Master of One

by Jaida Jones

  No point in speculating, when Cab focused on what had happened.

  These people had gambled, and he was all there was to show for it.

  Cab might’ve thought low of himself, but he wasn’t worth nothing. He cleared his throat. Turned his face to Sil’s strange fae gaze. Said what he should’ve from the beginning.

  “Thank you”—he hesitated, hand over his chest, anticipating pain if he touched it—“for what you did for me. And for trusting me—when I’ve done nothing to deserve trust.”

  Sil’s eyebrows were white. Cab caught notice of them as they rose, twin flashes of lightning against a golden sky.

  “For returning you to your natural state? This is not something a man should give thanks for. Have humans truly become so diminished?”

  “What you did for me . . .” Cab didn’t know how to let it alone. He had to ask the real question, the one sleeping like a cat in the shadows at the back of his mind. “Can you all do it?”

  He still thought like a soldier, wondering: Was Shining Talon not the ally he seemed? Had he merely feigned helplessness in the face of humans and their suffering?

  Sil smiled crookedly. The expression was impossibly wise on her young face. Over her shoulder, the redhead scowled at him like he was worse than a beetle that ate dung.

  “I was a promising young Enchantrisk, rare among my people. Our magic allowed us specialized knowledges, so while I cannot wield a sword to protect my allies, I have this.” She lifted her small hands, showing her elegant, too-long fingers that tapered at the tips.

  Cab imagined those fingers burrowing through skin, muscle, bone. His heart twinged in pain, but without fear or shame. Wholly different from how he’d felt after Morien’s magic had burrowed into him, an invading force without respect for anything living.

  He finally touched the spot on his chest through his shirt, and was surprised to find it numb. Like it had been removed—put someplace safer. He remembered what Sil had said to him about Morien and the sorcerers, before the pain had become too much.

  “They’re growing strong off you?” Cab rubbed his fingertips into the numb spot a moment longer, then stilled his hand. “Sorcerers like Morien. That’s what you said.”

  Sil didn’t flinch. Maybe fae couldn’t—or wouldn’t—show vulnerability. She ducked her head, wavy falls of hair slithering free over her shoulders like water. The older woman stepped protectively to her side. Gave Cab a look like he’d said something wrong.

  “We’re the ones asking the questions,” the redhead snapped.

  Sil shook her head. “I’d hoped he might be perceptive—and strong enough to think for himself, despite his training. He is. Doesn’t that make you feel better about his past as a member of the Queensguard, Einan Remington?”

  The redhead snorted in a way that meant definitely not, then spat onto the ground.

  “I had hoped we might talk about our future rather than linger in the past.” Sil’s voice, calm and clear, parted Cab’s thoughts. “The Lying Ones profit from the state of my people.”

  Cab couldn’t see how anyone could profit from the dead.

  There was his lack of imagination again.

  “We seek to explore a place with which I fear you will find yourself all too familiar.” Sil’s lashes skimmed her cheeks like the sweep of Cab’s scythe across Tithe Barley’s fields. How had he ever imagined he could escape his past? “The Queen’s catacombs.”

  Cab flinched. In spite of himself, all his training.

  Queensguard had blank faces. They cultivated silence for the guilty to fill. They didn’t react first, instead allowing others to reveal their own emotions and feelings.

  If it unnerved the townspeople—well, that encouraged compliance.

  Cab hadn’t marched with the Queensguard in some time. Yet his memory of the anthill tunnels beneath the Queen’s castle were fresh.

  The inspiration behind the initiate tours was that new recruits should swear allegiance not only to the sitting Queen, but to every queen before her, now lying in their sacred vaults beneath the Hill.

  No skeletons, no hanging cobwebs, no shrieking bats.

  Flickering torchlight. Stone tunnels and rows of pearlescent drawers housing the remains of their glorious queens.

  Captain Baeth’s first joke on their tour—“If your responsibilities ever get to be too much, recruits, the quickest way to end it all’s coming down here without supervision.”

