Roadside Magic

by Lilith Saintcrow

  She whispered a word in the Old Language and immediately winced. It stung her tongue dreadfully, and she tasted blood.

  No chantment for a little while, then. She needed milk, but whatever was in the house behind her was almost certainly soured by deathbringing sidhe.

  Besides, going back into that place, with that smell . . . no.

  The hound—bigger than a Saint Bernard, the size of a pony and with enough fur to make it seem even larger—bent its head and licked at her forearm. Robin tried to snatch her arm away and almost overbalanced. The dog continued licking, mildly, and the cut eased itself together, knitting slowly as it continued.

  Not a cu sith, then. Perhaps a dandydog, or a gebriel without a human-shaped head. It had four toes and large blunt nails, so it was more like a gytrash, but she’d never seen a gytrash this color.

  A new animal, then.

  It pressed its face against her shoulder, almost knocking her to the deck again, and gave a little hop of delight when she pushed at it. It was always Daisy who could coax a skeletal stray into eating from a can Robin stole from a corner store or supermarket, Daisy who lit up every time a mangy kitten wandered by. Daddy Snowe called her “pets” diseased, kicked at them with his cowboy boots.

  Once, he had drowned a whole sack of mewling kittens in the rain barrel while Daisy sobbed and Robin looked on, her face frozen.

  She shook the memory away, and the hound whined. It shoved its face in hers and licked her cheek, a wet, warm, real touch. Another whine, deep in its barrel chest.

  “I know,” she whispered, even though she didn’t. She didn’t have a single fucking clue.

  Her teeth chattered, and when she wound her fingers in the hound’s fur, warmth jolted down her arm, the feverish heat of a creature from the sideways realms. Her head cleared a bit, and she gazed out on the mortal backyard, blinking furiously as the sun shed a robe of cloud and poured down onto mildly shaggy grass and fence alike. An anemic sapling in the back left corner was furred with green, and when the hound folded itself down and wriggled, Robin found she could indeed hike her leg up over its back.

  “Be careful,” she whispered, and sagged against the creature’s vital heat. “They’re chasing me. You could flee, and leave me to—”

  The hound growled, another low thrumming sound lifting the fine hairs all over her body. A mortal response. Her arms and legs did their best to clamp down, to keep her on its back, and it rose carefully, finding its balance.

  “I wish . . .” There was nothing to wish for. So Robin swallowed the taste of blood and bile and whispered the name she’d knit together in the Old Language. Translation was difficult, but she wet her cracked, dry lips and tried anyway.

  Thankfully, she didn’t have to pronounce any chantment. The use-name was there, lying over the top of the thing’s truename in a gossamer shroud. It would be impossible to guess the real shape, the exact constellation of blood and breath below, if Robin or the hound didn’t teach it.

  “Pepperbuckle,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

  Pepperbuckle threw back his shaggy head and howled, a long, trailing scarf of a cry. He bunched himself, and the world fell away underneath him.

  Robin shut her eyes, clinging to warm, vital fur, and simply held on for all she was worth.

  WELL DEAD BEFORE

  19

  The house reeked of death; he didn’t bother traipsing upstairs to see what foulness lay in wait. Gallow arrived in the kitchen just as Crenn nipped through the back door, and the thought that the man might get to Robin first spurred him to even more speed. He hit the door, shivering the glass and bursting wood into shrapnel, and skidded to a halt.

  Crenn whirled, going down into a crouch, his hand blurring up for the hilt on his left shoulder. Gallow’s lance was already solid, lengthening, the point leafshaped now and wicked-sharp, dipping to rest at the hollow of the assassin’s throat. “Don’t,” Jeremiah said softly. “Don’t make me.”

  There was a patio table, smashed under a canvas cover, and the smell of chantment hung heavy in the air. A thin thread of Robin’s scent, that spice and woman he hadn’t realized he was missing until now.

  Liar. You knew you were missing it, all along.

  Crenn snarled, and the ruin of his face was clearly visible under strings of mossy hair. The boiling tar had done horrible things to flesh, and even for a Half the damage was a long time healing. His eyes glowed, bright coal-burning glimmers through the seamed and pitted flesh, and the most horrible thing was the shadows of sidhe gloss on the scars. A hideous beauty, one that Gallow might have called a lie if he didn’t know the depth of the damage behind the blemishes.

