Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1)

by Glynn Stewart

  “In the interests of avoiding bloodshed,” he continued, his voice colder than ice, “the Clans will accept a payment in blood and gold as reparations. The details of said payment will be decided by the new Speaker once he has been elected.

  “If, however, further provocations come to pass”—Grandfather’s tone was harsh, and I could see the Enforcer trying to melt away under his penetrating gaze—“such as, for example, unjustified sanctions on heartstone production levied as an attempt to falsely justify this murder,” he continued dryly, “the Clans would be forced to see this as a sustained campaign against us and would hold emergency elections for a War Speaker to lead us in open war against the Magus MacDonald and his dogs.”

  The threat hung in the air like bared steel.

  “Crawl back to your master, dog,” Enli growled. “Tell him the Clans will no longer deal with his minions. If there are to be negotiations for blood price for this murder, he will come to us himself.

  “Get. Out.”

  The tableau was frozen for an eternal moment until Enli released the Enforcer from his gaze. The man all but ran from the building.

  19

  The room was quiet for a long time after the Enforcers left. It felt different now, though, the grief now mixed with a slowly bubbling cauldron of rage. Grandfather had vented it for a moment and likely saved the lives of the two Enforcers he’d sent running, but the blood of the Clans was at a boil.

  Some conversations continued, though Mary and I were silent as we held each other. Enli wasn’t the only Alpha in the room—six of the other older men in the room were as well. In fact, unless I was severely mistaken, every living Alpha in Calgary was sitting in the Tenerim’s living room.

  The quiet conversations continued, but eventually Mary led me out of the living room and to her room. There, away from the politics and the talk of others, I held her as she wept out her grief for the man who’d raised her as his own.

  “Can you stay the night?” she eventually asked, leaning into my shoulder.

  “Not really,” I admitted gently. “I have to be at work early tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Mary said quietly, and I kissed her. “You should probably get going, then,” she told me. “It’s getting late.”

  She was right. Slowly and regretfully, I pulled away from her, and with a final kiss, she led me down to the front door, where I called a cab.

  I spent the cab ride home deep in thought. On the one hand, the Queen had charged me to track down the cabal, and the current conflict with MacDonald’s Enforcers had grown directly out of that. On the other, my main charge was to prevent a plot to attack and murder the Wizard.

  Any attacker would find it much easier to strike at MacDonald now that the Enforcers would have no support from the Clans, the strongest inhuman faction in Calgary. There was a good chance that war was coming, and that sort of conflict would lead to attacks on the Wizard.

  None of this brought any of us any closer to finding and destroying the cabal and undoing whatever plot had allowed them into the city. The Covenants that bound the inhuman community in Calgary together lay preventing such incursions at the feet of the Wizard, and he had failed. His failure was the key to the wedge driving everyone apart and weakening not just his position but everyone’s.

  Someone was playing a long game, and I was afraid the growing division amidst the inhuman population was not merely something they’d allowed for in their plans but something they wanted and had helped create.

  That thought suggested that the corruption in the Enforcers might stretch higher and wider than my worst fears—if Winters himself was involved... But that was impossible. If a Wizard’s right-hand man was betraying him, surely a Power in his own right should be able to detect that?

  There were only three major political leaders in Calgary among the inhuman community—the Lord of the fae Court, the Wizard, and the Speaker for the shifter Clans. Tarvers was dead, murdered by an Enforcer. The new Speaker wouldn’t have his experience or the respect he’d earned from the Wizard and Lord Oberis. The political balance would shift—inevitably toward the Wizard and his Enforcers.

  Was it as simple as that? The presence of the cabal used as a catalyst to weaken Court and Clan, allowing the Wizard to seize power? Or maybe forcing the Wizard to seize more control, distracting him away from another factor, exposing him to an attack on a level only Powers could understand?

