Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) (7 page)

Luce fixed him with a hard stare. “I have Chief Trimboli on speed dial. Just say the word and I’ll press the button.”

He looked at me, then Ben, then Garth, and back to Luce. Every face was stony. His bravado collapsed and he slumped down on the edge of the fountain again.

“Fine.” He sounded as sulky as a three-year-old. “Whatever. What
else
do you want me to do?”

“I’ll let you know. In the meantime you can stay here.”

“So I’m a prisoner?” His cheerful mood had evaporated.

“More of a houseguest.” One that would have to be closely watched. Letting a hostile goblin mage roam free in your house wasn’t a winning plan.

From the corner of my eye I saw Steve coming down the steps from the terrace, but the goblin held most of my attention.

“I’ll need some things from my cave,” he said. “You can’t make magic from nothing, you know.”

“Make a list and we’ll send someone out to get them.”

Steve offered a shallow bow, more for the goblin’s benefit than mine. I didn’t like to stand on ceremony. Having people bowing to me felt wrong.

“Mistress, a herald.”

“Where’s the message?”

His hands were empty.

“The herald comes from the Japanese queen.”

Speak of the devil. My anger surged again. This woman stood between me and my child. I had to breathe deeply until I had mastered myself again.

Messages from royalty required the herald to hand the message directly to the person addressed. I glanced at Ben, who shrugged.

“I’ll go and check it out.”

Ben knew all the local heralds, having been one until recently. I waited while he and Steve went inside. In a moment they returned, escorting another man between them. He was average height, with sandy brown hair and a growth of stubble that hadn’t made up its mind yet if it wanted to be a beard. There was a sharp intake of breath from the goblin, still seated on the stone coping of the fountain. Now he was sitting up straight, looking almost eager.

“This is Ken Thomas,” said Ben. “He’s an old friend.”

The herald went down on one knee and offered me the usual thick beige envelope. I glanced again at Blue. What was his problem? He’d had such a look of anticipation on his face for a moment there, as if waiting for a show to start. He stared back, now all butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth.

Had Ken hunted him down for a job he didn’t want to perform, just as Ben had? But that smile had a gloating quality to it, as if he knew something I didn’t.

I turned back to Ken and studied him for a moment. His herald’s charm, a tiny silver representation of Hermes, messenger of the gods, hung in full view on his chest. As far as I could tell, it was genuine, but Ben would have checked that.

Besides, Ben knew him. I met Ben’s gaze, unaccountably troubled by that look on the goblin’s face and his involuntary gasp. It was fairly safe to assume at this point that anything that would please the goblin probably wasn’t good news for me. I wasn’t exactly his favourite person at the moment.

“How old a friend? Like Nada?”

He frowned. Nada had been no friend of ours. But she
had
worn a goblin seeming to the Presentation Ball. Fortunately Ben was smart enough to make the connection.

“I haven’t seen Sarah in ages,” he said to the man still patiently kneeling at my feet. “I hope she’s well?”

Ken’s eyes flicked to the side. Chitchat in the middle of a delivery was an odd departure from the usual routine.

“Fine, thanks,” he said after a moment.

In reply, Ben launched himself and drove the herald to the ground. I leapt back, nearly landing on Blue’s lap. The man wriggled like a fish on a hook beneath Ben. I saw something flash silver in the sunlight as his hand came up, but then Steve and Garth joined the fray, and he was no match for their combined muscle.

Ben climbed to his feet and brushed grass off his clothes. “You okay?”

“Fine.” It hadn’t been me rolling around on the grass. His face was pale. He’d probably hurt his bad arm with that little manoeuvre. At this rate it was never going to heal properly. “Who’s our visitor?”

Garth had the man flat on his face, his arms pulled back at a painful angle, with one of the big werewolf’s knees in his back. Steve’s gun was out, aimed directly at his head. The herald—or whoever he was—lay still. Sensible guy.

“I don’t know, but it’s not Ken. I’m sorry, he had me fooled. I should never have let him in.”

“Who’s Sarah?”

“Ken’s wife. She’s been dead for years.”

“Oh.” So someone had had the same idea as me—a goblin seeming. Jason had probably called in the real Ken on some pretext and managed to swipe a hair. “Is he armed?”

