I got my wrapper off and started eating, and the next time I looked down, he had a mouth full of PowerBar and was chewing furiously. I grinned. I’d still rather have had a pie.
I ate my bar while scanning the crowd some more, but instead of Rosier I kept finding fey. Maybe because they were everywhere, making up at least a third of the revelers. And while I didn’t know a lot about the Light Fey, I knew enough to find it creepy that members from the three major houses were standing around the same pie wagon, and not trying to kill each other.
Well, the Blue and Green were standing around the wagon, debating the virtues of venison versus lamb. The Svarestri, in their black-and-silver finery, were just nearby, watching everything with flat gray eyes, their expressions making even the drunker members of the crowd give them a wide berth.
The pie guys kept looking at them narrowly, like they were driving off business, and eventually picked up their mobile kitchen and moved a dozen yards away, over by some sausage sellers.
The Svarestri didn’t even seem to notice. They stayed where they were, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the docks. Where people trying to bring up baskets of slippery fish were being dive-bombed by seagulls and blocked by the crowd that had stopped to gawk at the still-smoking ships.
Or at the new one just coming into view.
I hadn’t noticed it before, because it was almost impossible to see at any distance. Or even closer up, because it looked like the whole thing was coated in the cloaks the fey wore, the kind that reflected whatever was around them. The result was a ship that looked like it was made out of the waves themselves, translucent and watery bright, with sails that caught and reflected the rays pouring through a gap in the clouds.
It was beautiful.
And suddenly, that traffic problem got a whole lot worse. A trumpet pealed, a distant, pure note that had heads turning and conversations falling silent. And the next thing I knew, I was being squashed against the tree, me and Eel Boy, who had grabbed his basket protectively when what looked like the whole damn city descended on us.
After the second elbow to the ribs, I climbed up the tree after the boy, who was scaling it like it was horizontal.
Of course, some of it was, the burls and knots on the old trunk making convenient hand- and footholds, allowing us to get above the crowd. We found a perch on a more or less level limb, where he plopped his basket down and continued shucking eels as the throng surged below. And as the ship came closer, gliding silently up the river while more soldiers joined the fray, shouting orders at each other to hold back the crowd.
“Clear a path! Clear a path!”
The locals had obviously dealt with the soldiers’ short tempers before. Because there was a sudden surge away from the docks. Except for a couple of sailors, who were shoved unceremoniously aside, arguing loudly because their boat was still burning.
Nobody cared.
“Clear a path! Clear a path, damn you!” The dock was clear now, but the soldiers weren’t satisfied, forging a wedge into the crowd, cutting a route from the pier to the grassy open area between the two towns. They’d just finished when the ship glided to a stop.
“Who is it?” I asked the boy, whose disbelieving dark eyes rolled up at me.
“Seriously?”
I blinked at him. Had that been sass?
He smirked.
; That had definitely been sass.
“Who else would have a ship made out of water?” he asked.
“It’s not actually made out of water,” I said. “It just looks like it is.”
“Oh, right.” He didn’t bother to hide a smile.
I looked back at the dock. And was just in time to see the hull, sails, and even the delicate rigging, which had all been gleaming translucent pale in the sunlight a second ago, suddenly disintegrate. And plunge back into the river, a fantastic mass of water all falling at once, with a splash big enough to drench the crowd almost as far as our tree.
But not the small knot of people who had appeared on the dock.
Most of them I didn’t know, but that wasn’t true of the two dark-haired women in the center. Nimue walked out of the tsunami as dry as if the water didn’t dare touch her. She was wearing a sea green dress with layers of silk so fine they foamed up around her like the tide. And might as well have been made of it, when compared to the rough wool of most of the crowd.
They’d fallen largely silent, just staring. But not at the dress, or at the jewels scattered through her long, dark hair that could have been captured seawater, or at the dark-haired warriors surrounding her, tall and chiseled, with armor and shields that lacked the dull glint of metal in favor of the shifting, mercurial nature of her element. In fact, as amazing as it seemed, they weren’t looking at her at all.
They were looking at her companion.
The princess was dressed more simply, her rich brown hair in a simple plait, her dark green dress devoid of adornment, maybe because of her status as prisoner. And there was no doubt that that was what she was. The guards weren’t there to protect Nimue, who was basically an army all on her own. They were hedging her granddaughter, who must have been recaptured after the fight.