Heirs of Chrior: The Empty Throne Part 8

"Will that actually work?" I incredulously asked. "It'll keep the broken gla.s.s from cras.h.i.+ng to the floor?"

"I know my business, doll."

"Her name's Anya," Frat declared, and I stifled a laugh.

Spex rolled his eyes and came to his feet, then hung the ring around the boy's neck. "I don't want you to carry the rest. You might drop it on our heads. I'll hand it up when you need it."

Frat nodded, and Spex turned to me. "Now we just have to get him up there."

"That much I've figured out," I confided, trying to suppress my reemerging reluctance to put the boy in danger. "You and I will form a ladder with our bodies. You stand on my shoulders, and he can stand on yours."

I put one hand on the wall beside the door and bent a leg toward Spex. He raised his eyebrows and shoved me aside.

"You'll stand on my shoulders, and he'll stand on yours."

I glared at him-I knew Spex had his pride, but this time I wasn't making a commentary on his stature.

"Look," I argued, retaking my original position with a hand on the wall. "I'm strong enough, and you know what tools Frat needs to use. So it makes more sense for me to be the base."

"Fine," he grumbled, acceding my point, though not gracefully.

Tossing his top hat aside and using my thigh for a step, Spex climbed on top of my shoulders. Like me, he stabilized himself with a hand on the wall.

"Come on, Frat," I instructed, extending my free hand. "Up you go."

The youngster did as he was told, using my thigh to boost himself up, then scaling Spex's body. I leaned heavily on the wall to sh.o.r.e myself up, trying to remain still despite the trembling in my legs. Although I couldn't see what was happening, I could hear a screeching that told me Frat was etching the gla.s.s with the diamond. The pitch made my ears ring, and I clenched my jaw so hard I could feel my blood pulsing in my temples.

It wasn't long after the noise ceased that I heard the tap-tapping of the cane, and I held my breath. When a few stray slivers of gla.s.s sprinkled down on me, I knew Frat had been successful. Then the load on my shoulders mercifully lightened. The boy had hauled himself upward.

Spex dropped the sheet of paper, now sporting a mosaic on its sticky side, on the ground beside me, then jumped down himself.

"Nature," I muttered, still amazed at the technique.

"Which elemental connection lets you do that?" he whispered with a smirk, looking up to see if any lights had come on inside the house.

I ignored him, peering at Frat where he precariously hung on the window frame above our heads. Spex waved him onward, and he disappeared through the opening. I clutched my partner by the arm, hit by a wave of panic.

"Will he be all right?"

"If he's caught, he'll be treated better'n us. Quit worrying, Anya-he'll be fine."

A soft thud told us Frat had landed on the inside, and Spex and I moved to stand in front of the door. We heard a bolt slide open and some fidgeting with the locks, then momentary silence.

"I can't open it," Frat barked through the door frame. "I got the bolt and the metal door, but the locks take a key."

"Got it," Spex responded, and he removed a set of lock-picking tools from an inside coat pocket that were not unlike the ones Zabriel had employed on Evernook Island.

He set to work, and I could hear when each lock clicked open. I pictured Frat, crouching alone on the inside, likely afraid for all his audacity, and wished Spex would work faster. Still, I had to admit I was glad the boy had arrived to help. Even if Spex and I had managed to pick the locks from the outside, there would have been no way past the bolt or the second door without someone on the inside. Just before Spex started on the third lock, he glanced at me and held up a finger.

"Did you hear that?"

"What? I only heard us."

"I thought there was something."

He left the door and slipped along the side of the house, grabbing his top hat off the ground along the way. When he reached the end of the wall, he craned his neck around the corner to stare at the empty street. I waited, my pulse elevated and my stomach beginning to cramp. We needed to get Frat out, and I needed to have the Anlace in my hands. The blade had been outside the control of the Redwood Fae for far too long. The yearning I felt to hold it made me ache.

Impatient with the delay, I joined Spex, waving my hand in front of his face to block his line of vision.

"Fae have sharper hearing than humans," I sniped, "and I didn't hear anything."

"Yeah, but you're not Fae anymore, Anya."

His retort struck me so hard the air in my lungs felt cold, and I was glad the darkness hid the tears that p.r.i.c.ked my eyes. I wanted to adopt a human curse and tell him to go to h.e.l.l, but I couldn't choke out the words around my frozen breath.

He returned to the door, tossing me a mumbled "sorry" on his way past. I followed, and he quickly dispatched the last lock to swing the door open. Frat was sitting on the floor, his face framed in the dim light of the lamps mounted in the rooms on either side of the entry. I went to him and pulled him to his feet, relieved to see him safe and sound.

