“We have to stick to the plan,” the blonde said, looking around at the circle of women, who glanced at each other uneasily. “We have to try!”
“We don’t even know that there is a plan,” Hooknose argued. “If our boy’s lying dead in the woods, the covens aren’t comin’.”
“And even if they are,” the thin brunette put in, “we can’t get the walls down without the leaders. The wards—”
“Wait,” I said, trying to keep up. “What plan? And what boy?”
“A man, actually. Part fey. He’s helping us coordinate an attack on the camp.”
“The idea is to have the covens assault this place from the outside,” the blonde told me. “Keeping the fey busy while we free the leaders. Each of whom can harness the power of an entire coven, hopefully enough to destroy the palisade walls—”
“Then everyone scatters,” the redhead interrupted, hazel eyes flashing. “All the women in all directions while the covens fight off the fey. They may recapture some, but they’ll never catch us all!”
“Not at night. Not in our own lands,” Hooknose agreed.
“—but we were caught before we could find the leaders, much less free them,” the blonde finished.
“And now our only hope is dead,” the thin brunette said dolefully.
“You don’t know that. He had to find the other covens, get them to approve the plan, then make it all the way back here—”
“And that was one of the best illusions I’ve ever seen,” the redhead added enviously.
“Illusion?” I said, feeling my temperature start to rise. “What illusion?”
“Disguised himself as a slaver,” Hooknose said. “One who was killed trying to sneak back some of the girls we’d rescued from the fey. Our boy volunteered to pass through their lines and communicate the plan to the rest of the covens—”
“And he made it,” the blonde said firmly. “He must have. The illusion was perfect.”
Hooknose disagreed. “Too flashy. I told him to tone down that hair.”
“What does it matter?” the thin brunette wailed. “Knowing the fey, he’s dead by now—”
“You know, I seriously doubt that,” I said, watching a devil with two-tone hair run into the tent behind us and start thrashing around in the middle of the illusion. And then run out of the new back door and stare around like a madman.
Until he saw us. “Oh, good,” he told me, and visibly relaxed. “You’re here—”
And then I slapped him.
* * *
“Stop acting like you’re hurt,” I said, a few minutes later. “You’re not hurt.”
Pritkin felt his jaw for the third time. “It’s mostly my feelings—”
“Your feelings? You kidnapped me—”
“I explained that. I was coming back—”
“I thought you were going to court.”
“I am—I was,” he amended as we plastered ourselves to the side of a tent, halfway across the camp. “This . . . came up.”
“And you couldn’t have told me? You couldn’t have said anything?”
He shushed me, which didn’t do much for my temper. And then plucked a guard I hadn’t seen from around the side of the tent and handed him off to the witches. Before turning back to me, looking exasperated.
“There were too many ears around, and my disguise was wearing thin. The Green Fey are generally tolerant toward half-breeds, but with tensions this high—”
“So you left me with a slaver—”
“For a short time. So I would know where you were. So you wouldn’t be taken as plunder, or end up in one of those damn pens—”
“I can take care of myself!”
“Yes,” he said, suddenly intent. “But so can the fey, and there were a good many more of them than you, plus every slaver in the damn country scouring the hills for any woman they could find!”
“So you kidnapped me to keep me from being kidnapped?”
He started to say something, then thought about it for a second. “Essentially.”
“That would only make sense to you,” I said sourly.
“You two are . . . friends?” the blonde asked, looking up, as the limp fey was dumped into a barrel.
“Friends,” Pritkin agreed.
“It’s complicated,” I said, at the same time.
He frowned.
I sighed.
“Friends,” I agreed.
“It’s complicated,” he said, simultaneously.
She blinked.
The redhead laughed. “I used to have one of those sorts of ‘friends.’”
“It’s not like that,” I said.
“I’m working on it,” Pritkin told her.
I frowned. “Working on what?”
“What?”
“Which question were you answering?”
“There was a question?”
I blinked. The redhead laughed. The blonde looked like she was wondering how she’d ended up on a rescue mission with the Three Stooges.
“Is it much farther?” she asked. “To where they’re keeping the leaders?”
“No, just there.” Pritkin nodded toward a nearby pavilion.
And that was the only word for it. The tents in the back half of the camp had started out fairly basic, with a central pole and a dark weave. But they kept getting fancier the farther we got from the cattle pens. The air was cleaner back here, and the stars sparkled above white, multiroom mansions with gold designs on the canvas and bright pennants flying overhead. And this one was the biggest I’d seen, truly a home fit for a queen.
Only apparently, it wasn’t.
“Not the tent,” Pritkin said, and pointed to something past it.
Something that was a serious letdown.
I hadn’t been able to get much of a feel for the layout of this place, because the fey’s living quarters were scattered haphazardly, in a jumbled mass. But we’d almost worked our way through them, to the very back of the camp, where an open space lay near the palisade wall. In front of which was . . .
