by Wendy Palmer
'You wait,’ says the first one to Jacoby. ‘The Dark will have words about this.'
Jacoby replies, ‘I almost had all the secrets of the LightElves. He may have words with you.'
Kintore lifts his head and squints up at her, his face bruised and bloody. Her face is impassive. One of the males kneels on his chest, dagger drawn. ‘The other eye?'
'I prefer a more intimate trophy,’ says Jacoby. Kintore drops his head back to the ground with a thump.
As the males close in, a shrill whistle echoes around the alley. ‘The Watch,’ says Jacoby immediately. She has not taken her eyes from Kintore.
The males leap up and flee down the alley. Jacoby picks up her bag and puts her own DarkElf dagger, fair exchange for Kintore's LightElf one, beside his prone body. ‘This is so you know his mother.’ She is gone without a backwards glance.
* * * *
When Sparrow brought Trick and Mizzle back to their rooms, they found Mouse and Rhea waiting. The children hugged them, fiercely.
'Did you think we weren't coming back?’ Trick asked Mouse with some amusement.
That humour died under the boy's direct look. Next time he and Mizzle left the boy, they wouldn't come back. Mouse knew that.
To Mizzle, he said, ‘We have to go as soon as possible.’ He did not want to be here when that harridan got hold of the throne.
Mizzle nodded, went into her room, and shut the door.
Trick refrained from hitting the wall. She was once again the creature he had met in Port Told. There was nothing else of her left.
'Trick,’ said Sparrow, very quietly. ‘You can't go until you get express permission from Lanerol. Unless he sends an advance message, the LightElves will still—’ he stopped.
Trick looked down at his feet as if he could see through the floor and into the hall where Lanerol and Sharlon negotiated. ‘Will he still send the message if he has a rightful queen to serve?'
'She can't stop a decision made before she became queen.'
'Can't she?’ Trick shook his head. ‘This message Lanerol's going to send, how much use will it be anyway?'
'It should stop them killing you on sight.’ But not for long. The unspoken words hung in front of them.
Trick slouched against the wall next to Mizzle's door and tapped his fingers against the stone. ‘Maybe we should just take our chances. They'll have heard of us by now. Curiosity may stay their hand.'
'Mizzle thought it was important to get this permission.'
'Mizzle is playing by a set of rules only she knows about.'
He was not being fair. Mizzle was playing for survival, and permission from Lanerol had been a fair gambit. Not any more, though. Not with Sharlon about to assume the throne.
Mizzle threw her door open, almost hitting him with it. She stood in the doorway, her hair freshly braided, shrouded in her black cloak, face deathly pale and still.
She looked at them. ‘I go.'
They all went to follow her, Rhea coming with her brother. Trick stopped and turned around. ‘Sparrow, make sure Mouse stays here.'
It was the kindest way to make them both stay behind. Sparrow knew he was being dismissed and his shoulders sagged. But he nodded and grabbed Mouse.
The boy stiffened and for a moment Trick feared Illusion. Then Mouse too bowed to the inevitable. Trick alone followed Mizzle as she strode down the stairs.
As they went towards the doors, two Rangers—both humans—approached. ‘Lanerol will see you,’ one said from a fair distance away.
Mizzle eyed the exit. They could perhaps get out—and then be chased into Wyvern Forest, enemies behind and before.
They stood for a long frozen silent moment while Mizzle thought it over. Then she went into the hall and Trick followed.
Increasingly, she dropped back to that think-and-think-again way she had held to after Dester. Nervous, he guessed, about the LightElves, especially after he and Sharlon had shoved her off her cliff edge.
Lanerol sat at his table but Sharlon sat the throne, still in the tight leathers she had worn to make her escape. Her hair fell wild about her shoulders and she watched them with a malicious smile. No other people were in the room except the archers lined high about the walls.
'Need my permission to leave, do you?'
'No,’ said Mizzle, staring straight ahead.
Lanerol cleared his throat and started to speak, but Sharlon overrode him. ‘Trying for time in the dungeon, then?'
