A Fair Fight

by Perkins, Katherine

  On a raised dais at the center was a table. Other than the Count, three beings sat at it, all on one side of the table. While all three were, as best Megan could guess, between four and five feet tall, with lithe, slender frames, there was a marked difference in that one had feathers and the head of a raven, one had a dog's head, and the third had a more humanoid head, but with dark red skin and an extremely long nose.

  "So, what are they?" Megan whispered to Lani.

  "Tengu."

  "Wait, all three of them are the same thing?"

  "Yes."

  "Why do they look so different?" Megan was used to faeries looking odd, but usually, faeries of the same type had at least been somewhat similar types of odd.

  Lani smiled. "If you asked them, you'd get three different answers. But probably at least partly because they like confusing people and making them ask questions like that one."

  Megan nodded. Since they had the connection here, Ashling and the Count had taken the lead in the diplomacy and explanations. With the way Ashling tended to explain things, combined with the fact that her father and the Queen had thought that getting help from here at all was unlikely, Megan was not overly comforted by that.

  They tried to keep it quiet as everyone watched the Count shove a white stone with his beak to slide it into place on the game board he was standing on. He then turned over a tiny sand-timer with his foot. The ancient creature opposite him moved a piece in turn. The crow and the tengu had been playing Go for a long time, even with the turn timer, as Megan and the others were intermittently brought tea. All conversation with the tengu so far had been in Japanese, Corvid, or occasional Ashling Charades, so Megan wasn't really sure where things stood as the game progressed.

  Eventually, Megan could ignore the other problems enough to shake her head in wonder at the Count. “Wow,” she said. “He really is the smartest crow on Earth."

  "Well, he's not /that/ smart,” Ashling said.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Of the ten games he's played, he's been beaten all but twice."

  Megan sighed.

  "So, is the Count's friend going to help us?" Lani asked Ashling.

  "Well, that depends. It's a very complicated question," Ashling said.

  "Depends on what?" Megan asked.

  "The price of tea in China." Ashling replied in a very serious tone.

  "What does that have to do with anything?" Megan said.

  "That's what people keep asking, yes." Ashling agreed.

  “So what did you come over here to say?”

  “Oh. He's agreed to take our message to the courts, and they'll consider sending a small delegation to the conference. Then, of course, the courts will consider the recommendation."

  “Okay,” Megan said. That definitely didn't sound very fast, but she supposed it was better than nothing, which was apparently what everyone was expecting.

  “But they want to ask you something first, to have a bit more data to take to the courts.”

  “Oh. Of course.” And Megan got up, stepped fully into the shrine and, with a bit of a curtsey, joined the Count across the table from the Tengu.

  “Thank you for coming, Highness,” said red one with the long nose.

  “Good to meet you, Megan,” said the one with the dog's head.

  The crow tengu nodded politely amidst making his next move.

  “Very nice to meet you, too. Thanks for having me,” Megan said, a little disconcerted. “There was information needed?”

  “Yes,” said the dog-headed one.“We hear that you are planning to attend school in the visual arts.”

  Megan blinked. She had been expecting them to start a discussion of the lake, An Teach Deiridh's military readiness, or her dad. “Yes, um. I haven't decided where yet.”

  “How would you illustrate the scratch on your arm?”

  “Um, as a crease in some long sleeves?” She'd definitely wear long sleeves the next time she saw her mom, just in case.

  “Reasonable. What medium?”

  “For a self-portrait? Probably just ink and paper, though I admittedly do a lot with pastels these days.”

  All three nodded, though Megan wasn't sure if the crow tengu in the middle was nodding at her or at the Count, who was nodding back to him. The Count then began pecking at the more white-stoned areas of the board. Eventually, he stopped and then looked up at the tengu, who said “Yes, and two more, for 20. And the komi gets you 26, but I, my friend, have 27. An excellent game.”

  Megan took this in. “So... was that everything?” she asked.

