Page 78 of Fortune's Blade

“We have a common problem,” she said, perching on a tree limb that protruded slightly from the wall, bringing her to my eye level. “The Svarestri are after you; it’s the only explanation. Steen works for them, and it was his dragons who came for you—”

“Steen?” Ray asked sharply.

“Lord Steen of Vitharr. One of the Dragonlords of the Northern marches. I don’t know any reason he would want you for himself, and anyway, he’s their errand boy. Although whether he planned to kill you or take you, I couldn’t say—”

“Take her where?” Ray asked.

“The Svarestri have been using Steen’s thugs to kidnap our people. Not many, and not often, but when they come for someone, they come in force, like they did today. And they get what they want. They took our king that way.”

She fluttered up again, flying in a little circle in the air, which reminded me of a human pacing in agitation. And began speaking a mile a minute, to the point that it was hard to understand her. But I didn’t ask her to slow down; I was fairly sure she couldn’t.

“They knew that a lot of our people had fled the war, going into Earth through illegal portals and setting up colonies there. And that Kaliphranges had contacts among them. They wanted him to find a book of spells, for which they would guarantee him his life and that of his remaining people. But the Pythia was looking for it, too, and she obtained it first and burnt it, as it was supremely dangerous. It contained a spell that could drop the barrier between worlds and allow the gods to return and—anyway, she destroyed it.

“This was some time ago, a few months for her and a few years for us. He managed to fob Steen off for a while, citing the strangeness of Earth and the difficulty of working there. But when the Svarestri heard rumors that the book had been destroyed, and he couldn’t produce it . . . they took him.

“And that’s a problem for me,” she added, whirling on me suddenly. “For all of us! If they had just killed him, it would have been bad, but nothing we couldn’t come back from. But instead, they took him, and he knows it all—where our cities are hidden, how many of us there are, the routes we take when threatened, our favorite hiding places, spells and incantations to get through our wards—it just goes on and on!

“I need to find him—quickly. I know him; he’ll hold out for a while, but he’ll break sooner or later. Anyone would! I need him back or I need him dead, but I don’t know where he is—”

“You didn’t follow him?” Ray demanded. “He was your king!”

“Yes, of course we did,” she said, shooting him a look. “All the way to the warded area around their base, where one of my guards almost had his wings burnt off! But he’s not there anymore—”

“They took him somewhere else?”

“No, they took it somewhere else. The base is like this one, it moves around—”

“It moves? Is everybody flying about Faerie in dust storms these days?”

Her wings fluttered agitatedly. “It moves through a network of portals that Aeslinn established years ago, and will you shut up?”

Ray wisely shut up.

“I have people searching for it,” the queen told me. “It’s elusive, but we’ll catch up to it again; we always do. But even if we find it, we can’t get in there. We’ve tried everything, but the defenses are formidable, and anyway, whenever we attack, it just takes off again!

“I’ve been trying to act normal, to keep my people from finding out how much trouble we’re in, but it won’t matter when the Svarestri show up in force. They don’t trust us, and think us as little more than vermin. They won’t even offer us a chance to ally with them to save our lives; they’ll just kill us and I’m queen, I’m supposed to prevent that, but no matter what I try—”

She suddenly grasped a bit of my arm, and she must have been right about her magic, because she wasn’t burned. Even odder, I could almost feel the touch, as if on my actual skin. She was powerful, this one.

“But you,” she said, staring at me. “You’re different. You can disguise yourself as one of their dragon allies and fly right in there. You can kill him for me—”

“What?” I asked, trying to keep up with the rapid-fire flood of information.

“—or rescue him, if possible. But kill will suffice, just so long as he doesn’t talk—”

“And why the hell would she do that?” Ray demanded. “If the goddamned Svarestri are after her, we need to get her out of here! Not head straight into their hands!”

“That does seem like a better plan,” I pointed out.

But the queen suddenly stilled, settling onto the tree limb again with her small wings folding up calmly against her back. And, immediately, I knew why. I had seen father gain this same stillness many times, when the social niceties were out of the way and it was finally time to negotiate.

“Yes, that was what your father thought,” she said idly. “That it was best to get you away. But I decided to try to persuade you—or bribe you; I’m not above that.”

“Ha!” Ray said. “There’s not enough money in the world to make us take on those things again. We’re lucky we survived the last time!”

“Just as well I’m not offering money, then, isn’t it?” she said to him, although her eyes never left me.

“What are you offering?” I asked, only to have Ray get up and head for the door.