It was hard to dispute that logic. I said nothing more while Colorado and the girl (whose name turned out to be Columbine) slapped a plate chest piece on my front. It was attached to the mail with leather buckles, and although it was significantly heavier than the mail, it wasn’t overwhelming.
“You guys do know that I’ve never lifted a sword in my life,” I said conversationally as they strapped on shin guards, plates that resembled wrist braces but that Columbine referred to as gauntlets, and finally, handed me a small oval shield.
“None of us had when we started,” Colorado answered with a cheerful smile. “You’ll learn quickly. Now, as for a helm . . . I’m not sure what we have to fit you. We’ll try a couple, shall we?”
What followed was a painful five minutes as I tried on, and rejected, a number of closed helms. Most of them were simply too small, which just irritated me since I knew that both Columbine and Colorado were thinking what a fat head I had, but one of the helms that wasn’t too small was far too massive to be worn. In the end, Colorado said, “I believe that for today we’ll do without a helm. Now, what do we have left? I’m not sure what we have in the line of a lady’s sword . . . My lord!”
Colorado bowed low.
I turned, ignoring the little spurt of adrenaline. A dark-haired man with a short goatee strolled up, wearing what can only be described as a maroon velvet smoking jacket, a white silk ascot, and a fez. One of his hands was in his jacket pocket, while the other waved as he spoke. Two young women in harem costumes trotted behind him, one bearing a tablet computer, the other holding a spiral notebook and pen. “—That was the last that was ever seen of those brigands. Naturally, I offered to return the jewels and fine silks that had been stolen, but the fair maiden insisted I keep them as a sign of her gratitude. That and her virginity, but we need not speak of that now. End chapter. What have we here? A new recruit?”
“Yes, my lord,” Colorado said, bowing low again while gesturing awkwardly at me. “It is my honor to present to you the Lady Gwen.”
“Hi,” I said, refusing to be awed or give in to my curiosity about the man’s bizarre outfit. I held out my hand to shake his.
He looked at it for a moment, then pulled a monocle from his breast pocket and eyed it like it was made up of worms. “Greetings,” he said finally, tucking away the monocle. “You are not one of Aaron’s souls?”
“If you mean am I alive, yes. My mothers and I sought sanctuary here from some mortal police,” I said, hoping my exclusion of mentioning the Watch wouldn’t come back to sting me. “We were promptly arrested for spying. We aren’t spies. My mothers are Wiccans, and I am an alchemist.”
“Wiccans. Are they here?” He looked around.
“They are housed in Mistress Eve’s tent, my lord,” Colorado said quickly.
“Excellent. I have need of Wiccans. Tell them to start bespelling Aaron’s men immediately. Now, as for you . . . can you make fiery orbs that will rain down from the sky and decimate my enemy?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I don’t make bombs.”
“Pity.” His left arm, the one with the hand in his pocket, twitched and started to move. He grabbed his elbow and jammed his hand back down into the pocket. “You will be fighting on my behalf, I see. Colorado, make sure she wears my colors. All ladies like to wear my colors. And give her one of my signed head shots. The one used in my last book. It’s in profile. Ladies love my profile.”
“I will gladly see that she wears your colors, Lord Ethan, but first I must find a sword suitable for a lady’s use.”
Ethan stroked his chin for a moment, then waved an airy hand. “Give her the Nightingale.”
Colorado’s eyes opened wide. “Are you sure, my lord? That is Lady Dawn’s own sword—”
“She never fights anymore. She’s far too busy trying to find husband number seventy-one. My mother has issues,” Ethan confided. “She will insist on wedding mortals, and they never last. Still, it’s a hobby. Daisy, where were we?”
“End of chapter twenty-eight,” the woman with the notebook said promptly.
“Begin new chapter. By midsummer in the year eleven ninety-two, I had taken control of all the kingdoms of Wales, and was one day considering what act of derring-do I should next accomplish, when a Saracen prince arrived at my castle gates demanding entrance . . .”
