by Jocelyn Fox
When she arrived at their meeting place in two hours’ time, night blanketed the White City. Her hand reached for her coiled whip at her waist out of habit, but she’d left her favorite weapon in her quarters. It was too distinctive. What was the use of a disguise or stealth if Queen Mab’s fighters would be able to identify her simply because of her weapon?
Merrick walked wordlessly beside her as they approached the paddocks. They’d said all they needed to say back in their quarters, and now was not the time for stolen glances or surreptitious kisses. Quinn’s teeth flashed white in the shadows as he grinned at something that Moira said. No one had brought a lantern, so they gazed at each other by the dim light of the half-moon and stars that shone from the clear night sky. Thea arrived with a small cloth bag in one hand. She placed it on the table and stood silently. Robin slid out of the darkness and held up a slightly larger gray bag at Calliea’s look of inquiry.
“Which should we put on first, the caps or the runes?” asked Calliea, glancing between Thea and Robin. The smith and the scarlet-haired fighter looked at each other and then turned back to Calliea.
“Doesn’t truly matter,” said Thea in a low voice. “Let’s do mine first, just to make sure they work for everyone.” She grinned a little as she told Quinn, “I’ve never made one of these for a mortal before.”
“Thrilled to be the test case,” said Quinn.
Thea spilled the contents of her small cloth bag onto the table with a clatter of wood-on-wood. Small circles of wood bore carefully etched runes, and then the coins were threaded onto long leather thongs. She handed one to every member of the raiding party.
“First for our voices,” she explained. “All of these will need a drop of blood to activate.” She waited until the flurry of movement subsided – drawing daggers, pricking fingers, grimacing and sighing in resignation. “After you’ve put your blood on it, tie it around your neck. The closer to your vocal cords, the better.”
Calliea pressed the wooden coin to her neck and tied the leather strip snugly just below the base of her skull. She jumped as the coin suddenly glowed with the activation of the rune, sending tendrils of heat burrowing into her throat and wrapping around something within her neck that had never been touched before. She coughed at the unpleasant sensation, but it wasn’t necessarily painful. The heat faded a bit, but left a strange buzzing feeling in its wake.
After every member of the group had tied their rune-necklaces to their throats, Thea nodded and smiled as she said, “Now we just have to test them.”
The rune glowed as Thea spoke, and her voice emerged as a rolling wave of androgynous sound, a slight vibration creating an otherworldly tone.
“This is ingenious,” said Robin, grinning as the rune deepened and roughened his smooth, light voice.
Thea shrugged. “Runes are good for more than just forge-magic.”
“How does it choose how to modulate the voice?” said Quinn. His masculine voice sounded more like a husky-throated woman than an androgynous voice like Thea’s.
Calliea grinned. “Perhaps it keys into your personality and gives you what you’ve always secretly wanted.” Her voice sounded ambiguous; she could have been a young man with a beautiful singing voice or an authoritative woman.
“That’s perhaps closer to the truth than not,” said Merrick, smiling as his own deep-voiced disguise made everyone stare.
“All right, well, this is going to be a bit strange, but they won’t recognize our voices,” said Moira.
Thea passed around another wooden coin threaded on a shorter strip of leather. “These you won’t really be able to see, since I put a counter-rune on the inside, against your skin. They’ll be a bit more of a disguise, drawing shadows around us, making it difficult for anyone to get a good look. And they will sharpen our own vision in the darkness.”
Calliea pressed her pricked thumb against the wood and tied that rune to her left wrist. The outlines of her fellow fighters suddenly became clearer, as if the world had suddenly been drawn into focus. She blinked. It was still dark, but she felt as though she could see much better.
“And now the caps,” said Robin with a flourish. He passed out black caps worked with silver runes. “A bit trickier than we expected, but still sufficient. Not a full glamour, but something that should work in conjunction with Thea’s shadow-runes to make us unrecognizable.”
Quinn pulled on his cap, settling it low over his ears. His green-blue eyes flashed in the shadows. “You know how to gear up for a stealth mission, I’ll give you that.”
