by Alexa Egan
“The same account as we usually use, Lady Delia?” he asked, his cock nearly bursting free of his clothing. His need flushed his face, making him sweat.
She popped the first button on his trousers. “That will do.”
Reluctantly, he removed her hand. “Time enough for that when I get what I paid for.”
She leaned against his desk. He sought to keep his eyes upon her face but they fell to her breasts, round and pendulous, the nipples showing through the thin fabric. He swallowed and curved his hands around his chair arm to keep them off her body.
She knew his need and smiled again. Oh yes, he’d pay for the privilege but so would she in the end.
“De Coursy is on his way to London.”
“Old news, Lady Delia. We know where he’s headed and have made arrangements. You shall have to do better than that for the price you’ve asked.”
“And do you know what he takes with him?”
“That too is known to me. The theft of Jai Idrish is a grave insult to the five clans. The trollop who stole it will pay for that treachery. But the sphere will avail him nothing.”
“Perhaps not, but the Gylferion just might.”
“No.” He stood up, shoving the chair back until it toppled on its side. “He can’t have found them. They’ve been lost for centuries. They’re legend.”
“A legend come to life . . . much like Lucan Kingkiller, the Imnada who helped him gather them together.”
Fear splashed cold through him and his dick shriveled like a dried fish. “The Kingkiller rides with de Coursy still?”
“He does.”
“Four disks. Four souls. One door.” He recited the ancient teaching from memory. “It can’t be. It’s stories . . . just stories.”
“Are you willing to risk the future of the clans over it?”
“No. I am not. You’ve done me a great service, Lady Delia. You’ve told me what I need to know. And now you shall have your payment as promised.”
He pulled the bell rope behind his desk. The door opened and Mr. Thorsh stepped in, his thick lips pulled back in a feral grin, his gaze resting upon the Swann woman with lascivious excitement. It wouldn’t take him long. “Gather your best. We will be leaving for London within the hour.”
“You as well, my lord?”
“Developments require my presence on this foray.”
If what Lady Delia said was true, and if Lucan Kingkiller was involved, which he didn’t doubt, Dromon could not leave this to Thorsh and his soldiers alone. The Gylferion were too valuable to be left in their possession. For all his scholarship, de Coursy was no shaman of the Ossine. He might not yet understand how close he came to breaking the curse upon him. He might not know the forces needed to unlock the keys’ true power. But could Dromon take that chance? “Call on those of your company from the Seriyajj. I need their eagles’ swiftness.”
“Very well, my lord.”
“But before you go, Mr. Thorsh, I’ve a treat for you.”
The enforcer’s grin widened.
“I’ve paid good coin. I expect a good show.”
The enforcer stepped forward with a nod. Lady Delia’s head swiveled between them, alarm only now replacing the smug catty expression from her face. She stood up, backing toward the windows, but they were four stories up and far from where any cries for assistance could be heard. “That’s not what was agreed to. I’m no tavern whore to be had by some base soldier.”
“No, you’re a Fey-blood. The enemy of my people. A witch and a temptress who should be flogged at the cart wheel. How many have taken you? Ten? Twenty? You’re as well traveled as the Great North Road, Lady Delia. And I believe you promised me pleasure. Today, my pleasure is to watch Thorsh’s pleasure.”
The man grabbed her roughly, fisting the collar of her gown and ripping it to her waist. Her breasts spilled free, as large and rosy-tipped as Dromon remembered. Mr. Thorsh pawed her bush with one greedy hand. With the other, he grabbed her hair, pulling her head back as he kissed her deep and hard.
Sir Dromon’s hand dove beneath his waistband to fondle his limp staff to rigidity once more.
It was but a moment before the cunt surrendered to Thorsh’s brutish assault. She capitulated with a businesslike sigh, her hands falling to her sides as he had his way with her body. The enforcer had her on the floor in minutes, just as Dromon knew he would, her lily-white legs spread wide. She made no move to protest. She understood the business of men and their urges. She might be an earl’s daughter, but that only made her quim smell sweeter.
