by M. J. Scott
Adeline shook her head. “Digby is outside, but I will fill him in later. Do continue.”
Father Cho nodded and turned back to Ash. “As I was saying, Captain Pellar has brought his men to strengthen our forces.”
Adeline leaned forward in her seat and stared at Ash. “And are you intending to use your men, Captain Pellar, or perhaps just burn out the warrens on your own?”
Damn. She did know Ash’s history. Including, it seemed, his vaunted ability with fire. He could tame fire or call it. But I didn’t think even he could control a fire the size it would take to burn the warrens—the underground realm of the Blood that stretched for miles and miles beneath the City streets—and the mansions that stood above them. And without control, such a fire could consume the whole City, and it wouldn’t discriminate between Blood and Beast and human while it did.
Besides which, unless he had changed greatly from the man I knew, I didn’t think Ash would agree to do such a thing, kill so many indiscriminately. I hoped the wince that had flitted across his face at Adeline’s questions meant I was right. If I wasn’t, I couldn’t imagine that the Templars would sanction such an approach. They killed when they had to, but they didn’t slaughter without reason.
I held my breath, hoping I was right, as Father Cho regarded Adeline steadily for a moment before he said, “For now the plan is to hold the boundaries while we see what develops in the Veiled Court.”
“And if Ignatius presses the point?” Adeline asked.
Father Cho shrugged. “We will deal with that eventuality when we have to.”
Thin eyebrows, painted stark black to stand out against white skin, drew together. “There are innocents in the warrens. Humans.”
“We are well aware of that,” Lily said, her voice edged with impatience.
She knew the warrens better than any of us, having grown up there. Which reminded me, I needed to speak to her, to see if she’d had any time for one of her covert night missions into the warrens lately. We still hadn’t found any trace of any of the Fae women who’d disappeared in the months before Ignatius broke the treaty.
“Good.” Adeline’s expression was fierce. “I hope you remember it, in the days to come.”
“Are you asking us to show mercy to Ignatius Grey?” Guy asked.
“I’m asking you to think about the consequences of the decisions we make here.”
“We always do,” Father Cho said. “And we have no desire to cause any harm to innocent bystanders.”
I pressed my lips together. I wasn’t so sure I agreed with that statement right at this moment. After all, no one had thought through the consequences of bringing Asharic back to the City. At least, not the consequences to me.
“It seems to me that the only way to another lasting peace, in addition to defeating Ignatius, is to convince the Fae to form the treaty again,” Adeline said.
“The Fae remain in Summerdale,” Guy said.
And seemingly not inclined to help the humans.
The Veiled Queen was dead. She had been the one to forge the treaty and to hold the peace for four centuries, and look what it had gotten her. I doubted that our next ruler—and Veil only knew who that might be—would be so quick to put themselves in danger to protect the City. The Veiled Queen had spread her protection over the City and around the surrounding land until it reached the borders of the adjoining human territories. The Veiled World—Summerdale—shared some edges with the City and the human lands, but they were not quite of the same world. Another realm, really.
One where the Fae could live in safety without ever having to interact with the outer lands if they chose not to. Our future ruler might choose to withdraw and not expose themselves to the risks the queen had taken. Judging by the current lack of communication with Summerdale, that option seemed more than likely.
True, it wasn’t the humans who had killed the queen. But it was to save the humans that the queen had made the treaty and enforced it all these years. Since then, the humans had grown stronger and the City had flourished but at the same time become more inimical to my kind as the use of iron, even rationed as it was, spread. There weren’t many places in the City—in the human boroughs at least— where there was no iron.
There had been those in the Veiled Court who had wanted to break the treaty before this, to leave the humans to their fate and retreat to the safety of Summerdale. My father was amongst that faction. No doubt he would be doing what he did best and busying himself politicking at the court, trying to influence who might next assume the Veil. Much good that might do.
The court could scheme all they wanted, but the power would fall as it would. To the strongest of us. Whoever that might be. The High Families were powerful, yes, and their magics ran deep, but there were others who were strong. Those who stayed apart from the court and the games of power.
I couldn’t help looking at Ash. Why had he returned? Was it really so simple as being asked now that the queen was dead? Did he have another agenda? He was powerful. More powerful even than he’d been when he was exiled. I could feel his magic from where I sat, like a fire banked within him. When last I had seen him, it had been wild and headstrong. Bright with anger and rebellion, barely controlled. Frightening. It was that power that had gotten him into the trouble that led to his exile. Had drawn the attention of others in the Veiled Court. Others who chose to view Ash as a threat.
Now it curled to his will, quiescent, so that only a whisper of its song caught my ear. But beneath the calm, I could feel its depth like an ocean beneath my feet, making my skin tingle. He had mastered his gifts during his exile. Grown into them perhaps. Who knew what he could do now?
Most of the Fae healers I worked with at St. Giles were powerful and skilled, but their magic didn’t feel like this. At least not here in the City, where iron tamped all of us down. It was almost as though Ash carried a piece of the Veiled World with him, letting his power run free. Or maybe he had learned a trick or two whilst he was away.
