Page 20 of Fortune's Blade

“Come on,” I saw Claire mouth, as she grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the carnage toward a nearby, much smaller arched doorway in the stone.

It led to another staircase hidden within the walls that I hadn’t noticed, and still mostly didn’t, being too busy trying not to slide on the bloody steps or to flinch at the sounds coming from behind us. The dining hall looked and smelled like an abattoir and sounded like a concert of the damned. I’d never experienced anything like it in my life, and I’d lived with some dark fey.

I had never realized how much my old roommates had been accommodating my human squeamishness, I thought. Right before the crowd roared their appreciation at something loudly enough to almost rupture my eardrums. I braced my arms on either side of the narrow passage, wondering if the tower was about to collapse, then followed Claire upward again when it didn’t.

We emerged from the stairs just in time to see what all the uproar was about. Two of the scaley diners had grabbed the same struggling morsel and neither was letting go. Until the inevitable happened, and their tug of war ripped the huge pig in two, causing all of the fun stuff inside to fall about six stories through the air before splatting onto the floor below. And me to finally achieve a rarity for a dhampir: a complete and utter loss of appetite.

What a way to start an evening, I thought dizzily, as we finally made it to our table.

Chapter Seven

Dorina

“Pancakes,” Ray said, looking under the homespun cloth covering the latest little reed basket.

I perked up. “What kind of pancakes?”

That won me a side eye. “You can’t possibly care.”

“I care.” I reached for the basket, which he pulled away and nodded at the mound of empty receptacles stacked along one wall of our tent.

“Where on Earth do you put it all?”

“It gets burned up.” I made a feint to one side and, when he dodged, snatched my prize. “My metabolism requirements are greater than those of most people.”

“Most people?” he watched me throw off the cloth and peer inside. The basket was small, but packed with many hand-sized rounds of cooked dough, each of which was studded with nuts and dried fruit and topped with what smelled like a honey drizzle. I took a lick. Yes, it was honey.

Very nice honey, too, redolent of the flowers that grew in the mountains near here. I had been smelling their sweetness on the breeze for days, and was finally tasting it. It was just as I had thought: full of captured sunlight, aromatic grasses, rich earth and summer rains, all distilled into an ineffable sweetness that burst on the tongue.

Divine.

“It is wonderful,” I told the small old woman who was watching me enjoy her handiwork with obvious pride. I had once believed that the fey did not age, but had since learned that that was not so. They simply did it slower than humans, making me wonder how many centuries the wizened old face with the bright black eyes had seen.

More than me, at a guess, maybe many more. Her skin was as lined as a dried date and had the color of oak bark, but her hair was as white as new fallen snow. But there was nothing vague or faded about those eyes, which were watching me closely, to see if I was worthy of the title of sorceress.

I was not, despite what our one-time host had been trumpeting to all and sundry, but I nonetheless put on what I hoped was a winning smile. “How can I help you today?”

The woman hesitated, and brushed a small amount of that marvelous hair behind a gracefully shaped, pointed ear. But after a moment, she carefully took a fat, pink bellied creature, which I initially mistook for a piglet, from under her cloak and sat it on the table. I licked sticky fingers and watched as she cooed at it, coaxing it to turn over onto four stumpy little legs. And when it obeyed, I was somewhat surprised to discover that it was a dog.

Possibly. The fey had acquired some Earth animals, perhaps in trade over the centuries, including pigs, chickens and sheep, which made sense as they were useful farm animals and could be eaten. But this . . .

I wasn’t sure about this.

It was vaguely dog-like, if very fat and very ugly and of an indeterminate breed. It had a squashed face somewhat like a pug, but an elongated body that was more reminiscent of a dachshund. It had tufts of brownish hair running down the spine, but the rest of it was largely hairless and pink from the distention of the belly, which made what little fur there was rather sparce over the stretched skin.

It looked like it had eaten another dog, perhaps two.

“Er, what seems to be the problem?” I asked, and the old woman switched from beaming pride to slightly tearful distress as she described her pet’s troubles to Ray, who was tapping his foot and trying manfully not to roll his eyes at her.

“She says it’s lethargic and just lies around all day,” he finally informed me. “Imagine that.”

“Is that not normal?”

“No. According to her, it’s usually running about all over the place. Like lardass could do anything but roll around on the sofa.”

“Do the fey have sofas?” I asked, as I had never been inside one of their houses. The closest was the tent that we were currently occupying, which was vaguely house-like, but contained few comforts.

“Not that I know of,” Ray said, looking bored.