Wayfinder

Twenty-three

“There is too much iron in this world.” Aerin spoke through her teeth, a grimace pulling her striking features out of line. “The glamour is almost impossible to hold.”

Dafydd touched the small of her back, a small soothing gesture that had little visible effect. Lara made an apologetic face, but had to look away again: the glamours dancing in place around all of them jangled her nerves. Managing forward motion was enough of a task without trying to offer sympathy to an ill-tempered elf.

Of the four, only Kelly was clearly enjoying herself as they hurried through hospital corridors. Then again, of the four, she was the only one virtually undisguised. A costume shop had provided high-quality lab coats for all of them, and Kelly had found green hospital scrubs with a V-neck that displayed her considerable assets to good advantage. Half a week’s diet of ice cream and potato chips hadn’t visibly damaged her waistline and the shirt’s tucked-in waist emphasizer her curvaceous figure. The only glamour Dafydd had worked on her was transforming a driver’s license into a hospital ID, and the result was a soap opera–style nurse, all curves and quick smiles.

Lara, much more recognizable as a recent news-story kidnap victim, was hidden behind a glamour she couldn’t even see without making herself sick. A glimpse had suggested she was taller and more physically imposing than usual, with less delicacy in her heart-shaped face and drab lowlights in her blond hair. Dafydd swore the long white lab coat she wore made the illusion more effective and easier to maintain, and she only hoped the quick job would hold.

Aerin was almost as lightly glamoured as Kelly. She looked slightly more human than Ioan, but their fine bone structure and pointed ears were of a kind. A calculated risk, Dafydd called it, and swept into the secured corridor Ioan’s room was in as if he had every right to be there. Unlike any of the women, he’d added breadth to his own glamour, giving himself a far more intimidating air, though none of the suit-clad security looked even slightly intimidated.

“Doctor Aerin Cragen?” he said impatiently to one of the guards. “She’s flown all the way from—Don’t tell me the paperwork didn’t come through. If you could impress upon these gentlemen—?” He gestured to Lara, who stepped forward already hating what she had to do.

“The patient is from Ms. Cragen’s ethnic group, as I’m sure you can see. She’s come a long way to provide the help he needs. We must be allowed to see him.” Each statement was true enough. Aerin, sullenly, as though confessing something private, had allowed that her mother’s name was Cragen, and the closest thing she had to a last name was the matronym. Lara put strain into the words, making them impossible to disbelieve. It hurt her throat, hurt her skin to make truth heard, the task no easier than it had been in a human courtroom when it had been Dafydd’s freedom she was trying to achieve. It was easier by far in the Barrow-lands, so much more receptive to magic.

One of the guards, a tall man whose width of shoulder made him seem twice Lara’s size, removed his sunglasses to look first at her, then for a long time at Aerin, and finally back to Lara. “Sorry, miss. We can’t. Not without the appropriate paperwork.” He did, though, jerk his chin at Aerin to say, “I’ve never seen anybody who looks like you two. Where’re you from?”

Aerin looked without comprehension at Dafydd, who translated. Exasperation slid across Aerin’s face and she answered abruptly, cool expression locked on the guard. “An isolated area in Wales,” Dafydd said blithely.

Chills ran down Lara’s spine, not quite outraged protest at the lie, but not happy with the half-truth, either. The guard didn’t look any happier, an eyebrow cocked at Aerin. “I thought the Welsh spoke English.”

“I doubt your guest in there has spoken any,” Dafydd said. “This group has long since eschewed any but their native tongue. It’s a matter of cultural support and propagation.”

The guards exchanged looks again before the self-appointed spokesman sighed. “I can call it in for permission. It’s going to take a while. There’s a lot of paperwork to go through, and if you,” he pointed at Aerin, “weren’t obviously like him,” a thumb over the shoulder, indicating down the corridor, “I’d never bother trying. What kind of doctor are you, anyway? They’ve had the best brain surgeons in the country in there and they’re all afraid to even give it a shot because his physiology’s so bizarre.” He took out a phone, not waiting for an answer from Aerin, and after a few seconds said, “Yeah, we’ve got a doctor from the patient’s ethnic group down here, I thought you might want to come down and have a talk with her.”