Mizzle shifted that flat straight stare to Lanerol. He stood and faced Sharlon. ‘Your Majesty, I promised to open the way to Wyvern for her.'
'That was your promise, not mine.'
'We must honour it, Your Majesty.'
'Must?’ she asked, hissing the word out. Lanerol squared his shoulders and nodded.
Sharlon looked at Mizzle and Trick again.
He couldn't hold his tongue anymore. ‘Haven't you had enough of what a DarkElf can do?'
Sharlon sat back on her throne with a thump. ‘If she wants to die, she can try it.'
'I could say the same.'
He felt Mizzle shift her weight beside him. His shoulder blades itched, waiting for the arrows. He decided to change tactics. Threatening each other in turn brought them to a stalemate none could back down from.
'Look, Sharlon,’ he said. He would not call her queen. ‘Will you let Lanerol send his message to the LightElves if I do you a favour?'
'What favour could you possible do me?'
He was feeling his way. ‘The Kiara Valley Ullwyns own a beach. They row out from it to their sailing ships but they don't use it much because of the pirates off Livania.'
'Now that Mikcul is off the throne,’ Sharlon said, ‘this new Empress should clear out the pirates.'
Moraine apparently watched current affairs. Lithia could, in theory, hire mercenary ships from Port Told to clear the pirates away from their isolated beach landings under the cliff wall of Livania. He was pressed to see why she would bother. But he didn't say that. Let Sharlon learn the hard way not to jump to confusions.
'It doesn't matter. You have the power to commandeer that beach where Lanerol didn't.'
'Your favour is a swim?'
'No,’ he said, with some disgust. ‘You build a road to it. You build barges and use them to transfer goods to your ships. You can follow the southern route to the Western nations—it's faster and safer than the northern way Bourchia goes.'
She flicked her hair back over her shoulders, frowning intensely. ‘Ardmore's not a trading nation. It wouldn't be profitable to take perishable items that far.'
'But Livania is a great producer. At the moment she has to trade to Bourchia to get goods to and from the west since Port Told is the only viable harbour on this coast. But if you offer an alternative...'
Sharlon still looked suspicious. ‘I risk offending the Ullwyns and King Fillip and Livania may turn down an unknown prospect.'
Now he edged the truth. He showed her Lithia's ivory chit. ‘Tal Lithium owes me a favour and she has reason to not want to trade with Bourchia. I'm an Ullwyn and the only one you need to worry about offending. Buy your ships from the Bourchian shipyards and Fillip will let it slide. He recently had a financial boon which has left him in a good mood and he can't afford to cross Lithia right now anyway.'
She picked out the hole in his story. ‘You're an Ullwyn?'
It galled him to even say that. The full truth galled him more. ‘I'm their High Priest—'
'You're a priest?'
He ignored her incredulous interruption. ‘Even Matriarch Predyer bows to me. You tell the Kiara Valley Ullwyns I gave you that beach and if they try to deny that I'm even here, ask Carmelia Ullwyn.’ If she yet lived.
Sharlon curled her fingers over her lips. ‘Put it in writing,’ she said at last. ‘Then you can go.'
* * * *
He sat and wrote out his transfer of ownership of the beach to Sharlon, and a letter to Lithia, while Lanerol called in two LightElves and spoke to t
hem quietly. He gave them a sealed letter and they left the hall.
Mizzle stood impassively.
Lanerol sketched out a map and gave it to her.
She did not thank him.
At last it was done. He gave over his letters to Sharlon—and there was his revenge on Fillip, for himself and for Lithia—and followed Mizzle out into the courtyard. Sparrow stood with Bet and Skye, waiting.
'Please, Sparrow, you can't come,’ said Trick.
'I know,’ he said. ‘Here's food—it's past noon. And take Bet.'
Sparrow's treasured horse, given to Linnet and now given to him.
'I'll make sure she gets back.’ He embraced his friend. ‘Take care of Mouse.'
Mizzle kept her silence as they rode out of the gates, through the town and over the bridge into the forest.
