The Paladin Caper (33 page)

Tahla brought Loch not to a sitting room, but to the receiving hall where guests first met the family. White marble tiles were inlaid with malachite that twined vinelike across their surface, and a golden pattern scrolled across the entirety of the floor, drawing the eye to the raised dais where a single throne sat, lined with velvet and decorated with crystals at the arms and back.

Naria de Lochenville looked down at Loch from the throne, a pretty young woman in a dusky orange gown that brought out the golden tones of her own skin. Her eyes were covered with crystal lenses, a legacy from the same attack that had killed Loch’s parents.

The last time she and Loch had met, Loch had crushed the lenses under the heel of her boot after Naria’s failed attempt to kill her. Loch supposed Naria had picked up new ones.

Loch walked in silence to where the gold scrollwork pattern on the floor ended, just before the steps to the dais. Guards stood on either side of the steps, holding great ornamental halberds and with far more practical blades at their hips.

Loch looked up at Naria, who had said nothing.

“Baroness de Lochenville,” Loch said, and bowed low.

She rose from her bow to the sound of light laughter.

“Oh, Isa,” said her sister, smiling brightly from the throne, “you have no idea how long I have waited to hear you say that.”

Ululenia walked through the forest that had once been hers.

She felt every living creature that ran or swam or flew or crawled, and her hooves left no prints in the soft turf. The great trees were thick with leaves, and all around her was life, growing and changing and fighting and failing but
trying
nevertheless.

Once, these woods had given her peace.

She reached for that peace, reached for what had once been here for her, as she came to a little stream where water splashed merrily over a fallen log.

And found an intruder.

Idrienesae,
Ululenia said, and her horn flared as she pulled upon the ties of magic and life that ran through everything nearby, most especially the trees.

One tree, a great thick old monster whose leafy branches grabbed at the sunlight, split open with a low crack, and a small figure tumbled out, a slender, feminine foot-tall form in a short dress, with rainbow wings like a dragonfly’s glowing at her back.

“Ululenia, I didn’t think you would mind,” the pixie said, her little piping voice coming fast, “because you were gone, and the ancients were coming and I needed to be somewhere different, somewhere not where I was, and your woods were farther away, and you were not here or I would have asked, but we were friends so I thought you would welcome me.”

But then I came back,
Ululenia said, and turned toward Idrienesae,
and still you hid from me.

“It had been so long since I had seen you that I was not certain you would remember me, Ululenia, you know how we are, and I am small and do not remember very much at all to
arching ardor, bejeweled bosom.
” The little pixie stumbled and shook her head.

Why are you lying?
Ululenia asked, her voice still sweet and pure and beautiful.

Idrienesae shrank back nonetheless. “You went
dark
, and I was afraid, Ululenia, we were friends but those who join the dark fey do not always care about those they used to know, and I am small, Ululenia, so small and unimportant, and you would gain so little by eating me, and I could help you if you
curling caress, decadent desire
,” she said, and then cried out and fell to her knees.

You told Shenziencis where I was.

Ululenia’s horn flared again, and Idrienesae flew as though struck. She rolled along the turf, then sprang to her feet and leaped for the tree she had come from, but the tree opened only a crack, straining and groaning as though held fast.

The pixie clutched at the tiny crack as though she would wrench it apart with her own little hands. Ululenia’s horn flared again, and the great tree, hundreds of years old and wide enough for a dozen men to link arms and encircle, cracked down the middle as though struck by lightning.

Idrienesae screamed, and her rainbow wings flickered and vanished as she clutched her chest. The two halves of the tree fell with the wrenching roar of tearing roots, crashing into other trees as they slowly sagged to the ground.

You thought she was a Hunter, and you told her where I was, so that she could find me.

Idrienesae looked up to find Ululenia standing over her, and she crawled back, whimpering. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, she was going to kill me and I was afraid, Ululenia, I was so afraid of her!” She slipped as she reached the edge of the stream.

A shining white hoof pushed Idrienesae into the water. She sputtered, gasped, and tried to stand, and the hoof came down, pinning her to the rocks below the surface.

You were more afraid of her than you were of me,
Ululenia said, looking down at the pixie as she struggled below the surface,
and so you betrayed me
.
Who are you more afraid of now, Idrienesae?

The answer came only in bubbles that popped around her fetlocks.

I hunger as the wolf in the winter, Idrienesae. As the lynx with the mouse in its jaws, I would gain so little from you, but that little would be so much more than nothing. And who would tell me that I was wrong? You betrayed me. You deserve it.

The bubbles were slowing. If Ululenia lacked patience, simply shifting her weight would crush the little insect against the rocks, and then it would crumble into the energy from which it had come, and Ululenia would be that much stronger.

It.

Ululenia stepped back, and after a moment, bent her head into the stream and pulled Idrienesae out. She dropped the pixie by a tree and backed away, her hooves making no sound on the soft turf.

Idrienesae lay there for a while, coughing. When she could breathe, she crawled to a tree. She looked back at Ululenia, saying nothing.

The tree opened beneath her touch, and the pixie stepped into it, and the tree slid shut, and she was gone, sliding through roots and dirt to some other tree.

