The Queen's Choice

  “Hold it. You mean we just paid for two horses and you’ve never ridden before, either?” Shea was gawking at me in disbelief.

  “Well...no,” I admitted. “We have horses in the Faerie Realm, along with deer, bear, and other large animals, but few of us ride. We’re light on our feet and don’t tire easily. And we fly, remember?”

  “Don’t suppose you’ve ridden deer or bear, either,” Shea groused, and I gave her a pained smile.

  “Look, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, and this is the best way to do it.”

  Shea turned away from me to examine the bay gelding she had been given, and I did likewise, scratching my head as I tried to figure out the best approach to take to this riding business. I’d seen people mount before, so I tried to mimic the movement, placing my left foot in the stirrup. My action was apparently of great interest to my horse, as he turned his head to observe me, shifting his body away from me at the same time. I hopped on one foot to stay with him, and I could have sworn he sneered. An experienced rider would probably have guffawed at this notion, but it seemed clear to me that the big bay was taunting me. Animals usually beheld Fae with a certain amount of respect, but either I was no longer Fae or this horse was wicked.

  To my credit, I finally swung my leg over my gelding’s back and settled into the saddle. A glance at Shea told me she had also gotten this far, and was looking rather proud of herself. Ready to move forward, we tapped our mounts on their sides with our heels, but neither horse budged. Mine pinned its ears back and turned its head to nip at the toe of my boot. I yelped, though I had not felt the horse’s teeth, startling the animal into jigging sideways. Shea’s horse rumbled and spun in circles, and she ended up gripping the saddle with a nauseous expression. Then it ceased, its rump aimed at me, and began to back up.

  “Your horse is growling—he’s growling!” I slammed my heels against my mount’s side, frantically trying to avoid a collision, or worse, a kick.

  Laughter broke out behind us, and I swiveled in my saddle to see a young man standing in the door to the livery stable. He was perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, and over his clothing he wore a leather apron with an assortment of metal tools poking out of its pockets.

  “Horses don’t growl,” he said, earning a scowl from me. “They aren’t wolves. You’d think the two of you are Fae, the way you ride.”

  “Fae can ride,” I snapped. Just because I wasn’t among them didn’t mean I had to abide his bigotry and know-it-all attitude.

  “Then you’re definitely not Fae,” he responded with a grin. “But since you rented the horses, I assume you want to get somewhere. I’d be glad to give you a few pointers.”

  “That would be very nice of you,” Shea jumped in, cognizant of my foul mood.

  The boy spent the next hour explaining how to rein, move forward, change gaits, halt, and dismount. He also instructed us on how to saddle and bridle the geldings, as well as basics like how to tie them and how much grain to feed them. He spent more time with Shea than he did with me—her smile was pretty under any circumstances, but especially so in comparison to my irritable countenance. I didn’t like looking foolish, but there was no denying I had been served a plateful of humility.

  When the boy finally deemed us somewhat competent, he slapped our horses on their rumps, sending us off at a teeth-jarring trot. For the next couple of miles, we changed between the walk and various trot speeds, trying to find one that was comfortable. At length, our horses settled into a ground-covering jog that we could sit without feeling like we were going to be catapulted across the plains. Pleased with ourselves, Shea and I shared a grin.

  Now that we had the hang of horseback riding, we made good time on our way to Oaray. It was a two-day trek, during which we twice came close to military troops. I grew numb upon seeing them—I’d never encountered law enforcement or peacekeeping forces this far north. Fortunately, here on the fringe, they weren’t too concerned with checking papers. If they had, Shea could have been arrested on the spot for not having proper documentation. Still, it was worrisome, and I wished I could hover into the air for a better view of what lay ahead in order to steer clear of such encounters. Given the fresh, crisp breeze at our backs, I also longed to float on the currents for the pure pleasure of spiraling to the ground. But such delights were now lost to me. Annoyed at myself for focusing on the things that had been stolen from me, I urged my horse into a faster pace. There was more than one way to feel the exhilaration of movement.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE CITY OF FALSE SMILES

  I paid for my eagerness to stretch my horse’s legs and feel the wind rush—my legs were stiff and sore by the first night, and by the time we saw our destination on the horizon, it felt like my tailbone had been forced partway up my back. My entire rear resented the notion of movement in equal measure to its resentment for sitting still, and there was no muscle I could stretch to relieve my discomfort. Shea, I determined from her tart expression, was experiencing much of the same.

