“Did she?” His voice sounded calm. Good.
“She did,” Bitsy said.
Maks glanced at a rangy, eggplant-hued ogre with wild orange hair and pale horns. “Chauncey, please fetch my usual gear and bring it here.” Chauncey looked to his lord and receiving a nod left to do as Maks asked. Satisfied his ire would soon be sated, Maks approached the center of the rock garden. Bitsy eyed him warily but Wendell’s thoughts remained concealed.
Moistening his lower lip, Maks continued, “How did she force you to bring her here—” he paused to gesture back at Ari, “—in this state?”
The returner was in his care and they’d dared to harm her. Did no one respect the Medved name this night? Did they not recognize how dangerous it was to hurt his—to hurt the returner? Bear reared up on hind legs within Maks’s psyche. His claws were extended and if he did not relieve the tension there would be blood.
Chauncey returned, coughed and laid a duffel bag on the sand beside Maks. The ogre waited for further orders. Bitsy took a step back. “She went nuts when you went down. That staff of hers broke more than a few kneecaps and several of my men will be gumming their meals until their teeth and tusks grow back.”
Good. Ariana Golde had not let him and herself be taken easily. Maks shrugged, his gesture an indication the broken teeth and kneecaps were earned. “We have been friends many years, Bitsy. Why did you find it necessary to knock me out?”
She screwed up her face. “It’s because I’ve known you so long that I knew you wouldn’t let us bring the returner back here. Not once I saw you two together.”
He snarled before he could stop himself. “You were wrong,” he said. “We were on our way here.” Maks jerked his head at Chauncey and held up his right hand. The ogre went into the duffle bag and pulled a roll of cloth free. When he stood he began to prep Maks’s fist with the pre-glove hand wrap.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” Bitsy said. She wrapped her arms around her belly with a sigh.
“I know you didn’t. I am not angry with you. Merely puzzled.” Maks let his gaze fall on Wendell, who raised an eyebrow. The Grand High Oni stood nine foot two with skin the shade of red peppers. The mother of pearl spires of his horns—each centered on one of his brows—rose from his forehead and back over the storm cloud of his white-gray hair. “Oh ho, so I am the target of your vexation,” the ogre king said.
“Your sister did as she was ordered, no?”
“She did.”
“Then we must box now.”
Wendell chuckled, the sound of boulders being gurgled. A flick of his hand to his sister and she trotted off, Maks guessed to retrieve her brother’s gear. He and Wendell regarded one another but sheathed their thoughts in silence until Bitsy returned.
Once the sister had wrapped the brother’s meat hooks, Wendell spoke. “The thought occurs the returner is your woman, Medved.”
“Your thinking is muddled, Wen.”
A hiss cut through their conversation. Ari sat up, the heel of her palm pressed to her forehead. “Cripes,” she said, “I hear banjos.” She called for Maks and he would have answered if she hadn’t noticed her broken staff first. The splintered sections of what had been her weapon drew a sharp gasp from her. Maks felt it in his gut. He faced Wendell and called back over his shoulder.
“Do not cry, vorovka. I beg you.”
Her footsteps whispered across the sand, stopping a few feet from him. “I’m not going to cry, Maksim.” There was a sob embedded in the words. He’d seen the way she clutched the staff when Bear scared her in the fields. It had made her feel safe. Now she was injured and vulnerable, and her vulnerability whipped his chaos magicks into a furor. He breathed deep and slow.
“It sounds as though you may cry.” He still refused to look at her.
“I won’t.” The steel was back in her voice. The same hardened core she’d used against Bear when he’d bared his fangs in her face.
Chauncey finished putting on Maks’s gloves and tightened the laces. Bitsy had done the same for her brother.
“If we do not box now, Wendell,” Maks said, “I am going to kill you.”
Wendell rolled his neck. With deftness unusual in ogres he began to dance in an arch, first right and then left. Bitsy and Chauncey walked backward until they stood with Ari. Maks slapped his gloved fists together. His corner man had done a good job. He tracked Wendell and launched into his own dance, jabbing the air to warm up.
