Precise oaths, p.1
Precise Oaths, page 1
Precise Oaths
Paige E. Ewing
PRECISE OATHS
By
Paige E. Ewing
Copyright © 2023 Paige Roberts
Edited by Lisa Green.
Cover Design by MiblArt.
All stock photos licensed appropriately.
Published in the United States by City Owl Press.
www.cityowlpress.com
For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at info@cityowlpress.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.
Contents
1. Madame Anna Sees All
2. Other Nature
3. Fae Colonel
4. Wolf Trap
5. Aerial Battle
6. Tiger By The Tail
7. Spider Bite
8. The Fairy And The Goblin
9. Bedridden Badger
10. Nosy Rabbit
11. Towering Enemy
12. Wolf’s Bane
13. Binding Negotiations
14. Stella
15. Widow Spiders
16. Sick Day
17. The Prince And The Old Oak
Sneak Peek of Mirror Witch
Find Your Next Read
Want More City Owl Press Books?
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher
Additional Titles
Praise for Paige E. Ewing
“Paige Ewing has written a romp of a book in Precise Oaths. Liliana is an engaging, sympathetic heroine with a striking view of the world. One of the things I enjoyed was the way it made me look at being neurodivergent in a new way without once being preachy. What’s more, Precise Oaths is tremendous fun. Liliana’s quirky worldview is mixed with pure determination and ingenuity, along with a strong moral core. The writing is clean and flowing, with a host of terrific characters and great worldbuilding. It’s hard to write a thought-provoking book that’s also fun to read, but Paige pulled it off in spades.” — Angela Knight, New York Times Bestselling author
“Liliana may not always know how to act with humans, but she has deep knowledge of the ways of the Fae and the Others. Some unlikely alliances and Liliana's abilities give us a rollicking adventure and set the stage for more stories to come. It’s a lovely book and I look forward to reading the sequels. I need to know what happens next!” — Nancy Jane Moore, author of The Weave
To my mother, Janice Service, who helped build a love of books into my life from a young age, and told me, “You be what you want to be. I don’t care if you want to dig ditches for a living. But if you want to dig ditches, then you better be the best damn ditch digger you can be.” I’m writing books, but I swear, I’m the best damn book writer I can be.
Chapter 1
Madame Anna Sees All
People who knew about Others thought spider-kin seers couldn’t be surprised, but even Liliana could only see what she looked for. No one wakes up and wonders, Will a Celtic werewolf accuse me of murder today?
Liliana simply looked to see what the weather would be, just as she did every morning. When her fourth eyes showed her a fast-forward movie of clouds gathering and drizzly rain, she put on warm blue knit tights under her purple velvet skirt.
Her only plan for the day was to clean and organize before her favorite client’s appointment. Janice Willoughby had been her client for over a decade. The room-bot that kept her floors spotless and dusted everything it could reach was a thank you gift from Mrs. Willoughby. Something to do with Liliana’s advice helping her to become Mrs. Willoughby. She even invited Liliana to her wedding ten years ago in the Fayetteville Community Church.
The spider-kin seer didn’t go of course. Weddings were filled with crowds of strangers. But it was still nice to be invited. And the room-bot was marvelously useful.
Unfortunately, the handy bot’s telescoping arms couldn’t reach to dust the highest shelves in the room where the spider seer conducted business. Liliana balanced on her ballet-slippered toes between the back slats of a wooden chair and the edge of a shelf while she dusted. Out of boredom, she let her fourth eyes wander. Large and cat-slanted, the eyes opened on her forehead above her eyebrows, lavender and teal opalescent colors swirling.
She saw three strangers on her front porch. The shortest one would knock on the front door—very soon by the sharp, barely future shading of the vision. She glanced at the nicely dressed short woman’s wrist phone as she lifted her hand to knock.
She had only a minute or two until they arrived, depending on how accurate the time on the woman’s wrist phone was.
Strangers.
Liliana twisted the dust rag in her hands. Strangers often laughed at her or spoke to her slowly as if she were stupid.
Her clients understood that Liliana had trouble sometimes remembering to follow social rules. Strangers expected her to already know and follow all the rules.
Who made up the social rules anyway? How does everyone else always know them?
She sighed in frustration, balanced on one toe tip on the chair’s back for a moment, then hopped lightly down to the hardwood floor. She tossed her dust rag onto the corner shelf next to the pile of unfolded scarves.
There was no avoiding it. The three people did not look like they wanted her to convert to their religion or to sell her anything. She would have to answer the door.
Liliana closed all six of her inhuman eyes out of careful habit and brushed her thick, black hair forward with her fingers on both sides. Her hair would help obscure the tiny crinkles from closed spider eyes on her forehead and temples. Her appearance should now be indistinguishable from a young adult human. All three of Liliana’s parents had worked hard to teach her how to blend around humans. Normals could sometimes be violently intolerant of those who were different, and Liliana didn’t want to have to kill anyone today.
