by Jenn Stark
This sounded a lot like a pinkie-swear ceremony, and I suddenly realized what Ma-Singh was doing.
“Ma-Singh,” I said warningly. At the far end of the room, two people entered, swinging the door back with sharp urgency. Nikki and Nigel, the only two people other than Ma-Singh at the Vegas house who’d witnessed the strange bonding ceremony on the deck of the ship in the North Atlantic. Both of them now looked like they’d been struck with a brutal, killing fervor, their eyes flashing with intensity, their bodies rigid, ready to spring.
The generals paid no attention to them. Their gazes were on me. Not the curious artifacts jutting out from underneath my hands, but me. My face, my body. As if committing it to memory, imprinting me on their very minds.
“I know I can count on all of you to do your best whenever called to serve at Madam Wilde’s request, no matter how challenging or subtle,” Ma-Singh intoned.
A chill raced down my spine as the generals leaned forward. They started speaking then, but not in English. Each of them whispered words that sounded almost like a benediction, prayers wrought in their beautiful, hypnotic, and powerful native tongues. I exchanged a startled look with Ma-Singh, but he spared me only a moment’s glance—a very smug moment’s glance.
“I am glad to hear it,” he said as the generals fell silent. They sat back, but they didn’t look like people in a daze, or who’d been hypnotized into fealty. I was the only one who seemed to be fazed by the experience, and…dammit! The nails had sunk into me after all in my distraction, sharp bolts of pain lodging into my hands.
I stood quickly then, whipping my hands behind my back as Ma-Singh stood beside me. I may have had a dozen new fans, but they didn’t need to see me do my hedgehog routine. “Thank you,” I said, staring out at their solid, fierce faces.
I would have said more, but I didn’t have the chance. As one, they stood, their backs stiff, their eyes fiery, their manner filled with pride of purpose. They bowed to me, some of them crossing their hands over their heart, then straightened.
“Kyakka,” Ma-Singh said, or at least that was what it sounded like he said, and I recognized the lilt of the Japanese word of dismissal.
So did the oldest general, whose eyes flared even brighter at the end of the room. An expression of unspeakable ferocity chased over his face, then he turned and left.
The others followed behind them. In another minute, the room was completely empty save for Ma-Singh, myself, and the Aces of Swords.
“That,” Ma-Singh said with satisfaction, “was instructive.” He eyed me, his gaze dropping to my spiked hands. “I think I approve of these new weapons of yours.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
With no one here who didn’t know the truth, I pulled my claws out from behind my back and lifted them toward Nikki.
“A little assistance here?”
“You’re going to have to come up with a better release mechanism, you know,” Nikki said, but she strode cheerfully enough toward me down the long room. Her grin echoed Nigel’s, but I saw as well the curious intensity in their expressions, matched by Ma-Singh’s. They knew what had just gone down between myself and the generals. They’d felt the pull of the Gods’ Nails too.
The Mongolian general had used this new tool in my arsenal to help build a powerful connection between me and his top military personnel, but I realized in a flash that it could be put to more personal benefits as well.
“Thank you,” I said as Nikki approached. I held my hands out to her, palms up, the long bone spikes fully visible above their incision point in the base of my palm—helpfully cauterized by the magic of the Gods’ Nails, and stinging like hell. The sight of the artifacts caught Nikki up short, as I expected it to. So I continued, taking them all in with my gaze.
“I’m leaving shortly for Mexico. I know you want to keep me safe. But you can protect me best by staying here and coordinating the response to any new attacks from Interpol, SANCTUS, Gamon, or whoever else decides to come to the party. I need to do my work alone.”
“No.” Nikki and Nigel voiced their dissent as one, but Ma-Singh merely nodded.
“Yes,” I said, curving my hands around the nails. They both stiffened, and I could see the war of outrage playing over their faces, but I didn’t feel bad about it. I wasn’t going to pull them into danger.
