by Jaida Jones
Laisrean waved a spoonful of herbed potatoes before pausing to eat it. “You know how Mother is. She sees spies and traitors everywhere. She has me chasing down little leads and putting in my time to show she values the Queensguard. It’s a sensitive subject, since the fall of House Ever-Loyal.”
Was it Inis’s imagination, or had Laisrean been looking straight at her when he said that last part? He’d turned her blood to shards of glass as easily as a sorcerer with his spells.
“Can’t say I get the opportunity to spend much time with any of her sorcerers, though.” Laisrean’s attention was back on Somhairle. “How’d you meet Morien the Last? The man’s always busy.”
“I’ve had his unique company at Ever-Bright Manor for weeks now.” Inis had to admire how smoothly Somhairle could insult someone while stirring a bowl of soup, waiting for the broth to cool.
“Hm. And he invited you back to court with him, did he? Think it has something to do with Her Majesty? Nice surprise for Mother, that sort of thing? Or because she asked him to bring you?”
“I’d never presume to know her thoughts.”
“Haven’t seen her lately?”
“Only her reflection in mirrorcraft. Gifts come from the castle, but of course she doesn’t have time to visit. I’m not here to take over your job, if you’re worried about that. I couldn’t do it. Roaming about with the guards, talking to them man-to-man . . . I doubt they’d be convinced.”
Laisrean tore into a hunk of buttered bread with a snort. Inis rearranged the vegetables on her plate. Her appetite had departed for good when she again saw the leather cords around Laisrean’s thick wrist, on display after he’d rolled up his sleeves to eat. She had to keep from staring at them and willing them to burst into flames on Laisrean’s arm. Instead, she stabbed a carrot, sliced it in half, and went in search of something else to dismember.
“—carrot ever do to you?” Laisrean was asking.
“My apologies,” Inis murmured. “I’ve never been in such royal company. Is it impolite to eat in front of people one wishes to impress?”
Laisrean laughed. “She’s fascinating, Somhairle. Where’d you find her?”
Somhairle didn’t have to come up with another quick lie. Three fluttered her wings and knocked over his glass. It landed in Inis’s lap, wine spattered like fresh blood on the pale silk.
Inis leaped to her feet amid a flurry of Somhairle’s apologies. Laisrean lunged across the table with a handful of cloth napkins, while Three took off and flew in circles overhead. Somhairle’s attention shifted to his owl and his expression barely changed. Inis was too busy mopping the red stains off her skirts to notice Somhairle snatching the blindfold from her pocket, until he’d pressed it to her chest.
He must have heard something from Three. But what?
Inis reached behind herself to finish the deed. She tied the knot without hesitation.
Laisrean froze when he saw the blindfold. Not another napkin to sop up the damage, and he knew it instantly. His face changed. Inis recognized his new expression before he managed to cover it, almost immediately, with perfect courtly training.
It was fear.
But why would a loyal prince be frightened of a sorcerer’s blindfold?
“Little brother. Where’d you get that?” Laisrean asked.
“You.” Somhairle’s cheeks were flushed and feverish. “You’re a—”
He didn’t get the chance to finish. Laisrean clapped a big hand over Somhairle’s mouth, moving with unexpected speed for someone so big. There was grace, agility, muscle under his weight.
Shh, he mouthed. Inis realized he’d angled them so he was between Somhairle and the mirror over the fireplace. As though he didn’t want them to be seen. As though someone were watching through the glass.
“Little brother!” Laisrean spoke loudly. “Why, you’re choking! Shouldn’t try to talk with a full mouth! What manners are they teaching you out there in Ever-Land? Come, let me take care of you!” He hauled Somhairle along, remained between Inis and the mirror, indicated with his eyes that she should follow him.
His body shielding her, she went with him into the next room, where the only mirror in sight was covered with a red cloth.
A red cloth exactly like the one Inis still clutched to her chest.
Laisrean kicked the door shut behind them and released Somhairle gently, setting him on the edge of the bed.
