{Can you still use your own words?} Evanne moved her hands carefully.

  The half-smile dropped. “Do not sully the People’s language with your filthy, slurred movements, cur. We should never have let the words leave our fingers in the sight of strangers. They are ours, the one thing they left us with!”

  Evanne felt the tone of the conversation turn, bad becoming worse, and decided she’d feel better with a weapon in hand. Fuckit. She spun, dashing toward her fallen scattergun, made it three steps, and felt the floor fall away beneath her. Arms pinwheeling, she fell, scrabbling for a hold, a fingernail on the edge, anything. Her left hand found the floor’s edge, her too-sharp-for-a-human’s fingers catching on old metal. She banged against the wall of the pit she’d fallen into. Her feet kicked against the wall as she dangled, scraping against smooth metal. By the Three, she suckered me into a pit trap. Who even puts a trap in? The ancients were paranoid.

  Then, I should stop thinking about long-dead idiots and focus on myself. Out, woman. She reached up with her free hand, looking up, and locked eyes with the Feybrind. The cat had moved fast, quick as all her kind, and stood right above Evanne. “Just like the rest of you. Too quick to anger, too slow to think. And thus, too easily trapped.”

  Evanne glanced below. Darkness and cold, too black for her human vision to see, too frigid for her Vhemin’s eyes to make anything out. Could be a pit of spikes. Could be water. Unlikely to be a bed of feathers. “What do you want?”

  “Exactly what I’ve got. A Builder, to make marvels. And I don’t,” she pulled a knife free from her belt, stabbing it into Evanne’s hand, “need you.” Evanne screamed, grabbing onto the ledge with her other hand. The Feybrind pulled her knife free, Evanne whimpering at the pain. She dangled by one hand, eying the blood-slicked knife in the Feybrind’s hand. “Quit your mewling. That won’t kill the likes of you.” The half smile came back. “This will.” The Feybrind stamped down hard on Evanne’s undamaged hand. Evanne heard a crunch of bone, screamed, flailed, and then fell.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tarragon spent a lot of time trying not to throw up. It wasn’t just the pain, which alone was something that went deeper than her skin, harder than the time she’d faded in a Vhemin cell, and uglier than Helio’s death. The pain was bad! It was super bad. But it was just pain, and she’d been hurt before, by people more pro than this juiced-up Feybrind woman.

  No, it was all her dead brothers and sisters.

  Sure, she was worried for Evanne. The maybe-Vhemin fell with a scream, the floor sealing after her plummet from the light, and that wasn’t great. But Evanne wasn’t here, and the cages were. Each one held a dead fairy. Gold and silver wings, no longer shimmering. No glitterdust sparkled. Just a lot of dead, sad, tiny people. They weren’t rotted, not like Bigs. Something about people of the Kingdom kept them … fresher for longer.

  “So, fairy,” the juiced-up git said. “Help me, and your friend lives.” Her diamond eyes were close to Tarragon’s cage. Not so close Tarragon could gouge them out, but near enough the fairy could see where calculation met promise.

  Tarragon gave a sad little laugh. “Do you know how old I am?”

  “No.” Diamond-eyes seemed amused. “I’d guess you were⁠—”

  “I’m older than you, by a long shot. I am from the ancients’ time. I am an ancient! Last of a miserable family made to serve impossible masters. And in all that time, do you know what I learned?”

  The Feybrind pulled back, the amusement in her face falling like winter snow. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “Never kid a kidder. Never lie to a liar, and never sell to a saleswoman.” Tarragon tried an experimental flutter of her wings, but there wasn’t much vigour there. “You sent Evanne to her death, and you’re holding the promise of a dead woman over me. It won’t work.”

  Feybrind lips pulled back in a half-snarl. “I can cause you⁠—”

  “Aye, pain, I know of it. You’ve a miracle contraption at your wrist.” Tarragon pointed to the sleek vambrace on diamond-eye’s left wrist. It was a miracle of Tarragon’s time, made by a proper Builder, all silvered metal and fey lights. “Such devices give the wielder imagined power. A handshake of steel and miracle, all to control those who won’t bend, and force them to break instead.” Tarragon leaned forward, gripping the bars of her prison. “It won’t work.”