Warning tones shot over Lara’s skin. She stepped forward and put out a hand, trying to imbue the gesture with some of Emyr’s imperious expectation. The guard snorted and she drew a sharp breath, driving it into sharper words: “You will give me the phone.”

Anger slid over the guard’s face as he handed her the phone, his own free will clearly countermanded by her order. Lara, trying not to tremble, kept her eyes on the guard. A truthseeker at the height of her power could say a thing and make it true. Determined, sick to her stomach, desperate, she said into the phone, “You will give permission to let us through to see the patient, and you will do it now.”

Hesitation came down the line, an inhalation that went nowhere. “Who is this?” a woman finally asked.

Lara clenched her fingers around the phone, headache spiking. Magic use could wear even the Seelie out, and humans were far less built for it than the elfin race was. For a painful moment she sympathized with Emyr, unable to work his magics smoothly with mortal interference in the area. Her own truthseeking was easier to manage if she wasn’t already hidden behind the veil of power that kept them all from easy recognition. “This is the only person who can keep your patient alive. I assume your interest in his autopsy is secondary to the possibility of speaking with him.”

“Perhaps,” the woman on the other end said cautiously. “We can learn a great deal from an autopsy.”

“I have no doubt that your patient’s return to health now would impinge upon a convenient autopsy later,” Lara said bitterly. “You will give us permission to see him.”

“Who is this?” the woman demanded again.

Lara shut her eyes briefly. “Someone who answers to a much higher power than you do. Now let us through.” She handed the phone back. The guard listened for a moment, nodded, nodded a second time, then stepped out of the way as he snapped the phone shut. Lara stalked by with a scant nod of thanks, aware that the others fell in line behind her. Not until they’d reached the safety of Ioan’s room and Dafydd had authoritatively ordered the nurses out did Lara sag against the wall, hands buried in her hair.

Sour music faded as Dafydd released the glamour hiding her true features. Despite Ioan’s prone form on the bed a few feet away, he crouched by Lara, a hand light on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“The only reason they let us through is because Aerin’s so much like Ioan. I could hear it in the guard’s voice, the way he said she was like him.” Lara’s voice felt rough, as if her magic had torn her throat up. “Believe me, Dafydd, they’re not letting us in, they’re trapping us. Or they’re trying to.”

“Well, we can get out of here, right?” Kelly demanded. “Except it’s just your guy here, not Reg. We’ve got to get him, too.”

“We have to sneak out,” Dafydd said cheerfully. Lara gave him a dire look from behind her arms, and he chuckled, though his humor faded away under the weight of her glare. “Even at my weakest I’ve been able to hold a glamour that makes us effectively invisible, Lara, and we rode out of plain sight on the Common not three hours ago. The task of getting Ioan out of this ward is hardly insurmountable.”

“What have they done to him?” Aerin’s horror broke over their conversation. Lara dropped her hands to look at Ioan, who was riddled with IVs and monitor patches. His skin was scaly and blackening where the needles slipped into his arms, the veins spreading beneath his skin in a dangerous fiery red.

Sick dismay crashed over Lara. “It’s stainless steel. It’s all steel. They’re killing him!”

“Aerin!” Dafydd leapt to his feet and caught her wrist just before she bodily yanked the first needle from Ioan’s veins. “You can’t rip them upward, it’ll tear his skin even more badly, and he doesn’t need the damage. Like this.” He slipped a needle free with expert skill, shrugging as Kelly gaped in astonishment. “I had a century of lifetimes in your world, Miss Richards. I spent some time as a medic, among my many other professions. Aerin—yes, good,” he said as she put pressure on another spot where she’d withdrawn a needle with the same confident motion Dafydd had used.

