Fire Touched (20 page)

The Widow Queen, I knew, hadn't been one of the fae who'd tortured Zee. I thought that Goreu was in the clear, too—though they were not allies. Goreu was afraid of Zee, but there hadn't been any particular maliciousness in Zee's voice when he addressed him. The middle-aged-looking woman was a dead fae walking.

“We came to provide protection to Margaret and her guard, who were traveling through our territory,” said my husband, breaking into Zee's moment with a conversational tone. “We thought we'd use this opportunity to express our sadness at the death of the troll yesterday. Please do not send fae who put the citizens of our home at risk. We do not enjoy killing for the sake of killing.”

Adam's sense of timing is superb. The Gray Lords, even the ones who had nothing to fear from Zee, were so caught up in that drama they had trouble shifting gears to Adam. Their distraction let Adam hold the floor.

“We'd also like to inform you that we are unimpressed with threats. Some of your people”—he looked over the fae at the table, except for the Widow Queen—“composed a letter and put it on the door of my ex-wife's home. Please see to it that it doesn't happen again.” He took in a breath, and when he continued, it was in a very soft voice. “We do not want a war with you. But we will not stand
by and see our friends captured and tortured. We will not allow you to harm those under our protection. You should know that the fire-touched boy is ours. We will go to war if you force us to it. And if we go to war, it will not stay localized, it will not stay between your people and ours, because our human citizens will fight beside us.”

Zee tossed the bracelets up in the air and caught them, one in each hand, and closed his fists. Air left my lungs, driven by the magic he called. His hands glowed with a white light that was so bright I had to turn my face away. I fought to breathe, fought to stay on my feet—and it was gone.

Zee dropped two blackened chunks of metal on the table. “Those,” he said, “were an abomination.”

“How is it,” murmured Beauclaire, “that you are not on our Council? That you are not a Gray Lord?”

“No one asked me,” said Zee.

“Join us,” said Nemane.

Zee smiled at the Gray Lord who sat on the far side of the Widow Queen, the one in the salmon-colored suit. She swallowed noisily.

“Not today,” Zee said, his voice a purr of menace. “I have a few scores to settle, and I take too much pleasure in the planning to hurry. I'm swamped.”

“‘I've got my country's five hundredth anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it,'” I murmured very quietly. I wasn't sure that Zee was quoting the movie, but he sounded so much like Prince Humperdinck, I couldn't help myself. Either Adam was the only one who heard me, or no one else appreciated
The Princess Bride
.

“So,” said Margaret, pushing herself back from the table. “You have my answer.” This time she let Thomas help her to her feet and hand her the crutches. “Not that it hasn't been interesting. But you'll
understand that if you want to discuss anything with me, you'll have to do it long-distance.”

She made good time out of the room, and we followed her. As soon as I shut the conference-room door, Thomas picked Margaret up in his arms. I took the crutches—as the least able fighter, I could most easily be spared to carry things. And the crutches would make pretty good weapons if I needed them.

The bride and her entourage were gone when we got back to the lobby. One of the hotel people saw us get out of the elevator and, upon seeing Margaret in Thomas's arms, hurried over.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked.

“No,” Margaret said with a charming smile. “Thomas was either worried that I've tired myself out, or just wanted to get out to the car sometime in the next hour or so.” Her tone told him not to take her seriously, and he smiled appreciatively before he got a good look at Thomas's unamused face.

“Don't mind him,” Margaret said. “He worries too much.”

“We have a wheelchair,” the young man offered.

“Thank you,” said Thomas, bowing a little despite his burden, though he kept walking in the direction of the exit. “This is not the first time I've carried her out to the car. She pushes herself too hard, even though I've explained that when she does that, she only slows down the healing process.”

The hotel employee looked worried.

“I should recover fully,” Margaret told him. “Given time. It's just a lot of boring therapy between now and then. Tonight I really am fine, just a little tired.”

He escorted us out to the front entrance, offered to drive the car up, and when his help was refused, held the door open for us to leave.

We'd gotten halfway across the dark parking lot when Adam murmured, “Someone is watching us. I can feel it on the back of my neck.”