Either way, I would not care, I told myself firmly. What lay between us was an old, old story and I had no intention of cracking open its dusty pages.
There was quite enough chaos in my life already.
I realized I had missed the last few sentences of the conversation as Guy rose to his feet and leaned over the map spread across the center of the table. We all leaned in, waiting to see what he wanted to show us.
Or show Ash and his men, more to the point.
The rest of us were all too aware of the situation in the City, of the boundary lines that had been drawn between the human boroughs and the ones belonging wholly to the Night World now. Of ground lost and won. Of loyalties stretched and strained and nerves fraying along with them.
Guy’s finger traced the line of the humans’ territory slowly, as if he was marking off each of the boundary points where sunlamps and Templar forces kept the Blood from crossing each night.
There had only been minor skirmishes up until now, but we had all felt the weight of anticipation building, the roiling anxiety and pressure in the air. Ignatius had to make his move at some point.
Had to try to take control.
Otherwise the Blood would eventually be cut off from the supply of blood that the human Nightseekers surrendered to them. They could drain their Trusted—the humans who served them—dry, of course, but then they would be defenseless during the day. And they would have no hope of a future without Trusted to turn into the next generation of Blood.
Ignatius wanted power, not to preside over ruin. He needed humans. Wanted them to be his to do with as he pleased. Which meant sooner or later he would start his push into our territories. Unless we could stop him.
Guy spoke calmly, setting out the situation for Ash, giving him both the background and the latest intelligence we had.
Lily spent half her nights roaming the Night World, walking the shadow where only she could go, but so far that was all she did.
Personally, in Father Cho’s place, I prob
ably would have sent her to kill Ignatius by now, but the Abbott General had not been taught the art of ruthless politics by my father. He was still seeking a lasting resolution for the conflict. One that would restore the peace in the City and let the humans walk the nights in relative safety once more.
“This is all very well,” Adeline said when Guy paused in his monologue. “And I’m sure Captain Pellar appreciates the information, but we still don’t have a plan as to how we’re to solve this problem once and for all.”
It concerned me, sometimes, that Adeline and I seemed to think alike. The Blood were only a few steps away from abomination to my kind, their undying life after death unnatural in our eyes. I shouldn’t think like one of them. War, it seemed, made for strange bedfellows.
And that thought sent my gaze skittering back to Ash, like a compass seeking north. I pulled it away again and, in need of a distraction, said, “I assume what Lady Adeline is trying to ask is, what we are going to do about the Fae?”
Guy nodded. “We had agreed to wait and see what overtures might come from Summerdale, Lady Bryony.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “But a month has passed since the Fae withdrew. A month with no news at all and no one has left Summerdale that we can tell.”
The humans had watchers in the villages outside the Gate to the Veiled World, and it had stayed stubbornly shut since the Fae had retreated after the queen’s murder. Some of the Fae in the City had fled home, but no one had emerged.
“Are you saying we should send a delegation?”
“I’m saying we’re nearing that point.” I’d led the last human delegation into Summerdale. That time, thanks to the sacrifice of Fen and others, we had convinced the queen to return to the negotiations.
Which had led to her death.
Guilt and regret still turned my stomach to acid every time I thought of it. I could not claim to have ever been close to the Veiled Queen. I had decided the healer’s path was for me early on and had stayed out of court politics as far as that was possible for anyone raised by my father. And I’d left Summerdale altogether when Ash was exiled, not wanting to be forced to either play the games of court or become another of their unwitting victims. But close or not, she had been my queen, and I, like all the Fae, had felt the whiplash shock of her passing and the aching void in the threads of power that should have linked us all.
Like reaching for something that had always been there and feeling nothing. Worse than nothing.
I looked at Liam, at the space beneath his neatly shortened sleeve where his forearm was missing. I wondered if that was how it felt for him when he tried to use his arm. I still regretted that I hadn’t been able to save his arm, but it had been nearly severed, hanging by skin alone, too grave a wound for me to heal fully here in the City. And he would have died from the blood loss if we’d tried to take him to Summerdale—even if we’d been able to convince the Fae healers there to heal a Templar.
“Lady Bryony?” Father Cho prompted. “Do you think it’s time?”
“Yes. We need to discuss how we approach the Fae, unless we are abandoning the hope of a renewed treaty for all-out war with the Blood.”
My words caused more than a few muttered responses. I knew that some of the Templars would welcome a chance to wipe the enemy from the City completely. But there were Blood in other lands and sooner or later they would try to return. Better to reforge the peace and the balance between the races.
Though I doubted that could be done with Ignatius Grey still alive. His death, I was prepared to accept.
Father Cho shook his head. “No. No, I do not think we are ready to abandon hope.” He sighed then, ran a hand over his cropped head, and rubbed at the back of his neck. “But that is a longer conversation, and the night is growing darker. Captain Pellar, do you have the information you need for now?”
Ash nodded. “Yes. My men will be able to relieve yours tomorrow, if you can hold for another night. They will do better if they have one good night’s rest.”
“I think that is a request we can accommodate,” Father Cho replied. “Things are not so dire that we need you immediately.”
