“Is thatallyou see?”Nerd Girl drawled.She pointed at Dy.“Use your sorcery.What else is in there?”
“It’s agnicurna,” Dy said in tone of hushed awe.“All through the pixie dust.Now I understand.”
“Well, I don’t,” Cha told her.“They said they were looking for astra, remember?”
Dy gave her an impatient look.“Did you really ditch the entire semester on the Fae Wars?”
“Pretty much,” Cha admitted.“Can you learn my ignorant ass now?”
“Astra means weapon in the old language,” Dy explained.“It’s not specific.The Moonstone fae were worried about a weapon being smuggled in.”
That’s what Azul had said, Cha recalled.I don’t actually know what the astra is.That’s a generic term for something quite politically tricky within the fae realms and you are better off knowing less than more.“And this invisible agnicurna is the weapon?”
Dy nodded somberly.“But it’s not invisible.Agnicurna translates as fire-powder.Black powder that can be used as an explosive.It’s mixed all in with the Obsidian pixie dust—almost the same color—and the ambient magic of the dust obscures it unless you know what to look for.”
“And looking with the correct lens,” Nerd Girl agreed, tapping her temple.“Gotta have the right smarts.”
“So,” Cha said slowly, thinking hard, which kind of hurt her brain, “Otto was being paid to smuggle a human explosive into a fae realm.To what purpose?”…something quite politically tricky within the fae realms and you are better off knowing less than more.
“Nothing good for them,” Nerd Girl answered solemnly.
“And what’s bad for the fae is usually even worse for us,” Phin noted glumly.
“Because of the wars between the various fae realms?”Cha asked.“But those don’t involve us.”
Everyone gave her sardonic looks ranging from gentle to incredulous.“You mean,” Dy said with raised brows, “except for the ones that shattered the veils between worlds to begin with and allowed the fae and their magic into ours, making humans a conquered and oppressed people?”
Oh, yeah—there was that.Cha’s brain continued to churn away, Azul’s words, the ones he’d made her promise she’d keep in mind, going around and around.Politically tricky.What else had he said about that?That’s right.It was a politically tricky situation,he’d said as a non-answer, when she’d asked why a fae wedding would take place in the human realms.And he’d told her to keep the Moonruby wand, to remember the order of the fae realms and their relative power.Was Azul somehow in the middle of this?Marrying someone affiliated with Ruby and allying Amethyst with them?Shaking the thoughts away, she focused on the now—and on the sinking feeling in the part of her that measured the value of coin and shipments.
“I’m guessing this agnicurna is worthless in our realm,” she said, and they all nodded.
“Worse,” Dy said, eyes somber above her mask, “the contamination makes the Obsidian dust worthless.”
“And the box of gems is gone, too,” Phinny said, rubbing her belly as if it pained her.
“At least we have the deposit gold and what it bought us,” Dy replied, looping her arm around Phinny’s considerable waist.“Though we owe Cha her share.”
Lucky Ducky cleared his throat.
“After we pay you all, of course,” Dy agreed.And they set to haggling.
~44~
Endgame
It was asober group that gathered on the porch of Phinny and Dy’s charming cottage, despite the cold, aged ale and fresh rosemary twists.The shrieks of the kids splashing in the pond with Katu and Big Betty in their animal forms, the latter spraying everyone with water she sucked up into her trunk—including the adults sitting on the porch—helped to lighten the mood, but didn’t lift them entirely out of the glums.
“I can’t believe Otto fucked us,” Cha commented.
“Language,” Phinny said in mild reproof.
“They’re a mile away and I know they’ve heard the word before.”
“I can’t believe Monat isdead,” Dy said, elbowing Cha.“Priorities.”
“Well, Monat would be dead, regardless, but we still could have gotten paid,” Cha told her, earning a fierce glare from both women.
Cha shrugged and took a swig of her ale.It went down cold and just the right bittersweet to match her mood.Even the rosemary twists didn’t give her much comfort.Something was tugging at her, a nagging worry, a particular purple dread that she strongly suspected had to do with Azul and this connection he’d spoken of.He’d known she was in trouble; would she sense the same?The big problem there was thathehad had the power to save her whereasshecouldn’t even begin to find him.She even swallowed her considerable pride and drove Katu out to that rural ley, looking for the bloody rose gates or the field of poppies or even a something that looked like a nothing.She’d gone up that stupid slow rural ley several dozen times, hoping against hope that her princely hitchhiker might appear.
