Changeling on the Job: A Changeling Wars Novella (4 page)

“Quiet,” I told her automatically.

Her ears swiveled forward, her tail beginning a slow wag. “No can do, boss. You’re in Fae territory now. Talking grushounds abound.”

Well, they didn’t abound, exactly, but as we grew closer, I saw minotaurs and pixies among the crowd, dryads and goblins. They all spoke, and Anwynn was right—no one would give her sidelong glances for talking. They’d give her sidelong glances for having eyes, though.

We hit the edge of the market, and the bustle of it surrounded us. Sidhe from various families I didn’t recognize strode across the grass, their family insignias embroidered into a sleeve, or emblazoned across the front of a tunic. Some took a subtler approach, wearing gloves with their family insignia tooled into the backs of their hands. Each was followed by their own small entourage of lesser Fae. There were bulky, odd-looking men and women I couldn’t place as far as species, and the small sprites and pixies, who flitted about their masters, straightening gowns and bringing cups of water.

It was so entirely odd and foreign that it took me a long time to realize that while I stared at the market, it stared back.

I was dressed in mortal clothes, and although my jacket was zipped up all the way, a leather jacket, jeans, and boots weren’t exactly the sort of things that the Fae wore. Not here, anyways. They wore gowns of embroidered silk, soft-heeled suede shoes, and tunics of shimmering material that floated with the wind.

I was like the girl who walked into prom wearing a pair of overalls and beat-up sandals. I crossed my arms, suddenly aware of how a few stray tatters of my shirt trailed from beneath the hem of my leather jacket.

If the person who had begun the blood rite was here, they’d be given plenty of warning. My clothes screamed a fanfare before me: “Hello, the Changeling is here in the Fae world. Also, my job is to stop people like you. HI.”

A group of Guardians passed us on patrol, their silver armor gleaming in the sunlight, their eyes darting about, watchful for illegal activity or signs of trouble. I supposed it made sense to have a neutral armed presence in an area where all the Fae families mingled. Or allegedly neutral. Grian had had some of the Guardians in her pocket. Like mortals, Fae could be bought, bribed, and threatened.

 As we pressed farther into the market, I heard the whisper following me: “Changeling.” I wanted to hide beneath my hands. I hadn’t felt this many eyes on me since I’d battled a Guardian in the Arena. Normally, I didn’t have a problem being in front of a crowd; it was being constantly
watched
that bothered me.

I passed stalls and carts selling various baubles, gems, and phials. I stopped at one with a multitude of flowing scarves, so abruptly that Anwynn ran into my knees. Stumbling, I put out a hand to halt my forward momentum and found it on a soft green scarf with pale blue streaks. “This one,” I said, “how much is it?”

The merchant set down a mug and rose from his chair, and I almost balked. He hunched over, as if he carried a burden on his back that was too heavy to bear, making his standing height only barely taller than his sitting one. His beard fell nearly to his knees, braided in places and tied with silver wire. When he peered up at me, it was with bright black eyes in a face that looked as though it had been hacked from a crusty tree trunk. “Eight gold lions,” he said. “It’s all hand-dyed, finest gossamer. Repels rain—wonderful for those misty days.”

My salesperson instincts took over. Never mind the merchant’s odd appearance. I knew what he was about. Talk up the product, make the customer feel like they need the product. And a tactic I rarely ever used for fear of long-term consequences: exaggerate. I picked up the clay mug of water he’d been drinking from at the edge of his display.

I tipped it a little over my choice of scarf. “Water repellent? Wonderful.”

“Wait.” He put out a hand. “Six gold lions.”

“Five.”

“Fine.”

“And how did you plan on paying for that?” Anwynn murmured from the side of her mouth.

I fumbled in my pockets. Sometimes I did tend to get ahead of myself. “Put it on the Aranhods’ tab,” I said, hoping beyond hope that tabs were things that the Fae kept, and they had some way of doing so in a market.

The man grunted, pulled out a ledger. “Name?”

“Nicole,” I said.

He wrote something in the ledger, stared at it for a while, and then gave a satisfied grunt. Whispering a thanks to my biological parents, I swept up the scarf, pulled it over my head and wrapped it around my shoulders and torso until just the bottom of my jacket showed. I didn’t look as effortlessly put-together as the rest of the Sidhe, but at least I didn’t look like a sparrow in a swarm of hummingbirds.

