“I love you, too,” said Riordan, and he hugged her, kissed her again, and left.
He thought about what he had told Nadia as he took the elevator down to the parking garage. Perhaps tonight they would be able to go out and enjoy themselves.
But he worked for the Firstborn of the Family, and Nadia was a shadow agent of the High Queen of the Elves.
Both the High Queen and the Shadow Hunters tended to give assignments at odd hours.
Riordan wasn’t sure if his unease was simply paranoia or the premonition of coming trouble, but he resolved to be ready either way.
***
Chapter 3: A Little Favor
I was in a good mood as I finished washing the dishes and got ready to look at some of the paperwork for Moran Imports.
Not that the tax paperwork was going to cheer me up, mind you.
No, Riordan was responsible for my good mood, and I was a little embarrassed to admit how good he was at inspiring one. I had been glad to help him against Paul Ricci and his little coven. No more innocent people had been killed, and Ricci and his group had been stopped without any losses to the Shadow Hunters. But fighting that many Shadowlands creatures at once had made all the dark memories in my head start boiling up…
He had been there to distract me after the nightmare.
Er. I say distract.
I knew, in the end, I was luckier than I had any right to be.
I finished up in the kitchen and decided to exercise a little before I got to the paperwork. No weights, since I had done that last night and didn’t want to strain anything. Instead, I changed to a T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes and did a five-mile run on the treadmill. After that, I showered, got dressed in black jeans and a gray sweater, and settled myself behind my laptop to start working.
I had to do some tax paperwork because my brother had eaten a fruit basket at my wedding.
Okay, I should probably explain that. The High Queen had put in a brief appearance at my wedding since it was traditional for an Elven noble to give her bondsmen and bondswomen gifts on their wedding day. Her secretary Tythrilandria had brought me a gift basket of fruit from the Elven homeworld of Kalvarion, and my brother Russell had wound up eating most of it. Somehow, he convinced the High Queen to let him start a company for importing fruit through the Great Gate from Kalvarion and selling it on Earth. The High Queen agreed and had given Russell exclusive license to import fruit from Kalvarion and sell it on Earth.
I’m still not quite sure how he convinced her, but if my brother can do anything, it’s talk.
Of course, the High Queen could have agreed for any number of reasons. Kalvarion’s economy needed rebuilding after the devastation of the Archons. Or she wanted to put the Elven nobles in their place by giving the license to a human instead of one of them. Earth and Kalvarion were linked now, and trade between them would benefit each world.
And, as the paranoid part of my mind (which was most of it) pointed out, it was another way for the High Queen to keep my loyalty. She could, after all, destroy my brother’s company any time she wanted. When it came to motivation, Morvilind had favored the stick over the carrot. The High Queen was much more generous with the carrot, but the threat of the stick was always there.
Actually, knowing the High Queen, it was for all those reasons and a half-dozen other ones I hadn’t realized yet.
Russell’s starting capital had come from the two and a half million dollars he had gotten from the ten million dollar reward for Nicholas Connor’s death. I had also invested the million dollars Nicholas Connor had paid me after his goon Lorenz had tried to kidnap Russell. Given how close Nicholas had come to killing millions of people, it seemed fitting that I use his money to build something instead. Russell already had contracts with some of the liberated Elven farmers on Kalvarion, and agreements with grocery distributors in Milwaukee. (I had helped negotiate some of those.) The first of the Elven fruit harvest would be on sale in Milwaukee grocery stores in time for Thanksgiving.
Assuming it didn’t all fall apart, of course.
Maybe Moran Imports would crash, and we would lose all our money. Russell was an optimist. I was a pessimist. (That was why I had kept the two and a half million I had gotten from Nicholas’s death.) Maybe we would meet in the middle.
Anyway, tax paperwork. Most people don’t realize how damned complicated taxes are. The automatic deduction for federal, state, and tribute to your local Elven noble comes out of your paycheck, and that’s that. Maybe you get a refund after you file, maybe not. But if you have your own company, or you’re self-employed, it gets way more complicated.