Trick let her be until they were deep in Wyvern Forest, lost in towering trees and bright sunshine.
Lanerol's maps did not put them on the obvious and straight route along the river. Mizzle had to recognise the lie and followed the map anyway.
It was hard to speak into the cathedral march of trunks and light, but he made himself. ‘You can't do it much longer. Surely they'll sense it when you get close.'
She said nothing.
'I suppose that's all right since you're going to give it to them.'
She flicked a quick look at him.
'You're not?’ he guessed. ‘Because you need it?'
'Yes.’ As cold as her no to Sharlon.
He reined Bet to a stop and dismounted. Mizzle looked at him over her shoulder. ‘Do not delay me.'
'We might as well eat,’ he said. ‘We have to give them time to get Lanerol's message and work out what to do about it.'
Mizzle rode on a few more steps before circling Skye back and dismounting. She took the cold roasted chicken leg he gave her, and bread with fresh cheese, and a thick slab of chocolate for afterwards. It was good, warm and bitter in his mouth, and it could not be even near the quality Ardmore exported northwards. Sparrow had also included a flask of what turned out to be milk, which Trick handed across to Mizzle. They ate in the stillness. The wind scoured the trees overhead. Bees hummed and from somewhere nearby, water sang, not deep enough to be the river they should have been following.
He broke the peace again. ‘Are you worried the Light is a female?'
'No.'
He sighed. ‘You have to stop using it.'
She drank her milk without a hint she had heard him.
He understood, then, that Sharlon was not the reason Mizzle had fallen back to the stone and he faced it head on. ‘Mizzle, is it so dangerous to just let yourself be angry with me?'
'More than you can imagine.’ She had dropped her flask, and she clasped her long fingers together and looked at him over them. ‘Do not wish for it.'
'But you didn't use it when you first found me again.'
'Enough,’ she said. Her head lowered so that she stared at the ground. ‘I am too tired to fight my nature by myself.'
'You'll have to, once we get there. They'll know you've got it if you keep using it.'
'Let them,’ she said. ‘I do not care.'
Her impassiveness chilled him. ‘Don't give up now, Mizzle.'
She stood and walked away. ‘Go home, Trick.'
'Mizzle, they'll want to make you lose your temper. They've picked up human habits and will want an excuse to reject you beyond your mother.’ He followed her when she tried to walk away. ‘They'll want to make you act like a DarkElf, and if they know you use the DarkStone to ensure that you don't, they'll never accept you.'
Nothing touched the shell the DarkStone wrapped around her. Trick stopped trying to make a crack and set himself to smash it. ‘And then they'll take it off you like chocolate from a child.'
'They may try,’ she said, her back turned.
'I did, didn't I?'
She spun. ‘You boast of it?'
'Tell me, Elvish.’ His voice was steady but his hands were shaking. ‘Are you angry because I betrayed you or because I beat you in a fight and hurt your DarkElf pride?'
Mizzle reacted so quickly that he didn't have time to move. With one hand around his throat she said, ‘You could not defeat me if the fight was fair. You know this and so you tricked me.'
Trick said, absolutely calm, ‘I'm smarter than you then, aren't I?'
Mizzle took him off the ground, slamming him back into a tree and holding him there by his throat. Her other hand produced, not one of her swords, but one of the daggers from her belt. She set the point against his heart.
Trick took a breath. ‘Stone's not enough, is it?'
She paused. The glow in her frightening silver eyes died a little.
'You have to deal with it yourself, Mizzle, or this will happen when you go before the LightElves.'
Mizzle took on that considering expression.
Trick waited, her hand around his throat.
At last her face cleared and she let him go, taking a step back. He staggered, hand to his throat. Blood blossomed through his shirt where the dagger had pierced his skin. ‘That's a LightElf blade,’ he said. ‘Where did you get it?'
'My father gave it to my mother,’ said Mizzle, looking down at the dagger.
He pushed her just another step further. ‘Point first?'
She looked at him. ‘Speak to me,’ she said. ‘And I will kill you.’ She sheathed the dagger and stalked to Skye.
