Noble's Honor (Changeling Blood Book 3)

by Glynn Stewart

  But I was there to see one.

  I was here to see Calebrant. My father.

  The advantage of using magic to carve stone was that the artist could truly mirror the reality in a way that few could do with a chisel. Looking at the plain statue in the underground cavern, I could see myself in my father’s face.

  He’d been taller than I was, with even longer hair than my own shoulder length. The statue had captured its waves perfectly as it hung halfway down his back, loose even under the horned helmet.

  He almost certainly hadn’t worn it like that in battle, but even magic allowed some artistic license.

  “I feel like I should have brought something,” I told the statue. “Some token, but I didn’t even know I’d be coming here. I guess my feet knew where I wanted to go, even if I didn’t.”

  My father’s statue was unsurprisingly silent.

  “I appear to have pissed off your latest replacement just by existing,” I said quietly. “Not much I can do about it. She’s the Horned King. I’m…just your son.” I snorted. “Not that I even knew I was that until this year.

  “And here I am, talking to your statue, because I never met you when you were alive.” I sat on the ground, cross-legged with Esras across my lap.

  “But you’re the reason I have this spear. The reason I have the Gifts and power I have. I feel like I should know more about you than I do.”

  I didn’t get the impression that many people had known Calebrant well at all. Mabona, maybe. Probably my mother.

  “I wish Mom had lived long enough to be able to tell me about you,” I said. “Doesn’t feel right that I only know you secondhand, and not through her.”

  My father didn’t talk back. Statues were great listeners, I supposed. I felt more than a little crazy sitting on the cold stone floor next to my father’s grave, talking to him.

  “I wish I’d met you,” I finally told the statue. “Everyone seems to think I’m going to finish what you started. Save the High Court, defeat the Masked Lords. All I’ve got is a magic spear and a sarcasm problem.”

  That wasn’t true. I realized that even as I said it, and I actually found myself smiling.

  “And friends,” I told him. “And allies. I’ll miss Ankaris, but he’s not the only person I can rely on. If Silverstar wants to send me away, that’s her right. I have my own home and my own army now.

  “And I have Esras.” I shook my head and ran my fingers down the old wood. “So, I guess I’m not even really feeling sorry for myself down here. I just needed to talk to someone…and we never had a chance, did we?”

  I used the spear to lever myself to my feet.

  “You screwed my life up pretty good, you know,” I said to the statue. “But I don’t think that was your intent. Hell of inheritance you left me. I guess it’s time to get to work using it, isn’t it?”

  Because if I didn’t stop the Masked Lords, sooner or later, someone was going to be burying me in the catacombs above.

  35

  Damh Coleman was leaning against the wall next to the catacombs when I came up, saluting crisply as I met his gaze.

  “I figured you’d find your way down there,” he told me. “How’s your father?”

  “Dead longer than I’ve been alive?” I asked. “I’m running low on time, Damh. Silverstar kicked me out; I’m heading home pretty quickly.”

  “Then we’re heading with you,” Damh replied without hesitation. “I haven’t received orders to the contrary, and last I checked, my troop reported to you.”

  “Do you really want to put yourself on the wrong side of the new Horned King?” I said. “She doesn’t strike me as the type to forgive and forget.”

  “She’ll learn,” my friend said. “If she thinks she can run the Wild Hunt like a mortal army, she’s going to learn a few hard lessons. We’re soldiers, yes, but we’re also Hunters. We have our own honor and our own rules.”

  He shook his head.

  “If you’re heading back to Calgary, we’re with you.” He glanced at Esras. “I half-thought she was going to try to make you give up the spear when she asked you to stay.”

  “That’s exactly what she did,” I admitted. “The spear had its own ideas. The blood bond isn’t broken. With Ankaris gone, Esras only answers to me.”

  “Makes sense in a way,” Damh mused as he fell in beside me. “The Spear of Lugh answering only to the blood of Lugh.”

  I stopped in my tracks. That couldn’t possibly be right.

  “What did you say?”

