He didn’t care. He kept going, willing the tingle in his arms down, and set off for the lighted end of the street to find Clyde and Panko.
LEE TO GIVE
9
W hat in the name of Stone and Throne was that?
Her mouth all but hung ajar. Robin clutched at the bricks, fingers cramping and her calves aching. Her sides heaved and burned.
He was just a shadow, tall and broad-shouldered, green eyes alight and his hair black even in the shadows, ruthlessly short. The lance had appeared from nowhere¸ but he wasn’t full sidhe. She’d smelled a tinge of mortal on him even through the burning gunpowder of anger and the reek of blackboil death. The lance was a sidhe trick, a thing of cold moonlight and solid silver except when it dulled to cold iron, which meant he had some mortal blood, and he had killed a plagued Unseelie rider. What manner of man, mortal or sidhe, did that and simply walked away?
Go in peace.
She should. Her teeth would be clicking and clattering had she not clenched her jaw tightly enough to shatter them. Her breath had finally returned, and with it the mortal discomfort of cold and damp faded.
The slippery, loose fearfulness of having just narrowly escaped death at the needle-teeth of possibly plagued Unseelie hounds, however, would not disappear so quickly.
She collected herself as well as she could, smoothing her hair back, her gasps evening out as a measure of calm returned. Her heart hummed in her wrists and throat. She examined her arms and legs as well as she could in the dim light, and found no trace of plague. No rash, no black stipples. Pale, smooth, unmarked, uncontaminated. Her skirt dropped back below her knees with a sweet low sound, draggled with water and spattered with less-wholesome things but still intact.
Just like her skin. Still healthy.
Harsh breath caught in her throat. Robin stared at where he’d stood. Appearing out of nowhere, like a glamour sung into being by a Loremaster, an illustration of a courtsong or a riddling tale. Disappearing just as quickly, his boots smacking heavily on the pavement, as if he did not know the lightfoot, and his voice a harsh growl.
Go away. Christ.
She edged for the mouth of the alley. The sidhe rider was gone, only a stain on the concrete marking his untimely passing. It reeked of rotting fur and spoiled fruit, maggots squirming, and she held her breath until she was past. She flitted across the street, drifting from shadow to shadow as her rescuer clumped inelegantly back toward the tavern and the bright flashing lights. Mortals swarmed like disturbed bees, and she reached the safety of the dimness on the opposite side of the vibrating stain of bloodspill and death.
She paused, irresolute, on the sidewalk. Her trail was well and truly broken now. It wasn’t necessary for her to go back quite yet. She could very well salt this tale with a little more flash and bring it to Court, with the information that a green-eyed warrior breathed in the mortal world who could face a high Court Unseelie rider boiling with the plague and slay him—not as effortlessly as the Queen plucking an apple from a branch or bespelling a witless mortal man, but still. News of one who could stand against the plagued would be worth something, wouldn’t it, even if she had failed to bring back what Summer sent her for?
You’re lying even to yourself, Robin. You’re curious.
More than curious. There was a plan, hovering in the back of her nimble brain. A way to free herself, and possibly Sean, from those graceful, clutching six-fingered hands, perfumed with mortal desperation and the sweetness of apple-immortality.
For Summer was eternal. Or so it was held, in the Seelie realm.
A small clicking sound made her start. Robin whirled, and the humpbacked shape in the shadows rattled a dark leather cup at her. Dice clicked like bones inside, and her mouth went dry.
“Hullo, my dearie,” Puck Goodfellow murmured. He stood, easily, shedding the layers of shadow and glamour. “It appears you need no rescue from the hounds. How interesting.”
Robin’s fists clenched. Her heart had almost started out through her throat. “Puck!” More sharply than she intended to, her tone high and chill; the brown-haired youth eyed her warily. He wore leather, from softshod feet to leggings and laced jerkin, his bare arms moving with supple muscle under barkbrown skin. The leaf-bladed dagger at his hip glinted dully, and if the light had been better, she would have seen his hourglass pupils and the high points of his ears.
Goodfellow did not dress much to match mortals, if at all. If he wore a glamour, it was only to approach his prey more easily.
Robin backed up, two short, nervous steps, and regarded him.
