“I wish I could say it’s been nice knowing you,” Orianna said, watching the ebb of Summer soldiers moving around us, “but … I think we both know I can’t lie.” She flashed a look at me.
“Oh, I don’t think I do know that,” I said, looking her right in the eye. “You’ve been a spy all along, haven’t you?”
Orianna broke into a slow smile, then shrugged. “I have my loyalties, just like your friend Lockwood. But I was supposed to see you home safely in hopes that he could avert … this …” She cast a slow look around the Summer army moving around and past us. “Clearly,” her face fell, “that didn’t happen.”
“Clearly,” I said, doing a little looking of my own. A squad of Seelie buzzed past in light armor that reminded me of insect carapaces, their wings the only part of them that was uncovered. Just as soon as I thought that, something like a lance sailed out of the Unseelie lines and pierced one of them right through the undefended wing. He came crashing down somewhere in the crowd, which did not produce so much as a ripple in the endless movement of soldiers. “What’s the truth that Lockwood knows?”
“Maybe you should ask him,” Orianna said, fingers brushing the magical glass. It didn’t even ripple. “It’s not really my story to tell.”
“Maybe he should have told me,” I said. “But he didn’t. Probably because he didn’t want to put me at risk of torture.”
“You’re being too kind,” Orianna said. “Like I told you—Seelie lie. Not directly, but it’s what they do.”
I got up in her face. “Not Lockwood. He’s different. He’s gone out of his way to avoid lying.”
“Well, he’s gone out of his way to avoid telling the truth, too,” Orianna said. “Otherwise, why accept exile and go to Earth? It’s not like there aren’t territories here that wouldn’t have been favorable to him. But going to the land of iron and Iron Bearers?” She shook her head. “That’s a level of madness I wouldn’t care to contemplate.”
“It’s not so bad,” I said, wishing like hell I was in Tampa right now instead watching fae battle each other in some sort of bloody grudge match. A spell flashed red in front of me, and three fae just disappeared. No flicker hinted at their fate, but I had a feeling they were dead. “He seems to be doing well enough. I mean, if you avoid the carpentry and metalwork industries, you’d probably be okay there.”
“I prefer not to take any chances, thanks,” she said, then grimaced as she remembered where we were. “Okay. Well. Usually I prefer to avoid them. Today I might be willing to take a chance.”
“Spies don’t always live a long life here, I’m guessing,” I said.
Orianna fluttered her wings. “Is that what it’s like on Earth?” I nodded. “Well, maybe that’s one way our worlds are alike, then.”
I caught different-colored movement out of the corner of my eye, and realized there were a phalanx of lighter-armored fae moving past us, so many soldiers heading into this battle … I looked back; the queen and the court were gone, now, their dais out of sight behind the swarms of fae moving forth to fight.
Hmmm.
“Orianna?” I asked, and she tore her gaze off the battle for a second to look at me. “Promise you won’t be mad.”
“About wh—” she started to ask, but I slugged her, hard, in the mouth before she could finish. She bounced off the side of the cage and hit the ground.
“Owww,” I groaned, shaking out my hand. Mill had warned me not to punch with a closed fist, but I’d gone and done it anyway. I’d had to.
Orianna was laid out on the floor of the cell, dripping blood from her mouth. I looked around to see if anyone had noticed. They hadn’t. Everyone was way too focused on the battle to care about little old us. Rolling to her side, she moaned, stirring only a little. “Stay still,” I said under my breath, and then smeared my hand with the silver blood from her lip.
I turned to the nearest fae soldier, one of those lightly-armored ones that seemed to be moving up. “Help!” I called. “Help me!” I waved a silvery hand in front of my face.
He paused, last of his line, and they moved on without him, toward the front. “What?” he asked. I couldn’t hear him, but I could see his lips move.
I held my hand out. “The prisoner. She passed out. She’s bleeding from the mouth. I think she’s dying.”
The soldier did something completely predictable. He looked around for some authority to appeal to. This was the delicate part. If he could call out to the queen from here, my plan was finished before it started.