"Well done," Spex whispered, coming to join me. He freed the chain that held his mother's wedding ring from around the boy's neck, then pressed a coin into his hand. "Now out with you."

With a tip of his hat, Frat stepped across the threshold, and I entered one of the rooms. The house was quiet, maybe too quiet. Despite the difficulties we had overcome in gaining entrance, it felt as if we had walked into a trap-a trap that was baited and ready to spring.

Chapter Nine.

HASTINGS.

I stood just inside one of the drawing rooms in Sandrovich's home, trying to understand what I was seeing. The walls were lined with locked gla.s.s display cases, and more spiraled toward the center, separated by stretches of floor that created pathways. The room across the entryway was similarly laid out, with more locked cases. Kodiak Sandrovich's collection was extensive, expensive, and well secured.

It didn't take long to determine the man liked bejeweled weaponry. Spex and I spent the first moments of our time entranced by the blink of diamonds and emeralds and sapphires resting in the pommels of various tools of battle. Looking farther, we discovered generations-old memorabilia from the Fae-Human War: statuettes of angels running each other through, paintings of beautiful fields trampled by armies, and a helmet with wings hammered into the sides that had been worn by a Fae warrior.

"G.o.d forbid this goes south," Spex muttered. "I don't want this guy coming after me."

In my heightened state, I couldn't restrain a giggle.

"I wouldn't worry. On the occasions when I caught sight of him... Let's just say I think even you could outrun him. Honestly, I never would have guessed this was the sort of thing he collects. I saw him once at the front door-he held a handkerchief to his mouth and excused himself for being ga.s.sy. Kodiak Sandrovich has a dark side."

I walked along the cases, fingering the gla.s.s, aware that Spex had wandered into the opposite room. Eventually, I followed, padding softly upon the painted and glazed tiles that covered the floor.

"I think this is what you're looking for," he murmured upon my approach, staring into a case that contained only one piece. He had removed his top hat and was slowly twisting it in his hands, his posture reverential.

From atop a red velvet pillow, the golden hilt of the Queen's Anlace shone, only a pane of gla.s.s separating it from my grasp. The ruby set in its pommel was rich and flawless, and its blade gleamed, looking freshly sharpened.

"Can you unlock it?" I asked, my right hand itching to pick up the dagger.

"I knew you weren't telling me everything. This...this knife is magical. I can see it. I saw it from the other room. It's glowing brighter than you were when we first met. The magic beams off it like it's a bleeding lighthouse."

I knew nothing about the history of the Anlace, its purpose, or its properties, so I only nodded in response. I'd suspected the dagger was magical when the cut I'd inflicted on Thatcher More had not only bled but burned, and I'd become convinced in the Fere-the mountainous terrain that sliced through the Warck.u.m Territory from north to south-when it had done what bullets could not in killing a Sepulchre. But infusing magic into objects was impossible; even the conduit blades carried by the Queen's Guards were not powerful independent of their bearers. I couldn't be certain what the humans had accomplished on Evernook Island, but my people were not capable of forging a blade the likes of which Spex was describing. At least we weren't anymore. Faint murmurs of the Sepulchres' words about being cut off from the Old Fae when Shea and I had encountered the creatures in the caverns sounded in my head.

"I can unlock it," Spex said, finally answering my question. He retrieved his tools from his coat, and I leaned against the wall, watching him in silence while he worked. The tick of a clock somewhere in the house had seemingly been growing louder and faster the longer we lingered, and now it filled me with an urgent desire to leave. We shouldn't be here.

At last a small click sounded, and Spex lifted the lid of the gla.s.s case in the manner of a careful jeweler showing off his wares.

I felt no such hesitation. My hand flew to the Anlace to close tightly around its hilt. Moving toward one of the lamps, I examined the blade in better lighting, enjoying its accustomed weight, a sense of closure settling upon me. I wasn't weak anymore, not with the Anlace in my possession. I had failed in many things over the past four months, but this moment promised a bit of redemption. It would give me something to cling to when I inevitably faced the anger and disappointment of my family.

"Thank you, Spex," I whispered. "You didn't have to do this for me. I haven't been kind to you, not ever. So thank you."

"No, thank you," someone replied, only it wasn't my chronically flamboyant companion.

My heart lurched, but before I could react in any other way, a t.i.tanic grip closed around my wrist and snapped it backward. I heard a pop, then I screamed, white flashes stinging my eyes as my hand was lost to pain.

