Chapter Twenty-Four

 

“Come in here before you set the trees on fire,” someone said, almost as soon as we made it through the door.

We’d used the smaller one that was inset into the massive one, slipping through once Ray’s boys provided a distraction by spilling drinks on the guards protecting it and then running like hell. The guards had chased them and we’d passed on through, with no one else seeming to care. It helped that the party had reached the sloppy drunk stage and I doubted that anyone could still see well enough to notice.

The only problem was that my light hadn’t faded entirely. It was dimmer than it had been earlier, more of a vague flicker around my form, but still bright enough to cast moving shadows on the forest of trees growing out of the floor in the next room. I stopped to look at them in surprise.

The large space had the same construction as the room outside, or rather, it had started out that way. But mature oak and ash trees had scrawled their roots everywhere, not only underfoot, but also climbing up the walls like bark-covered vines. Creating a wooden obstacle course and giving the whole place the ambiance of an ancient temple lost in the jungle.

“How?” Ray called, answering back. “All I see is a forest!”

“There’s a path around to the left,” the voice said. “Look for the curtains.”

We gazed around, but the room was quite dim, with the only light coming from me and a scattering of tiny lanterns in the tree limbs. And the occasional miniature doorway or window that had been set into their trunks. I blinked at that realization and looked closer, but no, I wasn’t imagining things.

The nearest little door on the trunk of a fat oak was closed, although painted a pretty blue with white scrollwork. But the nearby window was open and it was the most exquisite thing, with bits of flattened horn for the panes, scraped thin to let in light when there was any, and a window box planted with flowers. The flowers were the product of a tiny weed that the dark fey called forest snow, because from any distance at all, the multitude of miniscule blossoms just looked like frost. But here, they seemed huge, as big as a pixie’s two fists put together, and spilling in riotous profusion down to the trunk below.

Inside the small dwelling was something even more delightful: a woven rug, in reds and blues and green. It was the kind known as a rag rug on Earth, which utilized scraps of old material to make a new creation in a multitude of colors. It couldn’t have been much bigger than the size of my palm, but it covered a good deal of the floor.

The rest was taken up by a table and two chairs, which would have struggled to accommodate a Barbie doll; a tiny candle in a wooden base with a flame kept equally small by the size of its diminutive wick; a wooden bench seat covered with several cushions embroidered with tiny scenes; a portrait on the wall, which was too small for me to make out many details; a kitchen off to the right with a bunch of bright copper cookware; and an archway that had some stairs inside it, leading further inside the trunk.

And an outraged pixie face, staring out at me, and all but shooting daggers from his eyes.

The trees must be where they slept, I realized. And in my fascination, I had bent so close that my eye must have been taking up most of the space in his window. Before I could apologize for disturbing him, tiny shutters slammed closed in my face, cutting off my view, and leaving me feeling like a gigantic Peeping Tom.

I looked back at Ray. “I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to—”

He took my hand. “Come on. We’ve been summoned.”

We made our way through the trees with me refusing to so much as glance at any more of the interesting views offered by tiny balconies and open windows. That was despite some miniscule faces peering out at me, because my light was enough to paint shadows on the trunks as we passed. Finally, we found a route that hugged the wall, cutting a path through the mass of roots and giving us space to walk.

“Do you think the witch lit me up on purpose?” I asked Ray quietly. “So that I couldn’t skulk about?”

“I don’t care,” he said, a thread of defiance in his voice. “And why should we have to skulk? They kidnapped us, tried to have their champion squash us, and didn’t even invite us to dinner!”

“I didn’t have anything I thought you might like,” the voice rang out again. “Not for a vampire, that is. Although I’ve heard that the dhampir eats like a troll!”

“Thank you,” I said, and the voice laughed. It was a woman’s, and it tinkled like bells.

“Come, come. Join us for dessert. It’s one thing both our cultures can agree on.”

