by Jaida Jones
“I’m not the betting kind,” Inis replied.
61
Cab
Cab had to use the sword’s pommel to chip at the stone around the fae coffin, dirt laid atop ancient white rock that fought them for every inch. Einan hacked away beside him, holding one stolen dagger two-handed. Neither of them was as successful as One, whose claws raked away stone and soil without pause. Cab didn’t like to see her toil like that, but she told him she was happy to sharpen her nails for the next group of enemies. Cab left it at that.
All the while, the face in the coffin watched them.
The fae face.
When the fae had first opened his eyes, he’d screamed in horror, mouth open wide behind the coffin’s glass lid.
Once he saw One, though, he had stopped screaming and now showed no sign of fear. The sight of the silver lizard, a fragment of the Great Paragon, was enough to earn immediate trust, though Cab wasn’t sure it was something he deserved.
They had the coffin halfway out when they heard human shouting, echoing down a nearby tunnel and coming closer.
“We’re not going to get it out in time.” Einan cursed. Wiped dirt out of her eye. Smashed the dagger against the wall in frustration. “Fuck me! Should have waited for them to finish digging and then attacked, instead of getting caught with our pants around our ankles—”
“Something tells me there’d have been more Queensguard in place by then,” Cab said. “Like the Queensguard who are coming now.”
When they came, they’d bring deadly force. Moves Cab knew so well, he practiced them in his dreams.
Another shout. Almost on them.
The coffin exploded.
Einan threw her arms up to cover her face. Cab didn’t, knew he didn’t need to before registering why he knew. One wasn’t afraid. And not only because she was made of silver and couldn’t be cut.
The glass blasted to either side of them, leaving them unharmed. The body within slid out.
It hit the ground and the earth began to shake. Cab reached for it.
Protect him. One’s voice in his head. Then, Look out!
Cab spun around, stepping in front of the fallen fae. The Queensguard had reached the mouth of the tunnel. They carried torches, the flames glinting off royal armor and steel swords, making it easier to see how outnumbered they were.
The odds didn’t matter. Not to Cab. Not when One had no fear.
Einan shifted her weight uncertainly. A slender hand reached out and wrapped its fingers around Cab’s ankle.
I will borrow your connection to One of Many, a new voice said, and thank you for allowing me this sacred trust.
What? Cab’s palms were sweaty where he gripped the sword. If the fae needed One, then it was One he needed to ask.
“Shit,” Einan said. “What are we doing? What’s the plan?”
Strength, One explained. He’s been asleep for a long time. Needs a jolt to get him started.
The Queensguard began to pour in, and Cab lunged, stepping away from the fae to knock the first Queensguard back into the tunnel with a hard, swift blow from his stolen sword. He’d create a bottleneck to better their odds.
The Queensguard dropped his torch but it didn’t go out, flickering against stone. Cab smelled something singed. Hoped it wasn’t his trousers.
Right, he said to the fae. Do it.
It happened all at once, like the arrival of a summer storm. He felt something shift, a push from the inside of his skull.
With that push, jagged stalagmites erupted from the ground, rising like stony prison bars across the mouth of the passage. The Queensguard shouted, then were silenced, the light from their torches doused. Those who couldn’t move out of the way fast enough were impaled. Rock acted to protect the cave where the fae had been unearthed, lunging free of the ceiling into new formations to shield Cab, Einan, One, and the fae where they stood.
It would’ve made a prison for them underground, but more stone was crumbling away behind them, creating a narrow corridor through the earth. Their escape route was clear.
One’s voice in Cab’s head was approving as the sense of otherness receded. Then only the two of them remained in his head. Cab fought off a bout of dizziness from the strain. Stumbled, then kept moving.
Good work. Not that I expected any less.
“We have to find our way back to the others,” Einan said.
Her eyes were on the fae they’d discovered. Cab could only guess at the joy she felt knowing Sil wouldn’t be alone. If it was anything like what he’d felt when he’d encountered One, Cab was proud to have had a hand in it.
