Chapter Twenty-nine

I was sucking on a splinter—my only relic from the fight—when I entered the kitchen. And found it deserted except for a harassed-looking fey at the sink, and Gessa sitting on a stool alongside. She looked the same as always, in a cute blue sack dress, because nothing rattled her. Including, apparently, teaching a fey how to do the dishes.

He looked up when I came in, relief flooding his face. Either he was out of the loop or he didn’t care about my supposed shaman status. All he knew was that a woman had finally showed up to do the chores, and the world had righted itself.

He started to take off his apron, and I held up my hand. “Sorry. Splinter.”

The weight of the universe came crashing back onto his shoulders, and Gessa had to turn away to hide a smile.

“You okay?” I asked her.

She nodded.

“And Ymsi?”

She sighed. “In his room. He sad.”

Yeah, I’d been afraid of that.

I added coffee to the perpetual grocery list on the fridge, and wolfed down a giant container of soup, a salad, three boiled eggs, most of a jar of pickles, and some soft cheese spread on half a loaf of fresh-baked bread. Then I headed for the basement.

Or I tried to. But young trolls make human teens look like neat freaks, and there was so much stuff piled against the basement door that I could barely . . . get the old thing . . . there! It finally allowed me a couple inches to squeeze through, so I did. And abruptly stopped, because I couldn’t see a damned thing.

That would have been bad enough on its own, without the minefield of items between me and the bottom of the stairs. But Claire’s uncle Pip had never bothered to run lights down here, and I didn’t feel like taking time to hunt for a flashlight. I slowly started to pick my way down.

Trolls are nocturnal, more often than not, back in Faerie. Not out of choice, but because their eyes don’t help them much even in daylight, leaving them at a serious disadvantage among better-sighted creatures. But at night, their superior hearing and smell put the shoe on the other foot, allowing them to hunt in pure darkness.

It was why a lot of them lived in caves. Even a well-equipped contingent of Light Fey hesitated at the idea of descending into a dark-as-pitch subterranean maze filled with creatures that didn’t need to see you in order to kill you. And over time, it had just become a thing. Caves might be cold and hard and generally unappealing—until you factored in the advantage of sleeping in safety. And suddenly, they didn’t seem so bad.

Which I guess was why the twins had chosen to live in the basement, despite being offered the guest room upstairs.

And why only one of them had adjusted to living in sunlight.

That, of course, was Ymsi, because gardening was easier during the day. But Sven was still mostly a night owl, and had taken to prowling around the neighborhood after dark, dragging back any rubbish that caught his eye. He just couldn’t get over all the stuff that people threw away here: cracked birdbaths and old furniture and random two-by-fours and a twisted bike with no back wheel and a painting of triangles and a rusted fridge and a whole box of CDs.

Trolls are not fond of hip-hop, as it turns out, but still—so shiny!

Claire had drawn the line at bags of actual trash, like she’d had to break Gessa from washing used paper towels and setting them all over the counters to dry. The Dark Fey lived on lousy land in Faerie, since most of the better stuff had been taken from them in the wars. I’d kind of gotten the impression that everything was hard to come by, from food to possessions, so nothing was wasted.

“Trash” just wasn’t a thing among the Dark Fey.

So garbage day was an endless bazaar of wonders to Sven, because many of the old people put their cans out the night before. Leaving him on an all-night shopping trip where everything was free. And leaving our garbage guys an easier job the next day, because a lot of the discarded junk of the neighborhood ended up back here.

That was especially true of anything metal and shiny that whirred softly when poked. Because, unlike his brother, Sven preferred all things mechanical, and had “rescued” a profusion of broken electronics to tinker with. He’d managed to get an old blender working again, which had delighted him to no end, and had thereafter started a side business with other Dark Fey, trading things he’d found or repaired for things he wanted.

The problem was that Sven had a problem telling trash from treasure, and had begun to demonstrate some serious pack rat tendencies. They hadn’t progressed all the way to hoarding, but they were heading that way fast. And Claire didn’t play that. If he didn’t do something soon, she was going to make good on her threat to open up the portal, and just blow everything to kingdom come.

Which might be the only option at this point, I thought, jumping over the railing for the last five feet, because it was easier.

My eyes had had time to adjust, allowing me to see a dim lantern glowing in the gloom and Sven over by the far wall, holding something. It turned out to be a troll favorite, consisting of potatoes sliced up in a bowl, covered with milk and a cloth, and set in a corner of the basement until it turned into something horrid. It was the Earth version of a traditional troll delicacy and the boys loved it, but it took a long time to make—because apparently it wasn’t good until it was really rancid—and they guarded their portions jealously.