  The politics of Powers left the bodies of mere men and inhumans in their wakes, and I had been drawn into the orbit of not one but two of those mighty creatures. If a third Power was involved, an enemy of MacDonald’s seeking to use all of this as a distraction to allow a strike at their level, I was so totally outclassed, it wasn’t even funny.

  But I was used to that. Most supernaturals were out of my weight class. It wasn’t like I had to fight whoever was coming after MacDonald; I just had to expose them.

  On that happy thought, the cab pulled to a halt outside my apartment building. I paid the driver and got out, shivering in the cold. A bitter north wind had swept into the city while I’d been at the Den, and I was grateful for the winter coat that warded off some portion of the chill.

  A fog was beginning to settle in, and the cab quickly vanished in the shadowed white of the city’s winter night as I headed toward my apartment. A shadowy figure appeared out of the white mist, and I had a moment of déjà vu before a fist caught me flat in the center of the chest.

  The Queen’s armor absorbed much of the blow, but it was still enough to stagger me and leave me open. A second blow smashed into my face, sending me collapsing backward, blood bursting from my nose.

  Shadows whirled around the figure, masking and concealing features and motions. It lashed out with a kick that I rolled to avoid and come back onto my feet. My right hand flashed forward, and I pitched a bolt of green faerie flame at my assailant.

  A whirl of shadow absorbed the flame, and then a tendril of darkness lashed out at me. It hit me in the left shoulder with a hammerblow the armor only barely kept from breaking bone.

  Pain rippled out from my shoulder, and I focused on it, channeling it into my flame. I swung at my attacker, and to my surprise, a whip-like tendril of green flame flashed into existence around my hand, slicing through the shadows to a grunt of surprise from my assailant.

  Unlike any flame I’d conjured before, the whip didn’t fade, taking a physical presence in my hand as I slashed it at my attacker again. It wrapped around the figure’s waist, holding them in place for a moment.

  Then a blow of pure telekinetic force smashed into me, picking me up and throwing me half a dozen feet backward. The shadow glamor shattered, as did my flame whip, and Laurie advanced on me, all glamors faded and her full true features exposed.

  “What the fuck?” I demanded, rising to my feet, and the momentary distraction allowed her to unleash another hammerblow of force. This one caught me in the same shoulder as the first shadow tendril, and this time bone did break. Excruciating pain radiated from my upper arm, where her strike had landed.

  “My Lord’s orders were clear,” she told me, brushing aside a burst of flame I managed to conjure from my left hand. “You were to avoid Clan Tenerim.”

  I sensed the next force strike coming and rolled sideways, coming up to my feet facing the withered form of the hag.

  “He himself was there; he knew why I saw them,” I snapped at her. “What the hell is this?”

  Another hammerblow of kinetic force slammed into my chest, but the armor absorbed much of the impact again, and I managed to stay upright, though I still stumbled back.

  “He did not authorize you to walk into their Den and utterly flout his restrictions,” the Unseelie fae told me. “He respects you, but you cannot flout his authority like that and not expect consequences.”

  Anger burned within me now. Oberis’s precious authority was more important than Mary’s grief? After the service I’d freely provided, working together with his people, and even his knowledge
that I served the Queen, he was this petty? I obviously didn’t know the Seelie Lord as well as I thought!

  Pain mixed with the anger and drove me upright. I let my left arm hang where it fell, and raised my right to a ready position, letting my anger fuel the flame of my mother’s gifts.

  “Don’t be a fool,” Laurie snapped. “Accept your punishment; you cannot face me.”

  The mix of pain and anger drove me, and with a snap of my fingers, I re-conjured the vicious whip of green flame and lashed out at her. Fire hammered into her cheek, and I smelled her flesh burning as the whip seared her flesh.

  “I’d like to test that theory,” I told her. “Bitch.”

  20

  Even as I faced the hag through the gathering fog, conjured flame in my hand, I knew this was not one of my smarter ideas. Physically, we were about equal. She, however, had far more Power and more ways to use said Power.

