by Jaida Jones
Then he set to poking at the lump. To his surprise, the silver stuff moved. Not easily; it wasn’t fragile. But with dedicated pressure under the pad of his thumb, he found he could push it aside, like globs of not-quite-dry paint. Rags tried and failed to ignore Shining Talon’s attention on him as he pushed at the stuff, discovering that he could pull the silver away in layers, like peeling a piece of fruit. As he gently tore aside a thick strip, he caught a glimpse of something white and gleaming beneath. On its surface were intricate etched patterns, like the ones he’d seen in the fae ruins.
Rags hesitated. There was something special under there. Why keep peeling when it was obvious to him, if not to Shining Talon, that he wasn’t the one meant to hold on to it?
Better to leave it in its protective coating until they ran across someone actually worthy of the thing. Like One’s master. Whoever that was.
“What about your fragment?” Rags asked. Shining Talon’s silence was wearing on him, dragging him down like his nails clawing the lump’s surface. “You and the lizard”—One didn’t look up at this, deeming Rags unworthy of her attention—“were in the same place. Wouldn’t it make sense for her to be yours?”
Shining Talon looked at Rags as if he were trying to decipher the question.
It wasn’t that tough a puzzle. Rags had unlocked worse to get to the fae.
“What?” Rags asked finally, less demanding than he’d intended. Whinier. “Something on my face?”
“I do not see anything. I must look closer.” Shining Talon rose to his feet in an instant, taking Rags’s chin in both hands and turning it toward the meager candlelight before Rags had the chance to yelp a wordless protest. “All is well with your face,” Shining Talon concluded.
“Then what about my question?” Rags demanded, warning flares burning to life in his gut.
“Ah.” Shining Talon’s gaze slunk away like a kicked dog. “I sought to answer without offense. Because of the uncertainty inherent in human nature, it was decided that my fragment should be the last uncovered.”
“Okay.” Rags waited for more. There had to be more.
Shining Talon lifted his eyes to meet Rags’s. “It was thought that if I were to be found alongside my own fragment—if gathering the fragments was without appropriate difficulty—the Great Paragon might fall into unfit hands. Arranging it in this fashion allows me to study the other masters and judge the quality of their character before the Great Paragon can be completed.”
Rags’s mouth struggled to find the right scathing remark. Typical fae, making something as complicated as possible, not appreciating the shades dappling the space between truth and lie. Now Shining Talon had to pin all his hopes on Rags, who carried a sorcerer’s shard in his heart.
Rags was no expert in fae lore, but his had to be the exact definition of unfit hands.
The urge to run pierced him. Once, while he was sneaking through a storehouse at thirteen, a stray nail had gone through the leather sole of his boot. The pain had been so sudden, the resulting rush of adrenaline so heady, that he’d finished the job quicker than a cat, without leaving a single drop of blood on the floorboards.
Pierced by a rusty nail was how Rags felt now. He wanted to bolt out the window, flee down the street. He’d figure out the rest on his way to the city.
A snort of laughter escaped his lips, followed by a convulsing peal of the damn stuff. If he ran, he’d be killed.
Being the best at thieving was his favorite thing. It was also what had trapped him.
“Are you unwell?” Shining Talon asked with real concern.
“Do fae not”—hysterical wheeze—“laugh?”
“They do. It does not look like . . . this.”
“Ugly, you mean?”
“I did not say—”
Rags waved the unnecessary apology off before it could ruin the moment. “Don’t sweat it. You were staring, I used a figure of speech, you’re gonna have to work on not taking everything at face”—another chortled snort—“value.”
There was a knock at the door. Rags tucked his treasures away and answered it.
Two trays of food waited for them outside. Rags pulled them in. One waited for him to close the door again before she sniffed warily at the bowls of steaming stew-slop, wrinkled her finely carved nostrils, and recoiled with a shake of her head.
“More for me, then.” Rags sat on the edge of the small room’s small bed, balanced a tray on his knees, and dug in.
