Tithe

Page 25

 

  He stopped her, placing his hand on her shoulder. She refused to meet his eyes, and abruptly he jerked her forward, pulling her body against his. Her muscles stiffened, but he tightened his hold wordlessly. After a moment, she subsided, her breath rushing from her in a long, shuddering sigh. Long fingers stroked her hair. He smelled of honey and sweat and the detergent her grandmother used.

  She rubbed her cheek against his chest, closing her eyes against the thoughts that were gibbering in her head, whispering bids for attention.

  "I'm here because you are kind and lovely and terribly, terribly brave," he said, voice pitched low. "And because I want to be. "

  She looked up at him through her lashes. He smiled and rested his chin on the top of her head, sliding his hand over her back.

  "You want to be?"

  He laughed. "Verily, I do. Do you doubt it?"

  "Oh," she said, mind unable to catch up with the stunning joy that she felt. Joy, that was, for the moment, enough to push the other sorrows aside. Because it was true, somehow, he was here with her, and not with the Seelie Queen. "Oh. "

  His hands made long even strokes, from beneath the wings at her shoulder blades to the small of her back. "And that pleases you?"

  "What?" She tilted her head up again, scowling. "Of course it does. Are you kidding?"

  He drew back to look at her for a moment, searching her face. "Good," he sighed, and pressed her head once more to his chest, stroking her hair as he closed his eyes. "Good. "

  They stood like that for a long moment. Finally he pulled back from the embrace. "Thankfully," he said, "we don't need the car to get into the Unseelie Court. Walk with me. "

  The tree was gnarled and huge, its knobbed and gored trunk giving it the impression of sagging under its own weight. The bark was thin and chipped, flaking off like dry skin. At its base, there was a gaping hole where the roots split.

  Lutie buzzed up from the hole. "No guards," she said, settling her small self in the tangle of Kaye's hair.

  "And this leads where?" Kaye was trying to control her trembling, trying not to let on just how not ready for this she was.

  "Through to the kitchens," Roiben replied, inching his body, feet first, through the gaps in the tree. Finally, his head disappeared into the dark, strands of silver catching on the splintered bark. She heard a clatter as he dropped down to the floor.

  Kaye pushed her boots against the entrance, feeling some of the softer wood give way, chipping off as she slid them in and pushed, burying her legs to the knees. Then, on her back, wriggling forward like a snake, she pushed herself through. It was a long drop, and she bit back a yelp as she landed.

  The tunnel was hot and cloudy with steam. Beads of moisture dotted Roiben's face, and his hair looked damp and heavy when he combed it back with one hand. He cocked his head to the left, and she moved ahead of him through the billowing steam.

  The kitchen was a huge room with a firepit in the center of it and no visible ventilation system. Faeries scuttled around in the smoke with large pots, piles of skinned rats, little cakes, baskets of silver apples, and rolled casks of wine. The reek of blood assailed her. Blood stained the walls and the floor, boiled in the pots and dripped over the plates of raw meat. Roiben walked behind Kaye, his hand on the small of her back, pushing when he wanted them to move and clutching her coat to signal her to stop.

  They crept into the room, staying close to the wall. A withered old faerie sat on a nearby stool, skinny legs dangling off the side, tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration as he painted black apples a shiny, nail-lacquer red. His white hair stuck up in wild tufts, and he periodically adjusted his small spectacles as they slipped down his nose.

  Next to the apple-painter, a huge green man with small horns on his bald head and fangs protruding over a fat upper lip wielded a cleaver over a collection of oddly shaped animal corpses, hacking them into stew-size chunks. Tattoos of roses and thorns ran up both of the man's beefy arms.

  Kaye crept as quietly as any time she had snuck in late to the house, as any time she'd left a store with full pockets. She concentrated on her feet, bowing her head slightly and walking slowly and quietly through the doorway.

  Soon the narrow hallway sloped down and opened into a larger passageway, this one floored with grayish marble and studded with huge, carved pillars. The ceiling dripped with stalactites. Kaye could hear people up ahead, shoes clicking like beetles on the stone floor.