I bent down to tie my shoe and took the opportunity to scan the parking lot behind us. “The nice guy who escorted us out is still watching us. Is that it?”

“She affects a lot of people that way,” said Thomas, as Margaret waved at our observer over his shoulder.

“It's the tragedy,” said Margaret cheerfully. “Some people can't stop themselves from wanting to help. It's a compulsion.” The man waved hesitantly back and left the doorway for the depths of the hotel, presumably to do his job.

“That's not it,” said Adam in a low voice. “Let's get to the cars.”

“I don't scent anyone,” I said after finishing with my shoe. “But I'm with you. There's someone.”

“They're around,” agreed Thomas.

Margaret leaned her head against him. “This would be a perfect time for an ambush,” she said, sounding delighted. “Maybe there's a troll or ogre around.”

“How about a witch?” asked a woman's voice.

As soon as she spoke, I saw her, a young, muscular woman wearing a summer dress with brown army boots, walking beside Margaret and Thomas as if she'd been beside us all along.

As soon as she appeared, I could smell her. Her scent held a mix of cinnamon, brimstone, and honey, but no witchcraft. She smelled like a fae, but with overtones of earth and water rather than a clear allegiance to either, which was unusual in my experience.

Thomas jumped ten feet sideways, Margaret in his arms. Adam moved in front of them like a trained bodyguard. I recognized her scent and stopped my instinctive move to draw my carry gun. Instead, like Adam, I put myself in front of Thomas and Margaret. Zee stood where he was but put a hand on his hip, where I knew he kept one of his bladed weapons. He didn't just use magicked swords—he
made
them.

“Dangerous to surprise us like that,” he said coolly, because he, of course, knew who it was.

I did, too. It's not that I remember everyone I scent. It's just that some people make a definite impression. Though some of the fae have
favorite glamours they wear, visual impressions are not a definitive way to recognize a fae. Scent is much more difficult for them to change.

“What's life without a little danger?” The woman looked at me, and said, “And didn't I tell them to keep an eye on you? No one who carries Coyote so strongly is going to be resting on the sidelines. But they never listen to me.”

Thomas set Margaret on her feet.

“You aren't a witch,” I said. I'd been as surprised as anyone when I met Baba Yaga the first time. The most famous witch in the world—wasn't.

She shrugged. “You say tomato, and I say tomato.” She used the phrase backward, the second “tomato” carrying the long “a.” “A million people and a hundred tales can't be wrong. You say fae, I say witch, and I am bigger than you—so I can call myself what I want.” She leaned toward me and sniffed and twitched her nose in a very unhumanlike way. “There's a Russian here,” she said to me. “I can always tell. And it's not
you
.”

She took a wide, awkward sideways step until she was in front of Zee. She frowned at Zee a moment. “I remember you as better-looking.”

“I remember you as an old
Topfgucker
, who sticks her long nose where it doesn't belong,” said Zee, unimpressed.

She dropped her head and cackled, a real witch's cackle—as if she'd watched too many cartoons. “
There's
my Loan, darling. Oops, I forgot. You are calling yourself Siebold Adelbertsmiter now, aren't you? Adelbert was such an old stick-in-the-mud—he deserved what he got, but he was a wimp, no one
I'd
brag about smiting. Siebold, darling, have you missed me? You never call, you never write. A person would be forgiven for thinking you didn't like them.
You
certainly aren't my Russian.”

She looked at Thomas, put a hand on Zee's shoulder so she could lean past him to sniff the air. “Not you,” she told Margaret. She looked at Thomas, and said, “
Obviously
not you. Too much Earth Dragon, too little air of the steppe.” She took that odd sidestep again; this time it put her directly in front of Adam. She leaned too close to him and inhaled.

“So it is you!” she exclaimed, with the air of a vaudeville cop finding the villain. She waited a moment, relaxed, and said, “You smell of my home. True
russkiy dukh
. I should take you home for supper—I would have just a few centuries ago. Sharpened my brass tooth in your honor . . . silver would be more appropriate, but I broke that one in 1916.” The brass tooth threw me for a moment, then I remembered that Baba Yaga was supposed to eat people with metal teeth that she would take out of her mouth and sharpen in front of her victims. In the stories I'd heard, the teeth were supposed to be iron, not brass.