He didn’t bother with the spoon at first, using a hunk of stale-but-not-seasoned-with-maggots bread. He hadn’t realized until the first bite how hungry he was, and he wasn’t satisfied when the bread was finished and the crumbs slurped messily off his fingertips.
Bread gone, the edge taken off his hunger, Rags reached for the spoon, no longer needing to plunge his face directly into the bowl.
He had the spoon halfway to his mouth when something flashed in his peripheral vision. A hard force stung his wrist, startling his fingers open from their grip and sending the spoon flying across the room in an arc of meat, potatoes, and brown gravy.
“Fuck!” Rags scrambled to keep the tray from sliding off his knees, bowl clattering on wood. He gripped his stinging wrist, leveling his accusation at the asshole who’d slapped the spoon out of his hand.
That asshole was Shining Talon.
“My lord,” Shining Talon said, distressed enough to forget what minimal progress they’d made, “are you all right?”
“You hit the spoon out of my hand! Do you think I’m fucking all right?”
“Yes, I did remove its fell presence, and not a moment too soon.” Shining Talon crouched at Rags’s side in a warrior’s position, ready to pounce. He was staring at the spoon as if it were the great weapon in the room, not the giant silver lizard.
Speaking of, her three eyes were tracking the proceedings with what looked like amusement.
Could lizards chuckle?
Rags groaned in irritation. “What are you talking about, Shiny?”
“That dangerous contraption—” Shining Talon began.
Rags put the tray aside on the bed, where it would hopefully be safe from Shining Talon’s “instincts,” and stalked over to the spoon. Shining Talon shouted as Rags bent to retrieve it, already at Rags’s side again. How did he move so fast without stirring the air in the process or making any noise?
Shining Talon gripped Rags by the wrist, real distress on his face. It made him look less unfamiliar, and also kind of funny.
“If it will not release you from its spell,” Shining Talon said, “then I will sacrifice myself to its command in your place. Will you accept the substitution, Iron Thing?” This last bit seemed to be directed to the spoon.
Nothing happened in reply, because Shining Talon was talking to a spoon. An ugly one, as spoons went, iron and old, but harmless.
Rags pinched the handle and wiggled it experimentally. Shining Talon’s lips parted, baring his sharp teeth.
“Me,” Rags said. “I did that. I moved the spoon.”
“The Spoon,” Shining Talon repeated darkly. “A foul name for a foul item.”
Rags tried to pull his arm free of Shining Talon’s grip, knowing from the start that it was pointless. “You don’t know what a spoon is?”
“I know now, and that is enough. I will not be tricked by it a second time.”
Rags patted the back of Shining Talon’s hand. “Could you maybe let go of me so I can eat my soup? Because that’s what spoons are for. Eating soup.”
Incomprehension. Shining Talon still regarded the spoon like he was waiting for it to sprout barbed tentacles and lash out.
“Your people seriously didn’t have spoons?” Rags asked, growing tired of the stalemate.
It actually worked, or seemed to, because Shining Talon finally took his gaze off the hated spoon. “You truly know nothing of our kind?”
“I truly don’t,” Rags mugged. Then he regretted going for the easy mockery, realizing a split secon
d later what was going to happen as a result of his bullshit.
Shining Talon was going to try to patch the holes in Rags’s knowledge of fae stuff.
Sure enough, his fae companion moved to stand by the window. Although it was shuttered, Rags couldn’t shake the sensation that the fae was looking at the village below, could see straight through the wood boarding the windows to the scenery beyond.
Was that something the fae could do? Rags had been honest when he’d told Shining Talon he knew shit-all about them.
“Hundreds of years ago, you would have heard my people in every breeze, seen the flicker of our hair in every rippling brook. Our laughter rustled in the tall grass. Your time held no meaning for us. We were ageless, fearless. No blade could kill us, save for one made of iron. One made by man.”