Ben gave me a reproachful look. “We searched him before we brought him out.”

“Search again,” I said to Garth. What was that flash I’d seen?

To my surprise—and to Garth’s—the man began to struggle. Garth punched him in the side of the head and he lay still again. Garth didn’t believe in pulling his punches. When he punched someone, they stayed punched.

“He’s clean. Just a ring.” He pulled a black signet ring from the man’s unresisting hand.

“Give me that,” said Luce.

I cocked an eyebrow at Blue, who’d lost that anticipatory smile. “Well? You saw something, didn’t you? How could you tell he wasn’t the real deal?”

Blue had probably just saved my life. He’d be kicking himself later.

He pushed his glasses nervously up to the bridge of his nose. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Liar. I could tell by the way his gaze shifted away. On an impulse, I reached out and snatched those annoying glasses off his face.

“Hey!”

I put them on and looked down at our captive. My turn to draw in a shocked breath.

“Bloody hell. It’s Kasumi.”

“What?” Garth clenched his big fist, eager to punch her again.

“Let me see,” said Ben.

I passed him the goblin’s glasses. “That’s amazing.” He had a good look at everyone present. Smart man. I should have thought of that. Then he glared at Blue. “You’ve been holding out on us. How do these work?”

“Goblin glass,” he said sullenly. “Always shows true. Haven’t you ever noticed how many highborn goblins wear glasses? It’s not because they’re short-sighted, trust me.”

I suppose that made sense, given the ability of goblin spells to change a person’s appearance. You didn’t want imposters sneaking up on you. But this wasn’t a goblin seeming. Kasumi was a kitsune, one of the fabled fox people of Japan, and mimicking the appearance of others was one of her natural abilities. Interesting that the goblin glass could see through that deception as well. I’d never known that was possible, but then, Leandra hadn’t known much about kitsune. They were rarely seen outside Japan.

I folded my arms and contemplated the goblin mage. He’d had these all along and never mentioned them. What other tricks was he keeping up his sleeve?

“I guess we know what your first job will be now.” I took the glasses back from Ben. “I’ll need about a dozen pairs of these.”

“Impossible! They take weeks to make.”

“You’d better get started, then. I’ll keep these ones as a down payment.”

“Perhaps some ointment would do? That’s quicker to make, but you would have to keep reapplying it.”

Ointment? There were fairy tales of people who’d rubbed magical ointment on their eyes and been able to see fairies all around who’d previously been invisible. The trouble was, I wasn’t sure I trusted Blue enough to rub anything he gave me into my eyes.

“Glasses,” I said firmly.

I put them back on and looked down at Kasumi again. Seeing the stubbly-faced man disappear, to be replaced by her familiar wide face and dark, red-tipped hair, was disconcerting.

“Let her up,” I said to Garth.

“I can’t believe you had the hide to show your face here again,” he growled.

She shook him off and climbed to her feet, ignoring Steve’s gun. She was a small woman, solid and powerful looking. Her short bob swung loose around her face, red tips as bright as ever.

“Believe what you wish, wolf.”

He growled. They’d never liked each other. “I should have hit you harder.”

“Look at this,” Luce said.

She held out the signet ring—only now it had a sharp needle-like spike protruding from it. A drop of some thick liquid glistened on the needle’s tip. She pressed a hidden catch or button on the side and the spike withdrew again.

“What’s in the ring?” She glared at Kasumi as if she’d like to use the poison on her. “Bane leaf?”

“No.” Kasumi’s gaze was level as it held mine. “We know that doesn’t work.”

Because she’d already tried that on me. In fact, this was the first time I’d seen her since she’d stabbed me in the heart, fully expecting that the poison on her blade would kill me. And then she’d abducted Lachie. Rage pounded in my head, and bloodlust sang in my veins. I could smash her to pieces with a smile on my face.

It hurt even more because I’d thought she was my friend.

“Du, then, I assume.” It was the only other poison that killed dragons.

Kasumi shrugged, but didn’t answer. I could hardly stand to look at her. She’d taken my son. Had she hurt him? I would tear her apart.

Luce held the ring as if it might grow fangs and bite her. Perhaps it could. Du was fatal to wyverns too.

“Let’s inject her and see what it does to kitsune,” suggested Garth in a menacing rumble.

