Between Kings, page 20
part #10 of The City Between Series Series
Athelas closed his eyes for the briefest moment. “Enough. I am not going to save your friends while you martyr yourself. They can join us with the king and do their job of distracting him so that you can work your plan in peace. Self-sabotage was not a part of my plan, nor ever will be.”
“You don’t have to tell me that!” I snapped at him. “No one is too precious to sacrifice when it comes to getting your revenge, are they?”
“You’re yet alive,” he said. “And will be for quite some time, if you’ll only listen to reason.”
“If reason is letting my friends get slaughtered one by one so that I can use the time to undermine the king’s magic, you can bet your boots I’m not going to listen to reason,” I said fiercely.
Athelas had no right to insinuate that I was precious to him—not after he’d killed my parents and my friends. Not when he had lied to me and played games with me as though I were just a chess piece ever since he’d known me. Especially not when I wanted desperately to believe it was true.
“I utterly refuse to leave you here while I save your ragtag group of heroes,” Athelas said. “We will—”
“You’re gunna have to,” I said. “’Cos I reckon that’s the king coming now, and I’m pretty sure your revenge doesn’t go as far as being killed by him—especially when it wouldn’t do any good. You can’t back out of this in time—you know you can’t. You’re gunna have to sacrifice me instead.”
I saw him hesitate; saw the regret that clouded his grey eyes, the way his lips thinned. But I also knew he wouldn’t hesitate long. He was used to sacrificing everything except himself to get what he needed, and he still hadn’t got what he needed. In one way, I could understand it: if Athelas lived, he had another chance to win. In quite another way, it hurt to see the moment acceptance came into his eyes, even though I knew it had to happen—needed it to happen.
“I think you’ll find yourself regretting this moment,” he said. “I think you’ll have to sacrifice more than you expect.”
“Wish you’d flamin’ stop talking to me,” I said, trying not to breathe too quickly. “The sooner you get on to pulling my friends out of the hole they’re in, the better. You can have a snark at me about sacrifices and regrets later on. We’ll compare wounds or something. Get your flamin’ game face on.”
“I warned you,” he said, and for an instant he could nearly have been JinYeong, all snarl and furious heat. “I warned you, Pet. I am not your chess piece.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m yours. But I’m the flamin’ queen, and you better not forget it.”
That was how the king found us when he stepped lightly from the concrete wall: me glaring at Athelas and Athelas fairly snarling at me.
“I see that the Pet doesn’t endear itself to everyone,” he said.
He looks so innocuous when you see him up close; he’s a tall, scruffy, golden-retriever of a man, his limbs a bit too long and his expression a bit too hopeful to be human. He turns his head slightly to the side when he talks with you so that you have the feeling he’s really listening to you—considering you.
And he probably is, but probably not for the reasons you might think.
He said pleasantly to Athelas, “I suppose it bit you?”
“Funny how we’re back to it now,” I muttered to myself. The king was one of the few fae who had called me she and her from the start—and, contrary to the rest of the world Behind, he had been one of the few I had met who now usually still did it.
“I managed to avoid that particular irritation,” said Athelas, bowing. “My liege, I trust that you’ll accept this human as a show of regret for not being able to warn you of its intentions in advance? As you’ll see, I came here myself to assist—it really was not possible to get the intelligence of it to you earlier.”
“As usual, you are unexpected but thorough,” the king said. “See if you can add to your usefulness by finding out where the pet’s motley group were concealing themselves from me last night—I gather that there are still one or two more of the party to find, and I’d think they’re hiding together. There were fewer this morning than there were last night.”
“I will do my best to find the errant members,” said Athelas, his shadowed eyes passing from the king to me.
I couldn’t read them—couldn’t do anything even if I did know whether he really was on my side or not. So, as Athelas bowed to the king and left me in the tight grip of two brawlers, all I could do was hope that I was right to trust him this time.
Chapter Eleven
There are things you know but don’t really realise until you’re plonked down into the middle of a circle of iron filings and salt.
“Oi,” I said, falling onto my backside in the middle of the dusty circle as the king carefully shook iron filings from a paper bag into the hole he’d left in the circle. “That’s my trick. Flamin’ derivative, that’s what you are.”
“I’ve no desire to have you running around and getting up to mischief while my back is turned,” he said.
“If you’re gunna turn your back on me, you’re dumber than I thought,” I said.
“You’re always so yappy,” he said. “Just like a little dog. No wonder the steward was able to read you so well—all he had to do was prompt you and you’d bleat out everything he needed.”
I mean, it wasn’t as if it wasn’t true, but it was flamin’ rude.
“Whose filings are you using, anyway?” I asked him.
“Your werewolves should have been more careful about where they left their stash,” he said.
“They’re lycanthropes. Exactly what are you planning on doing with me? I figured you’d want to kill me pretty quick.”
“That’s nothing you need to know about,” he said. “I’m not going to help you become a thorn in my side by an unwise word, so you’d best get used to being imprisoned for as long as I choose to keep you.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “That’s a bit insulting, though: I figured I was already a thorn in your side.”