After a few seconds, he realized that there was no authority to appeal to. “I’ll see if I can find someone to help you—” he started to say.
I was ready for this. “What’s your name?” I asked.
He was a soldier, caught up in the flow of battle. “Irise.”
“Hey, Irise,” I said, “how do you think your queen is going to react if this prisoner dies before she can be executed? Because I’m guessing bad—”
“I’ll go find someone—”
“There’s no time,” I said, putting an arm under Orianna’s face and tilting it toward Irise. She was drooling silver blood and it looked horrible. If she wasn’t unconscious, she was playing her role magnificently. If she was … uh … I might have punched her too hard.
Well, I’d be sorry for that later.
“Stand back,” Irise said and drifted closer to our cage. He put out a hand, running it along the front of the magical glass. He kept his weapon clenched tight in the other.
“I can only go so far back,” I said, putting Orianna’s arm under mine and trying to haul her to her feet. She was heavy and I wasn’t that strong, so it didn’t go so well. “Ohmigosh. She’s like a ton.”
“A … what?” he asked. The door was open, and he flittered closer.
“Hard to explain,” I said. “Here, help me lift her. We can get her to a—what do you call doctors around here?”
“Doctors,” Irise answered, lowering his weapon and taking a step forward. “Is that not what you call them?”
Oh, good. He had a natural curiosity.
“No, no, it is,” I said as he lifted Orianna up. His weapon fell to his side, out of easy position to stab me. “I thought maybe it was something different for you, because—it’s funny how we speak the same language, that’s all.” He looked at me across Orianna’s drooling face. “You know, being from different worlds. Kinda weird. Feels like you should be speaking Martian or something, you know?”
“No,” Irise said, frowning through his helmet’s facial slit. I had a feeling he was starting to develop a suspicion that he’d been had.
“Oh, well,” I said, “all right, let’s get help. Where do we take her?”
He moved to point at the rear of the battle, where the Summer Court was probably waiting, though I couldn’t see them. “The relief will be found in the rear of—”
His eyes went wide, and there was a slight flash as his helm flew a couple inches up, and he toppled forward under the stampede of the Summer army. No one even noticed. Bad luck, Irise. Hopefully his armor would help him survive the trample.
“Thank goodness you did that,” I said, looking at Orianna as she rubbed her jaw, looking at me just a little irefully. “I mean, I had a plan for getting this far, but I wasn’t sure what I was going to do from here.”
“Feels like you should have figured that out before you hit me,” she said, popping her jaw. The army was still stampeding past, though they’d slowed somewhat. No one was paying any attention to us, what with a war going on not a hundred feet away, and all them blindly charging into it.
“Oh, quit your whining, we’re out of the cage,” I said, and nodded at Lockwood, who was watching us, wordlessly, from inside his own, on his feet. “Let’s get him out and—”
“Do something even more foolish?” came a too-familiar voice from behind me. “That would be hard to imagine.”
I turned, slowly, to find Roseus standing there, grinning—again—a few soldiers at his ba
ck with weapons in hand. The world seemed to be shifting around me, the soldiers moving away, allowing Roseus’s men to move freely in a circle to hem us in. Their weapons glowed, poised and ready to strike. Even though they seemed to be at a distance, I had a feeling that once again, Faerie was not telling me the truth. They were ready to strike us down.
A flicker showed my fears to be true, a flash showing a spear just an inch from my throat, before it snapped back to the “real” world, and it seemed to be feet away.
They had us.
Chapter 35
I wish I could fight.
As I was being led away, a pointed spear in my back courtesy of the nearest fae soldier, that was the thought that kept coming to me. I wanted to be one of those lady badasses from movies and TV, who could bust out a fighting move spin, yank the spear out of this guy’s hand, and shove it up his nose.
My fighting experience was pretty limited, down to what Mill had taught me. Against vampires, I was getting … well, okay. Against a big guy in a dark alley, I could probably inflict some damage.