  Roiben pushed them both against the back of the pillar. He drew his sword from the sheath and was holding it against his chest. She found the dagger he'd given her earlier and clenched the handle desperately.

  But the footfalls turned down another corridor. Kaye let out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.

  They crept along like that until they came to a set of black double doors.

  "What's in there?" Kaye asked.

  "Wine and the aging thereof," he whispered back.

  The room was all stone, stinking of yeast, casks lining the walls and glass bottles filled with infusions of various flowers. There were rose petals, violet petals, whole heads of marigolds, nettles floating like organic space ships, and other herbs she could not identify.

  "What are those?" she whispered. There was no one in the room.

  "Wormwood, yarrow, cowslip, gillyflowers, agrimony, fennel—"

  "I bet you drink a lot of herbal tea," she said.

  He did not smile as he directed her toward the smaller of the two doors in the room. She wondered if he even realized it was a joke.

  "Laundry," he said.

  The next room was filled with as much or more steam than the kitchens. It wafted up through small vents in the ceiling. In the room were several large tubs filled with soapy water. One pale woman with dark eyes was wringing out a white cloth while another was stirring the contents of a tub with a long crooked stick. A man with long arms and a hunched back was adding some granules to the mix, making the water hiss.

  It was a small space, and Kaye cast a glance at Roiben. There was no way they could get through the room without anyone seeing them.

  "Maigret," Roiben said, grinning as he opened his arms wide.

  One of the laundry women looked up, her grin showing she was missing a tooth. "Our knight!" She limped over and gave him a highly ordinary hug. Her feet were hidden beneath the long skirts of her dress, and Kaye could not glimpse to see if there was something actually wrong with them. Across the room, the man and woman looked up from their duties and smiled too. "You're one I thought sure never to see again. "

  "I'm looking for a boy," Roiben said. "Human. With your new King. "

  The woman made a disgusted sound. "That one… King indeed! Yes, there's a boy about, but I can't tell you more than that. I've learned better than to draw the eye of Gentry. "

  Roiben smiled wryly. "And I as well. "

  "They're looking for you, you know. "

  He nodded. "I made a rather spectacular end to my service here. "

  The old laundress cackled and bid them farewell. Roiben opened a small door and they emerged into a hallway of shimmering mica.

  "How do you know they won't tell anyone they saw us?"

  "Maigret thinks she owes me a debt. " He shrugged.

  "Is something wrong with her feet?"

  "She disappointed one of the Unseelie Gentry. He had iron shoes heated red-hot before he made her dance in them. "

  Kaye shuddered. "Does that have something to do with the debt she thinks she owes you?"

  "Perhaps," he allowed.

  "What about through there?"

  "There's the library, the music room, the conservatory, and the chess room. "

  "Chess room?"

  "Yes, chess was well loved by the Queen. They gamble with it like mortals gamble with cards. She once used it to win a consort, as I recall. "

  "Corny loves chess—he was on th
e chess team in high school. "

  "We must go through the library to get there. " He hesitated.

  "What's the matter?"

  "We've seen no guards. Not at the entrance and not even here. "

  "What if that means we're just doing really, really well?"

  "Of a surety, it means something. "

  The door to the library was mammoth and elegant, clearly different from the plainer doors in the lower chambers. It was dark wood, banded with copper, carved with a language she could not read. Roiben pushed the door, and it opened.

  Bookshelves were arranged in a maze, so tall that it was impossible to see across the room to whatever exit there was. The shelves themselves were intricately carved with faces of gargoyles and other strange beasts, and there was the overwhelming scent of turned earth. Whenever Kaye looked in one direction, something seemed to shift in the corner of her eye. The books themselves were in such varied sizes that she wondered who read them all. As they walked, she tried to scan the titles, but they were all in strange languages.

  As they turned a corner, she saw a shape slide between the shadows. It was slender and vaguely human.

  "Roiben," she whispered.