Well, it looked like a roof someone had forgotten to put a house under. And since it was a thatched roof, and since the mostly missing building was a big one, it was fairly comical-looking. Like a toupee a passing giant had dropped.
But, pathetic as it was, that’s what the fey were using as a command post, probably because enchantments don’t work so well on insubstantial, fluttering “walls.”
If they did, we’d still be stuck back in our own tent.
“So, this is good, right?” I whispered. “It’s thatch. One good fireball—”
“Would never touch it,” Hooknose said, extending a veined hand.
The blonde nodded. “It’s warded.”
“No,” Pritkin disagreed. “It’s warded. We might get through with a week to hammer away at it, but we don’t have a week.”
He rotated his wrist, showing a crude hourglass etched into the skin of his forearm. Mages used magical tattoos for all sorts of things, but this didn’t look like one, maybe because he hadn’t had time. It did look painful—red and jagged-edged, like it had been done quickly and without a totally sharp knife.
But it was working.
Tiny red dots were flowing from the top of the “glass” to the bottom, and while I didn’t know how long it took to empty, I did know there weren’t many left. The covens were coming, and they were coming soon. And they were going to get butchered if we didn’t manage to rescue the leaders before then.
“Then let’s see what all of us can do!” the redhead said, starting up.
Only to have the blonde and the skinny brunette pull her back.
“There’s also the small matter of the queen’s personal guard,” Pritkin added dryly. “There’s dozens in there, and they’re staying put. From what I hear
, no one’s been in or out all day.”
“You got inside?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I impersonated a camp follower assigned to deliver food, but the guards took it from me. After the attempt to free the coven leaders, they’re not taking chances.”
“Then how d’ye know the leaders are even in there?” the redhead demanded.
“The camp follower I told you about. He was allowed in earlier. He also saw another set of wards on an inner chamber, and six guards outside it—”
“It’s the princess,” the blonde said excitedly. “It has to be!”
“Princess?” I repeated.
“A fey princess,” she told me. “She helped us organize the covens. She’s been fighting alongside us.”
“It would be easier to just get the coven leaders,” Pritkin argued. “If she’s fey—”
“We’re not leaving her!”
“If she’s fey,” he repeated stubbornly, “she’ll have to come to terms with her people over this, sooner or later, or be exiled. Do you think she wants that?”
“It’s for her to say what she wants,” the redhead said hotly. “It’s for us t’ get her out so she can say it!”
There was a chorus of agreement.
Pritkin sighed. “Then we’re going to need the key.”
“What key?” I asked.
He sighed again. “The one hanging around Nimue’s neck.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“Around her neck?” I asked, as Pritkin and I waited for the witches to get into position.
They were heading for the palisade wall, to start an enchantment to try and bring it down in case we failed. He and I were watching, ready to cause a distraction if it looked like anybody noticed. But so far, nobody had.
Maybe because everybody was at the auction. Other than a human chopping wood and a fey trying to reshoe a horse, there wasn’t a soul in sight. It was too good to be true, and it was making my palms itch.
“That’s what one of the guards told my source, when he offered to take a tray in,” he confirmed. “She’s the only one with a key.”
“How are we supposed to get it, then?”
“We aren’t going to get it. I am—if possible.” He didn’t sound like he was exactly in love with the idea. “I don’t want you anywhere near the sea witch.”
“Is that what they call her?”
“That’s one of the things they call her.”
Pritkin was looking grim, maybe because his plan to stow me with the slaver hadn’t panned out. Although I thought he should have been pleased about that, since it solved a problem for him. A big one.
Instead of trying to figure out how to break the witches out, we were now trying to smuggle some wands in, and let them do it for themselves. Basically the same idea I’d had when I first swiped the things, back in the courtyard. The question was how to get them past the guards.
Which was where I came in.
As head of the Pythian Court, I was technically a coven leader. Meaning that I should be put in with the others, solving one problem. And my bracelet would solve the rest.
Because even if the fey found it, it would always come back. Including the new little charms that ringed it, the odd, ugly, sticklike charms that Pritkin had shrunk, and that the witches could unshrink and run amok with. Distracting the guards while he infiltrated Nimue’s chambers for the key.
That was his job, because of his ability at glamourie. Mine was just magical munitions mule: get the stuff past the guards. So why was I sweating?
Maybe because my power remained uninterested in this whole affair, despite the fact that I was actively interfering in the timeline now, the very thing I wasn’t supposed to do. The very thing I was supposed to prevent other people from doing. And now that my head was clear, I was remembering things, like what it had meant before when my power wasn’t worried about changes in the timeline.
Something was about to go down, something bad, something that was going to make all of this irrelevant. Because that was what happened last time: a fey had died who wasn’t supposed to, but my power hadn’t cared. Because it knew that a battle was coming, one in which he was supposed to die, and the few hours’ difference weren’t enough to matter.
