Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer 9)

For a moment I just stared. Faerie was the most beautiful hell I’d ever seen. And then I spotted something else, half-­hidden among the crystalline forest. Something that looked a lot like a tent.

Maybe because it was, I realized, noticing the leather strips tied between two of the smaller spikes and

holding up a patched and weathered hide.

One that a fey soldier had just come out of.

His black armor gleaming in the sunlight, his silver hair flying in the wind, he looked like something straight out of Tolkien, a vision of knightly splendor from a forgotten age.

Until he crouched awkwardly in front of a firepit with his knees around his ears and began trying to coax a spark to life.

“Shh,” Pritkin whispered, entirely unnecessarily at this point.

The fey looked up, maybe coincidentally or maybe because their hearing isn’t just a myth. But Pritkin’s camo held. It helped that there were plenty of other sounds: the wind, whistling through chasms in the mountains; the distant call of some kind of hawk, far overhead; the rhythmic crash, crash, crash of stones as big as sky­scrapers being thrown into the pass.

And the chittering of small things inside the bag I’d dropped when we arrived, who were obviously tired of waiting to be let out.

Pritkin and I both froze.

The bag was an oversize backpack, made of double-stitched nylon and sturdy, but not sturdy enough. A loud scritch, scratch, scritch carried clearly in the cold mountain air as something inside fought to get out, and fought hard. A second later, I saw a dark nail poke through the material, looking like a prehistoric talon.

Shit!

Can you shut them up? I mouthed at Pritkin.

He shook his head and glanced at the bubble. Not without popping the camo. And it was the only thing keeping us hidden, because the damned mountain obviously meant to come right past us!

Our saving grace was that the backpack was dark gray, too, and almost matched the stone it was lying on. It had also become dusted with snow, furthering the resemblance to the natural surroundings. If they’d just shut up, I thought, there was no reason for them to be seen.

They weren’t shutting up. They were also writhing around now, rolling this way and that, making the sack look like it was having convulsions as they fought to widen the hole they’d made. Probably because the fey had decided to prepare himself a little snack.

It looked like he and his ride were on guard duty, covering the perimeter of the huge construction zone, where he was supposed to keep a watch for nefarious types like us. But the other manlikans were busy at the pass and not paying him any attention. And our location, as luck would have it, was about as far from them as his circuit allowed.

Time for breakfast, then.

And time for us to get out of here, only we couldn’t. We weren’t finished yet! And it wasn’t like there was anybody else to take our place.

Tristram, the creepy, dragon-­hide-­wearing mage from the consul’s, was Caedmon’s usual spy in the area. The king had employed him for years, because of plausible deniability if he got caught, which was why he’d been sitting with the fey instead of the mages during the war council. Part fey himself, he had disdained the human world as Pritkin had the demon, preferring his father’s family, who happened to be part of a lower-­level house aligned with Caedmon’s court.

Despite his less-­than-­fey-­like appearance, Tristram had inherited their stealth abilities, as well as a good bit of fey magic and an elongated life. He’d spent the last few centuries prowling around these mountains, learning ­every nook and cranny, every tiny, supposedly impenetrable pass and cave, and ingratiating himself with the locals down the slopes. He’d become known as a bolder-­than-­average trader who offered food in exchange for fey medicine, amulets, and hides.

The Svarestri knew of him, although not of his alliance with their enemy, and disdained him as they did all half-­breeds. But their food situation was precarious enough that they let him operate anyway, viewing him as repugnant but harmless. Or, at least, they had up until the war.

Now, all trade had been suspended, and everyone who wasn’t completely trusted had been banished from Sva­restri lands or forcibly moved farther in. And that included everybody in the nearest towns, where Tristram had based his operation. Getting caught here now meant an immediate death sentence—­assuming that Aeslinn’s new, ramped-­up security force didn’t kill you first!

Not that this one seemed too interested in trying.

The fey soldier had stuck some strips of animal flesh on the end of a spear and was using it like a spit to roast his food. It smelled delicious, and I guess I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Because the writhing had just gotten faster.

I saw Pritkin mouth something profane and felt his body tense. The great, crystalline head was almost on a level with us now, and he was preparing to jump the fey. Probably to keep him from sounding the horn that resided conveniently on a loop of hide by the tent flap.

And that . . . wasn’t good. Not just because the fey had a few million pounds of backup. But because we had a payload to deliver, one that would almost certainly be discovered if the damned guard went missing!

I grabbed Pritkin’s biceps, beginning a furious, if silent, struggle. And tried to decipher some mouthed words I couldn’t make out but didn’t need to. If the idiots in the pack didn’t quiet down, right freaking now, we were screwed, because the mountain wasn’t coming anymore; it was here.

Which is why I froze the little ankle-­biting assholes, before they could attempt to mug a fey.

As usual, time stoppage was a bitch, even a small one. Which is why it felt like somebody had just punched me in the gut. But on the plus side, the little creatures had frozen in place as if trapped in a nonexistent block of ice.