Calliea surveyed the others. They were a six-member raiding party about to strike deep into the heart of Unseelie territory, snatching away the Crown Princess. Her body hummed with the heat of the runes at her wrist and throat, and her heart picked up speed as her excitement mounted. She took a deep breath. “All right. We’ve discussed our plan. Again, this isn’t a sanctioned mission. If we’re caught, we’ll most likely be tortured and killed.”
None of them countered her assessment of Mab’s response to their uninvited foray into her claimed lands in the White City.
“We leave no one behind,” she continued. The faces of her raiders had smoothed into hard, battle-ready visages. “Once we reach the tunnel, we will incapacitate the guards.”
She picked up her own satchel and set it on the table, passing out dark silken kerchiefs to her raiders. They silently took them and tied them about their necks, ready to pull them up over their mouths and noses. The dark kerchiefs, bespelled to repel the sleeping-smoke they’d be using against the guards, pooled about their necks like liquid shadows. Calliea carefully removed four small glass orbs from the satchel. Violet smoke swirled within them, shifting constantly. She slipped one into her own belt pouch and handed the others to Merrick, Thea and Robin.
“We will use the smoke on the Princess as well if necessary,” she said. She’d had to respectfully but forcefully exclude Finnead from their planning after he’d sketched the layout of the Unseelie bunker where they were keeping the Princess. They all knew he wasn’t in his right mind when it came to Andraste.
“Once we have her,” she continued, “we will make all haste back to the Queen’s Pavilion on neutral ground. If we were not pursued, we can regroup there, take a moment to catch our breath.” She felt her face settle into a grim expression. “If it comes to a fight, we need to try to draw them out into the open, and the pavilion is a place we know, a place we can defend.”
“Even if it is a bit difficult to defend with all those columns,” offered Moira, shifting her bow on her shoulder.
Calliea nodded in agreement. “It’s not ideal, but it’s also possible that they would relent once we reach neutral ground, especially a place used by the Queens for their councils.”
“Mab shows no deference for sacred places,” said Merrick.
“She had her guys bust into the healing ward,” agreed Quinn.
“Then let’s not make it a fight, and we won’t have to worry about that,” said Calliea. White teeth flashed in the dark as her raiders grinned, their smiles framed above and below by the blackness of their caps and their kerchiefs. She took another deep breath. The collective anticipation vibrated through her. “Any questions on layout or the plan of movement?”
No one spoke. She heard the distant sound of the Valkyries’ mounts shifting in their paddock, snorting and stamping as they shifted in the night.
“All right then. Remember, no names or titles if you have to speak.” She gave them a brisk nod. “Let’s move.”
Like wraiths in the darkness, the raiders fell into step, two by two, their quick steps silent as they stretched their legs into a comfortable lope. Calliea ran beside Robin, and Merrick served as the rearguard with Quinn. They’d all studied the sketch of the Unseelie prison, and they’d memorized their route through the White City. Everything looked different in the darkness, but it helped that the first two, Thea and Moira, knew the path and traversed it with immutable surety. Calliea checked thei
r movements against the map that she held in her mind’s eye, but she trusted them and kept them in view as they slid through the shadows.
Her fingers itched to touch the calming curve of her whip. The night air coiled, still and cool, about their moving forms. As they neared Unseelie territory, a chill wrapped its fingers around them. Calliea suppressed a shiver, drawing instead on her anger toward Mab, listing the litany of offenses in her mind as they ran closer and closer to the border. The Unseelie Queen had sent Molly as an assassin to kill Tess. She’d tortured one of her own Three, cutting a blood-rune into Ramel’s chest. She’d stolen memories from members of her Court for centuries, and now she held her own sister, miraculously restored to her, as a prisoner.
Anger and adrenaline warmed Calliea as they approached the line of demarcation, Moira and Thea slowing their pace slightly as they scanned for any tripwires or sentries. Finnead had said that Mab didn’t employ guards at the borders of her claimed territories. Calliea hadn’t quite believed him until he explained that Mab focused her energy on her own Court right now, turning inward in her paranoia. She didn’t believe the other Courts to be brash enough to mount any sort of physical attack.