  The three tengu nodded again. “Thank you for coming,” said the dog-faced one.

  Chapter 8: Submerged

  Once upon a time, Megan had dreamed of having a palace. In her little-girl imaginings, it had white stone walls, a vast courtyard, a city full of adoring subjects around it, and especially high towers. It overlooked vast plains blending perfect emerald green with vast washes of pinks, blues, reds, oranges, and every other color she could imagine a flower could be. Then there were the fruit trees in neat rows, adding tiny delicate blooms and early season fruit to the mix of colors. On the other side, there were supposed to be high cliffs. From the towers, one could see for miles out over the vast, sparkling waters, or look closer, where waves dashed against the cliff faces.

  And looking at the ruined remains, gray with neglect and algae, Megan knew: somehow, she'd dreamed of Murias.

  The flower fields of her dream were there after a fashion. As was normal with Faerie, all the colors blended, even on the same plant. But instead of cultivated rows, there were wild, chaotic tangles of color as weeds battled it out with multicolored blackberry thorn patches. In spots, both had to give way for the hardier remnants of old flowerbeds. A few surviving fruit trees were in Spring bloom, flowers just starting to open up, but any effort to get to the uneven trees would require finding the way through the thorns. The skeletons of other trees provided some structure to climbing, choking vines and mushroom colonies—in their own way, even more fitting gardens for what Murias had become.

  The edges of the cliffs were now not that far from the wall, the stone showing signs of an oddly steep slope, with fragments of foundation stones jutting out. The structure had obviously once been both massive and ornate, judging by the scope of the ruins, but it had been undercut and mined out until almost everything had fallen into the sea. The old borders were marked by persistent fragments of walls that had once stretched over a mile. Here and there stood propped-up remnants of parapets or an arch or two standing entirely alone, a gateway opening from nowhere into nowhere.

  Scattered amidst the ruins were various tents, of widely divergent make. There were two central command tents, larger than the rest, while dozens of the smaller structures dotted the area.

  The only original part of Murias that had kept some semblance of itself was the grand table. It was truly vast, seemingly carved out of a single piece of stone. Lengthwise, Megan suspected that it would stretch the length of three football fields, maybe more. Despite that, at least in those times she'd sat at the table, getting used to the place, she noticed that it seemed to still have some magic to it. Specifically, when Riocard or Orlaith spoke while they occupied the joint head-of-table spots, even if Riocard's was currently slightly more elevated, she could hear their voices clearly from anywhere at the table.

  Similarly, as long as she was seated, she could hear the music of the two harpists that Riocard had set on either side of the table. He'd said something about "For old time's sake."

  Megan had to suspect that some of those old times were extremely happy, with the music mostly having a danceable, celebratory air. No one was dancing, though, and the music, so at odds with the fallen majesty of the setting, somehow just served to make it all the more tragic in her eyes.

  She couldn't quite understand everything that Riocard and Orlaith, along with their primary advisors, were discussing, and the music kept depressing her, so eventually, magic or no
, she left the table to check in on her friends.

  Finding Lani wasn't hard. The menehune were gathered with the brownies, or at least the brownies who weren't helping to make sure the table was set with enough cups and enough drink, or trying to politely guide arrivals from other regions to their places at the table. Lani was talking quietly with her father, who was dressed in Hawaiian ceremonial garb, even while the rest of his small delegation were dressed as if they might be ordered to go to work building something or other at any moment.

  Megan waited, not wanting to interrupt. They finished speaking a few seconds later, and Lani stepped over to her. "Hey, you okay? I know this is kind of weird."

  "Really weird, but yeah, I'm all right. Have the tengu or any of the other Japanese faeries shown up yet?" Judging by the morning with them, Megan hadn't really expected to see them this evening, but she had to ask.

  "No, and they're probably not going to right away, if they show up at all. This is just kind of initial strategy talk, the royals trying to impress people, and people with an agenda showing up so they can put their two cents in right away, and the royals can determine if they'll actually be helpful or not."