There were curtains at the end of the path, filmy things in dark green that blended in with the trees and were barely visible in the shadows. They cut the pixie’s sleeping quarters off from whatever lay beyond and should have muffled the voice, only I was fairly sure that it was being magically enhanced. Ray held the curtains out of the way for me, so I wouldn’t set something ablaze and get us into even more trouble.

The other side was more of the same, but I didn’t see any dwellings among the branches of the much sparser number of trees. The walls were also the same, although the ceiling was even higher than the one outside, and the place was vast, instead of smaller and more intimate as I had expected. I decided that I should stop expecting things in Faerie, and we moved forward.

The trees cut down the echoing void somewhat, but it was still a very large space with very little in it. Except for four huge banners hanging on the wall at the far end of the room, made of crimson silk and bright enough to cut through the gloom. They each had a large, gold and white flower in the center that flashed in what little light there was, beckoning to us like a beacon.

There was also something under them, at the far end of the space, where dim light flickered at us from among the trees. It finally resolved itself into a long table on a dais lit by standing candelabras on either end and smaller lights that were nestled into patches of greenery in between. So much for lurking about, hoping to overhear something, I thought.

When we’d started this excursion, I had had some vague idea of a situation like the one at the consul’s court, where there was always a crowd and some of them weren’t as discrete as they might have been. Lurking about there was often an education, drifting from group to group in the noisy mass, following tidbits about the room like a detective trying to put things together. Which was especially easy when the detective was an invisible spirit.

Ray had come along as my base, a familiar body that I could go back to if I needed to rest, or if I was summarily excised as I had been by the guard earlier. But that idea was out of the window now, and Ray must have been thinking the same. Because he sighed and headed into the echoing cavern of a dining room.

I followed, splashing the floor with light.

“Ha!” The voice laughed. “I like this new form, although not as much as the other.”

The speaker was hard to find, despite sitting on a throne large enough for a giant. Which must have been who it had been made for, as it was plush and padded and easily twelve feet across, leaving its occupant to dine in solitary splendor even among guests. But she was still hard to see, and not just because her crimson robes were the same color as the velvet seat cushions.

But because she was all of eight inches tall.

“Pixie,” I said, in surprise, and she smirked at me.

“You were expecting something else?”

“I . . . wasn’t sure what to expect,” I said truthfully, and only after I spoke did I realize that the voice was coming out of Ray.

I wondered if he had been talking to himself this whole time, and couldn’t remember.

But the pixie only clapped her hands again, and laughed some more. “Oh, this is too fun. That was you, wasn’t it, who scared off my guard?”

“What guard?” Ray asked.

“The one I put on your room. Not to keep you two in, of course; I don’t think any of my people are up to that. But to keep others out. Everyone here was so curious and you were exhausted and needed to rest.

“But a few hours later he comes tearing in here, half crazed, and babbling about some foul miasma trying to leech into his bones. I did wonder . . ..” She eyed me up and down.

I attempted to look entirely unlike a foul miasma. And returned the scrutiny, although she appeared almost identical to the small creature who had served my lunch, except that she was a redhead. And unlike the other, whose locks had been close cropped, she appeared to have a great deal of hair.

It was piled on her head in coils of fat braids and in little curls that hung down around her face. She also had huge, lavender eyes and the prettiest, delicate green wings that were currently folded downward as they were not in use, giving her the appearance of wearing an iridescent cape about her shoulders. I could see them because she was sitting on a tower of cushions to get her above the slab of beautifully polished wood serving as a table top.

There was no crown nestled in all that shining abundance, but she didn’t need it. There was no doubt whatsoever who was in charge. Something that was impressive considering who else was at the table.

But before I could properly acknowledge them, something stirred in the pixie’s lap, under the tiniest of blankets. Forgetting my previous lesson, I moved closer, surmounting the few steps leading up to the dais to get a better view. And what I saw . . .

Drove everything else from my mind.