“People who can’t remove themselves from circles of iron and salt shouldn’t complain about how unimportant they are. They should look on every passing moment still alive as a boon.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “True.”
I mean, it would have been true except for one thing.
There aren’t a lot of advantages to being human when compared with being fae, or behindkind, or whatever. Behindkind in general are faster, stronger, and able to heal more quickly. They’re harder to kill.
But that’s not to say that there aren’t any advantages. There aren’t many—but there are a couple.
That’s what I mean when I say that there are things you know but don’t fully realise—stuff like me knowing I’m fully human but not really getting the point of it until a fae king, who thinks that as an heirling you must have a bit of fae as well as a bit of human in you, chucks you into a circle of iron filings and salt.
Didn’t know how he’d managed to find our stash of filings. Didn’t know where he’d gotten the paper bag he was carefully storing them in.
Definitely wasn’t going to tell him that the iron filings didn’t burn, stop, or impede me in any way except for being annoyingly gritty underneath my palms when I reached out to catch myself after he threw me into the circle.
That’s called strategy.
And it was a little piece of knowledge that I was going to use to my advantage, even if that advantage was only to run away if I found that I couldn’t do what I needed to do. So when the king left me alone—but not, if I was correct, unwatched—I worked desperately hard to think about exactly what advantages I had, what they could do for me, and how best to use them.
That’s what the front of my brain did, anyway; at the back, all that existed was a froth of despair and worry and awful regret. All I could think about in that part of my brain was the memory of JinYeong’s limp, bloody body being carried into the temporary safety of a Between-laced utility cupboard. The safety of that cupboard relied on the door being the only way in and out: behindkind couldn’t get in, but neither could my friends get out without someone breaking through the lines of behindkind for long enough for them to make a run for it to the bridge.
Were they out yet? Had Athelas rescued them or decided against helping them, only to turn his mind to the problem of slaughtering the king? I knew he wouldn’t just leave—even if that had been possible—but I knew him well enough to be sure he had at least three or four plans revolving in his head, and here I was trapped with the king and unable to make sure he did what I’d told him to do.
Unable to make him do the right thing.
Unable to know if I’d made the right decision to trust him again.
I didn’t have my phone—it probably would have been smashed to pieces before now, anyway—and there was no way of knowing exactly how long passed while I waited in the darkness with a fast-beating heart, trying to calculate exactly how long Athelas would need to fight his way through the king’s brawlers, convince my friends that he was there to help, not hinder, and get them back to the bridge before more of the king’s brawlers—or worse, the king—found them.
I did know that the king hadn’t gone further than the outside of the maintenance cupboard he’d dragged me into, which was a relief. He still didn’t seem to understand how much of a connection I had with Between: he seemed to think that since he apparently had my magic in check, I was powerless and blind.
Unfortunately for him, I was very well aware of where everything was when it came to my immediate surroundings.
I was even, faintly, aware that some of my friends were still alive—though not how many of them were. The echo of the group of them danced through the rivulet and made a nonsense of left and right, up and down, as it bounced off the human magic-laced brickwork.
I would have given a lot to know how many were still alive. If JinYeong was still alive.
I would have given a lot to know if they were already on their way to the safety of the bridge.
Unfortunately for me, the king didn’t stay outside for very long. That was what I’d planned on; it was what I needed to happen. I needed the king to stay away and unaware of where my friends were so that he couldn’t use them as leverage again. I needed him to stay close so that I could work on tying up his magic while he thought he had me contained.
But I also knew that it was when his attention was focused on me that things would get more dangerous for me, and I couldn’t afford to die just yet. I had to get to work as soon as possible, with as little fuss as possible, and live as long as possible in order for everything to go well.
So when the king came back into the chamber alone and made a big show of getting himself a chair, pulling it along the floor and setting it up with deliberate precision just to sit down with folded arms and one leg crossed over the other, I used every skerrick of that time to slip the delicate needle of Between into the brawl of power that was his magic. And as he took the time to gaze at me consideringly, drawing out the unsettling silence, I used the thread of Between, gossamer and desperately fine, to draw in the rope of his magic and began to weave it back over and into itself.
It wouldn’t do any good to do the working with my own magic: it would never be strong enough to contain all of his magic, let alone stop it doing whatever he wanted it to do. No, like the brownies who had woven an enchantment over themselves that was so comprehensive that even when I knew what they were I couldn’t see what they were, I was going to use Between to make the king’s own magic weave a spell around itself. A spell that said no magic here, bucko.
I think the king was waiting for me to say something; from his perspective, I was just sitting there, glowering at him and maybe doing tricky things with Between. I couldn’t do much of that, of course, but I had to do something. I had to do it clumsily enough that he’d notice, too, which was good; the spell took up too much of my attention to be doing fancy things with Between.
From now on, I just had to focus on making sure the working kept going, and that the king stayed close enough to prevent my connection either breaking or becoming obvious to him. To do that, I let the call I was sending through Between get a bit too strong—strong enough for him to sense it.
