Kinked (29 page)

S
talking through the dark, silent halls of the palace’s underbelly was like a video game gone bad. Any moment now Quentin felt like they were going to run into a water trap populated with piranhas, while logs swung to and fro overhead and shadow wolves jumped out of nooks to attack them.

He rubbed his face and forcibly banished the image from his mind. He wasn’t quite as bad off as any of the others, but he needed to get some rest, and soon.

He said to Linwe, “Be sure to memorize the way back in case you need to run it by yourself.”

“Aw, damn it,” she said miserably. “I’m not going to need to.”

He was terrible at dates, birthdays and such, but he thought Linwe had to be around thirty or so, which was quite young for an Elven adult. Making any kind of direct age-to-adulthood correlation to shorter-lived races, such as humankind, didn’t compute, for she had already lived as a responsible adult for several years, yet she still retained the liveliness of youth.

He remembered her as a little girl, with her wide, naughty grin and eyes sparking with some kind of mischief. She
had been adorable and adored, and had pretty much run wild in Lirithriel Wood for the first fifteen years of her life. He hadn’t visited the Wood often, but he remembered once she had run up to him with a laugh that was bigger than she was. She must have been all of five years old. When she had reached him, he’d picked her up and swung her high, setting her on his shoulder.

An echo of the burning pain came back in his chest. He couldn’t let anything happen to her. Not her too, on top of all the massive losses the Elves had already suffered. He grabbed her by the arm, hauled her close and hugged her fiercely. After her first twitch of surprise, her arms came around his waist, and she hugged him back so hard her slight body shook with the strain.

He bent his head and said in her ear, “You will run if I tell you to. Do you hear me, young lady?”

“Quentin, that’s not my job …” she said.

“Linwe.”
He injected all the command he could into his voice. “You don’t have the magical aptitude for this kind of fight. And you. Will. Run.”

“Fine!”

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. He knew he was being overbearing and patronizing, and he didn’t give a shit. They all had to react to stress in their own way. This way was his.

He let her go, and they moved on.

After climbing a few staircases and another fifteen minutes or so of searching, they found the kitchens, which were as large as Quentin had expected. Linwe ran to the water pump over a large basin, and pumped out enough water to immerse her head in. While she drank and splashed water on herself, he located the pantries. He checked to make sure he wasn’t near any windows, then he spelled a small ball of light and began collecting supplies.

The pantry held massive amounts of anything he could have hoped to find: wayfarer bread, nuts, dried fruits, jerky, cured meats and dried fish, wheels of cheese, apples, honey, jars of jellies and jams, olives, pickled vegetables and pickled eel, along with potatoes and other tubers, spices, oil and huge sacks of grains.

One pantry held barrels of wine, barley beer, and bottles of liquor, along with wineskins. Given the size of the palace, there were probably other storerooms full of both wine and the foods that were suitable for long storage, but the contents of these pantries alone would be enough to feed the four of them for a few months.

Not that they would need to be here for that long. He gave a quick thought for how differently time might be passing on Earth, then dismissed it. That was a reality to face at another time. It bore no relevance to their immediate situation.

He opened one wineskin, tilted it up and poured wine into his open mouth, then corked it again. It was criminal to waste Elven wine in almost any kind of circumstance except this one. He handed the wineskin over to Linwe along with five more. “Empty those and fill them with water, while I pack some food.”

She took the skins and headed back to the water pump. He started throwing a selection of everything into four large canvas bags. Theoretically what he packed should be enough to feed them all for a week, except that he wasn’t sure how much food the Elves would need to eat to replenish their strength. He knew for sure that he and Aryal would eat a significant amount of food, especially protein. He tucked some apple brandy into the sack he intended to keep for himself.

The food and water were essentials, but he really wanted a few weapons and he wouldn’t turn down a blanket or two. He was also starting to twitch about how long he and Linwe had been gone from the others, so he banished the light, waited a few moments for his eyesight to adjust, and then scoured the kitchen for knives and linen tablecloths.

The tablecloths he found were long and heavily embroidered, which added to their thickness. They would make weird but effective blankets. After that, he stacked all of his finds on a table and waited for Linwe to join him.