This was Laisrean’s bedroom.
“Sorry for the manhandling,” he said, very quietly. “Couldn’t let you say what I suspected you were about to when you could be overhead. Almost had my cover blown once today, and I couldn’t risk it a second time.”
“—you’re a spy,” Somhairle concluded.
“What gave it away?” Laisrean eyed Three as he said it, already suspected it had to do with the owl.
“You met with someone she knows last night. It’s—complicated,” Somhairle said.
Laisrean folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the door. “I’ll try to follow along,” he replied.
76
Rags
Since the moment they’d met, Shining Talon had been impossible. Rags couldn’t take a step without the fae in his shadow, couldn’t rise on a stormy day without Shining Talon shielding him from the rain. There was no telling him different. He was stubborn as he was regal, and it drove Rags to distraction that he couldn’t make the big lug see reason.
In earlier days, seized by extreme frustration, Rags had even wished that Shining Talon would climb back into the coffin where Rags had found him and go to sleep.
Until Shining Talon started doing his best impression of a Sleeping fae all over again.
Rags never thought he’d actually see this. But now Shining Talon didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He was so caught in his private misery that Rags suspected he could throw himself out the window and Shining Talon wouldn’t look up.
Which was fine. Really. Rags should’ve known better than to get used to something. Everything, good and bad, got snatched away in the end, since time was the greatest thief of them all.
That didn’t mean he was happy about it.
“You know, this is the last thing we need.” Rags paced back and forth in front of Shining Talon, barefoot on the fancy rug. On top of everything that was making him itch with frustration, there was another added weight: he couldn’t talk about what they’d seen. Not directly. Using the nap-and-blindfold trick required two people, and Rags’s partner in crime was currently out of commission.
Maybe permanently. This was why Rags always worked alone.
“You’re looking queasy. We should see if Prince Sunshine or Lady Fury can order you some soup. Do your people eat soup? Or is that impossible, given the way they feel about spoons?”
Rags had given up looking for any change in Silent Talon’s expression. The crossbones at the corners of his mouth stayed put. And what was the point of staring at what once had been animated, only to be confronted with the equivalent of a tragic oil painting?
So Rags looked out the window instead. Watched the Queensguard in their shiny plate armor running drills in the courtyard. Thought about how Shiny needed a better nickname. Forget stealing: this was the first job Rags had done where he was hoping to make it out of the place with what little he’d had when he arrived. Like still-breathing lungs. He wondered if Angry Inis was going to get through this in one piece after everything she’d lost. And if Somhairle was truly willing to throw his family over for the fae, because fuck what was right, he had blood and money to protect.
Rags belonged here least of anyone, and he’d enjoyed a lifetime of being stepped on to enforce that knowledge. Inis was new to it. She’d been born Ever-Noble, then had her world shoved into a smaller box, shuttering its bright expanse when it was packed away.
There’d been a time when Rags never would’ve worried about any of this shit. The fact that he did now had to be Shining Talon’s fault.
Evening passed into night, and
the Queensguard drills ended late. Rags turned away from the window, disgusted with himself and the state of his life.
“Gonna lie down for the night,” he said, expecting nothing in response. “Make sure I don’t catch whatever’s got your tongue. Maybe the windlings are making a comeback.”
It wasn’t a ruse. He was exhausted by the prospect of throwing himself against Shining Talon’s stony grief for the rest of the evening while Inis and Somhairle were at a fancy dinner.
Rags, for the first time in his life, wasn’t hungry.
After closing his eyes, he had barely enough time to inhale before he felt the blindfold being pulled from his pocket and tied around his chest.
When Rags opened his eyes again, Shining Talon wasn’t looming over him. Instead, he was stretched out next to Rags, lying on his back with his hands folded over his stomach.
He looked like he had in the coffin. Like those fae they’d found trapped in the mirror room. The thought of him under the ground without Rags to come dig him out made Rags shiver.
Shining Talon had to quit this shit or Rags was going to lose it.
