Red Hood's Revenge (37 page)

“This is beautiful,” Danielle said.

“Yes.” Snow frowned as she looked around. “And that’s bad.”

No mortal had ever possessed a garden like this. Pink-leaved trees bordered meandering paths of green moss. Lavender buds hung from the branches like strings of tiny bells. Deep blue flowers rose like sweet-scented stalagmites to meet them. This place made Rajil’s garden look like a patch of weeds beside the road.

The walls of the garden rose several stories all around them, the balconies curtained in flowers that reminded her of roses with blossoms the size of a man’s head. Arched walkways passed overhead, a web of vines stretched between them.

Petals and fallen leaves blanketed the ground. Blue-green moss sank beneath her feet as she walked to pick up a leaf. She rubbed it between her fingers. The leaf left a golden residue on her skin. “This makes no sense.”

She wiped her hand on her robe, then sat on the edge of the pool and grabbed a mirror. She waited impatiently for Trittibar to respond.

His voice sounded distant. He was in the royal library, with several books laid out on the table in front of him. “Theodore is talking to Lakhim. I know you’re in a hurry, but you have to give me time to—”

“I think Zestan-e-Jheg is a peri.”

Silence. Snow watched Trittibar set aside the book he had been reading. He approached the mirror, which was hidden in the back of a sconce near the door. “I don’t understand.”

“Look through the mirror.” Snow turned slowly, giving him a good view of the garden. “Remember Volume Three of
Penkleflop’s Histories
? ‘Round him grew blossoms of every shape and color. Pleasing perfumes eased his troubles. Here the peri gathered to anoint their champion.’ ”

“Lots of fairies have gardens,” Trittibar said. “The fairy queen—”

“The fairy queen isn’t deev. The deev preferred the darkness of their caves. But the peri
needed
their gardens. ‘They took neither food nor drink, subsisting only on the sweet scents of the world.’ We know Zestan is powerful enough to command the Wild Hunt. When the Kha’iida studied the curse Zestan laid on Faziya, they couldn’t identify it. It wasn’t deev magic, but something similar. It was peri, not deev.”

“Why would a peri take Talia?” Danielle asked. “I thought they were the ones who protected Arathea.”

The howling seemed to come from nowhere, making Snow jump. She squinted at the mirror, trying to make out the windows behind Trittibar. Was there an orange tint to the glass?

“What’s happening?” Trittibar asked.

“It’s dawn there, isn’t it?” Dawn in Arathea came later than in Lorindar. About one hour later. The Wild Hunt ended their ride each night an hour before dawn, and it sounded like the rest were coming home.

 

Two hunters brought Roudette to what had once been the palace library. Most of the contents had been looted or destroyed long ago, judging from the sand and dust covering the empty stone shelves. What books remained were torn and damaged, though the desert air had preserved them better than Roudette would have expected. Broken statues lay on the floor, as if they too had fallen asleep when Talia’s curse struck.

Roudette was dropped roughly against the wall. The impact jarred the arrows in her body, making her cry out. She tried to stand, to fight and force them to kill her, but the hunters had already vanished, and her leg wouldn’t support her weight anyway.

Naghesh gestured, and Talia followed her into the library. “Remove her weapons.”

Without a sound, Talia bent over Roudette and began stripping her of her hammer and knives. Roudette held her breath, waiting for Talia to reach for the dagger on Roudette’s left hip. As Talia’s fingers closed around the handle, Roudette grabbed Talia’s hand. She twisted the knife toward Talia’s chest.

Talia snapped a light kick against the arrow in Roudette’s ribs. Roudette howled and fell, clutching her side.

“She retains the reflexes I gave her,” Naghesh said as Talia finished disarming Roudette. “The only difference is that now those reflexes serve me.”

“You?” The voice came from the doorway.

“Us,” Naghesh said quickly. “She serves us. Serves you, I mean.”

“Zestan-e-Jheg?” Roudette guessed.

“Welcome, Roudette.” Shadows clung to Zestan’s body, obscuring all detail.

Roudette had spent her life hunting fairies and learning their ways. She might not have memorized every detail the way Snow White had, but she knew fairykind better than most. The deev were supposed to be horned monsters, twisted creatures of such ugliness and evil that mortals fled in despair. Creatures who tortured their victims or crushed them with their bare hands.

Zestan moved with such grace as to make Talia appear clumsy, and her voice was song. “What are you?” Roudette demanded.

The shadows snapped outward, then fell away.

Zestan was taller than any human, with pearl skin. Elongated ears poked through ebony hair. A green jewel hung from a silver chain around her neck, similar to the one Naghesh wore. She was dressed in a violet tunic that clung to her form, a body that seemed neither male nor female. From Zestan’s back stretched brown-feathered wings, so broad they would have struck the walls if fully extended.

She—he?—was beautiful. Too beautiful. Her face was too perfect, her body without a single flaw. She seemed less a living, breathing thing than an artist’s masterpiece come to life.

Zestan’s smile held genuine warmth. “I’ve plans for you as well, Roudette. The Wild Hunt—”

Roudette grabbed the arrow in her side. “I’ll kill myself before I let you turn me into one of them.”

“Go ahead.” Zestan’s smile never changed. “Dead or alive makes no difference to the Hunt, but that’s not what I meant. The Wild Hunt was created by lesser fairies, and they are flawed. Limited to the darkness, burdened by the remnants of their humanity. Soon they will no longer be of use to me. I would make you the first of a new hunt. A band formed by peri magic.
Angels
, perfect and without limits.”

“So the stories were wrong,” said Roudette. “It wasn’t the deev who meant to conquer and destroy this world. It was you.”

“Oh, no. The deev are evil, brutish things. Strong and cruel. Like yourself, in many ways.”

