Page 67 of Fortune's Blade

Except as a depository for ravens. Not live ones, but décor items, a huge number of them stacked almost ceiling high in places, with some looking quite old. Like the two stone carvings that flanked the fireplace, which had been painted at one time, but were now mostly bare stone with just a little black paint in the creases of the feathers.

There were also raven sconces, raven candleholders, raven lamps and raven covered tapestries, although those were fairly motheaten and faded to the point that I could barely make them out. They contrasted with the banners stacked in bunches that looked fairly new, with green silk backgrounds that gleamed in the light from the hall, and a large black bird in the center. There was even a stack of shields with a raven painted on them, and they looked new, too.

“Hrafnavirki,” Ray said, noticing my interest.

“What?”

“Raven Fortress. It’s what this place is called. It started out as a giant settlement a long time ago, someplace with a crap ton of ravens. They still got an aviary of them somewhere out front, for old times’ sake, I guess. I was talking to one of the guards about it, while you were out.”

“Someone seems to be thinking about changing the name.”

“That would be the new queen, although I doubt she’ll go through with it. It’s tradition, and anyway, the king’s not dead, just missing.”

“Missing?”

Ray nodded. “The Svarestri grabbed him, or so some say. Others think he really is dead. Course, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“No,” I agreed, thinking about what I knew of the silver haired fey, who looked so pretty and yet were so deadly.

“Anyway, she’s placeholding until they get him back, assuming they ever do.”

Placeholding. I glanced around. I wondered if she knew that, considering that she was already redecorating.

But the little storage room provided a welcome respite, and a place to gather our thoughts. Together, we stared at the sandstorm still raging outside and attempted to sort things out. Or Ray did; I had already shown how useful I was likely to be at that.

The storm was ferocious enough to have scoured the skin right off of our bones had a ward not protected us. But there was a usefulness in its savagery, as it would also scour anyone else who came close enough to have a look. Although that seemed unlikely as we were no longer in the lovely valley.

If we could see anything besides blowing sand, it would be a vast, snow-dusted desert, one of the areas stolen from the dark fey by the Svarestri for the ore that lay under the ground. Most of the former residents been run out years ago, or turned into slaves to mine the land that had once been theirs. But the pixies were the exception.

Their small size and the fact that they had learned to build cities underground had made them difficult to find, as did the sandstorms. The area was naturally prone to them, Ray had said, and whenever the pixies didn’t want to be seen going from place to place, they conjured one up to use as moving camouflage. And sometimes, as in this case, they took a whole city along for the ride.

That wasn’t hard, as it fit neatly into a satchel.

Dory used a similar rig for her armory, only the pixies’ version of a pocket reality was even stranger. Ray had said that they’d learned to coax a bit of non-space out of the mouth of a portal, causing it to protrude into Faerie. They then continued to pull it further and further until it completely engulfed something they wanted to transport, before folding it over and sending it back where it belonged, dragging whatever it had captured into the pocket dimension that they had created.

It sounded to me like a tongue sticking out of a mouth long enough to snare a sweet, then slurping it back inside. Except that the tongue was another universe and the sweet wasn’t a single person or house, but palaces, cities, even whole armies. And the pixies could apparently accomplish this feat whether there was room for said items within the span of the portal or not, because non-space paid no attention to the limitations of our universe.

Its physics were not our physics, its laws not our laws.

Then they packed the whole thing away like a piece of luggage and flew off with it.

Considering how much energy Dory’s small armory took, that must have required an insane amount of power, to the point that I had no idea how they did it. I would have said a ley line sink, where two or more of the rivers of power that connected worlds crossed and pooled their energy, but they were not portable. Yet there was magic here, I thought, staring at the ever-changing golden whirls and ripples outside the balcony.

I could trace the patterns it made, enveloping the roaring storm and plaiting the winds together like a braid. Not one strand of power, but many, each unique, each a delight, each like an unknown spice on my tongue. Amazing.

“Okay, that works,” Ray said, lifting an arm and then putting it back down again. “That’s better.”

“What is better?” I asked, distracted, but following the movement with my eyes. And hearing him curse when his arm suddenly shot out and began punching the wall repeatedly, hard enough to crack it.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he said, as his boys came running through the door and pulled us back. Only to get almost decked by the wildly swinging arm for their trouble.

The scrawny one named Dan ducked just in time, but the handsome one got clocked in the throat and went down. Only to jump right back up again, because the last thing a vamp who was already in trouble wanted was to further piss off his master. And his master was pissed.

“What are you doing in here?” Ray yelled as he was grabbed again, less than helpfully. “Get off me!”

They got off.

“Sorry, boss,” Dan said. “But they, uh, started serving.”

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