“Your anger is unfounded, Medved. I have rights to call the returner out on her duplicity.” Wendell faked left and punched right. Maks anticipated the move and dodged, opening his guard. Wendell took the bait, stepping into the opening, and Maks rolled to slam his fist into Wendell’s exposed kidney. The ogre grunted in surprise.
They broke apart and circled one another. Maks stepped in to Wendell and took a blow to the chest. In exchange he rocked Wendell’s chin in three rapid punches.
“Ow,” Ari said, though Wendell remained silent. “You guys don’t have to do this.” The two males ignored her.
“You have the right to question her but she is in my care. Any harm coming to her is a slight to me. And there is also the matter of Fran—”
“Achoo!” Ari sneezed so loudly Maks swore she’d ejected a lung. He spared her a glance. Tension made her body taut. Did she worry for him? A punch caught him on the side of the head. He didn’t get the full brunt but the blow cleared his mind.
The gathered ogres cheered. Maks and Wendell broke again, moving forward and back in a semicircle until they switched positions and Maks faced Ari, Bitsy and Chauncey.
“Have you not seen Fra—”
“Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!”
Perhaps the returner had ogre allergies and could not be around them too long.
“Your boxing is greatly improved, Medved. Less uptight, more unpredictable,” Wendell said.
Maks split his attention between his sparring partner and beyond to watch Bitsy observe Ari. Finally the ogress spoke, part question and part statement. “You love him.”
“I’ve been falling for a long time.” Ari exhaled slowly.
Stunned, Maks took a fully extended jab to the jaw. The distance mitigated the damage.
“How long?” Bitsy asked.
“Since the late 1800s. It started with a schoolgirl crush on the Orient Express.”
Bitsy was taken aback. “But he’s so surly.”
Why did everyone keep saying this? Surely not all storied folk found him surly. Uppercut—one, two to the gut. Maks staggered and Ari winced.
“I’m working on that,” Ari said, her words for Bitsy while her gaze met his. She loved him. Had more or less loved him since she was a child.
He’d suppressed it, but he remembered her. Not so much on the Orient Express as on an evening at the opera—Rigoletto, San Francisco in the 1980s. Her scent, honeysuckle and moonlight, had led him through the crowd and he’d pushed his way past two critics in the midst of a foolish disagreement.
When the critics parted he’d forgotten his own name. The returner wore an exquisite gown of Swarovski crystal beads and silver silk. Lovely returner. He or Bear or they—there was no difference—connected to her then. He had been on his way to her, to find out her name, to talk for a while…but he’d seen her mother, Inari, and realized she was the child of two legendary strains of chaos magick. The realization welded him in place. Things could go terribly wrong if he closed the distance between the lovely one and himself.
Her running away had been a relief and he’d forced the image of her down past Bear, past the hunt, beyond even the day Baba-Yaga had bitten him. He had not wanted to yearn for a future, nor for the buttery brown skin, red painted lips and cognac eyes.
That same connection had drawn him to the Bridge Across building one spring day in 1996. No, he had not gone in, had not shared in the returners’ branding ceremony, but only because he’d known it would be his undoing.
If he were honest, this was the reason he had met her as
Bear in the foyer of his home. There had been an inkling of memory, a swell pushing at the barrier he’d placed on his desires for a wife. He’d suspected this woman was fated to be his.
Damn her.
He ducked under what would have been a brutal punch and pummeled Wendell in a series of body blows. The Ogre danced away and threw up a glove. “You invite the rage of an ogre, Medved. You are the best friend I have. It shouldn’t end over a woman.” They exchanged another set of ferocious punches that left them both hiding their wheezes beneath bravado. Maks’s chin probably wouldn’t heal for months. The pain blurred his sight.
Wendell fumed. “My dealing with her is non-negotiable, Medved. It is only out of deference to you I haven’t fed her to a certain rabid unicorn I have on retainer.”
Maks gave Ari an I told you so look through clearing vision. She shrugged back at him with a contrite smile and jogged closer.
“I can explain everything and it won’t harm your friendship at all.”