  The Feybrind’s tail lashed. “And why not?”

  “Because I’d rather die than help you, and that’s all you’ve got over me. So why don’t you play hide and go fuck yourself?”

  The Feybrind froze, then half-smiled. “I like you, little Builder. I think I’ll keep you a while longer.” Another lash of that tail, then she pulled her cloak tighter. “I’ll be back.”

  “Don’t hurry on my account. Say.” Tarragon pressed close to the bars. “What’s that cloak?”

  The Feybrind hesitated. “You must know, if you’re as old as you say.”

  “You don’t know!” Tarragon crowed. “You found it, but you don’t understand it. It is a Cloak of Many Colours.”

  The Feybrind’s glance soured like milk in the desert sun. “And why would you tell me this?”

  “I want you to wonder what would’ve been possible if you’d been nicer. That’s all.” Tarragon huffed and turned her back on the Feybrind. “You can go now.”

  She heard the swish, swish of a lashing tail, then nothing for a handful of heartbeats, then a door creaked before clicking shut. Tarragon let her breath out. My hands are shaking! By the Three, I’m trembling like a newborn kitten.

  “That was super stupid,” said a totally different voice.

  Tarragon jerked in surprise, turning to her right. There, three cells over and one up, was another fairy. “You’re not dead!”

  “And you’re almost observant.” The tiny woman was about Tarragon’s height, but where Tarragon borrowed her colours from both forest and sunrise, the other was blue, from the cerulean ocean to the deep almost-black after midnight. “Dancing Stars is not someone you want to mess with.”

  “Dancing Stars is the Feybrind?” At the blue fairy’s nod, Tarragon paced to the right of her cage, trying to get a better look, but there were three cells and as many dead fairies in the way. “Do I know you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Do you know me?”

  “Of course.” The blue fairy knelt, and Tarragon made out perfectly white tiny teeth bared in a fierce grin. “We all know you. Your name is writ in the stars. You are here to save the world.”

  “Hah. Oh. You’re serious?” Tarragon frowned. “I’m not much of a Builder. I failed my exams.”

  “I know that too.”

  “So how does a failure save the world?”

  The blue-tinged woman sat cross-legged. “You mistake failing one thing for being a failure. A fish cannot climb a tree, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad swimmer.”

  “I’m not a great swimmer, either.”

  The other woman laughed. “You swim well enough. We’ve seen it. But there is something else you can do better than almost anyone alive. One special thing we gave you, when we took away everything else. Do you know what it is?”

  Tarragon peered, hard, at the other fairy. “Who are you?”

  “I’m sure you’ll work it out.” The other fairy glittered like a pale moonbeam. “The Manifest is one part of us, but there’s so much more. There were many people who were part of the Itikari. Just like Vehement Systems, there were those driven by greed or hate, and others driven by glorious purpose.”

  Tarragon frowned. “I don’t think greed or hate is much different from purpose. Some people use that word to mean the same thing.”

  “And yet, there were some people who were good, all the same. Good people gave you something. They didn’t know it, and neither did you.” The blue woman glittered, just a little, to show she meant it. “We gave you potential.”

  Tarragon blinked. “You sound like my last report card. “‘Tarragon Greyflight shows potential but could try harder’.”

  “Hmm.”

  Tarragon huffed again, stood, and brushed herself down. “Well, you know my name. And you know my friend, Evanne’s.”

  “‘Friend’?” The other fairy’s voice held a hint of humour.

  Tarragon tried not to blush. “She’s a Big.”

  “Hmm,” the blue woman said again.

  “Anyway, she’s wonderful, and brave, and can, um, do stuff.” Tarragon felt her voice winding down and rallied. “Why do you care?”

  “Because her name is writ upon the stars, too.” The fairy leaned forward. “What do you fear, Tarragon Greyflight?”