Baba Yaga had not slowed down her patter, though. “More to the point,” she said, then giggled. “Point—tooth, do you get it? I am so funny. But as I was saying, I am
civilized
now.
Tamed
for the sake of the others, you know. A fine handsome man as you? Now I take him home for other things.” She licked her lips hungrily.

Adam growled at her.

“Stop it,” I said to her, because I was afraid that if she kept talking, someone would make a stupid move and get themselves killed. “Everyone's on edge, there's no use pushing them over. What do you want?”

“Who
are
you?” asked Margaret.

The witch, who was a Gray Lord, took the sides of her sundress, one side in each hand, and curtsied. “Baba Yaga, at your . . . well, not at your service. That would be a lie. Say rather I'm not opposed
to you—or not
as
opposed to you as I am to some others who were in the hotel tonight.” She dropped her skirt and held up a hand, displaying a business card with a cartoon Baba Yaga figure on it and a phone number. “For if they bother you, dearling. Just give us a ring. They being the other Gray Lords, of course.” She dropped the silliness for a moment. “Margaret, I owed your father, and he cannot collect. Take the card. Put it in the bottom of a drawer somewhere, but remember it. When you need me, you can call the number or rip the card in half, and I will come to your aid, once.”

Margaret put her hand on Thomas to steady herself and walked a few steps forward so she could take it. “My father told me stories about you,” she said. “He spoke well of you. Mostly.”

Baba Yaga smiled, her teeth white and straight. “How good of him. I speak well of him, too—mostly.” She looked at me. “I like what you're doing, Coyote girl—even though you had to kill my favorite troll. That's not your fault, though. I know who sent him. They are claiming they forgot how strong the call of water would be on him—that it was an accident that they lost control. You and I know better.” She held out another card, this one poison green.

“You don't get to call upon me for a favor,” she said when I took it. She glanced at Adam and licked her lips again. “Not unless you want to share the Russian wolf.”

“No,” I said, closing my fist on the card so it crumpled into a ball.

She cackled again, and said, “If you rip that one up, it will just be harder to read. You should call me for information—I think you might need advice soon. And I will call upon you from time to time. No obligation on either side, of course. You don't have to tell me anything, nor do I have to tell you anything. But I don't want a war with the humans, and some idiot among us—or more properly, some
idiots
among us—are determined to start one. If I
know trouble is coming your way, I'll tell you. Keep that card—you'll need it soon.”

“All right,” I said slowly. “No promises implied or given.”

She smiled. “Just so.” And she disappeared. No mortar and pestle this time, she was just gone. Her scent lingered behind her.

“That's all right, then,” said Margaret. “We needed a finale.”

“Don't trust her,” Zee told me. He looked at Margaret. “You're probably all right, if you're cautious.”

“I am,” she said, tucking the card into the small handbag she'd been carrying. “And if I'm not cautious enough, Thomas is happy to point it out.” She looked at me. “Mercy. I really would like a chance to talk to you. Would you mind driving our car?” She gave her hands a rueful look. “I'm getting better, but my hands aren't trustworthy to drive yet. Thomas, would you mind riding with Adam?”

The answer I saw on Thomas's face was that he minded very much, but he said, “I can do that.”

“Sure,” I said. “We'll have a girl's car and a guy's car. It'll be fun.”

Thomas picked Margaret up and put her in her seat, and watched gravely while she belted herself in. He shut her door and handed me the keys.

“Drive carefully,” he said.

“I will,” I promised.

He gave me a stiff nod and strode over to Adam's SUV.

I didn't have to adjust the seat to be comfortable. Thomas wasn't very big to be that scary. I took a moment to familiarize myself with the car, so I wouldn't have to do it while I was driving.

“Thank you,” Margaret said.

I gave her a startled look, because, as a rule, the fae don't thank you—and you'd better not thank them, either. “Thank you” implies debt, and most fae will hold you to that. Margaret laughed.