  “Wait, you didn’t know?” Damh asked.

  “The blood of Lugh?” I echoed back at him.

  “Your father was his descendant. Not in direct line, but the only one known. You’re the last living child of the bloodline of the first Horned King.”

  “What about Ankaris?” I asked.

  “He was, too. He was your cousin, after all. But they’re both gone now, which leaves you.”

  “Me.” The descendant of Lugh. That was…a terrifying thought. But also…

  “I guess it doesn’t matter. I have Esras, but Grainne Silverstar is the Horned King, the heir of Lugh’s power.” I shook my head. It wasn’t like I was planning on having kids, either. One of the “advantages” of dating Mary was that most supernaturals weren’t cross-fertile.

  We could all have children with humans, but few of us could have children together.

  “It’s why Ankaris declared you Noble,” Damh admitted. “That and the fact that while your Gifts were limited, they were powerful enough to meet our standards. You are your father’s son, Jason Kilkenny. I’ll follow you.”

  “I hope it doesn’t get you in more trouble than you can afford,” I said.

  “You underestimate how much trouble I can afford,” he replied with a chuckle. “I’m a troop captain of the Wild Hunt.”

  Before I could attempt to convince him otherwise, a single gunshot suddenly cracked across the fortress.

  I met Damh’s gaze.

  “What the hell?” I demanded.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was that way.”

  We did the only thing we could. We ran toward the gunshot.

  For a few terrible minutes, I thought the Masked Lords had come back. The lack of follow-up gunfire suggested otherwise, though, but I still had no idea what was going on when Damh and I charged out into the main assembly field of Tír fo Thuinn.

  The scene in front of us didn’t help me establish what was going on. Most of the surviving Hunters and Companions were gathered on that field, split into at least four groups.

  The largest was gathered around Silverstar. From the looks of it, she was the one who’d fired into the air to try and get everyone’s attention…but there were a lot of guns around and they were not being aimed particularly safely.

  “I have given my commands,” she barked. “I am the Horned King. You will obey.”

  “We can’t just leave our dead to rot!” someone replied. I didn’t recognize the speaker. Unlike Damh, I didn’t know everyone there, not even in passing.

  “We have a higher duty,” Silverstar told them. “And regardless, these are my commands. We will abandon Tír fo Thuinn. I will seal it against all enemies and we will seek out the rest of the High Court.

  “Only once we have gathered the High Court together again can we hunt down the Masked Lords and have our revenge.”

  That…was a terrible idea. Concentrating the High Court would put all of the Fae Powers in one place. In theory, that was a lot of magical might…but in practice, I had the sinking feeling that it would only provide the Masked Lords with an easy target.

  It wasn’t my place to argue with Grainne Silverstar, though. Quite the opposite, I wasn’t even supposed to be there anymore!

  “We are not leaving our dead!”

  “Fine.” Silverstar moved with a grace and speed none of us could match. Her gun snapped around and she fired. This time, she wasn’t aiming for the sky, and the Companion who’d objected fell
backward.

  She’d shot him in the head with a cold iron bullet.

  “I am the Horned King,” she bellowed. “Obey me or I will strike you down!”

  A few skittered over to join the group clustered around her, but all she seemed to be achieving was pushing the groups arguing against her together.

  “Is this treason, then?” she demanded. “Mutiny in the Hunt? Ankaris chose me as his successor. Delacroix, would you defy him?”

  The only other remaining Guardian looked terrified to be called upon, but she swallowed and stepped to the front of the chaotic mess that was roughly a third of the remaining Wild Hunt.

  “We have a sacred duty,” Delacroix said loudly. “We swore an oath to guard Tír fo Thuinn for all eternity. To bury our dead in its halls. To guard the High Court… Abandoning Tír fo Thuinn to force the High Court out of hiding betrays those oaths.”

  “We have no choice,” Silverstar declared. “Tír fo Thuinn is vulnerable. Scattered, the High Court is more so. A solitary Power cannot stand against the Masked Lords’ new weapon. We must gather the Court and face our enemies as one.”

