The Borderkind

Page 20

  The rumor was that Borderkind were welcome in the Latin Quarter. The old legends who lived there did not like interference and they did not like betrayal. They were perfectly willing to stab one another in the back, but looked askance at those in power murdering innocents, and so they were happy to thwart the Hunters by harboring fugitive Borderkind.

  It was possible things weren’t quite as simple, but Blue Jay wasn’t about to point that out to anyone in the Quarter. If the Greeks and Romans were on their side, even just to the extent of offering sanctuary, he would say nothing to jeopardize it. On the other hand, if they were just rumors, he and the others might not survive the afternoon.

  The wind whistled through the ruins, making the feathers in his hair dance. Chorti kept sniffing, trying to catch a scent. Cheval had been troubled when Frost had announced that he would not join them, but Blue Jay was not concerned. Frost was just too damned conspicuous. He was around somewhere, and would aid them if necessary. But they were going into Lycaon’s Kitchen without him.

  Amongst the ruins, there was still a real neighborhood in the Quarter. Beside crumbling palazzos were shops and houses and an open-air marketplace where fruit sellers hawked their wares alongside jewelers, leather craftsmen, and fishmongers.

  Lycaon’s Kitchen stood on the corner of a nameless street, beside a brothel where a trio of ancient whores played madam to half a dozen young men and women descended from the Lost of the old world. Blue Jay glanced around uneasily at darkened windows and the stillness of rooftops, and gestured for Chorti and Cheval to precede him.

  The rich scent of roasting meat wafted from the place through open, warped-glass windows. Walking inside, Blue Jay found the smell far more powerful. He normally preferred vegetables and fruits, but even his stomach growled with carnivorous yearning as he stepped into Lycaon’s Kitchen. The meat and spices filled the place with their aroma.

  Chorti and Cheval had paused in the foyer. The kelpy whispered something to the wild man, her elegant beauty so drastic a counterpoint to his savage ugliness. Chorti grunted, and when Blue Jay joined them, he saw the wild man lick his lips, then wipe a hairy hand across his mouth to remove the frothy drool there.

  “Control yourself,” Blue Jay said, voice low and dangerous.

  Cheval Bayard narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth at him. “He will be fine. Look to your own self. ”

  Blue Jay took a breath, studying her. He was a trickster, a mischief-maker by nature, but kelpies were outright killers, vicious things who ate children and distraught wanderers. Lovely as she was, hers was a treacherous beauty.

  Yet her treachery did not extend to betraying her own kin to the Hunters. In that, Blue Jay trusted her entirely. And the motherly way she doted on Chorti allowed him to believe she was not purely malicious.

  “Cheval,” he said.

  Those piercing, gemstone eyes found him.

  “Be ready to fight. ”

  The kelpy nodded. Blue Jay hesitated a moment and then stepped through the foyer into the restaurant itself. The dining room was stone and wood of an indeterminate age. The rear of the room was open to the kitchen so that the chefs could be seen at their stoves and ovens, and each time an oven door was opened, the fires that roared inside burned brightly. Chairs and tables were set up around a central courtyard open to the sky, such that, in inclement weather like this, only a portion of Lycaon’s was open for business. This afternoon, for instance, the rain fell in a light drizzle that dampened the stone tiles in the courtyard, but there was little wind, so the patrons eating a late lunch were undisturbed.

  Half of the tables were taken, mostly by humans. Amongst them were several men and women who were simply too perfect or too big to be ordinary people, and who must, then, have been legendary. Heroes, perhaps, or demi-gods. At one table, two harpies crouched without chairs, their hideous vulture bodies lurching toward their plates, pecking at the raw flesh they had been served.

  Many of the dishes served in Lycaon’s Kitchen were raw. It was part of his legend, after all. Once a king, he had been a cannibal who slew his guests and ate them. Upon encountering Zeus, Lycaon had tried to feed him human flesh, only to have the god take vengeance upon him by transforming him into a true animal, the first werewolf of legend.

  Lycaon knew what his customers wanted. And the customer was always right. He claimed not to serve human flesh any longer, but Lycaon had been made Borderkind by the world’s lingering legends of werewolves, and Blue Jay wondered if from time to time he made forays into the mundane world for fresh human game.

  Beside him, Chorti grunted and tugged on his sleeve.