Ethan and his entourage wandered off, leaving Colorado and me staring after him.
“So that’s the head of your team. He’s kind of . . . eccentric, isn’t he? What book is he writing?”
“He is engaged in taking down into print the many dashing and thrilling adventures of his life.”
“That explains the artsy outfit. Is something wrong with his hand?”
A pained expression crossed Colorado’s face. “Lord Ethan was smote with a mysterious ailment, no doubt by Lord Aaron.”
“Warts?” I guessed.
“Alien Hand Syndrome,” Colorado answered with a sigh. “It troubles him greatly, but do not mention it. He dislikes people discussing it.”
There was really nothing I could say to that, so I just stood patiently by while Colorado sent Columbine off to fetch the oddly named sword.
“This was Lady Dawn’s,” he said when she returned with it. It was a smaller sword than that which Colorado bore, with a narrow blade and a delicately scribed hilt that flashed blue and green. “She named it the Nightingale because it would sing when she slew her enemies. It was her favorite sword when she ruled the mortal world.”
“It’s very pretty. Are those emeralds?” I examined the hilt, seeing a couple of spells woven into the intricate design.
“And sapphires. You will take the utmost care of it, I have no doubt. Lady Dawn would not care to know her Nightingale was being abused.”
I tried to remember the history of Wales that I had learned a long time before, but I didn’t remember anything about a woman named Dawn.
“Absolutely,” I said, making an experimental slash or two in the air. The sunlight flashed and glittered on the sword, the gems adding brief bursts of color. I’d never so much as picked up a sword before, but this one pleased me on a primal level. It felt good in my hand. It felt right. “I’ll take very good care of it. So, what exactly do I do when I get to the battlefield? Join up with the other people?”
Colorado took me by the arm and steered me toward the far edges of the camp. “Oh, you won’t be fighting with others. Each soldier fights his or her own shift.”
“But—this is a battle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, of course.” We broke free of the encampment and walked up a slight incline to a knoll. Overhead, thick oily black and gray clouds blotted out much of the bloodred sky, periodically streaked with blue-white fingers of lightning. A distant rumble of thunder completed the nightmarish scene.
“But you have just one person fighting at a time?”
“Just one.”
“But . . . ,” I repeated, shaking my head. “That doesn’t seem to be a very efficient way to fight.”
“On the contrary, it’s quite very efficient. Lord Ethan found very early on that to have all of our troops fighting at the same time meant that many people were killed.”
“Isn’t that the whole point? I mean, killing your enemy?”
He looked horrified. “I do not know how you do things in your native land, Lady Gwen, but here in Anwyn, we do not condone slaughter.”
I felt like a genocidal fool. “Sorry. Obviously this way makes much more sense.”
“It does. We send out one person for a two-hour shift, after which he—or she—is free to rest until the following day’s shift. Few people are injured, and even fewer are killed. It is, as Lady Dawn says, a win-win situation.”
“Kinda makes you wonder why you bother fighting at all.”
“Oh, we don’t wonder that. We know why we fight. Lord Aaron attacked my lord. He had to answer. It was the only honorable thing to do.”
We crested the top of the knoll as he spoke. He stopped
, nodding toward the center of the hilltop, where the grass had been blackened, eventually wearing away to nothing but dirt as red as the sky. Standing with his arms crossed (not as easy to do while wearing armor as you might think), his sword sheathed at his side, was a knight in full armor, including helm, obviously awaiting me. “That is the battlefield.”
I looked around. The area surrounding the knight appeared to be about twenty feet in diameter. “That’s a battlefield? The whole thing?”
“Indeed it is, although if you wish to get a running start, you are permitted an extra fifteen paces.” He clapped me on the shoulder, making me stagger forward a couple of steps. “Good fighting, Lady Gwen! Your replacement will be up in a little less than two hours.”
I watched him trot down the hillside, and then I turned back to look at the knight and the so-called battlefield. It could have served as a baseball diamond for guinea pigs. I took a few steps forward until I was at the edge of the scorched grass. “Um. Hi. I’m Gwen. I guess I’m supposed to fight you.”
