Fire Kin

by M. J. Scott

  “So we should try to do what we think is right and let the Lady take care of herself?” I liked that philosophy. It was pretty much what I believed as well. Fen was somewhat spooky in his abilities, but I thought that maybe I would enjoy sitting down with him and some good brandy and whiling away a few hours doing nothing more than drinking and spinning tales at some point.

  If the Lady was going to grant us a chance to do that.

  “I’ll stay on the lookout for people trying to kill me,” I said. “I can manage that much.”

  “I hope so,” Fen said. “Lady Bryony seems to be—” He cut the words off.

  “Did you see Bryony?” I asked, suddenly unbearably curious. “In what you saw around me, was she there?”

  “Should she be?” Fen’s expression was faintly challenging. “If you are trying to do the right thing, should she be?”

  Was that his way of asking me whether I had honorable intentions toward her? Bryony definitely had a lot of friends here in the City, whether she knew it or not. “Bryony and I have a long and complicated story,” I said. “I care about her, if that’s what you mean, and I have no intention of hurting her. But if you saw her, that may mean she’s in danger too, so tell me.”

  “No intention doesn’t mean you won’t,” Fen said.

  “No. But I’ll try not to,” I said. “If that’s what you’re concerned about. I’m not toying with her and I don’t take her lightly. I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that much. So, please, tell me what you saw.”

  Fen sighed. “I saw her. With you. In the Veiled Court. And elsewhere.” His eyes went distant for a moment and I decided I didn’t want to know exactly what elsewhere entailed. It was odd enough to be speaking to him about my possible fate without getting confirmation that he’d seen Bryony and me doing anything potentially embarrassing for both of us.

  “I see. Thank you.” I pushed away from the tree. “For telling me. I will keep her safe if it’s in my power to do so.”

  “I would say see to your own safety and the Lady will take care of the rest, but Lady Bryony is special to us here in the City, so I will say thank you for considering her.” His mouth twisted. “I know it’s not easy to be . . . tangled . . . with someone complicated. But it can also be worth it.”

  “Perhaps you could tell her that,” I said.

  He grinned. “I have no desire to be turned into a frog.”

  “I’m not sure she can actually turn anyone into a frog,” I said. I paused, considering. “She might be able to glamour you so you thought you were a frog, I guess.”

  Fen pursed his lips. “I’d rather not find out. Safer to just stay away from the subject of you when I’m speaking to her.”

  “Coward.”

  “Pragmatist,” he replied, and then he laughed. “Not that that helps either.”

  “You know, you’re not being terribly comforting,” I said.

  “It’s not my job to be comforting,” he said. “Or yours for that matter. And I’ve kept you from your business for long enough for one day.” He straightened, then bowed a shallow bow, oddly formal after our strangely intimate conversation. And then he strode off through the trees, leaving me with a sense that things had just taken a turn for the peculiar.

  Chapter Fifteen

  BRYONY

  The clash of two autocabs—precipitated by a startled horse and an overturned hackney—resulted in an afternoon that was busier than I’d anticipated. The hackney driver had several smashed ribs, meaning several hours of painstaking work to convince all the pieces to knit back together, and the two cabdrivers had enough gashes, bumps, and broken bones between them to keep several other healers fully occupied. Of course, I could have let them do all the work, but the chance to throw myself into something that required as much concentration as coaxing shattered bone back into place did was welcome.

  By the time the hackney driver was safely transferred to a ward for rest and observation and another round or two of healing in the morning, the sun was starting to lower in the sky.

  Damn. I should have kept better track of the time.

  I was supposed to have taken Ash to the hidden ward, but it was getting close to too late now. The Templars, and Ash, I assumed, would be settling down to an early meal in preparation for the first patrols going out before sunset.

  Of course, Ash could be on a later patrol.

  Did I want to actually tell him?

  No. But there was part of me that wanted to see him all the same, despite our earlier disagreement.

  So, despite my better judgment, I set off for the Brother House, lingering a little on my path through the garden to soak up some of the warm green light shining through the trees and feel my aches eased by the earth beneath my feet.

  As I’d expected, when I asked after Captain Pellar when I reached the Brother House, the knights at the now fully repaired gate directed me toward the dining hall.

  Ash sat at a table with the tattooed girl—Rhian, I’d heard him call her—Liam, and seven other men that I didn’t know. Some of his mercenaries, judging by their lack of Templar accoutrements.

  They were laughing uproariously at something one of them had said when I stepped into the dining hall. The laughter continued in a second wave as I approached until one of them looked up, saw me, elbowed his right-hand companion with a somewhat awed expression, and jerked his chin toward me.

  Ash, spotting this little exchange, turned in his seat. When he saw me, the angle of his head increased to a questioning one.

  “Don’t let me interrupt,” I said.

  “Isn’t that what you came for?”

  “You’re obviously eating. It can wait.”

  “I’m done.” He pushed back his chair and came over to me as though to demonstrate the point. He gestured toward the door and we walked out together.

