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He nodded. “And then the Green Fey take replacements from the Dark. But there’s damned little left to take these days, at least along the border. And there’s no way for these people to cross it, not with more powerful factions ready to destroy them as soon as they do. They’ve been left between a hammer and an anvil, co
urtesy of the Svarestri expansion and the Green Fey callousness. If they choose to enjoy the satisfaction of pelting their enemies for a few minutes, believe me, they deserve it.”
An edge had crept into his voice. He was watching the light shimmer and change, and his face changed along with it, from cheerful engagement to fierce satisfaction, depending on what shadows the spectacle was throwing. But either way, it looked like he was enjoying the prolonged beating as much as the trolls were.
“I don’t know what will happen when they run out of room entirely,” he said after a moment.
I didn’t answer, although I could have told him. Because the dark fey had been coming to earth in ever-increasing numbers in my day. And congregating in enclaves under glamouries, those who couldn’t pass as human, because there was nowhere else for them to go.
I wondered what it must be like to lose not only your home but your entire world, except for the handful of family or friends you brought with you. Of course, immigrants had been doing that for years, but immigrants could always go home again, or work to integrate into their new society. Most of the fey couldn’t. They would be forever strangers in a strange land, and that suddenly struck me as terribly cruel.
“Why do the Svarestri need so much land?” I asked. “I thought they didn’t marry humans.”
He snorted. “They don’t.”
“Then shouldn’t their birth rate be low?”
“It should be. But the rumor is, they’ve made marriage compulsory, along with childbearing. They’re trying to build up their numbers.”
“For what?”
Pritkin shook his head. “No one knows.”
And then the crowd gasped, a collective inhalation of breath, as the battle on the boat commenced.
“Here’s your big scene,” I told Pritkin. And then I noticed: the fight had been subtly altered to focus on the little guard’s jabs at the fey, which in this version became a prolonged, heroic battle à la David and Goliath. Which it sort of had been, since the guard was maybe a third the size of his opponent. But it shortchanged Pritkin, who was left standing to the side, looking on admiringly.
“That’s not how it happened!” I said indignantly.
He just grinned.
“Don’t you care?”
“Care? I’m being immortalized in poetry and song,” he said, referring to the low-voiced chanting the graybeards had been doing. “A thousand years after my death, they’ll still sing of my heroic nonparticipation—and yours,” he added, as my wide-open mouth—damn it, did they ever show it closed?—shrieked by again.
“Can’t they edit me out?” I asked hopefully.
He laughed. “You may as well get used to it. This is how we will forever be remembered by generations of young trolls.”
Wonderful.
And then there was another collective gasp, because fire-me had finally got her shit together and shot the Svarestri warrior. Only, in this version, I’d cursed him, because apparently no one had equated the little thing in my hand to his sudden lack of face. He fell backward and the crowd went wild, screaming and yelling and stamping on platforms, to the point that I was afraid some of them were about to come crashing down.
But I guess they were sturdier than they looked, because none did. Even when a thousand voices shook the treetops, and a couple dozen real spears shot through the air, the crowd doing their best to kill him all over again. And I was laughing, because it was impossible not to be affected by their mood, which was bordering on gleeful.
And then everyone oohed, including me, when the huge area among the trees was suddenly lit by a hundred little boats made of stars. And, somehow, the elders had even managed to conjure up what looked like mirror images in the water, with showers of thinner sparks that glittered and gleamed like shimmering reflections. And lit the faces of the watchers with flickering fairy light.
And I’d been wrong; it had to be two, three thousand people staring out through the trees, faces awash with light and wonder.
“You said there were stronger dark fey clans?” I asked suddenly.
Pritkin nodded.
“Couldn’t they unite? Push the Svarestri back?”
“It . . . would be difficult.”
“Why?” It seemed to me that they had damned good reason. The enemy of my enemy might not be a friend, but I’d find a way to put up with him if it meant not dying. I thought most people would.