“Good thing your parents are looking out for you,” Anwynn said as we walked away. “Good thing they put your name on their accounts.”

A bit chastened and a lot annoyed, I stepped back into the crowd, my visibility much diminished. As we pressed farther into the market, the shade of the trees grew more oppressive; the grass turned to dirt and decomposing leaves.

Anwynn sniffed the air. “Calendula,” she said. A growl started in her throat. “The person you’re looking for has been here and has used some magic.”

“Can you follow the trail?”

She shook her head. “No. They’ve cleaned up. It’s too faint.”

“Unicorn water, then. If we find who we’re looking for, all the better.” I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering the insignias I saw at the Arena. “One of the families uses a unicorn for an insignia. Maybe they’ll have some unicorn-purified water? They might keep some around just for nostalgia.”

“Not a terrible idea,” Anwynn mused. We stepped around a stall with a myriad of shiny silver weapons hanging from its walls. “They have some stalls on the other side of this forest.”

“And I want to know who might be interested in enacting a blood rite. Which families keep sprites as bonded lesser Fae?”

Anwynn snorted. “Nearly all of them. The Volenths don’t. They live in caves, which aren’t conducive to the delicate lungs of sprites. Neither the Muirgheals or the Rustannars keep air sprites, which are what attacked us.”

Three families eliminated. That left nine other families—and all their hundreds of members. At least I’d narrowed things down. A little.

I let my hand slip back into the pocket with my butter knife, its cool weight comforting. Why now? Why wait until a month after Grian’s capture to try and enact a blood rite? It could be the power vacuum left after the police had arrested her. Grian’s family, the Le Fays, had been influential, thanks to Grian’s willingness to bribe, murder, and steal. Maybe someone saw this as an opportunity to take a risk and to elevate their family’s standing. After all, what were a few mortals to the Fae?

My jaw clenched. This was why I’d agreed to the Arbiter’s conditions: because I’d wanted to believe in something larger than myself. I wanted to be a part of something greater. But I had more to do than to reflect on self-improvement.

I lifted my gaze from my boots and caught a glimpse of a brown and blue cloak. It was mottled, almost blending in with the shadows beneath the trees. I pressed past a couple of dryads and saw the flash of a silver belt.

“Anwynn,” I whispered. “Ten ‘o clock.”

Her great head swiveled. “I see.”

“Flank them.”

“Already on it,” she said as she slipped away. She could be surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive for her size.

The man or woman stood at a stall under the shade of an elm tree. I couldn’t quite see the merchant in the shadows, but she hunched over her wares like a hen incubating a set of eggs, whispering in a low voice to the cloaked figure.

I drew closer and their voices drifted to me on the wind. “…and what sort of powers does this give the recipient?” A man’s voice floated from beneath the blue and brown hood.

“It won’t be any sort of Talent. The daemon geas isn’t Sidhe magic, so the power won’t be Sidhe power. It’s chaotic, difficult to control.”

“But someone with enough will and focus…?”

“Would be able to channel the geas in certain directions. You’ll need to find the last ingredient, of course.”

“Of course.” I heard the clink of coin against wood.  The man slid them to the merchant.

“An excellent decision,” she replied. I caught a glimpse of wild gray hair, eyes black and beady as a sparrow’s.

She collected a few things from her wares, her long, curving nails clicking against the items. And then she slid them toward the cloaked figure.

Anwynn crouched, her belly low, her ears pricked, ready to pounce. The man reached for the items—a small pearly tooth, a glass bauble, dark feathers, a twisted root, and a vial.

“Hey,” I said. Both the merchant and the cloaked man looked to me.

I’d hoped to see the man’s face, but he wore a gray scarf over his mouth and nose. All I could glean was a pair of hazel eyes, brown skin a shade lighter than my parents’, and black brows.

For an instant, we just stared at one another. And then the man swiped the objects into a bag at his side, whirled, and ran.

“Anwynn!” I called. I needn’t have bothered. She leapt at him.

For a lesser Fae, grushounds were intimidating creatures. They were swift, strong, smart, and relentless. Though I couldn’t stand her personality, I’d come to rely on her abilities.  But as she launched into the air, the cloaked man ducked swiftly to one side, flowing away from her attack as though he were a fish and Anwynn’s attack just the clumsy swipe of a hopeful toddler. She only caught a scrap of his bag between her teeth, her jaws snapping shut.