The man inclined his head, a flash of lightning reflecting off the closed metal visor.
“Just so you know, I’m new to all this. I’m an alchemist, not really a soldier. I was kind of . . . er . . . conscripted into this job. Totally against my will, because as I said, I’m not a fighter, but there are times when you just have to take the lesser of two evil choices, and this was it. The lesser, that is. So, what’s your name?”
Yes, I was babbling, but there was a method to my madness. I figured I had at worst an hour and a half to kill before someone else came to fight, and if I could use up some of that time in pleasantries, I was willing to chitchat like I’d never chitchatted before.
The knight didn’t answer for a moment, but then he shifted his visor up so he could look at me unimpeded by metal. “I can’t tell you.”
“Is it against the terms of the fighting or something?” I asked, digging the point of the sword into the ground so I could lean on it.
“Don’t do that.”
I blinked at him. “Don’t do what?”
“Don’t bury the tip of your sword in that manner. You’ll damage it. Here, see?” He marched over to me and lifted the tip of the sword in his mailed hand, showing me where the metal was dusty with bits of dirt and dead grass. “A sword is a valuable weapon. You must treat her with respect and honor.”
“Oh.” I blew on the end of the sword, took off my metal gloves, and carefully, so as not to cut myself, brushed off the dust and grass. “It is a pretty sword. It even has a name: Nightingale.”
The man’s eyes widened. Although I couldn’t see a lot of his face, he looked pleasant enough.
“You bear the fabled Nightingale? You must be a very great warrior indeed.”
“See, that’s just the thing. I’m not, not at all. I’m an alchemist. Did I mention that? My moms—I have two—my moms and I just got here in Anwyn, and all of a sudden I found myself with armor on and this pretty sword in my hand. So if you wanted to forgo fighting, I’d be fine with that . . . er . . . what was your name?”
“I told you that I cannot tell you my name,” he said primly, lowering his visor again and pulling out his sword, obviously in preparation for skewering me.
“Why not?” I asked quickly, desperate to distract him from the actual act of fighting.
He lowered his sword and raised his visor again. “I am King Aaron’s man.”
“Yeah, so?”
I could have sworn he rolled his eyes. “A warrior of King Aaron cannot be vanquished unless his name is known to his enemies.”
“Really? So if I guessed your name, I’d win?” I considered him, trying to think of as many male Welsh names as I could.
Up went the sword. Down went the visor. “That is so. Are you ready to begin? We have wasted much time in conversation.”
“Hold on just a second,” I said, lifting a hand. “I’d like to have a few shots at guessing your name.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice muffled behind the visor.
“Because I’m not a fighter. I’m a . . . well, a scholar, I guess. And besides, I can’t fight someone whose name I don’t know.”
“Why?” he asked again, but he lowered his sword once more and lifted the visor so I could see the annoyed look on his face.
“I can’t think of you as ‘the knight dude’ in my mental narrative, now can I? Daffyd?”
This time I saw him clearly roll his eyes. “No, that is not my name.”
“Herbert.”
“No.”
“Owen?” It was my own surname, but there was a chance it was also his first name.
“That is not my name, no. Now, shall we fight?”
“I’m not going to fight you until I have a name that I can think of you by. Darryl?”
His shoulders slumped for a moment before he straightened up and said, “You may pick a name to use for me.”
I really didn’t want to fight him. He looked strong and immovable, and that sword was much larger than mine. “Fine. But if you hurt me, my moms will come after you. They’re very protective.”
He lowered his visor for the umpteenth time. “We shall begin. What name do you choose for me?”
I thought of whatever was the least threatening and the least likely to harm me. “When I was a child, I had a soft, fuzzy purple bunny named Douglas. I guess I can call you that.”
This time he didn’t just lift the visor—he took off the entire helm, pulling with it the soft cotton cap that was worn under it. His hair was close-cropped, and spiky with sweat. “Are you insulting me?” he asked, pointing the helm at me.
