Page 22 of Fortune's Blade

But he had already forgotten about us with the typical disinterest of the breed, and begun talking to his companion again. He appeared to be wagering on the advertised fight, as there was a good deal of haggling and gesticulating, with more animation than I had thought he was capable of. And then I saw money changing hands.

“Are you listening to me?” Ray demanded. “We have a captive senator—”

“Whom you detest.”

“—who is probably languishing in a cell right now, or at a slave auction or worse. He could get sold off to . . . to anybody. To the mines or—”

“What mines?”

“I don’t know what mines! But they must have ‘em. They have to get all that metal from somewhere.”

“And you are concerned for him because?” I asked archly. “The last time you met, you tried to gouge out his eyes.”

“They’d have grown back. Eventually.”

“Which does not answer my question.”

“Two things. First, he’s a senator. There’s bound to be a reward—”

“You are worried about that now?”

“—and second, he came in here through a portal. He probably plans to go out the same way. We rescue him, we go home, without all the tromping through the countryside and possibly dying stuff—”

“I thought you said that you know where some portals are.”

“I do, but if this is the Turl uh Talat, then none of them are exactly close, and Faerie ain’t a place you want to go meandering around if you got a choice. Especially not now, with a war on and us not knowing exactly who is on what side. If there’s a portal nearby, we oughtta try for that one first.”

I didn’t say anything.

Ray frowned at me some more, as if he knew what I was thinking. Which he probably did. I had not perfected a “poker face” yet, as he kept informing me, much less a poker mind, and he had a talent for picking up my thoughts. Most vampires couldn’t, but he was sworn to Dory and thus to me, and it seemed to be part of the bargain.

Sometimes, it was . . . inconvenient.

“Look,” he told me now. “I know you’re worried about going back. But staying here is not a long-term option. And once we rescue asshole, we can decide what’s best to do then, okay? We don’t have to go back immediately, but it would be nice to have a portal in our back pocket, right?”

I nodded, trying not to show the almost violent reaction I’d had to the idea of leaving this place. I’d seen so little, and Faerie was so vast! There was so much left to explore.

And this was the closest thing to a real life I had ever known.

But I did not want to put Ray in any more danger. I wanted him back on Earth safe and sound, and this portal might be the best chance of that. As to whether I went with him . . .

I could decide that later.

“We can try, but—” I began, only to have the ogre growl again.

The cavalcade outside had finally passed on, and he had noticed that our line was not moving.

“Next!” Ray called out, but I shook my head. The next in line did not have sausages. “Oh, for— Fine!” he jogged off, only to come back with a small girl child with chestnut curls, a large father who looked to be partly human judging by his barrel chest, and a small lamb. And a sausage with everything.

I beamed at her.

She passed over the sausage, which smelled even better close up, although I could not name the meat. And then her father gave me a small lamb. Its leg was obviously broken.

“Caught . . . in fence,” he said, rolling the words, which were in English, around his mouth before he said them, as if they tasted strange. “You fix?”

I nodded. It was an easy repair, but there was a problem. “The heart is weak,” I told him. “I think it has a hole in it. I can try to repair it, or . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence, as I didn’t know if the little girl understood. And her big brown eyes were already filled with tears.

But if they were farmers, there were other solutions. A lamb was usually slaughtered every spring for the rennet in its stomach, needed for making cheese. And a fat spring lamb would not go amiss at the table, either, after a long winter with only dried meat.