Summer would be renewed, yes.
Come the dawn, she would be hungry. The changelings would be recalled, and the flint knife would loose torrents of nameless blood.
A white-hot flash filled the Jewel. The silent thunderclap rolled through Veil and Seelie alike, the mortal world momentarily full of a hot, uneasy flushing wind, there and gone as soon as tired cops and waitresses working the night shift could think that’s strange, it’s still winter.
When it faded, Summer lay whole and lovely, but pale, so pale, under an indigo night. The stars above field, forest, and dell glittered sharp-dangerous, and in a tall-pillared room in the heart of a white Keep with greenstone towers, a slim sidhe woman was driven to her knees, a green flicker on her forehead fading to dull gray.
The Queen of Seelie looked at her soft, beautiful hands. On her left wrist, a pinprick of black bloomed into a small, hard, calcifying boil.
Her teeth showed in a silent snarl, and Summer sought to gain her feet. It took her two tries. She did not call for her handmaidens yet. When they entered the hall, they would see her gracious and composed, with a rag of her spring-revel finery knotted about her left wrist and the rest of her as naked and innocent as any nymph.
But for now, Summer rocked back and forth on her knees, and hissed a slow, furious song of quiet vengeance that filled the pillared room with the dry, cloying scent of baking apple pie.
FULL NIGHT
47
He tossed fitfully through most of the afternoon, but the wound had sealed itself. Perhaps she’d drained all the poison. Maybe she should have used more bread?
Too late, now. The wound had closed. If any foulness lingered, she didn’t have the skill to draw it.
She roamed the small trailer, her hands finding things and setting them to rights. Laundry, chugging in the washer—she found an ancient box of dryer sheets, and wondered if her sister had sniffed them in the aisle, deciding on this particular scent. Meadow Fresh! the label declared, but it smelled like no meadow, mortal or otherwise.
Robin folded the clothes when they were dry, gathered refuse into black trash bags she found under the sink—everything was still arranged in the proper fashion, just where her sister would have put it.
Glancing in on Gallow every quarter-hour. Washing the dishes Puck had not broken—he had crashed around in the kitchen, perhaps offended by its size or the dirty dishes. Chantment eased some of the chores, but she did most of the cleaning by hand, his bathroom sparkling and mildew-free before she stepped into the shower’s embrace and stood for a long while in her dress and heels, letting warm mortal water flood her with soothing. When she stepped out, shaking water away with a single crackling word, drying her hair with finger flicks, she stood for a long few moments in front of the mirror. Even a sidhe chantment couldn’t get the flyspotting off, but at least there were no toothpaste flecks or smudged fingerprints.
There were bottles in the medicine cabinet. Two prescriptions with Daisy’s name on them; her allergies and probably for her back pain. Mama had a bad back, too, a mortal ailment.
Daisy Gallow, the bottles said. But Jeremiah had put her mortal name on her tombstone, perhaps to keep her even more secret.
Even safer.
The cleaning soothed her. Would he be grateful?
My lady Ragged.
Oh, she could try, she supposed. She could do a Daisy impression, blithe and laughing. The glamour might even become the reality, and Gallow perhaps even grow fond of her.
It was possible. So many things were possible.
The couch was finally cleared off, and she brought his coat there to mend it, needle-chantment pricking her fingers when her attention slipped—when he coughed, or moved in the darkened bedroom. It was like working while Daddy Snowe was sleeping, except without the guilty start every time a car door slammed or a mortal voice called.
Cold iron in his jacket pocket interfered with the mending, so she drew it out. And there was something else.
The Polaroid was ancient, and there on the third step of Mama’s trailer were Daisy and Robin. That day had been hot and dusty, she remembered, and the rent was late. But Mama said smile, so they did, Robin’s arm around Daisy, who had been promised an ice cream stolen from the corner store if she was good and didn’t cry because there was no dinner. The trailer was dark, too, because the power company didn’t like it when you didn’t pay.