I had insisted that we hire a proper accounting firm, and Russell agreed. I still checked over everything myself. I wasn’t an accountant, but I had spent so long covering my tracks when I had been Morvilind’s shadow agent that I had a comprehensive knowledge of how to comply with tax and financial law. Suppose I had sort of learned it backward.
Weirdly, I enjoyed myself as I sorted through the paperwork and the forms, double-checking the figures, enjoyed myself in the same sort of way I liked to push myself during a hard workout. If my parents hadn’t died of frostfever and Morvilind hadn’t found me, maybe I would have become an accountant or a bookkeeper or a business manager or something.
That, and I had to concentrate on the paperwork, so I couldn’t think about the Eternity Crucible. Maybe that was why I enjoyed it.
I had been at it for an hour when my ring pulsed, and I heard the voice in my head.
I habitually wore two rings. On my left hand, I wore my wedding ring, though I took it off when I showered or bathed or exercised. I didn’t want to be one of those damned sitcom wives who dropped their wedding ring down the drain and had to call a plumber.
The ring on my right hand was invisible to everyone but me.
Well, almost everyone.
That ring was a thick gold band set with a gemstone that looked like a ruby but wasn’t. It was crystallized blood from my heart. The High Queen had given me that ring, and only she and her other shadow agents could see it. (Evidently, she wanted her agents to be able to identify each other on sight.) The ring allowed the High Queen to communicate telepathically with me from any distance, and it also let me review my memories with crystal clarity, which I never used because I had too many things I didn’t want to remember. I could also use the ring to project a floating image of the High Queen’s seal, giving me the authority of a Royal Herald when necessary. I had never used that, either, because the High Queen liked her shadow agents to get things done quietly. That was the entire point of a shadow agent.
Her voice echoed inside my head.
“Nadia MacCormac,” said the High Queen. “Go to the lobby and meet Exeter.”
The contact ended.
I swallowed, locked my laptop, and stood up, dread settling over me. If the High Queen was making contact, it meant she had a job for me.
She was going to ask a little favor.
That was the deal. Tarlia had arranged to have Russell’s frostfever healed, and in exchange, I did favors when she asked. The High Queen had given me a few minor jobs in the New York area since she had recruited me, and I had almost gotten killed in the process.
I wondered what she wanted me to do now.
Well, time to find out.
I got up, donned my pea coat and a good pair of running shoes, and by reflex slipped my little revolver into the interior pocket. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I ought to bring a weapon into the presence of the High Queen. Then again, normal bullets didn’t work on Elves, and the High Queen would likely say I was foolish for going out without a weapon. It had been barely four months since the Archons and the Rebels had almost destroyed New York, after all.
I grabbed my phone and my keys, locked the front door behind me, and headed for the elevator.
Riordan’s building had a nice lobby, painted in neutral colors, with the mail room on one side and a pair of elevators on the other. I stepped ou
t of the elevator and looked around. A middle-aged man wearing a business suit waited in the center of the lobby. He had a seamed face and sharp blue eyes and was in good shape. Truth be told, he kind of looked like a high school basketball coach, the sort in good enough shape to run up and down the court yelling at his players.
“Hey, Exeter,” I said. “How’s business?”
“Functioning efficiently,” said Robert Exeter, who was one of the High Queen’s North American secretaries. “This way, Mrs. MacCormac. She would like to talk to you in person.”
I fell in next to him. “You know what this is about?”
“It’s not for me to say, ma’am,” said Exeter. That was a bad sign. Then again, he wouldn’t be in a position of trust if he gossiped about the High Queen’s secrets.
I followed him through the front doors to 6th Avenue, the doorman nodding as we passed. It was about quarter to ten, and the worst of rush hour was over, though there was still a good amount of both foot and pedestrian traffic. A pair of food trucks were on the corner, both selling some sort of breakfast burrito, and I saw the owners switching out their menus for lunch. The sky was a dull, leaden gray that promised rain, and already there was a trace of drizzle in the air. I shivered, tugged my coat tighter around me, and turned up the collar against the chill.