“Me? No!”
“You named me after a child’s toy! A rabbit toy! I am a warrior of Aaron! I am feared by all! The very ground itself trembles beneath my feet! I am not a soft, fuzzy Douglas!”
“Sorry. I can try to think of something else if you like.”
“You do that!”
I considered him, trying to formulate a vision of who he looked like. Maybe a Simon? An Alex? A Cadwallader?
“I’m sorry,” I said, slumping just a little. “Now that I’ve thought of Douglas the bunny, that’s what is stuck in my brain.”
He looked like he was about to explode, but he simply slapped the cloth hat and helm back onto his head, hefting his sword and waving it in a menacing manner. “It matters not what you call me, servant of Ethan. Commence the battle.”
“You know, I think I need a little coffee break. How about I go get us a little light refreshment?”
“You’re not going anywhere. Not again.”
The voice that spoke didn’t come from Douglas. He pulled up his visor, his frown being sent over my shoulder. I turned to see who it was that had joined us in our battle.
It was Gregory. And he looked angry as hell.
FIVE
The gentle glow of the Krispy Kreme sign lit Gregory Faa’s face. He was not happy, and he didn’t have one iota of trouble letting the man who stood with him know that fact. “I am not happy.”
“It’s hard luck that your girlfriend duped you again, but we need to focus on what’s important,” Peter said, without the slightest shred of sympathy.
“That just makes me want to punch you, you know,” Gregory answered, tired and cranky and utterly unable to keep from telling his cousin what was on his mind. Another day he might have been more circumspect, but tonight, as the two of them stood outside the Krispy Kreme shop in the Cardiff Shopping Centre, he lacked the verbal check needed to keep his emotions to himself.
Peter looked up from his notebook, wherein he was recording information on the chase that they had just undertaken across Cardiff to the shopping center. The fruitless chase. Gregory ground his teeth again at the thought of how Gwen had fooled him. Wantonly and brazenly.
“Why, because you don’t like me pointing out that she misled you?”
“Because you aren’t the least bit sympathetic with my plight. And she’s not my girlfriend.”
“You’re interested in her,” Peter insisted.
“I’ve never once said that,” he protested, wondering how Peter could tell that he was, in fact, quite interested in the delicious—if wicked—Gwen.
“You don’t have to. You saved her life. Twice, according to the account you gave of what happened after you stole time.”
Gregory looked into the distance, ignoring the flashing lights of the police cars as the officers continued to mill in and around the shop, interviewing workers and customers alike about the events of twenty minutes before. “I thought we weren’t going to speak of that again.”
Peter laughed. “We aren’t. Why do you need sympathy if she’s not someone you’d like to have a personal relationship with?”
He found it difficult to answer that question, and decided instead to answer another one, despite the fact that it hadn’t actually been asked. “I don’t think she escaped by means of a spell.”
Peter returned to making notes. “You interviewed the security guard. Didn’t he say that Gwen and her abductees ran into the doughnut place?”
“Yes. And I’m not so sure they were abductees.”
“Look, I know your pride is still stinging over this betrayal,” Peter said, giving him a sympathetic look that he found he didn’t like or want after all. “But you’ve got to face the facts that this woman is not someone you should be lusting after.”
“I never said—”
“You didn’t have to. Anyone who uses the terms ‘lush’ and ‘delicious’ when describing a woman lusts after her. She’s a bad egg, Gregory. She’s rotten to the core, and she’s not above using you to get what she wants.”
Gregory fought back the urge to argue with his cousin about Gwen’s character. He didn’t, but not because he realized that arguing at that moment would be futile—surrounded as they were with the mortal police, who, by means of some false identification cards, they believed were members of Scotland Yard—but because he had better things to do with his time and energy. “The guard said that Gwen helped the women out of the car. He said that the women, in turn, helped the kidnap victim very carefully and that Gwen and one of the others more or less carried the woman into the shop. Would you do that if you had the cops right on your heels?”