“But was she lying?” I turned to Caedmon. “What does your king say?”
“I would ask him had he not disappeared several weeks ago. There was an assassination attempt, or so it seems. He went on a hunting expedition with two trusted retainers one afternoon and never returned. We found his horse—riderless—and, after a search, the two retainers—dead. But of the king himself, there was no sign.”
I stared at my plate, my stomach flip-flopping like a landed fish. I herded my cows over to Stinky, who appeared to have the appetite of a couple of starving teenagers, and tried to order my thoughts. “So the Domi sent you to find out the truth,” I finally said. “Because if Claire’s claim wasn’t a desperate lie, she carries the heir to the throne.” Caedmon’s mouth was full, but he nodded. “And if the rumor is true?” He swallowed but still said nothing. “You’re planning to take her back with you,” I accused.
Caedmon sat back in the hard, uncomfortable dining chair as if on a throne, his legs stretched out in front of him in supine elegance. “The present situation proves that she is hardly safe here, does it not?”
“I believe I’m missing something,” Radu announced indistinctly, around the tiny brown leg that was sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He seemed to be having difficulty with his own chef’s cooking. A moment before, a bull had fallen over the edge of his plate, and when he’d tried to scoop it up surreptitiously, it gored his finger. “I thought the heir had to have a majority of Fey blood. Why would Claire’s child, assuming she is pregnant, be in the running?”
Caedmon shook his head, causing all that golden hair to shimmer like a silken banner caught in a breeze. “Forgive me, but you do not seem to know a great deal about the lady in question. The Domi has recently learned that her mother had a liaison with a powerful Dark Fey noble. If Claire was the result, a child born to her and our king would be three-quarters Fey. And a very strong contender indeed.”
I stared at Louis-Cesare, and could tell we were both thinking the same thing. “Half-breed.” He said it first.
I nodded. The Fey who attacked us hadn’t been after me at all—they’d mistaken me for Claire, the other half-breed who lived at that address. It looked like Kyle had gotten something right, after all. Claire was carrying a nonhuman child, but the father was Fey, not vampire. I felt a rush of relief so extreme that I laughed aloud. This garnered me a few worried glances, but I didn’t care. That was one huge weight off my mind. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only one.
“I was under the impression that the Fey took human babies and left changelings in their place,” Radu was saying. “Why would a Fey leave a child behind?”
Caedmon made a graceful, indeterminate hand gesture. “Presumably because the lady did not tell him she was going to have one. Perhaps she feared that he would take the child if he knew.”
“Then how did the king find out?” I asked. “Claire’s mother died when she was a baby. And if her real father didn’t know…”
“That is one of many questions I, too, would like to ask, were there any who might answer them,” Caedmon said. “Perhaps her mother told her husband the truth before she died. Perhaps he arranged for a test. There are several that could have shown the truth, both magical and mundane. We can only speculate.”
Louis-Cesare’s blue eyes narrowed as if he didn’t like Caedmon’s answer. “The Senate believes that the succession struggle has been taken into our world recently. Both Prince Alarr and another contender, a Svarestri noble named Ǽsubrand, have been seen in New York within the last month.”
I stared at him. “Where did you hear that?”
“From Kit Marlowe.” I scowled. The beetle hadn’t bothered to mention that little tidbit.
Louis-Cesare had the look of someone who was thinking hard. I preferred it to the compassion on Caedmon’s face. I didn’t want Claire to need compassion. “If the king is dead,” Louis-Cesare said slowly, “the throne is in contention. Disposing of Claire, if she is carrying the king’s child, would also remove a rival.”
“She must be found and the succession issue resolved,” Caedmon agreed. “In the last civil war, more than ten thousand of us perished.” His gaze went distant, as if he was seeing another time. “Arrows shredded the sky. Blood fell like rain. Smoke from the funeral pyres filled the air until all that was visible was a dirty haze that stung the eyes and stopped the throat.” His voice thrummed in the air like a note from a plucked string, and suddenly, I could actually see the scene his words described.