The king leaned forward as I did so and said pleasantly, “Stop trying to call things Between. They won’t come to you—they’re my subjects.”
“Didn’t think you did much work Between,” I said. That’s it. Lure him into thinking I don’t know much about Between apart from how to walk through it.
“Enough to spot silly tricks like that,” he said. “There’s no King Behind who wouldn’t.”
“Oh well,” I said. “It was worth a shot.”
“Now,” he said, without acknowledging that. “Let’s get right down to business, shall we?”
“D’rather not do business with you,” I said. Another forty seconds of work done. “Don’t reckon our business styles match—and I’m flamin’ sure our goals don’t align.”
“We can come to some sort of agreement, I’m sure,” he said. “And it would be ridiculous to refuse to hear me out when you have nothing but time.”
That was true, even if he didn’t know how true.
“Not sure why you’re not just killing me,” I said. That was true, too; I’d expected to have to do a lot more fighting by this stage, and now that I knew how hard it was to keep hold of my hybrid Between-and-king’s-magic weaving spell, I was very glad I hadn’t had to. “So I’m gunna take a stab in the dark and say that I’m probably not gunna like whatever you want me to do.”
“It’s simple enough,” he said. “Your friends are an irritant to me right now: I want that irritation gone. All you need do is tell me where they are, and we’ll both be spared a very unpleasant hour or so.”
It was so unexpected that my mind went blank for a moment or two; I had never expected to be asked something like this. My friends weren’t important to the king in the way I was, so why did he want them?
Maybe if I’d been thinking a bit straighter I wouldn’t have said so baldly, “Go jump in the lake, mate. Why would I tell you where they are?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll cut off one of your fingers for every time you refuse to answer the question,” he said, as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.
I went cold from my ears to my toes. I don’t think I moved for a good thirty seconds, and the worst thing was that he knew how badly he’d affected me. He just smiled at me in that friendly, shaggy dog kind of way and waited.
“Well, that flamin’ sucks,” I said, my heart racing.
My mind raced too, because there was no way I was losing fingers—or an arm—and there was no way I was giving up my friends. Which meant that it was time to fight—and hope that I could hold off the king for long enough to do what needed to be done to his magic.
A fight would definitely distract him enough.
It would also distract me, and the working I was doing had never felt so tenuous and fragile. I could feel it threading, weaving, joining, but like knitting, it could all be undone in a moment with a tug on the wrong thread.
“There’s no need for things to get as nasty as that,” he said gently. “I don’t have any reason to be kind to you, but I still remember the child you were—bright and inquisitive, glittering with magic. If you tell me where your friends are, you can keep your fingers.”
“What do you want with my friends, anyway?” I asked.
He was open and unguarded in a way he wouldn’t have been if I’d been outside an iron-and-salt circle, and if I could just get him to talk long enough, I might be able to do all that I needed to do before he realised I wasn’t as helpless as he thought.
Just fifteen minutes more. That was all I needed.
“You’ve got me,” I added. “You could just kill me and go home. I don’t get why you’re trying to grab them as well.”
“This is why you’ll never be king,” he said to me, as I concentrated just a bit more on the Between needle that was weaving its way through his magic and tangling it in itself. “You, I can execute at my own pace—even keep you alive, if I should wish it.”
Liar, said a part of my brain. As if I didn’t know the rules of the arena after calling him here! But instead of saying that, I just looked at him and let the filigree of his own magic grow up and over itself, knitting away to form a façade of magiclessness so utterly believable that even his own magic didn’t know it was magic.
“Brownies are really flamin’ useful,” I said vaguely instead, then added, “You saying that you’re crushing every sign of rebellion, even if it isn’t rebellion that can really harm you?”
“All rebellion harms me,” he said. “I am king. To rebel against me is treason and I reserve the right to punish traitors. Not one of them will live. I have no way of knowing if another of them is an heirling, after all.”
“If you’re trying to convince me to give up my friends by telling me you’re just gunna kill them—”
“No,” he said, laughing. It was the kind of laugh you give when a kid does something unreasonable but cute. “We’ve passed that point—we passed it a long time ago. You can consider it a punishment.”
“I’m surprised you think I’ll fall for the I might not kill you after all line, then,” I said, unimpressed.
“There are many things I’m capable of giving to those people who are loyal to me,” he said. “The very least of those is their life.”
“Yeah, well, my life doesn’t belong to you, and you can’t take it or give it as you like,” I said.
It wasn’t exactly true, but if my life was in the balance here, I was going to sell it for as much pain, trouble, and nuisance as flamin’ possible. Mind you, it wasn’t like he couldn’t just open the circle and drag me out—or bring in a couple of brawlers to do it—and that wouldn’t leave me in a very good position. I would rather be free to fight and waste a bit more time than already be in his clutches.
Might as well see how well surprise did as a weapon then, I decided. I strode forward and right out of the iron-and-salt circle, suppressing the instinct to run out. I hadn’t finished the job of tying up his magic yet, and the further away I got from him—the more my thread of Between had to strain—the easier it would be for him to discover what I was doing.
