She turned to look at me and I froze in place for a moment. It took her a couple of seconds to focus on me, her expression settled in the liquid serenity of deep focus. She spoke, her voice rich and sleepy-sensual. “What is it, my Knight?”

Her eyes had changed.

They were a deep, glacial blue-green. And her pupils had changed shape. They had become feline, like most of the Sidhe.

She blinked several times, focusing on me by degrees, coming up out of the state of concentration she’d been in, and as she did her eyes changed color again, lightening to their natural sky blue, pupils shifting back to circles. “Give me a second, Harry. I’m . . . tracking about two dozen conversations. . . .” Then she exhaled, sighed, scratched at the end of her nose, and said, “What can I do you for?”

I hooked a thumb at the Redcap. “Need to borrow him for a few minutes. I’m going to do something about these squid things and I figure they might object.”

Molly arched an eyebrow. “You’d trust him?”

“I’d trust you.”

Molly eyed me and then nodded. “Sure. Go with him, Red. Guard him as you would me.”

The Redcap bowed his head deeply toward Molly and said, “My lady.” Then he turned to me, smiling diffidently. “Sir Knight, I am at your disposal.”

“If you were,” I said, “I would.”

“Bold words for a man about to trust me with his life,” the Redcap mused.

“Just making it clear where we stand,” I said.

The Redcap smirked. He . . . reminded me considerably of Thomas, now that I thought about it. Six feet and a little lean, dark-haired, and beautiful in the alien way of the Sidhe that would only have let him blend into the oddest of crowds. He was pantherine, slim with hard muscle, relaxed and flowing in his movements, and capable of tremendous speed and the effortless grace that I had witnessed nowhere so much as in the Sidhe at war.

Legend had it that his hat was red because he constantly dipped it in the blood of his victims to keep it nice and bright. He was one of the more prolific killers in the Winter Court, and his star had been in bloody ascendance ever since the death of the last Winter Lady.

I stared at him for a second and said, “Considering you were helping Maeve screw up the world the last time I saw you, you’ve done pretty well in your career path.”

“Is that what I was doing?” the Redcap asked, his tone guileless.

I stopped and stared at him for a second. Then I said, “Hell’s bells.”

“Ah,” the Redcap said, grinning. “The ape finally works it out.”

“You weren’t working for Maeve at all, were you?”

“Years late to the party,” the Redcap said, “but I suppose you got there eventually.” He tapped his pistol against his leg. “Mab had positioned me in Maeve’s court about thirty years before. I’d been feeding her information while I served her daughter.”

“And everything you did to me was meant to assist me.”

“Or keep my cover with Maeve, yes,” the Redcap said. “Or because it was amusing. I’d apologize for the wound, but hurting you at that time was all three. Honestly, we all thought you would realize the script and play along. But you bumbled your way through it more or less, I suppose.”

I just stared at him for a second. Then I said, “I don’t suppose it occurred to anyone to just talk to me.”

“How many feet higher do the letters need to be in order to spell it out for you, wizard?” the Redcap asked, amused. “Best you learn to read the subtext, if you wish to continue in this business. Besides. It’s not as if Mab can just hand the Wild Hunt to a mortal to play with.” He shook his head. “Strife between queens is a terrible thing for the rest of us. Each can lay commands upon us that we cannot refuse. If one is to hold to one’s loyalties, it requires a great deal of careful negotiation of circumstance and conversation to function at all.”

“So you were bodyguarding Maeve,” I said. “And you more or less betrayed her to her death.”

“It was necessary.”

“And now you’re bodyguarding Molly.”

“That is my privilege.”

“And if it becomes necessary to betray the Winter Lady again?”

“I should do so without hesitation,” he replied calmly.

“If you do,” I said, “there will be stories about what happens to you.”

The Redcap tilted his head and regarded me quizzically. “I don’t think you understand my position, wizard. The lady I now serve meets the highest criteria for my approval that I could reasonably expect from someone still so . . . mortal. She is attentive to her duty, efficient in her execution, and deals appropriately with her enemies. So long as she continues so, she will have my support.”

“And the moment she weakens?”

The Redcap gave me a small smile that showed sharp canines. “This is the Winter Court. One shudders to think what would happen to her.” His smile sharpened slightly. “Or you.”

I glowered at him.

“Just making it clear where we stand,” he said, in the most annoying way possible. “Honestly, I have no feelings for you personally either way. Excuse me.”

And he lifted his gun and sent a bullet about six inches past my left ear.

By the time I flinched, there was a splattering sound and one of the squid things flopped and contorted on the floor, coming to a halt and dying a leaking, broken little monstrosity, ichor making the stones of the castle spark and sizzle.

I rubbed furiously at my ear, which itched tremendously for no good reason at all, and scowled at the Redcap.

He lifted his pistol, smiled, and said, “As my lady commands. Proceed, wizard.”

I grimaced at him. Then I trudged over to the battlements where the pizza had been set up and crouched down in the corner, where I’d have cover from assassin squid from a couple of directions at least. The Redcap followed, coming to a halt about ten feet away from me and simply standing there, gun in hand, waiting.

I got down to business. A stick of chalk from my pocket and the pizza were all I really needed. Summonings were pretty straightforward affairs, magically speaking. It was the consequences of summonings that got complicated.

For example, I was about to attempt a summoning using a being’s true name, right here in front of half of the world. Dammit. I’d have to go nonverbal on this one. It was a low-powered-enough spell that, with any luck, wouldn’t hurt too much to perform silently.

Words and magic go hand in hand. Hell, half the words to describe magic practitioners go back to root sources that basically mean speaker. There’s a reason for that. Magic happens mainly in your head, fueled by emotion and shaped by concentration, reason, and raw will. There’s an awful lot of juice going through your brain at any given moment while performing real magic, enough to actually do damage to it.