  “What did you want?” he said courteously once we were alone. Courteous yet cool, I noted. Still wary after this morning’s exchange perhaps? “Did you rest?” he added, eyes narrowing suddenly as he took in my dress—the same one I’d been wearing earlier.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I came to see you about what you wanted before. About the . . . tunnels.” I glanced around and then threw up a ward around us, just in case of prying ears. Better safe than sorry.

  Ash looked suddenly more interested. “What about them?”

  “I can show you, if you want. I’m sorry. I meant to come earlier but there was an accident in Silverstown and they needed me.”

  He looked back toward the dining hall. “I’m on first patrol. It will be late by the time we return and I have more work to do. Tomorrow perhaps?”

  I didn’t know if I was relieved or irritated by the delay. “All right,” I said. I knew I should go back to the hospital, but once I left I knew that Ash would ride out. Toward danger. Which made my stomach knot with worry, but there was nothing I could do that would stop him short of knocking him senseless or using a binding. Neither of which he’d thank me for. I made myself smile at him, trying to project airy confidence. “Tomorrow, then. Good hunting.”

  ASH

  The patrol was nervous; I could feel it. Not just in the extra jingling from the horses’ tack as they tossed heads and flicked ears as though straining to hear things that were beyond the reach of both our hearing and theirs. That was one sign—the horses were trained well, but they couldn’t help picking up the nerves of their riders—but the men were nervous too. Our orders were straightforward. Ride the boundaries along our assigned section of the border, make sure that no one was sneaking across in either direction to cause trouble, and enforce the curfew on the human side.

  Normally that sort of detail would be carried out with a certain degree of relaxation. But there were no jokes or casual conversation tonight. I didn’t know whether my men had picked up the grim mood from the Templars who accompanied us or they were just nervous about facing Beasts and Blood.

  Most of the wars and disputes we’d fought
in were human matters. We had from time to time, of course, been involved in skirmishes that involved nonhumans, but that was different from knowing that half the City—the half that contained your enemy—was full of creatures who were faster and stronger than you.

  The humans who made up my troop had come from places spread across the earth. All of them knew about Fae—obviously—and Beasts and Blood and various other creatures, but not many of them were from places like the City, where there was such a concentration of all the races.

  Mostly because in other places, territories belonged firmly to one race or the other and the consequences for humans trying to press into Blood or Beast territories were dire.

  The early hours of the night passed slowly. Nothing happened, which only made the mood more tense. It was normal to have nerves early in a patrol, but then the men usually settled into the rhythm of it and boredom and familiarity conquered the worst of the uneasiness. But tonight it didn’t. I felt it myself. A phantom tingle on the back of my neck. Faint noises catching my ears that were happening no place but in my head.

  I set my teeth against the distractions, running through the exercises that I’d been taught to calm my mind and soothe anxiety. But at the same time, I sent my senses roaming as far as they could, using little bursts of power to try to see if there was anything actually lurking in the dark that could account for the unease we all felt.

  For a long time the answer was no. We rode the assigned section of the City, a long stretch along the street that ran down one side of the Great Northern Line railway and then a slightly more jagged path that traced the new borders between former border boroughs that now belonged to the humans or the Night World.

  There were few humans out and about and those that were had papers to show they had business to be conducted at night. They were only too happy to produce them when the Templars asked. We were nowhere near Brighttown, where some of the theater halls and taverns still operated, in a pretense at normality that I found strange but that the humans seemed to find comforting.

  Denial. I was no one to point fingers at anyone for spending some time wrapped deep in its depths. Though if Ignatius did start things soon, those businesses would have to be closed—if they weren’t destroyed in the opening skirmishes. The last thing we needed were places where large groups of humans gathered at night.

  That would be taking the concept of being a sitting duck to a whole new level of stupidity.

  We turned off the street we’d been working our way up and back onto the one that ran parallel to it for yet another loop. We made it down one block before I felt a tingle on the back of my neck. One I was sure was real this time. Watching eyes.

  I twisted in the saddle, scanning the rooftops and buildings on the other side of the railway, seeing if I could spot anything.

  “Trouble?” Patrick asked, riding up beside me.

  I shrugged. “Not sure. Just a feeling.”

  “Someone watching?”

  I nodded.

  “Not unexpected.” He gestured across the railway line. “But you won’t spot a vampire watching you unless you have some Fae trick up your sleeve that I don’t know about.”

  “Nothing in particular. But I do see better than you do.”

  He looked the length of the street and back, peering into the dimness, and then shrugged. “Look away.”

  I did. Scanning the buildings for a patch of extra darkness that might tell me that a vampire stood there, drawing the shadows around himself. The Blood couldn’t do as wraiths did and turn incorporeal, but they could—and did—make themselves near enough to invisible when they had darkness to cloak them. It was their particular form of glamour, really, blending in with their surroundings so well that you could walk past right them and never suspect they were there until it was too late.

  Unfortunately, unlike with a glamour, they were able to do it with no telltale trace of magic to give them away.