They both knew Mama would let Daddy Snowe come back in when he showed up. Because at least he’d pay the bills, even if his fists flew and Mama could only do things right some of the time. That day, though, it had been just them, and Daisy’s sweet warmth nestling beside her.
She heard him moving. The needle-chantment was finished, so she laid the coat gently on the back of the couch and was settled with the Polaroid clasped in her hand when Gallow appeared, moving stiffly as an old man.
His jeans were unbuttoned, dark hair reaching up his chest. A silver medallion winked among the forest, the Horn’s camouflage. Muscle moved under his skin, and along his side the angry red scar of Unwinter’s poisoned blade. She had done all she could.
It didn’t feel like enough. Nothing, in fact, ever did.
He blinked, rubbing at his green eyes. Robin’s chest ached, and her throat was full.
When he braced himself against the wall and regarded her again, she was ready. She laid the photograph aside, with one last long, lingering look.
Robin-mama. And all the stars of Summer’s dusk. Now dead, dry fires. You’re so warm, Rob.
Not warm enough to keep mortal death at bay.
“I saw her that day,” Robin heard herself say dully. “She… she had come to me. She wanted… to conceive.” Trouble with her lady parts. Who should we blame for that, I wonder? Curse or just bad luck? “We argued a little, she called it root magic but she wanted it anyhow. I went and bargained for a chantment. That nonsense, just like Mama called it. She thought I was maybe deluded, but it was worth a try.” Was her mouth twisting down bitterly? Maybe. “That night… She… she asked me if I’d stand godmother, if she… I said I would, and I left her. I wish I hadn’t. I wish…” She licked her dry lips. “Once I had it, I waited where we usually met, but she didn’t come.”
He said nothing. So Robin continued. “She said she had a man, and a fine one, and she wanted the rest of it, too. She was… happy. I know she was. You made her happy.”
“Robin…” As if he’d been punched.
“When I could leave Summer again I found her buried, and I… I am sorry, Gallow. The chantment… maybe someone saw me speak to her. Maybe…”
“Car accident.” He swallowed audibly. He was pale. “A ditch, a tree… It wasn’t your fault.”
She closed her eyes briefly, sagging. The relief threatened to break a fragile wall between her and more useless weeping.
I will never weep again. When she could, she stood, slowly. Stood in the middle of his mortal trailer, his mortal life.
Sister a-broken, Puck sneered inside her head. Yet another account to balance. She braced herself. “You went into Summer. You took her the cure.”
“I had to. She would have killed you when you returned, one way or another—”
“Why do you care? Because I look like her?”
“She looked like you.” Fiercely now. He pushed himself away from the wall and tacked out across the living room. The floor creaked a little. “Robin, I’m not kind, and I’m not asking for—”
“I am not Daisy.” Each word a knife. “I will never be your mortal love, Gallow. We are at quits, and I’ll not darken your door again.”
“Robin.” He dug in his jeans pocket, and when he drew the locket out it was barely a surprise. It swung from his fingers, a traitor because it yearned toward him. “I would go with you. I would ask you to stay. I would also give this back to you.”
She was a traitor, too, if only with craving. If she stepped across the room, if she let him touch her, she would crumble. Robin’s chin came up. “Keep it as
weregilt, Armormaster. I am a faithless sidhe bitch, and likely to remain so.”
She turned on her heel and stalked for the door. He moved, perhaps to catch her, but Robin was quick, and she had her shoes on. She stepped out into the flow of a warming spring evening, pollen already beginning to float golden on the breeze, and stepped sideways.
And was gone.
Nightfall found her downtown, on the roof of the Savoigh Limited. Tucked between skyscrapers, it was a relic, and had much iron in its construction. The breeze was soft, winter’s chill finally fled at last.
The city seethed under its mortal lights. Those who could, sensing the gathering tension, sought any hole to hide in. At dusk Unwinter would have been banished from Summer, if not before, for Summer had the Jewel and no invitation into her lands would stand if she chose to revoke it. It would now be open war between Seelie and Unseelie, and the free sidhe would no doubt make merry hob of it, with Puck Goodfellow’s guidance.
