Page 60 of Smoke & Ashes
Plans & Actions
Iexplained to Tara about my dreams over the usual steak-and-coffee breakfast. And, as ever, I leaned more on the coffee and she leaned more on the steak.
“I’m not sure I’m happy about our enemies courting you while you’re sleeping in my bed.” Her blood-reddened lips curled into what I hoped was an ironic smile.
“Hey, I don’t like it any more than you do.”
“You may be underestimating quite how little I like it.”
“Same, with knobs on. It’s my head they’re in here.”
Apparently done with the meat at last, she nibbled delicately at some kind of pastry. “And you’re certain that the King-Queen and the Prince of Wands will turn on each other?”
“Pretty much unavoidable given what utter shits they both are. But they’re too paranoid by half to let their guards down while still fighting you lot.”
She set the tray to one side and stretched out on the bed a moment. “Still, we might be able to accelerate matters. An alliance with no trust is a fragile thing.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t completely sure. I didn’t have the world’s deepest insight into faery psychology, or vampire psychology for that matter, but I had more experience than Tara did. “The trouble is I don’t think it’s an alliance exactly. It’s more like a deal with the devil. Except I suspect both sides think they’re the devil in the arrangement.” On reflection, that probably wasn’t a great recipe for long term cooperation either, but I didn’t want to get Tara’s hopes up about the playing-both-sides strategy.
With a resigned sigh, Tara rose and dressed. Gold today. She was going to have to sell her grandmother on an idea she’d hate, which meant she needed an air of authority. She looked unbelievable in, like, a very literal sense. There was always something about Tara that I actually couldn’t believe—that to-the-manner-born vibe which said that whatever she did was right and wherever she stood was where she was meant to be. I felt a little bit like a class traitor for being so into it.
I got myself dressed as well in the slightly cleaner outfit that once again the laundry goblins at Safernoc had got ready for me while I was out doing other things, and then we went down to the White Drawing Room, where Henry, Sofia, Flick, and the Dowager Marchioness were already waiting for us.
“I hope it has not escaped your attention,” observed the old lady as we entered, “that fully half the people in this room are outsiders.”
“Allies, grandmother,” said Henry. “Something we have perhaps overlooked for too long.”
She responded to this with a contemptuous look. “Interlopers, leeches, and malingerers.” Her gaze came to rest quite pointedly on Flick. “What wasshedoing while our home was under attack? Hiding in the upstairs rooms and crying? I’d thought your generation was bad enough”—with a pointed gesture she indicated Henry and Tara—“but it seems there were deeper depths left to plumb.”
“Enough.” Tara’s voice was soft but it carried. “Felicity is here because she is in danger, and she is in danger because her friend fought beside us on the borders when the Prince of Wands was about to tear down the walls of reality and make a mockery of our very duty and purpose.”
The dowager marchioness met her granddaughter’s gaze without flinching. “A battle that you chose, of course, for reasons that hadnothingto do with any of our present company.”
Much as I hated her, she did have something of a point. I couldn’t very well be grateful to Tara for having my back in a crisis and also insist that her having my back in a crisis hadn’t on some level compromised her judgement, duty-wise.
“Kate came to our aid last night,” Tara insisted. “And she will help us bring our people back from the Cold and the Dark.”
“Are you still committed to the foolish notion of rescuing people who have already proven themselves unable to do what is needed of them?”
Tara’s lips, still a little bloody from breakfast, grew thin. “I shall not abandon our own. And surely, grandmama, you will admit that there can be few flaws in such a strategy. Either I will bring our sisters back from the clutches of the enemy, or I will die. Either way, you should be able to count a victory.”
“I do not wish you dead, child.” The dowager’s expression didn’t soften, exactly, but it settled into a more nuanced bitterness. “I wish you to see reason.”
I was beginning to tune out of the conversation. There was only so much of an elderly werewolf telling me I was worthless and a distraction I could take. Besides, while I was absolutely onside with supporting Tara in operation don’t-leave-our-family-members-as-faery-mindslaves, it was still only one thing on my list of priorities for the next week or so. Although unless the dowager was a whole lot more murderous than I was giving her credit for, I’d at least managed to bundle protecting Sofia and probably thwarting the Prince of Wands in with the wolf stuff. There was just that pesky finding-the-holy-grail-to-save-one-of-my-oldest-friends issue I needed to be taking care of.
Then again, we were talking about a millennia-ancient magic cup. It’s not like it wasgoinganywhere.
“I think our best bet,” I told the assembled werewolves, only one of whom was looking at me like she resented my breathing the same air as her, “is if Tara, Sofia, and I go to London.”
This time it was Flick who interrupted. “You can’t make her fight monsters again, not straight away.”
“I’ll be okay.” Sofia took her friend’s hand. “They’ll look after me.”
“There’s two of them, and Kate’s clearly fucked. No offence, Kate.”
“None taken.” I clearly was. “But I wasn’t planning for her to fight anything. Our best hope of catching our enemies unawares is if we find a way into the Cold and Dark that isn’t the one on your doorstep. There’s a couple of entrances in London I know about and we should be able to get in one of them. But if I’m right, and Sofia’s kooky bride-of-Apollo schtick will fix your packmates, I’d rather we do it as close as possible to the place we go in, instead of having to drag four werewolves back to Safernoc while an evil faery lord is still controlling their minds.”
“I should come with you.” That was Henry. “There are at least four of us in there, plus two vampires, plus the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter.Outnumbereddoesn’t begin to describe it.”
