“Was?”
“He died,” I said shortly. Because Mac was another of the people I’d lost on this journey. One who’d believed in me. One whose trust I had yet to validate, whose sacrifice I had yet to honor, because that could only be done one way—by winning this.
But it looked like he’d left me some help.
“Mac specialized in magical tattoos,” I explained. “When he died, some of them transferred themselves to me. This is the last one left.”
“What does it do?” Rosier demanded, squinting. Like that would help.
“I didn’t think it did anything.” Mac had been a war mage, before a debilitating injury led to an early retirement. He’d taken to making up wards in his spare time, to sell to the magical community. And, naturally, considering that his clientele mostly came from his old profession, the majority had been useful for battle in some way: improving senses, strengthening stamina, or acting as outright weapons. Like one in the form of a sleek black panther he’d named Sheba, which had attacked enemies with all the savagery of the real thing.
But garden lizards aren’t known for their ferocity, and if this little guy had increased my abilities any, I’d failed to notice.
The bright black eyes reappeared, materializing on the skin of my knuckles, Cheshire Cat–style. The rest of it followed, somehow managing to seem solid and 3-D, despite being flat against my hand. Yet it could disappear again in an instant, fading away into nothingness.
Like the necklace.
I smiled, finally understanding. “Mac didn’t make you to fight, did he?” I asked softly. “He made you to conceal.”
Because what did a war mage need as much as his weapons?
A way to make sure that no one took them from him.
“What?” Rosier looked testy. “What are you talking about? What is it?”
“A chameleon,” I said, wondering why I hadn’t figured it out before. But then, I often forgot it was there, until its little claws pitter-pattered over my skin in the middle of the night, waking me up. Because mostly, I didn’t even see it, a fact that I’d put down to shyness.
But no.
It was just doing its job.
It seemed uncomfortable out in the open, so I held it up to my shoulder and it hopped from there to my hairline, scurrying over the skin of my neck, making me shiver. Or maybe that was the cold. Because the rain had finally slacked off, leaving a star-studded sky peeking through gaps in the clouds. But the wind had picked up, causing me to pull closer to Rosier. Not that he seemed in the mood for a cuddle.
“I don’t see how that helps us,” he said testily. “Unless you’re packing an AK-47 I failed to notice.”
“It wouldn’t help if I was. We can’t go around shooting people—”
“According to you.”
“According to common sense. It would change the timeline.”
“Yes, and that would be a shame. The one we have being so successful,” he said crabbily, and hunkered down under my damp skirts.
Rosier didn’t seem to take roughing it well. But he had a point. As nice as it was to finally discover what my little companion did, I didn’t see it helping us out of this. The same was true of Billy, who was too weak to materialize without a power boost I couldn’t afford to give him. And my bracelet, which was too dangerous to use, since I couldn’t predict what it would do. So, okay, I wasn’t going to have to steal back my stuff from some peddler, but other than that . . . it looked like we were still screwed.
I sighed.
The rain dripped off the roofline.
We jolted around some huge boulders that were jutting out into the path, all mossy and green and running with rivulets.
And suddenly, a vista opened up before us.
Chapter Nineteen
I hadn’t realized how high we were, since we hadn’t seemed to be hiking uphill all that much. But we must have, or else we’d been higher than I’d thought when we came in. Because we were looking down into a vast, sprawling valley.
In the distance, the sloping sides of a mountain range receded in ranks, becoming darker and more indistinct until they were finally lost in mist. Below, the deep blue night was studded with flickering campfires, like a reflection of the heavens above. It caused an optical illusion, making it hard to tell where sky ended and earth began, and made me dizzy enough that it took me a minute to realize what I was seeing.
And even then I didn’t believe it.
Because there were hundreds of them.
Hundreds and hundreds of campfires. Meaning that the army we’d passed on the road, which had now stopped for the night, had to be numbered in the thousands. Thousands of fey, more than I’d ever expected to see on earth—more than I’d ever expected to see period—and at their center, what looked like a whole city built out of tents.
The other women had gathered around, dirty hands clinging to the bars, pale faces staring out, momentarily forgetting their fear in the face of overwhelming awe. I doubted any of them had ever seen anything like it. I knew I hadn’t—and that I hadn’t read about it, either.
You’d think something like this would make the history books, I thought, as we creaked onto a narrow road, terrifyingly steep and rocky. I grabbed the bars, bracing along with everyone else, and tried not to notice the sheer drop-off on the other side. Or the pebbles rolling under our wheels, which were plain wood and didn’t have any kind of traction. Or the fact that this wasn’t the most well balanced of vehicles.
All of which was still okay, more or less, until the merchant abruptly whipped up the horses.
Suddenly, instead of slowing down—which would have been freaking sensible—we were all but flying down the mountain, wheels rattling, cage swaying, women screaming—and falling and tumbling because the crappy wheels were only in contact with the road about half the time.
“What’s happening?” I yelled at Rosier, who had wrapped himself around a cage bar, like a frightened monkey. “What’s he doing?”
“Trying to avoid that,” he said, looking over my shoulder, his eyes huge. I turned in time to see a blast of spell-fire tearing through the air and then through the cage, shearing off the top right corner and sending us swaying dangerously from side to side.
“What the hell?” I screamed as the horses whinnied and bucked, the merchant shouted and swore, and we almost fell into the abyss.
As it was, I got thrown to the other side of the cage, where for a second I was left staring down at a sea of nothingness, just a blue-gray void of mist and vague lumps that might be trees, and another cliff face rising across the gulf, distant but near enough that I could see shapes darting among the rocks.
And flinging spells, because three more were already headed our way.