Against a faerie with a weapon pointed at my back? Yeah … it wasn’t going to work out like the movies. My version of the Hollywood ending would finish with me getting stabbed mid-spin trying to disarm the soldier who had me at his mercy.
They were bringing Lockwood along, too, and Orianna. We were being marched in a procession through a split in the line of fae that were still rallying forward toward the battle. Every once in a while a blast of magic would shoot by from the court, though I couldn’t see them now that I wasn’t high up on the plinth in my cage anymore. The aura of a glowing surge of blue or green was a pretty solid cue that magical craziness was afoot, though.
“The queen has ordered your executions to commence immediately,” Roseus said, a certain smug satisfaction layered on his face. He was walking alongside, between me and Lockwood.
Poor Lockwood. He had five spears pointed at him, a couple of which were resting a few centimeters into his flesh. They were taking no chances with him, and silver blood was welling in small beads at the site of the wounds.
“Come to Faerie, they say,” I muttered, feeling the not-so-gentle poke of the spear in my back, “see the magical world, they say. Well, let me tell you something—no wonder there’s no Earth-to-Faerie tourism industry, because your hospitality here sucks. Figures you’d execute me just for showing up and doing … basically nothing.”
“Now, now, you didn’t do nothing,” Roseus said, still smirking. “Give yourself at least a little credit. You helped deliver this traitor to us.” He waved a hand at Lockwood.
“I was an honored paladin of Summer,” Lockwood said, his teeth gritted in pain. He was holding up pretty well. I’d taken a little pain lately, upped my threshold, but I was pretty sure if I was being frog marched with spears piercing my flesh, I’d be crying at least a little. “I chose exile rather than to allow our kingdom to suffer under the burden of my knowledge. But I have always been loyal in my heart.”
“It is an inconvenient truth of rule,” came a voice from out of the lines of armies to our right, “that knowledge is indeed a terrible burden.” Master Calvor stepped out from between two ranks of soldiers, as though he’d been inspecting them and decided to just meander over and join us. His eyes were flashing with amusement, but his mouth was a hard line, devoid of any joy. “You should have born yours quietly.”
“I did,” Lockwood said, pausing just long enough that one of his guards sank his spear tip into the meat of Lockwood’s shoulder. I cringed, but Lockwood did not move, staring down Calvor. “I kept my quiet. Accepted exile as the price for keeping our kingdom whole and unharmed. But that wasn’t good enough for you, was it?”
Calvor cracked a little smile. “No. Another truth of ruling—if you’re going move forward, sometimes people will get in your way. This leaves you with limited options. Go around them, if they let you. Decide not to move forward. Or …” And he made a vague wave at Lockwood.
“Crush them?” I asked.
Calvor smiled. “Indeed. I don’t care much for reversing course or going around.”
“Yeah, you don’t strike me as the kind who’d detour an inch around an orphan,” I said. “You’d just roll right over them.”
“In fairness,” Calvor said, casting a subtle eye over the battlefield, “there are so many orphans, especially after today. Yet only one me.”
“I’d like to see the number of both greatly reduced,” I said.
Calvor turned back to me and smiled. “I imagine you would, Iron Bearer. But I care not what you think—what matters is my people and my legacy.” He shrugged. “Anything else is hardly worth concerning yourself about.”
“I suppose it’s unfortunate then that your legacy is somewhat curtailed with the death of your son,” Lockwood said.
I blinked at him. That was probably the nastiest thing I had ever heard Lockwood say, just savage AF, and the worst part was that it was delivered so dryly, like one of those old timey British insults, but man, did it land like he’d sledgehammered it home.
Calvor reddened, looking like he might lurch forward and attack, but he got control of himself swiftly. “My legacy will just have to be what I deliver to my people, since you … you saw to it that my son did not survive.”
“Your son brought about his own death,” Lockwood said. They were staring hard at each other. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“But you could have saved him,” Calvor said. “Just as I could save you now.” He leaned in, close to Lockwood. “And I will take great pleasure in doing you the same courtesy you did him—none.” He waved a hand, and looked to Roseus. “See it done.”
