Gessa nodded.
Stinky didn’t want to leave, but a firm pat on the backside from Olga and a stern look from me, and he loped off with Gessa, one small hand in hers and the other dragging the huge bear.
Leaving just us grown-ups.
Except for the small troll, who didn’t look that old to me.
Or to Claire, I guess, because she moved toward the forest of blades before I could stop her. “He’s a child, and he’s dying!” She stared around the table, green eyes flashing. “What is wrong with you?”
“You help,” Olga told her a
gain, subtly getting between Claire and the male trolls.
“I can’t help!” Claire said, shoving frazzled red hair out of her eyes. “You should have come to me sooner—”
“Just found.”
“He’s your nephew?” I asked, because I really hoped not.
“No. Slave. Ran away last night, after fight.”
“What happened?”
“Slaver’s men found. Tried to kill.”
“So he couldn’t rat them out,” I guessed.
She nodded. “We find, but they find first. Killed them.” It was nonchalant.
Good, I thought.
I’d find some more to question.
Ones who hadn’t tried to kill a child.
“Listen to me,” Claire said, looking around the table. “I don’t have the skill for this. Do you understand? I need help.”
Nothing.
Nobody moved; nobody breathed. A bunch of humans would have had tired arms by now, holding weapons that heavy that still for so long, but the trolls hadn’t so much as blinked. They looked like some kind of Renaissance tableau—a deadly one, with small, dark eyes reflecting the overhead lighting, which also glimmered on the swords and axes and knives. And on the scattered pieces of armor that some of them wore, despite the fact that I’d rarely seen trolls think they needed it.
“Listen!” Claire said again, because it didn’t look like anyone was. “I can’t help your friend. But he can.”
She pointed wildly at her father-in-law, who also hadn’t moved, not so much as a finger. He was still in the doorway, hands loose, weapon still in its sheath. Not that it mattered. Every damned person in the room knew how quickly that could change, which probably explained the standoff.
Well, partly explained it.
“I thought you guys were okay?” I asked Olga, looking from her to Caedmon. They’d seemed to get along at a dinner party they’d attended at my crazy uncle Radu’s recently. Who was absolutely the kind of guy to put Dark and Light Fey at the same table and think nothing of it. Yet, somehow, everything had worked out.
More or less.
But the less hadn’t been because Olga and Caedmon were at each other’s throat. They might not be friends, because fey didn’t really understand that term the way humans did, but they also weren’t enemies. At least, I hadn’t thought so.
“We okay,” Olga agreed, and several of the nearest trolls growled.
This did not appear to faze her.
“He not hurt us,” she pointed out, with a little more liveliness than I was used to from Olga.