Which was why it was weird that he wasn’t eating it.

He was just holding it, sitting on the floor beside a blanket-covered lump that I assumed was his brother. He looked at me. And then he held out the bowl, in both hands because it wasn’t actually a bowl. It was a kitchen sink one of the neighbors had thrown out, and that he’d found and bunged up and used for things like eating three boxes of cereal for breakfast.

Or a whole lotta rancid potatoes.

“He don’t eat,” Sven said, looking worried. Because that was not a normal thing among trolls.

“Just leave it there,” I told him, and he nodded and put the sink down.

Sven levered himself up and, despite his size, managed to negotiate the minefield on the stairs better than me. It reminded me of the big guy at the fights; so graceful despite his size. I stared after him for a moment, with something rattling around my brain, something that felt important. . . .

But then it went away, and I sat down by the lump.

It was a little ripe in here, smelling like a combo of swamp gas and troll ass, and making me curse dhampir noses. But there was no point trying to hurry this. Trolls did not hurry. They considered it undignified, unless it was children gamboling around or in battle. Otherwise, they had an odd sort of gravitas about them, a natural poise you wouldn’t expect—or at least I hadn’t, until Olga taught me that grace transcended species.

I waited.

It was peaceful down here if you ignored the smell, and dim even with a lantern. There were some narrow windows up near the ceiling, but they’d recently been covered with black paint. I dragged the lantern closer, and Ymsi turned over, the light glimmering in his tiny eyes.

“Did I disturb you?” I asked, wondering if I should put it back.

He shook his head.

We sat there some more.

Despite appearances, trolls could be very restful people to be around. Unlike the Light Fey, who reminded me of jagged bolts of lightning, or hyped-up teenagers, always ready for a fight or an adventure, trolls had a natural peacefulness about them. Like the mountains and trees and deep, quiet fjords they were named after, they didn’t seem to need to prove something to the world to justify their existence. They could just be.

I leaned back against the basement wall, and slowly felt the anger, confusion, and worry still knotting my gut start to ease away. Cool darkness wrapped around me, a gentle sort of fuzziness pervaded my body, and my feverish thoughts slowed down, down, down. I took a deep breath, and let it out, suddenly feeling calmer.

It was nice.

A large finger emerged from the blankets, and pushed the heavy vat of potatoes and slime my way.

“Thanks, but I just ate,” I said.

Ymsi frowned, probably not seeing what that had to do with anything.

“We humans have tiny little stomachs.” I pulled up my sweatshirt and showed him. He regarded it sadly. “And mine’s full. Otherwise, I’d be all over that,” I said, which seemed to mollify him somewhat.

“You should eat, though,” I told him.

He shook his head. I noticed that his eyes glimmered a little more than usual, although maybe that was a trick of the light. Sure, Dory, and the light is dribbling down his face, too.

Goddamn, I wished we’d caught whatever attacked him! I wanted to do evil things. But that required finding it first.

“I know this is a bad time,” I said. “But I have some questions. Can you answer some questions?”

Ymsi blinked at me, looking surprised. Like he’d expected the usual “it’s not your fault, you shouldn’t blame yourself” stuff he’d probably heard a dozen times by now. Which was true, but not helpful, because of course he blamed himself. He’d stabbed a kid. And the fact that he hadn’t wanted to, and that the kid might pull through anyway, wasn’t really the point, was it?

“I’m going to find whatever was here last night, and I’m going to kill it,” I told him. “But it would be easier if I had some more info to go on. If you remember anything?”

Ymsi regarded me silently for a moment. I looked placidly back. Troll brains took their time, but that didn’t mean they were stupid. Ymsi, for example, could tell you everything about every flower in the garden: which needed sun and which did better in shade, which made the prettiest flower and which smelled the best, which responded to what kind of fertilizer, or needed what kind of soil, acidic or sweet. The guy was a walking compendium of knowledge about his favorite subject, like a human kid knowing all the stats on his favorite sports team, even though he’d just failed algebra.

People are smart when they want to be, and I thought maybe Ymsi wanted to be right now.

“Woman,” he finally said, in a low rumble.

“It was a woman who attacked you?”

Again, I got a surprised look, although this time, I wasn’t sure why.

Until he told me. “Not attack. I attack. I kill—”

He broke off.

I blinked. Maybe no one had talked to him about this, after all. “You didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “He’s upstairs resting. Didn’t they tell you?”

He nodded, and then shook his head violently. “I try kill. Same thing.”

“I don’t think the kid would think it’s the same thing.”