It was . . . it was . . . it was precious, so much so that I gasped in wonder and put out a hand, before remembering my current state and snatching it back. Ray hadn’t gone up in flames when I touched him because we were linked, with the witch’s spell seeming to view us as one and the same. But this beautiful creature did not have that protection, and I wouldn’t have hurt it for the world.

On the contrary, I felt a surge of overwhelming protectiveness sweep over me, something that the pixie seemed to sense. For she sat the tiny bundle up a bit more, and pulled back the blanket that was partially covering the face. And let me see.

“My son,” she told me proudly. “Is he not perfect?”

“Oh,” I breathed. “He is. He is utterly perfect.”

It was true. He must have been a new born, for he wasn’t even the size of my pinkie, with an exquisite little face smaller than a fingernail. He had no hair yet, at least not to speak of, although there was a bit of downy fuzz on his head so fine that I was not even sure that it was there.

He looked like a doll, something a master carver had made out of alabaster with the tiniest opalescent wings just visible in flashes as she adjusted him. But he wasn’t a doll. I could see that clearly when I got closer, moving around the long table and up to the throne, where the queen allowed me to get nearer, waving off the group of winged, leather clad guards that had descended on me like a cloud of locusts.

I barely noticed them; I was too busy bending over the bundle, being careful not to get too close. But he must have sensed something, because he moved, pushing an arm out of the softness of his blanket and waving the tiniest of fists about. As if to say, what is this huge, bad-mannered person who dares to breathe on me?

And then he yawned, a ridiculously big, open mouthed expression of displeasure and sleepiness that made me fall in love immediately.

I would have died for him.

“He likes you,” the queen said, her lavender eyes sharp. “He tends to scream at everyone else.”

“He is perfect,” I breathed. It was all I could think to say. But it seemed to be the right response, because she patted the seat beside her.

“Come, sit by me. I think he finds your presence soothing.”

“I—I can’t. I might scorch the seat, or—or hurt him.” It was unthinkable.

“Don’t worry about that,” she assured me. “The flames won’t get through my magic.”

“’Scuse me,” Ray said to someone from behind me. Because he must have moved when I did.

I turned to see him surrounded by the pissed off guards, who he was batting away like annoying gnats. And then noticed the woman in the seat of honor on the queen’s right. It was the Pythia, looking uncomfortable, perhaps because my butt was in her face.

I moved it slightly, and she flashed me a look out of pale blue eyes that I couldn’t read. That was probably just as well, as the last time we’d met, I had tried to kill her. I had been laboring under a misapprehension caused by the North American consul, who had wanted to drive a rift between her and my father, and had used me to do it.

And yet, she limited her reaction to seeing me again to a stern look? I remembered the wide-eyed, frightened woman she had been that night, and did not understand what had changed. But something had.

I looked from her to Mircea on the queen’s other side, who was looking quite at home, and as perfect as if the fight in the arena had never happened. His daywear had been exchanged for dark blue velvet robes with silver embroidery at the neck and the cuffs of the tight-fitting sleeves. His hair was dark and shining, as were his eyes, which reflected my flames as he looked at me.

His expression was neutral, and as usual gave nothing away unless he wanted it to. But his gaze was strangely intense. I didn’t understand it for a moment, as he had seen me in many guises through the years, with this far from being the strangest of them. But then I realized: yes, he had seen guises, but he hadn’t seen me, not without Dory being present.

He had never seen me just on my own, with nothing else in the way. Not before today in the arena, where there had been no time for scrutiny. In a real sense, then, my father and I were meeting face to face for the first time.

I suddenly felt flustered and looked away, not wanting to know whether he approved of what he saw.

And met another pair of eyes, only these were easier to hold, despite not looking any happier. If anything, the opposite was true. Marlowe was on the other side of father, leaning forward so that he could see past him, and looking as fierce as he had when faced by an army of fey.

