Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [101]
“Tell us!” Klava demanded. The rest gathered closely around to hear what she had to say.
“One of them is Prince Alexsandr of Led Belarus, my betrothed Sasha,” she said, and blushed. “But he is not one of the Champions.”
“What is he then?” asked Klava. “A great warrior?”
She had to laugh at that. “Better. A Songweaver.”
No matter what Tradition they came from, it seemed that all of the girls knew what a Songweaver was. “We call that a Skald,” said the dark one, looking impressed. “Is he a Greater or a Lesser Skald? Does he tell The Tradition a new path and make it listen and heed him, or does he cajole it into believing that his way is the Path it wishes to take?”
“Oh, it is persuasion he does.” Katya smiled. The dark girl nodded.
“That may well be of more use to us,” was all she said, but Katya felt her warm approval.
“The other two—” she paused for effect “—are dragons.”
Well that certainly put the fox in the henhouse! It was a good thing that the Jinn was gone because the babble that arose was enough to wake the dead. Katya just let it run out, since she knew she wouldn’t get a word in anyway. Fortunately it wasn’t so much noisy as it was confusing with everyone trying to talk at once. When they all finally ran out of things to say—mostly about frying pans and fires—she spread her hands.
“I haven’t got a lot of answers for you. The amount of information I can get from my bird is quite small.” They nodded at that, and accepted it. That was a relief. “All I know is this. They are Champions, or my bird wouldn’t have gone to them. I was very specific on that point. If they are Champions, that means that they will fight to free us. And Sasha wouldn’t be with them if they weren’t going to help us. He is not easily deceived.”
There were glances all around. Finally it was Klava who said, a little reluctantly, “Well, if they really are Champions…”
Lyuba began to chuckle. “Oh think! Dragons! No matter how powerful the Jinn is—these are dragons! They’ll make him think twice, at least!”
“And we really need to find that bottle,” Katya said firmly. “It does us no good to fight and defeat the Jinn if we can’t confine him again, because I don’t think we can actually kill something like him. It’s time for all of us to put every moment we can into the hunt.”
“You know,” the bear-girl said slowly, “we might be going about this all wrong. Instead of finding where it is, it will be easier to find where it isn’t. We need to make a map of the castle and start eliminating places.”
“There is one. It’s in the guardroom. The old one, that the Jinn’s people don’t use.” That was the gypsy. “I’ll bring it here. Then we can search every room completely.”
Katya nodded. “And it might sound like a waste of time, but I think each one of us ought to go over every room. We each have abilities that the others don’t.” There was a sly look from the gypsy, and Katya thought wryly, And I know what yours are, because she knew for a fact that the “old” guardroom had been locked the last time she’d checked it. Well, having someone who could pick locks around was going to be heaven-sent.
As the gypsy slipped out, and the others gathered to discuss how to perform the searches, the girl in white sidled up to Katya. “You want to talk to me,” she whispered.
Katya nodded, and put her hand comfortingly on top of the girl’s. It was ice cold, as she had suspected. “You aren’t alive, are you?”
Two slow tears formed in the girl’s colorless