CHAPTER 20
T he cold mountain winds blew across the cradle formed by the meeting of those three high peaks. As the sand skittered across the grass and across the bones of Detective Halliwell, it began to snow.
Kitsune raised her hood and from its shadow peered out at the activity around her. The Sandman’s pagoda castle-so reminiscent of the styles of old Japan, from which her own legend hailed-remained standing. The doors had been torn away. She kept close to the castle, kept still, and simply watched.
Oliver and his sister celebrated their reunion. He fussed over her, making certain she was not badly injured. The captain of the soldiers had turned out to be Damia Beck, the new advisor to King Hunyadi. After attempting to murder Oliver and Kitsune, the Atlantean advisor to the king of Euphrasia had been removed and executed.
Captain Beck gave Collette Bascombe a change of clothes and her own cloak, so that after a few moments out of sight she had emerged clothed in a dark, heavy tunic and too-long trousers and a black cloak with the crest of Hunyadi upon it. When Collette returned, she thanked Captain Beck profusely, thanked all of Hunyadi’s soldiers who had ridden with Julianna and the late detective Halliwell to aid her.
Over the course of these long minutes-slices of eternity-Kitsune had been forced to witness a second reunion. With Collette seen to, Oliver had turned his attentions to Julianna, who though only human was far more beautiful than Kitsune had imagined. Her long auburn hair gleamed darkly in the celestial light. Tall and slender, she had a formidable air about her.
Kitsune could have killed her in seconds, torn out her throat and had Julianna’s blood dripping down her chin before any of them could react. She was only human, after all.
But, hidden within her fur cloak, she only watched as Oliver and Julianna held one another close and cooed apologies and promises. Her ears were keen, and she heard most of what they said to one another, heard Oliver’s regret and the passionate crack in his voice as he rasped his love to her.
At long last the Bascombes-the Legend-Born-and Julianna said their good-byes to Captain Beck and her soldiers and came back to the massive open doors of the sand castle, where the wind whistled in the vast dark hollow of the place.
“You said we can pass through the Sandman’s castle here and come out in any of his other castles, right?” Oliver asked.
His eyes were alight with new passion and hope and courage.
Kitsune bared her sharp little teeth. “That’s right.”
Oliver looked at his sister and his fiancee, and they nodded their consent before he turned to Kitsune again.
“Then we ought to be going to Yucatazca now, don’t you think? Whatever lies Frost may or may not have told, I still believe he is my friend, that he’s trying to do his best. And he kept his vow to me, to find Professor Koenig. It’s time for me to keep my vow. Captain Beck and her soldiers can’t come with us. The treaty between the Two Kingdoms forbids it. But whatever help we can be to the Borderkind, we’re going to stand with them.”
Kitsune stared at him, eyes narrowed. She smiled, and wondered if he even saw the edge to it. “And while you are in Palenque, if you and Collette can earn a pardon from the king, all the better.”
“True enough.”
But a look of dark and painful regret passed between Oliver and Julianna then. Collette, looking on, glanced away as though crestfallen.
Kitsune understood. Even if Oliver and Collette could earn the pardon they sought, and were able to travel back to their own world without fear of persecution from beyond the Veil, Julianna would have to remain behind. Unlike the Bascombes, she had not been carried here by a Borderkind. She had touched the Veil.
Julianna would be trapped here forever, one of the Lost Ones.
What would Oliver do now?
The irony was cruel.
Kitsune had the cunning heart of a fox and the mischievous soul of a trickster. Love had touched her for the first time in centuries and now it had curdled into bitterness. She had always hoped and believed that Oliver would come to love her, in time, but Julianna’s arrival had ruined any chance of that. Her heart felt dark and heavy now. She saw Julianna’s misery and Oliver’s pain, and she relished it.
“Let’s go, then,” the fox-woman said. “Frost and the others need our help.”
They all spared a final glance and a wave at Captain Beck and her soldiers, who had mounted their horses and gathered now by the castle doors to see them off. Then Kitsune led the way back into the howling shadows of the Sandcastle, into the darkness, shielding her eyes from the windblown grit, nursing her bitterness at the truth that she had learned.
For she understood now that Oliver could never have been hers, no matter what he may have allowed her to think.
He had hurt the woman in her, quite deeply.
But it was the fox in her that now wished very much to hurt him back.
For a moment, Blue Jay allowed himself to think that it was all going to go smoothly, that Ty’Lis was not prepared for their arrival. Lost Ones and Yucatazcan Borderkind surrounded the palace in the circle at the center of Palenque. In the flickering gas and electric lights they were a sea of curious and angry faces. When Frost gripped the sentry by the throat at the top of the stairs, they were all with him.
The other guards attempted to intervene, but Li snapped at them and sketched a line through the air. Where his hand passed, the air itself lit on fire, a streak of flame suspended above the ground. He held one hand at his side and fire spilled from his palm, forming itself into the shape of an enormous tiger. He staggered with the effort, no longer the legend he had once been. The blazing tiger-thing opened its maw and a gout of flame roared out.
The guards kept still.
Frost released the guard he’d throttled. The man reached up to touch the frozen flesh of his throat where the winter man had clutched him.
“Let them pass,” he rasped.
The three Mazikeen were arranged around Frost as though they were his honor guard and several of the sentries stared at them and whispered to one another. One in particular, an imposing soldier whose face was scarred from a lifetime’s survival in battles that had claimed others, watched the Mazikeen with cold eyes.
“You must be announced,” the scarred sentry said, and it was clear from his tone that he would not be so easily intimidated.
Cheval Bayard threw back her silver hair. “Then announce us.”
The grim, scarred man nodded, took one last long look at Frost and the Mazikeen, and then turned to hurry into the palace. The two massive doors had been built large enough for gods and giants to enter the palace, but given the rarity of such occasions-and that the king was a god in name only-there was a pair of smaller doors set into the larger. The scarred sentry disappeared through one of those and it slammed shut behind him.
Cheval seemed pleased with herself, but she had a reckless air about her, as though she no longer cared what fate held for them all. Perhaps, with Chorti dead, that was the truth.
Beside her, and several steps below Frost, Grin smiled. Soon, his expression seemed to say, they would have their answers. They weren’t alone now. Instead they were surrounded by others demanding the same answers, demanding justice.
Blue Jay remained several steps below the others, watching the crowd, watching the skies, watching the palace itself.
This did not feel right.
Only a fool would have allowed himself to think it would be this simple. He cursed his own momentary lapse.
“Frost,” Blue Jay said, moving up the steps past Cheval and Grin, pushing between two of the Mazikeen. The eyes of the sentries watched him carefully. “This isn’t going to be-”
The winter man looked at him with a weary, knowing gaze. Too easy.