Sir Dromon’s hand pumped in rhythm with Thorsh’s grunting thrusts.
A pity the Fey-blood bitch didn’t scream. But there was time for that. And she’d been paid very well.
* * *
London was dour skies, slick cobblestones, and unpleasant faces. Gray passed through the early-morning crowds with barely a flicker of recognition for the noise and the smells and the overwhelming press of humanity hemming them in on all sides, but Meeryn felt her neck swiveling at every new distraction. Her last visit to the metropolis had been brief, her mind preoccupied with retrieving Gray. Before that, she’d made only short annual visits, accompanied by the duke and his household, for a few weeks to shop and perhaps take in the theater or the British Museum. All edifying experiences in the cloistering company of governesses when she was younger and of hatchet-faced companions as she grew older.
This visit was filled with bittersweet excitement. Gray took her hand as they threaded a gap between a rowdy group of apprentices and a butcher in gaiters and spattered apron carrying half a pig over his bloodied shoulders. Both sights to amaze, but Meeryn noticed only the way Gray’s fingers fit with hers, the heat traveling up her arm to tingle in her belly, the callused strength of his grip. He glanced over his shoulder, eyes querying her well-being, and she nodded. His answering smile was fleeting, but he tightened his hold on her hand in acknowledgment.
She would have felt nothing but pleasure had it not been for the telltale tremors passing like a current through his muscles and the way his skin stretched sickly and greenish over the bones of his face. It had been two days of hard travel since Marnwood. Three days since he’d taken the last of the draught. Each night had been a hell as he was taken over by the curse to become the eagle of his aspect. Each dawn a tragedy as the scissoring anguish of the Fey-blood’s dark magic tore through him once more, leaving him retching and weak, naked upon the ground, man again.
Should Sir Dromon or his Ossine find him this way, it would take little effort to overpower him; no matter how well Gray chose his battleground.
They’d not stopped to refresh or relax in Audley Street upon their arrival in the city. Instead Gray had hired a hackney to carry them as far as St. Anne’s Church in Soho. A second to bring them to Holborn. The rest of the way on foot. He’d explained this roundaboutation with a simple “I want the Ossine to find us, but not yet. There are things I must take care of first. People I must speak with.”
She wished she’d worn more comfortable half boots.
Precaution had her checking behind every so often, glancing down alleys and side streets. Was that a sinister shadow in that far doorway? Did the gentleman across the street with the brown silk waistcoat watch them a bit too carefully? What of the old woman selling gingerbread, her mop cap covering her dirty curls?
Meeryn tried not to jump at every odd character or startling noise, but it was difficult when there was no way to know from what direction danger might fall on them. Gray was confident that he could evade the Ossine until such time as he chose to reveal himself. Meeryn did not possess the same self-assurance. She’d resided under the same roof with Sir Dromon since he’d moved in to Deepings to be near the duke. She’d witnessed the man’s cunning firsthand, been both an observer and a victim of his insidious, twisted cleverness.
They crossed London Bridge into Southwark and the wide thoroughfares narrowed to crooked lanes and shady alleys. The buildings grew drearier too, soot cove
red and tightly packed, doors of peeling paint, windows stuffed with rags or gaping empty to the fish-laden breeze. The shop sat in the dim, muddy valley between a great, looming church to the south and the pumps and machinery of the nearby waterworks to the north. A sign hung faded to obscurity over the entryway. She sought to peer through one grime-encrusted window but the interior was as shadowy as the alley they stood in; no way to know what lay beyond the rusted hinges and battered door.
“Are you certain they’ll be open so early?”
Gray turned the knob, the door giving way with a screech of defiance. “I’m not sure Ringrose actually sleeps.”
