“But you could claim her—”
“Not until they chop off that lying bastard’s head! And even then she’ll be the queen’s prize, to do with as she likes!”
“They’re not going to kill him,” another fey said. He was sitting, with his feet on the table, peeling an apple.
“How do you know?” the first one demanded.
Apple Boy looked up sardonically. “Don’t you know who that is?”
“Who?” the second fey asked. “The veslingr?”
“A wretch,” the other agreed, “but not so powerless. That’s Nimue’s grandson.”
“What?” The other two stopped torturing Rosier long enough to stare at him.
He nodded, obviously enjoying the attention. “I was there when they caught him. He was trying to recover some of the magic he spent on the wards by using his slut, when he lost control and dropped his glamourie. I got a good look at his face before they hauled him off.”
“Grandson?” The second fey was still looking confused. “You mean one of the princes—”
Apple Boy laughed.
The first fey looked like he’d just figured something out. And from the disgust on his face, it wasn’t something he liked. “You mean great-grandson.”
The fey at the table nodded. “Now you’ve got it.”
“Got what?” the second fey demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“The polluted one. That half-demon thing Nimue should have killed at birth.”
“Gods,” the second fey said. If he’d been Catholic, he would have crossed himself.
“Why didn’t she?” the first fey demanded. “Anyone else—”
“But she’s not anyone else, is she?” Apple Boy asked, eating a piece of fruit off his knife. “The law is for peasants like you and me. The great ones do as they like.”
The first fey bristled. “I’m no peasant. My grandfather—”
“And who was your grandmother, again?”
“Leave her out of this!”
“Why? She’s the reason you’re here, isn’t she? And not only you. It’s getting difficult to find a trueborn anywhere these days.”
“I’m trueborn! I—”
“If you were trueborn, you’d be sitting in the ducal palace, instead of guarding a bunch of kerlingar.”
“But to let such a thing live,” the second fey interrupted, obviously still appalled. “What was she thinking?”
Apple Boy shrugged. “Probably whatever she’s thinking now.”
“What?”
“He’s in with her. Him and those witches.”
“Maybe she’s about to rectify a mistake,” the first fey said, viciously.
“Rectify?” Rosier suddenly piped up. “What do you mean, rectify?”
“I told you to shut up—”
But Rosier wasn’t shutting up. Rosier was grabbing the bars of his cage, looking a little crazed. “What do you mean, rectify?”
The fey smiled, and jerked him out. “Here. I’ll show you.”
Shit.
“The lanterns, down the hall,” I told my knives quickly. “All of them. Go!”
They leapt up, always ready for some mayhem, and a second later the fey were leaping, too—and in the case of boots-on-the-table, almost falling on the floor—as the corridor behind them practically exploded.
They ran out, swords drawn, and I scrambled forward to grab Rosier. “Where’s Pritkin?”
“About time!” he said shrilly. “I could have been—”
“Where’s Pritkin?”
“—killed, where the fuck—”
I shook him. “Pritkin!”
“They took him to see Nimue,” he said breathlessly. “That’s all I know.”
“And she’s where?” Because the bizarro house was starting to feel like it should have filled half the damn valley.
“What part of ‘that’s all I know’ did you not understand?”
I let go of him and started rifling through the cabinets, looking for a handy diagram I didn’t find. But I did find my stuff, jumbled in a basket. I threw Billy’s necklace over my head, grabbed my ward, tossed the pack on my back—and jerked my head up at the sound of the guards thundering back this way.
“Well?” Rosier shrieked.
“There’s nothing—”
“There has to be!”
“There isn’t!” I slammed the last door, and he looked around frantically.
“The cages!”
“What?”
“Let them out!”
And then we were scrambling to release the familiars, all of which took off down the hallway. I took off after them, Rosier on my shoulder, because hopefully they knew where their mistresses were. But even if not, I liked this corridor better, since it was going in the opposite direction from the guards.
Who sounded pissed.
Damn, I wondered what my knives had been up to.
I didn’t worry long, because it took everything I had to not get lost in the mazelike layout of the place. We thundered down the hall and through a door at the end at a dead run. Then turned into another, slamming into the wall on the curve, before immediately diving into a third. After that, I didn’t even try to keep up with the twists and turns, because what was the point? It wasn’t like I knew where I’d been to start off with.
But I knew where I’d ended up. Because if anything had ever said “queen’s private chambers,” that was it. I braked and jerked back behind a wall.
But the herd didn’t.
They went barreling through an elaborate antechamber, full of rich fabrics, beautiful woods, thick carpets, and elaborate mosaics, yowling and barking and knocking things over. And a moment after that, the two guards who had been bookending an arched doorway were cursing and running after them. Rosier and I followed, through the door and into another line of small, interlocking rooms.
It wasn’t the same one Pritkin and I had been in. That had been done up in greens and browns, while this one was water hues, every tone of blue and white and green imaginable. But it had a lot in common with the other, like the fact that it was full of places to hide.
I dove behind a pierced screen as the two guards came back, carrying a pack of very unhappy runaways.
They passed by, the birds cawing and flapping, the dog snarling, the cats hissing and scratching the hell out of one guy’s ear. And I picked up a blanket to cover Rosier and walked quickly in the other direction. Nobody looked at me twice, not even the duo of guards near the end of the line of rooms, because of course they didn’t.
I was just a slave.
And then we were in.
“I asked the same question.” It was a man’s voice, but I couldn’t see him. I couldn’t see much of anything; there were too many butts in the way. “They say their population is growing and they need more food. They also hinted that they enjoyed the idea of weakening you. They worry about a possible alliance of you with the Dark Fey.”
“The Dark!”
That was a woman—or a female, anyway. The voice was too lyrical to be human, although the scorn took the edge off slightly.
“You have common cause,” the man argued. “The Svarestri’s expansion is squeezing both of you. If you were to ally, they fear their ability to hold against such a union, one bolstered by the army of half humans you’ve built for yourself.”