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“Do you know,” Mircea told me thoughtfully, “we have ceremonies for almost everything, except that? The bite is considered an intimate act. It is customary to take care of it in private.”
Yeah, I could see that. We hadn’t been up to much that night, both of us being exhausted and very much under the weather, but Louis-Cesare had enthusiastically made it up to me several times since. Most recently in an alcove downstairs before he had to go away to get his own family ready. Although, it was really all the same thing now, wasn’t it?
I realized I was grinning stupidly and stopped it.
“So what’s the problem?” I asked.
“No problem. I merely wished to ask if—”
But I didn’t find out what Mircea merely wished to ask, because an elegantly dressed Olga was headed our way.
I had on a bias-cut, sapphire blue silk thing that Louis-Cesare’s tailor had whipped up, and I thought I looked pretty good. But Olga was jaw-dropping in some fey ensemble that consisted of a lot of bling, a lot of gilt leather, and a lot of feathers, which she nonetheless managed to make appear regal. It helped that she had an entourage of her own, a mixed group of trolls of all sizes and descriptions, including one familiar towering blue mountain.
“Hang on,” I told Mircea, and walked over.
Blue was one of the few who had not gone all out. He was wearing what looked like the same leather loincloth he’d been in every time I saw him, and the hoary feet were unshod. But he managed the same gravitas Olga projected anyway, and frankly, he didn’t need any bling. The guy was impressive enough all on his own.
The tiny, velvet-clad woman at his side, on the other hand, was styling. I almost didn’t recognize her, because the gun-toting granny had had a makeover. Even the cigarettes were gone.
She flashed me some thigh, when I asked about them.
“Still got ’em, although I’m trying to quit. Faerie, you know.”
“What about Faerie?”
“They don’t got ’em there, and even if they did, Magdar and I are off to the hill tribes, so we’ll be camping out a lot. I wouldn’t be able to get any anyway.”
“Hill tribes?”
She nodded. “That’s where he’s from. We’re gonna try to find his people. And maybe some of mine.”
“Some of yours?”
“Oh, I know,” she told me, “I look ancient to you. But I was young once, and met this guy and—well. You know. He left after a while, which woulda been fine, ’cause I don’t need no man to take care of me! But then he came back for the babe.”
“You lost your child?”
She nodded, and the old eyes went soft. “He had dark hair, like his daddy. One of the river folk, Magdar said. He came back for my boy, and that’s the last I ever saw of him. So Magdar and me, we both got people to find, you know?”
I nodded.
Blue hadn’t said anything, and I hadn’t really expected him to. Trolls don’t waste a lot of words. But then he surprised me.
“Always thought I die in fights,” he said suddenly. “Or in battle with slavers. Now . . .”
“Now you need a different plan.”
I knew how that felt.
“Good luck,” I told the
m. “To both of you.”
They nodded gravely, and passed on, and I rejoined Mircea.
“You have interesting friends,” he told me. He glanced over the railing. “And family.”
“At least somebody got them into tuxes,” I noticed. “More or less.”