Meeryn’s eyes widened, her jaw dropped open and she knew she must have made a noise somewhere between shock and amazement. The shop was a musty peddler’s dream of cluttered shelves and stuffed drawers. Dusty old books warred for space with jars containing brews of questionable origin labeled in unknown languages, fizzing beakers and bubbling tubes and coils of wire, and in one case, a pickled human head that stared out at her in mild astonishment. Above her, bunches of dried herbs hung from the rafters, creating a tunnel of green, while to either side, a wild profusion of trailing vines and flowering plants covered every surface. The air was a fragrant aroma of spicy, ferny earth, the light a strange greenish glow filtered through the leafy walls. But it was the prickle of Fey magic against her brain and lifting the hairs on her arms that made her stomach knot and her hands clench in uncertain fists.
“What is this place?”
“To the world outside, it’s an obscure apothecary’s shop. To the Other, it’s a thin place; a point where the earth and the Summer Kingdom of the Fey overlap.” With the tip of his cane, Gray pushed aside a drooping wide-leafed plant with small yellow flowers. “Ringrose is the proprietor or the gatekeeper, depending on your point of view. He’s . . . ah . . . hard to describe. Best if you meet him and make up your own mind.”
As if cued from the wings, a muttered curse came from behind the far curtained doorway. “Who’s there? Don’t they know what time it is? Bloody dawn, that’s what. I’ve barely put aside nightgown and cap and had a proper cup of tea and I’m being hounded by poky-nosed customers. Badb, go see what horrid interlopers have come sneaking about my doorway at such a frightful hour.”
The curtain was pulled aside to reveal a little man with a long beard, flowing white hair, and bushy white eyebrows. He was dressed in the manner of a down-at-heels shopkeeper, but Meeryn had the impression he’d be far more at home in wizard’s robes and a tall pointed hat. Yet, it was the odd little man’s companion that narrowed her gaze and made her breath catch. An enormous crow dove from his shoulder to alight on a nearby shelf, its beady eyes watching them with nothing less than disdainful amusement.
“What is she doing here?” Meeryn blurted.
The man harrumphed, his beard and eyebrows bristling with indignation. “Are we acquainted, madam?”
Gray stepped forward. “No, but you and I are old friends. I need your help, Ringrose.”
If the man bristled at Meeryn, he fairly quivered with suppressed emotion at Gray’s appearance. His silver eyes went round as saucers and his jaw worked as though he were masticating a particularly tough piece of beef. “You! Haven’t we seen the last of your kind yet, shapechanger?”
“I’m out of the supplies I need to create the draught. I need more, or else . . .” His words trailed off into an awkward silence.
Ringrose took up a basket at his elbow, began walking the aisles pulling a leaf here and stem there. “You stick your old spoon in the wall? Don’t beat about the bush, young man. It’s plain as the nose on my face you’re close to death as a chap can be, and still be walking, talking, and”—he cast another indignant look at Meeryn over his shoulder—“swiving.” He paused, purple flower in hand, to sniff Gray up and down, nostrils wide, tongue at the edge of his mouth. “You smell of Arawn’s realm. Not much yet, but soon enough the door will swing wide.”
“Can you help me?”
“Of course I can, shapechanger. Hasn’t old Ringrose been there from the beginning? And the beginning of the end? Really, the beginning of the beginning if you count back far enough.” He waved them to follow. “Step lively, but be careful of the inventory. I’ve new items yet to be cataloged and no time to do it while the world rolls topsy-turvy.”
Gray followed, but Meeryn hung back, awaiting a chance to confront the crow without an audience. She waited until they passed into the back room and the curtain dropped into place. When she swung around, the shelf was empty, the crow gone. In its place stood the young girl, her cap of black curls framing her narrow impish face. She wrinkled her nose. “Ringrose is right. De Coursy is failing faster than expected. He has little time left.”
“Where have you been? We needed you. The Ossine attacked Marnwood.”
“Just because I have aligned myself with your cause, Lady N’thuil, do not mistake me for a soldier in your war. I do not fight your battles nor do I follow your orders.”
“Then why did you come to Deepings? Why did you help us on the moors when the avaklos attacked? Or offer your advice when young Jamie was found?”