Chaos-magick ears and whiskers shimmered to life on her head and face, joined by a set of three flickering tails at her back. Oh no. She’d gotten an idea and it involved more deception. Maks warned Ari off with a gesture but kept his guard up in case Wendell decided to grab her. Instead the Grand High Oni relaxed. “Go on. Take a shot at entertaining us,” he said.
Things could go very badly if she tried to trick the ogres. Maks made to protest. Wendell waved him off. “No, Medved. Let her try to explain. Otherwise I’ll take my club to her and our bond will end.”
Maks allowed his claws to extend; Ari stepped up behind him and laid a hand on his forearm. “If she dies, Wendell, you follow her. Understood?”
“Hah, I know you will try to kill me,” The Ogre replied with equal ferocity. “I expect no less of you.”
Maks jerked his chin up in agreement. Wendell stomped his feet and several ogres scrambled to bring him a chair. Once he’d made himself comfortable, and had been supplied with a bowl of edamame, he gestured for Ari to proceed.
She drew herself up, appearing as proud an orator as her father. Maks wondered if she had the old trickster’s skill. She’d need it in order to pull off whatever she’d planned without getting them both killed. Maks could take Wendell but they’d never make it out of the ogre complex. He would not default to ego; delusions did not befit a Medved.
Ari cleared her throat and began. “I gave the Lady Goblin-kin your necklace because I could not deny the plea of one so deeply in love.”
Maks rolled his eyes. A hush fell over the assemblage. Incredible. He’d read of hushes in the faerie tales humans wrote but he’d never seen such a thing among Faebles.
“The Lady Goblin-kin, Lucida, carries a special feeling for the Grand High Oni and took the necklace as a symbol of his love. She knows she will never have The Ogre himself.”
Wendell let out a guffaw; it ricocheted around the courtyard, joined by the tittering of the gathered ogres. “Hilarious. Oh ho, how I will make the wench suffer for her love,” he said. The gathering laughed more.
Ari nodded, her expression encouraging. “As well the Grand High Oni should, and you’ve been the height of genius in setting her up. It’s the reason I felt so comfortable in giving her the necklace.”
Quiet descended and Wendell leaned forward. Dear gods. Maks slapped himself on the forehead, grumbled and slid the hand down to cover his face. All lies. Though Ari appeared to be selling Lucida out, Maks knew she’d liked the lady too much to do so.
“What part of my vast genius are you speaking of?” Wendell stroked his chin and relaxed back into the chair. Bah, The Ogre was confused but refused to show it in front of his people.
Taking a beat the returner bowed. “Well, obviously the Grand High Oni has taken great pains to put a stop to any marriage contract the Lady Lucida has sought to make for herself. This is why I realized the Grant High Oni has plans to visit the worst torture and agony the world has ever invented on the lady of the goblin-kin.”
“Of course, this was my plan all along.” The ogres murmured various terms of agreement, save Bitsy. She wore the strangest look. Like Maks, she seemed unsure of what to believe.
“It is a plan so diabolical even my own baba, my father, would not have thought of it.” The returner looked on the Grand High Oni with admiration.
Wendell blushed eggplant. “You flatter me but ’tis true. Any fool can see I plan on torturing the Lady Goblin-kin by, by…” He made the rolling gesture he and Maks both favored as though he couldn’t think of the right words to illuminate his genius and merely needed someone to help him with the phrasing.
Ari came to the rescue. “By marrying her and making her as miserable as husbands have been making wives through the eons.” She finished the statement innocently.
Maks stood gobsmacked—once again. He couldn’t be sure whether proximity or a riot of emotions he didn’t care to name had brought on the change in his thinking, but he’d caught on to the ingenuity of her plan. His vixen-vorovka was truly her father’s child. He could not fathom why she thought herself an unworthy heir.
Wendell looked around, bloated with superiority. “Just as you have said.”
Some of the ogres were clearly confused but others gazed at their leader in abject admiration. Bitsy’s mouth fell open.
“Regardless of her love,” Wendell said, “she did not come to me when her father died. How can I be sure she will have me now and not ruin my scheme?”