“Can you run?” Cab asked the fae.
The fae lifted his young, golden face. On his brow above his nose was a tattoo of a black crescent moon. He was marked with tattoos like Shining Talon’s, but fewer of them. Only one bone, on the middle finger on each hand, and nothing beside his bow-curved mouth.
“I will run,” he replied.
62
Rags
With cutlery in his trousers and a sleeping fragment in his pocket, Rags headed downstairs, Shining Talon dogging his heels.
It’d taken hours, and a half dozen dropped forks, before Rags had been able to get the things into his pockets. His hand shook from the exertion, fingers weak as newborn kittens.
But anything was better than focusing on Shining Talon in the room they shared. It was getting harder, impossible, even, to work up a head of steam about anything the fae prince did and said.
At least there was hope for getting the mirrorglass out of Rags’s heart. But there were other things that had wormed into that organ because of this quest, more insidious things, and he didn’t know how to be rid of them.
This softness would do him no favors in the street.
Inis and Somhairle were waiting by the door, one with a silver cat, one with a silver owl. Someone—Rags suspected Inis—had draped a decorative tapestry over the hall mirror to protect them from catching sight of, falling into, one of Morien’s twisted pantomimes. Rags held up his hands and framed all four in the right angles of his thumbs and forefingers. “Nice portrait you lot make.”
“Good. You’re finally up. Three and Somhairle have a few leads,” Inis said.
“What do you mean, ‘a few leads’? Isn’t it a straight shot, like how Cab led us to you and you led us here?”
“Ah.” Somhairle bit his bottom lip, apologetic. “That’s . . .”
“He’s practically sequestered here,” Inis began.
“That’s all right, Inis. I can explain myself. The trouble is that I rarely see anyone out here. The last time I was in a large group was when I was still in the city, and I was only a child then. Afterward, I rarely visited. We already know who it isn’t, since we’ve ruled out the servants and the few regular visitors I do get, but as for who it is . . .” Somhairle shrugged, still sheepish. “It’s more complicated than if I were someone with more friends. Or experiences.”
“Easy for you to say,” Rags muttered. His anger was misplaced, as always, but knowing that didn’t help the anger go away. “You don’t have this thing in your chest ready to shred your heart meat if we don’t do what Morien says.”
“Heart is muscle,” Shining Talon said, “not meat.”
“Listen up, Shiny—” Rags began.
“Enough.” Inis’s voice practically made the chandelier rattle, but more effective was the way Two rose onto his hind legs to back her up. Rags quieted quick. “This means we’re going to have to go to court. Together. Splitting up isn’t an option. We’ve already lost One and her master. We can’t afford to lose anyone else.”
“Me and him”—Rags jerked a hand Shining Talon’s way—“at court?”
“Morien can glamour Shining Talon so he doesn’t look so . . .” Inis paused.
Rags snorted an ugly laugh. “So fucking fae?”
“That,” Inis agreed. “Same with Two and Three. Make them look like a lap cat and a hunting bird to everyone else. Somhairle and
Three believe that if Somhairle is back in that place, something will trigger the right memory, and he can lead us to Four’s master.” She shrugged, hands in the air. “As you said, we need to deliver results.”
“If we ever find One and her master again, I’m going to be the one to clout him in the face,” Rags said, “as thanks for putting our dear Morien in a blacker-than-black mood and leaving the rest of us to deal with him.”
“It’s not a bad plan.”
Everyone turned to face the new voice.
Where there had been an empty receiving chair in the corner, Morien now sat, his legs crossed, fingers steepled.
Rags rolled his eyes, then made it look like he was studying the ceiling when Morien’s attention shifted his way. When he put his hands into his pockets, stolen silverware poked his palms.
“We thought you’d approve.” Inis dropped into a curtsy with a readiness that had Rags resolved to watch her more closely. Smart girl. “Even if Prince Somhairle’s constitution isn’t robust, he’s keen to help.”
“You talk too much,” Morien informed her.