“I am causing you distress.” Shining Talon’s voice was soft. “This is not my intention.”
“You’re distressed,” Rags said. “You get to be. I’d say I get it, but I don’t. I don’t have an entire people to mourn.”
“I cannot leave this place,” Shining Talon said. “I’ve sworn an oath to you, an oath I would not break, but abandoning those trapped . . . it would be a crime of the highest order.”
“I know.” Rags licked his chapped lips like a snake testing the ground in front of him. He didn’t want the earth to crumble under his feet like it had in that fae maze. “Listen. Remember Dane? I told you about him. Only . . .” Only not really. He hadn’t told Shining Talon everything. Hadn’t told anybody.
Silence followed. Rags let himself believe it was his duty to fill it.
“I was ten. Maybe twelve. The years blur together when you don’t know how old you are, you know?” Shining Talon knew. He’d needed to ask the water how many years had passed while he’d been sleeping. “I used to rummage through the butcher’s garbage for scraps. And there was this kid. He caught me once. Offered to bring me better cuts, if he could sneak ’em away.” Rags laughed through his nose. “Obviously not meant for the street life. But that’s exactly what he wanted. We’d sit in that alley and he’d beg me to tell him stories about the Clave, the other thieves there, what I’d stolen that day, how I almost got caught, how I’d hidden for hours in a pile of laundry, like it was all some kinda game. Sometimes, when he showed, he’d have these big purple bruises on his arms or his face. Said he fell, or walked into the meat slicer. Clumsy kid.”
Rags rolled his eyes. Sometimes they’d stayed on the roof all day, watching the sun sink like a fat golden coin beneath the Hill. The heat of the roof tiles against his back, sunlight in Dane’s hair, the goofy wheeze of his laugh: it was all as vibrant as ever. “Used to listen to me like I was the royal bard mouthing off about princesses in Storyteller Square.”
Rags looked at Shining Talon out of the corner of his eye, but he was staring up at the bed canopy. Impossible to know whether he was listening. But Rags had started telling the story. He had to finish it.
“It wasn’t long before he was saying he wanted to join me. I’d train him in the thief’s life, and we’d live free on the streets.” Rags scratched an itch on his nose. “I don’t gotta tell you that a butcher’s kid’s never gone hungry. He was soft, inside and out. I was using him for food and that clapboard never suspected. I told him he was an idiot. No way I was taking any apprentice, and especially not one so green.”
Rags’s throat clenched, tight and hot.
“But he wouldn’t leave it alone. Kept nagging. Going on and on about how great it’d be. Eventually, I got fed up. I was settling into the city, making my mark, and I didn’t need a starry-eyed kid dragging me down. The next time he talked about running away from home to pick pockets with me, I stopped coming around. No more back-alley butcher’s shop visits. The meals weren’t worth the hassle.”
Rags waited for something, anything, from Shining Talon. A disapproving look, a wrinkled nose. Nothing. Probably he wasn’t listening, and Rags was telling this story for no one but himself.
Rags kept telling it.
“Life happened. I got pinched selling off an old lady’s prized emerald brooch, and I did six months in lockup. After that, I had to build myself back up again, practically from scratch. Didn’t have time to think about Dane. It was over a year before I went back to the butcher’s shop to check on the kid. Felt bad, you know? Wanted him to see that I was still kicking, in case he was worried.”
Rags was cursing himself for starting this. He’d never thought about how awful it’d feel to share this part with someone else.
“When I finally made it back, the butcher’s shop was boarded up. Full of squatters. I fished the story out of one of them. The butcher and his wife left one night, split town without telling anyone where they were going. Locals waited the respectful amount of time before they started looting, and meat spoils something awful. Nobody thought much of the stink. Took a while before they found Dane’s body in the cold room, stacked between sides of beef.” Rags coughed a nervous laugh, though the story wasn’t funny. “They had to stop and call in the Queensguard after that. Law said his head was knocked in. Could’ve fallen. Always was a clumsy kid.”