  “Everything.” Tarragon was surprised at the misery in her voice. “I don’t even have a sword.”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Just, ‘ah’. There is no agenda in everything.” The other fairy stood, also brushing herself off, and beamed at Tarragon. “Let me introduce myself. I’m⁠—”

  “Are you a Builder? A proper one?” Tarragon bit her lip. “Can you get us out of here?”

  A pause. “You could say that.”

  “Okay, cool.” Tarragon shivered. “I don’t want to hurt again.”

  “None of us do, but sometimes it’s what’s required.”

  Tarragon mulled that for a moment. “Fair enough. What’s your name?”

  The blue fairy pressed her face to the bars. “I’m Yasmine Glittercone.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Sight of Day didn’t like death or killing. It was a complicated matter, because those who’d laid down the weave of his soul designed him as a carnivore. He knew how to make limoncello, pancakes, and the best berry compote north of Ravenswall, but he needed to rend flesh to live. The biggest problem with killing was how slow everything else moved. When he was a much younger Feybrind he’d wondered why there were any deer left in the world, or why humans sometimes starved, because it was as easy as thinking to loose an arrow to the slowly plodding retreat of a startled doe. It made light work of murder, which seemed at odds with how the world was made, with everything else hard.

  When he’d asked an elder, Wending Stream told him, {They don’t run slow. We run fast,} and he’d understood. There was a cost to the People’s speed, and he’d learned that later on his first run-in with the hated enemy. The monsters had swarmed his forest home, and while his tribe had fought and killed with ease, Feybrind also tired. The Vhemin looked stronger and weren’t, and with that bulk they also looked more likely to tire but didn’t.

  This taught him speed was there for a reason. His kind were too soft, too easily killed, to be slow. They needed to lead the wind just to survive.

  And they’d been losing for hundreds of years. The monsters—human and Vhemin—pushed them from the plains to the forests, the forests to the ice, and always Feybrind stepped back. Sight of Day hadn’t minded. He’d known he wasn’t made for this world. An ill-fitting sock over a broken foot, an ache that never let up, and he’d waited for it to, one day, stop.

  Then he met a red-haired warrior, a woman who stood before the Three not in supplication but as a leader. An equal to the gods, not because she used their gifts of Storm and Sway as easily as they did, but because she held courage and love and gentleness with a world that didn’t deserve it. Geneve was the Daughter of the Three, pure of heart, choosing to save the world, even the Feybrind in it. And so he’d joined her quest because it passed the long, wearisome years, and then he discovered quite by accident that he loved her. A human who could’ve been his sister, or his cub. And with that realisation came another: I don’t want to die.

  He learned through this mayfly that killing happened, but it shouldn’t, not to anyone, anywhere, no matter if their skin was scaled, furred, or bald like a baby mole. And that was good enough.

  Sight of Day hadn’t understood Vertiline at first. Another warrior but following the blade because her heart’s love held one too. It was a silly reason to kill, but humans did a lot of dumb things. Then he watched how the teacher became the student, Geneve no longer the kneeling adept but the protecting master. Golden Feybrind eyes saw the cost Vertiline wore for the things she’d done and had to keep doing, and knew the woman hated who she was, and desired to be something she couldn’t be.

  It broke his heart, and he realised he loved her too.

  The largest surprise was when he realised the monster who walked with them loved them both too, burned with it despite his cold blood. The Vhemin lived worse than Feybrind, because no one liked them, not even other Vhemin. And he knew the one thing his brother Armitage feared was losing his new tribe. He feared no skittering monsters from the dark.

  Which was another stupid Vhemin thing, because Sight of Day heard their number, thought there were more than fifty, and knew there was only one way they were getting out of this alive. When Armitage charged, Sight of Day felt a building sense of panic, a desire to run to his brother’s aid, but he couldn’t see. He heard well enough, sending shaft after shaft into the enemy. Sight of Day knew how tall Armitage was, could feel his bulk in the night, and shot around the outline he held in his mind. For the first time in his life, he wondered if he might not be fast enough, because there were so very many creatures coming for them. He wondered if this is what the doe felt like.

  I can’t see. Why did they give the stupid Vhemin the better eyeballs?

  He sensed Vertiline to his left. She would be vibrating with a need for action, but she couldn’t see either.

