“Yeah, I guess so,” I finally settled for. The tone was noncommittal, but there was a catch in my voice I hadn’t intended.
Marco grabbed my arm. “I was talking about his determination. His refusal to let others win, despite the odds being against him. I don’t know where they picked him up, but he wasn’t a fighter in his old life, I can tell you that. The rest of us were ex-soldiers, bodyguards, thugs. We grew up knowing our way around a sword—he barely knew how to hold one. But he won.”
“Then he was nothing like me,” I said, and this time there was something in my voice, something bitter. Because I hadn’t won this time. Mircea had been right and I’d been wrong. I’d been lucky, or maybe I’d just had really good people around helping me, so I’d beaten the odds. But my luck had just run out, and so had Pritkin’s, and I didn’t—I couldn’t— I needed to think, to figure something out, but all I could see was his face—
I started to get up, but the hand-on-my-arm thing didn’t change. Except to give me a gentle shake, which had my head wobbling around almost enough for whiplash. Marco’s gentle and everyone else’s gentle were two different things.
“Listen to me,” he said, and there was something in his voice that stopped me, even better than his grip. “I look at you and I see this . . . squashy little thing. This scrap of flesh with a mop of curls and big blue eyes and a stubborn tilt to her chin that scares the fucking life out of me, because anybody, anybody at all, could just snap her like a twig. When Mircea gave me this assignment, I didn’t give two shits for my chances. Thought, “I’m gonna have to sit on her to have any hope that she’ll survive the week.” Figured this was the master’s way of getting rid of me—give me an impossible job, and watch me fail.”
I blinked at him in confusion, not understanding his point. ‘Why would he want to get rid of you?”
He shrugged. “We butt heads. I have with every master I’ve ever had. Never had the power to go it on my own, but always resented the hell out of anybody giving me orders. My last master was ready to throw in the towel and stake my ass, until Mircea came along. You’d think I’d be grateful.”
“I’m sure he respects you,” I said, still confused. “He wouldn’t have given you this job if he didn’t.”
“Yeah, maybe. I never know what he’s thinking. Guess that’s why he’s the diplomat.” Marco looked at me frankly. “I’m not. They did their best, dressed me up in all those fine suits, cut my hair—even got me a damned manicure!” He laughed suddenly. “First one in my life. It didn’t help. I was what I was, not what I looked like. Just like Jules today. And just like you.” He pressed something into my hand.
I looked down at it, and for some crazy reason, expected a cigar. It wouldn’t have been the weirdest thing that had happened to me today, and nothing was making sense anyway. But it wasn’t a cigar.
Instead I was clutching something cool and hard and oddly heavy. Something vaguely triangular, with an uneven, pitted surface. Something—
“Where did you get this?” I whispered, staring at the little bottle in my hand. And then up at Marco, in utter disbelief. “I checked everything—”
“Not everything.” He picked up something from the darkness beside him and handed it to me. A large, round, hairy something in a fine gold filigree setting that looked even worse in the low light. Like a balding severed head.
Fred’s horrible souvenir.
“But . . . why would she put it there?”
“Way we figure it, this was the cup she used to take it in. Probably mixed it with something to cut the taste. And after, she just . . . forgot.”
“Forgot.”
“Or you can be romantic about it. She was Pythia. Maybe she knew you’d need it.”
My hand closed over it, and I looked up, half blind. “Why are you giving this to me?”
“Couple reasons. The way I see it, you may not know what you’re doing, but at least you know you don’t. Everybody else thinks they got things all figured out. Jonas and his prophecies, the master and his army . . .” Marco shook his head. “They’re not gonna find a way to fight Ares if they’re not looking for one. You might.”
“And the second reason?”
He finally unwrapped the cigar he’d been mangling. “That old Pythia—Agnes?”
I nodded.
“Seems to me that she was fighting this war, too, only nobody knew it. So she was fighting alone. And look how that turned out.” He grimaced. “Thought it was time someone helped you.” Dark eyes met mine. “Just don’t make me regret this, all right?”
I nodded, biting my lip, and stared at the crimson glints in the almost full bottle in my hand. “You’ll be in trouble when Mircea finds out you gave this to me.”
“Probably.”
I looked up. “And?”
Marco stuck the cigar between his teeth and grinned at me. And then mussed my hair. “I’ve been in trouble before.”
• • •
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Rosier asked when I just stood there, looking at the bottle in my hand.
“I’m trying to figure out how much to take.” It was the one thing Rhea couldn’t answer for me. I assumed the acolytes could, but she’d never been around when Agnes was using the potion. And nobody had been nice enough to put a recommended daily dose on the label.
“Well, how much did you take last time?”
“Maybe an eighth of a bottle, because that’s all there was. But it wasn’t enough. I think that’s why I was out for so long—I had to supplement it with my own power, and almost blew a fuse. But if I’m unconscious this time—”
“Then double the dose.”
“I was out for almost a day,” I reminded him. “If I double it, and I’m out half a day, does that help us?”
“Then take all of it. Be certain.”
I stared at it, biting my lip.
I wasn’t certain.
I wasn’t certain at all.