She cracked the door just as the short woman’s knuckles were about to touch it. That let in the traffic noise of the busy street in front of her house.
The three strangers were taken aback for only a moment. Lots of people had door cameras these days and might have been warned by their house AIs watching through those mechanical eyes.
Maybe these people were driving by and saw my sign.
The big sign outside said, “Madame Anna Sees All.” It wasn’t true, since no one could see all without going insane, but her second mother urged her to paint it five decades ago. Ixchel said that advertising did not have to be accurate, only catchy.
Curiosity tickled the back of every part of Liliana’s mind. Some part sent her a thrill of possible danger, but she couldn’t trace it. Perhaps the warning was from a part of her mind that used one of her closed sets of eyes. She would check after her strange visitors left.
A brief glance with her first eyes, her dark blue human eyes, told her only one of the three people on her doorstep was a man. He wore jeans, an open synth-leather jacket, and a black T-shirt with white letters and a stick figure that said, “Stand back. I’m going to try…science.” Disproportionately large, shiny black combat boots stuck out from his ordinary jeans.
She stared at them. He must have very big feet.
Those look like actual leather, made from cows.
Taxes on leather and other animal products had made them an expensive rarity since 2036, when the Green Party swept the elections toward the end of the Energy Wars.
The short woman in the blue synth-silk suit held up a shiny gold badge in the general direction of Liliana’s wandering gaze. Her skin was perhaps the darkest shade Liliana had ever seen on a human, and she wore her hair in neat, shoulder-length braids. Her stature put her face nearly level with Liliana’s. An agreeable coincidence. There were not many people as petite as she was.
Keeping her smile carefully small so her fangs wouldn’t show, Liliana smiled at the woman’s sensible but dressy flats.
“Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Detective Shonda Jackson. This is the CID liaison with Fort Liberty, Sergeant Zoe Giovanni, and special CID consultant, Doctor Peter Teague.” She indicated the other two people, who nodded in turn. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Questions,” Liliana repeated. The tightness in her shoulders relaxed. Everyone came to ask her questions. They must be new clients then. She waited for them to ask.
“Yes,” the police detective confirmed.
Liliana considered opening her third set of eyes to look at these new people properly, but she couldn’t risk her inhuman eyes being noticed. There were about a hundred Normals for every Other, so the likelihood was high that any new strangers she met were Normal.
The third stranger, a tall, pretty soldier with Army sergeant’s stripes, looked at the sky. She had no makeup, an athletic build, and a pained expression.
Liliana looked at the sky too, but saw only the clouds and drizzle she had already seen with her fourth eyes that morning. There did not appear to be anything unusual up there.
“Ma’am, could we come in?” the soldier asked.
“Oh!” Clients asked ques
The soldier’s name was Zoe Giovanni, but her customers taught Liliana that social rules demanded she call soldiers by their rank and last name. She didn’t know about civilian police officers, though, since she’d always avoided interactions with them. She assumed she should use the policewoman’s rank, but should she use the detective’s first name, Shonda, or her last name, Jackson? It was probably different from the military.
“Yes, Detective Shonda, Sergeant Giovanni, Doctor Teague. Please, come in.” She opened her door wide, bowed gracefully, and gestured for the three strangers to enter her work space with her usual flourish of flowing sleeves. Dramatic motions were expected from seers.
“That’s Detective Jackson.” The short woman crossed her arms and pressed her lips together.
Liliana’s cheeks heated. That had to be a new record, even for Liliana. It usually took more than a few seconds before she managed to annoy someone that much. “I am sorry, Detective Jackson.”
She closed the door, muffling the traffic noises. The formal dining room Liliana had converted into her business was not ready to receive visitors. The pile of new, unfolded scarves lay messily on the shelf near the closed door to the rest of her house. The goddess symbols, crystals, and other arcane bric-a-brac on the higher shelves were still dusty. And the large crystal ball was off-center on the round table in the middle of the room.
Hastily, Liliana moved it two inches to the left.
The three people stood among her scarves and clocks and mystical knick-knacks peering around curiously, filling up a lot of space.
The spider-kin suppressed an instinctive urge to squash herself tiny in a corner of the room. “Sit down.”
The strangers started at her abrupt order.
She winced at her own tone. She’d meant that to be an invitation but didn’t get the voice inflection right.
To fix her social mistake, Liliana added a graceful gesture with one arm accented by the butterfly sleeves of her hibiscus-print silk blouse. She might not be good with her voice, but after growing up dancing on the high lines of a circus, no one could fault her physical grace.
They sat in the three client chairs around the far side of the round table.
