Page 5 of Fortune's Blade

It wasn’t much to look at, just a concrete block room with some shelving and some recently installed fluorescents overhead. The fey often had multi-room, semi-palaces in theirs that they could carry around on their backs. Or that their servants could, ready to pitch far more than a tent for their masters at the end of a long day’s ride.

But I assumed that those took a lot more power than my little baby, and sleeping rough wasn’t something that bothered me. Being in a fight without weapons bothered me, or enough ammo, or first aid gear. So, there were no chaise lounges or four posters in here.

Instead, it was the armory of my dreams, one that I’d have never even imagined was possible in the bad old days.

For most of my five hundred and something years, my biggest problem supporting myself as a mercenary had been coming up with the money needed for the tools of my trade. The mages who did piece work did not do it cheap, which was fair. They were selling their magic, a product of their own bodies, and the fact that they made more of it than they needed wasn’t the point.

They knew their worth, and it was high.

But now I was a senator, a member of the feared Vampire Senate itself. And the fact that my senator father had arranged that mostly to give his faction an extra vote didn’t matter. I still had the same privileges as everyone else, and that included access to the Senate’s armory.

And, boy, had I exploited the hell out of that access!

I looked around in pride at my room full of goodies, and felt their low-grade hum fill me with a sense of genuine peace and serenity. There was nothing like knowing you had the firepower to take out a convoy, and then to blast the hell out of the army that followed it. Hmmm.

I basked for a moment.

Of course, how much any of this was going to help in Faerie was debatable, and took the edge off of my buzz a little. This place felt like being in a video game where, whenever you levelled up, the bad guys did, too. I’d gotten myself one hell of a new advantage, just in time to go into a world where nobody cared.

It was infuriating, but I had come loaded for bear anyway. Including purloining some of the Senate’s new, next level stuff that wasn’t even on the market yet. And might never be, since they were trying to keep parity with the Silver Circle, the magical organization of which the War Mage Corps was only a part.

The Circle had people constantly working on new magic, so we had to as well. There’d been peace between the two groups for centuries, but the Senate was a strong believer in the old saying: Si vis pacem, para bellum—if you want peace, prepare for war. And damn, if they hadn’t prepared.

I just hoped that some of this was going to help.

I also hoped that the clothes rack I’d shoved into a corner, behind a couple of grenade launchers, was going to contain something suitable. I unstrapped the weapons, pushed them out of the way, and set about finding us appropriate attire for dining in a castle full of dragons. But like with my arsenal, my wardrobe really wasn’t up to the task.

Still, we didn’t have all day, so I went with a tux for Louis-Cesare, which would probably work even if nobody knew what it was, since he looked good in anything. And a floor-length, bias cut, amethyst colored evening gown for me. It was a slip type, with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline, and was mostly unadorned. But I had glittery sandals to match and the straps on the gown, which crisscrossed in back, were set with diamond-like crystals.

I thought it would work.

I carried my best guesses back up the stairs and crawled out of the entrance. And for the first time, took a moment to really look around our room. It was frankly gorgeous.

It was a large semicircle facing the expansive balcony, which completed the circle. It couldn’t really compete with the view, but it tried, with brightly colored cushions and gorgeous tapestries and an inset mosaic of tiny glass tiles above the bed, which must have taken someone years to complete. It showed a bucolic scene, with hills and forests and a crashing waterfall, which I had been in no fit state to appreciate before.

There was also a mirror, which . . . yeah. Gonna need more than a decent dress to avoid embarrassing Claire. A lot more.

Thankfully, we hadn’t had to walk through the castle itself, saving me from leaving a first impression with my hair looking like a startled cartoon character’s, my face wind chapped, and my eyes set on boggle. I combed fingers through my startled locks, which helped not at all, as they just sprang back up again. Then grabbed a comb from a pocket of my duffle and forced them into compliance.

“I found us something to wear,” I called out to Louis-Cesare, who was still sightseeing.

There was no answer.

“You want to come get dressed, or what?” I asked.

“I think . . . you might want to come out here,” he said, sounding a little strangled.

I went out there, comb still in hand.

And all right, if I hadn’t known that we were curiosities before, I did now.

“Where did they all come from?” I asked, surveying a sky studded with dragons, despite the fact that it had been clear when we flew in.

“They’re unbelievable, aren’t they?” Louis-Cesare said softly.

“They’re something,” I said, somewhat at a loss for words.

Okay, that was a lie. I actually had a lot of words, all of which I swallowed back down because I didn’t know how good their hearing was. I didn’t know a lot of things here, which was a problem when facing down creatures who were that powerful. Magical energy peppered my skin like stinging rain, making me have to work not to flinch even through denim and leather, and they weren’t even trying.

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