  I looked for heat too. The Beasts ran hot, and the difference in the temperature of their bodies was enough for me to be able to feel the difference between them and a human. But the night air was cool as I ran my mind across it, which made me think that there were no wolves lurking on the rooftops.

  But I couldn’t shake the skitter of nerves at my back, the sense of being under surveillance. We moved down the street, the horses’ shoes making their familiar soothing clopping noise against the cobbles. They, at least, had calmed down now that we’d made several passes, which meant that the men were starting to relax too, I supposed.

  When we turned down the side street that formed part of the border, heading down toward where the warehouse/barracks we’d set up was, the tingling on my neck vanished and I twisted in my saddle once more.

  Rhian had made her way up next to me and she turned too. “Something out there, boss?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Feels edgy to me,” she said.

  “Me too.” I peered into the darkness, then made myself look away.

  “I hate border watch,” Rhian muttered.

  “Bored?” I said with a grin.

  “Yes. Isn’t it better to just take the fight to them if we know we’re going to have to eventually?”

  I nodded up toward Patrick’s broad back, where his Templar cross was a dull red against his white tunic in the strange light shed by the gas lamps. “That’s for them to decide.”

  “Hope they make up their minds soon. Waiting just puts everyone in a bad mood.”

  “There are bigger considerations than people’s moods,” I said gently.

  Her face twisted. “I know. Lots of people in this City. Lots of families.” She said the last word with the faintest wistful hint to it. She was an orphan, as far as I knew, but she’d never volunteered the story of how that had come about or how she’d become a soldier. I assumed the former had something to do with the latter and that therefore it wasn’t a memory she wanted to relive. So I respected her right to keep it to herself.

  Ask no questions.

  I hadn’t wanted to share much of my own story with my men, so the policy seemed to work for the troop as a whole. People who become mercenaries often have secrets. As long as my men were loyal and obeyed the rules I set, I wasn’t looking to pry their histories out of them.

  I scanned the way behind us one more time, then shook my head and sent Aric walking forward once more. There might be watchers in the night, but we still had a job to do.

  • • •

  The street back to the warehouses where half my men were garrisoned seemed much longer on foot. But the horses were more tired than we were—Rhian and Charles and I had ridden a second short patrol today after the previous night’s nervous yet ultimately uneventful one, and I wanted them well rested for the night to come. The streets were quiet in daylight and I didn’t think dismounting to spare them was any great risk.

  I’d sent Charles back to the Brother House to join the Templar briefing but had decided to accompany Rhian back to the barracks. I hadn’t had time for a proper inspection of them yet, and it was best to do it while the situation was still quiet.

  The late-afternoon sun was pleasantly warm as we walked, and the men and women going about their business in the streets gave us cautious smiles of greeting. Rhian kept up a running commentary on the night’s adventures and the state of our supplies and the myriad logistic details of integrating the men with the City and the Templar forces. I listened with half an ear, the rest of me distracted by thoughts of sleep and food and coming up with a better plan for the next night’s patrols.

  I needed to talk to Simon about the sunmages and how we might be able to better use their resources. I understood the need to protect the border to the Night World and I understood the value of the symbol that the sunlamps provided and how that symbol assisted in keeping the human population from panicking, but the truth was that sooner or later the Blood were going to figure out a way to breach the border en masse and cross over.

  When that day c
ame we didn’t want one of the best forms of defense we had—the sunlight the mages could call and store—concentrated on the border where it would be useless once the Blood had crossed.

  We had turned the last corner toward the warehouses when I caught a sudden hint of magic from above me, and then there was a shattering crack as a bullet hit the cobblestones by my foot, showering my boot with shards of rock.

  “Holy mother of—” Rhian swore beside me, and shoved me toward the nearest building. Her shrill whistle of command sent the horses bolting down the street. They had sense enough to know to run away from gunfire when told to do so. Another shot hit approximately where we’d been standing before we moved, and I threw up a hasty glamour, hoping to hide us from the marksman’s sight.

  But the magic I’d felt might well mean that they were Fae and able to see through my defenses. Rhian yanked open a door—gods only knew to what—and we dived through and slammed it shut. We hit the floor in unison and crawled rapidly toward the door at the far side of the room. I flung up a ward behind me, hoping to make the door resistant to any attempts to open it and follow us.

  Three more shots rang out rapidly, one shattering the window behind us. They were followed by four more that thudded into the floor just a few feet from my boots.

  “Two of them.” I swore. One pistol couldn’t shoot that many shots so fast.

  “Are you hurt, boss?” Rhian said beside me, adding a few curses of her own as she looked around.

  The broken window had sprayed glass across the room and a chunk of it had sliced my hand, but I was otherwise unharmed. It was bleeding but not enough to be a problem.

  “I’ll live.” I hesitated for a moment, gauging the distance to the door and the angle of it relative to the window. Unfortunately the sunlight streaming in from the broken glass highlighted the door clearly, which meant that, if our snipers had the correct vantage point, they could probably see the door from where they were. Which meant going through the door was risky. Though maybe not as risky as staying in this room.