Wind whipped my robes against my sweat-soaked body. Below me, a battlefield flowed away to the bloodred horizon. All around, columns of smoke clutched the sky like leprous fingers. Everywhere lay bodies in still-smoking armor, suffocating me with the smell of blood and fire and burnt flesh. My hands were raw from holding the spear I had used against my enemies, but I barely noticed. Ashes were in my eyes, ashes that had once been the body of a comrade, an ages-old life ended by a chance shot from a green recruit. They clung to my face, stealing the pride of victory, mixing with my tears, threatening to choke me—
“Caedmon!”
It felt like someone slammed a door in my face. I was back at the table, my heart thudding, my ears ringing, my vision swimming in pieces. I was light-headed and disconnected, as if my mind was trying to occupy two places at once and it wasn’t built for it. My mouth was sour with anguish over the death of someone I’d never met; my veins thrummed with adrenaline from a fight I’d never experienced.
Radu was on his feet, confusion on his face, and Louis-Cesare was looking daggers at the guest of honor. Caedmon ignored him, but his eyes were concerned as he gazed at me. “My apologies, child. I would not have had you see that.”
“What happened?” To my surprise, my voice was steady.
Caedmon appeared slightly embarrassed. “The Frum-fórn, what you call the Fey, exist in both planes of being at once: the physical and the… I suppose you would call it the spiritual. I sit here, I eat, I talk, yet my awareness is not taken up entirely with such things. It exists—I exist—elsewhere, as well. And for a moment, so did you.”
“Why?”
He lifted his glass slightly. “I have had, perhaps, a bit too much of our host’s excellent wine.”
Louis-Cesare snatched up his own glass, sniffing it cautiously. He turned to Radu. “What are you serving?”
Caedmon smiled at his host. “I must congratulate you—smooth, velvety and with a subtle tang that lingers on the palate like perfume.”
Radu looked from him to Louis-Cesare, managing to appear proud, confused and contrite, all at the same time. “I thought it appropriate, considering our guest—”
“What is it?” Louis-Cesare demanded again.
Radu was beginning to look cross. Something told me his dinner party wasn’t working out quite as planned. “I had Geoffrey dilute it. Most of that is my personal label—”
Caedmon chuckled. “And the rest is some of the best Fey wine I have tasted in many a year.”
“So that is what did it!” Louis-Cesare’s expression could have cut diamond.
Caedmon’s eyes went dark, like underwater jade. “Do you wish to accuse me of something, vampire?”
“That… substance… tortured us with memories! Made us relive things from the past. Horrible things.”
Caedmon’s expression was eloquent. Without saying a word, he managed to give the impression that it was an incredible trial to be forced to share a table with one so ill-mannered. Then he sighed and looked at me. “Did you also experience these memories?”
I nodded. “We thought… we encountered a spell at the caves. We thought the mages had left it.”
“You were likely correct, although our wine would heighten the effects. Have you had any before tonight, say, within the last three days?”
“No. I—”
Louis-Cesare interrupted. “You drank some on the jet, from my glass. I had filled a flask in the cellar of your home.”
“Wait a minute. You??
?re telling me Claire’s cellar is full of Fey wine?”
“Yes. I was surprised to see it, for only the Fey can make it. I always wondered why it is so heavily regulated in our world.” He stared daggers at Caedmon. “It seems now I know.”
Caedmon looked affronted. “In a few days, three at the outside, the effects will dissipate. The strongest will be gone in a few hours.”
I sat up, feeling more myself. I sniffed my glass, but there was no sign that we’d been drinking anything dangerous. It had merely tasted like a decent red, fruity and earthy. “What does it do?”
“Nothing harmful,” Caedmon assured me. “Under the right conditions, it helps align two people’s thoughts or, in lesser quantities, their emotions.” Dark green eyes regarded me appraisingly. “Even with a great deal of wine, few would have been able to pull forth a memory so vivid. I could almost smell the smoke.”