  Blue Jay glanced at him. “You can speak. Why don’t you?”

  Cheval lanced him with a withering glance, as protective of Chorti as if she were his mother. “He prefers not to. ” Then she turned to Chorti, touching him gently upon the arm. “What is it?”

  But Blue Jay had already seen what had upset the wild man. At a table in the corner were three Keen Keengs, as sorely out of place there as Chorti himself. They were Australian, and he Guatemalan, but the difference was that Chorti was Borderkind and rumored at least to be welcome here. The Keen Keengs were nothing of the sort.

  When the Veil had been raised, those among the legendary who retained a connection to the mundane world—who still lived in the hearts and minds of humanity through folktales and bedtime stories—had become Borderkind. The magic woven into the Veil allowed them to travel back and forth between worlds…but only if they wished it.

  Many among the legendary had wanted nothing to do with humanity, and their disdain prevented them from becoming Borderkind. But there were those, the Keen Keengs amongst them, who had wished to be Borderkind but could not, because at the time the Veil was created, the humans lacked enough belief in them.

  Not all of them were bitter and unpleasant, but Keen Keengs tended not to like Borderkind very much. Blue Jay stared at the giant winged bat-men, deeply disturbed. The Keen Keengs crouched at their table, chairless like the harpies, and studiously avoided looking toward the entrance.

  “Shit,” the trickster muttered.

  A broad-shouldered man with a cruel, bestial face broke away from conversation with a waiter and strode toward them. His hair was thick and unkempt and his face covered by a dark stubble. When he smiled at them with utter insincerity, Blue Jay saw his teeth were large and pointed. He raised enormous hands as though to punctuate his question.

  “What have we here? Strangers in our midst. Which marks you as desperate, or foolish, or both. ”

  Blue Jay stepped forward, wrapping himself in trickster magic even as he did so. A blur of azure swished in the air around him, but he did not attack with his spirit wings, nor did he transform. He might have done either, or might simply have challenged the man who approached, but Cheval prevented this by stepping in front of him and bowing to the cruel-faced man.

  “Both we may be,” the kelpy said, her silver hair cascading along beside her face as she bowed. She glanced up at him without rising. “But we are also kin, Lycaon. Will you not hear us speak, cousin, before deciding?”

  Lycaon. Blue Jay felt foolish. Cheval had guessed, of course, but he ought to have seen it right away. The bestial features, the unruly hair, the cruel glint in the eye. This was likely the werewolf himself.

  Again he bared his teeth in that false grin. His gaze shifted to take in Chorti and then Blue Jay before returning to Cheval. “I have never had much use for the kinship the Borderkind have presumed since the creation of the damnable Veil,” he said, voice low, as though he did not wish to be overheard.

  “Yet we have heard that you have welcomed others of our cousins to remain here until danger has passed. ”

  Lycaon grinned now, and this time it seemed sincere. “The soft-hearts and thinkers who crafted the Veil are also those who made up rules for this kingdom, and forged a truce with Yucatazca. I don’t like them. Anything that vexes them is a pleasure. ”

&n
bsp; “We’re welcome, then?” Blue Jay asked.

  The werewolf hesitated a moment, then gestured to a table. “You’re welcome to eat. Welcome to pass through. But not to stay. ”

  That would have to do. Blue Jay nodded. “You have our thanks. ”

  “Keep them. I’ve done you no great favor. You could still be eaten on your way out of the Quarter. ”

  He turned on his heel and signaled to a waiter to attend to them. Chorti did not wait, but moved quickly to a nearby table. Blue Jay was not at all surprised, given that the wild man was practically slavering at the scent of meat. After a moment’s hesitation, Cheval joined Chorti at the table.

  “What are you doing?” Blue Jay whispered as he went to her side. He did not take a seat, standing beside her instead.

  Cheval gazed up at him. “We have been offered a moment of haven and hospitality. It might do well for us to make an effort to be less conspicuous. ”

  Blue Jay laughed softly and stared at her, wondering if her mind was quite intact. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

  Already Lycaon had drawn a great deal of attention to them. He looked around and saw two of the Keen Keengs bent close, muttering to one another. The third he caught watching him, but it glanced away upon being discovered.

  “This is idiotic,” Blue Jay said.