  Anger and adrenaline rushed through me, and I advanced on Laurie, slashing the whip at her again. She managed to dodge this time and conjured tentacles of shadow, stark and black amidst the fog and the snow that was starting to fall.

  I cut the whip through the tentacles, snowflakes vaporizing as they hit it. The tentacles broke apart as the flame hit them, and I carried through to bring the whip flicking back around to wrap around Laurie’s arm as she raised her right hand to conjure something.

  The hag screamed as the flame struck her flesh again, but it wasn’t merely pain. My ears rang with the echoing noise of her voice, and I used the whip to jerk her toward me so I could punch her. My fist collided with her jaw, and the scream cut off.

  However, that left Laurie mere inches from me, and more black tentacles suddenly flashed out. One drove into my broken arm, the pain making me cringe away from her. A mass of blackness encased and snuffed my whip as other tendrils of darkness grabbed my wrists and legs and tried to hold me in place.

  I channeled the pain from the pressure on my broken arm, and for an instant, I was utterly encased in green faerie flame, glowing like the will of the wisp who’d been my grandfather.

  The shadows that held me burnt away in the green light of the fire, and I stumbled backward, trying to break free enough to conjure more flame.

  Laurie didn’t give me the time. In my moment of focus as I burnt away the darkness she’d shackled me with, she loosed another hammerblow of force. I was too busy trying to get distance to dodge, and it slammed into my left leg, just below the knee, with a sickening cracking noise.

  I fell. Another blow of telekinetic force hit my right leg, just above the knee, with another sickening crack. With three broken limbs, I collapsed into the half-packed snow, pain rendering me incapable of thought, let alone motion or fighting back.

  She knelt by me, the glamor of a pretty young woman I’d first seen her in flickering into place around her.

  “I told you,” she said sympathetically. “You brought much of this on yourself.” The hag surveyed the snow I lay in and the snow falling.

  “I’d leave you here,” she said bluntly, “but my Lord ordered you left alive. Like I said, he respects you. You just can’t defy his authority like that.”

  Pain swept through me again as she scooped me up. She made no attempt to be gentle as she walked through the doors of my building like they weren’t there and carried me down to my apartment. Once there, she casually dumped me in the middle of my living room floor, totally ignoring how my broken bones fell.

  I couldn’t prevent myself from whimpering in pain, and she looked back at me as I lay helpless in pain.

  “I told you, you brought this on yourself,” she told me. “Obey my Lord’s orders, and I won’t have to do this again.” She eyed me as she paused judiciously and then concluded, “Bitch.”

  At some point after she left, I passed out from the pain.

  Blurry perception returned, pain dominating the world.

  “I can’t stay,” a female voice said softly, my ears hurting at even that volume. The voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “If the Seelie lord did order this, he cannot know I was here—and I can only conceal myself from him for so long.”

  “I will heal him,” another voice, also female but totally unfamiliar, promised.

  “Good,” the first voice answered. “I do not like where this is going, and he is my only Sight into this mess. I need him.”

  I had a sensation of motion, and then pain screamed back into my world, dragging me back into unconsciousness.

  I woke a second time to even blurrier perception but less pain. I was on something soft, and I had a vague impression of a blonde woman leaning over me. She saw that my eyes were open and smiled gently before laying a hand on my forehead.

  Sleep, not unconsciousness, claimed me in gentle arms.

  The third time, I woke to soft female voices talking at the foot of my bed. I was conscious enough to realize I was in my bed this time and to compute that there was at least one person sitting on the end of my bed.

  I slowly opened my eyes and blinked against the harsh brightness for a moment. Then I realized that the room was actually very dimly lit, only a lamp in the corner turned on, as my eyes slowly adjusted to any light at all.

  I recognized one of the voices now and croaked her name.

  “Mary?”

  The conversation stopped, and I suddenly had two women at the head of my bed. Mary all but threw herself on top of me, hugging and kissing me. My limbs responded slowly, stiffly, but eventually I got an arm around her.