“No wonder he’s remained unconscious.” Lara pushed to her feet so she could see the sallow Unseelie more clearly. “They’ve been poisoning him. Not deliberately,” she said as Aerin’s expression darkened. “They just couldn’t have known the needles would do him damage. They don’t, usually. Not to humans.”

“How could any fool think him human when they looked at him?”

Kelly, obviously understanding the sentiment if not the actual words, retorted, “Because there’s no other option. We don’t have humanoid alien species as far as anybody on Earth knows. Besides, they’re probably dying for him to die so they can cut him up.”

Aerin shot Lara a frustrated look. “When will your truthseeker’s gifts burgeon enough to permit comprehension between worlds?”

“I don’t know, Aerin. I don’t know if it’ll ever work that way. I think we’re doing well in that you and I can communicate.”

“Lara?” Ioan’s voice scraped below theirs, rendering the bickering silent. “Truthseeker? Is it possible?”

“Tsha.” Dafydd put a hand on his brother’s forehead, no longer as distressed by Ioan’s changes as he’d been. “We’ve come for you, Ioan. Aerin, Lara, myself. Even a mortal woman has ventured to your rescue.”

Ioan opened his eyes, barely focused gaze lingering on each of them until he found Kelly, and chuckled roughly. “I remember you. You fought well. But you’ve sustained a wound. A shame, to scar that lovely face. Dafydd, we must …” His eyes rolled back, unconsciousness claiming him.

Kelly whispered “You weren’t too shabby yourself,” and pressed her knuckles against her mouth, eyes large as she looked to Lara.

“I think he’s all right.” The agonies of inaccuracy in that phrase almost made Lara laugh. Instead she clutched her head a moment, then made herself straighten and pay attention to Dafydd. “There must be back ways out of here, fire doors or something. If we take one of those and come in the front again to find Detective Washington, we can avoid trying to sneak past the contingent of government guards at the head of the ward.”

“Do you really think they’re government?”

“I think city or state police would be in blue uniforms, not black suits. If they’re not government they’re—”

“Something worse,” Kelly supplied. “Corporations, maybe. Either way it’s not good for the home team. Tell you what.” She exhaled noisily, then glanced down at herself. “The big guy out there, the one who did the talking, is kind of my type, and I’m all Nurse Richards here. Should I go play distraction while you guys make a break for it?”

Dafydd lit up, but Lara shook her head. “If we were car shopping, I’d say yes, but it might backfire here. He might fall for it, or he might realize immediately it’s a ruse. No matter how good the glamours are, I think if someone’s really suspicious they might fail under scrutiny. We’re better off being sneaky as a unit. The problem is, how are we going to get Ioan out of here? On the bed, like it’s a gurney?”

“I’ll carry him.” Challenge sparked in Aerin’s gaze as Lara blinked at her. “Do you think me too weak?”

Lara studied the slender Seelie woman, remembering more the ease and speed with which she wielded a sword than her apparently fragile form. “No. It just wouldn’t have occurred to me to even try. The only way I could carry him at all would be in a fireman’s carry, and that’s probably bad for people with head injuries.”

Aerin slipped her arms under Ioan’s back and knees. Dafydd adjusted his brother’s head so it lay against Aerin’s shoulder, and Aerin straightened with apparent ease, a curious gaze on Lara. “What is a ‘fireman’s carry’?”

“God damn,” Kelly said in admiration. “I want her personal trainer.”

Lara, drily, said, “You really don’t,” and a moment later the gut-sickening magic of glamours enveloped them all.

A fingerful of Dafydd’s lightning shorted out the emergency door’s alarm system, and in moments they were free of the hospital building. Even with the jangling shards of misplaced light and shadow brought on by the glamours, Lara could see that Ioan’s color improved beyond the hospital walls: the elfin races were simply not suited for the concrete and rebar buildings that so much of humanity hid within.

