I nodded. There wasn’t anything I could say. Unlike Talus, I had only just met the two gentry who’d just died. From my glimpse into his memories, they’d been his friends for longer than I’d been alive. Friends who had been wiped from the world in a single moment of fire.
The cabal had been warned we were coming. Not just that someone was coming but that fae were coming, or they wouldn’t have used cold iron in the claymores. I didn’t want to think of the amount of effort cold-hammering something resembling the thousands of ball bearings in the mine represented. Effort put into trying to kill us—kill me. I liked not being killed.
IT WAS a short drive to the house of the doctor the fae Court kept on retainer. He was waiting for us when we arrived, already dressed in scrubs and standing by a stretcher with a young woman.
The girl was a platinum-haired changeling, but the family resemblance between doctor and assistant was striking. I found myself wondering, as she helped me load Robert onto the stretcher, what kind of fae her mother had been.
The father and daughter rushed Robert into the house, and we followed them in. It turned out that they had turned what had probably been a main-floor office or something similar into a—totally concealed from the outside—brightly lit and fully functional operating theater.
I barely had enough to see that before the changeling daughter closed the doors to the operating theater, leaving Talus, Laurie and me standing in the living room. It was a neatly furnished room, with two chairs, a couch and a loveseat, all in a starkly sterile white.
“I guess we may as well sit down,” Talus suggested.
“I’m going to go have a smoke,” Laurie said.
“Don’t leave,” Talus ordered. “My uncle is on his way; he’ll want to debrief all of us.”
She nodded and left, heading for the front door, leaving Talus and me alone in the sitting room, watching the door past which Robert was being operated on. We both sat for a long minute, just staring at the doors.
“Who knows about Robert?” I finally asked. I didn’t need to say what about Robert—he knew I’d been in his head when we linked.
“My uncle,” Talus answered. “His grandfather, Raphael. Dave and Elena knew too, but I guess that’s irrelevant now.”
“That few?” I was surprised.
“Noble fae aren’t supposed to have affairs outside of the nobility,” he said. “Or, at the very least,” he continued drily, “we’re expected to avoid having or acknowledging any children that come of said affairs.”
“Like Robert,” I said quietly.
“Like you,” he pointed out. “A Vassal? Your bloodline is more noble than mine, changeling.”
“Keep that quiet,” I asked. “Eric and Oberis are the only ones who know.”
“A wise choice,” he said with a nod. “I will keep your secret if you keep mine, Jason.”
“Done,” I said without hesitation. I wasn’t planning on blabbing about anyone else’s parentage; that much was for sure. I knew too little about my own, and I knew that was dangerous.
“Thank you,” Talus told me, but any further conversation on secrets was cut off by Laurie’s return, a haze of acrid cigarette smoke offending sensitive fae noses.
The hag took a seat on the loveseat, facing the chairs where Talus and I were staring at the OR door. Silence hung in the room for several minutes, to be interrupted in the end by Oberis stepping out of Between into the middle of the room.
“I was delayed,” were his first words. “I had to arrange for our people’s bodies to be removed so we can give them decent burials in our own way. Stay seated, you three,” he ordered as I started to rise.
The fair fae lord took a seat on the couch, focusing his gaze on each of us in turn. The room was silent, the tension thick enough to be cut with a knife.
“What happened?” Lord Oberis finally asked.
“They were expecting us,” Talus said bluntly. “They’d looped footage so we didn’t see anything before we got up to the floor, and then cleaned the office out.”
“They destroyed any papers or computers they couldn’t take with them,” I added. “It looked like a pretty thorough job.”
“There was some kind of ward over the bombs,” the noble fae continued. “I didn’t sense them. Jason did”—he nodded at me—“because there was cold iron in the claymore mines they used as the main trigger. I didn’t know he was an iron-seeker.”
“I didn’t know that was special,” I said. “Not that it was enough to save Dave and Elena.”
“Iron-seeking is not uncommon among the fae, but not truly common either,” Oberis told me. “I am an iron-seeker, but Talus here, who shares many of my gifts, is not. So, you warned Talus. What happened then?”
“If he’d just warned me, Uncle, I would be dead,” Talus said quietly. “Dave and Elena didn’t have time to duck. Robert only survived because he was blown back into the stairwell, which Laurie hadn’t got out of yet when we triggered the bombs. Jason tackled me and knocked me to floor. Without that, I’d have been in the path of the cold iron.”
“I think you repaid the favor,” I told Talus. “You got us through the floor and to the ground safely despite the bombs.”
“Yes, one of my people in the fire department did mention an interesting hole that the fire thankfully destroyed before more than one or two of them saw it,” Oberis said softly. “It seems I am in your debt, Mr. Kilkenny, for the life of my nephew, and that you two are even.”
“We were lucky,” I said. “Those bombs could have killed us all.”
“We lost two good people,” Oberis told me. “That is never lucky. But I understand your point. This cabal has picked an enemy, it seems.”
As the import of those grim words sunk in, the door to the operating room opened and the doctor, stripped of gloves and face mask, stepped out.
“Dr. Lacombe, how is he?” Oberis asked.
“It was touch-and-go for a minute,” Lacombe said simply. “If you’d been any slower at getting the cold iron out, I think the damage would have spread too far for me to do anything.
“As it is, I’ve stopped the bleeding, both internal and external, and have stabilized him on an IV. He’s still borderline,” the doctor said quietly, and looked at Oberis.
“My lord, I’d like permission to add a small dose of quicksilver to his saline,” he continued. “It would guarantee his survival and speed his healing dramatically.”
“How much?” Oberis asked.
“Less than a milligram,” the doctor said immediately. He’d clearly been expecting the question.
“Do it,” Oberis ordered. “But watch him afterwards. One dose shouldn’t cause addiction—”
“But it’s better to be careful,” Lacombe finished for him. “Your will.” The doctor returned to the operating room, letting the door swing closed behind him.
The Seelie Lord of Calgary looked around at the three of us, still armed and armored under our winter coats, and sighed.
“This was fucked beyond all recognition,” he told us. “You walked into a trap and walked out. You saved Robert’s life, unquestionably. All of you, go home. Return the gear to the Court at a later date.”
A tiny hand gesture suggested that I should stay for a moment as Talus and Laurie drifted out. I crossed to the couch and stood next to Oberis.
“I am sorry, Vassal of my Queen,” he said quietly. “We find ourselves further from completing your mission, when we expected to gain ground.”
“Two people died,” I answered, equally quietly. “I’m more sorry for them.”
He nodded stiffly and gripped my shoulder.
“I can feel in these old bones that the Queen’s warning is true, and that something deeper is going on here,” he told me. “Keep the gun and vest. I have the feeling the day will come when you will need arms and not have time to turn to me.