I fell to my knees, folding my injured arm into my body, and stared at the black-clothed legs of a beefy man who now held the Queen's Anlace-held in his bare hand the ancient relic that had never been touched by a human in all its long history until it was stolen from me. Was this the person who had been following me? My eyes traveled upward, taking in his thick neck and bald head and- I screamed again, this time in rage, and launched myself at the newcomer's face. Hastings, the man who had shot and arrested my cousin, who had tried to have Shea and me killed, who had imprisoned and tormented Spex, and who had sent Faerie after Faerie off to die, would not leave here with the Anlace. If I had my way, he wouldn't leave here at all.

I caught Hastings by surprise, and he stumbled backward. In my senseless fury, I dug my teeth into his cheek, the nearest flesh I could find, and it became his turn to scream. Blood ran in my mouth; then the Anlace clattered to the floor-Hastings needed both hands to pry me off. He threw me, and I landed hard on the cold tile, air knocked from my lungs. But that wasn't enough for him. He advanced on me, and I closed my eyes against the pummeling I was about to receive. But nothing happened. I peered out between my eyelids, shocked to see him growling and swiping at his back. For a brief moment, I thought my bite had been rabid. Then he spun to reveal Frat clinging to his shoulders like a wildcat. Where had the boy come from? I struggled to sit up, wanting to help, needing to help, but my limbs wouldn't obey.

"Let go, Frat!" I cried, a mere moment before Hastings slammed backward against a wall. I cringed, watching my would-be defender slide limply to the floor.

The brute of a man returned his attention to me, whether out of wrath or because of my call. He brought his full weight down on top of me, his fingers crus.h.i.+ng my throat. I clawed at his neck and shoulders, my body heaving in spasms from panic and lack of air. With my good hand, I dragged my nails through the gouge I'd made with my teeth along his jawline, then my fingers caught on a chain hanging around his neck. With the last of my strength, I jerked it free.

Gla.s.s broke, distant and distorted; then what sounded like a cannon went off-loud, sharp, right beside me.

I could breathe again.

I hauled in air, making noises I wouldn't have ascribed to a dying animal, and rolled onto my hands and knees. Vision I hadn't been aware of losing came floating back, along with a throbbing in my temples so potent I might have vomited had my throat not been rapidly swelling. My heart was pounding at an impossible rate, and I thought my chest would combust.

Where was Hastings? He would kill me if he got his hands on me again.

I tried to crawl, but my injured wrist gave way, and I collapsed, crying out from the grinding pain and burn beneath my skin. I turned around to the best of my ability and spotted the thug lying strangely immobile on the floor. The tile beneath his head was darker than it should have been and glinted wetly in the dim light. I shook uncontrollably, wanting to creep close and stab him with the Anlace to ensure he never rose again, but...

Where was the Anlace? I scanned the floor, breath coming in frantic gasps. There was no sign of it. No sign of Spex, either, just a snowfall of gla.s.s shards from the display cases. And Frat's motionless body. I slid toward the boy, ignoring the p.r.i.c.ks and stings of gla.s.s, but a form blocked my view. Someone had knelt in front of me. I opened my mouth to scream once more, but my raw voice wouldn't obey.

"Calm down. I'm not going to hurt you." The words reached me through a fog, resounding like an echo. "Anya, look at me. I'm here to take you someplace safe."

It was hard to focus, but I did because the man was familiar. He held out his hands in front of him, showing he meant no harm, and I squinted past them into the stern, lined face of Constable Marcus Farrier.

Why? How? My brain could supply no answers. Then one clear thought formed. If Farrier was here, Tom Matlock couldn't be far behind. I swung my head away from the senior officer and spotted Tom standing just inside the entrance to the room, utterly still. Hastings, Frat, Tom-I was beginning to feel I was in a room filled with sculptures. Except...except Tom's hand was shaking. The hand that was outstretched, gripping a pistol.

Reinforcements were arriving, and Constable Farrier went to Tom, leaving someone else to monitor me. Exuding a mixture of gentleness and caution, he took the gun from his partner's hand.

"Send for a doctor," Farrier commanded amid a hundred other orders he was issuing to those around him. The noise was loud, the activity confusing. I still couldn't see Spex-and Frat's body had disappeared. "Have him meet us at the station house. And get word to the Lieutenant Governor that things here didn't go exactly in accordance with plans."

Somewhere in my mind I registered that the Constable was displeased. Distinctly so. What plans had he and Luka put in place? New arrivals, faceless strangers, wrapped me in blankets and trundled me into one of their wagons. No one noticed the chain snug against my palm.

I was instructed to lie down on a stretcher as the coach b.u.mped along the streets, the pair of horses who pulled it moving at a fast trot. I refused, despite my shakiness, and when someone took me by the shoulders to try to force me, I threw a white-knuckled punch with my good hand and grazed the man's jaw. No other attempt was made.

