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“He sees through glamouries, including fey ones. They say there is nothing his eyes do not perceive truly, and many of his Children have this same gift. The fey did not want us to know that they had kidnapped Dorina. You have enemies; as does your father. If we did not see them, it would widen the field of our search considerably.”
“And slow us down.”
He nodded. “The fey could therefore not have used glamouries at this court and have expected them to work. And neither could Jonathan.”
I frowned, trying to think past the pain, and finding it hard going. “But it couldn’t have been him. We saw the body.”
“Yes, we did.” Louis-Cesare’s voice was grim. “But the Circle refused to release it.”
He was talking about the Silver Circle, the world’s leading magical authority and a frequent pain in my ass. They’d had Jonathan in one of the cells at their main headquarters in Stratford, until he had a little ‘accident.’ They’d made us travel all the way to England to see what was left.
“That’s my point,” I said now. “You thought it was him, said you were sure of it—”
“As sure as I could be. But the stench . . .”
My nose wrinkled in memory. The Circle’s HQ was underground, almost like an ancient vampire lair, with a maze of twists and turns and a thousand dark doorways. I’d stopped trying to memorize our path after I saw one suddenly fill in and another casually move itself further down a hallway. But instead of the fine furnishings and unctuous servants of a vampire abode, there had been the reek of potions, so thick that it had permeated the very walls, and cold-eyed war mages fingering their weapons as we slowly walked by.
The cell we’d been escorted to had been even worse than the rest of the place, being small and cold and vaguely damp, a miserable spot to spend any time at all. But Jonathan hadn’t been there long. Because the best security in the world won’t help you if you manage to seriously piss off a demi-goddess.
I didn’t know the whole story there, what exactly he’d done to deserve having his heart aged to powder even while it was still beating. Yes, he was a leading figure among our enemies, coming up with new ways to use old magic and giving us a series of migraines in the process. But you don’t risk alienating your allies in the middle of a war just to execute a guy who was already on everybody’s shit list.
No, it had been personal, whatever he’d done to her, just as it was for me. And despite everything, I hadn’t been able to suppress a vicious smile at the expression on the body draped over the thin cot. He’d been on his back, his arms flung out, his face caught halfway between surprised and apoplectic.
Even in death, he’d looked furious that anyone would dare to cross him.
Only now I had to wonder: had she?
“I couldn’t get a good scent read,” Louis-Cesare was saying. “The mages say we live like snakes in holes in the ground, but at least we clean ours. They had decayed protection wards like spider’s webs in every corner, with new ones merely layered over the top. There was potions’ residue, some of it going back centuries, like pepper in my nose. There were spells, crawling all over each other, and snapping and snarling everywhere I turned, or whenever a war mage passed too close to another . . .”
I nodded. The mage who had been chosen for our escort had been civil, at least, and had managed to keep a sneer off his face most of the time. But his damned coat had shocked me every time I got near it, which was difficult to avoid in some of those narrow tunnels. Not that I could have anyway. I’d initially thought that I was just being clumsy, having been thrown off my usual game by the level of creepy, but no.
I’d looked down after the fifth or sixth shock to see the damned coat reaching out for me with its hem. Like leather fingers ready to pinch. As a result, by the time we’d reached the cells, the only thing I’d been able to smell was my own searing flesh.
Damned mages.
“I couldn’t scent Jonathan through all that,” Louis-Cesare added. “But tonight was different. The taste of his blood on the air, the stench of corrupt magic—it was exactly as I remembered. I’ve never smelled it as strongly on anyone else, or in precisely the same combination. It may as well have been his signature cologne.”
I sat there, and despite the complete sincerity in my lover’s voice, I was having a hard time with this. “But I talked to her. She assured me—”
“You mean the Pythia,” he said, referring to the chief seer of the mages, who pretended to preside over the whole supernatural community.
I nodded. Despite her court’s claims, and my father’s best efforts to seduce her to our side, she mostly worked with the Circle. Of course, she’d lie if they asked her to. Rumor was she was even dating a war mage these days.
But I’d been in a business where judging people accurately was important for a very long time, and I remembered the intensity in those strange, too-pale eyes, when she’d told me what had happened. She’d shifted into my room at the consul’s court without warning—a demigoddess’s privilege, I supposed—and practically scared me to death. One second, there’d been nothing but air behind me, and the next—
A skinny blonde chick with weird eyes and weirder clay earrings had been standing there. She’d seen me notice the latter and said that some of the young initiates at her court had made them for her. They were supposed to be chocolate kisses, her favorite candies.
They’d looked more like poop emojis to me, but I hadn’t been dumb enough to say so.
She’d stood there awkwardly for a moment before blurting out that Jonathan was dead and she was sorry she couldn’t have saved him for me. And I’d promptly forgotten about terrible earrings and good manners and the fact that people who ruled whole countries were on a waiting list to see this woman. And just turned around and ran. New travels fast and I’d wanted to get to Louis-Cesare before he heard it from someone else.
I’d made it, if only just. And then we’d gone to see for ourselves, because neither of us could believe it, otherwise. And damn it, maybe I should have stayed and questioned her some more, but I still didn’t think she’d lied!
Yet it seemed equally unlikely that she could have been fooled. She was the damned Pythia. I just didn’t know anymore.
“You’re saying that the mages deceived us somehow,” I said.
Louis-Cesare shook his head. “I’m saying that it was Jonathan. How he came to be there I do not know.”