“She was afraid her status as such a powerful leader would turn you off. She thought you’d find her too manly and not possessing of the soft comforts of womanhood.”
“Any fool watching knows she’s got the best qualities of womanhood.” Wendell pantomimed large breasts by curving his mitts in front of his chest. “And I am certainly no fool.” He scoffed at Ari’s silliness.
“Just so,” she said.
“Go to the goblin side and tell the lady to come to me.”
Ari shook her head. “You’ll have to go to her, Grand High Oni, it’s the only way.”
“Nope. She must come to me and beg.”
“But, but—” Ari’s chaos-magick ears, whiskers and three tails went on the fritz, blinking on and off.
Maks shot a sidelong glance at Wendell. The spell vixen-vorovka had spun began to crack. Without a compelling closing she’d lose the ogres. Maks did not want her to fail. Not knowing what it meant to her to make her parents proud. The same need had driven him before his parents had gone to stone. He understood Ariana Golde. Therefore, Maks decided to do what he had been doing all night. To act the proper sidekick to Ari’s hero. Even if this meant he had to mislead his buddy for the greater good.
“This would not be good, Wendell.” Maks stepped up to the plate. Ari blessed him with the most beautiful smile of thanks he had ever received. He wanted her to give him more looks matching its radiance.
“Think, man. The lady fears you find her too mannish. If she comes here it will be her doing the wooing.” Wendell yawned and Maks leaned forward, rolling both hands in the air. “As though you were her ladylove rather than she yours. From that moment on she would wear the pants in your household.”
Wendell shot from the chair. “The goblin-hag wouldn’t dare such insolence as to believe me less of a male than she.”
Maks threw his arms wide. “What choice would she have?”
Wendell sat down in a rush, dropping his chin into a palm. “What must I do?” he asked dejectedly.
“Oh.” Ari bumped hips with Maks and they shared a knowing look. “We have an idea.”
Chapter Eight
“When an ogre comes to take his bride
He belts a song and goes with pride
He bellows loud and yanks her hair
Then makes a flag of her underwear…”
The ogres were on the move; their various horned shapes and hues marched in a grand parade toward the Scar of Fanaweigh. Brightly colored paper lanterns bobbled on air and odes—of questionably romantic inten
t—roused the denizens of the district. Soon a multitude of Faeble voices—pixies and sprites, gnomes and ovoids, dragons, unicorns and all the others—joined in to sing the ancient songs. Faebles glittered, flew and flamed in celebration. Ari danced right along with them. The Grand High Oni had done his choosing and journeyed to claim his bride.
A few hours before, Ari and Maks had played the roll of matchmakers and negotiated the marriage contract. She’d kept a generic version in her shoulder pack since her mother started in on the husband campaign. Ari liked to be prepared under normal circumstances and one couldn’t learn enough when it came to legal documents and her tricky parentage.
Anyway, they’d sent Corbel and Trajan ahead with an ogre guard; not only to keep her minions safe but also to verify the Grand High Oni truly wanted the Lady Goblin-kin’s hand. The goblins had returned with a yes and the party started.
Maks clapped in time and lent his voice to another ode that may have been a love song but could’ve been a soundtrack to domestic violence. Aghh when in ogre town…
Bitsy joined them on their march. Nodding first to Maks then to Ari, she sighed. “My how I’ve missed such sweet chaos as you two wrought here tonight.”
Trajan seized the moment to do his jig around the ogress, tossing pixie dust into the air. She obliged him with a twirl and chortle all her own. He skipped away. Her eyes followed him and she grinned. “The kitsune, the trickster foxes, of my ancestors’ homeland once did the same.” She laughed. “Which is no surprise knowing your mother, Ariana.”
Ari smiled cheerily and Maks patted Bitsy’s shoulder. The ogress suddenly crushed them in a better bear hug than Ari imagined any Medved could give—high and tight. Really, really ridiculously tight. Ari’s breath whooshed out and Maks grunted.
Bitsy carried on, oblivious to their discomfort. “If you two pull this off the ogres and the goblin-kin shall sing odes to your glory, and my children will be called by your names.” She released them.
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