  We arrived in Oaray in the early evening, while the town still looked like a happy, safe place to raise children. In truth, it was—but only if parents wanted their offspring to establish themselves as successful deviants come adulthood.

  As I had been in the City of False Smiles before, I knew where to go and what to do. I led Shea on horseback through a few narrow streets, then into a main plaza, where the night was awakening. Greetings flew everywhere. The people of Oaray knew one another well, and visitors were welcomed wholeheartedly because they were the source of the city’s income. There were nice buildings in the plaza, shops and the like, but only one remarkable structure. An open stable was attached to one side of it, and we tied our mounts before entering the peculiar bookstore-inn-restaurant-church that beckoned to us.

  Every sort of person lounged inside the place, which was named The Emporium. There was drinking, but not to excess; the crowd seemed sober enough. Long fainting couches accented the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that had the attention of a few children. On the other side of the establishment, chairs were arranged like pews and a man preached. In a corner to the preacher’s left, I spotted an exchange taking place: a bible for quite a bit of gold. I wondered what treasures the undoubtedly hollowed-out book really contained.

  “Can I help you?” asked a woman with a bright accented voice that told me she wasn’t a native of the Warckum Territory. Truth be told, she probably didn’t have the papers to leave Oaray. She stood behind the counter straight ahead of us, and I smiled back, Shea close on my heels.

  “Room ten-twelve,” I said, and the woman, blond hair braided with twigs and pretty berries, pulled out her register.

  “What was the room number you requested?”

  “Four-six,” I replied, ignoring the confusion in Shea’s dark, penetrating eyes.

  “You’re all set.” She flipped her book closed and handed me a key. “You know the way?”

  At my nod, she finished, “Sleep well! Service will be up in a few.”

  I thanked her and turned toward the stairs that curved behind the entry desk. But before I could take more than a few steps, Shea caught my arm.

  “Care to explore a bit?” She glanced around the establishment, clearly intrigued by its atmosphere, and my stomach clenched, wondering how many young men might be on the loose in Oaray. At the concern on my face, Shea tentatively added, “I mean, this looks like an interesting place.”

  I sighed, feeling like an overly strict guardian. “Not now. Business to attend to first. We’ll see if there’s time after.”

  She nodded and followed me to the staircase. Up, up, and up we went until we found the third floor, which was nothing more than attic space. Unlocking the only door, I ushered my friend inside a tiny, dingy room stuck under the eaves that held but a couple of chairs and a table. Its smell was rancid, a mixture of spilled alcoho
l, cheap food, pipe tobacco and blood.

  Shea wrinkled her nose against the odor. “Anya, what the hell? I know we’re on a tight budget, but there’s no bed up here, and this room is not labeled ten-twelve. That service the girl mentioned had better be good.”

  “It will be. Just relax.”

  We sat around for half an hour or so, Shea occasionally parting the dusty curtains to peer through a small window, until finally there was a knock on the door.

  “The person you’re expecting?” she asked, and I hopped to my feet with a nod.

  But the person who came through the door was not Deangelo, the trustworthy Faerie with a despicable attitude who had sold me my forged papers when I’d gone on my original Crossing. This was not Deangelo, to whom we Faeries were sent for aid, to whom Evangeline would have gone for travel papers stating she was human, the man Illumina would have been told by my father to see. This was a new man, young, small in frame and height, but with sharp hazel eyes. He wore suspenders, a top hat, and heavy eyeliner, probably so he could blend in with the night crowd of Oaray, although the clothes suited him better than a costume of convenience should have. Behind him came an older man, large, bald, and carrying a wooden box.