“I was seeking you, to bring you a gift.” He spread his narrow, capable hands, keeping them well away from both dagger and the pipes hanging from his belt. “It occurred to me you might be followed, so when the whistles came I followed. Mayhap I would have done you a good turn.”
Mayhap you set the dogs on me yourself. I wouldn’t put it past any free sidhe, and you least of all. “You’re far from home, Goodfellow.” She was damp, she realized, with fear-sweat and poisonous, mortal acid rain. Or maybe it was the plague, settling against her skin. “And what you carry is Summer’s, not a gift you have lee to give. She will be glad of its return.” She resisted the urge to check her arms again. Tainted, Half or below, didn’t take the plague.
At least, they hadn’t yet. There had been gossip about Ilara Feathersalt, shutting herself up in a faraway bog because she saw a spot or two, even though she had a mortal great-great-however-many grandmother. Or maybe that was merely rumor, and she left Court because Summer had finally tired of Ilara’s beauty being compared to hers—or vice versa.
Robin had herself glimpsed Ilara’s gray-veiled slenderness stepping into a pumpkin-shaped carriage drawn by flame-manes one early, misty morn behind the Eldar Circle’s looming white stones. No trembling, and no breath of foulness had marred the lady’s form, but her exit had caused a buzz throughout the Court.
Goodfellow’s small laugh was another dry, bony sound. He tossed a small black silken bag; her hand flashed out and caught it. The glass ampoules inside clicked together; she examined them. Each one was sealed with colorless wax, containing a thick fluid that sparkled like firefly pixies. She muttered a chantment to rob them of the noise of clinking together and tucked them in her left-hand skirt pocket. There was time enough to shift them later, and she finally raised her gaze to Goodfellow’s. “I shall tell her of your aid. She will no doubt ask its price.”
The Fatherless grinned, sharp white teeth gleaming. “Oh, my Ragged, perhaps I am curious, curious sidhe. Perhaps I know who your dark knight-errant is, as well. What would you pay for his name and a warning?” The free sidhe grinned even wider, his irises firing in the gloom, a glow no mortal would see unless they were near to shuffling off their living coil. “Or will you hurry along now that you have your little baubles for Her Majesty?”
Baubles. As if he doesn’t know what’s in these. Robin folded her arms defensively. “I don’t think you have anything of value. I might even suspect you of setting the Unseelie on me; isn’t that a free sidhe’s favorite pastime?”
His face fell. The gleams of his eyes filled with more dangerous sparkling, though, a foxfire that a mortal might be led by. “You wound me, darling Robin. We share a name or two, and I was your guardian into Summer. You should be more charitable.”
His right-hand fingers now played with the leather-wrapped daggerhilt. Robin kept those extra-jointed fingers in sight, and backed up still more. Her earrings warmed slightly, the golden hoops brushing her cheeks. “I am charitable, free sidhe. I’m not singing.” She edged out into the street.
No, the Ragged could guess why Ilara had left, and kept the knowledge close in case it should be useful later. The Feathersalt’s lover Braghn Moran, tall and fair-haired, had been ensnared by Summer herself, and was now wasting away for want of the Queen’s affection. Summer had taken another into her favor, fickle as always, and perhaps Ilara disliked to see the wreck of her former paramour. And
Sean, poor Sean…
Her throat threatened to close. Pay attention, Robin. Now she had to step over the border into Summer soon, or Goodfellow would carry tales. If he did and someone listened, Robin might be trapped at Court until the Queen decided to send her on another thankless mission.
The next one might not end so well.
“His name is Gallow.” Goodfellow leaned back against the wall, hooking his thumbs in the woven-leather belt. A show of disdain or relaxation, or both. “He has not been moved to take an interest in a sidhe in many a long year. I wonder why he did so for you, my dove?”
Gallow? What an ill-starred name. “Perhaps he thought the rider was hunting him.” It was pale, inadequate, and as a parrying blow, very much not up to her usual standards.
Goodfellow regarded her narrowly. His expression softened, just a fraction. “You are shaken, and white as milk. Come, I know a place you may gather yourself, and—”
And place me under an obligation? I think not, mischievous one. “No, though your kindness is more than I deserve.” A pretty, empty phrase to match his own. Gallow, Gallow… Have I heard that name? Not that I can recall.
