“Their servants took up the old conflicts as if nothing had changed, using the weapons their former masters had left behind to savage each other almost to obliteration. And dragged the rest of faerie into their quarrel.”
“Why? What was the point? If the gods were gone—”
“What is the point of any war?” He shrugged. “I assume it was to see which family would lead. The Blarestri won—barely—and continue to be the most powerful clan to this day. But it was not so much a victory as both sides fighting to exhaustion, leaving them with little choice but to make peace. They did so, but the groups they’d dragged into their conflict continue to hate each other.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
But Pritkin was shaking his head. “Put yourself in their place. Unwanted, despised, treated as nothing your whole existence, with no dignity, no power, no pride allowed to you. Until, one day, a war breaks out about which you know little, but which suddenly has the great ones that you have envied and hated and secretly admired for as long as you can remember, coming to speak . . . to you.”
“Because they wanted something!”
“Of course. When else do the powerful notice the rest of us? But it didn’t matter to the tribes of dark fey, who suddenly found themselves decked in the colors of the great houses, with golden chains around their necks and important-sounding titles before their names. They who had been nothing were now valued auxiliaries, and in some cases, even front-line troops—”
“Cannon fodder!”
“What?”
“Nothing.” I guess they didn’t have cannons yet. “They put them out to absorb casualties, to save the light fey numbers.”
“Yes, and the dark knew this. But they thought if they fought hard enough, did well enough, proved their worth, their families would be honored. Be given lands to live on, titles to hold, be able to hold their heads up among any in the land . . .”
“And when the war was over?”
He sat back against the tree. “What do you think? What do you see?”
I looked back at the spectacle and the ring of watching faces and didn’t answer.
“But the scars didn’t heal,” he told me. “The dark fey clans who were on different sides in the fighting still despise each other. For old wounds, for older resentments, and because they cannot fight the ones who were really the cause of their suffering. The light fey are too strong, and the gods . . .”
“Have a lot to answer for. So do their servants!”
Their children, I thought, looking around. Yes, the percentage of godly blood might be small now, might be minuscule even, but once, these had been their sons and daughters. How did you throw away your own flesh and blood? How did you look at a tiny child and call it a monster?
“If it’s different from you, it’s not so difficult,” Pritkin said softly, because I must have spoken aloud without realizing it.
“I couldn’t do it.”
“No, I don’t believe you could. But you aren’t fey. And the light fey . . . aren’t like us.”
I glanced back at him, because there had been something in his voice. And discovered that there was something in his face, too. And this time, I didn’t need a translation.
I’d seen the same expression often enough, in the mirror.
It looked like the dark fey weren’t the only ones who had felt abandoned.
Chapter Forty-eight
The crowd was rapt, watching their two heroes courageously battle to keep us from going over the rocks, while showers of sparks sprayed around like fireworks. Or like massive waves of water, suffocating even in the air. All of a sudden, I was finding it hard to breathe.
I sat back against the tree trunk and concentrated on my beer.
“I never knew my parents,” I told Pritkin. “They had . . . an accident . . . early, and I was left with a guardian who . . . didn’t like me much.”
He waited, but I didn’t elaborate. I wasn’t sure how much I could tell him, how much he’d remember later. We’d shared some pretty memorable events already, but let’s face it, the sixth century was the sixth century. I’d probably end up just some crazy witch he met, a crazy witch named Ohshit. I stifled a half-hysterical laugh with my mug, because he was looking fairly serious for once, but it fit. Oh, God help me, but it did.
“Mine didn’t like me, either,” he finally said.
“You had guardians?” I hadn’t known that. Although I supposed I should have guessed. Rosier wouldn’t go to all this trouble for a child without seeing that he grew up.