  “Who are you?” I asked confrontationally, but the fellow in the suspenders was neither insulted nor surprised.

  “I’m not Deangelo,” he drolly admitted, tapping a cane he didn’t need on the ground to punctuate his words. “A blessing from the perspective of some of his customers.”

  “Not from mine.”

  The bald man carried his box to a beat-up desk and set it down amidst a cloud of dust, and Suspenders spun to flop dramatically into a moth-bitten armchair. I scrutinized him—he was not much older than Shea and I.

  “There’s no way around this, darling. I do the papers now. Deangelo got taken away about two months ago.”

  “Taken away?” My gaze drifted to Shea, hoping she was keeping an eye on the bald fellow. She didn’t disappoint. Her hand rested on the pistol at her hip.

  “You’re not going to trust me unless I’m straight with you,” the suspendered fellow went on. “I respect that. If you worked with Deangelo in the past, then you have to know it’s dangerous, what he used to do, what I do now. Every once in a while the Governor decides it’s time to raid Oaray. The rumors about this place finally get to him or something. Who knows? But Deangelo went down in the last sweep.”

  “Well, where is he now?” I demanded, thinking not only of the aging Faerie, but of Evangeline, who might have wandered into the middle of this sweep.

  “How should I know?” The cane tapped a few times, whether out of impatience or nervousness, I couldn’t tell. “The Governor’s laws protect the Fae, but they sure as hell don’t protect criminals, not even magic ones.”

  For the first time, the bald man spoke, muttering something in a language I couldn’t understand. At his partner’s quick shake of the head, he went back to the wooden box.

  “You want papers or not?” Suspenders drawled.

  Though I wasn’t happy about things, I nodded. We needed travel documents for Shea, no way around it.

  “Tell me your names,” I grumbled. “So I’ll know who I’m dealing with in the future.”

  “Haruspex by first, Eskander by last. But you can call me Spex—the rest just gets in the way. That big guy over there is Hastings. So what name are we putting on these papers? I guarantee they’ll look as official as if the Governor himself put his seal on them.”

  “Mary Archer,” I said, giving the name only a moment’s thought. Shea could pass for a Mary, and the last name was common enough not to draw questions. “We just need the one set.”

  Hastings pulled up a creaky chair and opened his box, removing a few materials. The basic papers were already made up, but he mixed together some ink that had a distinctive shine in the light, and made careful swoops with his hand to draw out the necessary print. When he was finished, he waved Shea over, handed her the quill, and instructed “Miss Archer” to sign her name.

  “That’s everything you need,” Spex said, standing with the same sort of flourish with which he’d sat. “Now, about what I need.”

  “I know, twenty gold,” I said, pulling out my money pouch.

  “Fifty,” he corrected, and I froze, trying to make sense of his unyielding expression.

  “That’s more than twice Deangelo’s rate!”

  He shrugged unapologetically. “So you can do math. Doesn’t change the price.”

  “But it does make you a thief. Especially when I don’t know if your work’s any good.”

  “Forger, thief—any more compliments and I’ll blush. But here’s the bottom line. After what happened to our mutual acquaintance, rates went up. The risk factor is greater. I can’t justify putting my neck on the chopping block for twenty pieces.” Spex sauntered toward the door. “If you don’t like the price, don’t take the papers. If you don’t trust the product, that’s all the more reason to walk away.”

  Shea muttered something to Spex as Hastings closed up shop. From her tone, I guessed it was an insult, but the words were in the same language the illicit duo had spoken earlier. His heavily lined hazel eyes shifted from smug to cautious; the bald man, on the other hand, appeared not to have heard.

  I counted out the coins Spex wanted and handed them over.

  “If these papers don’t deliver,” Shea barked at the departing men’s backs, “you’ll hear from us. You can count on it.”