  “Give him a moment, m’dear,” the blonde woman told Mary, her voice carrying a thick Irish accent. “Only his right arm really works right now.”

  The stranger’s words reminded me, and I tried to move my other limbs. They were stiff, slightly unresponsive and painful to move—but they moved. They weren’t broken. Mary helped me sit up, and I looked questioningly at the stranger.

  “I think I owe you thanks, but who are you?” I asked her.

  “My name is Niamh,” the stranger told me. Her eyes were a stunning green color, and she had tied her blond hair up in a braid that wrapped around her head rather than falling to the ground. “Our Queen brought me here to heal you.”

  “You did this?” I gestured down at my surprisingly not broken body.

  “I am like you,” she told me, “a Vassal of the Queen but not noble. My father was a middling-ranked noble and a Vassal, but my mother was a mere dryad. I have some of both of their gifts, including healing, but I am beneath most noble fae’s notice.”

  “I suspect you manage that avoiding notice better than I do,” I groaned, slowly, with Mary’s help, raising myself to a sitting position.

  “So it seems,” she agreed. “Your upper left arm was shattered, both of your shoulders had multiple hairline fractures, your right leg was broken in four separate places and your left kneecap was actually sheared in two. I don’t think you avoid attention very well.”

  “You healed all of that?” I asked, impressed.

  She nodded. “That and a dozen or so minor fractures in your ribs,” she added. “You are very lucky you were wearing the armor the Queen gifted you. Without it, I judge your ribs would have been crushed and your lungs and heart like pierced with bone fragments. I cannot heal the dead.”

  I winced at her description of my actual injuries—and how much worse it could have been!

  “How did the Queen know?” I asked.

  “You are Her Vassal,” Niamh said simply. “She is at least vaguely aware of what happens to all of us, wherever we are. You are on a task for Her, so you are higher in Her thoughts.”

  “She’s afraid Oberis did order this, isn’t She?” I asked softly, remembering the half-heard conversation. “What does it mean if he did?”

  “He ordered an attack on a Vassal of the Queen,” the other Vassal said quietly. “The High Court will not approve. He will find them unwilling to take his calls for a time and their support lacking until he has re-earned their faith.

  �
��Aiding you in defeating this cabal and this plot upon MacDonald will go a long way towards that,” she continued, “but that presumes you are willing to let him.”

  I looked at Mary, who was now cuddled up to my side, and I squeezed her gently. I saw the worry in her eyes at Niamh’s words and smiled as reassuringly as I could through the pain.

  “I don’t think I have a choice,” I said quietly. Then a sudden horrified thought struck. “Shit, I have to get to work!”

  “You’d look rather silly going in today, dear,” Mary told me quietly. “It’s Sunday.”

  “I kept you mostly unconscious,” Niamh explained. “It was easier to heal you that way. It still took two days. Your work did call your mobile on Friday; I told them I was a nurse in the ER and you had been in a minor car accident but would be fine by Tuesday.”

  She fixed me with a steady glare.

  “And you aren’t going anywhere until then,” she told me. “I need to return home tonight, but you are not going anywhere until Tuesday. Bed rest or, if you have to go anywhere, you’re going in a wheelchair. Understand?”

  “I don’t have a...” I trailed off as she pointed. An expensive-looking unpowered wheelchair was sitting in the corner of the room.

  “Much of the healing process is not yet complete,” she explained. “You will be fully healed soon, but you must give the magic and your body time to work. Do not walk till Monday night at the earliest.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Mary promised. “Clem has agreed to let me borrow his car, so I can take you to the funeral Monday.”

  I gave her another gentle squeeze in thanks.

  “How are you getting home?” I asked Niamh.

  “My half-brother is a member of the Wild Hunt,” she told me. “A group of the Hunters is in Seattle today on other business. He will detour on his way back and take me Between to Ireland with him.