  He strode toward the center of the restaurant, out into the open courtyard. Warm summer rain pattered his hair and jacket, fell upon his hands as he stopped and glanced around. If the whispers were true and there were Borderkind taking refuge in the Latin Quarter, he had not seen any of them here. As he surveyed those lunching at Lycaon’s Kitchen, many of them studied him in return. Human faces narrowed with concern or suspicion or simple curiosity. Blue Jay did not mind the scrutiny. In truth, he had counted on it.

  The waiters studiously ignored him. If Lycaon had not slain them or thrown them out, then his staff would not trouble themselves. Only the waiter assigned to the table where Chorti and Cheval sat would pay any attention to them.

  Yet there was one other.

  Blue Jay raised an eyebrow when he saw Leicester Grindylow emerge from the kitchen bearing a tray of sandwiches. Grin had been a frequent customer at Amelia’s and often substituted as a bartender there. But Blue Jay knew that the long-armed bogie had also been a friend of Jenny Greenteeth’s, and Jenny had betrayed them to the Hunters. He wondered if Grin was also a traitor.

  When the Grindylow saw Blue Jay, he lifted one hand in an amiable wave. Grin slid his tray onto the table before him and smiled at the trickster before sorting the plates out in front of the olive-skinned women at the table. They whispered to one another and looked at Blue Jay with gossip and scandal in their eyes.

  Blue Jay nodded to Grin and resumed his search of the restaurant.

  A pair of hooded men sat at a table near the kitchen. As an oven door opened, the heat and light of the fire inside rushing out, they glanced up. Their faces were wan and gray, eyes black, and their beards were white and braided. Blue Jay knew them on sight as Mazikeen.

  Yet if there were Mazikeen here, he did not understand why they had not revealed themselves. They were not cowards, that much he knew. Which meant they had come here for another purpose, and perhaps it was in his best interest to give them their secrecy for another few moments at least.

  As he searched, he noted the presence of a few other Borderkind. Several merrows sat together, feasting upon raw fish, their webbed fingers and large green eyes revealing their marine nature. Toward the front of the restaurant, bathed in the gray light that came through the pitted glass of a window, a small man sat eating something that resembled burnt poultry. His features were unmistakably Asian, yet though he was the size of a child, his face was clearly adult. As Blue Jay studied him, he turned away, resolutely refusing to meet the trickster’s gaze.

  Borderkind. Blue Jay was certain of it.

  He started to walk toward the little man and crossed a place where the warm summer rain was frozen, icy sleet. Blue Jay flinched and glanced upward, but even as he did so he realized what had happened. The roof was open to the gray stormy sky, and Frost had passed above the courtyard, watching him, swirling in the wind and rain.

  Cocky and carefree as he normally was, Blue Jay felt a distinct relief at this reassurance that Frost was with him. Cheval and Chorti might be staunch allies, but neither their loyalty nor their skill as warriors had yet been tested.

  The little man glanced at last toward Blue Jay as the trickster approached. Fire ignited his eyes and streamed to the sides, flames rising toward his hair. He was no Greek or Roman legend, obviously, and so he must be Borderkind, or have presented himself as such.

  Blue Jay strode to within several feet of him and bowed.

  The little man with flaming eyes nodded slowly, as though in resignation.

  The bang of wood on marble cracked in the air like a gunshot. Blue Jay twisted round even as Cheval called his name. The Keen Keengs had thrown their table aside. Wings spread, they lunged across the restaurant, banging chairs out of the way and driving a waiter to the ground. Chorti rose up in an explosion of fur and claws, huge jaws opening to reveal those perilously long metal teeth. The first of the Keen Keengs grabbed him and drove him to the ground with the power of its thrashing wings, long talons raking Chorti’s fur.

  Cheval staggered back several steps, retreating from the attack. But she was not fleeing. She transformed in the space of those steps from stunning beauty to horrid ugliness—from woman to the green-furred, muck-encrusted horse-woman form of the kelpy. She reared back and shot out a hoof, cracking the skull of the nearest Keen Keeng. The thing was shaken, but then it spread its wings wider and screamed fury, ignoring the blood that ran from the fissure in its face.

  Blue Jay ran toward his companions, and once again the blur of azure wings colored the air around him. One of the waiters reached out to prevent him from joining the fray and Blue Jay spun, dancing on the air, spirit-wings hammering the waiter, throwing him back onto a table that tipped beneath his weight.