Elves despised Fae architecture frequently calling it heroin chic (and when near children twisted twiggy style). All declared without a hint of jealousy, of course. Despite her unlawful ways, Laural took exception to the Fae laws of compounding interest. They created a section of the city that is the opposite of a ghetto in that it had all the money but definitely didn’t want to let in any of the “lessor” species. She’s gotten the most recent horse off around here. Those thieving Fae didn’t have the right to have any horses of quality. They already had immortality. What exactly else did they need to contain their perfect lives? Besides the odd kidnapped human princesses, they should be self-sufficient, isolationists by now. Her ideal Fae never met another species.

  The homes mostly consisted of eggshell white spires, golden handrailing which may or may not be actual gold leaf, and mother-of-pearl inlay forced into nearly everything available. All of it resembles rhizomes of leggy plants randomly managing to bind together. The tubular towers all stunk of wealth accumulation in undefined years which strangely smelled like forced labor and rose hips tea. Any species that had an immortal lifespan had the corresponding wealth, at least usually. All the ones she’d seen in the city. That didn’t automatically make them superior to her own kind, just for forever living. And despite the moniker, immortality meant a being capable of living forever. Not that they always would.

  Adville contained an untold number of nooks and crannies choked with various species. Every other species did not have a centuries long hate like the Fae and elves did. She’d never gone into a spaghetti house before. Not liking any Fae or friends of Fae was self-preservation. And here they were purple orced and dwarf-gianted straight into her personal worst situation ever.

  The dwarf-giant was appropriately sized to the elf door based on the fixation of relative time and space in the region. Meaning of course the dwarf-giant perfectly fit into measures, metric not imperial, but at heights which are standard to any measure of mean, while naturally being of no average size. The dwarf-giant ducked and strained upwards to reach the griffin door knocker. Made of overlapping circular wooden saplings expertly woven together to create a flat surface, it swung in before the guardsman could hit the knocker.

  A waifish Fae child sat at the door. Her big eyes that much larger for the bulbous head. A nanny bear ran over chiding her, “I told you not to open that!”

  “Oh, umn, who are you?” The grizzly asked while picking up the child and putting her on the hairy hip. The nanny bear wore a pink frilled apron and yellow hat. It clashed, but who would tell a momma bear that? Perhaps her husband wore a red shirt. Maybe a large friend had a hat and rain boots.

  The dwarf-giant bristled at the lack of a gentry greeting. “We were told to bring the prisoner here directly! We’re looking for whomever will pay us for the thief. You can pay, can’t you?”

  Lifting the child further onto her hip, the muzzle wrinkled and her face scrunched. “You need money. Let me take you to the waiting room for – the, uh, Lord.”

  She bounced the giant-headed (that is big-headed but without the connotations and in no way giant species related) Fae child up and down. The white-haired head bobbled alarmingly back and forth.

  They followed the fussy bear to a room just to the left side of entrance of two grand staircases. She pointed to the green door. “That’s the antechamber to the office.”

  They stepped in. Behind them, they heard a distinctive click, as the bear locked them in. The space was small and very strange. Under a double height ceiling, plane wooden chairs from the plains, unpainted or varnished, lined the room on all four corners. Each wall had diagrams of various feet on the walls. Mostly with anatomy being pointed out on various species. The space had one huge open window with no curtain that looked out directly into a brick wall outside, but it let in a lot of light to see by anyway. With nothing but dust motes to look at, they stared around. Noting a few strange contraptions on the floor, it looked like one could measure various claws, hoofs, and heels in.

  Taking the time to further state his authority, the dwarf-giant ordered the reptile to check the other door.

  He jiggled it then hissed. “Locked, boss.”

  At that pronouncement, they waited. With nothing better to do than stare at fluttering dust and eddies, soon they’d all sat down and measured their feet on the boards out of curiosity. Everyone muttered about their sizes and wondering how long it had been since their last set of shoes. They even did Laural’s feet to crow about how tiny her little elf toes were.

  They heard a knock on their door from the other door, and everyone bolted into a ramrod straight position. The knock had been loud.

  An affected, strident harsh voice followed the knock, “Bring in only those important!”

  Naturally, everyone pushed out the door. Leaving their bound prisoner to grunt in annoyance at their carelessness. They didn’t fully shut the door though, so she could lean forward and look into the room through the door’s opening. Fae doors often didn’t have keys so no key holes to glance through.

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  A great hulking mahogany desk sat across the middle of the space. Behind it sat the room’s lone occupant who looked like he might offer a loan. On each side, mahogany bookshelves commanded each wall and behind him another massive, none curtained window, but this one looking out into the rather sparse gardens beyond.