A tour bus and a pair of SUVs sat in the bus lane, their flashers on. They were parked illegally, but God have mercy on the hapless Homeland Security officer who tried to ticket them. Both SUVs would be full of Elven Royal Guards, and the bus belonged to the High Queen.
That was one of the little secrets I had learned since becoming her shadow agent. Everyone knew that the High Queen lived and traveled aboard the Skythrone, the floating fortress/city that served as her capital. The Skythrone moved all around the world, but a giant floating city doesn’t move all that fast. Very often the High Queen traveled away from the Skythrone, roaming from trouble spot to trouble spot.
“Like Harun al-Rashid,” Riordan had said when I told him about it.
“Who?” I said. “You mean that guy who owns the kebab shop on 47th Street…wait. Wait, wait, wait. This is one of those history things, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Riordan. “He ruled the Caliphate about twelve hundred years before the Conquest. According to the stories, he would disguise himself and wander the streets of Baghdad at night, looking to see how his subjects fared and whether or not his officials were carrying out their duties.”
“That sounds like the High Queen,” I said. “Except she has a bus. Hey, you want to get kebabs for dinner?”
Later, while we had been waiting for our kebabs, I looked up Harun al-Rashid on my phone. According to the official online encyclopedia, old Harun had undertaken his nighttime walks accompanied by an executioner to administer immediate capital punishment on the spot if he found a wrongdoer.
That definitely sounded like the High Queen.
Exeter climbed the steps to the bus, and the doors hissed open. I followed him inside and found myself looking at an Elven woman. She was tall, with dark hair and silver eyes, and wore a bright pink leather coat. The coat fit well against her lean body, but I knew thanks to the spells Kaethran Morvilind had put upon it, she could fit an entire arsenal into the coat’s pockets. Like, for all I knew she had an entire battalion’s worth of guns and ammo in there.
The ring of a shadow agent of the High Queen rested on the third finger of her right hand.
She brightened when she saw me. “Nadia!”
“Hey, Tyth,” I said, and we hugged even though I’m really not a hugging kind of person. Tythrilandria had once been a shadow agent of Kaethran Morvilind, like me, and we had done some insanely dangerous things together and somehow come out alive on the other side. In the process, we had defeated the Archons and united Earth and Kalvarion.
If you can’t hug someone after all of that, then when can you? I mean, we had traveled to freaking Mars.
“It’s really good to see you, Nadia,” said Tyth. She talked with such a pronounced Valley Girl accent that I wondered again where she had learned English.
“How’s the job?” I said. After Morvilind’s death, the High Queen had taken her on as sort of a personal assistant. I think the formal description was “lady-in-waiting to Her Majesty,” but in practice that meant “personal assistant.”
“Really busy,” said Tyth. “I think we’ve been to thirty countries in the last two months. Her Majesty does like to travel around and make sure people are honest.” I thought of old Harun and his executioner again. “But she wants to talk to you right away.”
I followed Tyth and Exeter into the bus. The interior looked like a conference room. Seats lined the walls and faced each other, probably so the occupants could talk while the bus was in motion. There were multiple video monitors on the walls, showing a combination of news reports and maps. All of them were muted.
Tarlia, High Queen of Kalvarion and Earth, stood halfway down the bus, gazing at me with eyes the ghostly color of flame beneath a copper pot.
She had red hair bound back from her beautiful, alien face with a golden circlet, and wore armor of overlapping silver plates, a red cloak hanging from her shoulders. Tarlia was seven feet tall and towered over me like a silver storm cloud. There wasn’t any emotion on her face, but I had the sense that she was deep in thought.
Maybe even worried.
I gripped the edges of my coat and curtsied as best I could in the enclosed space. “Your Majesty.”
“Nadia Moran MacCormac,” said Tarlia, her voice like music and thunder. She looked at Exeter and Tyth. “Wait outside. I wish a word alone with Mrs. MacCormac before we begin.”
Tyth and Exeter bowed and left. I waited, my heart hammering against my ribs.
