Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [74]
“Well now someone does,” Sasha replied, and proceeded to brush and comb the Little Humpback Horse until the dark grey coat shone like the tsar’s favorite steed on parade.
“She has me bound with a spell,” said Sergei. “She plays it on that flute thing.” And he nodded at a peculiar instrument hanging on the wall beside the stall.
And at that, Sasha smiled. A musical spell, hmm?
Fortune was favoring her Fool.
If this goes wrong, Sasha is going to kill me, Katya thought, as she lurked in a still-overgrown corner of the garden, just out of sight of the fountain where the Rusalka was sulking. Then again, if this went wrong, Sasha wouldn’t have to kill her….
She was waiting for the moment when she felt the Jinn appear, and hopefully she would even see him when he did. Then she would go down to the fountain and let the Rusalka attack her. Even if the Jinn didn’t see the attack, he should sense the small magic she would use to help to cover her ability to breathe water. Since he had already reacted poorly to her use of magic once, that should bring him, and then he would see the attack.
She fingered the high, uncomfortable gold collar she was wearing. She and the others had found it rummaging through the jewelry the Katschei had accumulated. Hopefully it would be enough to protect her neck and make the Rusalka switch from trying to choke her to trying to drown her.
There were a lot of things depending on hope, here. But then again, this Jinn was like a grain of sand in an oyster shell. The Tradition didn’t want him there, and was secreting layer after layer of magic to try to be rid of him. If she could only tap into that, her schemes would go much smoother.
Her head went up as she sensed the Jinn.
The hum was faint and far off, but growing nearer. She only wished she could tell what direction he was coming from.
The hum grew louder. Nearer now…
She looked about from under cover of the trees she was hiding among. No sight of him on the battlements. He might be somewhere inside the building.
Or not. The hum was still approaching.
Then it stopped moving. She looked around again, but still couldn’t see him. She was just going to have to take her chances.
Taking a deep breath, she walked out into the garden, the sun hitting her like a hammer, taking the path that was going to put her walking right past the fountain, as if she had forgotten that the Rusalka was there. And it took everything she had to pretend that she was focusing on something else, something off to the other side of the garden and not on the fountain.
There was no sign of the Rusalka, but then, there wouldn’t be. The evil bitch was hiding under the water, waiting. She’d spring out at the last moment….
Katya drew even with the raised basin of the fountain. Went a little past—reached about the middle.
With a shriek of pure rage, the Rusalka erupted from the fountain and seized her neck.
Katya didn’t have to feign a scream; even though she was expecting the attack, the Rusalka surprised her. She felt the strong hands closing around her neck, heard the Rusalka’s grunt of surprise as her hands encountered the collar. Meanwhile Katya was fighting back, kicking and scratching, pulling hair. The goal, after all, was certainly not to appear passive! As she scored the Rusalka’s face with her nails, the creature shrieked again, and with a sideways twist of her body, flung them both into the fountain with a tremendous splash. The water cushioned their fall, but the stone coping around the basin hit Katya in the leg so hard she knew it was going to leave a black-and-blue mark the size of her own head, and her head bounced off the bottom of the fountain hard enough