Page 2 of Ogres Don't Play

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “I know that you and the music master are going to get along famously together. I want you to record the entire event from the planning stages through to the very last performance, and then probably get a few interviews afterwards about how much everyone loved it. It’s going to go viral! With Mirabel’s skills and connections, there’s no corner of Sing or Song that won’t be exposed as a haven of fascinating perfection that absolutely the world will demand to explore for themselves.” He tapped on his nose. “I can smell a success, and the two of you, a team made in heaven itself.” He said those last words with sudden gravity that made my stomach churn again.

I’d been raised in the ranks of the Holy Order of the Swords of Truth. You didn’t say heaven casually to those with various amounts of angelic blood. Angels were absolutely fanatical. If you used the wrong tone, even the most casual knight of the sword could take offense and you’d end up in an illegal duel and then cleaning bathrooms when your father found out that you’d been fighting in-rank. Ask me how I knew that. That experiencecleaning toilets had taught me that men with angel blood still didn’t always get into the bowl, and there was definite splashing. Even heavenly urine stank. It stank to high heavens. Snicker.

The reporter finally got a chance to speak. “My supervisor wanted me to make sure you got the clear message that Singsong’s Missive can’t cover your Jubilee as extensively as you’d like. It’s a great idea, but the man hours that would take, and the fact that it’s not really a story for the paper but for the city’s own tourism means that you should get in contact with a marketing firm who can take your project on and really focus on your vision.” She kept her voice firm even if there was a flinch in her eyes.

“I agree,” I said, smiling at her encouragingly. Maybe together we could beat the mayor at his own game. “I’m the music master, not a party planner. I have important work to do maintaining the city and bringing the music hall back to its former state of functionality, even if glory is completely out of the question considering the state of ruin it was allowed to languish in.”

“Ah, but if you don’t work together, how will I be able to withhold certain information that certain authorities will find most shocking?” He smiled benevolently, like he hadn’t just resorted to blatant blackmail. “You’re both here because you need your secrets kept safe in the vault.” He nodded his head soberly in deepest concern for us and patted his chest over his heart. “Exposure can be so unforgiving, particularly when it’s couched in certain terms that irrevocably shape the public’s opinion.”

I glanced at the reporter, who shared my look with her own hunted expression before I refocused on that snake of a pix. I’d had way too much confidence when I came here, thinking I could actually get a slippery monster like him to pay my hall.

“Now, now, don’t be worried, my dears. You’re two of the most talented women in the city. Together you can plan a lavish affair that will have the country, no, the world talking, and I know that you won’t disappoint me.”

His smile was the most terrifying thing, those unnaturally curved lips beneath those big glittering, gleeful eyes. Fairies were the worst.

I stood up, dragging myself out of the sand pit chair and stalked towards his desk. “I am not afraid of whatever truth you think you know about me. I know nothing about organizing a city-wide festival and your lack of judgment in choosing me to do such a thing shows your own incredibly short-sighted and delusional?—”

My words were cut off with an explosion of fire and feathers that landed on the desk and immediately caught all of my carefully prepared paperwork on fire.

The fairy man leapt back with a squeak while my dear, darling Yaga screeched shrilly and started after the mayor. My emotions must have been running too high if I’d accidentally summoned my wannabe phoenix. She was a chicken, but she thought she was a great creature of vengeance and mayhem. I moved quickly, ripping the gorgeous beige silk curtains down in a crash of metal frames, and then threw the fabric over my pet, wrapping her up while the reporter grabbed the other curtain I’d knocked down and started beating the flames with it.

In a few moments, I was standing in the center of the smoking wreckage of what had been the mayor’s perfect office with my chicken wrapped in charred fabric in my arms.

The mayor pointed at me with an evil glint that had to come straight from the infernal realm, whatever you said about the origins of fairies. “You will organize the Jubilee. You will get the Scholar and the Gray Society to help you bring order from the chaos for one weekend of perfection, or I am going to tell theregional music guild what’s going on in Singsong City. You may go.” He threw a sparkle ball at us that buzzed and itched until we turned and fled. I marched out with my struggling chicken in my arms while the reporter kept pace with me, but her expression wasn’t serene. Right. Because she had a story she didn’t want to get out, and somehow the mayor had found out what it was. Exposure wouldn’t be great for either one of us, but I had several resources at my disposal that she most likely didn’t have.