She finished filling the last wineskin, slipped over to him and appeared to study the supplies he had gathered. “I shoulda set a limit on your credit card,” she said, with a ghost of her normal good cheer.

He ruffled her hair. “I know this loads us down, but it does cover all the basics.”

“I’m not complaining,” she told him. “It’s all I can do to keep from eating everything in one of those canvas bags right now.”

He dug into one of the bags and handed her an apple. While she took quick bites, they gathered up all the supplies and headed back down to the cell block. Determined to catch the first hint of any of the shadow wolves’ presence, he kept his awareness hyperextended, but they had a quiet, uneventful trip.

As soon as they pulled open the cell block door, Linwe called softly, “It’s us. We’re back.”

Aralorn and Caerreth met them at the door. Quentin kept a skin of water, the canvas sack with the largest amount of meat and the apple brandy, two of the tablecloths and most of the knives, and let the others sort out the rest. He took a few moments to pick the lock shut on the cell block door, and he told the others, “Set watches.”

Then he went in search of Aryal.

He found her in the cell he had been locked in, curled into a tight ball, and the coil of tension that had been wound so tightly in his gut eased. Still, as depleted as she was, she could be dangerous if she was startled out of a sound sleep.

To warn her of his presence, he said, “Hi honey, I’m home.”

She didn’t move, but he knew somewhere inside of her, her animal form had heard him. He walked over to her, sat down and set the knives within easy reach. Then he told her, “I’m going to put a hand on your shoulder now. Don’t bite me.”

He curled a hand along the point of her shoulder. He could tell she was chilled, because tiny goose bumps were raised along her skin. He shook her gently and told her, “I have water, apple brandy and meat. Which do you want?”

She uncurled slowly, moving as though her whole body ached. She mumbled, “Brandy.”

“Okay, but you can only have half of it.” He was not quite lying, just withholding information. He had a second
bottle in the sack. He uncorked the first bottle and set it into her groping hand.

Then he placed one of the folded tablecloths in her lap, and he pulled out the different kinds of food, setting it out in front of them. He chose a hunk of cured meat and tore into it caveman-style, washing down the dry bites with swallows of water. Exhaustion pulled at his bones. With one part of his attention, he noticed how Aryal drank the brandy but didn’t reach for any of the food.

Various reactions occurred to him. He considered each one and set them aside.

Finally he said, “You want to hunt the bitch, you’ve got to eat properly and get more rest, because, sunshine, you can barely sit up straight. I’m not going to take you with me or have you as a fighting partner if you’re going to be a liability.”

The silence in the cell was sour. Then she reached forward to slap her hand down randomly on a pile of food. “Oh gods, you brought more wayfarer bread.”

“All you got is bitching and whining?” he said irritably. “That’s not all I brought. Most of it is meat.”

He sensed her leaning further, feeling over the offerings. She picked up a jar and shook it. “What’s this?”

“Pickled eel,” he told her. “If you don’t like it, I’ll eat it.”

She said, her voice slow and tired, “Pickled eel and apple brandy. Huh.”

For some reason that made him laugh. “Put that way, it sounds pretty awful.” He paused, then reached for the bottle. She put up a token resistance but let him take it. He drank, and the light, fiery liquor sliding down his throat was one of the few good things that had happened that whole, gods-cursed day.

In the other hall, the Elves talked quietly together. Already they sounded more animated. Hope and carbohydrates were a powerful combination.

When the hollowed-out feeling in his gut had eased, he said quietly, “After we eat and get some sleep, I want to send the others back. They aren’t equipped to hunt the witch. They can cross back over to the Bohemian Forest and stand
guard as per their original orders, and maybe send someone out to update Ferion and Dragos.”

Aryal was silent for a while. She said, “If Galya reaches the passageway, you’re setting them up for a bad confrontation.”

“They don’t have to engage. They can let her go, and she can be tracked down to wherever she lives in Russia.” Tired of the dryness of the cured meat, he set it aside and reached for a wheel of cheese and a small jar of olives, set with a honeycomb wax seal. “Besides,” he said, “we’re not going to let her reach the passageway.”

He sliced off a piece of cheese and handed it to her, then sliced off some for himself and broke open the jar of olives. As she chewed, Aryal said, “I want one of these bars.”