“Promise me,” I said. “I can’t worry about you following me where I’m going. I want to know you are doing the work that needs to be done.”
“Where are you going?” Nikki asked brusquely, her hands clenched. My heart twisted in my chest, but I needed her assurance.
“Promise me first,” I said. “I’ll tell you, and if I need you, I will call—I will. But I need to know you’ll stay here otherwise.”
“Fine,” Nigel said, his voice clipped. “We’ll remain unless and until we are summoned.”
Nikki whipped her head toward him, her eyes blazing, but she nodded tersely.
“I’m traveling to the marketplace in Mexico City,” I said, bracing myself for their outrage. To my surprise, however, their faces blanked. They nodded. As if now that the promise was made, the tension flooded out of them, their path made clear.
“You will need provisions, a plane,” Ma-Singh said, settling in front of the laptop open at the head of the table. “Security at least to get you through the landing site. Then they will fall away. We’ll have local eyes on you as well. It would look strange if we didn’t, to anyone who was watching.”
I didn’t like that, but I saw his point. “Fair enough. I’m leaving today, though—tonight at the latest.”
Nikki had moved in front of me. She’d picked up a couple of linen napkins from the table, and, using them to shield her palms, she placed her hands on the nails. Even through the thick cloth, I felt the jolt of awareness at her touch.
“Then you’ll need these out of you,” she said with a rueful grin. “I seem to recall this as being not particularly pleasant.”
“I trust you,” I said, remembering Armaeus’s words. “I trust you, I know you are my friend, my protector, my—”
My breath caught as she yanked the nails free, and, happily, it didn’t hurt nearly as much this time. Nothing like a little practice. Blood gushed forth over my wrists, and Nigel cursed, pulling off his shirt in one fast movement and catching up my hands with it.
“This job just keeps getting better and better,” cracked Nikki, winking at me over Nigel’s hunched shoulders. He straightened away from me, my hands now effectively tourniqueted together. Ma-Singh, for his part, had already taken the nails from Nikki, their gleaming white surfaces unblemished in the cradle of silk he used as a buffer between his bare hands and the potent artifacts. He exchanged the linen for their silk wrappings, and replaced the nails in the jade box.
“You’ll take these with you,” he said.
I nodded. The nails weren’t ideal weapons, based on the logistics of using them, but it would be good to have them along in case I needed to turn an angry crowd. And where I was going, I suspected there would be a lot of angry people. I still needed more information, however. And for that I needed Armaeus.
“Get the plane ready. I’ll be back as soon as possible.” I worked my hands free of Nigel’s shirt, shuddering a little as the wrist wounds pulled against the cloth. Still, the bleeding had stopped. The puckered edges of the openings stretched toward each other, the flaps of skin making me only a little bit queasy.
“I thought you were leaving tonight,” Nikki said, but her tone wasn’t challenging.
Ma-Singh answered for me, pointing to the laptop. “She’s been summoned to Prime Luxe. A Council limo has been idling in front of the house for the past ten minutes.”
I curled my lip at the idea of being summoned anywhere, but there was no point in arguing. It was close enough.
Nigel and Nikki left the room with so little fanfare, I almost felt abandoned, then quickly stuffed that emotion down. If this was going to work, I needed to remain in control of my own emotions,
especially the pettier ones. Gesturing to Ma-Singh to follow me, I made my way down the long, empty halls toward the front of the mansion.
“You don’t trust the loyalty of the generals?” I asked him quietly as we passed several doors, voices evident on the other side engaged in a United Nations’ worth of languages.
“I trust them implicitly. I trust you implicitly,” he said, with a candor that pierced me as effectively as the spikes had, resulting in an equal amount of pain. “But they know you less personally than I do. While they will protect you and follow you, I needed them to believe you as well. Until you earn their trust outright, I do not quibble with how I achieve that belief.”
I frowned. “It kind of feels like cheating.”
“Will you risk your body and all your abilities against any enemy of the House and those whom the House protects?”
