Chapter Five
Once every cup was filled and the real party got started, Cheyenne found herself staring at the golden liquid poured from the keg into her fake-fancy goblet. Ember laughed at a toast one of the rowdy rebels tossed her way and approached her friend’s side, grinning from ear to ear. “Honestly, I thought the fighting was crazy, but this?”
Cheyenne said, “I know, right?”
“It doesn’t even seem real.”
“Tell me about it.”
Ember peered over the lip of Cheyenne’s black goblet. “No fellwine for you either, huh?”
“Are you kidding?” The halfling snorted and gestured at the revelers with her drink. “These guys make everything we did at Peridosh look like a bunch of kids on a playground. And Maleshi’s drinking out of a freakin’ skull.”
“You think it’s real?” Ember lifted her heavy metal tankard of Bloodshine and raised her eyebrows as she slurped.
“I mean, it could be, for all we know. Dipped in silver or something. Or it could be a gag.”
“You should ask her.”
Cheyenne laughed. “I should ask her?”
“Don’t look at me like that. No way in hell am I going up to the psychotic nightstalker warlord to ask if her drinking skull is the real deal or a prop.”
“Ha. You’re forgetting one important detail, Em.”
The fae girl cocked her head and shot her friend an exasperated look. “Enlighten me, then.”
“You’re Nós Aní to the Aranél of Ambar’ogúl.” Cheyenne fought back a shudder. “You can ask anyone anything you want, and they can’t do a damn thing about it.”
“Oh.” Ember found Maleshi in the crowd of drinking rebels. The general had propped one blood-splattered boot on the closest pulled-out chair and leaned forward over the table, laughing and drinking out of her silver skull with the others. “Still, you should ask her.”
“I think you care a lot more about the story behind that one than I do. Might as well use your high status while you can. Your best friend’s drow royalty, apparently.” Cheyenne snickered and lifted her goblet in a sarcastic toast before taking her first drink of Bloodshine. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed at the burst of tingling bubbles sailing both down her throat and somehow up to her head. “I don’t know what to say about this stuff.”
“Like champagne on steroids.” Ember took another long drink and smacked her lips. “I love it.”
Cheyenne laughed and looked at her friend in surprise. Then she caught sight of Foltr for the first time and lowered her goblet.
The gnarled old raug had made his appearance at the celebration without anyone noticing his arrival through one of the dozen archways leading into the bunker’s main chamber. He shambled toward the partygoers with a heavily wrinkled scowl on his gray face, orange-brown eyes blazing beneath the thick ridges of his furrowed, hairless eyebrows. The heavy walking stick in his clawed hand clacked on the stone floor, but it wasn’t loud enough to draw anyone else’s attention. When he stopped at the end of the huge black table, he propped both wizened hands on the top of his stick and lifted his chin. Then he cracked the base of the stick against the floor and sent strobing orange light in every direction.
The rebels turned toward him with their smiles frozen on their faces. Foltr lifted his stick and pointed at the table. “It’s been a long time, but I assumed you lot were smarter than a pen of bare-assed pups still sucking on their mothers’ teats. Clear the table. Give the seats to those who earned them. And somebody better pour me a drink before I have to come after it myself.”
Laughing, Sakrit grabbed the last tankard from the open chest before hurling the empty box behind him. It clattered to the floor, quickly followed by the second, and he grabbed a half-empty bottle of fellwine to fill the tankard to the brim. He turned back toward Foltr with a grin. “For the ancient one.”
“The ancient sleeping one,” a troll man shouted, raising his goblet. “You missed all the action, raug!”
“I miss nothing.” Foltr snatched his drink from Sakrit’s hand with a grunt and moved toward the closest chair beside the head of the table. He took a moment to upend his drink in a long guzzle, then slammed the tankard to the table before lowering himself into the chair. “But the lot of you seem to be missing the point entirely. Don’t make me say it again.”
A cheer rose from the surrounding magicals as a select few removed themselves from the crowd to head toward the table. Maleshi slid her boot off the chair and sat where she was. Corian and L’zar approached the end of the table, where the drow sat at the head beside Foltr and the nightstalker took the chair on L’zar’s other side. Jara’ak, the buzzing magical made of swarming black specks, Lumil, and Byrd joined them.
“Cheyenne.” Foltr stretched his arm toward her and nodded. “I would be honored if the Aranél sat beside me. Both of you, of course.”
“Right.” Cheyenne and Ember exchanged confused glances before making their way toward the table. The halfling sat in the chair beside the ancient raug, who sniffed and nodded curtly before propping one hand on the top of his crooked cane and grabbing his tankard with the other. Ember sat on her other side and gazed at the others at the table while the rest of the magicals stood or lounged about on stacked crates, drinking and laughing in their own private conversations and ignoring the little meeting the raug had called.
The troll woman Elarit Masharun took a seat directly across the table from Cheyenne. The silver chains draping across her purple nose from one eyebrow to the other were flecked with someone else’s blood, and she widened her eyes at the halfling with a small, approving