“Maybe we can swap her for Lachie,” Ben murmured, a quiet voice of reason among all the hostility.

But Kasumi heard. “Don’t be ridiculous. Daiyu finds him too useful in controlling Jason to give him up.”

“Not even to save her loyal kitsune?” Ben didn’t look convinced.

That made Kasumi laugh, though it wasn’t a happy sound. “Daiyu knows I’d be first in line to kill her if I could. There’s no such thing as a loyal kitsune any more.”

I frowned. The bitterness in her tone had the ring of truth about it. I fought down my rage and tried to think logically. If she’d managed to kill me … what would have happened to her?

That was an easy one. Garth, or Luce, or Ben—just about anybody in this garden—would have killed her on the spot. She hadn’t come here expecting to walk away. So why commit to a suicide mission if not for loyalty to her queen?

“What hold does Daiyu have over you?” Was I being a fool again? But I’d been so sure Kasumi had wanted me to succeed, had even liked me personally. Maybe she’d only turned on me because she had to.

She hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “The same hold she has over every kitsune. Not that there are many of us left any more. She’s seen to that. She holds all our hoshi no tama as surety for our obedience. If one of us disobeys her, all will die.”

“That’s crap,” said Garth. “We’ve seen your stupid star ball. You had it with you when you were pretending to be on our side.”

The hoshi no tama was the heart of the kitsune’s magic. Without that glowing golden ball she wouldn’t have been able to take Ken Thomas’s form.

She didn’t look at Garth. “She sent me here to destabilise your proving, and remove all the claimants if I could. She knew I needed my hoshi no tama for that.”

“Then why didn’t you just run away once you got it?”

Now she looked at him, a look of withering scorn. “Does your pack mean so little to you that you’d abandon them to certain death so that you could be free? I have children. A husband. A father. She holds their lives in her hands. One wrong move from me and my son and daughter would have their throats slit in their sleep.”

I looked down. I couldn’t bear that look of desperation in her eyes. More than anything, that convinced me she was telling the truth. I knew what that felt like. Nothing was more important than your children’s safety. It must be tearing her apart to know they were in constant danger.

“What will happen now that you’ve failed to kill me?”

“I suppose it depends what you do to me. If I die she won’t take action against my family.”

“And if you live?”

“You’d better kill me. If you don’t I’ll keep trying to kill you until I succeed.” She shrugged as if she didn’t care either way, but I wasn’t fooled.

“Why don’t you join us? Help us defeat her, and your family will be free.”

“I can’t.” Her dark eyes held a weary sorrow. “She keeps the hoshi no tama of every kitsune in a special case. It is always locked, always guarded. The minute I move against her, she will destroy them. A kitsune cannot live without her hoshi no tama. It would be the end of our whole race. If I raise my hand against her, they will all die. Even if someone else kills Daiyu, they have standing orders in Japan that in the event of her death, all the kitsune are to be slaughtered. Not only can I not move against her, but I must actively work to keep my bitterest enemy alive lest all my family die like dogs. It is a most effective trap she has me in.”

“We could steal the case.” God knows how, but we’d pulled off some pretty wild schemes together before. It would be worth it to have Kasumi at my side again. The advantage it would give me against my new sisters would be phenomenal.

Kasumi shook her head. “I don’t even know where the case is. Somewhere on her main estate, most likely. But even if we could steal it, we’d have to steal all the kitsune out from under her nose at the same time, or she’d just have them killed. They’re defenceless without their hoshi no tama. There is too much that could go wrong. I cannot risk it. I’m sorry, Kate. I wish it could be different.” The old warmth was back in her eyes for a moment. “But I can’t risk it, not even for you.”

Deflated, I looked away, back over the now-clear water of the fountain. I caught a flash of orange as a goldfish slipped under a lily pad. The yellow lily rocked ever so slightly, its beautiful petals turned up to catch the sun.

I’d have to lock Kasumi away, then. Probably chain her in silver, too. She was dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous shifter I knew, even more so than a dragon. It would be like keeping a time bomb ticking away in the dungeon, always wondering when it was going to explode. But what else could I do? I couldn’t kill her. She’d saved my life more than once. We’d been friends. And two little fox children waited in Japan for her to come home.