The market around us drew back, the Sidhe gasping and clutching at their belongings. “Stop that man!” I called, throwing off the scarf over my head.

No one moved to obey except Anwynn.

I guess I should have expected as much. I wasn’t a Guardian. The Arbiter had made me my own Fae family to discourage other families from placing Changelings, which technically made me a Queen. But I had no other family members to support my reign or power. Titles were only that when it came to the Sidhe. Power was acquired through the bonding of lesser Fae, the crafting of items, through information and shows of force.

So no one listened to me—the Changeling, the loner, the one who made her home in the mortal world.

Keeping the Fae and mortal worlds separate? That was my job, and mine alone.

My feet, already tired from chasing sprites through Portland, ached as I pounded across the packed earth of the marketplace. I heard Anwynn’s panting as she recovered from her lunge and followed me.

The man darted and wove through the lesser and greater Fae, an eel gliding through reeds. I followed as best I could, drawing on my Talent for swordplay to increase my speed. The man darted to the left, between two hills. It was more crowded in that direction, the wandering Fae forming a bottleneck. I’d catch him there; the two hills had nearly sheer sides, the grass fading away to reveal rocky surfaces.

I shoved my way into the crowd, stumbling into Sidhe and lesser Fae alike, muttering apologies they probably didn’t hear. If I could just end this here, find the unicorn water, and then get back to the business of closing stray doorways, the Arbiter wouldn’t even have to know about the blood rite.

The man’s cloak fluttered just out of reach, constantly disappearing behind the crowd. I reached for his bag.

With a bit of a kick and a jump, he rose above the crowd and
ran sideways
across the sheer face of the hill. His bag hit a couple Fae as he passed; the place where Anwynn had bitten it caught on a minotaur’s horn and ripped.

Something shiny fell from the bag, but the man didn’t slow. He leapt to the opposite cliff, bounced off of it, and was clear of the crowd. A flash of sunlight hit my eyes, I blinked, and he was gone.

I slowed and Anwynn caught up to me. “What the hell,” I said, panting, “what the hell was
that?
”

“Someone skilled in the fighting arts,” she said. “Someone Talented in swordplay.”

“Well I’m Talented—I can’t do that.”

“Yes, but you’re also newly manifested.”

I had a lot of raw power, but not enough refinement. Certainly not enough to run on walls. How was I going to catch this guy? If he was Talented, that meant he was one of the greater Fae, one of the Sidhe. I’d hoped he was one of the lesser Fae, because that would make things so much simpler. Now I had larger things to consider, like who I might offend by apprehending him and how it might shift the balance of power. And what had he been talking to that merchant about?

I reached the spot where the man’s bag had ripped further. The minotaur was still there, rubbing at his horn with an irritated expression on his face. “It’s fine, Agram,” the Sidhe woman next to him said. “Honestly, you’re fussier than a cat in a puddle. You’re not hurt.”

I knelt and brushed aside some dried leaves to find a round, dark brown stone. It hadn’t been among the items he’d bought. Reflexively, I held it out to Anwynn to sniff. She took a great big whiff.

“Smells like death,” she said.

I waited.

She tilted her head, as though carefully considering. “You know,” she said, “it doesn’t have to be a very
large
television.”

I choked back an exasperated sigh. “What’s next? You want a hot tub? Input into decorating decisions?”

She gave me a curt nod. “There is a tall vase of sticks by the front door. What’s the point? Every time I hit it with my tail, you get angry, and it’s hard not to do when it’s so close by.”

“It’s called decoration for a reason.” I ticked off a few fingers, the brown stone warm in my palm. “When you start paying rent, when you start contributing to the bills, and when you start cleaning up after yourself—then we’ll talk about household decisions.” I thrust the stone back at her. “Tell me more about the smell.”

She didn’t bother to sniff again, her gaze fixed on mine. “It’s bad.”

“Use it,” I said. “Follow that man’s trail.”

The grushound did as I commanded, weaving back into the thick of the crowd. Now, with the scarf gone, I felt the gazes of the Sidhe following me once more. “Oh, get over it,” I called out. “I have legal status and I’m just trying to do my job. Yes, I was raised by mortals and my clothes are weird. Whoop-dee-doo.” I supposed, if I’d been trying to fit in, this was the wrong way to go about it. But I was never going to fit in, and I was tired of being stared at.