“What IS this place?”
I’d been picturing Cahlish as a war encampment. A sea of tents pitched amongst the snow. Campfires sending pillars of smoke up into the sky for as far as the eye could see. It was nothing of the sort. This place was a stately home. Beautiful. Beyond the bedroom Carrion and I had woken up in was a sprawling house full of open-arched windows, light, airy hallways, and pretty rooms that went on forever. Portraits hung on the walls featuring dark-haired males and females, many of whom bore a striking resemblance to Fisher. The furniture was lovely, the overstuffed chairs and sofas sagging in a relaxed way that suggested that this place had been lived in. Loved in. Birds sang outside. The sun shone, bouncing off the thick mantle of snow that covered the grounds of the estate, so bright that it looked as though the grounds were studded with a million diamonds.
“My great-great-grandfather built it a long time ago,” Fisher answered in a brusque tone. The heels of his boots rang out as he marched down the hallway. “It was my home before Belikon commanded my mother to the Winter Palace to marry him.”
When Everlayne had told me how her mother had come to be at the Winter Palace, I hadn’t spent much time considering what her life would have been like before that time. Nor had I considered what it must have been like for Fisher. How old had he been when he’d traveled to Belikon’s seat of power? Just ten years old? Eleven? I couldn’t remember. The differences between Cahlish and the Winter Palace were stark. He must have hated leaving this place.
A peaceful quiet hung in the air here. It felt safe. Calm. The rooms and hallways were all abandoned. It wasn’t until we descended a curved staircase, the stone steps worn smooth and dipping in the middle from so many feet, that we encountered another living thing: a small creature, only three feet tall, with a round, protruding stomach, glassy amber eyes, and the strangest skin. It looked as if it were formed out of the last dying embers of a fire—rough and charcoal-like, with tiny fissures that ran all over its body, the edges of which glowed, flared, and faded, as if a flame might kindle there at any moment.
The creature carried a silver tray bearing a steaming pot and two cups. When the creature saw Fisher, it yelped and dropped the tray, sending the pot and cups crashing to the ground. “Oh! Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no!” The creature’s voice was high-pitched though decidedly male. He wore no clothes to speak of, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t appear to have any body parts that required covering. Eyes wide as could be, he staggered back from the mess he’d made—the shattered porcelain at his little smoking feet didn’t seem to be the source of his panic.
Kingfisher stunned me to silence when he dropped to his knees and started picking up the shards of broken cup. “It’s all right, Archer. Hush, it’s all right.”
Archer’s mouth hung open. His gaze met mine, and I was amazed to find that there was a tiny ring of flickering fire surrounding his jet-black pupils. He pointed at Fisher. “You see him?” he squeaked.
I eyed Fisher. “Unfortunately, yes.”
“He’s…” Archer gulped. “He’s really there?”
Kingfisher stopped what he was doing, his head hanging, and for a second, I found myself transfixed by what I saw. The gorget only protected his throat. The back of his neck was exposed, the ends of his dark waves not long enough to cover it. His skin was pale apart from a single, stark black rune visible between the base of his skull and his shirt collar. It was complex, all interlocking fine lines, loops, and curls. Most of the runes I’d seen on the Fae had been ugly-looking things, but this…
Kingfisher looked up at Archer. The rune disappeared. “Stop fretting, Arch. You’re not hallucinating. I returned home late last night.”
Archer threw back his small head and wailed. He trampled right over the broken tea service in order to get to Fisher. Throwing his thin, fiery
arms around Kingfisher’s neck, he sobbed hysterically. “You’re here. You’re
here!”
“Whoa. Steady now.” I waited for Fisher to shove the little creature away, but he wrapped his arms around him instead, hugging him close. “You’ll make everyone think we’re being attacked.”
Archer leaned back, pressing small hands to Fisher’s face, patting him everywhere, as if to make sure he really was real, leaving black smudges all over Fisher’s cheeks and forehead. “I missed you. So, so much. I wished, and I hoped, and I—” Archer hiccupped. “I wished, and I hoped. Every day.”
“I know. I missed you too, my friend.”
“Oh no, oh no!” Archer leaped back, patting frantically at Fisher’s chest. “Your shirt, Lord. I’ve singed your shirt!”
Kingfisher chuckled softly. There was no hint of malice in laughter. No mockery or cold, cruel edge. He just…laughed. “It’s easily fixed. Stop fretting. Here.” Suddenly, Fisher’s shirt was no longer fabric. It was smoke. It writhed around Fisher’s torso for a moment, then became a shirt again, un-singed and perfect. More smoke pooled around Fisher’s boots, rolling across the floor, concealing the broken pot and cups. When it dissipated, the pot and cups were whole again, sitting back on the silver serving tray. “See. Good as new,” Fisher said.
“You’re too kind, Lord. Too kind. But you shouldn’t need to fix my mistakes. I should be more careful. and—”
“Archer, please. All’s well. Go on now, quickly. I’ll come and find you before dinner. I want to hear everything that’s been happening around here while I’ve been gone.”