That sounded a lot like what Rags had already heard. The fae had once lurked around every corner, ready to lure children away with sweetsong to sleep for a century. While the children slept, the fae stole their youth and beauty, sucking it from their bones, leaving their clean-picked skeletons tangled in lush vines.
The queen and her sorcerers had at last driven them back, making the countryside safe for travelers and trade, for families and newborns.
Rags looked at Shining Talon. All he could think about was how swiftly he’d sniffed out Morien’s spellwork on Rags’s heart. He’d sensed that Rags was bound without having to ask, and had grieved it instantly without even knowing Rags.
None of the stories Rags knew about the fae suggested they put their own kind to sleep for hundreds of years. A restless mind might dart around wondering what else had been left out of those tales.
Weird. One moment Rags was trying to cram as much food as possible into his mouth without choking, and the next he was too aware of the fae in the room with him to swallow. Shining Talon was probably the last of his kind. Someone mourning an entire race of people.
“Your people should’ve realized a weapon doesn’t make the best peace offering.” Rags knew it was horrible the moment he said it but couldn’t take it back. He waited for Shining Talon to look at him with loathing—or worse, with the resignation of total disappointment.
Beneath the heavy fabric of the cloak, Shining Talon crossed his arms. He didn’t move more than that, but he somehow looked wearier than if he’d slumped against the wall. When he turned away from the window to look at Rags, his gaze wasn’t miserable. It was distant.
“More than a few of us expressed our concerns,” he said. “After the Lying Ones had killed our best warriors, they began closing in on the Bone Court. Our king and queen sued for honorable peace. Your queen had other ideas.”
That explained why the fae had been soundly wiped out by sorcerers. Honor wasn’t worth the breath it took to say the word when you had to choose between your blood being spilled or someone else’s.
Rags had been both teacher and student of that particular lesson. Dane’s dark eyes and hopeful, bruised face rose from the depths of memory where Rags kept him banished.
Rags banished him again.
The room’s lone window creaked open, snapping Rags out of his reverie.
Rags peered over Shining Talon’s massively broad shoulder. The fae had already whipped around to face the source of the noise.
One stood on her hind legs, front claws between window and ledge, levering it open in its rickety track.
“Is it—she—supposed to do that?” Rags asked.
“One acts on her own only if she’s caught the scent of her master.”
In a blink, she’d shouldered the window completely open and slithered with weightless grace over the ledge. Her tail swished once.
She was gone.
“No,” Rags said, brain catching up with him. “Uh-uh, we’re supposed to stay in here, and we’re definitely not supposed to let the big silver lizard leave this room. If the locals see her, we are all—”
“You are Rags the Thief.” Shining Talon paused with one hand on the windowsill, one leg already outside. “Do you not flout authority with your very vocation?”
“With my very— Shit, Shiny, listen, we can’t—”
“We cannot stop her,” Shining Talon said. “For this reason we must accompany her. To mitigate panic, should it arise.”
Rags rubbed his chest, thought about how pissed Morien was going to be, and quietly said, “Fuck it.”
Then he followed Shining Talon, climbing out the window into the dark, horse-dung-smelling street.
25
Somhairle
Somhairle’s favorite spot in Ever-Land was a copse of birch trees near the lake at the edge of the grounds. Surrounded by purple hopswitch, flowering smokebranch, and ancient cat’s-a-roses, this was where he slipped into other worlds countless times, huddled over a book or a fresh play from the city, another of Laisrean’s occasional presents.
Thinking of you. Laughed when the princess turned into a donkey. Missed your laughter joining mine.
There hadn’t been one of those for some time. Laisrean had never replied to Somhairle’s letter about the birds. Had it not been delivered?
The silver glimmer of his carousel across the water beckoned, or mocked, daring Somhairle to return to a more dangerous realm of fantasy: the nostalgic past.
How could he do otherwise, after he’d learned this terrible news about House Ever-Loyal?
How delayed the news had been. He was mourning nearly a full year too late.