  “Then we call the Court and bury our dead while we wait to hear,” Delacroix replied. “It is not our place to command the Powers of the fae!”

  “But it is our place to defend them,” the Horned King proclaimed. “If you will not help me do so, then you are a traitor and a waste of my time!”

  That…was enough. I slammed Esras against the stones as I strode forward, channeling power into a shield that shouldered aside Silverstar’s strike at Delacroix. Flickering glamor-blades shattered against the stone as I moved to stand between the now very clear two factions.

  “Horned King or no, you do not hold the right of life and death over the Hunt,” I told Silverstar. “You, too, are bound by sacred oaths, Grainne Silverstar.”

  “You have no place here, Kilkenny. Be gone.”

  I sighed.

  “You know my name,” I told her. “But let’s get it out, shall we?”

  I funneled power into my voice.

  “I am Jason Alexander Odysseus Kilkenny Calebrantson,” I bellowed. “I bear Esras, the Spear of Lugh. I am the son of the Horned King, a Noble of the Wild Hunt, and I will not see our sacred trusts betrayed.”

  The assembly yard was silent.

  “You challenge me?” Silverstar demanded.

  As a Noble of the Wild Hunt, I theoretically could challenge her for the antlered helm. I didn’t want the damned job. I just wasn’t willing to let her kill anyone else today.

  “No. You are the Horned King,” I told her. “But I will not permit you to shed the blood of Hunters and Companions upon these, our most ancient grounds. Whether you will it or not, I am a Noble of the Wild Hunt and I call on you to respect our oaths and our honor.”

  There were…seventy, maybe eighty Hunters and Companions behind me. A somewhat larger group in front of me, gathered around the Horned King.

  “You defy the Horned King,” she ground out. “I will spare your lives, but you are all mutineers and traitors. You are all barred from Tír fo Thuinn. If you would hide behind Calebrant’s brat, then go with him.

  “But any of you who remain on this ground in ten minutes will die by the hand of their King!”

  The fields of Tír fo Thuinn were silent as Silverstar finished her pronouncement.

  It was the last thing the fae who’d defied her wanted. They wanted to stay there and bury their dead…but it was within her authority to exile us from the ancient fortress. If the Horned King expelled us, we were expelled. Banned.

  She wasn’t, quite, expelling us from the Hunt itself. But she was exiling us from Tír fo Thuinn.

  “Delacroix,” I said quietly as I stepped back into the crowd. “You with me? You might still be able to—”

  “I’m with you,” she cut me off.

  I turned, intentionally showing Silverstar my back. It was a risk, but it was one I had to take as I looked over the half-dozen troops’ worth of Hunters and Companions who’d defied the Horned King and suddenly become my responsibility.

  “Follow me Between,” I told them. “It seems we are no longer welcome here.”

  I took one last look around the fortress where my father was buried and inhaled a breath of air. That air was tainted with blood and smoke, the sickening smell of burnt flesh mixed with the faint taste of cordite from the previous day’s gunfire.

  I met Silverstar’s glare and bowed, slightly.

  “It is your right,” I told her. “But I promise you: I will honor my oaths. I ask that you do the same.”

  “Get out of my sight,” she snapped.

  I stepped Between, walking calmly away from Tír fo Thuinn. I felt Damh behind me. And Delacroix. And the Hunters I knew from Damh’s troop…and then others. More.

  More, in fact, than had been openly defying Silverstar. The Hunters and Companions she’d exiled had followed me…and so had others. At least half the Hunt was Between with me as I walked through another world to cross the waters of the North Sea.

  We couldn’t make the entire journey like this, not without knowing who was following whom and where we were going. I targeted an abandoned set of Scottish moors and emerged once again.

  A chill breeze cut across the hilltops and I surveyed the area. We were being watched by some vaguely curious sheep and that was, thankfully, it.

  Dozens spilled out of Between behind me. One moment, the moor was an empty, windswept hill, dully lit by the gray morning sun of a Scottish winter.