“I will bring them to the executioner myself,” Roseus said, and nodded at his guards. Our little stay of execution was over, and now we were on the march again. Calvor disappeared into the ranks of the soldiers, and we were marched over the vivid green grass toward the back of the lines. The soldiers were fewer here, and it seemed the bulk of the army had moved forward now, into the battle at the front line.
“You don’t have do this,” I said, inadvertently parroting the single stupidest line that every person in every TV show and movie said whenever they were in a dire bind like this.
“Of course he does,” Orianna said. “His patron just ordered him to kill us. How do you think this turns out for him if he fails?”
The soldier walking me gave me a not-subtle jab with a spear, and I jerked my shoulders forward at the sting. “Gah!” A little drop of blood ran down my spine. I tried to reach the wound, but it was right at the spine between my shoulder blades where I couldn’t reach it. “I hope it turns out he gets locked in a cage with a bunch of angry, hungry avara, honestly.”
Roseus smiled. “That’s not bad. I’ll talk to the executioner, maybe we can add that as an option in the future. For now, though … we’re a simple people, probably unlike you Iron Bearers and your complexities. I hear you have wagons that move as if by magic, but without any actual magic?”
“They’re called cars,” I said. “I’d love to show you one. Especially if it was made of iron. And traveling eighty miles an hour at your face.”
“I regret that you shan’t get the chance,” Roseus said. “But as I said—we’re a simple people. Your methods are complex, but ours … have a certain elegance in their simplicity.” He nodded at a dais ahead, where a faerie was waiting, one so huge he looked like a pro wrestler who’d been juicing hard for a long time. He wore a feral grin, stretching almost ear to ear, and had one of those black masks that wouldn’t have been out of place in a medieval movie.
And he swung a giant axe up to rest on his shoulder.
“Up you go,” Roseus said, bringing us to the edge of the platform and beckoning us to climb up. “Now, now, don’t be shy. If you don’t climb up on your own, then we’ll be forced to—”
“Kill us?” I almost rolled my eyes. “Oh, no.”
Roseus smiled. “The headsman will be swift. If you
force us to … we will not be. Your blood will flow slowly, and your life’s leaving will be a great, seemingly eternal pain.”
“I know which I pick,” Orianna said, fluttering up to the platform under the watchful eye of her guards. They remained down on the ground, though watchful.
Lockwood, too, climbed up without a word. His guards gave him one last poke, too, a little silver blood washing out from the new wound inflicted on his calf. Lockwood, for his part, only grimaced, but remained upright, now upon the dais.
I looked at Roseus, who seemed to be waiting for me to do his bidding. “Iron Bearer? Are you going to make this easy on us both? Or will I be forced to look at your strange, dark, non-magical blood as it runs over the green fields of Faerie?”
Something about that caused a tingle across my scalp.
“I just want to go on record saying,” and I prepared myself to take a step up to the dais with the other two, “you’re a giant jerkface. You’re all liars here, every last one of you. Believe me, because it takes one to know one and you—you people are liars. You live in lies, you bathe in them, you wear them every day of your life like high fashion.”
Roseus did not look impressed. “Your words carry some small sting. Not as much as the headsman’s axe, I imagine, but still—they find their mark. Fare thee poorly, my dear.” And he gave me a little shove as I tried to step up onto the platform, but his push made me topple and hit my knee.
“Ow,” I said, pulling back my ragged dress material to see my leg. Skinned it, a little scrape showing red where I’d landed. I snapped a look back at Roseus. “You’ll pay for that.”
He snorted. “I greatly doubt it, though it amuses me that even in parting, on your way to death, you find time to lie with these idle threats of your own.”
I ran my finger over the welling blood, and the tips came away red, the liquid running between the whorls of my prints. “Yeah … that wasn’t a lie.”
Roseus didn’t even bother to restrain his smile. “It’s going to be quite fun to watch you—”
Lies in the Dark Page 27