I sat on a bench, cradling my injured wrist against my chest, and rocked back and forth, battling nausea. My fight wasn't aided when, halfway to the station house, it dawned on me that I wasn't just Hastings's victim. I was in custody.

I threw up then, though one of the Constabularies saw it coming and thrust a bucket under my head. Although it was mostly liquid, it felt like razor blades slipping through my aching throat. He held out a water flask, and it occurred to me he was the fellow I had tried to punch.

"Are you sure you don't want to lie down?" he hesitantly inquired.

I wiped at my mouth and shook my head, wondering how long it would be until I was in handcuffs. Constable Farrier had used my name. There was no hiding my ident.i.ty or running. I had been one of Zabriel's accomplices on Evernook Island, and if that weren't enough, I'd been apprehended in the midst of a robbery.

"Where's Tom Matlock?" I rasped.

The Constabulary c.o.c.ked an eyebrow, surprised by the inquiry. "I imagine he'll be along."

The statement picked up at the end like a question. This man was a dead end. I knew Farrier to be a harsh man, and Tom was my best hope of gaining leniency. I could only pray to Nature he'd be there to advocate for me.

The jail to which I was taken was part of the Southern District's Constabulary Station, a mere holding cell compared with Tairmor's prison where I would likely end up. Benches lined the walls of its main waiting area, and a large desk was situated to control entrance to the wide hallway off of which opened half a dozen cells. Its layout was similar to the station house where Shea and I had been taken following our arrest at the West Gate. We had escaped our confinement back then by attacking and subduing a guard. I doubted I would be given any such chance this time; I also doubted I possessed any such capability in my injured state.

I was escorted to a cell that afforded a view of the entryway, the blankets still draped around my shoulders. The door was left ajar, although two officers were stationed to watch over me, and a doctor came to tend my wounds. Realizing I was still clutching Hastings's chain, I shoved it into the pocket of my tunic. For no reason I could fathom, I had not been searched; the Constabularies hadn't even bothered to remove the knife in plain sight at my hip.

The physician laid my wrist on three planks of yellowed wood that pa.s.sed for a table, then poked and prodded at my injury. He'd just determined it was broken-something I already knew-when the jailhouse door opened and Marcus Farrier strode into view, Tom Matlock close on his heels. My heart soared until I registered the ashen look on Tom's face, the odd deadness in his eyes.

"Sit down," Farrier instructed, pointing Tom to a bench. He did as he was told, hunching over with his forehead pressed to the heels of his hands, fingers jammed into his normally tidy brown hair.

I watched Tom while the doctor splinted and wrapped my wrist. He didn't move. What nerves the sight of him had quelled built up rapidly again-I wanted to go to him, make him look up, wake up, say something to prove he was more than just a body. But I was under watch, and the physician was now plucking gla.s.s from my palms.

The doctor finally departed, and my gaze went to Constable Farrier. He paced the main room, occasionally glancing at Tom, occasionally at the door. Every once in a while he ran a hand through his graying hair. I had never seen him so agitated. What was going on? The crisis was surely over. After all, the robbery had been interrupted and I had been arrested. Shouldn't he be questioning me? Why was he stalling?

The station house door opened, and everything became clear. Luka Ivanova, son of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor in his own right, strolled in like a king greeting his conquering army, with the wardrobe to match. In spite of the fact that it was late at night, he was clean-shaven and attired in an embroidered russet coat with gold b.u.t.tons strung by chain to an elaborate brooch. This was not a man who had been pulled from his bed.

He met Farrier partway across the room, his demeanor and half-a-head advantage in height giving him tremendous presence.

"What is it?" he snapped with the easy brusqueness of someone in charge. "I was told there was a problem."

"The girl is fine," Farrier prefaced.

"The girl is royalty, Constable."

My insides flipped. The last time I'd talked with Luka, he'd known nothing of my status in the Faerie Realm.

Farrier bowed his head, conceding his commander's point. "The Princess is fine. She was attacked, but we arrived in time."

"Her attacker is on a slab, I presume?"

"Yes."

"Good. I wouldn't want to have to explain Princess Anya's death to Queen Ubiqua. I'll see her now and a.s.sess her condition myself."

The mayhem in my brain increased dramatically, their brief exchange generating dozens of questions. But I couldn't focus on any one of them.

Luka's attention s.h.i.+fted toward the cells, and I examined my bandaged wrist, not wanting him to know I'd overheard. I nevertheless caught the movement of Marcus Farrier's hand as it closed around his commanding officer's upper arm. I lifted my eyes to see the Governor's son, his posture tense and expression confused and but a breath away from offense, staring into the Constable's face. What was going on between these men? Whatever it was, it didn't seem I was their primary concern. My head ached with the effort to find clarity, for very little about this situation made sense to me.