Archer’s eyes were wet. It seemed impossible that anyone would cry tears of happiness over Kingfisher; if I wasn’t witnessing for myself, I’d never have believed it, but it was happening all right. Every time a tear fell and hit Archer’s cheeks, it hissed and turned into a puff of steam. “Yes, My lord. Of course. It would be my pleasure.”
I watched Archer go, perplexed. Kingfisher set off walking again, saying nothing. I jogged after him to catch up. “What kind of faerie was he?”
“Not a faerie. A fire sprite.”
“Okay. And why did he seem to like you so much?”
Fisher didn’t even dignify that with a response. “There are a lot of fire sprites here. Water sprites. Air sprites. Not so many earth sprites. You might want to spend some time learning the names of all of the lesser Fae creatures. Eventually, you’ll offend the wrong person if you go around calling everyone faeries.” As he spoke, we passed a nook in the wall, where seven marble busts were mounted on stands, one of which was facing the wall. Kingfisher flipped off the gods as he passed them, not even breaking his stride.
I let out a frustrated huff. “Look, I won’t be here long enough to learn the names of every type of creature in Yvelia. You’ll find I’m highly motivated to make these relics and get the hell out of here.”
“Mm, of course. You’re so eager to get back to that awful city.” Kingfisher turned a corner and then halted abruptly, opening a door to his left. “Back to all that oppression and starvation. I can really see the appeal.” “Out of everyone, you should understand why I want to go back the most. You’re desperate to do everything you can to help your friends here. I have friends and family who need help, too. They’re too tired to fight Madra
on their own. They’ve given up. If I don’t go home, who’ll help them?”
I was hit with a wave of his scent, all cold dawn morning and the promise of snow, and my breath caught in my throat. I ignored the reaction, forcing myself to think about everyone suffering in the Third instead. It was hard to focus on that when he was standing so close. The tips of his ears jutted out from the waves of his hair, the tiniest flash of his pointed canines showing between his parted lips. His crooked, taunting smile made me want to forget all about my ward. It made me want to remember crawling into his lap, and when his strong hands had found my waist, and—
No.
I wasn’t going to lose myself to that. Not after what he’d done to me last night, forcing me to obey his will.
“I haven’t found myself in this position voluntarily. I wouldn’t choose to be here if I didn’t have to be. The task is my birthright. It became mine the moment I drew my first breath. You’re just one of hundreds of thousands of people who live in your city. Why shoulder the responsibility of saving them when they refuse to save themselves?”
He already knew the answer to his question. He wasn’t stupid. I said it out loud for him, anyway, because he clearly needed to hear it. “Because it’s the right thing to do, Fisher.”
He said nothing. Just looked me up and down in a way that made me feel small and silly. “After you, Little Osha.”
 |
This forge was nothing like the one back at the Winter Palace. It was huge and packed with so much equipment that I didn’t even know where to look first. The hearth was large enough that I could have stood up in it if I’d wanted to—a bad idea, given the powerful fire that was already raging in it. Along one side of the wall were rows and rows of crucibles of all shapes and sizes. Beakers, stirring rods, and flasks sat on shelves. Mortars and pestles, and large glass vials containing powders, dried herbs, flowers, and all manner of different liquids.
Along one side, the forge was completely open to the outside, giving way to a small snow-filled, walled garden with a bench and a tall tree naked of leaves at its center. Beyond the high brick wall, I made out the tops of more trees—evergreen pine this time—and the rocky, sloping foothills of a majestic mountain range not that far in the distance.
“They’re beautiful,” I said, before I could stop myself. “The mountains. I’ve seen pictures of them in books before, but I never knew they could be so…majestic.”
Fisher stared at the mountains in the distance, a complicated look on his face. “Omnamerrin. That’s the name of the tallest peak. The one with the sheer face. It means ‘sleeping giant’ in Old Fae.”
“Do people try and climb it?”
“Only if they want to die,” Fisher answered.
Wait. I glanced over my shoulder, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
“Why are you frowning like that?” Fisher asked.
“Because…” I looked back to the door behind me and the warm, cozy hallway on the other side of it. “The dimensions are all wrong. We were on the third floor just now. And the other rooms we passed were much smaller. This forge is on the ground floor, and the roof’s too high, and…”
“Magic.” Kingfisher shrugged. He paced over to a bench and began the now familiar process of unfastening the sword from his waist. “The
doorway is enchanted. Bound to the entrance of the forge, which is located outside of the house. Much safer than having highly explosive compounds and chemicals inside the house itself. When we walk through the doorway in the house, it transports us here. Simple.”
Simple? It was simple. Which made me want to scream. I was going to throttle him. “If you can do this, then why the hell didn’t you just bind some doorways back at the tavern instead of making me go through that shadow gate?”
“Because I can’t do this,” Fisher replied, setting Nimerelle down on the bench. “This is Ren’s work. I don’t possess the same gift.”