“Robin.” He sounded serious now, his even, light tenor tinted brown as bark. “I mean you no harm.” The tone dropped, became intimate. “I have never meant thee harm.”
Ever since she had surfaced from the pond and seen him crouching near her clothes, regarding her with bright interest, he had been in the habit of making such comments. There was a time she had been mortal-stupid, and thought perhaps he meant them—but caution had been ingrained in her even then.
Male meant danger. Any girl raised in the trailer parks absorbed that warning early and well.
“Oh, certainly not.” The sarcasm dripping from her words could have turned the slow drizzling rain to ice. She retreated even further, but he made no move. “Would you have taken my sister to Summer, too, had I begged thee harder?”
His face closed like a door. “Mortal is as mortal does. She was lucky to be left in this pale realm. Tell me, how is your changeling friend? Still warming the Queen’s bed, and yours still cold?”
It actually hurt below her breastbone, the dart striking true and a bite of disgust that he would think her so crass as to use a mortal child so. Still, she had not survived Court by allowing her face to show every wounding word.
“Warm enough, Robin Goodfellow,” she heard herself say. “Warm and wide enough, but you’ll never know.”
With that, she fled. She did not aim for the entry point so near to this alley. Let the free sidhe carry all the tales he would. Robin Ragged had decided, between one breath and the next, to have further words with this green-eyed Gallow.
TERRITORY TO BE GAINED
10
Summer exhaled sleepily, under an indigo canopy gemmed with strengthening stars. A white tower rose, its sides pierced with slender windows, and in one, a golden gleam trembled. Silver lute strings plucked by soft ageless fingers, their nails faintly blushed with the pink of a tender rose’s heart, and amid the quiet music, a mortal breathing.
He sat on the nacreous marble floor below the window, her cascading green mantle almost swallowing him whole. The heart of Summer essayed a lazy rill of music, one bare white foot peeping from underneath a mantle’s fold. The loveseat was of frayed red velvet, but you could not see the bloody fabric under the green. The Jewel on her forehead flashed, once, as the balance tipped, evening into night. The flower-carven walls, glowing softly, bathed the entire host in spectral light, moonglow captured by the tower’s top and slowly released when Summer willed it. Low couches covered in velvet and watered silk held those few honored enough to attend, and sigh-wrought draperies wrapped each wall and sconce, not to mention the shell-glowing lamps and the couch legs, in cobweb-fine mist.
She played, the Queen of all she surveyed, and looked out upon the night. Those high in favor at the moment amused themselves in their own quiet fashion, the highbloods feigning interest in books or each other, soft whispers traded behind slim, cruelly beautiful hands or fans made of multicolored gossamer wings and tiny bleached bones. The ladies-in-waiting, their skirts spread according to arcane etiquette, alert to each small change of Summer’s expression, draped themselves in languid poses. Braghn Moran, Ilara Feathersalt’s erstwhile paramour, held a moonwrought chalice while a masked brughnie squeezed freshly picked cloister-grapes in her knotted, barkbrown fists, the feathers on her mask quivering. Chantment dropped from Braghn’s lips, turning the stream of amber fluid into thick honeyspice mead.
Summer’s other favorite, a lean, black-masked rogue rumored to be Arcad Shallowdraft, held a gold-trimmed tome weighing as much as a kelpie. He did not bother to pretend to peruse its fantastically colored pages, choosing instead to study the mortal boy crouched in the folds of Summer’s mantle. The eyeslits of the sidhe’s beaked mask showed hot crimson sparks, and some of the ladies-in-waiting tittered among themselves. Imagine, to show jealousy of a mortal so openly! Especially a mortal tainted by association with that Half girl, the russet-haired one Summer sent hither and yon.
But it pleased Summer to let it continue, and when she set the lute aside to invite the golden-haired boy onto her seat, the rogue had the grace to look away. Soon his identity would be revealed, and a delicious play would have been wrought, and they would politely applaud.
For now, Summer smoothed the mortal boy’s hair while he gazed adoringly at her. “Little Sean,” she cooed. “And how is my little sprite, my little joy?”