I nodded, thinking of the molten armor, like a black puddle around one of the bodies, and of the scalding wind. By the time it blew across all the fires, it was like a breeze straight off of hell. It brought back memories of my own, of the trenches in France after a mortar attack, and I broke out in a sudden sweat. My heart leapt in my chest, adrenaline flooding me as my perception began to skew. My throat closed once more, full of pain, choked with ashes—
Caedmon stroked his hand up my arm, brushing power along my body like liquid, dissipating the sensation. “Yes,” he murmured, “unusually sensitive.” He smiled reassuringly. “Do not let it concern you. What you saw happened long ago, a memory of our last great war. Even then, it took centuries to replace the numbers lost. Now, I fear, it would be impossible. Yet a struggle over the succession could provoke just such a cataclysm. Your friend must be found.”
“You read my mind,” I said fervently, shivering slightly from the power in that brief touch.
“The Fey don’t read minds,” Louis-Cesare said harshly, his eyes on Caedmon’s hand.
Caedmon smiled, and it was not a particularly nice expression. His grip tightened. “Perhaps not. But we read other things. For example, vampire, I know you have a knife up your left sleeve, even though I cannot see it. The metal sings to me; it is a talent.” He glanced at me, and his smile was deliberately provocative. “One of many.”
Louis-Cesare’s anger suddenly filled the small room like water, and in a heartbeat his eyes went from silver-tinged to as solid as two antique coins. I sat frozen, awash in a sea of power. I was beginning to understand why Mircea had wanted him along, only Daddy had failed to mention anything about the hair-trigger temper. I guess he assumed the red hair would clue me in.
Caedmon sat very still, not offering challenge but not shrinking from it, either. I wasn’t sure what to do, with a suddenly homicidal vamp on one side and a less-than-pleased Fey on the other. Rock and a hard place didn’t begin to describe it. I glanced at Radu, but he was sitting like a deer caught in headlights, with those beautiful turquoise eyes almost completely round.
In the end, it was Olga who defused matters by letting out a belch that I swear was a full minute long: By the end of it, we were all staring at her in sheer amazement. It’s considered rude by troll standards to fail to show appreciation for a fine meal with an appropriate bodily function. It appeared Olga had liked the grub.
She patted her enormous middle and got out of her chair with all the grace of a pregnant hippo. “Good food,” she told Radu, who managed to nod his thanks. “I sleep now,” she announced, with an almost queenly dignity. Geoffrey scurried to lead the way back up the stairs, and Olga followed him out, her behind brushing the sides of the narrow stone stairwell as she went.
I decided she had a point. If Caedmon knew anything more, I’d squeeze it out of him tomorrow when I could think better. I pulled Stinky out of the cheese plate, where he’d decided to take a nap. “I think I’ll call it a night, too,” I said, hefting him onto one hip. I didn’t bother to say good night. Radu was too stunned to notice, and it wasn’t a Fey tradition. Besides, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be.
Chapter Sixteen
Branches whipped across my face with a sting like tears. The hard-packed snow slid under my feet as I ran, but I couldn’t stop or even slow down. The sky was a pale, leaden gray overhead, but darkening rapidly. There was worse weather coming. I should turn back, return to the dismal but warm interior of the tavern, but I couldn’t. I would never go back there, to that malodorous, ill-lit, cramped little place. I couldn’t stand to see fear in the eyes of the men, to have them shrink back when I passed, to listen to them whisper about the evil that had come among them. Even though it had been the whispers that told me of what I would find.
I paused on the top of a steep, rocky slope, drawing clear, cold air into my starved lungs. The wind that keened down crags and across frost-armored trees was bitterly cold, but it was blowing the other way. I could see the smoke, but not smell it. Not yet.
The valley stretched out in front of me in wave after wave of white, broadening and finally merging with the plains below. A few snowflakes drifted down, catching on the ends of my hair. There was a haze of white in the air over the other end of the valley. Soon, it would consume the smoke, and what I sought would be lost until spring revealed the tattered remains. No. I had to get there first.
I plunged down through the trees, leaping, stumbling, and half fell into a rough clearing. Now I could smell the smoke. The air was filthy with it, its acrid taste in every breath, coating the inside of my throat, my lungs. I knelt down on the hard-packed snow in front of blackened ruins that in no way resembled the village they had once been. Already, delicate crystal flakes were trying to cover the ugly, smoking remains, as if the forest resented the mar on its beauty. Soon, they would succeed.