Roudette caught herself relaxing, lured by the gentleness of Zestan’s voice. She twisted the arrow, using the pain to help her focus.

“We protected this land,” Zestan said. “We saved the people from the deev. We fought and we died, all in the hopes that the people would grow and redeem themselves, and in doing so earn redemption for us as well.”

“You sound like a preacher.” The words were the same ones her father had spoken, but never had his voice carried such sorrow and pain.

“We were cast out of Heaven for our cowardice.” Zestan’s wings shivered. “Banished to this world for failing to fight in the uprising, and sentenced to watch over and protect your race until we earned forgiveness. Only then would we be welcomed back home.”

Roudette had heard variations of this lie from the fairy church ever since she was a child. “You actually believe this?”

“Not anymore.” Zestan was no longer smiling, and her words chilled Roudette. “
We saved this world
. Do you know how many of our kind died against the deev? How many of us were tortured and maimed, imprisoned in cages and left to wither into nothingness? We gave you freedom.”

“I thought it was humans who fought the deev,” Roudette said.

“Girded with
our
power.” Zestan’s wings snapped out, then slowly settled behind her like a feathered cape. “All these years we’ve tried to guide you, until one by one we fell into despair and retreated to our mountains to sleep. I’ve tried to rouse them, but the loss of hope casts a curse as potent as the one that struck Sleeping Beauty. They choose to sleep until humanity finds peace or until this world comes to an end. Would you care to wager which will come first?”

“You’re alone?” Roudette tried to keep the hope from her voice. A single peri couldn’t fight all of Arathea. Once the people learned the truth, they might still destroy her.

“I’m tired.” Zestan spoke plainly, the weight of her desolation striking Roudette like a blow. “We will never return home. If paradise is forbidden to us, then I will remake this land into paradise.”

She took the zaraq weight from Naghesh and examined it. “For a year Naghesh and I worked to duplicate this poison.”

“Why?” Roudette asked, genuinely curious. “You’re peri. I thought you could wave your hand and crush this entire palace to dust. Why go to such lengths?”

“I could destroy Lakhim and all who serve her,” Zestan said, “but it would turn this nation against me. Better to let them believe a deev has escaped and loosed this chaos on the world. When the time comes, I will break Talia’s curse myself. Her story will end the way it always should have ended. Talia will return to lead Arathea.”

“Under your control,” Roudette said, looking to Naghesh.

“An elegant plan, don’t you think?” said Naghesh. “We don’t even need to waste an assassin this time. Once we send Talia into the palace, I’ll force her to poison herself and trigger the curse.”

“War would have come eventually,” said Zestan. “Fairies against humans. How many would have died on both sides? All fairykind watched what happened in Lorindar, how the humans forced my descendants into their treaty, imprisoning them in the middle of their island. The spread of the fairy church, the original curse against Talia and her family, these are only a few of the steps we’ve taken to prevent such a thing from ever happening again, but it’s not enough.”

Her eyes were so wide, shining like black pearls. “My kin may have turned away from this world, but I will not. There will be no war. There will be only paradise, and you will be a part of it.”

Zestan actually believed what she was saying. Believed it and wanted Roudette to believe as well. Roudette had seen it many times growing up. Her father had been like that. So convinced of his own righteousness he thought simply pronouncing those beliefs to the world would be enough to persuade all who listened.

“The people will fight you,” Roudette said. “There will always be wolves.”

“The wolves shall bow down before the angels,” Zestan responded. “If they refuse, the angels will destroy them.”

Roudette closed her eyes. She had never won an argument with her father, either.

T
HE WILD HUNT CLOSED IN FROM ALL SIDES of the garden. Danielle thought about fleeing back through the pipe, but the hunters would only catch them. There were so many, bodies pressed together until she couldn’t see the walls beyond. So Danielle waited, sword held ready.

“I could summon the dwarves,” Snow offered.

“Not yet.” Danielle doubted Snow had the strength to call up her demonic helpers. Even if she could, Danielle wasn’t convinced they would be strong enough to fight the Wild Hunt.

She was surprised to see women among the hunters. Though fewer in number, their appearance varied as much as the men’s. One wore hide armor trimmed in brown fur, while another rode bare-chested, carrying only an enormous wooden spear. A third wore a long Hiladi hunting jacket, broad-shouldered and trimmed in copper.

Danielle lowered her weapon. “I would speak with you.” She searched them all, trying to identify a leader. Did anyone from the original Hunt still survive?

“What are you doing?” Snow whispered.

“Do you remember what Mother Khardija said at the temple?” she asked. “That the Hunt sometimes spares those with the courage to face them?”

“I remember it’s a stupid thing to risk your life on,” Snow said. “I never should have translated that for you.”

Danielle managed a smile.

A man garbed in green rode forward. A golden horn hung at his side, and he carried a simple wooden long-bow. His horse was a sooty chestnut, as though black ash had been sprinkled over the animal’s back and sides. Both horse and rider studied Danielle, though neither one so much as breathed.

She sheathed her sword and stepped forward, drawing on all of her training to present herself as calm and unafraid. “How long have you been this way?”

They stared. For a moment, Danielle feared the Wild Hunt, like everyone else in this country, simply didn’t understand her language.

“How long since you were truly alive and free?” she asked. She could make rats understand her. Surely she could do the same with the Wild Hunt. “How long?”

The hunter’s bald scalp wrinkled ever so slightly. “We’ve no memories of our lives before.”

Danielle smiled. Despite everything, she found herself ridiculously pleased to hear her own tongue. The Wild Hunt knew no boundaries, and from what Snow said, they were in many ways a single creature. If one of their number spoke a language, they would all know it.

She could feel Snow pressing closer, her back to Danielle’s as the rest of the Hunt moved inward. Their glow had faded with the rising sun, but Danielle could still see the moonlight shining from his skin.