Dane had been running from something, from someone hurting him, and Rags had been too caught up in his own worries to notice. He wasn’t anybody’s savior.
He didn’t want to fail Shining Talon the way he’d failed Dane.
“What I’m saying is”—Rags stared burning holes into the canopy over the bed, unblinking, until his vision blurred—“we don’t have to take off. Who said anything about leaving?”
“You have been moving.” Shining Talon spoke at last. “You have not stopped moving. I assumed this implied more travel was imminent.”
Rags groaned.
“And there are orders from the Lying One to find Four, Five, and Six,” Shining Talon continued. “When those orders change, they may require a new journey—”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Prince Sweetheart hasn’t figured out where he’s supposed to go next. We’re stuck here until he does. I guess we’re gonna have to use the opportunity to bust your buddies out.”
“They are children.” Shining Talon released a long breath that sounded like he’d been holding it since their discovery of the mirror chamber.
“Shit,” Rags said.
“Yes, it is shit,” Shining Talon agreed. Rags didn’t laugh at the curse on his perfect fae tongue. “I know I am young. I am a warrior who has not proven himself. I was unable to protect you from the Lying One. Neither am I able to protect them. They are dying.”
“Quit feeling sorry for yourself, Tal.” Rags tried out the new nickname, let it roll around behind his teeth. Couldn’t call him Shiny after they’d found that glittering torture chamber, all silver blood and polished glass. “Clouds the mind. Gotta keep that clear for working out how to pull off the craziest jailbreak in . . . well, ever. Thriftlamb the Unstoppable wouldn’t even try this. But we’re gonna save those kids.”
For Dane, and all the others like him ground up by the city.
Rags felt something tug at his wrist. Tal’s fingers hooked under his sleeve, drawing him close. Their fingers interlaced like a key turning in its lock, the bolts sliding seamlessly into place. Rags stared at the ceiling, aware of his palm pressed to Tal’s as they lay side by side. The fragment in Rags’s pocket warmed with approval.
“You are exactly who I knew you would be,” Tal said, “from the moment I opened my eyes.”
“You like the nickname, then?” Rags asked, because his throat was tight again, his cheeks hot.
He half turned on the bed, aware of the hard, bony press of Tal’s hip against his own. Did fae have bones of iron? N
o, it was iron they despised. The Ancient Ones, giant beasts, had skeletons of stone, which Oberon Black-Boned had used to build his court.
Their palaces were the bodies of age-old creatures. And here was Tal, a prince of his people.
Rags’s head swam with possibility, with the desire to climb on top of Tal and try to wrestle some of the impossible grief out of him. But there was a shadow in the beat of his heart. Pain like a splinter deeply embedded.
This wasn’t the time. Daring as ravens, Rags reminded himself. He’d found something more important than snatching what he wanted.
“You can stay, if you want,” he said, “while I sleep.”
Slowly, carefully, he settled into Tal’s side. He set the palm of his free hand on Tal’s shoulder. Then he closed his eyes, because looking at Tal while he suffered was too much from up close.
“I would like that,” Tal agreed.
Never a moment of stillness until this. Rags knew it couldn’t last. But for a few deep breaths, he let peace wash over him, holding the warmth of Tal’s body against his.
77
Cab
Cab told Sil everything he’d learned from her contact while, a flight of stairs down in the Gilded Lily, Einan died onstage.
She returned covered in a paste that smelled suspiciously like red wine and didn’t bother going behind the screen to change out of her soiled costume. Cab accidentally saw a flash of her slim, flat chest before scrambling to look away.
“Well, you survived.” Einan came back into Cab’s line of sight wearing a simple shift dress, whipping her red hair out of her face into a braid. Her lips were stained berry-dark, shapely against the ghost white of her freckled face. “That’s something. Betray us all yet?”
Cab didn’t know where to rest his eyes. At least he’d spent enough time with Einan that her barbs no longer hooked into his skin. “I swore myself to your cause and I meant it. I’ll do whatever it takes to earn your trust.”