He had cleaned up nicely, however, with his goatee well-trimmed and his own robes, deep green and without ornament, being attractive enough. But his hair was a riot of dark curls that it appeared no comb had ever touched. I blinked at them, wondering if he had merely forgotten to brush them, or if this was supposed to be a fashion statement.

I did not know.

“What is this?” he demanded furiously, as if he didn’t know what to make of me, either. “What fresh hell are you up to now?”

I gazed back at him, unsure how to respond to that. I looked at Ray, who was now flanked by a whole bevy of pixies with knives on their belts and swords slung over their backs. They looked rather fierce, possibly because of the previous batting, but Ray was snubbing them with the aplomb of a man who had recently stared down a giant, a dragon and a vampire senator.

“Ignore him,” Ray advised. “He’s just being a bitch.”

“Sit, sit,” the queen said impatiently, and I sat.

“I have a problem,” she began, before Marlowe cut her off.

“Haven’t you been listening?” His hand hit the table. “She’ll only make it worse! She’s a time bomb waiting to go off! Impossible to predict, and we don’t even know—”

He stopped talking rather abruptly, I assumed because father had silenced him. Outbursts were rarely useful and not his style. But when I leaned forward a little to look around Mircea, I found Marlowe with two tiny, leather clad guards in his face, small spears out and almost touching his nose.

Their expressions were eloquent, and I didn’t need to know the language to read the message: “Don’t try it.”

“Our apologies,” Mircea said, smiling ruefully. “Kit is still ruffled by our experiences in the arena. He doesn’t usually speak out of turn.”

“I should hope not,” the queen said, waving a small hand. The guards broke off and went back to their positions by the wall, but not without a few more spear flourishes in Marlowe’s direction.

“However,” Mircea said, and she scowled. “He has a point. Fairie appears to have brought out new abilities in Dorina, ones that she has had no chance to learn how to control. Employing them on any kind of a—”

“Bored now,” the queen said, and turned to the Pythia. “Are you going to try it, too?”

The pretty blonde, who was wearing a lovely gown of tissue of silver that clashed terribly with an ugly gold and ruby necklace, just sighed. And rolled her eyes, shook her head and drank wine, all at the same time, the latter rather aggressively. The queen smiled briefly at her and then switched it to me.

“As I was saying, I have a problem that we should discuss, but perhaps I should put the little one to sleep first, before we are interrupted. He gets fussy when he’s tired.”

“Oh.” I tried to hide my disappointment. “Do you have to?”

Her smile broadened, from smug satisfaction to something more genuine. “You can come with me, if you like.”

I nodded and got up.

“I gotta go, too,” Ray said, somewhat aggressively for one addressing a queen. “She can’t talk without me and I—”

He broke off, but the queen wasn’t fooled. “You don’t trust us?”

He didn’t answer, but she didn’t look offended. “She is perfectly safe here.”

“It’s Faerie,” Ray said, the words bursting out of him as if a dam had broken. “No where is safe.”

“Some places are.” Shrewd eyes slid to me and then back to him, as if evaluating something. “And if I wanted to hurt her, I’d go after the body lying alone and unprotected in your room, wouldn’t I? Save for the guards I had to bribe to go back there.”

“What?” Ray looked suddenly alarmed, as if he hadn’t thought of that. And started for the door, only to find a cloud of pixies in his way. He whirled on the queen. “Tell ‘em to move—now.”

“Or what?” she asked curiously.

“I’ll move ‘em!”

She laughed, and once more, I was reminded of bells. “I think you would try,” she agreed, sizing him up. “But it isn’t necessary. My guards are there to protect the body whilst the mind is elsewhere. And you can come along,” she added, before he could speak again. “You are linked, and she might vanish if you get too far away.”

“I, too, should like to see the nursery,” Mircea said, only to have the Pythia snort into her wine.

The queen shot her an amused look. “Another time,” she said, and glanced at her guards, “Keep them here.”

And then she flew off into the darkness, with Ray and I scrambling to keep up.