“They say.” The scorn was dripping now. “And you believe them.”
“What I believe is that they are willing to hold the borders for a regular shipment of food. No slaves. They don’t use them, Nimue; they never have. And if they’re as strong as you—”
“Are they? Are you sure about that? You had best be, Arthur. Betray us and you’ll have more than the Saxons to worry about!”
Arthur?
My head came up.
The butts belonged to guards, who ringed the room ahead. I was in a small antechamber, dim because their bodies cut off most of the light, and unable to do anything to improve the view because of two more guards on the door behind me. They were facing the other direction, but might notice if I started climbing around on the furniture. Like the ones in front, standing in front of two pierced screens on either side of a small opening, could decide to turn.
And then someone did, but only to shift slightly, giving me a narrow view of the room through the gap. And of Pritkin, kneeling in the center, naked except for his trousers, with those powerful arms bound behind him. And balancing on the balls of his feet as he watched a dark-haired woman argue with a mirror.
Okay, I guessed she was actually talking to the man in the mirror, big and blond and red-faced, and rapidly getting redder.
“I’m not betraying anyone,” the man—the king—said as I stared at him. “I have given you options; you choose not to take them. What do you expect?”
He did look like Arthur, I thought. Or the myth, at least: golden hair held in place by a shining circlet, close-trimmed blond beard, the weathered skin of a warrior, but with jovial crow’s-feet at the eyes. But there was fey in him, too, if you knew where to look: eyes too blue to be human, movements too liquid, a voice that was almost an independent entity, with power behind it, rebuking, cajoling, entrancing . . .
Well, except to Nimue, who didn’t appear impressed.
“I expect you to be sensible!” she snapped. “You are my blood, yet you ally with my enemies?”
“You sound like I’m joining them in making war on you—”
“You may as well be!”
The man’s blue eyes flashed. “You say that to me? To me? When it is my people’s blood that has made you strong? How many would you have in your army if not for our women? How would you feed them if not for our grain? Yet you demand more?”
“A temporary measure, owing to the recent war—”
“There’s always a war, Nimue! It’s one thing my father taught me! You’ll never be free of it, he said—but he tried. For his people, he tried, and made that damn treaty with you—”
“Which you repudiate!”
It was thunderous, and the tension, already thick enough to be tangible, kicked up another few notches. I glanced over my shoulder, and, sure enough, the two guards behind me had twisted around this way. Luckily, they were still ignoring me, but I didn’t know how long that would last.
I started working off my bracelet.
“What are you doing?” Rosier hissed.
“The plan,” I said softly, and nodded to the row of women on their knees behind Pritkin—the coven leaders, I assumed. And our only possible allies.
“The plan failed spectacularly,” he hissed. “And now the witches are in there. We are out here. What exactly—”
I held up my chameleon, which as usual when off the body was a small gold trinket. “You can get in there.”
It took him a second. “I can’t!”
“You can. It’ll hide you—”
“It isn’t designed to hide a person. It’s designed to hide things. Small things—”
“You’re a small thing!”
“But I’m not a crazy thing! What am I supposed to do? Crawl over and give the witches the wands—”
“Yes!”
“And then what?”
“And then they cause a distraction. And . . . and we get Pritkin out. . . .”
“You can’t even convince yourself!”
“You have a better idea?”
“Anything is a better idea! Do you think the fey are just going to stand there while the witches cast a spell to unshrink their weapons, and another to untie their hands, and another to—finally—do some damage?”
“Again—you don’t like the plan, come up with a better one. I’m open to suggestions!”
“—that’s the point of the tournament,” Arthur was saying as Rosier glared up at me. “Come to court, Nimue. If you are as strong as you say, you will defeat the Svarestri and gain all that you wish. But if you’re too afraid—”
“Too smart, you mean, to wager an advantage I already have. Renew the treaty, Arthur. Increase the tribute to the amount I have asked for, and you will have the peace you seek.”
“Or?”
“Or I will take your women, all your women, and leave you to see how long your men follow you without them!”
Arthur drew himself up, blue eyes burning, all hint of joviality gone. “Do not threaten me, Nimue. You won’t like the outcome if you do.”
“Neither will you,” she said, turning around for the first time.
And for a moment, I forgot everything, even why I was there. Because she was beautiful. No, I thought, in stunned amazement, she was beautiful, achingly, heartbreakingly, unbelievably so. Raven-dark hair, flowing like a river almost to the floor, eyes like a sea storm, blue and gray and glinting in anger, a face so perfect it hurt, like a force of nature carved in flesh. Blue robes that flowed about her like waves when she moved and grabbed one of the witches.
And slit her throat.
Chapter Twenty-six
I stared at the dying woman, thrashing in Nimue’s arms, and a horrible sense of déjà vu slammed into me. Her hair was long and half gray, and I couldn’t see her face. But, for a second, it was Rhea all over again. A fact only heightened when Nimue looked up.
And the beautiful blue eyes flooded black.
Black like the endless night sky, without any stars. Black like the pitiless depths of the sea. Black like the eyes of a monster, a monster I’d seen before, a monster that—
Eating you, he’s eating you. He’s—
The room seemed to telescope, and that horrible feeling I’d kept having broke over me, freezing my limbs, tightening my throat, keeping the scream that was building trapped inside.
Until Nimue grabbed another victim.
And I made a sound that the fey didn’t seem to notice, but that had Pritkin’s head jerking around. Our eyes met, and suddenly, everything was happening at once: Arthur bellowing, women screaming, Pritkin out of his bonds and lunging, the room dissolving into chaos as a mob of fey jumped for him and he jumped for Nimue—
And wrenched something off her neck.
“Ohshit!”
I started, because all that had taken a couple seconds, and suddenly something was streaming at me over the heads of the crowd. Something on a fine gold chain, something that gleamed in the lamplight, something I would never catch in a million years, because I had the coordination of a clumsy two-year-old. Something that my hands plucked out of the air anyway, at the same moment that Nimue looked up.
And our eyes met.
“Vlva,” she spat.
“Sybil,” the spell dutifully translated.
“Fuck,” I whispered.