This terrible answer to the terrible questions he’d purposefully ignored since Faolan and Morien turned up on his doorstep.
When had House Ever-Learning grown so beloved by the queen?
When had House Ever-Loyal turned against the Silver Court?
When had his mother determined he should receive no news of past friends, of the city’s shifts and struggles?
Somhairle once counted the House’s eldest daughter, Inis Ever-Loyal, as his truest friend among the Ever-Families. Had she been an active agent in their betrayal or a victim of her parents’ scheming? The friends of Somhairle’s childhood, the brightest memories he treasured of weightless laughter and acceptance—which of them were buried deep in traitor’s earth, never again to feel the warmth of the sun?
It frightened him to think such hatred for the Queen lurked even in the hearts he’d thought he knew best, had certainly loved most.
No word of it from home. No warning. If the Queen had thought such news would distress her weakest son, of course she would prevent it from reaching him.
Her total power and keen gaze, once a little boy’s great comfort, suddenly reminded him of the worst of his fevers, a chill gnawing him ragged from within.
If only Somhairle could have flown off with the few surviving birds who’d escaped Ever-Land. They hadn’t returned yet, though Morien had been absent two days.
Somhairle approached the house more determined now to don the courtly gear of gossip and learn all he could from Lord Faolan. What had happened to House Ever-Loyal, every painful detail. He’d swallow every bitter draft to the last.
Only Morien’s horse was back in the stables, all haunch and trembling bone.
Red fabric shrouded the windows.
Storm clouds knit direly above the nearby trees, growling closer.
Black leaves blanketed the front steps. They shattered, rather than scattered, when Somhairle tried to brush them aside with his silver crutch.
Inside, Faolan lingered before a locked door, gaze fixed intently upon the empty keyhole. Somhairle, perhaps too kindly, let his lame foot knock against the wall in warning.
Faolan whirled with a tinkle of ornamental gold. Several chains of varying lengths hung around his neck, one bearing a medallion imprinted with the quill seal of House Ever-Learning. In a thigh-length tunic and fitted breeches in complementary shades of muted sage, his thin shirt a whisper of cool lilac beneath, he looked like a summer hillside.
How many outfits had he packed for this purportedly brief visit?
“Fo
r all there is to recommend him,” Faolan said quickly and with brittle cheer, “Morien the Last is a uniquely difficult houseguest.”
“That sounded nearly apologetic.”
“On my honor, I would never apologize.”
Believable. On the Hill, kindness was misinterpreted as weakness, an unwelcome reminder of frailty in Catriona’s Silver Court, where the Queen was forever young. An apology was capitulation.
Catriona did not capitulate.
“I wondered if you might dine with me tonight.” Somhairle’s lines came out as smoothly as if he’d rehearsed them with more than a statue troupe in the glen. “I’d welcome the chance to hear more of your exploits on the Hill.”
“Your hospitality overwhelms this servant of your mother’s crown.” Faolan affected a bow, though it didn’t appear to mock. A dappled pattern of shadow dogs hunting ghost deer cavorted across the back of his jacket. “I hope Your Highness isn’t offended by my transparency, but after an hour with Morien the Last, I’d kill for a real conversation.”
Somhairle’s laugh drowned out the imagined jeering of his brothers, some of whom must have warned Faolan against expecting too much from the youngest prince.
Though Faolan cast a narrow glance over his shoulder as they left Morien alone to his private business, he didn’t appear to find anything lacking in Somhairle’s company. He even refrained from pointing out, as though Somhairle might not have been aware of it, that there was no meat at dinner.
The dining room was built for a cozy twenty, white walls and dark wood. Through the windows in the daylight, the dying garden would have been visible. In Ever-Land, the greenery had ever remained fresh as first blooming.
Until Morien’s arrival.
Currently all one could see of Somhairle’s cultivated shrubs and flowers was a gaunt scattering of haunted, hunching shadows.