“Who did you kill last night?” said Tarlia at last.
“I helped the Shadow Hunters kill a restaurant owner named Paul Ricci and some of his employees, your Majesty,” I said. “He had gotten a copy of the Summoning Codex and had called up a maelogaunt and lot of anthrophages and wraithwolves.”
“What peculiar timing,” murmured Tarlia. “But, then, it may just be a coincidence.”
“Your Majesty?” I said.
“But that is the nature of both humans and Elves, isn’t it?” said Tarlia. “To destroy themselves, if left unchecked. But, darling girl, this isn’t the time for philosophy. It’s time for practical action. Is there a coffee shop nearby?”
I blinked, thrown by the change in topic. “There’s a decent one about three blocks up 6th Avenue that way.”
“Splendid,” said Tarlia. “We are going to have a cup of coffee, and then we shall discuss the favor you’re going to do for me.”
“That will…uh, cause quite a stir,” I said.
“Very few people know that I am in the United States at the moment, and we’re going to keep it that way,” said Tarlia. “Fortunately, Morvilind taught us both the Mask spell, did he not? We’ll remain inconspicuous.”
She gestured, silver light flashing around her hand, and a Mask spell wrapped around her. She Masked herself as a red-headed human woman in a white coat tied around the waist, with blue eyes and pale skin. Jewels glittered on her ears and around her throat, and her high-heeled boots looked as if they had cost a thousand dollars. The Mask spell looked human, but the image was still stunningly beautiful. Honestly, she looked like a model at a photo shoot. I half-expected a convenient gust of wind to make her hair billow dramatically around her head.
“Um,” I said. “Yes. That looks totally inconspicuous.”
Tarlia laughed, and I heard genuine amusement. “Darling girl, this is still less conspicuous than the High Queen of the Elves. Tythrilandria!” Tyth entered the bus again, along with Exeter and two of the Royal Guards, grim-faced Elven men in silver armor, swords and submachine guns at their belts. “Bring the file. You will need to Mask yourselves as humans.”
Tyth picked up a briefcase from one of the seats, and she and the two Elven Guards c
ast the Mask spell. Silver light flashed around them, and they took on the guise of humans. Tyth didn’t look all that different – same pink coat, same dark hair, but her eyes had turned blue, and she had the less angular features of a human instead of an elf. Both the Royal Guards became burly human men clad in double-breasted business suits, shades covering their eyes and radios in their ears. They looked like casino bouncers, or maybe enforcers for a really classy mob boss.
“Do I look human, Nadia?” said Tyth, and she cocked a hip.
“Yes,” I said.
“Did I get the ears right?” said Tyth.
“That you did.”
“Then we shall be inconspicuous,” said Tyth.
I looked at the image of shocking beauty that surrounded Tarlia, and the Masking spells around the Royal Guards.
“Yeah, very inconspicuous,” I said.
“Come along,” said Tarlia.
We exited the bus and walked to the coffee shop, the Royal Guards leading the way, Tarlia following them, and me, Tyth, and Exeter bringing up the back. To my mild surprise, the whole thing worked. Tarlia looked like an actress or a model with an entourage.
I thought again of Riordan telling me about Harun al-Rashid walking the streets of Baghdad incognito.
I really hoped Tarlia wasn’t going to order me to execute someone.
“Tell me, Nadia,” said Tarlia, and I moved to walk at her side. “How does the city fare?”
“Uh,” I said. “It’s getting better. I think most of the road damage from the Archon attack has been repaired. People are still kind of on edge. But life goes on.” I realized that most of what I had said was banal. But Tarlia had said she had recruited me for reasons other than my dazzling eloquence.
I glanced to the right and saw bullet holes marking the wall of the building, some of the windows still boarded over. There had been heavy fighting on this street during the Rebel attack.
“Yes,” murmured Tarlia. “You would hardly know that nineteen thousand people were killed during the battle, would you? But life does go on. The rent needs to be paid next month. It is the one thing humans and Elves crave above all else.”
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