Think again, ice bitch, Calliea thought with a wolfish grin as she followed Moira, slipping along the edge of a building. A faceless satyr watched them from an alcove above their heads. The Unseelie Queen had not cared to restore any of the damage done by Malravenar’s creatures in her part of the City. Statues still lay like shattered corpses and huge blocks of white stone studded the paved path. Calliea drew her sword with a slow silver hiss, and Moira nocked an arrow to her bow ahead of her.
No taebramh lights illuminated the paths of the Unseelie stronghold. In the Seelie and Vyldgard portions of the city, they had installed floating lights on the main paths that pulsed into life at dusk. Now, Mab’s fondness for darkness – or ambivalence to the comfort of her people – helped them as they slid stealthily toward the entrance of the old armory, sticking to the smaller alleyways and pausing before every turn to allow Moira and Thea to check for any passers-by. But the paths in Unseelie territory were eerily deserted. The cold bit into Calliea’s skin as they neared the old armory, the hillside looming above them. Her boots slid on frosted cobblestones and her breath plumed in a white cloud before her, ghost-like in the pitch-blackness. Even with Thea’s runes, it was difficult to see in the dense darkness.
Moira and Thea crouched on either side of the narrow path, two buildings in states of disrepair soaring on either side of them. An exposed stretch of paved ground that might have been a courtyard in centuries past stretched before them. A circular tower from one of the buildings had collapsed across the stretch of ground, silent testimony to the destruction of the White City and the apathy of the Unseelie Queen.
“To the tower,” said Calliea in a low voice.
Moira and Thea nodded. Moira drew her bow and covered Thea from the shadows as the smith slid forward, running in a crouch toward the tumble of white stone. Moira jerked her chin and said in a whisper, “Go. I’ll keep cover.”
Calliea ran across the open expanse with her heart in her throat, her skin prickling as she half-expected an Unseelie arrow to punch into her exposed back. She slipped on a patch of ice, put a hand down to regain her balance and resumed her run, her breath catching. But she pushed away her embarrassment. Time enough to groan over her clumsiness after the mission was over. Her uneasiness subsided as she reached the cover of the ruined tower, the jumble of stones tall enough to conceal her even if she walked upright. She slid over to the edge of the tower – what had once been the roof, judging by the fragments of gleaming azure tile that winked like gems in the darkness.
“Two guards, as Finnead said,” Thea murmured, her kerchief already pulled over her nose and mouth, leaving just her glittering eyes visible. She palmed her glass orb, the violet smoke swirling dark as ink in the absence of the moonlight.
Calliea pulled up her own kerchief, twisting to survey the line of crouched figures behind her. She heard the low murmur of a message being passed from the rear of the line.
The raider behind her – she thought it was Robin but couldn’t be sure with the kerchief around his face and the cap obscuring his hair – squeezed her shoulder and said quietly, “All here. All ready for the smoke.”
She nodded and shifted her grip on her sword, wishing again that she had her whip. But she shoved the thought aside and leaned forward, gripping Thea’s shoulder with her free hand. “Smoke.”
Thea nodded. She sidled over to the last tumble of stones, moving low to the ground, her sinuous grace apparent even through the disguise. The glass orb glimmered in her gloved hand. She checked the positioning of the sentries one final time, raising her head just above the highest stone with deliberate slow movement. Calliea found herself holding her breath as Thea assessed the distance, adjusted her grip on the orb, and then stood tall and threw the glass sphere in one fluid motion.
Calliea saw the orb sail in an arc and then lost sight of it, but she heard it shatter on the frosted stones of the courtyard. She heard one of the sentries raise his voice, more in curiosity than alarm, and then the quiet hiss of the magically enhanced fog rolled over the stones, reaching the sentries more quickly than they could realize what was happening. Fingers of fog reached around the stones of the ruined tower. Calliea tensed as she drew her first contaminated breath through the kerchief, but she felt nothing except a slight prickling in the soles of her feet, down where the fog was the thickest.