  “Just stay out of trouble, dolls,” Spex called as he descended the stairs, then the businessmen were gone.

  I tossed Shea my travel documents and she compared them to her new ones. “They look good. Hard to believe, but I think they’ll pass.”

  “I want to know what really happened to Deangelo.”

  Dust floated around our heads, and I was about to suggest we leave the attic and find a real place to sleep when Shea stopped me with a question.

  “Deangelo was your friend?”

  “Not really a friend. He was old, sort of hated all living things. But he was dependable. A Faerie who fell in love with money and settled out here after he went on his Crossing.”

  “Because Spex and Baldy—they were trying to decide if you were Fae.”

  “What?” I sputtered, the leather folder she’d returned to me slipping through my fingers. It flipped open, and the documents broke away from each other in the manner of grown siblings.

  “I speak a little Bennighe,” Shea affirmed, helping me to gather the papers. “It was my mother’s first language. The big guy asked what Spex saw on you. If you flickered or something like that. I don’t know all the dialects. But he meant did you have wings.”

  I stuffed my passport into my jerkin and ran to the window. Evangeline would have come this way on her Crossing, and Illumina almost certainly had encountered these two. I was lucky enough—if it could be called luck—to be wingless, but my friend and my cousin would have been exactly what Spex was looking for. What did he and Hastings want with Faeries?

  Through the coats of dirt on the pane, I could see citizens lighting gas lamps along the street. I surveyed the scene and caught a glimpse of the distinctive pair with whom we’d just done business vanishing around a corner.

  “Come on,” I ordered, grabbing my coat and pack. Shea did likewise, and we fled the room, eager to see where the forgers were headed.

  Leaving The Emporium, Shea and I headed onto the streets, which had the atmosphere of a perpetual holiday despite the cold—everything was prepared and kept to impress guests, including decorative pine wreaths on doors and lampposts that brought sparks of life to the city in the dead of winter. We jogged in the direction Spex and his partner had been going, and identified their destination with relative ease. There was a second inn, this one home to a large and raucous pub, a
few blocks away.

  The inn was named The Illusion, presumably a jab at the blindness of the Governor’s Constabularies to Oaray’s underbelly. We went indoors, Shea in the lead, since Spex had spent more time talking to me than to “Mary Archer.” I pushed back my hood, not wanting to look suspicious, then tied my reddish-brown hair into a bun to draw less attention to its vibrant color.

  With little searching, we found the pair we had followed at an out-of-the-way table, engaged in a discussion with two other men. I examined the faces of the four conspirators and my palms began to sweat. Spex and Hastings were meeting with Fae hunters. I knew because the tall, stringy-haired man who had bound my hands was among them. I hadn’t expected to remember any of their faces, but now that he was before me, his features were as recognizable as my own reflection. Based on what Thatcher had told me, the other men were likely his brothers or cousins. Besieged by trembling, I shrank into the shadows along the wall, images of a halberd flashing behind my eyes. My temples pounded, and my body jerked in an attempt to escape the phantom weapon.

  I took a few deep breaths, tightening my fists at my sides, part of me wanting to rush forward and attack the culprit and part of me wanting to disappear. Shea said nothing. Her eyes were on our prey, making her oblivious to my struggle.

  I gradually regained control of my emotions. There was nothing I could do about the past, however potent it was in my mind, but this meeting made it more imperative than ever to find out what Spex and Hastings might be doing. Their choice of associates left much to be desired.

  Feeling tense and short-tempered, I waited with Shea at a dimly lit table near the door until the meeting broke up. The Faerie-hunters departed first, followed shortly thereafter by the odd duo we were trailing. Drinks in hand, Spex and Hastings sauntered by us, though their eyes never flicked in our direction. I frowned, for they stood at a deliberate distance from one another, their demeanors no longer that of friends or even associates. In fact, Spex stared at Hastings with unmistakable animosity.