“I'm not that old, Mercy,” she said. “About a hundred years, and most of that was spent in the Heart of the Hill—underground, imprisoned in a forgotten chunk of mine tunnel.”

She'd said that she'd had no food, no drink, no light. I tried to imagine what going without food and water for almost a hundred years would have been like. A werewolf would have died, starved to death like a human in that situation, maybe even faster than a human. There were degrees of immortality, some more terrible than others.

Unaware of my thoughts, Margaret had kept talking. “My father thought that it was important that we blend with the normal folk, so I don't have a lot of the taboos the old fae do. ‘Thank you' means just what it would to you.”

Adam's SUV lit up, and I rolled down the window to wave them ahead. I didn't spend much time in Walla Walla. If I'd been alone, I could have found my way out to the highway, but why bother when Adam could lead the way? He flashed his lights and took point.

“How did you survive?” I asked her.

“Not very well.” She held her hand up and moved it. “It's taken me years to get this far—and the first year I spent as a total bedridden invalid. But I am better now, getting better almost every day. A month ago, I would not have been able to stay on my feet as long as I did tonight.” She paused. “That's sort of what I wanted to talk to you about. You are human.”

“Half,” I said apologetically. “My father is . . . not human.” I wasn't up to explaining my complicated parentage to her, likeable as I found her. Besides, I was pretty sure my bloodlines weren't what she wanted to talk about. “I can change into a coyote, and I have a few other tricks up my sleeve.”

“But your husband is still far stronger than you,” she said.

I nodded. “He is.”

“How did you get him to stop treating you like a fragile thing that might blow away in a harsh wind and take you to bed?” she said.

Holy cow. The girlfriend talk. I tried to remember the last time I'd done the girlfriend talk. Char. It had been with Char, when I'd talked her out of the very handsome but not very bright young man who would make a lovely date for someone else. That was all the way back in college.

I smelled Margaret's sudden embarrassment. “I had a much more tactful way to ask that,” she said. Then she let out a frustrated growl. “We've been living together for two and a half years, and the most passion I get is a kiss on the forehead. And I don't have anyone but Thomas to ask about it. And I
can't
ask Thomas.”

“Obviously not,” I said. The reason I hadn't had the girlfriend talk with anyone in a long time is that I sucked at it. I could barely talk to
Adam
about our relationship, and I
loved
Adam.

“Right?” she said.

I liked Margaret. I wanted to help her if I could, even if only as a sounding board. But. I couldn't forget what Margaret was. Despite the easy way she'd thanked me and how she'd just established that she was not under the power of the Gray Lords, she was still fae. If there was one thing I'd learned about the fae, it was that being in their debt was only a little more dangerous than having a fae in my debt. If she wanted my help—I'd ask for her help, too.

“I have a proposition for you,” I said. “I'll try to help you—as much as one clueless person can help another—if you'll give me some intelligence on the people in the room tonight.” Like, say, the name of the middle-aged woman in salmon who had tortured Zee. “I could ask Zee—but he tends to hate everyone uniformly.”

It hadn't been an accident that Tad had been the one to talk to
Adam and me about the Widow Queen. I could call Ariana, maybe, but she was in Europe, and she hadn't been in that room tonight.

“Deal,” she said promptly. “What do you want to know?”

“Don't you think I should go first?” I asked. “I see your problem, but I'm relationship-challenged. Since Thomas sounds like he's relationship-challenged, too, you might be better off talking to Adam, who has experience dealing with stupid people.”

She leaned back in her seat and smiled sweetly. Unlike when Zee smiled sweetly, it didn't send the hairs on the back of my neck up with nervousness. “I'm not in the inner circle of the Council, either. All I know is the stuff my father drilled into my head. But he was pretty sharp. I have to tell you, that if all you do is listen to me whine, it would help me a great deal. Let's do politics first. I have a feeling it will be less depressing. What do you want to know?”

“Let's start with the woman in the salmon-colored suit,” I said.

“Órlaith,” she said. “She is the sister of Brian mac Cennétig.”