“This is the last.”
“What?”
I looked up at him. “The last bottle. There isn’t any more.”
“What do you mean?” He looked annoyed. “It’s a potion, not a finite resource—”
“A potion that takes six months to make.”
“What?”
I nodded. “Jonas said Agnes had to put in a request for it six months in advance, because of the brewing time, and that the last batch was delivered a week before she died—”
“Then get it from her court. If she just received a shipment, she can’t have used it all!”
“I did. That’s what this is. And your people checked with all the potion makers, and if the Senate has any, they’re not giving it to me.”
Rosier looked at the bottle in my hand and scowled. “You’re telling me this is the last anywhere?”
“Yes. And I can’t go into the past and retrieve any, because the Pythias only used it in emergencies, and that would screw up time in a way I might not be able to fix. So . . . this is it.”
We both looked at the little bottle for a moment, the demon lord who ruled a world and the Pythia who controlled time, and neither of us had anything useful to say.
Until Rosier’s voice cut through the pub, a harsh, discordant note. “Take all of it.”
I looked at him, and my fist clenched around the glass.
“Damn it, girl! If those Pythias find us, they’ll take whatever’s left. Better it be in you, where it might do us some good!”
He was right; I knew he was. But for a minute, I just stood there anyway, feeling old, pitted glass slide under my fingers and cottony fear crowd my throat. I had to do this, and I had to get it right this time. And yet I just stood there.
And then I threw it back, a bitter, oily dose that moved horribly on my tongue.
“Feel anything?” Rosier asked.
??
?Nauseous,” I gasped, staring at the bottle, afraid that maybe I’d gotten a bad batch.
Until my hand spasmed, and I watched it fall to the floor as if in slow motion, while every cell in my body exploded with light and warmth and power, so much power that I thought for a minute it was going to rip me apart.
And then I was sure it was. Reality warped, time telescoped, and the chair beside me duplicated itself into a thousand chairs that receded into the distance, like fun-house mirrors placed face-to-face. Like the rest of the pub, like the hand Rosier put on my shoulder, like the world around us . . .
Until everything slammed back together again, wrenching me off my feet and into a maelstrom of light and shadow, sound and silence, and wind that I couldn’t feel but could hear in my ears, echoing in my head, screaming past us as we fell down, down, down, into nothingness so absolute that I wasn’t sure anymore if the wind was screaming or if I was.
And, okay, I thought.
I guess it was good after all.
And then I passed out.
Chapter Forty-one
“Cassie! Cassie! Damn you, wake up!” Someone was shaking me. And cursing. And glaring down at me out of evil red eyes.
And then slapping me hard across the face.
And then looking surprised when I slapped him back.
I blinked and realized that the face was Rosier’s, and that the weird eyes were reflecting the sky behind him. Which was red and dark and boiling with gray-green clouds. His hair was limned in red, too, and a whipping wind had it ruffling and sticking up in a good impression of his son’s. To complete the scene, somewhere nearby, something was burning.
“Are we in hell?” I croaked, confused.
“Close enough,” Rosier snarled. And then he snatched me up, supporting me as we stumbled for the scant cover offered by a nearby copse of trees.
They were on fire up in the tops, probably a result of the embers that were blowing about everywhere. But it didn’t matter because everything else was burning, too. The trees all along the riverbank, the bushes, the weeds. It even looked like the river itself was on fire, the surface reflecting the flames and the wind gusts sending little gold-tipped ripples everywhere. Pretty much the only thing that wasn’t alight—yet—was the old mill, but the dark hulk was visible because the moon had come out since we’d left, big and pale and floating serenely over the chaos below.
It was not illuminating Pritkin. Or if it was, I couldn’t tell with all the leaping shadows everywhere. And with my eyes watering and my head spinning. And with the explosions, I added mentally, as another tree went up with a crack and a burst of flame, the wind whipping the burning bits at our heads.
“What are they doing?” I asked as we ducked for cover, both from the fire and the too-pale figures that had started it.
“Trying to flush out my son!” Rosier said, furious. “They obviously can’t find him—”
“We can’t find him! How are we supposed to spot him in this?”
It looked like the fey we’d run from earlier had given up on subtlety and were just destroying everything in their path. Which was soon going to be Pritkin—and us—if we didn’t find him quick. And we weren’t going to. I was choking just trying to breathe, the smoke from the ring of fire obscuring the areas under the trees like low-hanging clouds.
This wasn’t going to work.
And, for once, Rosier seemed to agree.
“You aren’t,” he said, looking grim. “I am.”
And then he was on his feet and moving fast.
I grabbed for his arm, but missed because my reflexes hadn’t recovered yet. So I grabbed his leg instead. “I’m supposed to find him. You’re supposed to—”
“I know what I’m supposed to do! But I can sense when he’s near, girl; you can’t! So I will get him out.”
“But you’re supposed to distract the Pythias!”
“There’s been a change of plan,” he said, shaking me off like a bothersome puppy. “You distract them, then meet me in town.”