“She say stab. I stab. I can’t stop—” He broke off again and, for a moment, sat very still. “I try,” he finally said. “I run into things. I break. But no one hear.”

Probably due to all the screaming.

“That’s why you were covered in blood,” I said. Because the stab wound in the kid wouldn’t have caused that. The blade might have gotten a little messy, but Ymsi should have been fine. Except that he’d made himself deliberately bloody, not an easy thing for trolls, so that someone would notice.

And if everybody in the house hadn’t been in basically the same shape, maybe they would have.

“That was brave,” I told him, and got another look, almost angry this time.

“Not brave! I kill!”

He threw off the blanket, looking like he wanted to get up and punch something.

I knew the feeling.

“Well, I think you’re brave,” I said. “You tried to fight off an attack, all by yourself, with no one to help you. And when you couldn’t, you did the next best thing. You stabbed the wrong side of the chest, because you knew what this woman didn’t. That troll hearts are on the other side.”

Ymsi made a sound, and not a nice one.

It didn’t seem like he agreed with me.

I sighed and looked up at the ceiling, which had some old explosion patterns on it, from Pip’s still. The boys had apparently halted production of their brew for the moment, because the hulking thing in the corner was silent, just gleaming a little in reflected light. And showing me a dark glimpse of the tortured face that Ymsi was hiding from me.

There was another long pause.

“Light Fey,” he finally said, his voice harsh. “Heart same side as human.”

“So if it was a Light Fey woman, one who didn’t know much about trolls, she might think you’d done the job?”

He nodded.

Sounded like Efridis to me. But that made even less sense now than yesterday, and it hadn’t made much then. Efridis of all people knew that Aiden was protected—she’d been the one to steal the rune in the first place. She had to know he was wearing it, so stabbing him would do exactly fuck all.

But if the troll kid had been the target, then it really didn’t seem like her.

Based on what Dorina had heard in that underwater room, it sounded like Geminus’ family were back in the smuggling business, assuming that they’d ever stopped. Geminus had been running weapons, and very dangerous ones. There was serious money in that, particularly in the middle of a war; it would make sense for some of his guys to risk continuing it.

And to kill a troll kid who knew too much.

What didn’t make sense was for Efridis to be involved. Claire might hate her, and with cause, but the fact remained that she’d come to warn us when she didn’t have to. She’d helped save our asses just a couple weeks ago. Why would she be helping the other side now?

And it wasn’t like there weren’t other suspects. Aeslinn, for instance, Efridis’ estranged husband. He was a leader on the other side of the war who had worked with Geminus in the past. He had every reason to put arms in the hands of his partisans here, and to sow as much discord as possible.

Plus, earth was his element; he could easily raise a manlikan force out of it. And he controlled a whole fey kingdom. He could probably also scrape up a vargr, if he thought he needed one. Like to frame his faithless wife for a crime he’d committed?

And, finally, there was the fact that Olga had slept a little too soundly the night that the troll boy was attacked. She’d put it down to being up for something like a day and a half, but I wasn’t sure. Food and drink are always offered to visitors by trolls; it’s seen as a major insult not to. So despite arguing with Geirröd, aka White Hair, and Trym, better known as Gravel Face, she had followed precedent.

After they left, she’d been so sleepy that she could barely keep her eyes open, so she went to bed. And slept like the dead. Which she might well have been, except that Stinky had stolen her half-finished beer.

Fortunately, Duergars are immune to drugs and poisons, which was a good thing. Otherwise, he’d have been dead years ago from all the crap he eats. Seriously, Stinky will never starve.

So, somebody might have tried to knock out or poison Olga, who had brought in the troll kid, and then an attack came that very night that ended with that same kid getting stabbed. Seemed like they might be connected. Especially since she’d said that the two leaders hadn’t been keen on coming here. They’d wanted to take the boy to a troll healer, halfway across town, and Olga had made them divert. Because she hadn’t thought the boy would survive the trip.

Maybe they hadn’t, either.

Ymsi was looking at me over his shoulder, like he was wondering what I was thinking. Or maybe he wanted some comfort, Dory! I was bad at that, but Ymsi was a good kid; one of the most genuinely sweet people I knew. He hadn’t deserved any of this.

“You couldn’t have done any better,” I told him. “Caedmon and I tried together, and we couldn’t stop her.”

And, okay, that finally got a reaction.

Ymsi blinked. “You fight?”

“Yes, we both did. But it—she—got away. She was powerful, Ymsi, but you tricked her. You tricked her and you won.” I got up. “You ought to remember that.”

Ymsi just looked at me, blinking slowly, like he was trying to process that.

But when I looked down from the stairs, on my way out, the sink was in his lap and he was eating.