Badb seemed to grow more agitated with every hurled question. Her face, already an unnatural pearlescent white, seemed to blanch to the color of bone. Her black snapping eyes shot sparks, and her slender body quivered with unspent rage. “De Coursy is to me just one more generation in an eternity of such. He will live and die and the world will spin on. There is nothing special in this one.”
“That’s not true. You said yourself he’s the last hope for the Imnada. There has to be a reason why you, one of the Fey, help him when the Other who bear the blood of your race seek to murder him.”
The door opened, and Lucan entered the shop. Badb and Meeryn’s heads turned in unison, and Meeryn had her answer. It was clear in the expression written all over the other faery’s face. “You don’t do it for Gray at all. You do it for him.”
Lucan’s dark gaze went opaque, his stern face rigid with an ancient pain. “She does it because of me, not for me.”
* * *
Mac hadn’t exaggerated. The Audley Street town house looked as if it had been on the receiving end of a direct artillery strike. Furniture had been toppled and smashed, cushions ripped open, drawers emptied, pictures ripped from their frames. Glass, pottery, and bits of once expensive and exquisite pieces of artwork crunched under his boots. Walls had been hammered, and floorboards pulled up.
Gray passed from room to room in silent study, relieved he had closed the house and sent his staff north to his estate at Addershiels before he’d departed for Deepings. There would be no unexpected grisly discoveries. No repeat of the mutilations at Zeb Doule’s small cottage.
He ended his tour in the kitchens, which had somehow remained relatively intact, though not completely without casualties. Ash from the open range lay scattered like a black film across the floor. The fire shovel, poker, and tongs lay in a clutter by the door amid a pile of three saucepans and a bent brass candlestick. The pine worktable had an ominous gash across its already scarred top, while a sack of sugar and two of flour had been stabbed, white powder spilled on the floor beneath an upper shelf.
Meeryn knelt in front of a row of cabinets, her skirts dusted with both ash and flour. “Look, Gray! I’ve found a crock of oatmeal, a half wheel of cheese, and”—she grinned—“David St. Leger.”
David poked his head around a larder door like a jack from a box. “Here’s a heel of bread, a jar of olives, and, best of all, cherry wine.” He waved a bottle above his head in triumph. “A veritable feast.”
“Did anyone see you arrive?” Gray asked.
Arms full, David brought his treasures to the table along with three wineglasses and three plates. “Aside from half your neighborhood, no. It’s two in the bloody afternoon. It’s not as if I can poof myself in here like a djinn from a bottle. But I’ve placed our own pickets with orders to sound the alarm should they notice anything suspicious
. They know their business and have no love for Sir Dromon.”
“What of Callista?”
David drew the cork from the wine, topping every glass. “She’s gone north.”
“You sent her to her aunt on Skye?”
St. Leger paused a moment before placing the bottle on the table with a plate rattling thump, laughter gone from his eyes. “Sent her? I almost had to crate and mail her to the place. It took a day and a half of persuading, cajoling, threatening, and finally pleading before she agreed to ask for refuge from the old battle-ax. The woman hates me, and she’s not too fond of Callista, but they’re family. And Dunsgathaic is the safest place to be, with a plague of Ossine descending.”
Meeryn stiffened at mention of the name. “Isn’t Dunsgathaic the fortress of the Amhas-draoi?”
“It is, and a more grim-faced, humorless bunch you’re not likely to find this side of a charnel house,” David said, spearing an olive on the tip of his knife.
The brotherhood of Fey-blood warrior-mages were soldiers with no equal and sorcerers with immense power at their command. Even Sir Dromon would think twice before assaulting such a stronghold. Callista would be safe.
Meeryn cut off the usable portions of bread and cheese, placing helpings of each on the plates. Rummaged through a drawer for three forks and a bread knife and returned to the table, righting a stool.
“Who needs Mrs. Waverly?” Gray complimented, tearing into his foraged sandwich.
Meeryn smiled over the rim of her glass. “I doubt even she could ruin bread and cheese.”
“Don’t be too sure. Remember the time she served Ollie that pudding topped with currants? He had a rash for a week and spent twenty-four hours attached to his chamber pot.”