“So each fey slaver will be leaving with a fairly big group?” I asked, to be sure I understood. “A group he doesn’t know too well?”
“Not tonight,” the redhead said, before the blonde could answer. She crouched down beside us. “Not wi’ our people using the darkness to make them pay for every life they steal!”
“Your people?” I frowned at her. “You mean the crazy women who almost killed us coming in?”
She shot me a sardonic look. “They weren’t tryin’ t’ kill ye, girl, else ye’d be dead. They were tryin’ to save ye.”
“Aye,” Hooknose agreed, joining the party. “Let’s see how much Nimue profits from her crimes!”
“Nimue? Then the Green Fey are behind this?” I asked, suddenly noticing a few green tabards in the crowd. Most of the guards hadn’t bothered with them, probably because of the weather. But the waterworks coming in should have been enough of a clue. Water was the Green Fey’s element and they could do amazing things with it. If I hadn’t been preoccupied—
I suddenly noticed that everyone had turned to stare at me, in various degrees of incredulity. “I’m . . . not from around here,” I added weakly.
“Your home must be far if you don’t know that Nimue considers this her personal fiefdom,” the blonde said. “She thinks she can do whatever she likes with it.”
“And what she likes is to renegotiate the treaty,” the redhead commented heatedly. “And it was bad enough already!”
“A recent war with the Dark Fey depleted her numbers,” the blonde explained. “She’s insisting on doubling the levy.”
“But the king refused, and damn right, too!” Hooknose muttered. “But now she’s come in force, rounding up not only what she asked for, but every woman she can find!”
“They’re even taking the children,” a thin brunette despaired, her eyes on the camp.
“She’s just trying to put pressure on the king,” the blonde told her. “Nimue has a hard enough time feeding her own children—she can’t want to feed ours, too.”
“So she’ll take them and the food!” the redhead said. “Leaving us just enough to raise a new generation. So they can come and pick them over, taking who they like, raping and plundering—no! This ends now!”
“How?” the thin brunette asked bitterly. “She has the leaders, and also the princess. And without them—”
“That’s why we’re here,” the blonde said, seeing my confusion. “Nimue called the coven leaders to a conference, only to take them captive. We came on a rescue mission.” Her lips twisted. “And soon thereafter needed rescuing ourselves.”
“Would these coven leaders be able to help us get out?” I asked.
“Aye,” the redhead said. “If we could find them!”
“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?”