  Still though, despite having to squint, she focused on the man. The average romance novel might have called him exotic and hot, but that would have been only due to the necessary requirements of that literature. He was quite unattractive for a Fae, who were known to be the hottest species in the room. Very long, tall, thin and sharply elbowed and jointed. His hair was an uncomfortable pale-yellow bordering on white, and his gray eyes washed out. He wore his hair loose to his mid-back and his ears, the longer more elegant point of a Fae. Least someone imagine the hair was shiny or cared for, it was instead long, greasy, and slightly stringy. He had a prominent hooked nose. Fae tended to have either a very long curved up or down nose. Like their ears and their nose got pulled too long for their face but then got rested back there by accident. Nose reshaping has become a common fashion. The nose job might be undertaken at the tender young age of fifty-five. Those that didn’t typically glammed their appearance to hide their lack of fortune to afford a new face. Therefore, seeing such an obvious old generation Fae feature was a tad shocking. It might mean this Fae was very poor or perhaps very traditional. Fundamentalist Fae believed nose reshaping to be conforming to weaker species’ views on attractiveness.

  Laural knew heaps and jeeps about her natural born enemy. One must know in a city like Adville. Where the Fae to elf ratio was nearly even, with all the money on a Fae side, and thus a huge source of conflict.

  He wore original Fae garb as well. The layers of silk piled up enough to puff out his frame with clearly seventeen layers of silk. It made his hands stick out awkwardly, and those she noticed with surprise had a few calluses. The inner robes appeared to be various layers of whites and yellows, while the top brocade of rich greens, red flowers, and hand switched embroidery from edge to edge didn’t match his skin color. It made him appear even more sallow. Either he had someone who deeply disliked him dressing him or the whole outfit had belonged to a different Fae before him. It swallowed him whole in a reverse cocoon of garments. His whole body shifted slightly which caused an extreme rustling and scraping of the garments. They also were pompous gasbags that nobody liked except other Fae. That’s what Granny told her as a young elfling, anyway.

  The large size of his wallet and not his thin arms would be this one’s strength. She guessed. Always true with the Fae, useless except for bickering and dickering. They never did proper buying or selling.

  After shielding his eyes from the new light of the window, their self-appointed leader grunted, “That one is your quarry as expected. We dropped her into the foot antechamber. Do you need anything else for us to get paid?”

  “An extra guard to stay with me while I confer with her. It’s up to her if she will be freed or sent to the gulag.” The Fae said this calmly.

  “New Guy! Stay!”

  Even the Fae shifted uncomfortably at the aggressive tone. If anyone in this room shouted at people, it had to be one of the so called “higher” species. Higher species means that they were capable of being immortal. Although in practice, immortality meant a lot of different things to different species. The line between long lived species and higher had long been debated among philosophers. Usually resulting in the end “Really old,” “extremely old,” “very old”, or “Ancient old” becoming a pedantic discussion on the meaning of aged.

  “Your pay is located on the dining table along with refreshments, to your right at the entrance.” The Fae gave him a wide smile that appeared pasted on instead of natural. It dropped as the dwarf-giant left. Every guard except the orc left through the foot room, leaving the door fully open to see the Fae and purple orc together, while she sat alone trussed up.

  He ignored the prisoner for the time being. “Are you interested in better pay with a better,” he hesitated over the word, “manager? Umn, leader?”

  The orc considered this. “What would I do?”

  “Guard myself as I do everything. It might also include work outside the city. You could keep being treated like a trained dog and getting a third of the money while being in danger from an off-worlder.”

  “A third, you say?”

  The Fae gave a toothy grin. Bodi took in the man with close attention. Like the orc, Fae have different features than an elf. Most possessed four-pointed back teeth that could be exposed at will but generally weren’t unless the Fae felt comfortable.

  The orc on the other hand noticed that unlike the elf who had magic of the natural kind. This Fae of whom was the first he’d meant of the species practically oozed magic from every poor pore of his body. Magic poured out. A strangeness that he couldn’t say if it was actually caused by the location or the Fae’s existence or this particular Fae’s abilities. He had slicked back hair and a long, hooked nose. A thin frame, shorter than Bodi himself but still reasonably tall.

  The Fae had the appearance of wealth. Silken shirts and uncomfortable brocade green pants. Yet, Bodi sensed a difference there. For one, most of the ultrawealthy didn’t notice guards getting yelled at overly much. For two, few of them would waste their time meeting someone that stole their horses. Whipping, sure. Perhaps a form of sadistic pleasure, but this might be true interest. What could one expect in such a creature?

  “Is this a deal? Perhaps you have a longer contract with those guards?”

  “No. I’m quite amenable to joining you. So long as you understand I won’t be as commanded as I’ve been doing with the guards. I want allowed more choice of my schedule and what I get to say and do.”

  “Done. So long as my property and my person are protected, that’s all I will need. You can bring the prisoner in if you want to or I can have another fetch her.”

  “I’ll get her. She’s slippery.”

  Slippery is something she would have liked being called, but in truth all she’d been able to do while they’d shoved in the small room was observe and listen to the entire conversation while she wondered how anyone could build such a solid locked antechamber. Had it been designed to hold prisoners or by someone who had a deep love of craftsmanship? Either lent itself to being quite hard to escape from. She had no weapons and with her hands tied up, lost circulation. It had not stopped her from eavesdropping and peaking. Neither the missing keyhole nor the door would have been open enough for it, so she’d been lucky the guards were careless in leaving it open.

  The orc moved slower to heft her up and bring her over to her new captor.