  Not only royal remains set beneath the Hill, where fortifications were strongest, but traps peppering the tunnels to snare grave robbers and glory sellers. Fashioned after the style of the fae underground, which everyone on the Hill could appreciate only once the fae were defeated.

  “You’ll never hear whispers of selling Queen Thula Ever-Bright’s pinky bone, or Queen Reve Ever-Bright’s jewels.” Captain Baeth’s chest puffed like a proud gray dove. “These traps are deadly to anyone without proper clearance—only Queensguard knows how to get around ’em, see?”

  Sacred knowledge. To be granted only once they’d proven themselves and been sworn in.

  Cab didn’t trust he could remember every twist and turn they’d taken that night. He’d been wide-eyed, in awe of the captain and the royal catacombs. He hadn’t been paying attention to what mattered: How to get around the traps. How many there were. Which ones were set to maim and which to kill.

  “I was never . . .” Cab’s voice faltered. He pushed himself to continue. “I only passed through them once. I left the Queensguard before they initiated me into the highest ranks. If you need me to guide you, I’m sorry, but—”

  Need some guidance? One’s voice was like a sudden summer shower, gentle rain in the back of his mind. Trust me to help.

  “Ah . . .” Malachy raised his voice and his hand at the same time, pointing toward the end of a tunnel, from which a faint silver light had begun to glow.

  Cab felt a rush of warmth through his battered, still-beating heart, as the graceful shape of One coalesced at the end of the tunnel. He’d had good days and bad, days so dark he thought he’d never unburden himself of their weight.

  There was nothing like knowing One.

  “Oh,” Einan whispered, “damn.”

  As One entered the sewer chamber—picking her way around puddles of garbage, lighting her beautiful way forward—Sil began to smile.

  50

  Rags

  Rags had almost recovered by the time they returned to Lord Faolan’s country home.

  He’d spent the whole ride trying to move his hand. Weakly coaxing his fingers out from his palm, only to halt when the stabbing pain seized control once more. Breathing through the pain, then trying again. A little farther each time.

  Now they had another meeting with Morien, and he’d do what-the-fuck-ever to Rags for any damn reason.

  Granted, Rags made it easy for Morien by purposefully goading him. But that felt closer to control than waiting for punishment to happen out of nowhere. He’d do it every chance he got, until Morien figured it was pointless or Rags’s body gave out under the strain.

  Whichever came first.

  Rags walked into their meeting under his own power, deliberately kept his head down to avoid Shiny’s attempts to catch his eye, and cradled his wounded hand close. If he was going to have to work without it, he’d better start practicing.

  Except their meeting with Morien went smoother than Rags had anticipated, since Inis was the first one to speak up.

  “I know where we have to go.” She stood confidently in the middle of Lord Faolan’s study, facing Morien and Faolan with all the poise and bearing of the nobly trained. No Ever-Noble could say the ex-Lady Ever-Loyal wasn’t one of them by birth. In her velvet riding cloak, the hem of her gown embroidered in crossed lace swords, she was transformed—nothing like the tangled spirit of retribution Rags had seen thundering up the road to whack Cabhan in the face. Rags realized his mouth was hanging open and clamped it shut with a hard snap. “That is, if His Highness Somhairle Ever-B
right is still alive. I know his health has never been predictable, and it has been a few years since last I summered in Ever-Land.”

  Lord Faolan and Morien exchanged glances. Rags would’ve sworn that beneath the swaths of red fabric, Morien wore a smile that matched his lord’s.

  “Despite the unfortunate issues of ill health that plague His Highness, he is still alive,” Lord Faolan replied.

  Inis nodded, showing no relief or pleasure at the information. “I’d suspected. I didn’t think Two would have pointed me toward a master who was no longer among the living.”

  Lord Faolan settled a fluttering hand on the neck of one of his hounds. “Arrangements will be made for your safe passage to Ever-Land first thing tomorrow. His Highness spends all his days there.”

  The silver of Shining Talon’s eyes flashed in the corner of Rags’s vision. Rags turned.

  The fae’s broad shoulders carried the tension of a criminal lineup, breaknoses and cutpurses standing side by side to await condemnation or clemency. The black crossbones at the corners of his mouth shadowed his frown.