“Then Ren could have—”
“It only works over short distances, human, so take a breath. I couldn’t have. Ren couldn’t have. We needed to travel eight hundred leagues, and a shadow gate was the only way to do it.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “But, if you knew that was how we were going to get here, why not just call the gate inside the Winter Palace? Why make me ride a horse through that terrifying wood all night?”
He gave me a teasing sidelong glance. “I thought you weren’t scared of the wood?”
“I wasn’t! Just…answer the question.”
Kingfisher placed his elbows on the bench, leaning toward me, his hair obscuring half his face. “Because, Little Osha, the shadow gate uses a lot of magic. We Fae are sensitive to such things. If Belikon had sensed me drawing that much magic to the catacombs under his palace, he would have transported himself there before we could have blinked, let alone traveled. That tavern is fifty leagues from the Winter Palace, which, coincidentally, is the exact distance required to perform heavy-hitting magic without alerting someone you want to keep in the dark. So. Do you have any more annoying questions?”
“I do, actually. Why can’t you just use the shadow gates to go between here and the other realms? You don’t need relics for the shadow gates. They don’t make you crazy, apparently. So why even bother with the quicksilver?”
“Martyrs, have mercy,” Fisher muttered. He spoke as if he were explaining the most rudimentary, obvious information to a five-year-old. “Shadow gates are of this realm. They can only be used within this realm. Quicksilver is not of this realm. Therefore, it can be used within this realm,
but also within or to other realms as well. No, no more fucking questions. We have work to do.”
And that was that. He crossed the forge to where a huge wooden trunk sat by one of the largest crucibles, grabbed it by the handle, and dragged it over to the bench. He didn’t break a sweat, even though the godscursed thing looked like it weighed more than Bill and Aida combined. My eyes nearly popped out of my head when he threw back the lid.
A mountain of silver rings sat inside, different shapes and sizes. Some of them were marked with an egis or a family crest. Some of them bore diamonds, or rubies, or sapphires. Some of them were delicate and elegant. A lot of them were chunky, with heavy, engraved bands. I’d never seen so much precious metal in one place at one time. “Well. It’s a good thing Carrion isn’t here. He’d have stolen eight of these already and neither of us would have noticed.”
“I think we’ve already established that I notice when someone tries to steal my belongings.”
Holy fucking gods, he was never going to let go of that. I shot him a baleful glare as I stooped down and picked up one of the rings. It was very feminine, with roses engraved on either side of a beautiful aquamarine stone. “There must be a thousand of them,” I said breathlessly.
“Eighteen hundred,” Kingfisher said. “And that’s just in this trunk.
There are eight more trunks on the other side of that bench over there.”
Sure enough, I looked in the direction that he was pointing and saw at least two more wooden trunks shoved up against the wall. The others must have been hidden out of sight.
I tossed the ring back into the trunk. “Are we forging swords out of them?” Silver was too malleable to forge weapons out of back in Zilvaren, but maybe the Fae blacksmiths had figured out firing techniques to make it stronger. Perhaps they infused it with magic. Perhaps…
My mind ground to a halt, my line of logic dying a miserable death when I realized that Kingfisher was smirking at me again. That smirking meant nothing good.
“Anyone can use any old relic in a pinch, but relics are most powerful when they’re forged from something important to its owner. These are the family rings of the warriors who fight for me. Each one has great meaning to the male or female it belongs to. You are going to take each and every one of these rings, and you’re going to turn them into relics.”
“Fisher, no! There are nearly…” I was good with numbers, but I was too stunned to think straight, let alone perform multiplications. I got there in the end. “There are nearly fifteen thousand rings here! Do you have any idea how long it would take to melt down each of these rings and cast it into another one?”
“Years, I’m sure. But don’t worry. We’re not looking for a pretty piece of jewelry. You’ll melt down the ring, transmute its properties so that it will shield the wearer against the quicksilver, then cast it into something simple like this.” He hooked his finger around his chain and drew out the pendant he wore around his own neck. “If there’s a stone or some kind of engraving on the ring, you’ll find a way to incorporate that into the medallion you make. Other than that, it should be pretty straightforward.”
“Straightforward?” My vision had gone hazy. He couldn’t be fucking serious. “I said I’d help you make…enough relics…” I trailed off, a sinking feeling of dread crushing my chest. I’d done it again. I hadn’t paid attention to the details, had I? And it was even worse this time because I thought I’d done a good job.
“I swear I will release you and allow you and Carrion to return to Zilvaren the moment you have made enough relics for my people. Was that not the promise you had me make?”
“Yes, but…”
“I have fifteen thousand warriors, Little Osha. To have enough relics for my people, I need fifteen thousand relics. When you’re done with all of these rings, I’ll release you from your oath and take you to the closest quicksilver pool so you can leave. Until then…” He eyed the trunk full of rings.
“But I don’t even know how to turn these into relics yet! That alone could take weeks. It could take months!”
Not even a flicker of sympathy hid in Fisher’s silver-mottled eyes. “Then you’d better get to work.”