He didn’t understand that. He hadn’t brought any food that came in bars. “What?”

The indirect moonlight from the single window was so faint, for many races the cell would be in total darkness, but his eyes were especially suited to the night. He saw her gesture to the cell door that stood wide open. “These bars. I want one of them with the dampening spell still on it so I can stab her with it.”

His eyebrows rose as he considered that. “That’s actually an awesome idea,” he said. “Unfortunately, the cells are so well constructed that I don’t think it’s feasible. We’d need a blacksmith, and by the time the smith separated one of the bars, probably the dampening spell would be broken.”

“A girl can dream, you know,” she said. She had sounded bad before, and now she sounded utterly exhausted. “Give me that bottle again.”

He passed it over to her. “So, who do you love?”

She drank from the bottle and wiped her mouth. “Excuse me?”

“Name somebody you love.”

“Why?” She sounded baffled.

Impulse was driving him, and he didn’t want to try to explain it. “Just because,” he said. “You’re friends with Niniane. Do you love her?”

“Ye-es.” Now she sounded cautious.

“Suppose Niniane was in trouble, and it was bad.” She nudged his arm with the bottle and, surprised she offered, he took it and drank. “Suppose,” he said, “someone Powerful that you didn’t know had threatened her.”

“Are you telling me that you know some plot against Niniane?” she asked suspiciously. “And you’re only just now bringing it up?”

“No! I’m creating a hypothetical scenario.”

“I’m back to ‘why’ again.” She wrapped the tablecloth around her shoulders and lay down. “But go on.”

He felt filthy and the cat in him was offended, but there was nothing to be done about it for the moment. He put the folded tablecloth he’d kept for himself on the floor to use as padding for his naked back. Then he lay down on it beside Aryal and stared at the ceiling.

“Suppose,” he whispered, “you tried to help your friend by trapping the person who threatened her. And suppose your plan backfired, and you ended up hurting both of them. What would you do?”

She coughed out a chuckle. “Feel bad. Is this about what happened when you decided to mend the error of your ways and gave up smuggling?”

The stone floor made a wretched bed. The only way he could be more uncomfortable was if he were still bleeding. He said, “Yep.”

Aside from the quiet sounds of the Elves settling to sleep, silence pressed down on them. Aryal whispered, “What did you do, Quentin?”

He closed his eyes. “When Dragos went after Pia last year, and the Elves shot him with the poisoned arrow, did you know that Pia had been staying at my house at Folly Beach?” She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even appear to be breathing. He continued, “I traded the information to Urien in exchange for his promise to let Pia go. Urien didn’t keep his end of the bargain.”

After a moment, she said, “Why the fuck did you tell me that now, when I’m so tired I can hardly breathe?”

Aside from exasperation, she also sounded genuinely mystified. He muttered, “I figured that would be a good
thing. Less opportunity for you to go ballistic before you had a chance to think.”

More time passed. She whispered, “You manipulative bastard. Why did you tell me at all? You didn’t have to. Nobody is bothering to ask questions about that anymore. You got away with it.”

“Nobody else knew about it. That doesn’t mean I got away with anything.” He rested a forearm over his eyes.

She turned onto her side until she was facing him. “It’s been eating away at you all this time.”

“Kinda,” he muttered.

She smacked him on the shoulder with the back of her hand, and he jumped. “What the hell, Quentin?” she said between her teeth. “Did I not just get done telling you the other day that I would go after your ass if you did anything to hurt anyone I cared about? Did you really make the very best decision you could have made after hearing someone say something like that to you?”

He couldn’t help himself and started to smile. “What are you going to do about it?”

She smacked him again. “I don’t know. I can’t believe you made me mad at you after being so—so nice to me today. What is wrong with you?”

“There’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. I mean that literally. You figure out what’s wrong with me, and I’ll pay you sixty-four thousand dollars.” He rolled onto his side to face her. She jerked her tablecloth closer around her shoulders, muttering under her breath. He stroked her hair, and she froze. Somehow the darkness made it easier for him to admit, “It sickens me to think I hurt Pia the way I did, and I still don’t like Dragos, but I’m growing to respect him. I’m sorry I did it.”