  "The keepers of secrets," he said, not looking back. "They will tell no one of our passing. "

  Kaye shuddered. She wondered what was written in the tomes that lined the shelves of the library if the idea was to keep secrets. Were the shapes custodians or guardians or scribes?

  As they came to a crossroads in the bookshelves, she saw another dark shape, this one with long, pale hair that started too high on its forehead and large, glittering black eyes. It slipped into the shadows as easily and soundlessly as the first one.

  Kaye was very glad when they came to a small, oval door that opened easily to Roiben's touch.

  Heavy draperies hung on the wall of the chess room. The entire floor was inlaid with black-and-white tiles, and five-foot pieces loomed on the edges of the room. Corny was sleeping on the floor, his body overlapping two chess squares.

  "Cornelius?" Roiben knelt down and shook Corny by his shoulder.

  He looked up. His eyes were vague and unfocused and he was a mass of bruises, but even worse was the satiated smile he turned up at them. His face looked aged somehow, and there was a tuft of white in his hair.

  "Hello," he slurred, "you're Kaye's Robin. "

  Kaye dropped to her knees. "You're okay now," she said, more to herself than to him, reverently smoothing back damp strands of hair. "You're going to be okay. "

  "Kaye," Roiben said tonelessly.

  She turned. Nephamael was stepping into the room, from behind the draperies on the far wall. His hand stroked the marble mane of the black knight chessman.

  "Greetings," Nephamael said. "You will pardon my humor if I say that you have been the proverbial thorn in my side. "

  "I rather think you owe me," Roiben said. "It was I that got you the crown. "

  "From that point of view, it's a shame that life is so often unfair, Rath Roiben Rye. "

  "No!" Kaye gasped. It couldn't be. Roiben had been so far away from the others when she'd used his name. She had barely been able to hear herself. He'd killed all the knights close by, all the ones that could have heard.

  "No one else knows it," Nephamael said as though reading her thoughts. "I killed the hob who thought to ingratiate himself with me by giving it over. "

  "Spike," Kaye breathed. It wasn't a question.

  "Rath Roiben Rye, by the power of your true name, I order you to never harm me, and to obey me both immediately and implicitly. "

  Roiben's intake of breath was sharp enough to mimic a scream.

  Nephamael threw back his head and laughed, hand still stroking the chess piece. "I further order that you shall not do yourself any harm, unless I specifically ask you to. And now, my newly made knight, seize the pixie. "

  Roiben turned to Kaye as Lutie screamed from her pocket. Kaye sprinted for the door, but he was far too quick. He grabbed her hair in a clump, jerking her head back, then just as suddenly let her go. After an amazed moment, Kaye dashed through the door.

  "You may be well versed in following orders, but you are a novice at giving them," she heard Roiben say as she ran back into the maze of the library.

  Before, she had simply followed Roiben through the winding bookshelves—now, she had no idea where she was going. She turned and turned and turned again, relieved that she didn't see any of the strange secret-keepers. Then, careening past a podium with a small stack of books piled on it, she turned into a dead end.

  Lutie crawled out of her pocket and was buzzing around her. "What's to do, Kaye? What's to do?"

  "Shhh," Kaye said. "Try to listen. "

  Kaye could hear her own breathing, could hear pages fluttering somewhere in the room, could hear what sounded like cloth dragging across the floor. No sounds of footsteps. No pursuit.

  She tried to draw glamour around her, to color her skin to be like the wall behind her. She felt the ripple of magic roll through her and looked down at her wood-colored hand.

  What were they going to do? Guilt and misery threatened to overwhelm her. She put her head between her legs and took a couple of deep breaths.

  She had to get them free.

  Which was absurd. She was only one pixie girl. She barely knew how to use glamour, barely knew how to use her own wings.

  Clever. The word taunted her, the sum of all the things she ought to be and was not.

  Think, Kaye. Think.

  She took a deep breath. She'd solved the riddles. She'd gotten Roiben out of the court. She'd even more or less figured out how to use her glamour. She could do this.

  "Let's go. Please—let's go," Lutie said, settling on Kaye's knee.