“I know,” I said, laying my hand on his. I certainly wasn’t going to fight or debate this in the middle of Maiwenn’s castle. “Look, it’s okay. We’ll talk about this later. Right now…well, I can tell you don’t really want to go.”
He shook his head. “No, no. I’m coming with you-”
“Kiyo,” I said, unable to help a small smile, “I know you. I saw your face up there. You want to be with Luisa more. And you should. Stay awhile, and I’ll just go back myself.”
“Eugenie…” But I could tell I was right.
“It’s fine. And I’ll be fine. I’m the big bad Thorn Queen, remember? Besides, I want to visit that village we passed.”
He was silent for several seconds. “Where will you be tomorrow? I want to find you.”
“I’m not sure. In the morning I have to be back in Tucson for a job-and to talk to Roland-but after that…” So much kept happening lately that I was always shuffling one problem around for another. I hadn’t had the chance to talk to Roland about Art and the Yellow River connection, nor did Kiyo know about the recent developments around that either. Before I could start to explain, Kiyo turned us in an unexpected direction.
“Do you want to go hunting fire demons?”
I regarded him with surprise. “Really?”
“Well, if you’ve got Jasmine and your new tricks, you’ve got more of a fighting chance, so I figure you might as well make it a slam dunk and bring me along. You’ve been wanting to get rid of them, right?”
We’d come to a stop in the hall, and the scenario was eerily parallel to when we’d been in my castle earlier. There was no chastisement or echoes of that argument now, and I was grateful. “Thank you,” I said, leaning toward him. I placed a light kiss on his lips-or at least, I tried to make it light. His hand reached out and grabbed my shoulder, bringing me closer still and intensifying the kiss.
I pulled back, wondering just how weird it would be for a servant to see the father of their queen’s child making out with someone else. Of course, among the gentry, that kind of thing was probably pretty typical.
“Go,” I said, stepping back before I was tempted to kiss him again. “Go see your beautiful daughter. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Eugenie.” His face split into one of those wonderful grins. “And thank you for…I don’t know. You understand me. I don’t think anyone else does.”
I smiled back and then watched him turn around. A few moments later, I turned as well. As I stepped outside into the balmy spring air, I wondered if anyone truly understood me.
Chapter Eighteen
The village I’d passed earlier was called Marmant, and I had to get directions from Maiwenn’s guards to make sure I didn’t accidentally take some twisted Otherworldly path in my attempt to return. I rode there with troubled feelings, still replaying the events with Kiyo and trying to decide if our assorted arguments today had qualified as true fights. I soothed myself a little by reaching out and manipulating the air, creating gusts and eddies and attempting to see how big a blast I could make. At one point, I made a scrubby tree bend pretty far, but it tired me out. I had to practice more to sustain true gale-force winds, and lightning still remained out of my grasp.
The people of Marmant greeted me with that same mix of fear and awe I had come to expect. Word of the changes being wrought in the land was getting around, so they were grateful and allowing themselves optimism at last. Yet, my fearsome reputation always lurked on the horizon, so they spoke gingerly around me, fearful of enraging the dangerous monarch who had forced this dangerous land upon them.
“How is everything?” I asked, hoping I seemed concerned and nonthreatening. Rather than a mayor, this town had a council of five that made decisions, and they’d invited me inside for a private meeting. They were ordinary-looking men and women-still with that peasant feel so common in the Otherworld-but there was an air of competence around them. “You’ve got water and food now?”
“Yes, your majesty,” said a middle-aged woman who seemed to be the speaker of the group. “Thank you, your majesty.”
“Good. I’m sorry it’s been so hard on you. Things should be better now.” There was a brief silence in the group, one heavy with unspoken meaning. I looked from face to face. “What?”
“We don’t want to trouble your majesty…”
“Trouble away. It’s what I’m here for.”
This got another round of exchanged looks. It was still apparently an odd concept for these people.
“Well,” began the woman, “near the outskirts of our town’s boundaries, there have been some attacks.”
“What kind?”
“Bandits, your majesty.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. We’d known the group had moved, but they’d been quiet thus far, allowing me to hope I could take Kiyo up on his offer and deal with them before they caused more trouble.
“We actually have many fighters and strong magic users,” she said with some pride. “But we could not stand against their monsters.”
“You mean demons.”
She gave a nervous nod.
“Son of a bitch,” I said again. This had to be dealt with, and at this point, I really was willing to be a bastard and hold a gun to Jasmine’s head. “Don’t worry. They’re going to be taken care of. Soon. Very soon.”
The woman looked startled at the menacing tone in my voice, but her words were grateful. “Thank you, your majesty.”
“Anything else I should know about?”
This time, it was a man who spoke up. “We don’t want to trouble you…”
I groaned. “Just tell me what it is.”
“We heard your majesty has been seeking missing girls.”
I straightened up. “Yes. What about it?”
“One of ours disappeared two days ago. My neighbor’s daughter, Markelle.” A small, wry smile crossed his lips. “She’s a wild one, often wandering off where she shouldn’t. But she hasn’t come back…and she always does….”
I felt my fists clenching and forcibly relaxed them. I didn’t need to scare these people any further. “Aside from the bandits, have you seen anyone else lurking around? Humans, maybe?”
He seemed even more afraid to discuss this topic. “We see humans sometimes, your majesty.” I think he thought mentioning my own kind would anger me. “It’s not uncommon. Often there are humans who…ah, give chase to some of the denizens of this world.” Shamans like me, he meant. “Usually, they leave us alone once they’ve found their quarry.”
I thought back to Jasmine. “Any soldiers or warriors of the gent-shining ones?”
“Occasionally. I presume they’re deserters from King Aeson.” Not a bad theory, actually. “But we see none of them regularly. There’s no one in particular who keeps returning.”
I leaned forward, some part of me feeling like everything was about to fall together. “But there is a human you keep seeing, isn’t there? Especially since the girls began disappearing?”
He nodded.
It was here. Everything was here. “A man, right? A man with a red snake tattoo?”
“No, your majesty.”
“I-what?” I froze for a moment. “Then who?”
“A woman, your majesty. A woman with graying hair that she wears in a long braid.”
I stared at him for several seconds, and then I laughed. This seemed to scare them all more than if I had burst into a rage.
“Abigail,” I said at last, more to myself than them.
“Your majesty?”
I waved a hand at them. “Never mind.”
Abigail. Fucking Abigail and Art. Working together to…what? Abduct gentry girls? But why? I’d toyed with the idea of Art as some kind of sick rapist, but where did Abigail fit in with this? Surely that would hold no interest for her. With a sigh, I pushed the questions to a small box in my mind, needing to wrap this up and get back to the human world. I needed to have that talk with Roland.
“Anything else going on I need to know about? You’ve got copper nearby, right?” Finding water and food was naturally essential, but it was copper that was going to truly change things in the Thorn Land. It was what all our trade agreements were being based on. “How’s the extraction going?”