Page 35 of The Filigree Key

The setter laughed, trotting up to me without a care in the world and stopping right on the edge of my shield. “He cannot hear me. His ears have long since been deaf to the natural world.”

Well I had ears, and there was something distinctly female in this wight’s voice now that it wasn’t raging. But gender meant nothing when it came to the art of deception and half-truths. My ivy-green eyes narrowed on the wight. This pure spirit had tricked me before. Its captivity had taught it something it never should’ve learned.

“I saw the truth in your memories. That ring—” The setter bristled, snarling once before mastering itself. “Was not your doing. And I know now why you can’t set my kin free to travel beyond the mist.”

The thorny vines of battle magic winked out, but the shield and the blockade on the tunnel remained. “I’m sorry,” I replied cautiously.

“My freedom?” it prompted.

“How can I be sure if I let you out you won’t do what you just did? You . . . you possessed me.” A ripple of revulsion like the scurrying of spider feet skittered down my spine. “I can’t be possessed. I have too much to do. Too much at stake.”

“A demonstration of my good will, then?”

“What can you do confined in here?”

The setter laughed, not at all offended. “My body, as you call it, is imprisoned, but my perception is not. I see all that happens here. I am a traveler of the In-Between, after all.”

To see everything but be powerless to do anything about it, much less free yourself? That had to be maddening. “You would take your revenge upon Ossian if I freed you.”

The setter morphed into the snarling wolfhound. “What allegiance do you owe him, Daughter of Violet?”

“None. But I can’t have you do that when I still need him to get to Elfame.”

“So your offer of freedom was as empty as—”

“No,” I snarled back. “It’s merely a ‘not yet.’ Besides, what would you like better? To take your revenge now when he’s at the height of his power and risk being imprisoned again, or wait until you can really hit him when it hurts?”

The wight returned to its setter form. “I did not know the meaning of the word devious until I came to be here. Nor revenge.”

“Does a snapping turtle blindly snap at a school of fish hoping to catch one, or does it patiently wait with its mouth open and its tongue wriggling like a worm to ensure it snares a meal? Or a Venus flytrap that delays closing its jaws until more than one sensory hair is triggered by a fly? Yet you would not call these devious.”

The setter sat. “I will wait until the time you free me, then.”

“And you will not interfere with me or mine, including my Grandmother?”

If the wight knew I wasn’t responsible for the ring I wore, then it had seen in my memories who truly was.

“That is a tall order.”

“That is the price of your freedom,” I retorted. “My Grandmother has much to answer for, least of all to you.”

The setter swished its feathered tail and sat down with a huff. “It is agreed. I will leave you and the Defiler alone.”

“I’ve never had dealings with a wight before—how good is your word? You already know mine, having raided my memories.” I would be sour about that for a long time to come, no doubt.

“We do not make bargains like the Fair Folk, nor empty promises like the mortals. I will show you my good will. I will bring you to the man inside the bear.”

The man inside the— “Arthur?”

“Come back when you are alone. Come at night. And I will bring you to his dreams. They are his only comfort these days.” The setter’s attention shifted. “The Horned One grows suspicious. Farewell, Daughter of Violet. Keep your word, and I’ll keep mine.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

In the atrium, I withdrew my hand from the cloch and allowed the green glow to dissipate from my hand. Overhead, the glass dome no longer shone silver with the gray light of mid-morning, but sparkled with starlight of twilight.

A whole day gone in what seemed only an hour.

“What happened?” Ossian demanded, turning me to face him. “You had it contained, and then . . ..” Apparently even he didn’t understand what he’d seen. “What happened?” he asked again.