  It was killing him to be here, and yet here he was. The last of a proud people. And here Rags was, witness to Shining Talon’s pain, for no reason he could imagine other than dumb luck.

  “All the comforts of my home are yours for the night,” Lord Faolan continued. “In the morning, you’ll find new horses awaiting your next journey. Your service to the crown is commendable,” he added. “The work we are doing here, though I understand it has been harrowing and has required . . . uncomfortable elements of supervision, is necessary. As evidenced by the disappearance of our friend Cabhan, the enemies of Her Majesty grow ever bolder. We race against them. Let us harbor no illusions of what terrible chaos will reign should we lose that race.”

  Rags could see Inis’s jaw harden at the mention of their missing Queensguard, but she didn’t say anything, and left without protest when Lord Faolan dismissed them.

  Again, a massive, cozy bed awaited Rags for the night.

  Again, he couldn’t enjoy it because Shining Talon was dogging his every step.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” Rags snapped, throwing his boots across the room.

  They narrowly missed the drink cart, setting the crystal glasses shivering. Rags descended on it and snatched up a bottle of something tawny and expensive-looking by its neck. Out of habit, he tried to pocket a silver stirring tool, but his hand twitched so badly between the grab and the drop that it slipped free, fell to the rug.

  Not that it mattered.

  Faolan could have Morien tear him to pieces if he caught Rags stealing his precious hospitalities. The risk outweighed the reward.

  “Forgive me,” Shining Talon said—forgive me, like everything was his fault and not Rags’s. “I thought I had explained. My people do not require rest as you do.”

  It took Rags a blink to remember what Shining Talon was even responding to. The not-sleeping thing: one in a long list of circumstances that had seemingly aligned themselves against Rags, ensuring he never got a second free from Shining Talon’s golden supervision.

  “Right, and you’ve been sleeping for a thousand years already, so.” Rags threw himself on the bed, closed his eyes, and flung his arm over them for good measure. It took some doing to pry the stopper free from the bottle with only one good hand, but he finessed it, finally, with his shuddering thumb. The first swig he took burned down his throat into his belly, filling him with a sickly heat.

  Either it took a better tongue than his to taste the difference, or the expensive stuff was as tough to swallow as the cheap swill Minty brewed under his Clave bunk.

  Rags forced down the sudden longing he felt at the memories of his piss-stinking, never-warm-enough childhood. Nights spent sleeping with one eye open, expecting Mountain to wallop him and steal his last coins, or Sidle to pickpocket him the instant Rags lowered his guard.

  Another swallow of Faolan’s spirits. Rags didn’t know the name for what he was drinking, didn’t care. He was after the comforting numbness that billowed through his mind like hot steam from the city streets.

  He’d felt too much in recent hours. His whole hand pulsed like a raw nerve, sensitive to every dust mote in the air. He imagined it hurt worse than when Lady Winter, an old Clave folk hero, had sewn diamonds into her palms to escape with her stolen goods.

  His drinking filled the silence, though he could feel Shining Talon watching and judging him.

  Finding Rags obviously unworthy. Even now, Rags was in bed trying to black out peacefully, instead of working with the thing that fell from the stars in his pocket.

  There was no peace to be had in the dark of the crook of his elbow. Rags’s pain and his cure for that pain had him feeling light-headed, and when he sat up in one smooth motion, he only made it worse. As expected, he met the silver sheen of Shining Talon’s eyes.

  “You might as well take your chance and get lost now.” Rags gestured shakily with the bottle in his hand. He stared at the other hand, the one Morien had cursed. His palm didn’t look different, but he kept expecting a shard to surge from beneath the skin like a shark’s fin, betraying hidden danger. “I’m as good as dead on the streets without my hands. Pretend he’s killed me, and you’re free.”

  Shining Talon moved, was seated on the edge of the bed with both hands around Rags’s damaged one before Rags could slip away.

  For a moment, Rags was merely impressed. Even through his discomfort at being reminded again that he was hopelessly outmatched, Shining Talon had a presence, a gravity, that glowed with trustworthy brightness.