Once we were out in the hall, we kept walking with that buzzing ball of magic chasing us all the way outside until it stopped at an invisible threshold, leaving us out on the pretentious porch beneath a four story roof supported by elaborately carved pillars depicting all the usual supernaturals: angels, mermaids, elves, and fairies. The city hall was supposed to have an undercity equivalent, but the archway on the opposite end of the porch was filled with pale stone that looked extremely permanent, no doubt spelled to keep the undercity in its place.

It was raining, visibility very low out past the high roof, and I was understandably disappointed with my interview. No idea why I’d thought that things would go another way, but I’d hoped. I’d have to tell Tiago to tighten our belts. Again. If I was a real music master, it wouldn’t be like this. Singsong deserved a real music master who was invested in its prosperity and health, but all it had was me and my chicken, Yaga.

“What should we do?” the reporter asked, frowning thoughtfully. “Nanny sent me to deal with the mayor because I’m the least expendable and she thought things would go like this, but even the society journalist can’t do a project this big, and I know that if I let Sparks manipulate me…” She looked around and then handed me a card. “If you’d like to get together to discuss the project, give me a call.” She gave me a harried smile and plunged into the deluge without a moment’s hesitation in her hurry to get away from the mayor.

I took my time refreshing my weather spells on my harp before putting it back into its weatherworn case. When I looked up, the ogre from before was staring at me. I’d known a lot of ogres from my time with the HOST, or the Holy Order of the Swords of Truth. Not that we’d chatted, but I’d given several of them extreme blood loss. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable seeing infernal creatures wandering around in daylight without stabbing them, but I was adapting. I even had a small group of Song inhabitants who came to the music hall for lessons in exchange for musical maintenance in Song, the cavern undercity that most upper city dwellers found uncomfortable at best, life threatening at worst.

As I slung my harp case over my shoulder, the ogre came towards me, long stride eating up the short distance between us. Speaking of eating…

I turned and hurried into the sheets of rain, hoping to get somewhere far enough away from the city hall where no one would be appalled at the magic I’d be forced to use on the monster if he was foolish enough to attack me. I hurried down the long street between the curved buildings that housed the rest of the city’s noble workers until I reached the narrow pass on the end where I’d had to show the guards my ID before they allowed me in. The road was gated, closed unless you showed the right papers. Foot traffic passed on the side beneath an arched stone gate connected to the wall of the six story City Hall proper.

I ducked past the guards but hadn’t left the arch when a grinding of stone on stone filled the air directly above me. A warm, strong body hit me, knocking me to the ground, covering me while stone rained all around, mostly hitting him, but a few sharp fragments hitting my forearm before he shifted me so that I was more fully under his weight until we were sealed in beneath tons of stones and nothing but heavy breathing to keep me company.

Chapter

Two

Icould have stabbed him, but it didn’t seem like the thing to do. Then again, maybe I couldn’t, because one of my arms was pinned across my chest and the other beneath his bare forearm above my head.

Bare.

In the darkness, his warm, raw, beating flesh was covering me like a massive ogre blanket, but the other ogre had been wearing clothes, and no one would get naked in the mayor’s courtyard just to catch a stone roof. His chest was definitely wearing nothing other than my long hair, although I couldn’t see anything beneath the pile of rocks until he opened his eyes, showing a flicker of glowing gold with specks of neon blue. The golden lines spread across his cheekbones like tears to his temples. On his forehead, an outlined circle came to life with threads of glowing gold flaring out like sunbeams.

A battle ogre who could manipulate magic was on top of me under a mountain of stone, and I was on top of my harp. That’s when I panicked.

I pushed up towards him, trying to twist around and get my weight off my harp, but he grunted and didn’t move, almost likehe had nowhere to go, and I just ended up plastered against his chest pushing into the muscles while I wriggled.

Stone shifted above us, and he grunted. “You might wish to remain still. Not crushing you is difficult enough without your movements.” His voice was low, deep, but the pronunciation was precise even if the words were spoken slowly. Ogres didn’t usually bother to learn words that didn’t have direct meaning. An ogre would say, ‘no move’ or ‘crushed’ instead of all those extra words that had no real purpose other than to keep linguistic rules.

I held still, but my harp was the first instrument I’d ever had, the thing I’d taken home with me when I was a kid and had my first ogre encounter, and this monster had magic similar to the top ranking warrior ogres. “Yes, thanks, but my harp…”

He took a deep breath that I felt on my skin, a long inhale that brought back a rush of horrified memories. I’d been smelled by ogres so often on the battlefield. It’s like they could tell I hated it and did it just to infuriate me.

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