SNAIL’S FIGHT

Into the light. That suddenly sounded like the best idea in the world.

Following the prince—because that was what her class was trained to do since birth—Snail thought about what she’d just witnessed. As the prince had checked out the two dead boggarts, she’d stared at them over his shoulder.

Their throats had been cut with something large and inelegant.

Something like the ogre’s butcher knives, the ones he’d worn in the belt around his waist.

But when she and the prince had passed by the dead ogre, he was still lying on his stomach, which concealed the knives. And he was as still as the two creatures at the door. So she knew he couldn’t have been faking. Ogres were not subtle creatures.

There’s someone else in this game, she thought. Someone who doesn’t care about killing, which argues for a toff. Someone who is fast, thorough, and inelegant, which argues for a Border Lord. Someone who kills without using magic. She bit her lower lip. Which leaves only another creature, or an apprentice. She sighed. Apprentices don’t kill.

She thought a minute, then amended that: Unless they are apprentice assassins. Not that she’d ever met any apprentice assassins. Or met anyone who’d met any.

It was a puzzle.

Puzzles made her head spin.

A midwife’s apprentice was taught how to anticipate problems in the birth chamber, not solve problems left by killers. Anticipate, alleviate, and then await—the midwife’s creed. What an assassin’s creed was, she didn’t want to know. Cut, kill, hack, and hew, slice your prey through and through? And then slip silently away?

She forced herself to watch the prince’s back and keep up with him step for step across the interrogation cell. By concentrating on that, she got her head to stop spinning at last, but it didn’t solve the puzzle.

She hated puzzles.

While she climbed the secret stairs behind the prince, she stuffed her right hand into her apron pocket and wrapped her fingers around the handle of the knife she’d taken from the ogre’s back. Elegant, with a carved handle, and an exceedingly sharp point that she hadn’t dared touch, the knife was the only thing that made her feel even a little bit safe.

So why hadn’t the prince taken it? Or asked for it back? She shook her head, reminding herself that if there were a third player in this game, then the knife was probably his. And he, rather than the prince, had done the ogre in. I definitely don’t want him to come to get his knife back.

Snail was lost in thought as they reached the top of the stairs, and she failed to notice the prince coming to an abrupt stop. She slammed into him for the second time that day, and he dropped the candle. It fell spinning to the floor, making their shadows dance crazily along the stone walls as if there were suddenly dozens of strange creatures in the corridor.

“I’m so sorry, Your Serenity!” she whispered as she bent to pick up the candle. It must have been magically lit, because it was—thanks be to Mab—still burning. But when she stood up again, she saw that the shadows hadn’t lied completely, and there was someone else in the hall: a tall, dark shadow looming up behind the prince, spreading shadowy arms to grab him.

And that someone, Snail thought, was most probably the one who killed the two assassins and possibly the ogre as well.

Before she could move or even think, the shadowy arms grabbed the prince. He tried to jerk away, but the arms held him fast by the shoulders. Even by candlelight, Snail could see that the prince’s face had gone bone white. It was as if she could see the skull beneath. Whether it was terror or something else, she couldn’t tell.

“Let him go!” she shouted.

She heard a low chuckle, and it was not from the prince, who was still struggling against his assailant.

That laugh . . . she’d heard it before. Only she couldn’t think where. She took the knife out of her pocket and held it up in her left hand, the candle being in her right.

“Let . . . him . . . go,” she said plainly, each word enunciated in case the shadow assailant was from the Seelie Court and didn’t speak their language. “Let him go now. I have a knife . . .”

She held it up and was pleased that her hand didn’t tremble at all.

“Unless you are left-handed,” the voice behind the prince said—it was low, controlled, and rather amused—“I think I have the better of you.”

“I am left-handed,” she said, bluffing, “and my knife is very sharp.”

The low laugh came again. “Your knife, is it? Not unless you are a drow.”

Unexpectedly, the prince broke free, turned to face his assailant, and said, “Jack, what are you playing at?”

“You know him?” Snail was astonished.

The prince said over his shoulder, “He is my best friend.” He hesitated as if he’d said too much, then turned back to the drow.

And now Snail could clearly see the drow’s hand, which—if she’d noticed it earlier—would have identified him sooner, the four-fingered hand with sharp black fingernails that gave away his clan.

“Answer me, in Obs’s name,” the prince insisted. “What are you playing at?”

The drow moved into the light.

Still holding the knife out in front of her, Snail raised the candle so she could see both their faces at once.

The prince looked furious, color now flooding back into his face. He had his hand on the handle of his sword as if any minute he’d take the drow’s head off.

As for the drow—this Jack—he was old. She knew that few drows reached old age. They were a quarrelsome crew—the young males fighting in the nest and eating their dead, and the adolescent males battling to the death over mates. That Jack was this old and a friend of the prince meant he was smart, lucky, and ruthless. She didn’t like the sound of that combination.

“Ask him,” she said to the prince. “Ask him again.”

“Ask him . . . what?” the prince said, turning toward her, narrowing his eyes, almost hissing.

She realized at once that she might have just made a fatal mistake. The problem was she’d never had real occasion to learn proper manners. Birthing mothers don’t care if the midwife addresses them correctly; they just want the babe out NOW! And the prince had seemed forgiving of her lapses in manners when they were alone and creatures were dying mysteriously all around them. But she knew that toffs could get really prickly about all that manners stuff when they were gathered in one place. Not that the drow was an actual toff. But still . . .

More than one head had been lost at court because of a dropped address or a misused title.

“Ask him again, Your Serenity, if it pleases you,” she said, dropping quickly to one knee.

He turned back to the drow and said casually, so no one would think the girl had commanded him, “What are you playing at, Jack Daw?”

Not to be outdone, the drow bowed his head. “Just trying to keep you safe, Your Serenity.” He winked one bright eye at Snail and stuck a dark nail into his mouth as if loosening a bit of something lodged in his teeth. When he withdrew the nail again, he added, “It looked like you were falling there.”

The prince straightened his tunic. “I was fine. The girl bumped into me is all.”

The drow peered at Snail as if his old eyes were having trouble piercing the darkness. She wasn’t convinced.

“A midwife’s apprentice? Interesting.” He turned back to the prince. “Shall I keep her safe as well, Your Serenity?”

“Well . . . yes . . . I suppose . . .” the prince stammered, then caught himself. “Yes, of course,” he said, sounding more regal, more commanding. “She has proven useful in my escape.”

“Your escape seems to have needed many such useful folk already,” said the drow. “And it is barely begun.” He seemed to be controlling the urge to laugh.

“It is no laughing matter, Jack.”

“Am I laughing, Serenity?”

Snail thought, Close enough as to be no never mind, which was something Mistress Softhands often said.

“Then let us get moving.” The drow’s voice was coolly in control. “The guards will find your two other useful friends at the bottom of the stairs before long.” He turned and said to Snail in a tone that was both commanding and wheedling, “I suggest you put the knife away lest you fall against the prince again and injure him with it. It looks quite . . . lethal.” Then he walked away from them, along the corridor.

Snail dropped the knife back into her pocket but kept hold of the candle with its flickering light, not wanting to miss any of the drow’s movements. He may have wanted to help his friend. But she guessed he didn’t really want to keep her safe at all. Or alive.

However, she knew he would do his dirty work in the dark where the prince couldn’t see it. His kind always did. More reason to hold the candle high.

She was in this fight and flight alone, as she had been from the start.

It’s best not to forget that, she told herself.