even without speech. I did not entirely understand it, since he screamed and cursed a great deal, yet I found his presence soothing.

  “And now?” he finally said. “Now that all this has happened. The fey and Faerie and—” he waved a hand around. “This. What do you want now?”

  I stared at the flames for a minute. It did not help. “That is difficult to answer. I have not thought about it in so long, that it doesn’t even feel like the right question anymore.”

  “What is the right question?”

  I remembered what Mircea had asked, all those years ago, what I had once wondered and what Nimue had demanded tonight. Perhaps that was the question I should have been asking all along. Only I didn’t know the answer to that one, either.

  “What am I?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Dory, Cairo

  We withdrew to Hassani’s personal chambers, to speak in private. And, despite his reputation, they were definitely the rooms of a scholar more than a warrior. The outer section was clearly an office, with a simple wooden desk at the far end and several chairs. But it was large enough and stuffed with enough antiquities to qualify as a small museum.

  There were two large glass display cases with numerous shelves in the middle of the space, which acted as a sort of room divider. Hassani picked up a blue faience item from one of them and handed it to me. It was a shawabti, one of the thousands of small, human-shaped figurines that used to be buried with the pharaohs to serve as servants in the afterlife. I’d seen plenty of them in the Cairo Museum when we’d visited the day after our arrival.

  But none so fine as these.

  I found them fascinating, or I would have, if I hadn’t been so anxious to hear what the consul had to say about Dorina. But I knew old vamps, and pushing them rarely resulted in anything good. I had about a thousand questions for Hassani, but ironically, the fastest way to get them answered was to bite my tongue and smile.

  It wasn’t as hard as it might have been, because the figurines really were interesting, and not only for the artistry that went into them. But because they reminded me of some modern-day versions I’d seen at Aswan. The market there had had tiny clay statues of vegetable sellers, basket weavers, potters, spice vendors and fishermen, with some clearly modelled on local residents. One little guy had even had one of the famous crocodiles draped over his shoulders, the beast gazing smugly at potential buyers as if to say, “Why yes, this is my due.”

  That one had been my favorite, but they were all exquisitely detailed, and painted in bright, happy colors. The tomatoes in front of one vendor were a cheerful red, the leaves in another’s basket were a brilliant green, and the spices another was hawking were a delicious-looking saffron yellow. But other than for the vivid hues and modern clothes of the Aswan figures, the two groups might have been made by the same craftsman.

  Different artists, thousands of years apart, but they’d both captured perfectly a slice of Egyptian life. The ancient version had tiny bakers rolling out dough; tiny cow herders leading their spotted charges; and tiny beer brewers leaning over pots half as big as they were, checking on the quality of the item that was so vital to the Egyptian diet that it was often used in place of currency. There were a surprising number of women depicted, too, with one playing a lute that didn’t look so different from the oud player upstairs, and another with a harp. There was even a female artisan painting a figurine of a goddess.

  “Women played an important part in ancient Egyptian life,” Hassani informed me, seeing the direction of my gaze. He indicated the figurine he’d just given me. It was of a weaver at her loom, with a smaller figure, perhaps her daughter, kneeling beside her, as if helping or learning.

  “Yeah, doing the hard work,” I pointed out cynically.

  He smiled. “Yes, but most work was hard then, and they were well compensated. They wove the linen, you see.” He took me over to a wall, where a piece of ancient fabric resided under a slab of glass.

  It had yellowed slightly over the years and, by modern standards, was a little clunky, with some of the strands slightly wider than the others. But it was also very sheer, surprisingly so. I’d have easily been able to see my hand through it had I been able to touch it. As it was, I could see the pattern of the wood on the shelf below.

  “The ancients described this type of fabric as royal linen,” Hassani informed me. “The very finest kind. Well, other than that made for the pharaoh himself, which would have had gold threads woven through it.”

  “It’s. . . very nice,” I said, trying to think of something to say about a piece of old fabric.

  But, of course, that only encouraged him.

  “Fine linen was a luxury item that brought huge prices, both inside and outside of Egypt,” he continued. “In fact, it sold for so much, that the women weavers sometimes out earned their husbands.”

  “That must have been awkward.”

  “Not at all. Their earning potential was valued, and made Egyptian women powerful. Alone among the ancient civilizations, women in Egypt were considered equal to men under the law. They owned their own property, could conduct business the same as any man, could testify in court, could even sue for divorce if they wished, advantages that women in the West would not have unti
l the last several hundred years. Some noble women were even educated and held important government positions, becoming viziers or priests. Did you know, the first female physician in recorded history was an Egyptian?”

  I shook my head.

  “It is true. Lady Peseshets, who lived in 2500 B.C. Egypt understood the power of women, all those years ago. Ironic when you consider that the modern world still often overlooks it. If I wanted to hide a weapon . . .”

  “What?” I asked, because he just trailed off.

  But Hassani only smiled.

  I’d have liked to look through the whole collection, which took up both of the mid-room display units. Or to have examined the beautiful painted pottery, much of it intact instead of in shards like in the museums, that was scattered around. Or the gorgeous gold and carnelian jewelry on several plinths, as well as an entire overdress made out of delicate beading that a model was wearing.

  But we weren’t here for that.

  Fortunately, Louis-Cesare changed the subject.

  “You managed to recapture the artifacts,” he said, from the other side of the room.

  I carefully returned the shawabti to its place and Hassani and I walked over to some shelving along a wall, where the fey items we’d brought had been displayed. Well, most of them. One large basket-like thing was on the ground, with a strange blue light shining from under the lid that I didn’t remember having been there before.

  Considering what had happened the last time a fey artifact lit up, I gave it a wide berth.

  “Yes,” Hassani agreed, gazing at the shelves. “Most of the attempted thieves were apprehended on site, and the rest were tracked down shortly afterward.” He reached up and took down a small object. “We also recovered this from the location of your attack.”

  I hadn’t seen what it was, because it had been sitting behind something else. He handed it to me, but this time, it wasn’t a cute little statue. This time—