“Now, Morien.” Somhairle’s voice was weedy and hoarse. “She’s my friend—”
“But not a friend to Her Majesty’s Silver Court, I’m afraid.”
“Disguise me too, then,” Inis said.
She clearly had more to say, but she bit down on it, not wanting to do anything that would put their sharded hearts, or Somhairle’s unsharded heart, in greater danger.
“Start with this one,” Rags said, louder than he needed to, as he pointed at Shining Talon. A little sleight of hand to draw Morien’s attention from Inis, cast it elsewhere while she wrestled her mutinous feelings under control. “Something tells me he’s going to need extra practice acting anything close to human.”
Shining Talon blinked, shedding whatever mood had threatened to take him. The idea of traveling to the Hill, the epicenter of the power that had murdered so many of his people: not good.
His silver eyes turned to Rags, but that was what Rags wanted, for a change. Ignoring the way it made him feel thirsty like a hot day.
“I had never imagined such experiences,” Shining Talon said. “Being with you is a marvel.”
“Ugh.” Rags ignored the twist beneath his ribs that told him he was pleased. “You ruined it.”
63
Rags
Instead of taking separate horses, they rode in a carriage to the Silver Court to arrive in style. This left Rags and Shining Talon trapped with two born Ever-Nobles, both of whom seemed convinced that mere hours before they landed at court was plenty of time to teach a common thief and a fae a lifetime’s worth of manners.
Although Rags knew what Two and Three were supposed to look like, the spellcraft disguising them made his vision blurry at the edges. What he knew he should see and what he actually saw were two different things, and if his focus wandered, he ended up seeing four animals in the carriage, not two.
As for Shining Talon, Morien had assured them the glamour would work on anyone who didn’t know who he was, but Rags had his doubts. Those innocent silver eyes shone through. He was so big, so golden. He filled a room, or a carriage, like no human could, his massive shoulders steady whenever the carriage hit a bump that sent Rags flying out of his seat to crack his head on the roof for the nineteenth time.
Whatever. Rags had other problems: like how their cover would be blown if he reached for the wrong fork at a dinner, or bowed a fraction of an inch too low for somebody who didn’t deserve it, or farted in the middle of a party and cracked wise about it to a deacon.
“You’re telling me there are seven forks to choose from at an informal dinner?” Rags refused to believe it. There weren’t tables big enough. “Then we’re fucked, and not ’cause of me; I’m a fast learner. Listen, Shiny hates cutlery. Went mad one time, thought a spoon was attacking me, knocked it across the room and would have fought it to the death if we hadn’t been interrupted. True story.”
“They’re arranged in order of size for each course. It isn’t difficult to remember. One new fork with every plate.” Somhairle’s patience hadn’t worn through yet, while Inis had long since given up, staring moodily out the carriage window and refusing to acknowledge she could still hear the sound of Rags’s voice.
There were bowing lessons next, then titles, and by the time Rags’s head was feeling stuffed full of nonsense like a stinking etiquette book, the countryside was rolling into properly populated landscape, which could only mean one thing.
They were on the outskirts of the city.
Rags breathed in deeply, could almost smell the familiar mix of cheap food and pollution. The press of too many bodies too close together. Tenements and sewers and laundries and countless pickpockets, scoundrels who’d steal the eyes out of your head if you didn’t keep watch on them.
Home.
Rags sat up straighter in his seat while Shining Talon frowned to himself. “The air smells wounded.”
“Don’t ruin this for me, Shiny,” Rags replied.
The capital was old, built on a mass of fae ruins. The castle on the Hill perched atop the conquered, the buried. Rags didn’t spend much time dreaming about that place. He’d had normal ambitions once: to own a room he could call his and fancy jewels none would be brave enough to nick, to eat whatever he pleased every night, and to sleep without somebody breathing down his neck.
The Hill could have its wonders. Rags would settle for comfort and a bad reputation.
He flexed his hand, trying not to wince. There’d be no life for him to go back to if he didn’t get these shards out of his body.
