Page 38 of Fortune's Blade

“The guard didn’t have the key, dumbass,” Ray said, through an alarming amount of hair. Which still seemed to be growing.

“Then find one!”

“This isn’t Earth, okay? You don’t get to order people around—especially me.”

“Oh, look, Cousin It disapproves.”

“Bite me.”

“I can’t. You’re wearing the equivalent of a pelt. And speaking of dumbasses—”

“Don’t go there.”

“—did you really think that was going to work? That they sell candies in the open marketplace that could let you steal another being’s magic—”

“It was worth a shot!”

“—and that the guards wouldn’t have taken them from you if they did? Are you really that thick—”

I didn’t think Marlowe was done speaking, but Ray suddenly snapped, slamming him up against a tent pole hard enough to crack it and causing a momentary pause.

“I thought it might allow me to get us all out of here,” the smaller man hissed. “Which is more than you have been doing!”

“Getting killed might technically be an escape, but it isn’t one I wish to experience—”

“Then shut the hell up! We’re the rescuers; you’re the rescuee. You do as we say!”

“Fine.” Marlowe stared at him malevolently. “Then what is your great plan, after getting into a pointless fight and thrown into jail? Where do we go from here?”

It was a good question. I could hear the roar of a considerable crowd, but not see them. The only thing I could see was a maze of fabric walls. And when I pushed past them, I was confronted by more of the same.

We were in a forest of tent poles, brown homespun and a few ropes holding it all together.

One that never seemed to end.

“Maze spell,” Ray scowled, having followed me through one set of walls and into another, identical corridor. “No wonder they only had one guard.”

“How do we get out?” Marlowe demanded, staring around.

“We don’t. The only way out of a maze spell is to go through to the end.”

“The end?” He stared at Ray. “As in, where they were probably planning to take us in the first place? Where we are set to be executed? That end?”

“Unless you wanna wander around in here forever, yeah.” Ray looked at me and his scowl grew. “Come on. And stay behind me.”

I did as I was bid, as experience had proven that his knowledge of the fey was considerably greater than mine. Or than Marlowe’s it seemed, although the irate man had at least stopped talking. Perhaps because Ray was navigating by sound and he didn’t want to interfere with it.

Or perhaps because he had left us to take off on his own, I realized, when I looked back and he was not there.

“Let him go,” Ray said, noticing his absence the same time that I did.

“I thought you wanted his portal—”

“Sod his portal. I want you out of here alive. If he causes a distraction doing something stupid, it may help us.”

It did not help us, but not because Marlowe didn’t do something stupid. But because long minutes of wandering through claustrophobic, fabric-sided corridors only led one place. And it wasn’t somewhere we wanted to go.

“Alright,” Ray said, licking his lips as we stood in a short tunnel leading into a huge arena.