  The next, it was full of fae, many still in shock at what had just happened. The hillside was very quiet as I looked out over what had suddenly become my people and realized that I was suddenly the leader of half of the Wild Hunt.

  “Delacroix…” I trailed off. She’d followed me into this. I figured I could—that I should—use her first name. “Amandine. Damh. Find what we’ve got for officers, troop captains, Nobles. Hell, people the others will respect and follow.

  “We need to get organized before this turns into a mob.”

  I didn’t know what getting organized entailed—or what a mob entailed, for that matter. But I knew that Amandine and Damh did.

  And part of me suspected that if I didn’t get my rogue Hunt organized, the High Court was going to be in serious danger.

  36

  It took twenty minutes for us to establish who should even be in a council of war. Thankfully, it didn’t take much longer to gather the officers to actually have said council.

  Amandine and I were the only Nobles, but we had ten troop captains, including Damh. I looked around at their stressed faces and knew that the situation was still far from under control.

  “How many of the Hunt followed us out here?” I asked gently.

  “Including ourselves”—Amandine gestured around—“one hundred and six.”

  “So, we’re going to have ten troops of ten,” I said firmly. “I’m assuming you all have at least some people from your own troops, correct?”

  The captains nodded. I knew Damh had everybody, for example. Most of the troop captains had brought at least three or four of their troop with them. It looked like I actually had more of the Hunt’s midranking officers than the Horned King did.

  “Pull people you know from the stragglers into your troops,” I told them. “We’ll probably need to reallocate people once we’ve got everyone organized, but that can wait until our next stop. Right now, we need to make sure that everybody out here knows who to look to for instructions.”

  “Where do we go from here?” one of the captains asked.

  I looked over at her.

  “I’m sorry, captain, I don’t know everyone’s names,” I admitted. “You are?”

  “Siobhan MacNeil,” she introduced herself. “Our new King seems to have gone mad, but that doesn’t tell us where we go next!”

  “The best thing we can do in the long term is wait for Silverstar to regain her balance,” I told them. “We don’t defy her a
nd we continue to do our duty. I’m uninclined to try and force the Court to gather, but I will be making contact with Mabona once we’re all safe. We’ll move against the Masked Lords once we’re ready, try and bring this damn civil war to an end.”

  “Where is safe?” another captain asked. I glanced over at him and he shrugged. “Archie Pittaluga, my lord.”

  I couldn’t object to the “my lord.” Not here, not now. Not when I’d just somehow ended up in charge of half the Wild Hunt.

  “Once we’ve got everyone organized, we’ll step Between to my own home base in Calgary,” I told them. “I have the space there to put up everyone, though it’ll be a tight squeeze for a day or so as I arrange additional housing.

  “That will give us a base of operations as we try to sort out what the hell is going on. As I see it, we have three objectives now.”

  I waited to see if anyone objected to me simply dragging them all to my house. No one did, so I nodded to them and continued with the objectives.

  “First, we need to protect the High Court. That means we need to make contact with at least one of the Powers so they know they can reach us and we know if they’re in danger. I’m a Vassal of Mabona, so that’s the easiest task. I’ll need you to identify if anyone else’s Vassals ended up in our collection here.

  “Secondly”—I counted visibly on my fingers—“we need to neutralize the Masked Lords. They had a major base in Malta which has now been destroyed, but it won’t have been their only facility. If nothing else, they are Fae Lords, which means they have courts and resources of their own that they can access openly.

  “We need to identify them and move against them. We remain the Wild Hunt, with the authority to prosecute and arrest even Fae Lords. We will find the Masks and we will end this civil war.”

  “And Silverstar?” Pittaluga asked carefully.

  “That’s our third objective,” I told him. “While preserving the High Court and ending this damn civil war are higher-priority, we must also keep our eyes open for opportunities to fix this schism in the Hunt. Grainne Silverstar is the Horned King. We were, I feel, correct to defy her—and definitely correct to refuse to allow her to randomly execute officers of the Hunt.