  He’d thought Robin’s loveliness a lie once, too.

  The assassin tensed. Gallow didn’t, the lance humming sweetly against his palms. It had fed well last night, but there was no end to the thing’s hunger.

  The old Armormaster had never warned him of that. Would it have mattered, if he had?

  “She’s not here,” Crenn said. It was almost obscene, how the tar poured over what the attackers had thought was a dead body had left his lips untouched. Chiseled and perfect, you could see a ghost of what he’d been before they used the cudgels on him, and the bubbling-hot liquid as well.

  Jeremiah didn’t let his gaze lift to scan the backyard. The locket throbbed under his T-shirt, a secret heartbeat. Close. Very close. Still running, too. A canny girl, his Robin.

  Not yours yet, Gallow. He kept the lance steady. “You gave me a warning, Crenn. I’ll give one in return: Stop chasing my lady Robin. She’s not for you, or for Summer.”

  Stillness. The sun was falling, afternoon waning, and this backyard was full of chantment echoes. What had Robin done? Her song could kill, but he didn’t think it likely that she’d harm a houseful of mortals.

  Anyone on her trail might not be so kind, though.

  “Your lady Robin?” On that scar-wrinkled face, the sneer was even uglier. “I do not think she welcomes your suit, Gallowglass.”

  What would you know of it? Just like dealing with one of the touchy mortals on a jobsite. “Just as I’m sure she won’t welcome yours, if you get lucky enough to catch her.”

  “Oh, and now he knows the Ragged’s mind as well.” It would be difficult for the assassin to sound more disdainful. He straightened slowly, the lance rising in line with his throat and Gallow’s weight shifting to keep it steady. “And mine. Why bother with dancing, Glassgallow, if you know the music so well?”

  “The Ragged is mine. Go back to your swamp and nurse your scars.” Way to go, Jer. Still, he needed this dealt with, and if he could provoke the man . . .

  “Oh, they need no nursing.” A wide, white, sharp smile, his shoulders loose and easy under the brown leather.

  That brought up another troubling thought. Where was Puck? He had been underfoot all through the last few days, and with his hold on Robin . . . was he with her now?

  A flash, a spat curse, the lance rasping against his palms, a propeller-movement tossing one of Crenn’s blades wide. Gallow skipped back, batting the curse away with a single word, the Veil shimmering around them both, sensitized by whatever had happened before two Half started flinging violence and curses around.

  Crenn was still abominably quick. Two blades and that lightfoot grace, the tar hadn’t robbed him of the beauty and precision of sidhe movement. Gallow fell back, feinting, watch that left hand, he’s . . . A muscle-tearing effort, blades chiming, the lance bending, impossibly fluid, shifting through shape and unshape to batter aside one sword, blinking aside to smack the flat of the other one and drive the assassin back. The deck groaned beneath them, glass and metal jittering under the torn canvas cover. The grill, under another cover, toppled over, and Jeremiah caught a flash of a propane tank.

  Ah. Two steps to the side, the lance lengthening, Crenn pushed off the deck and landing catfoot on wet grass. His right sleeve flopped a little, high up—the lance’s kiss. A thin trickle o
f blood slid warm down Jeremiah’s temple, the initial curse having brushed him with a razor wing.

  Nobody mowed, Jeremiah realized. Whoever’s upstairs was well dead before Robin arrived here. Coincidence?

  Not with the saplings in front and backyard greening like they were. “Crenn.” His breath coming hard but regular. “The Ragged needs no protection from me.”

  A single shrug, moss greening along Crenn’s forehead where salt sweat moistened the strands. One blade held au coeur, the other high in blackbird’s-rise, the sunlight failing again behind a screen of rain-heavy cloud. He was so goddamn fast, and if he got inside the lance’s reach Jeremiah might be forced into something other than knightly sparring.

  Crenn’s eyes glittered. He straightened still more, his gaze flicking across the deck and Jeremiah in a smooth, controlled arc. “And yet Summer granted you her life.”

  “She did.” He weighed adding more. “The situation is . . . complex.”