  Rags didn’t trust it, or he couldn’t. Safer to burn out the part of him that wanted to than to let it take root and flourish.

  He stayed where he was. He thought he was holding still, though it was impossible to be certain with the sway of the bed. He’d never been on a ship, but he could guess it felt like this.

  Then Shining Talon pressed his thumbs into key points along the back of Rags’s hand. The sharp pain in his joints lifted, reverting to a numb sort of pressure. The relief was sudden, brief, and exquisite.

  Rags almost melted, only somehow avoiding giving everything away. He was aware of Shining Talon’s gleaming silver gaze on him, how he seemed to want a response. Rags cast about for something. Or pretended to, until Shining Talon spoke again.

  “I did not know if that would work, but I see from your expression that you are no longer in intense pain.”

  So much for Rags having to thank him.

  “What do you mean, you ‘did not know’?” Rags withdrew his hand, flexed his fingers experimentally, and nearly cried with relief when they obeyed without blinding pain. A stiffness remained, his joint movement hindered by the mirrorglass shards, but the agony had ebbed. “My hands are my livelihood, Your Majesty. I trusted you with custody of my favorite one, and you’re telling me you treated it like an experiment?”

  Shining Talon’s eyebrows quirked. He bowed chin toward chest, again taking Rags’s hand in both his own. The touch was oddly cool, making Rags wonder whether the fever in his blood was real or imagined.

  A fae prince was holding his hand. Did the fae know what hand holding meant, or did it mean something else to them, like Kiss my ass or Want to talk to some trees together?

  Another swallow of liquor. If Rags was sick, this would kill his fever, right? Logical.

  “This generation knows so little of our kind,” Shining Talon said. Hardly fair. Rags couldn’t read the histories even if he wanted to. “You would no doubt have encountered fae glass in the ruins of the Lone Tower where I was awakened. Reflections, distorted by enchantments.”

  Rags remembered Mirror-Rags’s yawning mouth, the swivel of his scrawny neck, and barely contained a shudder. “Not my favorite of your accomplishments.”

  It felt small to complain to Shining Talon about fae cruelties. Humans, despite more limited means, had beaten them at that game, and how.

  “They are unsettling by nature,” Shinin
g Talon acknowledged. “They are the most powerful of our magic, and the most dangerous. Indeed, the Lying Ones based their mirrorcraft upon a perversion of fae glass. I performed what presented the most immediate solution—the same offered by the royal Enchantrisks when our warriors began to fall.”

  Rags’s heart thrust itself against the shard slicing its red muscle, a pounding ache in his chest when he thought of the beautiful fae pierced by mirror shards. It was one thing when Morien the Worst tortured a parentless thief, but his kind had done this to Shining Talon’s family, friends, brothers in arms.

  Rags didn’t want to think about any of it. He didn’t want to learn about the ways the fae had tried to fight a war they ultimately lost. How everything and everyone Shining Talon once knew was gone, the centuries passing over their black bones.

  How could one scrawny thief begin to cover the debt that was owed?

  Rags did what he did best and changed the subject. “So it’s temporary, then.”

  Shining Talon’s strong fingers found a tender place between the roots of Rags’s first and second fingers. He pushed in hard, the pressure furrowing to the center of Rags’s palm before it moved to the outer edge.

  Rags watched the motion carefully, intent on replicating it for himself later. He wouldn’t be beholden. Though in this precise moment, he appreciated the free hand for drinking and saw no reason not to take full advantage of his situation. He meant only to lean forward enough to meet the bottle, but instead found himself with his forehead pressed to Shining Talon’s broad, sturdy shoulder.

  For a moment, the world was steady.

  “Your ear has been damaged.” Shining Talon’s formerly merciless fingers brushed Rags’s torn earlobe with the same fluid ease with which he’d touched the stream in the Lost-Lands. Shining Talon, fae prince, talking to water. Asking it the time of day.

  Rags’s whole body turned liquid and slow. Shining Talon’s skin smelled of gold and blastpowder, like one of Blind Kit’s explosions taking out the wall of a vault. His heart mule-kicked at the thought of treasure.