  "No wonder my dad looks so unhappy."

  "Yeah, this isn't really his kind of..." Lani paused at the sound of raised voices, then sighed. "Speaking of agendas."

  Megan wasn't sure if she wished she understood ancient Greek or was really, really glad she didn't, at the sound of some of the things Cassia and the figures gathered in front of her were saying. She knew her art, and Cassia, well enough to recognize most of the assembly. There was a single centaur looking around warily, almost ignoring the rest. Two one-eyed giants, cyclopes, loomed behind the rest, both staring down at the scene playing out in front of them. And then there were six figures, three females—Megan could tell one was a dryad, having heard enough in the past year about who was and wasn't a dryad, one was probably a nereid, and the last was some other kind of nymph dressed in vines—and three males, one of whom was a proper Bronze-age satyr, one a smaller Roman faun, and then a figure who looked almost like a male version of Cassia, with the mix of features. All six of that group formed a half-circle around Cassia and her cats, with the full satyr, the mixed satyr, and one of the nymphs occasionally stepping forward to more directly get into Cassia's face.

  Much as Megan knew she should probably leave what looked like a volatile situation alone, curiosity won out. Lani tried to stop her, but ended up just sighing and tagging along, after a last, quick hug for her father.

  As they got closer, Megan could hear the satyr speaking in almost threatening tones. “Don't want to be tangled up in another mess. We don't know that there'll be a direct connection. And if there is, we're not sure we want to risk being away from home when our own problems come back.”

  Cassia growled back a response. "Idiot. You really think you stand a chance if the Titans did get loose, huh?"

  The satyr reached out and shoved her, which drew a growl and a near lunge from Maxwell, before Cassia put a hand on the cat's head, calming it. Not that she looked especially calm herself.

  Despite her staring daggers at him, the satyr continued. "I'd rather not die being someone else's cannon fodder before I get to find out." The comment drew nods and vocal agreements from the others and inspired one of the nymphs to step in and try to push Cassia as well.

  This time, Cassia didn't so much as budge, at least until she turned her head to glare at the nymph. The woman backed away quickly after that, and Cassia turned her attention back on the satyr.

  "Fine, go back to Greece. No one here needs you anyway," Cassia spat back at him, before turning to walk away.

  Lani and Megan scrambled up to her. A couple of the other bunch looked, for a moment, like they weren't done causing trouble yet. The faun starting towards Cassia. The centaur grabbed him by the shoulder, said something in Greek, shook his head, pointed at Riocard, and said something else. The faun quickly took two steps backwards again, and the rest gave Megan, Lani, Cassia, and the cats some room.

  "You all right, Cassia? That looked pretty intense," Megan said.

  Megan assumed the first words out of Cassia's mouth were swearing, directed towards the other delegation, but it was quiet enough that no one looked at them. Finally, she answered in something Megan could understand. "I'm fine and will stay fine as long as they stay the hells away from me, or better yet, go home."

  "So you know those guys? They're not just being general-purpose jerks?"

  "I used to party with some of them. War parties, mostly. If they'd get their heads out, they're not bad fighters. But they're going to mess this up."

  "We'll hope for the—" Lani started to speak, before Ashling showed up, the Count settling on Lani's shoulder.

  "Come grab a seat. The king wanted to see you."

  "Us? Doesn't he have a lot of more pressing business, dealing with some of the folks showing up?" Megan said.

  "Plenty, but it sounds like he has a mission for us. I hope you remember the lessons in sneaking I gave you, Megan."

  Megan rolled her eyes but headed back to the table, letting her father finish an exchange with Inwar. He finally turned back to them, and the fake, diplomatic smile turned into a more tired, but more genuine one. "We have word that the Courts of Japan may grace us with a few representatives. I understand I have Counts-to-Eighteen's vaunted mastery of Go to thank, though I don't recall anyone assigning you that direction."

  "Caw, caw."