* * * *
He followed her still, deeper into the forest. Both horses were nervous. He made Bet hang back. That considering expression came and went on Mizzle's face and he knew she struggled with herself.
He had risked death to make his point. It was made, and he kept away from her.
On into the afternoon, she went where Lanerol's map directed her, taking obscure turns unerringly.
Trick wondered if she really needed the map's direction. A human would have needed it to walk into the heart of Wyvern if they did not follow the river but DarkElves had their own powers. They would feel the thrumming of the LightElves’ airy heart and follow that. But Mizzle used the map, when even Trick knew it led them the long way round.
They shared a campfire that night, sitting in complete silence and well separated by the flames. Mizzle refused food and refused to look at him. Trick wrapped himself in his cloak and hoped to live to see the dawn.
She left him unharmed. He was woken only by Bet's whinny as Mizzle rode Skye out of the clearing without him. Then it was scramble and haste while he got Bet saddled and the remains of the fire buried before he could go after her. He never thought of turning back.
He caught her on the banks of the Wyvern River, a great expanse of mist turning the trees into ghosts and wreathing him with voicelessness.
Mizzle did not acknowledge his sudden loud entrance into her stillness. She had told him to go home and she acted as if he had, as if he was not even there.
He trailed doggedly behind her southeast along the river.
The mist lifted, birds flitted and sang, and he began to relax into her new tactic. Only then did she speak.
'Why do you provoke me so?’ Her voice pierced the silence. Birds quietened for a second before resuming their calls.
The same fleeting stillness came and went in his heart. He picked his words with care. ‘So you know what you will do when the LightElves do it.'
She looked at him with sombre eyes. ‘I came close to killing you.’ She had been close before, he knew that. Her admission now implied she had come as close as she ever had. He had been less than a breath from death.
It did not have the same appeal it once did. ‘We've both had our chances.'
Mizzle nodded. She had to realise he could have killed her after knocking her out. ‘Why did you steal it?'
She had never asked, he had never told her. ‘My mother is dying.'
She nodded again, unsurprised. ‘An illness?'
Trick made an equivocal noise, wondering where this
led. ‘She just wastes away.'
'Such a thing,’ said Mizzle. ‘She could not be healed as you were healed.'
'I don't ask it,’ Trick said, slipping into her manner of speech not quite deliberately.
'You want it,’ she said. ‘I cannot give it.'
'It doesn't matter.'
For the third time, Mizzle nodded, a quick, sharp gesture. ‘You still may go.'
He was relieved at the change of subject. ‘I can't go back to Ardmore now. Sharlon will either open the gates to her father or rule like a tyrant in his place.’ He didn't add that the news of Rouen's death had to be spreading behind them. Rumour would implicate Mizzle even if Lanerol tried to keep her out of it. He would not be welcome, with or without Sharlon in power.
'You do not like her because she beat you in a fight and injured your male pride.'
Startled, he looked at her, and she ghosted a smile at him.
He returned it honestly. Things were right between them and she did not use the DarkStone.
'It should have been Sparrow with you all this time,’ he said. ‘He would have made it easier for you.’ He could find no other way to apologise to her.
Mizzle shrugged, her simple human gesture. ‘But then I would not have had so many chances to practice self-control.'
He had to smile again at that. ‘You may go to Livania,’ she said now.
'It's too late.'
Mizzle glanced around, and he realised she had mistaken him. ‘You can't deny a Livanian the end of the story, Miz.'
'Very well,’ she said. ‘And it is too late.'
LightElves had blocked the trail in front of them. He hadn't heard a sound. This was the moment where Mizzle's gamble with Lanerol paid off—or didn't. The four LightElves had bows drawn and beaded on Mizzle. She sat on Skye, still and waiting, her hand spread weaponless before her.
For the longest time, no one moved.
Trick understood then. The LightElves had had an instinctive reaction when they saw her ride towards their stronghold, but they were not authorised to kill her.
The LightElves spoke LightElvish among themselves. Trick shook his head. The words buzzed in his head as if he should be able to understand them.