“What key?” I asked.
He sighed again. “The one hanging around Nimue’s neck.”
Chapter Twenty-three
“Around her neck?” I asked, as Pritkin and I waited for the witches to get into position.
They were heading for the palisade wall, to start an enchantment to try and bring it down in case we failed. He and I were watching, ready to cause a distraction if it looked like anybody noticed. But so far, nobody had.
Maybe because everybody was at the auction. Other than a human chopping wood and a fey trying to reshoe a horse, there wasn’t a soul in sight. It was too good to be true, and it was making my palms itch.
“That’s what one of the guards told my source, when he offered to take a tray in,” he confirmed. “She’s the only one with a key.”
“How are we supposed to get it, then?”
“We aren’t going to get it. I am—if possible.” He didn’t sound like he was exactly in love with the idea. “I don’t want you anywhere near the sea witch.”
“Is that what they call her?”
“That’s one of the things they call her.”
Pritkin was looking grim, maybe because his plan to stow me with the slaver hadn’t panned out. Although I thought he should have been pleased about that, since it solved a problem for him. A big one.
Instead of trying to figure out how to break the witches out, we were now trying to smuggle some wands in, and let them do it for themselves. Basically the same idea I’d had when I first swiped the things, back in the courtyard. The question was how to get them past the guards.
Which was where I came in.
As head of the Pythian Court, I was technically a coven leader. Meaning that I should be put in with the others, solving one problem. And my bracelet would solve the rest.
Because even if the fey found it, it would always come back. Including the new little charms that ringed it, the odd, ugly, sticklike charms that Pritkin had shrunk, and that the witches could unshrink and run amok with. Distracting the guards while he infiltrated Nimue’s chambers for the key.
That was his job, because of his ability at glamourie. Mine was just magical munitions mule: get the stuff past the guards. So why was I sweating?
Maybe because my power remained uninterested in this whole affair, despite the fact that I was actively interfering in the timeline now, the very thing I wasn’t supposed to do. The very thing I was supposed to prevent other people from doing. And now that my head was clear, I was remembering things, like what it had meant before when my power wasn’t worried about changes in the timeline.
Something was about to go down, something bad, something that was going to make all of this irrelevant. Because that was what happened last time: a fey had died who wasn’t supposed to, but my power hadn’t cared. Because it knew that a battle was coming, one in which he was supposed to die, and the few hours’ difference weren’t enough to matter.
I was assuming the reverse worked as well. Like if those people who were supposed to die earlier today did so shortly from something else, they’d never have a chance to mess with the timeline. So my power wouldn’t care, but I did, because I was here and Pritkin was here and we needed to get gone before the shit hit the—
“It’s time,” Pritkin said, abruptly enough to make me jump. He looked at me. “You all right?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little breathlessly. “Yeah, I’m good.”
I stopped fingering my bracelet and followed him.
The toupee turned out to be a nobleman’s house, because apparently noblemen had different standards back in the day. But it was bigger inside than I’d thought, with a high ceiling under the conical roof, like looking up into a big straw hat. Just how big I wasn’t sure, because a wattle-and-daub wall rose a dozen yards away with a door in it, blocking off the inner areas from what looked like a reception room.
Well, okay, it looked like the medieval version of a hunting lodge, with a fire, a table, and a few chairs covered with animal hides spread around. But no people, just like there hadn’t been any guards on the door outside. It should have made me feel better.
It didn’t.
“Wait.”
Pritkin had already started for the door, but he turned to look at me. “We don’t have much time.”
“I know. But this . . . I need to know something first.”
He raised an eyebrow.