  “It always is.” Crenn’s blades lowered, slowly. “Your lady Robin, hm?”

  She doesn’t know it yet. “Yes.” He didn’t relax. This was altogether too easy.

  The smile widened. Crenn actually laughed, a short, bitter mouthful that might have been merry as a pixie if not for the grotesquerie his face twisted into.

  He was still laughing when he vaulted the back fence, disappearing due west, and the only thing that stopped Gallow from chasing him was the sudden sharp tug on the necklace in his pocket. North and east, and fading quickly.

  Priorities, Jer. How fast can she move, after all this?

  “Not fast enough,” he murmured, and the lance disappeared as he bent, one ear pricked for a new arrival to muddy the situation.

  Tangled in the canvas, a curve of broken glass. Rusted-red along its sharp edge, and clinging to it, three fine, curling, coppergold hairs.

  Had she been forced to defend herself with this? The blood on it . . .

  His heart, like one of Unwinter’s treacherous night-mares, dropped sharply away, then returned to pound in his wrists and throat. Jeremiah sucked in a breath, glancing at the sky again.

  Robin. Oh, God.

  What if she’d been caught? Summer would not send only one erstwhile assassin to gather up her wayward little Half bird. Seelie had been here, the entire yard shouted it.

  Jeremiah wrapped the hairs into the dried blood, hoping they’d hold. Shoved the glass in his coat’s miraculously unshredded left breast pocket, and headed for the fence.

  CARNIVALE

  20

  She tumbled, boneless, from the hound’s back, with barely enough strength to keep herself from falling face-first onto blown-down chainlink fencing. Blinking, pushing her hair back, Robin staggered, and couldn’t find her balance until Pepperbuckle slid along her right side, for all the world like a cat stropping a beloved human, and whined deep in his chest. Her fingers tangled in his fur again, and she limped along with him. Her shoes slipped, her calves aching savagely as the chantment in the heels fought against her mortal heaviness.

  Where am I? Metal shapes rose and blurred, and she bit back a scream, thinking the dog had dragged her to the Unseelie after all.

  A huge glaring white face, the size of her entire body, loomed before her with its lips rusted with old blood and its nose a crimson bulb, and terror almost robbed her of the ability to read mortal writing. Peeling paint on cheap pasteboard, and with a jolt, she realized where she was.

  SALTHOFF CARNIVALE

  BEST IN THE WEST

  COME INSIDE!

  “Oh,” she whispered. Her heart hammered, and for a moment the place glimmered, the shape of something underneath wearing through. There was iron, though, in the tilting Ferris wheel, and also in the bigtop’s skeleton full of shredded ribbons fluttering on the spring-chill, freshening breeze. Rain-scent filled her nose and eyes, her hair tangling, no longer as silky. The pins shifted, and she had to clap them to her head while she struggled to walk alongside Pepperbuckle, who patiently guided them both down the central arcade.

  I wonder what happened. It looks like everyone just . . . left. She shivered, shut her eyes. Some things could turn a place sideways—and some could wrench a place out of the stream of both mortal and sidhe, a crack between door and jamb. It was usually a disastrous occurrence, without any merriment to attract sidhe attention. Never mind, I don’t want to know.

  Pepperbuckle whined. Now they were past the arcade—there were still electrical cables, sagging on posts, buried in leaf mulch and sandy soil to trip the unwary. She hung on grimly, the creature’s warmth a welcome shield. Small trailers stood on either side, the shells carnies dragged from town to town. A screen door banged, hesitated, opened under the wind’s persistent fingering, banged again, the screen loose and flopping in long ribbons, as if it had been clawed.

  The hound seemed to know where he was going. Robin’s arm was a solid bar of pain by the time he walked her to a trailer just like all the others, turning so she could grab at a rickety railing above handmade, portable, dry-rotten steps. She climbed one, then another, clinging to the wobbling balustrade. Splinters poking her palms, she hauled herself up the third step and half-fell against the door.

  When she turned, blinking against a stinging, dust-laden wind—funny, but it seemed like the rain hadn’t fallen here—Pepperbuckle was gone.

