Page 82 of Quiver of Cobras
The man in question let out a high-pitched laugh. ‘See? She’s nuts! I’m a dragon. I’m not a fucking faery! Do I look like Rubus to any of you?’
‘He can’t be Rubus, Maddy,’ Morgan said. ‘We’ve spent hours in his company. Rubus could never maintain a glamour for this long. None of us can.’
I bent double, using my body to shield the sphere as well as trying to regain my lost breath. ‘I did.’
‘You were poisoned.’
‘So’s he!’
‘Pah! Why would I poison myself?’ Rubus shuffled to the right as if to overtake Finn and get closer to me. Fortunately the Redcap was canny and used his larger frame to keep him back.
‘Because I told you,’ I said, straightening up. The pain in my chest was easing slightly. At least now I could talk without sounding like a faked sex tape. ‘I told you what happened to me. Like a fucking fool, I told you that rowan poisoning enabled me to stay in a glamour for hours. You took that information and used it. Give it up, Rubus. You’re not an old dragon any more than I’m a glorious heroine. You’ve been several steps in front of us the entire time. Well, now you’re behind. You’re not getting your greasy hands on this sphere. I’ll die before that happens.’
His mouth twisted. ‘That can be arranged,’ he said, in a voice that was all gruff Rubus rather than high-pitched Mendax. He lunged towards me, arms akimbo and hands curled into lethal claws, ready to gouge out my eyes.
Morgan got there first, leaping in front of me and pushing me away. I staggered back and fell to the ground while Rubus laughed nastily. ‘She always was your weak spot, brother,’ he hissed.
He threw out a punch that connected with Morgan’s face. Then he laughed again. ‘I knew if I took her back you’d be too distracted to think clearly. She’s not as smart as you think she is, you know. I’ve been sending her little notes and manipulating her all along. She actually believed that one of my faeries was disloyal. Ha! I even made her think that I’d tested her loyalty and she’d passed. Madrona was far better at lying before her amnesia. Now she wouldn’t fool a child.’
‘Maybe not,’ Morgan said evenly. ‘But Madrona has more good in her little finger than you have in your entire body.’
Rubus smirked. ‘I doubt that. And speaking of little fingers…’ He delved into his pocket and pulled out his pinky ring. ‘It was fun seeing you steal this from me. It turns out you’re not all that clever either, brother.’ He twisted the ring onto his finger again and admired it. ‘It doesn’t quite fit properly when I’m wearing this body. Glamouring myself as a dragon has been fun but I’ll be glad to not have to inject myself with rowan again. It’s rather unpleasant.’
‘You really did poison yourself deliberately, then.’
‘I’d cut off my right hand if I thought it would help our kind get home. That’s the kind of good faery I am. Fortunately, it won’t come to that because it turns out that you’re just as foolish as your girlfriend is. You were stupid enough to use the oath breaker. I wasn’t sure you would – at every point I thought you’d work out what was really going on. Only my brother could free me from the truce. It was a masterful stroke indeed – and not on your part. Now the truce doesn’t affect me. Now I’ve been truly unleashed.’
He kicked upwards, aiming for Morgan’s chest, but fortunately Morgan managed to dodge his foot. Even from my sprawled position, I could see him straining to fight back. His face was twisted in pain. Blood drained from my face as I realised what was wrong. Gasbudlikin bastards. We were fucked.
‘You get it now, don’t you?’ Rubus said, sneeringly. ‘The truth has finally penetrated your dim brain. By using the oath breaker, the truce no longer holds for me but it still holds for you. I can hurt you. I can kill you.’
He stretched out his arms and laughed again, the sound echoing round the faery-filled square. ‘Chen did well to find that little object. He was quite the master at locating magical items. Not that any of them did him any good in the end because faery objects don’t help dragons.’ He grinned nastily. ‘They’ve certainly helped me, though. You can’t touch me but I can do whatever I want.’
The magnitude of what we’d achieved was almost too horrifying to accept. We’d handed Rubus the keys to this demesne. By using the oath breaker, we’d granted him the freedom to destroy any faery he wanted to. We’d not thought it through. Rubus would be virtually unstoppable now. All we could do was keep the sphere out of his hands.
Rubus pointed at one of his faeries. ‘Give me a gun,’ he commanded.
‘You don’t have to do this.’ Morgan’s voice rang out loud and clear, without a trace of a tremor. ‘You don’t have to resort to murder. You don’t have to be evil.’
‘Evil?’ Rubus took the proffered weapon and hefted it in his hands as if he were testing the weight and gleefully anticipating what he would do next. ‘You’re the one who’s evil, Morganus. We have a way home. That sphere can return every single one of us to Mag Mell but you refuse to let us use it. You want to stay here, trapped in this shithole of a demesne.’
‘If you use the sphere, the consequences will be disastrous.’
Rubus rolled his eyes. ‘Puh-lease. So there will be some proper magic here. So what?’
‘That magic will kill the humans.’
There was a squeak from the small crowd of humans who were in the vicinity. They seemed to be frozen to the spot by the drama that was playing out in front of their eyes.
Rubus was oblivious to their presence. ‘You don’t know that for sure.’
Morgan glared. ‘Yes, I do.
‘Maybe,’ Rubus said softly, ‘the risk is worth the reward. We are superior beings. The humans destroyed their homeland in the name of technological advances. Returning them to the Stone Age and introducing real magic will probably do them the world of good.’
‘Got that right,’ Amellus snorted from the side. I could see other faeries nodding fervently. Surely they couldn’t all believe that Rubus was doing the right thing? Or were they so focused on getting home that they were blind to what would happen if Rubus used the sphere?
I glanced round. Only Lunaria looked uncertain, her hands twisting and her expression white and worried. If I could get through to her, there might still be hope.