The tight set of Inis’s jaw told Rags she was thinking along the same lines. Thanks to Morien, Inis had lighter hair and a different mouth. The bridge of her nose was shorter, its end tilted up. No one would recognize her, but she couldn’t do a damned thing about her insides. The only change Morien had made there was the shard in her heart.
Then there was Somhairle, so good-natured about everything it was impossible to imagine him feeling bad about anything. Still, he’d called the Hill his home once.
Topping it off was Shining Talon. A member of the conquered race upon whose bones the first Ever-Bright queen had built her castle.
Yeah. It was a good thing Rags didn’t worry about anyone but himself. He would’ve been in too deep with this group.
The carriage ride passed all too quickly after that, in a blur of jostles and bumps. Somhairle tried hard to distract them, but his chosen topic of conversation—fae battle poetry, of course—was so boring, only Shiny was still paying attention.
As they passed through the courtyard, Shining Talon shuddered.
Rags didn’t ask him what was wrong this time. But he looked over. Big mistake. Shining Talon opened his eyes, bare slivers of silver peering out at Rags from behind their glamour of simple blue.
“There are shanks of iron buried beneath the crossroads here.”
“That’s worse than a spoon, innit, Shiny?” Rags replied.
Without warning, the carriage rocked to a halt. Rags nearly fell forward into Somhairle’s lap. Shining Talon, of course, remained statue still.
They should’ve spent more of the ride teaching him how to be clumsy like a human.
A rapping on the door, followed by “Out,” in the official voice of the Queensguard. The kind of voice Rags used to have nightmares about before his nightmares turned fae and feral. He almost relished the icy slide of regular fight-or-flight fear, a welcome change from the new instincts he was being forced to learn to face terrors he still wasn’t prepared to deal with.
Somhairle leaned over to the carriage window and cracked it open. “Perhaps you weren’t aware, but I’m Prince—”
“Out of the carriage, Prince,” the Queensguard insisted. “Her Majesty’s orders. For anyone who passes through, no matter their bloodline.”
“Yes. Of course. One moment.” Somhairle shut the window again, patted Three nervously.
R
ags didn’t have to ask where that nervousness came from. “If Morien’s sent us here to get ourselves arrested for being the shadiest group of bastards ever to approach the castle . . .”
“Say it louder, Rags.” Despite her sharp tone, Inis stroked Two uncertainly. “We are here because the Queen commands it. Aren’t we?”
“According to Morien,” Rags muttered.
“Then we’ll have nothing to worry about,” Somhairle said.
“Except that we’re glamoured in a fuck-ton of sorcery, and have a fae prince and two big-ass silver beasts of unknown power and origin with us,” Rags replied. “Other than that, we’re not suspicious in the slightest.”
“Best get on with it.” Somhairle opened the carriage door, raised his voice. “My apologies. My condition makes it difficult for me to move quickly, hence the delay.”
With an exaggerated wince, he levered his bad leg out of the carriage and braced himself on the doorframe so as not to stumble.
The Queensguard, being gracious, good-hearted, law-keeping servants of the crown, didn’t offer him one whit of assistance. Inis was behind him in a flash, taking his good arm, leaving Two behind with Three on the plush carriage seat. If Rags looked at them cross-eyed, he was almost able to convince himself they were a pair of regular Ever-Noble pets. Then he blinked, caught the silver sheen, and scowled at his own headache.
Shining Talon’s face was gray-pale. Was that a side effect of the sorcery, a mixture of his golden skin with the image Morien would have the world see when the fae stood before strangers?
Rags blinked. No, definitely gray.
“You’re not freaking out about the iron, are you? ’Cause you’ll blow our cover if you can’t keep it together.”
“I am together,” Shining Talon replied. “But I do feel as though I am being pulled apart.”
Rags sighed and grabbed Shining Talon’s arm. “You were asleep for a thousand years in an abandoned tunnel and you came out ten times better than anything else alive today. You can handle a little pat-down by a couple of clank-headed humans.”