Chapter 238 The Jugglers
POV: Fae Warrior Senna | St. Thomas site, upper and sublevel
The humans always watch with the expression of people who are not certain whether what they are seeing is beautiful or terrifying, which is the correct response because it is both, and we have never seen any reason to choose between those two qualities when both are available simultaneously.
My name is Senna and I have been a member of the Queen's strike cadre for forty years and in that time I have developed the philosophy that all cadre members eventually develop, which is that the work we do and the form the work takes are not separable, that how you fight is as important as whether you fight, that a death delivered without craft is a waste of the moment that produced it.
Tom called the favor at midnight and the Queen answered it personally, which is the specific statement about the value of the favor that the Queen's personal response makes, and we arrived at the St. Thomas site at twelve thirty-seven with eleven cadre members and the Queen in the vehicle behind us and the specific focused quality of people who have been given both permission and purpose.
The Hermetic mages in the upper facility are the ones that Alteroni's Parliamentary guards have partially contained and partially not contained, three in custody and two who slipped through the containment during the chaos of the facility's multiple simultaneous engagements, and the two who slipped through are in the stairwell heading down with the specific urgency of people who are trying to reach the lower levels before the lower levels are fully locked.
We intercept them at the top of the stairs.
The first mage throws an offensive ward immediately, which is the correct tactical response to encountering a fae strike team in a stairwell, and the ward is technically well-executed, the compression ratio good, the targeting accurate. What the mage did not account for is that the ward arrives where I was rather than where I am, because the forty years of cadre training include the specific skill of not being where the incoming thing is aimed when the incoming thing arrives, and I am three feet to the left and the ward hits the wall and I am already moving with the blade that is mine in the way tools are yours when you have been using them long enough that the distinction between the tool and the hand holding it becomes technical.
The motion is dance-like because all correct motion is dance-like, which is to say it is the motion of a body doing exactly what it is designed to do, and the blade moves through the space that the mage's defensive posture leaves open with the specific beauty of a thing going to where it is supposed to go, and the mage goes down.
The second mage is watching the first go down and has approximately one second of that watching before the second cadre member, who has been behind me in the stairwell and who has the specific quality of someone who treats a partner's engagement as a performance to be complemented rather than competed with, arrives at the second mage's position from an angle the second mage was not tracking.
Two mages, twelve seconds, two cadre members. The other nine secure the upper facility perimeter with the efficiency of people who have done this in more complicated environments than an abandoned hospital stairwell.
The Queen arrives at the facility entrance at twelve forty-nine and she has the quality that fae royalty has in person, which is a quality that photographs and descriptions do not capture, the specific quality of something very old and very aware and very deliberately present, and she walks through the facility with the attention of someone reading a place rather than simply occupying it, and she goes all the way down to the sublevel holding area where the hybrid children are being managed by the remaining members of Callum's team and where the chamber is now in Callum's arms, and Isla is on the floor being worked on by the Parliamentary medic that Alteroni had the presence of mind to bring.
The Queen stands in the doorway of the sublevel holding area and she looks at the chamber in Callum's arms, at the hum of the preservation equipment, at the form visible inside it.
She looks for a long time.
"The child has fae genetics," she says, to the room and to Callum specifically, and she says it with the specific quality of someone delivering information that has weight beyond its face value. "A fae bloodline contributed to her conception in ways that neither parent was aware of. This is not unusual. Fae bloodlines move through human and supernatural populations in ways we track and they do not." She looks at the chamber. "She is fae-touched. She is under our protection."