“Of course I will. It’s just—”
“Then it is not cheating,” he said, cutting me off. “It’s working more quickly toward your goals. I do not know if the nails would work so powerfully with a leader who is not noble in heart. But these weapons are of the gods. So presumably not.”
“Depends on which gods,” I retorted, but I couldn’t argue too much. I’d seen the impact of the nails already. I knew their value. I’d simply have to live up to the expectations I’d set in the minds of his—my—generals. As much as I suspected they would follow my orders into the fire, even without the nails, knowing that they’d been compelled to protect me made my own actions even more critical. I couldn’t fail them. I wouldn’t.
True to Ma-Singh’s word, Armaeus’s limo was waiting for me at the curb. I turned to the Mongolian general and shook his hand, wincing only a little at the pain in my wrist.
He noticed anyway. “You are too lax with your sense of personal care, Madam Wilde. It’s no wonder you inspire your allies to be so protective and your enemies to be so rash.”
The Mongolian’s face was a mask of genuine, almost fatherly, worry.
“I’m working on it.” I grinned. My heart seemed to expand a little as he gazed so somberly at me, and I pulled him into a quick, hard hug. He grunted with surprise, straightening quickly, and I let him go before he burst a blood vessel. But when our gazes met again, his seemed undeniably brighter.
“I’ll have the plane in place this evening,” he said.
“Good.” I hesitated, then held out my hands for the jade box. “Let me take that to the Council.”
Ma-Singh scowled, but I wiggled my fingers.
“Nikki was right. I need a better way to retract these than finding someone I trust. I have a feeling that requirement is going to prove problematic where I’m heading. If there’s something they can do to facilitate their use, I have to let them see it.”
Not for nothing, Armaeus had likely been salivating over the prospect of studying the artifacts. It would give him something to do while I grilled Martine about everything he knew. The kid might think tagging along was a good idea, but that was a total nonstarter. Still, I had to talk with him before I left for Mexico. I needed to know what he knew.
Reluctantly, Ma-Singh handed over the jade box. “Even with the weapons of the gods, you must take care, Madam Wilde. Your enemies are all around.”
I winked at him. “Thanks to you, so are my friends. I like my odds in that regard.”
He sighed but obligingly stepped back. The limo driver had exited the vehicle and now stood by the rear passenger door. I dutifully turned away from the general and slipped inside the car’s cool, dim confines. I realized immediately that this was a more luxurious limo than usual, even by Armaeus’s exacting standards.
Right after that, I realized that I wasn’t alone.
“Miss Wilde.”
As the vehicle pulled away from the curb, the lights came up dimly, and I saw the Magician’s long catlike form reclining in the seat opposite mine. Beside him, perched like a bobbing reed on the shoreline, was Martine.
“You guys going stir-crazy already cooped up in your penthouse?” I asked, trying to mask my dismay.
Armaeus lifted his hand to wave off my protest. “You’ve brought the Gods’ Nails. We don’t have a great deal of time. If I may?”
I handed over the box, not feeling strong enough to have the spikes anywhere near my wrists again so quickly. The boy scuttled over to my side of the limo as Armaeus took the jade container.
“You wield fire.” Martine leaned forward in his seat, his bright eyes fixed on the box.
I looked at him sharply. “How do you know that?”
“The pictures on the wall.” He smiled. “The sword you hold—it’s sharp, like these, but longer. And it’s on fire.”
I frowned, trying to recall the imagery on the dome of the central building of Atlantis, or even the mural Martine had painted. The sword had been held aloft, yes, by the figure in those paintings. But there hadn’t been arcs of fire bursting forth. I would have remembered that.
Armaeus murmured something in a language I didn’t recognize, not that that narrowed down the options much. He sighed with deep appreciation as he unwrapped first one spike, then another.
“What?” I prompted, but he ignored me for another long minute as he stared at the nails, passing his hands over them as they lay on the cloth.