Thea stood, the head of her axe catching a shred of starlight. Calliea followed suit, standing tall beside the stones. The raiders reformed around her, sliding into their places again. Thea and Moira crossed the fog-choked expanse first. Calliea tensed again, waiting for some invisible trap to be sprung, but they made it to the shadows by the door to the armory, the night still silent around them.
Calliea nodded to Robin, and they crossed the courtyard at a run, following in the path that Moira and Thea had sliced through the fog. Calliea’s breath burned in her throat as they reached the armory door, and she told herself it was just from the adrenaline and the running. Moira held security while Thea whipped a coil of silver cord out of her belt pouch, binding the hands and feet of the sentries with practiced efficiency. As Quinn and Merrick crossed the courtyard, Thea turned her attention to the armory door, pulling out a set of lock picks. She ran her hand over the door, checking for any spells ingrained in the heavy dark wood. Quinn joined her, his gloved hands accepting the lock picks that she handed to him.
While Quinn and Thea worked, Calliea faced the eerie expanse of the courtyard and the sightless eyes of the dark windows in the ruined buildings that towered over them. The fallen tower that had offered them concealment now seemed to teem with moving shadows. Robin held security to her right and Moira to her left.
Merrick offered advice to Quinn as they worked the picks in the lock. One of the men cursed as a spell flared into life, melting one of the silver picks. Quinn tore off his glove as the molten silver ate through the leather. Calliea focused her attention on the expanse of the courtyard but said in a low voice, “Everyone all right?”
“Yes,” came Thea’s androgynous, disguised voice. “Working the counter-rune now.” She cursed softly. “Shouldn’t have missed it.”
They were taking too long. Every moment they spent exposed, struggling with the lock on the door, was a moment closer to discovery. The knot of anxiety tightened in Calliea’s chest. She took deep breaths to counter her rising impatience. Quinn and Merrick were working as fast as they could. She glanced at the prone figures of the Unseelie guards, wondered when they changed shift, thought that maybe they’d moved on this raid too fast. There were still so many unknowns that had seemed insignificant in the friendly darkness by the Valkyrie paddocks. Now, every nerve in her body tingled with premonition and every muscle ached from her tense surveillance of the empty courtyard, the enchanted fog still clinging to the cold ground with a thick, unn
atural stillness.
A movement to her left drew her attention, her heart leaping but then settling with a nauseous drop as she saw Moira straightening from kneeling by one of the prone guards. The disguised Vyldgard scout held up a ring of keys. Calliea couldn’t see her triumphant smile but heard it in her voice even through the rune-magic. “One of these should fit.”
Thea and Quinn quickly found the key that matched the lock. Torchlight leaked into the cold darkness as they slid inside. One of them reappeared briefly. “Clear.”
They all slipped into the open door, pulling it gently closed behind them. Thea quickly took a wad of clay from her belt pouch and pressed it to the seam of the door. She embedded another wooden rune-coin in the pliable clay. It would send them a signal if the door was opened from the outside. Calliea wasn’t exactly sure what kind of signal, but she trusted Thea.
Flickering torches lined the passageway carved into the hillside, crystalline threads of frost sparkling like veins along the walls and over their heads on the curved ceiling. After their journey in the darkness, the light of the flames seemed lurid and bright. Merrick pulled out his glass orb as they started down the passageway. The enchanted fog moved quickly and had a long reach, but Calliea wanted to be certain that the second pair of guards didn’t have time to sound the alarm or engage them in a fight. She took slow, controlled breaths even as her stomach climbed into her throat. Every step seemed like a gamble. Every moment she expected the tunnel to explode with the wrath of the Unseelie Queen. The cold intensified. Her fingers ached and she longed for the feel of warm sun on her face. Then she fiercely brought her attention back to the task at hand. Perhaps Mab’s traps were not physical, but traps for the minds and souls of those opposed to her.