Page 20 of Queen Takes Triune
:Kansas City. When would she have seen you there, before Christmas? Before I came to you?:
The window between Rik and Daire becoming my Blood, and then Guillaume, was very short. Just days.:Other than the incident with the saleslady and when Ra attacked through the portal, I can’t think of anything.:
:I was there for those attacks. This would have had to be before. I believe I would have been able to sense her presence, though she’s very good at masking even her servants. Rik wouldn’t have known what to look for. Can you think of anytime you felt uneasy for no reason?:
:The bar,:Rik growled in my head.:Remember? You didn’t want to go down the dark hallway to the restroom, but I couldn’t sense anything amiss.:
We’d gone shopping, and then I’d danced with Daire. Rik had been so grumpy and uneasy. I’d just barely started my period, and we’d all assumed that was why he’d been so tense. That was partly why he’d had such a hard time that day, but maybe he’d sensed something else that he couldn’t recognize.
:It’s very likely,:Guillaume said.:Little is known about the Dauphine, but she’s rumored to have servants acting as her eyes and ears in the world that are basically mindless shells. As such, they’re nearly impossible to track. I never saw one myself, but Desideria was all-too familiar with her Triune sister’s tricks.:
Goosebumps flared down my arms and my fangs throbbed with urgency, as if I needed to feed and feed and feed, gaining power to defend myself against this threat. I couldn’t believe the Dauphine had been that close to me. Before I’d even known how to protect myself. Before I’d gained enough Blood to do anything at all.
I must have been a few steps from… death? Or being forced into becoming her sibling queen? Who knew what the mysterious Triune queen had intended if she’d found me basically defenseless. Though I wasn’t naive enough to assume she’d had only goodwill and friendly intentions on her mind.
I focused on the crow queen.:Do you know where this letter was found?:
Her head cocked, her bright eyes locked on me. A sort of invitation, I thought. I slipped into her mind like I’d done with my rat so I could see through her eyes.
No, not her eyes. It was another crow. A male. But she could see through his eyes, which gavemethe power to see too. Ramifications flickered briefly in the back of my mind, ideas and ways I could use this gift. If she could see through all her subjects’ eyes, and I could see through hers…
I basically had a massive spy network all across the United States.
She cawed softly in my head and sent me several visions in rapid succession. Stonehenge. Steep cliffs and brilliant green fields with low rock walls. More fields of long lines of short trees with green fruit. Olives, I thought. The savannah with its baking, dry heat. A deep humid jungle.
Places from all over the world. Not just the United States.
Awed, I asked,:Can you see all birds? Or just crows?:
She showed me an image of a crow on a branch, chirping and talking to a snowy owl. A bright-colored parrot. A small brown starling.
So she couldn’t see through other birds’ eyes… but her kin could talk to them.
Amazing.
She pulled me back to the young male crow. He sat on an iron railing several stories above the ground. A narrow alley lay below, paved in uneven cobblestones. The house across the alley was a large, sprawling three-story building with pinky-peach stucco. Dark green shutters and trim lined the rows of windows. A fountain bubbled in a tree-shaded courtyard that faced the crow’s vantage point. Probably the rear of the building, I thought. Another two-story building ran perpendicular to the other, with a swimming pool in between them.
As he watched, an unassuming beige sedan slowly drove up the alleyway and parked directly beneath where the crow watched. A man got out of the car and walked across the paved courtyard to the back building. He didn’t approach the double doors but walked along the shorter building toward the last window on the end. A hand stretched out with several envelopes and packages. Without slowing his step, the man took them as he passed, and then looped back toward the car.
He opened the driver’s door but paused a moment to flip through the stack. It looked like mail, but through the crow’s eyes, I didn’t see any stamps. This mail wasn’t meant for any regular post office. I tried to identify any unique features, but he wore a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes that shaded his face. He didn’t have a beard and wore jeans and a plain T-shirt. Even the cap was a basic run-of-the-mill faded red hat without any insignia or logo.
He could be anyone, from anywhere, and I’d never recognize him.
The young crow crouched, wings poised. Another crow swooped down from the roof of the building across the street and snatched at the baseball cap. The man cursed and flung his hands up around his head, batting at the crow.
While the young male quietly swooped down and snagged the envelope that had fallen onto the top of the car.
He swept up on silent wings, weaving his way through old brick buildings. I scanned the area through his eyes, trying to identify the city. The air was humid and smelled of a river or lake. Rather swampy.
Iron railings and balconies dotted most of the older buildings. We flew over an old gnarled tree drooping beneath the weight of moss clinging to its branches. The south. But where?
Even though this had happened months ago, it seemed as though the young bird felt my urgency. Or maybe he’d been taught to always look around and note his location anytime he found something of use to his queen. He took a leisurely loop across the large, sprawling city. In the distance, I could see water and ships. Even a few steam paddle ships moving up and down the river that dumped into the bay.
Not the bay. The gulf. New Orleans. I was sure of it.
I broke contact with the crow queen and looked up at Rik. “Didn’t you say that Leonie Delafosse is the queen of New Orleans?”
He nodded. “As far as I know, yes.”