Martine began to squirm beside me, and I totally was right there with the kid. I never was big on waiting. I was big on finding out what I needed to know. “So this Birdhouse,” I began. “What is it exactly?”
“You’re not leaving the child behind, Miss Wilde. You need him.”
I waved at Armaeus irritably, as if I was swatting a gnat, but Martine apparently wasn’t on Radio Magician.
“A beautiful place!” the boy said eagerly. “Everyone’s dressed like birds, especially the women. There are mostly women there.”
Oh, fantastic. I tried to keep the grimace from my face. “And why do we need to begin there?”
“The map back is in my heart, not my head,” Martine grinned at my blank look. “I cannot tell you how it is to find the tunnels, only that I will know the way by sense. I cannot picture it, only travel it.”
Tunnels?
“I told you so.”
I ignored Armaeus again.
“But why?” I asked Martine. It seemed almost a foolish question, but to my surprise, the boy answered it.
“Because of the prophesy,” he said, nodding quickly as I blinked at him. He drew in a long breath and recited the way any ten-year-old would a memorized poem. “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild, With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”
I knew that poem. Yeats. The Stolen Child. Oddly enough, it was one of the first things I’d learned to read all on my own. Hearing it now, from the mouth of a babe…a shudder rippled through me.
Martine pounded his chest with pride. “I am the human child. You are the wild faery. Yes? When you reach the waters, you will be our salvation.”
I lifted a hand. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a wild faery.”
“Really.”
I glowered at the Magician. He countered with an insouciant smile and tapped the artifacts resting in his lap. A chill danced up my arms.
“These were found by the Vikings,” he murmured aloud. “But they predate them. These inscriptions are druidic.”
I peered at the scratches on the bones. “Kind of all the same, though, right?”
“Perhaps better stated, they did not originate with the warrior class, but with the religious. Sorcerer priests were meant to wield them, to enact the will of the gods. That they were found and co-opted by a chieftain isn’t surprising, but they would never reach their full power in the hands of a non-Connected.”
That made sense, given how much power they seemed capable of in my hands. If they’d been truly that mighty, I doubted they’d have been barricaded up in that chair. They’d have been used as a weapon, not a symbol of strength.
Armaeus was clearly reading my thoughts. “There is also the damage they wrought to be considered. Your wrists are healing. Mortal wrists don’t.” He chuckled. “You could consider these nails a one-use-only venture for most. The threat of them proved to be powerful enough to serve the need in cementing the chieftain’s power.”
So they’d been sealed into a throne for a reason. Agony was a good reason.
“At least they didn’t hurt as much the second time I used them.”
Armaeus nodded. “The nails have imprinted on you, Miss Wilde, and do not give up their allegiance so easily. They’ll obey—and they’ll prefer to obey you.”
“Yeah, well, how can I retract them more easily? I’m not taking Nikki on this trip.”
“I will help you!” Martine said quickly, his eyes shining with excitement as he looked from the nails to me.
“And option B would be?” I prompted, staring at Armaeus.
“You can cast them from you, and they’ll slide out far enough for you to grasp the hilts in your hands. Too far and you’ll lose them, of course.”
“Cast them…” I frowned. “I tried that. Those things were not shaking free.”
He shrugged, returning to his contemplation of the sticks. He pointed at the lower section of the left nail. “It’s quite clearly written here.”
I leaned forward, but as expected, I wasn’t able to translate Ogham. “Might as well be an IKEA insert.”
“When the time comes, sweep your arms down and away from your body. But the strength it will require will dim your abilities on all other fronts. Once they are affixed, I would only release them…with great care.”
The limo slowed, and I glanced up, expecting to see the über-kitsch of the Luxor in front of us, the great sphinx and obelisk marking the earthbound entry into Armaeus’s spectacular home of spirit, metal, and glass.
But we weren’t at the Luxor at all.
“No,” I said automatically. “No, no, and no.”
I seemed to be saying that a lot. One day, someone would listen.
Today, it appeared, was not that day.