  "Yes, yes. One must have aspirations, but I understand that there's an organization for recognizing the world's best Go players. Keep practicing, and maybe they'll one day have to be a little more accepting."

  "Caw."

  "Indeed. But I also don't recall asking about that errand. Any other surprises we should be aware of?"

  Megan was tempted to tell her father about the dogs back at the pizza place, but she was pretty sure Cassia or Mr. Kahale had already passed the information on. "Nothing, Dad. We haven't really had time."

  "Always such a limiting factor. Ah well, then, since you have taken it upon yourselves to become diplomats, the smallest possible delegation seems particularly suited for Ashling and the Count."

  "Oh?” Megan wondered if there were some sort of pixie-size joke in that.

  “There are very few of our sort of folk in Spain, but those they have are learned and talented. And so it seems proper enough to send two of our own experts in linguistics, with a particular affinity for minor Spanish dialects.”

  Megan groaned.

  Ashling and Lani each had a few questions for Riocard, which Megan mostly missed, listening to the harps playing instead. Finally, the others left the table, so Megan followed along. Lani went back to her father to catch him up on what she'd been assigned to do—assuring him she could even make it to school first—and then went to inform Kerr. The brownie was helping to head up a food crew, assembling outdoor cooking pits.

  After a few words with Lani, Kerr approached Megan. "Don't worry, I'll check in on things at your house. If you're not back by a reasonable time Monday night, then I'll come cover for you again.”

  “I hate to take you away from your kitchen.”

  The brownie shuffled and shrugged. “Even the chef can take time off, given cause.”

  “Honestly, I hate lying to Mom even more now.” It wasn't like it used to be. She couldn't be sure her mother wouldn't understand. But where could she even begin?

  “Still probably best not to leave her panicking.”

  “Yeah. Thanks, Kerr.”

  Chapter 9: Proactive Princessing

  Despite all of the recent experiences, it ended up being school that felt really surreal to Megan. She kept looking to windows for signs of giant dogs, and daydreaming about exotic locations and people with the heads of animals riding fantastic beasts. She managed to keep up with her actual note-taking and assignments, but even with a decision on college looming, everything seemed drearily unnecessary compared to the pre
parations for a war just a ring of mushrooms away.

  She caught up with Lani at lunch, getting her food and heading straight for the art room. Normally, Megan was allowed to come in during lunch to draw or work on projects after her lunch, with the teacher occasionally looking in on the students who did come in during lunch hour. Today, she just wanted to sit in the back and talk quietly. "I feel sorry for Kerr, but I kind of hope this takes a while."

  "I don't know. Most of the time, I'll take AP World History over 'Stupidly Dangerous Things 101.'"

  "This is just a diplomatic mission. How badly can it go?"

  "How much time have you spent in Faerie, now?"

  "Not enough. I should be there. That's serious."

  "College is serious too, Megan. So are finals. Have you told your Mom, yet?"

  "No, but I will. I just need to figure some stuff out. I'll do it after this quest."

  "All right. Let me know if you need any help with homework. You still need to graduate."

  "I know. Trust me, I know. And I will. But seriously, you can't tell me you're not going a little stir-crazy here, trying to deal with equations and old wars and things when you know there's a real worlds-war about to happen?"

  "I happen to like equations. They help me forget some of that. But, okay, maybe I have just a little senioritis. I'd still rather we all go to college than go to war, though."

  "Even if I pull rank and princess my way into getting you your own trebuchet?"

  Lani grinned. "Okay, so the trebuchet was kind of neat. Princess isn't a verb, though."

  "It is when I do it."

  Within two hours of school's letting out, they were in an otherworldly cave, standing in front of a familiar large reddish dragon. The golden-haired, bright-eyed maidens—golden like metallic wire, bright like spotlights—surrounded him, much as they had in the Goblin Market months ago.

  “Hi, Xurde,” Ashling said cheerfully as Megan looked up at the draconic cartographer—and up, and up.