If he chose to guide them, that is. Robin thought it very possible indeed.
She waited, perched next to a stone gargoyle’s leering, looking at the rubies of brake lights, the diamonds of headlights. Exhaust, and cold iron, a breath of damp from the river. A hint of crackling ozone—lightning about to strike. The faint good smell of a soft spring rain approaching.
He did not keep her waiting long.
“Oh, my darling. What fine merriment we have had.” He melded out of the darkness, his boyface alight with glee. “You are the best of children, delighting your sire’s heart so ful—”
The golden flood of song hit him squarely, Robin’s breathing calm and controlled, and knocked the Fatherless to the ground. She was on her feet in an instant, the stolen crowbar burning in her palms as she lifted it, brought it down with a convulsive crunch. Iron smoked on sidhe flesh, and by the time she ran out of breath and the song died, thick blue ichor spattered the rooftop, steaming and sizzling.
“You,” she hissed, between her teeth. “You killed her. You pixie-led her car. You killed Sean. You did it.”
Amazingly, Puck began to laugh. “Aye!” he shouted, spitting broken teeth. They gleamed, sharp ivory, ringing against the roof. “Robin, Robin Ragged, I will kill all those close to thy heart. I will have thy voice!” He slashed upward with his dagger, a spot of wet green beaded at its tip, but Robin was ready and skipped aside.
Not today. She didn’t say it. She’d finished her inhale, and the song burst out again, given free rein.
Smoke, blood, iron, the crowbar stamping time as razor-edged music descended on the Fatherless. Some whispered that he was the oldest of the sidhe; some said he remembered what had caused the Sundering. Others sometimes hinted he was the cause of the division in the children of Danu, the Little Folk, the Blessed.
When the song faded, Robin dropped the crowbar. It clattered on the roof.
The thing lying before her was no longer sidhe. Full-Twisted, it writhed, and its piping little cries struck the ear foully.
She bent, swiftly, and her quick fingers had the pipes and the dagger, Puck Goodfellow’s treasures. The Twisted thing swiped at her with a clawed, malformed hand, and its voice was now a growl, warning.
Her breath came high and hard, her ribs flickering. The dagger went into her pocket, its sheath of supple leaf-stamped leather blackened and too finely grained to be animal hide. The pipes—she almost shuddered with revulsion as she poked a finger in each one, and near the bottom, where they were thicker, she touched glass.
Three glass ampoules, like the ones she had bargained MacDonnell’s kin into making. Decoys within decoys, but this held a sludge that moved grudgingly against its chantment-sealed container. A true cure. Like her, he had decided the only safe place to hide such a thing was in his own pocket.
Like sire, like child, perhaps? Hot, bilious loathing filled her.
The Twisted thing that had been Puck Goodfellow struggled to rise. Morning would find it here, too malformed to speak or walk. It might starve to death; it might cripple out the rest of its existence like Parsifleur Pidge, though she had Twisted it far past that woodwight’s ill-luck. Robin looked down at it, tucking the pipes in her other pocket.
They were powerful, and there was no better time to learn their use.
“For Daisy,” she said quietly, “and for Sean.”
The thing writhed again, trying to rise, the thick shell of bone on its corkscrewed back scraping the roof. Robin turned away. Full night was falling.
I must find a place to hide.
SOON ENOUGH
48
He was weak from the poison, but he still dragged himself out behind the trailer, onto the trashwood slope. The lance filled his hands, and Jeremiah dropped his second-best backpack. He turned, and listened.
Dusk had folded her robe about her and left the sky, shutting the door of day. From the other side, full night rose in her own indigo splendor, the hard points of stars peeping through racing clouds. The wind was uncertain, flirting, promising rain, and thunder rumbled in the distance. What part of the sound was actual thunder, and what part the approaching battles, he couldn’t say.
Nearer, there was a crackling and a rushing. A glitter through the windows, not noticeable from the front yet.
Down at the bottom of the hill there was a stand of young birches, and from there he’d strike out east. Two shackles circled his neck. The locket, its chain too short for his throat, twitched against the notch between his collarbones.