  Debt repaid, I guess. I’m probably safe here for a little while. It was like thinking through mud. She tried the door; it was unlocked, and that was a good thing, because she couldn’t even whisper a lock open in her current state.

  Inside, more dust. It was an ancient Airstream, with a half-kitchenette and a porta-john closet of a bathroom. That didn’t matter, because there was a bed, and Robin staggered across cracked, humped flooring and collapsed. The wind moaned, and the foggy idea that perhaps she wasn’t in a mortal or sidhe space would have been frightening, but she was too tired to care.

  Bang. Hiss-whine. Bang. Creak.

  She woke to the entire trailer rocking on its dead, airless tires, and a wet nose in her face. Somehow the hound had squeezed through the door, its jaws clamped on a glass bottle. It nosed at her, liquid sloshing inside the glass, and she tried to push its snout away before it blew a warm, hay-scented breath over her and she realized the sloshing was something good.

  She pushed herself up, wedging her back against the trailer’s thin, rust-spotted wall. Had she slept? For how long? It was dark outside, but time in a between-space like this could warp in strange ways.

  The bottle was milk. Full-cream, with a foil cap, and her hands shook as she managed to peel the topper off. The canine shape barely fit inside the trailer—how on earth had it gotten through the door?

  Doesn’t matter. Cu sith can change size, a little, maybe this one can.

  She tipped the bottle to her lips, and the balm poured down her throat in long swallows. Thin trickles kissed the outside of her mouth, her chin, dotted her dress, but she didn’t care. The dog whined, a high-pitched, yearning sound.

  She tore the bottle away, gasping, and the world roared around her, spinning and taking on its accustomed color and depth. The Veil flexed, flexed again, unseen shapes ghosting just at the edge of her vision. A moment’s worth of concentration, the music under her thoughts dipping and arrowing along at its usual volume, and she winced at the thought that she’d been afraid of losing it, even as she hated what her voice could do.

  What it had done.

  She offered the hound the bottle, but it shook its lean, graceful head, its eyes darkening a shade. It backed up, its rear ramming the kitchenette’s cabinet, and the look of agonized surprise crossing its long, intelligent face wrung a tiny, betraying laugh out of her.

  Pepperbuckle chuffed, a small chortling sound, as if he tried to chuckle as well. She tipped the bottle to her mouth again. Full-cream. She could taste the sun and the grass in it. Where on earth had he found such a thing?

  “Good,” she said, when she could breathe again for
drinking. “Good boy. Good, good boy.”

  The hound wriggled again, the entire trailer rocking and groaning. He thrust his face at her again, and Robin found herself scratching behind his floppy ears, just where she’d always seen Daisy rub stray dogs. Those eyes half lidded, and now she could see the pupils were oval instead of round like a cu sith’s vertical slits. More like a gytrash then, those good-natured dogsprites who guarded travelers in need—or led them into a bog and feasted on their still-writhing flesh, like kelpies, depending on their mood.

  “Best boy,” she whispered. A few more swallows finished the bottle, and the hound tensed. “No. No more.” Robin coughed and took a closer look at her surroundings.

  Nobody had been in here for quite some time. The bed she huddled on was a tiny, mildewed cot, and the walls were papered with fading photographs and once-glossy ads from old, old magazines. Flappers stared from water-spotted paper, handbills for the carnival’s appearances in other cities with florid illustrations, a strongman with a waxed mustache holding up inflatable barbells, and several pictures of a solemn, dark-eyed girl on postcards stuck to the wall with creeping mold.

  It was filthy, and her skin crawled, but the trembling and rippling in the fabric between the real and the more-than-real would hide her for a while. At least this particular trailer was relatively solid, and the shape shimmering underneath it didn’t seem to be Summer. Perhaps part of the Low Counties, there were dry places there where the free sidhe were all dust-dancers and pixies, connaughts and il de mus, scatterbrained flitters and closemouth earthsalt sidhe. The interference would make tracking her difficult.

  Which was good. Her legs still shook, but at least her shoes were glossy again. Her dress was the same deep blue as ever, the needle-chantments repairing themselves as her strength returned.

  The hound wriggled with delight again, rocking the entire sorry heap. “Maybe we should find a more solid place to sleep, huh?”