Liliana chose a sheer, rose-printed scarf from a shelf and sat in the chair opposite the strangers. Now they wouldn’t feel insulted because she didn’t make eye contact. It was expected for her to stare at the crystal ball. She sighed with relief.
In the dramatic singsong that she’d memorized, Liliana said, “Madame Anna sees all. Pay me what you feel is fair for truth that cannot be seen by other eyes. I see what is, what has been, and what might be. Ask and the truth shall be yours.”
She watched the strangers in the crystal reflections. Amused smiles played around their lips.
“Well, we did say we wanted to ask questions,” Peter Teague said.
Sergeant Giovanni rolled her eyes.
Oh. They must expect a charlatan’s show.
Liliana would have to prove to them that her sight was genuine before they would ask any questions of substance. She kept her smile small so as not to show fangs. They would learn what she could do. “Who chooses to be seen?”
Sergeant Giovanni grinned wide and shrugged. “I’ll bite.” She glanced at the detective for permission or confirmation.
Detective Jackson sighed, then nodded. “Fine.” Liliana didn’t know why the detective was still so annoyed. It seemed like a small mistake and Liliana had apologized. “I suppose we can start with that. It’ll be interesting to see what the lady can do.”
Liliana draped the scarf over her head as a veil to obscure her face. If they were Normals that didn’t know about Others, she had to make sure they didn’t notice when her inhuman eyes opened and closed. She waved dramatically over the crystal ball. When they looked at her gesturing hands, the spider-kin opened her third set of eyes just below the inner corners of her human eyes, like glossy black tears.
The sergeant’s soul shimmered with color and energy, but not the distinctive, feral shine of a beast-kin, the cool green overlay of a plant Fae, or the hard edges of a mineral Fae.
A Normal. I was right.
Sergeant Giovanni’s heart pulsed richly red, a passionate person, impulsive, someone who falls in love easily and deeply. Her inner self was riddled with the dark purple cracks of past heartbreak. A shell of pale yellow cynicism guarded her tender, wounded heart. “You have loved unwisely, Sergeant Giovanni. More than once, you chose forever, but forever didn’t last.”
The soldier with her long brown hair up in a neat twist at the top of her head arched an eyebrow. “Will I meet someone tall, dark, and handsome?”
Her cynical shell sought to hide the genuine question behind humor, but the answer mattered to the soldier. Liliana risked a quick peek with her fourth eyes, making an extra fluttering motion with her hands to distract the strangers.
Will Sergeant Giovanni meet someone tall, dark, and handsome?
Images solidified of a very tall man with strong, memorable features that Liliana found exceptionally handsome. Scars marred the smooth, dark brown skin on one side of his face. On one temple, a few strands of wiry gray mixed with black in a military short haircut. On the other, his ear was lost in scars, and a white streak marred the neat black hair. He wore a U.S. Army colonel’s uniform, and he shook Sergeant Giovanni’s hand in a vision with the only slightly faded shading of the recent past.
“A tall, handsome man with dark hair and skin and a burn scar on his face is already part of your life. He is someone you respect, an officer.”
Liliana tilted her head, considering. This man intrigued her. The colonel’s handsome face shimmered slightly, a sign that it hid something else, something Other.
What is he?
Some years in the past, he walked in a dry, barren land, armed and careful. Sergeant Zoe Giovanni followed, guarding his back.
“You follow where he leads.”
A dying bush brushed the bare skin on the back of the colonel’s hand. The bush bloomed.
Oh.
Liliana blinked her fourth eyes in shock. To affect plants so profoundly with an unintentional touch, the colonel must be Sidhe, the royal Fae who had the strongest ties to the Green. She hadn’t thought there were any Sidhe on this continent, and yet, someone who obeyed a Sidhe sat across the table from her.
Her hands gesturing around the crystal ball faltered. Sidhe from the seelie day court were indirectly responsible for the near extinction of her species. She swallowed hard.
He is only a vision.
To keep from leaving a trail of blooming flowers and greening grass everywhere he went, a Fae with that level of power would have to suppress his aura constantly. That required an intense level of vigilant control.
Why does he hide his power?
Instead of looking for visions, Liliana thought about the veil over her head and the Normal woman with the passionate soul who sat across from her.
There are many good reasons to hide what you are.
For the merest moment, she considered telling Sergeant Giovanni what her tall, handsome colonel really was, but then winced at a scolding voice in her memory. “My daughter will be a woman of discretion, an ehemythos, not a tale-teller blaring the secrets of others as if she had the right.” Her fourth eyes helpfully supplied a glimpse of her father’s swarthy face, grim with anger.
“He has a will of iron,” Liliana said carefully. That was probably not a secret.
DoctorTeague nudged the sergeant with an elbow. “You gotta admit, Zoe, ‘a will of iron’ fits Colonel Bennet to a tee, and he’s tall, dark, and handsome with a burn scar on his face.”