Keep it as weregilt.
Well, maybe he would. But he’d also find her. Sooner or later, she’d listen to him.
The other chain was Unwinter’s Horn. He let out a long breath, examining the lance. Solid silver, its leaf-shaped tip, humming expectantly.
Gallow rested the lance-end on the ground, leaned against it. His legs were still a little shaky. Only time would tell if Robin had managed to draw all the poison out. If she hadn’t, well.
He didn’t have to wait long. Smoke began to billow, and the flames sucked greedily through the windows he’d thoughtfully left open on the back side of the house. Soon after that the entire structure was involved, and the carport buckled, melting. Shouts and running feet, sirens in the distance.
The mortal world already believed him dead. This was simply tidying up loose ends. Weregilt of another kind, perhaps.
Daisy’s clothes would be burning already; he’d laid the fire chantment thickest in the bedroom. She was sleeping soundly; there was nothing more to be done.
When the trucks arrived and the mortals began spraying water on the sidhe-fed blaze, he picked up the backpack and shrugged into it. The lance quivered and itched, but it would drink blood soon enough. He might well lead Unwinter to Robin, if he was unlucky.
He didn’t care. Selfish, just like a sidhe.
Jeremiah Gallow turned away from his mortal life, again, and vanished into the pale birch trees.
In the distance, the thin threads of silver huntwhistles rose.
All through that long day, the thing on the rooftop smoked and rocked back and forth on its bony shell. Its flaccid limbs flopped uselessly, and the cloudy spring sunshine striped it with steaming weals. It made tiny piping sounds, lost in the noise of traffic below. Horns blared, engines gunned, the murmur of crowds enfolded it. The sun was cruel, for all it was weak, and the thing’s eyes were runnels of black tar pouring down its wasted cheeks. Once proud and capering, it was now a Twisted wreck, its wounds still seeping. She had been thorough, the avenging attacker.
As thorough as he would be, soon. But first he had to survive the assault of the mortal sun. Twisted, iron-poisoned, and wounded as he was, it burned as if he was one of Unwinter’s dark-creeping legions. The heavy-misting rain was no balm, full of poisonous exhaust and the stinking effluvia of the metal the foolish salt-sweet mortals used to scar every piece of free soil they found.
Had it been full summer, their sun might have finished the work the daughter had begun.
Below, the Savoigh Li
mited throbbed. Once its stone facade and plaster walls, ornate fixtures and heavy-framed mirrors had been new, then oudated, then seedy, and now refurbished. The winds of urban gentrification blew erratic but inexorable, and the Savoigh, with its uniformed doormen and its high-rent offices, its tiny cold-water studios for the bohemians and its ancient, growling boiler in the basement, had become that most terrible of things: a fashionable heap.
Rocking steadily, the rhythm of the thing’s shell grinding as it threatened to topple. Its piping sounds became more intense, tiny malformed cries of effort. They soaked through the rooftop’s rough surface, burrowing down.
Afterward, if the residents of the Savoigh Limited remembered that chill spring day at all, they remembered an endless string of bad luck. Printers jamming, coffeemakers sputtering, milk and creamer clotted and sour even before its sell-by date. A scented candle shattered on the fifth floor, spilling hot wax across important paperwork and almost catching the drapes on fire, plaster sagged, stray cats wandered in, yowling, and didn’t leave until the aroma of their urine soaked the entire building. The boiler sputtered and creaked, moaning, the sound of its displeasure felt through the wooden floors. Fingers jammed in doors, toasters overheating, electrical outlets sparking when the cords were jiggled, four fender-benders out front and the doormen decrying the paucity of tips. Toes catching on carpets, stairs missed and neck-breaking tumbles barely averted, papers scattered and microwaves either not heating anything or scorch-burning it to the container, two mini-fridges inexplicably ceasing to work…
All through this, the rocking continued, the creature gaining inches across the roof. Lunchtime came and went, and it became obvious what the thing was aiming for—a pool of shadow in the lee of an HVAC hood, lengthening as the sun tipped past its zenith.