Ululenia could feel the magic, could track it if she wished. She did not.

She pushed herself back to her human shape and looked at the dead tree, ripped in two by her fury. She looked at the stream. Her hoofprints marked the dirt at the edge, the only hoofprints she had made in her journey.

She turned at a noise and saw Dairy at the edge of the trees.

“You did the right thing,” he said.

She was in his arms then, holding on to him as the drowning squirrel to the only rock before the waterfall, and her chest heaved as the sobs broke through.

I want to go back,
she said in his mind.
I want to go back.

“Dairy went off to look for Ululenia,” Hessler said, joining Tern at a market stall where she was haggling. “He’s worried about her.”

“He’s got a pretty good track record for his worries being on target,” Tern said to Hessler, and then to the middle-aged lady selling the herbs, “Seriously, if you have cut this with basil, what I am doing to it will turn it into an incredibly toxic gas instead of the harmless sleep tonic I am trying to make, so if this is like a quarter basil, I need you to tell me.”

“Is no basil,” said the lady. “Twenty for pouch.”

Tern held the little bag up to her nose. “I can
smell
basil in this. I need sleep tonic, not pesto sauce!”

“Is no basil,” said the lady again. “Twenty for pouch.”

“Tern, Hessler,” said Icy, “the puppet show is starting.”

Tern looked at the woman’s wagon. “You’ve got an herbalist guild membership. You know, if this turns out to have basil in it, I can bring a grievance to the guild. They usually settle, because it’s not worth the legal trouble, but do you know what they do to the people who besmirch their guild’s reputation?”

“Maybe basil fall in,” said the lady. “Fifteen for pouch.”

Tern finished the now-much-more-reasonable purchase and followed Icy to where the puppeteer was starting up. The market had quieted, and a crowd had gathered near the stage.

“. . . still concerned about having delegates from the Empire here for the
Republic
Festival of Excellence,” the manticore was saying, wiggling its scorpion tail with worry. “Is that sending the right message?”

“It’s sending the message that we’re ready to put these decades of war behind us,” the griffon said, puffing its mane a little. “And frankly, if Princess Veiled Lightning sees that the Republic is united and strong, I’m happy to have her take that back home to her mother and father.”

“Veiled Lightning?” Tern looked over at Hessler. “I didn’t know she was coming. Do you think we’ll get to see her? We never really got to talk last time.”

“Given that she was either attacking us or racing with us to prevent the destruction of the Republic and the Empire, yes,” said Icy.

“But this time, if she’s at the festival, we could grab a kahva, right? Maybe drinks or something?”

“You know that as a member of an inheriting ruling class, Princess Veiled Lightning is invested in the systematic oppression of workers,” Hessler said, “and while admittedly the Republic’s
de facto oligarchy
and still-present nobility is little better, I hardly think that she’s someone to idolize.”

“I don’t idolize her,” Tern said, “but, like, if we’re having drinks, maybe she asks about my hair, and I offer to show her how I do
my
braids, and then she shows me how to do
hers
, because the instructions that came with her doll didn’t have any words, and the pictures were confusing on which lock of hair went under and which went over, and then—”

“It is good to know that you do not idolize her,” Icy said, and then suddenly broke off to look back at the puppeteers, who had been going on about something Tern hadn’t caught because she had been thinking about braiding Veiled Lightning’s hair.

“. . . clearly a time of celebration, and I don’t think it’s necessary to mar that with discussions of an incident from so long ago,” the griffon was saying.

“Yes, but next week marks the tenth anniversary of the Red Trail Massacre,” the manticore pressed, flaring his wings and driving the griffon back, “and the Empire has never made reparations, so I think it’s justified to at least raise the question.”

The dragon hopped between the griffon and the manticore, flame puffing from its mouth. “The Red Trail Massacre was an ugly event that nearly brought the Empire and the Republic to war,” it declared. “From all official information, Republic soldiers at Fort Guyer were brutally slaughtered.”

“Well, they had been conducting airship test-fire exercises across the border,” the griffon said, hunching back from the dragon’s fire, “so it wasn’t entirely unprovoked.”

The manticore pounced and began banging the griffon’s head on the ground, to the delight of the crowd. “It was a vicious attack that cost Republic soldiers their lives.”

“It wasn’t even the Imperial army!” the griffon sputtered, kicking itself free. “It was some vigilante Imperial group, the Order of the Still Valley!”

“Where is
this
going?” Tern asked, and then as she looked at Icy, added, “and also where is he going?”

Icy was making his way through the crowd, heading for the puppeteer’s stage.

“Then let’s have the members of this Order of the Still Valley handed over into custody!” the manticore bellowed. It leaped at the griffon once more, but stopped as the dragon slapped a paw over its tail.

“Strong words,” the dragon roared to the crowd, with fire belching from its mouth again, “but worth bringing up in this time of peace. If the Order’s leader, the man who commanded the massacre, were brought into custody instead, that might avert the arrest of the entire Order.”

Icy shouldered his way through the crowd. “That is enough.”

“Icy, what’s going on?” Tern asked, following after him with Hessler in tow.

“And who is the vicious warrior responsible for slaughtering so many of our soldiers during peacetime?” the manticore growled.