“Can the human be brought forth the same way?” Aerin stood with Ioan’s weight in her arms as if it was nothing, unconcerned with what would be, to Lara, a staggering burden. Unconcerned for his weight, at least: her concern for the man himself was visible, which Lara found curious, given Aerin’s enmity toward the Unseelie. “It would be best if he was not subjected again to your iron-filled walls.”

“I know.” Lara passed a guilty hand over her eyes, but shook her head. “I think he has to go back in, though. He only has a couple of injuries. They’re bad, but a head wound and that cut he took to the thigh aren’t on the same scale as what Detective Washington suffered. His torso was punctured repeatedly. Moving Ioan like this is a risk, but I think moving Washington the same way would be homicide. Dafydd’s going to have to open the worldwalking spell right there in his hospital room and we’re going to have to wheel him through, bed and all. Can you choose where we arrive? Could you bring us straight to the healers?”

“If I knew precisely where they would be, yes, but with a war going on, it’s possible none of them remain within the citadel.” Dafydd looked apologetic. “It’s less risky to bring him there, and ride for a healer, than to bring him onto the battlefield.”

Lara whispered a curse, but nodded. “And the spell itself? Can you work it inside a human building?”

“I prepared it while you rented our costumes. It only needs to be triggered within the building, and that’s easy enough. I did it at your apartment,” he reminded her. “We only need be bold a little while longer, and then all will be well.”

She scowled at him. “I don’t believe there’s any definition of ‘well’ that encompasses ‘two men are in desperate need of healing, a traitor needs to be found in the midst of an army before he destroys two kings and claims their crowns, and ancient rivals have to be found, brought together, and made to remember a history neither of them wants to recall so that a truthseeker can find a way to mend the past.’ ”

“Mine does,” he said irrepressibly, and to Lara’s astonishment, stepped forward to pull her against himself and steal a lingering kiss. Astonishment, then a shy, foolish delight filled her, and in disregard of what they faced, Lara tangled her fingers in Dafydd’s hair and held on.

“Ioan,” Aerin said pointedly, “is not that light.”

Dafydd broke free with a laugh, though he touched his forehead against Lara’s and murmured “You’re so terribly pragmatic I couldn’t help myself,” before turning a smile on Aerin. “I think this will be easiest if you remain hidden behind a glamour cloak while the rest of us strip away our costumes and come to the hospital as ourselves. All three of us know Detective Washington, and friends are expected to visit.”

“That would be a better plan if I had real clothes with me.” Kelly stood arms akimbo, making everyone else look at her. “Well, the rest of you are wearing real clothes under lab coats, but I went whole hog—all the way,” she corrected herself with a half-serious glower in Lara’s direction.

“I wouldn’t have said a word,” Lara promised.

Kelly snorted. “You always say something when I use vernacular.”

“You can be the nurse bringing us up to Washington’s room,” Dafydd suggested, and Kelly, satisfied with that, relaxed out of her aggressive stance.

Aerin sighed. “Cast your change of glamour, then, Dafydd. I’m not sure I can hold a veil of unseeing within those walls.”

Color and music became more bearable as the glamour fell away from Lara herself. In seconds, she and Dafydd were as they usually were in her world, and Kelly remained unchanged save the “hospital badge” swimming in Lara’s vision when she glanced at it. Only Aerin was headache-inducing, a blur of not-quite-there that sat wrongly in the world. “All right. Let’s get inside and up to Detective Washington’s room quickly, then. The less time I have to see Aerin fading in and out like that, the better.”

“I don’t see her at all.” Kelly sounded childishly delighted as she herded them into a tight group. Together they hurried through the parking lot to enter the hospital’s front doors for the second time in less than an hour. Kelly went straight for the elevators, saying “He’s on the third floor” over her shoulder.

The doors dinged open as they reached them, and Dickon Collins, Dafydd’s cameraman and Kelly’s ex-fiancé, stepped out. Shock jolted over Lara, stopping her where she stood, and similar surprise flashed over Dickon’s face.

Then suspicion replaced it, and he lifted his voice to snap, “Security! The hospital needs security here right now!”