The imaginary attack died as imaginary William got sliced in two by Nancy's flash. They had him. One superior flasher he could handle. Between the two of them, they would mince him into pieces before he got his fingers around anyone's throat.
William crossed his arms. "What is it you want?"
The woman raised her head. "I want you to go deeper into the Edge and find Spider. I want you to take away the object he's looking for and bring it to me. If you kill him, I would consider it a bonus."
Well, he did ask. "Why me?"
"Because he knows my agents. He knows the way they think, and he kills them. You've tangled with him twice and survived. So far, it's a record." She locked her teeth, making the muscles on her jaw stand out. "Spider is the worst kind of enemy. He's a true believer, convinced that he's serving a higher cause. He won't stop until he's dead."
"And you're here because you don't want to waste your people hunting him," William said. As a changeling, he was expendable. Nothing new there.
Nancy's voice cracked like a whip. "I'm here, because of all of the operatives available to me, you are the best man for the job and I can't suffer another failure. I can't compel you to help me. I have no authority over you. I can only ask."
If that was the way she asked, he hated to hear what her order sounded like.
She did ask all the same. That was new. He'd been given orders all his life. Declan was the only one who bothered to ask him anything. The dumb blueblood insisted on treating him as if he were a real person. Still, William reflected, he had a comfortable life. Asking alone wouldn't pry him free from it - but they also brought Spider to the table. The knowledge that the child murderer was within his reach would eat at him now, burrowing like a tick under his skin, until it would drive him crazy. He had to kill the man. It was the last bit of unfinished business he had. He'd murder Spider, taste his blood, and come back here without a weight on his soul.
Go deeper into the Edge, huh? The Edge wrapped the junction of two worlds all the way from one ocean to another, widening and narrowing whenever it felt like it. Sometimes it was three miles deep, sometimes fifty. "Where in the Edge is Spider?"
"In the swamps," Erwin said. "West of here, the Edge narrows down almost to nothing and then abruptly widens to encompass an enormous swamp the locals call the Mire. We estimate it to be at least six hundred square leagues, perhaps bigger."
Nine hundred square miles. "A hell of a swamp."
"The Mire is sandwiched between the Weird and the Dukedom of Louisiana and the Broken and the state of Louisiana," Erwin continued. "Most of it is mud and water, impassable and unmapped. The Dukedom has been dumping exiles into it for years. They're too full of magic to escape into the Broken, so they simply stay there, stranded between the worlds."
William raised his eyebrows. "A swamp full of criminals." He would be right at home.
"Precisely." Nancy nodded. "Spider is an urban agent. Nothing short of a dire need would drag him to the Mire, where he's out of his element. There are a dozen places where things are heating up, but instead his crew is scouring the swamps. They're looking for something. I want to know what it is and I want to own it."
She didn't ask much, did she? Just the moon and the stars.
"The Louisianans moved a detachment of Air Force wyverns to the border with the Mire," Erwin said.
William grimaced. "They expect to airlift Spider as soon as he gets out of the swamp."
Erwin nodded.
Whatever Spider was looking for had to be valuable if they were willing to park a wyvern for him.
A predatory light sparked in Nancy's eyes. "The Dukedom of Louisiana wants a war, but they're unwilling to risk it unless they're certain of their victory. Spider has been trying to deliver the means to win this war for the last ten years. This time he must've found something remarkable. If the war starts and the Dukedom wins, every changeling within our borders will be murdered."
"Don't," William warned. "The pictures were unexpected, but I'm not an idiot. I know what you're trying to do." Changelings had a harder time controlling their emotions. That was one of Hawk's favorite tactics: rile up the changelings, get them angry with the scent of blood or a punch in the face, and send them into the fight to rend everything they came across. He was an old wolf and this wasn't his first hunt. "Cheap tricks don't work on me."
Nancy smiled and he fought an urge to step back.
"I was right. You will do nicely. We will give you all of the support at our disposal. Weapons, technology, maps, intelligence on Spider's crew."
William showed her his teeth. "I don't like you and I don't like this mission."
"You're not required to like me or the mission," Nancy told him. "You're required to complete your task. That's all."
"Suppose I do this for you. What do I get?"
Nancy arched her eyebrows. "First, you'll get vengeance. Second, I will owe you a favor. There are people who would cut off their right arm for that alone. But more importantly, you will know with absolute certainty that Spider will never kill another changeling child. Think on it, William Wolf. But be fast about it. Time is short."
A cold drizzle sifted onto the swamp, blurring the trees and obscuring the narrow road. The sounds of three horses clopping merrily along blended with the noise of the birds and chirping of insects.
Given a choice, Cerise would've galloped. Instead she kept the pace slow. The last thing they needed was to blunder at full gallop into an ambush.
"It's Sheeriles," Erian said from the right. Slim, blond, he rode like he was born in the saddle. The feud between their family and the Sheeriles had taken his mother when he was eleven, and Cerise's parents had raised him. He was more like a brother than a cousin.
"They have no reason to restart the feud," Mikita boomed. Nature had forgotten to install a volume control when he was born, and he came with two sound settings: thunder and louder thunder.
Unlike Erian, Mikita rode as if he was afraid the horse would somehow escape from underneath his huge blocky body. Six-feet-five, two hundred and sixty pounds, none of it fat, he was almost too big to be a Mar. Hard to grow that large on a ration of fish and swamp berries, but Mikita had somehow managed.
"The Sheeriles don't need a reason," Erian said.
"They do and you know it. If they can't show cause, the Mire militia will come down on them like a ton of bricks," Mikita said.
Mikita was right, Cerise thought, as they rounded the bend in the twisted road. The Dukedom of Louisiana was very generous in supplementing the Mire's population with exiles. None of them was law-abiding or peaceful. The Edger families stuck together, turning into clans full of half-starved locals with itchy trigger fingers. Feuds bloomed in the Mire like swamp flowers, and some of the old-timers threw around heavy magic. In their family alone, they counted four cursers and seven flashers, and then there were people like Catherine and Kaldar, whose magic was so specific they had no name for it. If the feuds had been left unchecked, pretty soon there wouldn't have been anybody left in the Mire to feud with.