Don’t hold back, now, I thought. Let us know how you really feel…

I needn’t have been concerned; sharing his feelings about half-humans was something that Jimmu was, apparently, quite happy to do. “I thought your interest in the halflings brought shame upon us. I thought you were intending to invite them into our society. The idea disgusted me, and so I followed Jakes and did away with his subjects one by one. Until he began to suspect me—then he was just one more halfling stain to be blotted out. The goblins, well…” He shrugged. “They got in the way.”

There were hisses behind me, and more than a few goblins—towering above most of the other creatures in the hall—bared their multitudinous fangs. I took a firm grip on my beautiful shoes and inched away from the table.

“Is this all you have to say on the matter?” Orin asked, his expression still bizarrely calm, as if he were inquiring about the weather. “Are these your justifications for your actions?”

Jimmu’s shoulders eased up and down in a graceful shrug. “My only justification is the existence of such things as that,” he said, turning around to point at me. I groaned inwardly at the same time I gave an automatic, if entirely inappropriate, little wave. Why the fuck did I just do that? I thought, as Jimmu continued his diatribe. “Halflings are a disease that must be purged from our society,” he intoned. “Any of you who cannot see that are disgracing yourselves and our people.”

The hall was silent. I looked about, and although most beings around me looked angry at Jimmu’s words, there were quite a few that I thought didn’t look entirely displeased. I also noticed that quite a few beings were eyeballing me right back, and I quickly averted my eyes.

Finally, Orin’s and Morrigan’s voices rang out. They spoke as one, their words throbbing with authority.

“Jimmu Naga and nestmates: You have committed serious crimes against our community, to which our halfling brethren resolutely belong. You have risked bringing undue attention to our existence with your actions. And you have spoken falsely to your king and queen, and to their Court. For these crimes, which amount to acts of treason, your lives are forfeit. Kneel and accept our justice, as is our right.”

Rather unsurprisingly, none of the nagas knelt. Instead they formed a circle around Jimmu, their firstborn brother and natural leader.

“So be it,” the nagas spoke together—as if to prove that they, too, could speak in stereo. As one, they raised their swords in front of them, all of which had begun to glow blue as if sheathed in the eerie fire that Ryu had used to burn the goblin letter so many days ago.

That evening there’d been a lot of noises, like the sounds made by what came out of Jimmu’s sack, that I’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again. But the next noise to echo through the hall was one I was pretty sure I recognized.

It was the unmistakable sound of the shit hitting the fan.

With a fierce cry, Jimmu launched himself from his position among the nagas straight toward Ryu.

But my lover was nothing if not prepared. In a flash, Ryu shrugged out of his jacket while Wally pulled two scimitars out of his pantaloons. The djinn threw one wickedly curved blade to Ryu, while they both took defensive stances. I watched in disbelief as Ryu responded to Jimmu’s charge with Neo’s beckoning gesture from The Matrix.

The tiny portion of my brain that had a modicum of control shook its head, while wondering what the hell else Wally had in his pants. Maybe a way out? I thought, as Jimmu’s sword met Ryu’s with a resounding crash. With that sound, the rest of the nagas were aloft, attacking various points in the room. In response, creatures were pulling cudgels and edged weapons from underneath skirts, from inside coats, even from out of thin air. The nahuals all turned into lions, tigers, or bears (oh my!) while the Alfar created either little mage-light-looking things that they launched like projectiles at the nagas or lightsaber-looking shafts of light.

Meanwhile, the nagas—who I had to remind myself only numbered nine in total—appeared to be everywhere at once. Three had transformed into enormous black snakes. They were huge: long as RVs and thick as three WWE wrestlers grappling together. Their fangs looked as long as my body, and they had cobralike hoods that were scaled in red on the inside.

Somehow, the six that had remained in human form were no less scary than their serpentine brethren. They moved as swiftly and inexorably as water poured from a glass, cutting a swathe before them with their burning swords. I watched in horror as a naga female cut down a nahual in the shape of a tiger. The big cat had leapt from a table behind the snake woman, but she had spun around like a top and suddenly the cat was in two pieces, neither of which was moving.