“Your Majesty…” The boy stumbled over the words, blushing. So charming, when the mortals flushed with their hot salt-sweet blood. A changeling held his place in the mortal world, and would until Summer tired of him. It was inevitable.
“Oh, little sprite.” Pearl-white, sharp teeth flashed between her carmine lips. “Speak again.”
His tumbled curls parted under her snowy fingers, and he shuddered like a pony under the brush. A hush fell—even among the sidhe, silence sometimes falls at once on a gathering. Mortals called it a god passes among us, but the sidhe have a word for it—one mortals cannot hear, even when spoken.
The high, sweet music of a mortal child’s voice broke it, clear as crystal. “When is Robin-mama coming back?”
Silence deepened, as every sidhe in attendance tensed, waiting to see what Summer would make of this.
She laughed carelessly, but a darkness passed briefly over that ageless-beautiful face. Pinpricks of light in her black, black eyes winked out, something moving in the depths of her gaze. “Oh, she is on an errand, flapping her ragged wings.” Summer exhaled a sweet-drugging breath over the child’s head. “She’s quite forgotten about you, little one.”
The boy’s face slackened, drooping, but he brightened when Summer toyed with his hair afresh. It was so easy to divert the mortal mayflies, and so pleasant. If this one was returned to the mortal realm he would lead a shadow-life, longing for the Court he would remember only in dreams; when the changeling who held his place was brought home and fêted, its sojourn and celebration would end among the Queen’s apple trees, or in some corner of the sideways realms not yet Summer. The blood would flow hot, loosed by the flint knife only a queen could wield, and wherever it sprinkled would be forever under her sway.
Each mortal pet was, in the end, only territory to be gained.
Soon the child was gamboling merrily among the ladies-in-waiting, who petted and cosseted him under the Queen’s gaze. The rogue drew close, whispering in Summer’s ear as she drank from a moonwrought chalice, and if her laughter rang a little harshly, none dared to remark upon it.
Quite a few of the assembled sidhe smiled cruelly at the thought of Ragged Robin’s return, even as they fed the boy ambrosial bits and crowned him with glossy chantment-wrought laurel.
SHADOWCOIN
11
Four ambulances. Cops everywhere sorting out the mess. Broken car windows and other detritus crunched underfoot. One car was a fuming hulk, firefighters still d
ousing it with foam or fog or something. Jeremiah watched, the marks on his arms tingling as the lance, unsatisfied, ached for release.
There were bodybags. Three of them loaded into coroners’ vans. The quirpiece had done its work well, and a crowded bar on a Friday night was never too difficult to tip into chaos. Lowered inhibitions, petty pride, and rough words were fertile ground for any seed of mischief.
He stepped back into shadow, his skin alive with twitching adrenaline. His truck was at the other end of the parking lot; Panko’s ancient Volkswagen van listed slightly to the right half a block up the street. He couldn’t see Clyde’s motorcycle; a fire engine was blocking the view.
He searched for Panko’s familiar wide broad bulk, or Clyde’s muttonchops and baseball cap. Nothing yet. The quirpiece was a cold weight in his pocket. By morning it would be crumbling mud, or leaf sludge. Of all the uses such a sidhe chantment could be put to, this was one of his least favorite.
It was amazing to watch human beings cooperate in the face of disaster. Sidhe response would be… otherwise. The humans, they swarmed to comfort one another and repair the damage. Someone wept in huge messy gulps, while someone else made soothing sounds.
He kept looking, unwilling to leave his vantage point until he saw a familiar face. Maybe it was his mortal half forcing him to tarry. Maybe it was the traitorous ache in muscles he hadn’t used in a while—construction kept you in shape, but combat was another thing entirely.
Clyde, his head wrapped in a white bandage, stood stolidly at the edge of a knot of people corralled in a corner of the parking lot away from the action—the lightly wounded section. His hands hung loose at his sides, and his bald spot glowed under the assault of light, circled by white gauze.
Jeremiah eased forward. There was no crowd of onlookers; the Wagon Wheel was at the end of a street packed with warehouses, well after quitting time. Everyone who was likely to gawp had been involved. Nobody even looked at him.