And with that he was gone, striding off before I could point out that I didn’t know where “town” was. And that I wasn’t in any shape to distract anybody right now. And that I didn’t even have a weapon, because, unlike him, I actually cared about the—
My brain skidded to a stop on an image of Rosier’s handgun. Which, no, might not help me much itself, since using it here could trash the hell out of the time line. But which was sitting in a pack of magic that might.
A pack I’d dropped on the shore before going skinny-dipping.
A pack that might still be there, concealed by the weeds.
I glanced around again, dropped to the ground, and started crawling.
The riverbank was oddly undisturbed, except for the stretch where chunks had been carved out of it by the fey barrage. It looked worse than I remembered, an ugly, bare scar in an otherwise pristine stretch of sand, but it did help me to orient myself. Between that and the mill, I managed to find my former patch of weeds, and soon after that my discarded clothes.
And the pack!
I hugged it to me, almost disbelieving, because let’s face it, I don’t get luck like that every day. And then I pulled the “dress” over my head. Because ugly and lumpish and hot it might be, but it was also darker than my white tank top. I ditched the Keds, too—also white—but couldn’t make myself put my old “shoes” back on.
Until I thought of how extra crispy my soles were going to be, running through a fiery forest, if I didn’t, and reconsidered.
I was trying to find a missing lace, which, being leather and brown and stringy was doing a good job of imitating one of the squashed down reeds, when another explosion burst across my vision. I looked up, because that one had been a little close for comfort, and scanned the riverbank. But I didn’t see anyone.
Because they weren’t on the bank.
I had a second to stare at the sight of Pritkin, not walking on water, but running on it, full out, his bare feet kicking up little waves behind him in the firelit stream. He’d reacquired the board shorts, but not the Ghillie top, I guess because it wouldn’t be much use as camouflage unless it was on fire. And his precious walking stick was thrown over his back, in some kind of leather carrying device that didn’t stop it from smacking into his legs with every stride, because it hadn’t been made for a human’s use.
It had been made for the things chasing him.
And they were chasing hard. Right behind him were a bunch of fey, slipping and sliding and falling and half drowning, because they were wearing armor, not thin flax, and because they didn’t seem to find the water as accommodating as he did. But others were converging on the bank—a lot of others, a whole freaking lot of others, barreling this way like an otherworldly freight train—
And then Pritkin reached me. And snatched me up. And the next thing I knew, I was doing it, too, leaving little spongy footprints on the surface of a river less solid than land, but more than any stretch of liquid had any right to be.
For a minute, anyway. And then it was like the strange water balloon surface in front of us ran out, and we dove. Or, rather, Pritkin dove, and I fell off the edge, cursing and flailing and sinking, because he was pulling me down, I didn’t know why.
Until a flash of light missed me by a hair’s breadth, boiling through the water just above my face, scalding my flesh even through the chilly stream.
And, okay, I figured it out.
And we shot down like a bullet.
In a minute, my lungs were burning—it felt like bands of my skin had been seared off, and yet still we dove. Into blessedly cold water that was going to kill us anyway, because no way could we swim farther than the fey. There were too many of them and this wasn’t going to work and I was about to try to shift us out even if it sprained a magic muscle or brought every Pythia in five miles down on our heads, because at le
ast we’d have heads—
And then I saw it: something glowing blue at the bottom of the river.
It was hazy and seemed to fluctuate with the current, so I couldn’t see it clearly. Or much of anything else, because we were too deep now. But a second later I felt it, like a drain pulling us in, pulling us down. And before I could try to shift again, before it even fully registered, we were in, vacuumed up and sucked down a vortex of swirling light and color and sound, until it stopped abruptly.
Really abruptly.
Bug-on-a-windshield abruptly.
And I realized that I’d just fetched up against some kind of stretchy membrane that covered the opening to a cave.
The cave appeared to be full of rocks and dark and wet, although not as much of the latter as you’d expect with a gaping hole in the wall. It was also full of Pritkin, because the membrane hadn’t stopped him. He had passed through just fine and landed in a crouch on a wet stretch of rock on the other side. And was now arguing with some waist-high shaggy thing that appeared to be mostly nose and hair and attitude.
An attitude that got noticeably worse when I started thrashing against the barrier, distorting it into the cave in fist – and foot-shaped protrusions, because a ton of water was pressing down on me and shifting wasn’t working and I was about to be drowning and—
And Pritkin grabbed the thing’s spear and threw it straight at me.
I would have screamed, if I weren’t suffocating. Or moved out of the way if I weren’t being crushed by all that water. Which was suddenly falling all around me, as the membrane dissolved in a burst of light.
And I exploded into the room, along with a few thousand gallons that tsunamied through all around me. And around Pritkin. And around the hairy little nugget, who was now an angry little nugget, appearing here and there through all the churning water to stab at us with a couple of knives.
That would have been more of a problem if we hadn’t been simultaneously rushing headlong down a rock-strewn corridor on the torrent of water gushing through the wall. And doing it with only intermittent light, because the roof of this cave was not in great repair. Big gaps flashed by overhead, showing not the hellscape we’d just left, but instead pieces of a discordantly beautiful day, with bright blue skies, fluffy clouds, and riotous vines waving cheerful tendrils at us.