And found him surrounded by girls in white.
Chapter Twenty-one
For a second, I stared at them and they stared at me, all of us looking surprised and vaguely horrified. And then they shifted out, all at once, before I could say anything. Leaving leaping afterimages in front of my eyes, the result of lighting flashing off their bright white dresses a second before they fled.
I went to my knees on wet leaves, half-blind and breathing hard, and wondering if I’d actually managed to intimidate somebody.
Or if, more likely, they’d gone to rescue the boss. Who my power obligingly showed me floundering around in a bog, miles from here, cursing as she realized what I’d shoved into her neck. And that her power wasn’t going to get her out.
But her acolytes would.
We needed to get gone.
But my body didn’t seem to agree. My body had had it. I grabbed Rosier, who the girls had helpfully fished out of the tree, hoping against hope to eke out one more shift. Only to end up sliding down onto my ass instead. While the heavy wooden wagon bounced around on the other side of the tree line, like a piñata caught between two candy-hungry kids.
I watched it blankly for a minute.
That wasn’t something you saw every day.
But there were no witches this time, no rush to release the contents, no movement at all, except for the screaming, flailing horses. For some reason, the rescue party, or whatever they were, was hanging back, staying low, hiding in the shadows. Probably because of the next-level crap they’d just seen, I thought, grimacing.
And that was . . . that was bad, right? Not that I wanted them butchered by the damn fey, but . . . they were supposed to be, weren’t they? Like the slaver was supposed to be shot through the throat and left to choke on his own blood, only he wasn’t, either. Because the witches weren’t there. So, instead, he was scrambling out of the net; he was staring around wildly; he was looking straight at me.
Or no, I realized, as somebody jerked me up.
He was looking at the fey behind me.
The next few minutes were a blur. Just the vague impression of being dragged here and there, of being loaded onto something—maybe another wagon—of rain soaking me and wind beating me, and Rosier whispering things I couldn’t concentrate enough to understand. Maybe because I was already concentrating on something else.
Something I’d learned recently about people who were alive and weren’t supposed to be. Something about when my power didn’t seem to care about that. Something about the implications . . .
None of which I had time to focus on before we stopped abruptly and I tumbled out into a patch of mud.
I wasn’t the only one. At some point, the other women had been pulled out of the destroyed wagon and loaded up alongside me. And whatever new conveyance we were on ha
d been going pretty fast, and didn’t have bars, so there was nothing left to catch us anymore.
But there were plenty of armored fey surrounding us, and a forest of spears in our faces.
I lay there, blinking back to awareness, watching firelight gleam on a circle of broad, flat blades. They were so shiny I could see my too-wide eyes reflected in the nearest, along with a few scattered raindrops and the frightened faces of the women behind me. And the merchant climbing down off a wagon and coming around.
And starting to curse.
“Put those damn things away,” he told the ring of fey. “I’ve lost enough tonight!”
“You don’t give us orders, old man—”
“No, but your Lady does! And she likes the work I do. So take it up with her!”
He snatched Rosier off the dirt beside me and started striding toward the entrance to a palisade. Like the checkpoint earlier, it looked recently erected from stripped, sharpened logs, some of them massive. Like the two that a couple of wooden gates were swinging from, currently closed against the night.
And which were hedged by two equally massive bonfires, which had somehow survived the deluge, and which the merchant was heading for with obvious intent.
Oh, crap.
I scrambled to my feet, wobbly-legged and dizzy. And stumbled after the man, catching up and grabbing on to his right arm for support, because I was about to fall over. And because it was the one holding Rosier.
“No,” I said, breathlessly. “No, please. I told you; I need him.”