  He remembered the elderly Wending Stream’s words, her fingers giving them purpose, her truth formed into shapes of meaning, and stored within his heart. {They don’t run slow,} she’d said, leaning over him, her forest-green eyes deep and cool. Unafraid of the gold brightness in his, calm as gentle breeze from the north. But she’d also said, {We run fast.}

  Behind him, he felt the the spire’s presence, with the stupid human who tried to make the unwilling live again lashed to its base. A thin arm of metal reaching to the roof. His arrows were metal, and his eyes weren’t worse than Armitage’s. They were much, much better. The cat bared a half-grin, drew two arrows, and held one against the bow, the other between his middle and ring finger. He turned to where he knew the spire was, loosed, and turned back. Not faster than light, but faster than the arrow. The arrow hit the spire, metal tip hitting metal shaft, and sparked.

  His eyes, a gift from masters long dead, saw for a brief moment. Too brief for a human to see much, but plenty for a Feybrind. The idiot Vhemin was under a hungering mass of spider-dogs. There were five rattling across the rocky ground toward them, so he loosed his arrow, then sent four more after. He didn’t need to hear the thunks to know he’d hit. Feybrind didn’t miss.

  He fired another arrow behind him, got another spark, and he shot a further five horrors that were trying to eat his brother. Vertiline spoke, her words far slower than Handspeak, but of course they couldn’t see any words given shape and form rather than sound. “He had a lantern.”

  The cat thought about which he she might mean. Ah. The necromancer had a lantern at his belt. It was mired in the sticky mass anchoring him to the spire, but that was fine. Sight of Day spun, padding over ground he couldn’t see, shoring up next to the human who brought the sleeping dead back to wakefulness. The man was in a panic, all panting breaths and sharp gasps, which Sight of Day ignored. He laid fursoft hands against the man, feeling to his belt, liberating the lantern.

  Turning, the cat tossed the lantern. His fingers found their way to his quiver. Two arrows left. Perfect.

  He fired the first, sending it though where he knew the lantern was. He heard the tiny awkward shriek as it pierced the device, then fired again.

  The second shaft arced through the midnight black. It hit.

  And sparked.

  The room bloomed as the lantern wept liquid fire. Spider dogs, a room ablaze, and in the middle of it, Knight Champion Vertiline, glass in hand, and murder whispering in her ear.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Well, this is a load of old ass. Evanne favoured her left ankle, because the drop through the floor hadn’t been bad, but the landing sucked. She’d hit in darkness, the light above not doing a great job of telling her anything about the room, and she rolled her foot on some old tat scattered about. The trapdoor above closed, shuttering her in deeper blackness. The night feels like an old friend at this point.

  The tat she’d identified as trinkets and coins. Her human eyes couldn’t pierce the gloom, her Vhemin’s blood heat vision not doing any better, but her fingers said the coins were just metal discs. It wasn’t easy to tell if they were gold or a material of the ancients worthless after their passing. She pocketed them, then turned a few trinkets over. That one? Probably a doll about the size of her hand. This shape? An empty cup. Another one gave her a fright, small objects conjuring fears of a spider avalanche, but it was just a chipped container full of desiccated nuts. She laughed, nervously, and the sound fell into an abyss, as if she was in a great cavern. She waited after that, just breathing, and was rewarded. There was some light, and over time her human eyes brought shape to her. She strained, seeing buildings about, a pathway leading away. She was on what could only be called a promenade, locked in gloom under the lake.

  She took another look above at the closed trapdoor. I fell a long way. It was lucky she hadn’t broken her leg. It looked to be ten metres on a good day, fifteen on a bad, and that’s when she realised: the floor cants. It was as if she stood on the deck of a sailing ship frozen half-way through rolling the waves.

  The roof above wasn’t skewed. If it was fine, it meant the floor here wasn’t, and that spoke of some deep structural problems. It was the kind of thing Uncle Day would know about, and remembering the golden-eyed Feybrind stabbed her right in the feels. He’d know what to say to make this right. Hell, he’d probably know how to talk to the psycho killer witch Feybrind above so they could all just hug this out.