“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.