Similar scenes of carnage were taking place throughout the room, but my attention quickly went back to Jimmu and Ryu, still locked in single combat. Their swords were moving so quickly they blurred and I had no idea who was winning. I wanted desperately to help my lover, but I didn’t see how I could get near. I thought about throwing my chair, but I imagined accidentally tripping Ryu and I shuddered. I had never felt more powerless in my life.

A feeling that was exacerbated when someone used the opportunity provided by the ensuing fracas to goose me. I jumped, and turned to find that Wally had somehow gotten behind me. He smiled at me, his eyes flashing, and I backed away a step. Trust no one, Ryu’s words echoed through my memory.

But Wally wasn’t there to hurt me. “Get out of here, halfling,” he said. “Your bedmate is busy and it’s about to get nasty.”

Bedmate? I thought, incredulously. And what the hell do you mean, it’s about to get nasty?

But I took Wally’s advice. With a last, and very pained, look toward where Ryu was battling with Jimmu, I grabbed my shoes, turned tail, and fled.

Suddenly an explosion rocked the hall. The king and queen had finally taken action, aiming two large orbs of energy at one of the snake-formed nagas. Both orbs hit like torpedoes, blasting off the snake’s head. Its body swayed, pumping blood up into the air like red oil, before crashing down to the ground, pinning a shocked incubus under its weight. The Alfar monarchs calmly began creating new missiles, pumping energy into small balls that grew slowly in their palms.

I had been knocked off my feet by the reverberations of the blast, and it took me a moment to clamber back up. The part of me that wasn’t shitting itself was amused that I was still clutching my shoes. Like I said, I had my priorities. My earlier scouting had revealed an exit immediately to the side of our table, which only required a short sprint to reach. The way was also relatively clear, as most of the action was currently located in the center-front of the hall. Still crouching, I gritted my teeth and focused on my goal, preparing to make a run for it, when my steps faltered. I’d caught a glimpse of the human whom Nyx had brought—he was still sitting on the edge of the head table, apparently oblivious to the chaos around him. I couldn’t just leave him there, and his kidnapper was too busy to keep him safe. Nyx was currently clinging to the back of one of the snake-formed nagas’ hood, yelling bloody murder with one of her arms stuck into the creature’s eyeball up to her elbow. She looked happy as a pig in shit.

I swore, changing direction. There was another exit immediately behind where the man was sitting, which was as good a door as the one I was heading toward, and I could grab the man on my way out. I crouched down to make myself as small a target as possible, and scuttled toward the front of the hall, trying to balance skirting around the action with getting to my destination as quickly as possible.

When I got to one of the hall’s thick pillars, I leaned against it for a moment to release the breath I’d been holding since I started off. There had been two more Alfar grenades lobbed, one of which had punched a nasty looking hole in one of the remaining snakes’ hood, leaving it reeling. Orin’s, however, had gone wide, landing with horrific consequences among a little knot of Compound servants. Forcing my gaze away from the bloodbath, I prayed that Elspeth wasn’t among them. When I caught a fleeting glimpse of Ryu, still alive but also still fencing with Jimmu, I took a deep breath and worked up the courage to leave my pillar. Not least because coming toward me was a slowly moving bundle of activity that seemed to consist of two spriggan bodyguards and the other naga female. It looked like all three were trying to club each other to death, and I remembered what Ryu had said about the spriggans being mercenaries. One of the big brutes didn’t seem to know quite which side it was on.

I used the pillar to help propel myself into the melee, running as fast as I could toward the man and the door behind him. I yelped as an arm landed with a thud in front of me. To my horror, I recognized the golden circlet encompassing the fat bicep—it was Wally’s. Just then the djinn was there, kneeling to pick up his amputated limb. He rolled his eyes at me like he’d dropped his wallet and stuck his arm back on, where it knitted smoothly back into position. Pulling another weapon from his pants—this time a cruel looking mace—he launched himself back into the fray, smiling as if he were handing out candy rather than concussions.

I shook my head and sprinted off, again, until I finally made it to my destination. When I reached him, the man was still sitting as if he were on his sofa at home rather than planted at the edge of a battlefield. I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door, but he didn’t budge. I pulled harder and harder, until I was leaning over so far I practically made a forty-five-degree angle.