This caused another, slightly more annoyed-sounding murmur to roll through the room. The Templars were stretched thin and all of them were tired. But I had to agree with Father Cho. Mixing one tired force with another who hadn’t even been properly briefed on the situation wasn’t a good solution.
“Thank you, sir,” Ash said, and then leaned back in his seat. For a moment I thought I saw fatigue on his face, but then it returned to his set expression of earlier.
“Good.” Father Cho turned to Guy. “You can continue to brief Captain Pellar tomorrow morning.”
“And the Fae?” Adeline asked.
“Lady Bryony and I will also discuss that in the morning. She is best placed to advise us how to make the approach.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had been expecting Father Cho to ask for a meeting tonight. Perhaps I had some hope of seeing my bed at a reasonable hour after all.
Though, after the sudden reappearance of Asharic in the city, I wasn’t at all certain that I would sleep.
Chapter Three
ASH
I rose as Father Cho called an end to the formal part of the proceedings. My mind was working through all the information that the Templars had provided—and the implications of a wraith and a Blood lord being present at this meeting—but I couldn’t give either my full attention. Not when Bryony was in the same room.
But I kept my attention to my end of the table as I stood. My legs had stiffened slightly now that I’d actually spent more than a few minutes unmoving, and I stretched to my toes to ease the ache, then leaned forward to study the map of the City again, trying to banish my distraction.
Sir Guy stood beside me, eyebrows the same pale blond as his hair drawn together as he stared down at the map too.
“Are you patrolling tonight?” I asked, wondering if the tension riding the massive Templar was from that or something deeper.
He nodded. “Late patrol. After midnight.”
I grunted sympathetically. Midnight in most battles was the dead watch, unlikely to see much action, though staring into the darkness, trying to tell simple shadow from actual foe, was never easy on the nerves. But here, where the enemy were Blood and Beast Kin—creatures who dwelled easily in the darkness of the City nights—midnight to dawn must be the most dangerous time. Which, no doubt, was why Guy was taking that patrol himself.
“I’ll look for you in the afternoon, then?”
Guy frowned as he nodded but then his expression eased. He beckoned across the table to Liam. Liam rose obediently and made his way through the milling Templars and around the table to join us.
“Liam, perhaps you can keep briefing Captain Pellar in the morning.”
Liam’s frown was an echo of Guy’s. “I’m not exactly up to date,” he said. “I was playing courier, remember?”
Guy brushed his objection aside. “I can bring him up to date on the current status, but you know our arrangements and schedules and logistics better than anyone else. You can see to getting his men settled and the supply situation settled.”
I almost groaned. Logistics. I hated dealing with logistics. Give me nice clean tactics and strategy. Even battle itself. But then, I knew just the solution to this particular problem. I touched the metal insignia I wore in my collar, sent a pulse of power in the direction of the person I wanted.
“I can do that much,” Liam agreed, and Guy nodded approval and then made his excuses and left us to it.
“What time would you like to meet, sir?” Liam asked.
“As to that,” I said. “If it’s logistics you want to discuss, then I’ll hand you over to one of my lieutenants. They will know best what we need.”
I caught sight of the person I intended to dump this task on as I spoke. Rhian stalked into the room and scanned it smoothly, looking for me. She grinned when she spotted me and waded her way thr
ough the crowd, who parted to let her through. Possibly not used to women wearing mail and a sword nearly as long as they were, these Templars. Or maybe it was the bright streaks of blue and red dye that flared amongst the darker brown braids that flattened her hair against her head that caused the surprise on their faces.
“Rhian,” I said, as she joined us. I watched Liam take her in with amusement. Obviously he hadn’t come across her during our trek to the City. Easy enough. She tended to keep to herself and join the scouts on their daily rangings when she wasn’t occupied with fighting, organizing the entirety of my forces to her satisfaction, or either of her other two favorite hobbies. “This is Brother Liam. He’s going to be liaising with us on logistics, so maybe you can put your heads together and get us squared away.”
Rhian shrugged, which was as close as I was going to get to “yes, sir” from her. She looked Liam over once, then took a second longer look before she grinned and stretched out one of her hands to gesture at the tattoo on his. The red cross was dark against his skin, the color of blood under bright moonlight. “Nice work,” she said. “Who did it?”
Her sleeve fell back, revealing the intricate tangle of tattoos adorning her arm. Liam blinked as he saw them, then seemed to recall his manners. “Brother Edward is our sigiler.”
“Got others?” Rhian asked, leaning in to examine the tattoo more closely.
Professional curiosity, I assumed. Rhian was responsible for the tattoos that graced any of my band who’d acquired one since she’d joined us five years ago. Curiosity and, judging by the spark in her eyes, a spot of let’s tease the Templar and see what he’s up for. Well, Liam was a grown man. He could fend off Rhian if he wished. She was determined when she set her sights on something she wanted, but Liam was also stubborn. Rhian might do him good. There was a sadness at the heart of him. A pain I assumed was mixed up with the tale behind his missing arm. He was far too serious for a man his age. Rhian was just about the opposite of serious made flesh. If nothing else, watching the two of them would be entertaining.