I cautiously picked a path through the smoking ground toward the only heap that had yet to collapse. It didn’t look much like a house—it could have been a storage shed or even a shop—but I didn’t have time to search through the entire charred landscape for clues. I tugged on the few intact boards and they fell inward, disintegrating even before they hit the floor.
They left a hole big enough for me to slip through, but there was precious little to see. A few scorched pots, a scrap of cloth that suddenly burst into flame, crumbled to ash and blew away on a breeze. Nothing else.
I crouched among the ashes, sifting through the still-warm remains with my fingertips. What had I expected? The bodies were outside, scattered charred bones and wisps of hair crisped by the heat. Indistinguishable. I could have walked over hers on the way here, unknowing. There was nothing to show that this had once been her house, no object left intact that might have been hers, no familiar scent on the breeze. No memory, however vague, from the time I must have spent here.
Nothing.
Wet flakes melted on my face, running in cold rivulets down my cheeks. A wisp of bitter smoke curled from the rubble, extinguished almost immediately by the plop and hiss of a wet clump of snow. I looked up and realized that it was falling more heavily now, piling up in soft drifts against the black lumps outside. The wind was picking up, too. I should leave—now, before I was trapped in this white hell.
I lingered a few minutes longer anyway, strangely reluctant to go, to admit defeat. But, the cold was running chilly fingers along my body, leeching my heat, making me shiver. I backed out of the tiny space, and immediately the wind and snow reached out to grab me. The village’s remains were only dark shapes now, dimly visible through a heavy snowfall. Fierce, bitter cold wrapped around me, and I stumbled over a protrusion, falling flat on my face. A quick pain pricked my palm. I looked down and saw nothing, but my hand closed over a hard, metal shape, long and sharp. My numb fingers recognized the familiar feel of a dagger.
The wind howled around me as I stumbled to my feet, but I made it to the trees and the scant protection they offered. I glanced down at the weight in my hand, and it was a treasure, the blade so bright it reflected the white-flocked canopy above me almost like a mirror. The hilt was engr
aved, a complex rendering that must have cost a fortune. No peasant’s protection this. A grim-looking dragon, obviously carved by a master’s hand, clutched a cross, its slit, angry eyes staring outward in obvious challenge.
I shoved it into my belt, glad to have the protection it offered. Even more valuable, it was something to prove to myself that I had been here, that it hadn’t been just a dream. I had come, even if it was too late.
I woke up to the shrill sounds of a very unhappy Duergar. When he saw I was awake, Stinky stopped the caterwauling and crawled into my arms. I hugged him, feeling his tiny chest rising and lowering in frightened breaths. As with Caedmon, I couldn’t get a clear scent reading on him, but he picked up so many smells it would have been difficult anyway. At the moment he smelled like soap and dirt and raw beef. It was oddly comforting.
I sat staring into the darkness as Stinky slowly quieted. I must have made some kind of sounds in my dream to so upset him, but I couldn’t imagine why. It hadn’t quite been a nightmare, although it had the flavor of deep sadness, of important things left undone or done too late. And it had been unbelievably real. I could almost smell the charred wood and feel the sharp sting of pine needles across my face. In a warm bed in a well-heated house, my body shivered from biting cold and bitter loss.
I had no idea what it meant. My dreams usually involve things jumping out at me from dark alleys, dragging me off, ripping me open—my subconscious isn’t exactly subtle. The things that frighten me tend to be tangible, like the knife. But although it had borne the family symbol, it hadn’t been menacing. No one had attacked me and I’d suffered no physical pain, unless you counted the slight sting of the blade’s point. And if that was the worst injury I suffered on this job, I’d throw a party.
After a few moments, I gave up and tried to return Stinky to his nest of blankets on the floor. Despite the bath, I suspected he had fleas, and didn’t want him sharing my bed. But he resisted, and those sticklike arms were stronger than they looked. I got a good look at him and realized that it hadn’t been my distress that woke him up, after all. His little stomach was hugely distended. The whitish gray skin under the lighter fur on his belly was pushed out like he’d swallowed a softball.