Not to mention paying out the hefty bribes required to make sure the fae rulers turned a blind eye to the humans’ entertainment escapades.
“I got details,” Garaile promised in a low voice.“Got any ale?”
Cha jerked her head toward the changing rooms.“Walk with me.”As reigning champion, she rated a private room.Catching the anticipatory gleam in Garaile’s eyes, she shook her head to herself.These young bucks all seemed to think an invitation to her room meant they’d get to bang her.To be fair, sometimes itdidmean that.Not today, though.Probably.
She palmed the lock spelled to respond only to her touch, gestured Garaile through the doorway, and pointed at the ratty couch.Private didn’t mean posh.Katu strolled to his oversized pillow and flopped down, tongue lolling pinkly.
“Spill,” Cha instructed Garaile, while she moved to the cooler and extracted a carafe of ambrosia.She poured a healthy draft into a bowl, the honeysuckle-sweet scent of it just a little too cloying, and set it before the cat.The enchanted carriage-beasts could live on regular food, like the animals they’d been born as, but to transform to and run as carriages, they needed the fae fuel to keep going.Humans called it ambrosia, because of the nectar smell and how much the animals loved it.
The fae, never fond of talking to humans, much less sharing secrets, wouldn’t ever say where ambrosia came from.They simply sold the bottled liquid, along with other magical elements like pixie dust, for extortionate prices.Those imports had become key to human society.Once upon a time, the fae had existed only in stories.Then the Fae Wars had exploded, weakening the once-impassable boundaries between the fae realms and the world of humans.Those walls between separate realities had fractured, becoming porous.In some areas, they disintegrated entirely.
Humans were suddenly able to enter the fae realms—not a good idea today any more than it had been in the old fairy tales.Likewise, the fae invaded human lands, bringing with them arrogance, arcane magic, and monsters from myth.They easily conquered the pitifully vulnerable nearby principalities of Torocca.
As with all conquests, nothing had worked quite so effectively as introducing luxury goods to the newly oppressed population.The fae brought magic to the human world, enchanted conveniences that put an end to the misery of disease and starvation, and now no one could live without them.Which was good for Cha, because those needs—and the illegal methods for satisfying them—had kept her in coin.At least, until Dy went legit.
Garaile caught the iced bottle of ale she tossed to him with a grateful nod.“Monat was bringing a load of contraband pixie dust back here to Rockton,” he said.
Damn and damn.Monat was an old friend.Dy would hate to hear this—so much so that maybe Cha wouldn’t tell her.“Well, it won’t be the first time Monat has had to talk her way out of a little jail time and a fine.”
“Not this time.Apparently, she got the dust from a source on theotherside of the border, and got picked up there.”Garaile waggled his brows in titillated horror.
Cha winced.Lots of smugglers ran the risk of illegally transporting goods from the closest fae realm of Obsidian.It was no party, dealing with the fae hounds of the law.“Obsidian jail is no picnic,” she conceded.“Still, Monat is a pro.She can handle it.”At least, Cha hoped so.
“Not that side of the border.Theotherother side, you know?”
Cha waited for him to explain, but Garaile only nodded significantly and tipped back his ale.
“The otherotherside of the border…?”
“Yup.”He counted on his fingers.“Not Obsidian, but the second one.Is that Citrine?”
Spare her Garaile’s slow wit.Cha took a bracing swig from her own bottle.“Moonstone is the second fae realm,” she told him patiently.“Are yousureMonat went to Moonstone?”
Humans took a chance crossing into the fae realms, full stop.Even the closest and lowest order fae realm, Obsidian, posed its dangers.Moonstone was that much worse.The way the six fae realms existed, you had to pass through the lower ones to reach the higher ones.They were kind of magically nested inside each other.Not that plenty of smugglers hadn’t figured out how to bypass the import/export depot in Obsidian to trade directly with Moonstone, and the higher realms that worked through Moonstone agents, but it was a bad idea to actuallygothere.
Like the pixie dust they exported, the fae realms increased in power—and strangeness—the deeper in you went.The black pixie dust from Obsidian was the lowest test, which made Obsidian correspondingly the least dangerous of the fae realms, at least magically speaking.From there the dust ascended in power to Moonstone white, Citrine yellow, Amethyst purple, Cinnabar orange, and culminated in Ruby red.No humans had ever seen—to Cha’s knowledge—the orange dust from Cinnabar or the legendary scarlet dust from Ruby.Probably because their faces melted off if they came within a league of that stuff.
Very few human magic workers could handle Amethyst purple dust or even Citrine yellow.Moonstone white dust was priceless for its potency and because more humans could deal with the stuff—like the mages working the racecourse—but Monat had taken a ridiculously dangerous chance, even for a haul of that.
“Getting to Moonstone and back is a fool’s gambit,” Cha pointed out, just in case Garaile hadn’t fully grasped it.
“You know that.I know that.”Garaile shrugged.“Monat knows that.Or she sure does now.”
“Did she make it back out of Moonstone?”
“Unclear.Word is, Monat is still in one of the fae realms—no one’s sure which—in some fae jail.Maybe only Obsidian,” he added, as if to make her feel better.
“Even if it’s only Obsidian, they’re more likely to send human smugglers home with a few added features as a lesson than let them off without punishment.”And that was if they came home at all.Dammit, Monat.
Garaile grimaced, passing a hand over his forehead as if checking that he hadn’t sprouted a pair of curling, brightly colored horns as had famously happened to a well-known smuggler caught out in Obsidian.Humans marked thus by the fae did not fare well, rarely surviving long.Mortal flesh couldn’t endure that sort of modification.
Cha narrowed her eyes at Garaile.“Anything else?”
“You know as much as I do now,” Garaile answered, holding up a hand as if denying personal responsibility.“Well, except one thing—some people think the law-hounds have found a way to listen to the underground path-channels.”
Cha set down her ale abruptly, thethunkpunctuating her dismay.“Is that verified?”
“Rumor, but a persistent one.Could be paranoia.”Garaile shrugged, taking a thoughtful swig.