I was assuming the reverse worked as well. Like if those people who were supposed to die earlier today did so shortly from something else, they’d never have a chance to mess with the timeline. So my power wouldn’t care, but I did, because I was here and Pritkin was here and we needed to get gone before the shit hit the—
“It’s time,” Pritkin said, abruptly enough to make me jump. He looked at me. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little breathlessly. “Yeah, I’m good.”
I stopped fingering my bracelet and followed him.
The toupee turned out to be a nobleman’s house, because apparently noblemen had different standards back in the day. But it was bigger inside than I’d thought, with a high ceiling under the conical roof, like looking up into a big straw hat. Just how big I wasn’t sure, because a wattle-and-daub wall rose a dozen yards away with a door in it, blocking off the inner areas from what looked like a reception room.
Well, okay, it looked like the medieval version of a hunting lodge, with a fire, a table, and a few chairs covered with animal hides spread around. But no people, just like there hadn’t been any guards on the door outside. It should have made me feel better.
It didn’t.
“Wait.”
Pritkin had already started for the door, but he turned to look at me. “We don’t have much time.”
“I know. But this . . . I need to know something first.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“The staff.”
“Yes?”
“Do you have it?”
“It’s . . . safe.”
“Safe where?”
He didn’t say anything.
I bit my lip. “You don’t trust me?”
“It’s not me. . . .”
“Then who?”
“The king. He said—”
“What king?”
Pritkin stared at me. “The one we met yesterday?”
I just looked at him. “Yesterday” was a difficult concept when you jackrabbited around the timeline as much as I did. Like, really difficult.
“The one who tried to kill us?”
Not narrowing things down much.
“The one you somehow froze in place?”
And then I remembered: the face of an angel, if you didn’t count the expression. Reflexes faster than those of anyone I’d ever seen, including other fey—almost including me, and I’d been shifting. And a shiny mailed boot stabbing down, not on me, but on the roof all around me, which had been thatch, too.
And which had broken, sending me falling straight into the hands of the Pythian posse.
I frowned. “You mean the blond—”
“Yes.”
“—was the Sky King?”
“Yes. Caedmon. He told me—”
“Caedmon. You’re on a first-name basis now?”
Pritkin’s eyes narrowed. “After you disappeared—again—he agreed to let me take the staff back to court, to use as bait to try to find out what’s going on. Or don’t you want to know why all three of the leading houses of Faerie are currently on earth, at the same time, in the same place, with armies?”
I shook my head. “We already know that. The Svarestri stole the staff, and the Blarestri came chasing it. And now Nimue—”
“But that’s just it. Why did they come? The Svarestri barely know this world. Why bring the staff here, where they are at a serious disadvantage even among other fey, who have at least some familiarity with it? And where their power doesn’t work nearly as well as in Faerie? They steal a staff that could easily caus
e a war, and they bring it here. Why?”
“I don’t know. But we’re not going to find out if you lose it—”
“I told you, it’s safe.”
“But you won’t tell me where.”
Pritkin scowled. It was strange. The face was different—the face was a stranger—but that expression was hauntingly familiar. Except for one thing.
“I hate your eyes,” I said suddenly, before I thought.
“What?”
“Not—I mean those,” I said, gesturing at the blue-black combo he had going on. “Do you have to keep them?”
He looked a little surprised but shook his head. “No. The guard was about to change while I was here, and I wasn’t using this face then, in any case. They won’t know me any more than they will you.”
“Is that why you think this will work? They don’t know me?”
Pritkin looked at me for a moment, and then walked back over. He had that expression, the I’m-going-to-figure-her-out expression, which yeah, probably wasn’t much of a challenge right now. It felt like I was stalling, even to me.
But I couldn’t seem to help it. I didn’t want to go in there. It had been okay from the outside, just a silly little hat of a house, but now . . .
I didn’t like it now.
It felt like standing at the entrance to a cave where you’ve been told there’s a monster, but you didn’t believe it until you got there and, oh, look, a monster. Or like being in one of those old movies where you’re at the top of the basement stairs, leading down into darkness, and the light switch doesn’t work. And, worse, you’re a blonde. Everyone is yelling at their TV, “Don’t go in there, don’t go in there,” but you do because you’re the blonde, which is Hollywood code for criminally stupid.
Only I wasn’t, and I didn’t want to go in there.
Pritkin’s head tilted, as if some of my inner dialog was showing on my face. “That and the fact that the fey can sense power.”
“And that matters?”
He held a hand just above my arm, and goose bumps rose to meet him. “You have power. Anyone who concentrates, anyone with the ability, should be able to feel it. If I’m to convince them that you’re someone who needs to be put in a highly secured area, you have to be powerful.”