“Don’t touch me!” I snarled.
“Then get off the damn road!”
“All right, all right, just don’t—no, don’t touch—don’t touch!” I ran off the sheep trail pretending to be a road, sloshed through a ditch half-filled with water, and scrambled up the other side. There were old-growth trees hedging the path on both sides, the kind you don’t see anymore because they went for fuel or something centuries ago. And bushes and undergrowth everywhere else, because this was Wales and Wales had some kind of law that required every inch to be covered in green. But for once, I was grateful for it.
I dodged behind a tree, completely and utterly skeeved out, and clung to the bark, panting.
“It’s just a hand,” Rosier said, in his teeny tiny squeaky voice.
“Don’t talk, either,” I said, trying not to hyperventilate.
“We have to—”
“I said, don’t talk!”
He shut up. The army we’d spotted barely in time marched closer, still eerily silent. And I did my best to get my breathing under control before I passed out.
It didn’t work.
“God!” I shrugged out of the backpack and ran off a little way, biting back a scream. I managed it—just—because the soldiers headed this way were fey, and those ears had to be good for something.
I finally got a grip and turned around to see Rosier sitting on top of the pack, legs crossed, smoking a cigarette. Which would have been fine, if they’d had cigarettes in medieval Wales. And if he hadn’t been naked. And if he’d looked remotely human.
But he was in his disgusting white slug phase, which was apparently how demons recreated bodies, but which looked nothing like a human child.
Nothing.
I’d been carrying the icky thing around in the medieval equivalent of a backpack—a sack with ropes that fit over my shoulders. It had left him closer to me than I’d like, but at least I hadn’t had to look at him. Now I did, and it was just as bad as before, and maybe a little worse. Because the suite had been dark, but now the moon was out. And the light filtering through the trees was glistening off the mucous membrane that covered him from bald head to webbed toes, and off the tracery of tiny purple veins spidering all over the stark white “skin.” And pulsing.
I shuddered again and looked away.
The-thing-that-would-be-Rosier smoked.
The latest batch of troops started passing, but didn’t see us because of the weeds. Good old Wales, I thought, as I edged as close as I dared to a bunch of bushes, which wasn’t all that close. But even so, I could see flashes of moonlight through the foliage, gleaming off weapons and helmets, and feel the earth shake under my feet. Which, considering how light-footed the fey were, meant there were a lot of them.
A whole lot.
These were dressed in cloaks that seemed to blend in with the night, trying to fool my vision into believing that there was no one there. It didn’t work, because there were too many of them, but it didn’t help, either. I’d recently learned that the fey were handily color-coded, which made it easy to keep them straight—when you could see them.
The Alorestri wore a lot of green, because they lived in forests and marshes and I guess it was good camouflage. They were known on earth as the Green Fey, since that was what Alorestri meant in their language, and why bother coming up with anything better when the fey didn’t? It wasn’t their real name, which we paltry humans weren’t good enough to have, but it worked for trade, which was what they were mainly interested in. They came to earth the most, but I’d gotten the impression that it was usually in small trading parties, not in however many were currently hogging the road.
Yet I didn’t think these were the black-armored, human-hating Svarestri, either, but not because they almost never came to earth. But because we’d already encountered them on a parallel road, which was why we’d switched to this one and thought we were safe. Only it didn’t look like it.
I tried to pick out a flash of blue or gold, the livery of the last great fey house, the Blarestri, or Blue Fey, but couldn’t see one. Of course, with the moonlight bleaching almost everything shades of gray, who could tell? Anyway, I didn’t know why I cared. The Blarestri might have a better rep in my day, when they and the senate seemed to have some kind of understanding, but this was sixth-century Wales. The last time I’d encountered them here, they almost roasted me alive.
I finally gave up and looked back at my traveling companion.
God, it just didn’t get any easier.
“Why are there so many soldiers?” I demanded softly.
Rosier’s small shoulders moved up and down. “I don’t know. I anticipated some problems getting into court, but nothing like this.”
“It looks like we landed in a war zone!”
It shouldn’t have surprised me; things hadn’t been much friendlier the last time we popped in. The Svarestri had stolen a prized fey weapon—the same staff I was after—and run off to earth with it. Only to be pursued by the Blarestri, the staff’s owners, who intended to retrieve it and then feed it to them.
The result when they met up had been a battle for the ages, with me and Rosier in the middle, just trying to survive. And to grab Pritkin, who was being difficult because when was he not? And then that Victorian Pythia Gertie showed up, drawn by all the magic being slung around, and sent me back to my time, and the fey . . .
Well, it looked like their little quarrel was ongoing, didn’t it? Which was not cool, since the staff they wanted just happened to be with the guy I wanted. Because Pritkin had snatched it before he left.
Rosier regarded me through a cloud of smoke. “There was always a war in this era. But things were supposed to be in a bit of a lull right now. The Pax Arthuriana, if you like—”
“Then why—”
“I just said I don’t know. You’re supposed to be the psychic.”
“Clairvoyant! I don’t read minds.”
“Just as well.” He blew a smoke ring at me.
It looked like our brief truce in London was over, which was fine by me. But something else wasn’t. “So how are we supposed to get to court? They’re everywhere—”
“Not everywhere,” he argued. “Just on the roads. Which there aren’t many of in this era, leading to bottlenecks.”
“We didn’t meet a soul last time!”
“We weren’t that close to court last time. But this is the main road, and it gets more traffic. Although it’s less bad than it will be. We’re still miles out.”
Yeah, thanks to Gertie, I thought viciously. She could home in on magic—especially the Pythian variety—so shifting straight into town hadn’t been a good idea. We’d shifted into the middle of a burnt-out mill instead, a remnant of our last trip, hoping to confuse her about our real destination. And then booked it before she showed up. But it was hard to make time when you had to hack your way across what amounted to a jungle, or stop to dodge people every five minutes on the road, and ten to one, she was on our trail.