by Ari Marmell
Then you got the Unseelie: the goblin under the bed, the troll under the bridge, the mari-morgan waiting to drag you under the water. The less said about the Unseelie, the better.
Unfortunately, I got a lot to say about the Unseelie. Just not yet.
The point to this little lecture is that the Seelie Court here in Chicago’s modeled themselves after your own municipal government—and they’ve managed to twist tradition and title up with their efforts to take after you Joes. So King Sien Bheara and Queen Laurelline prefer Judge and Police Chief. We got our dukes and earls and princes and barons—titles they still hold, and still use on written edicts and certain formal shindigs—but for the most part, they’re judges and aldermen and captains and lawyers. And just to make things even more of a hoot, there’s no correlation. A baron and an earl might both be committeemen. A knight might be a captain. And like I just said, King Sien Bheara ain’t remotely the only judge.
So how do you know who outranks who? If you’re from here, you just do; and if you ain’t, you keep your trap shut and pay real close attention until you work it out.
Anyway, I hadn’t expected to get an audience with Chief Laurelline or Judge Sien Bheara, though two months sounded a little extreme. I’d mostly asked for two reasons: one, it’s an old trick; you ask for something ridiculous, so when your next request is a little less ridiculous, it sounds reasonable.
And two, I wanted to see if I still had any pull around here. The answer to that last was looking to be a pretty resounding no.
“I told you who I am, doll. I was a prince of this damn Court!”
“Yes, Mr. Oberon.” She dropped her mask of indifference long enough to look disgusted at gracing me with that name. “You did. And I should wish to mention that, in point of fact, you were never a prince in Chicago. Which means, at best, you were only ever a visiting dignitary here.
“And also, that pesky past tense. You were a prince, before you went and got yourself banished.”
My fists clenched, and I’m pretty sure my ears started to steam. “Now just a minute, you—”
“If you are not planning to make an appointment, I would request that you leave. There are other folks waiting in line.”
I took a couple of deep breaths. “May I please see one of the other courtiers, miss?” I tried to make myself sound nicely chastened, when in fact I really wanted to play some chin music on the nearest handy mug.
“I’m sure you may.” She aimed a thumb at the door further down the wall, past all the receptionists’ desks and windows. “Personal secretaries throughout the hall. I’m sure one of them can assist you. You are not to approach any of the offices without permission.”
“Thanks. I hope I’ll find them as helpful as you’ve been.”
“I’m certain you will. Next!”
More barely controlled chaos through that door, in that same combination of precinct and courtroom. At dozens of desks scattered throughout the wide hall, detectives and file clerks, seneschals and more receptionists, all scribbled, typed, or chatted as their duties dictated. A spriggan cop frog-marched a goblin past me and cuffed him to a chair, while a pixie shot past my head carrying a subpoena bigger’n she was. The place reeked of smoke that was equal parts tobacco and crushed flower petals.
And for the next two hours, I subjected myself to every imaginable variation of the phrase, “Sorry, no,” from a bunch of aristocrats’ brats—relatively young aes sidhe and gancanagh and whatnot, learning the ropes of the Court before they came into their own titles. Some of ’em didn’t even bother to check their calendars or ask their bosses; most were polite enough to go through the motions. I got told that some of the nobles here could pencil me in in a couple weeks, whereas others might deign to sit down with me precisely three days after Hell froze over—assuming the reports of said abnormal winter could be independently verified by three separate unbiased sources.
Have I mentioned that I wasn’t the most popular fella around?
I actually thought about waiting the two weeks, to be honest. I’d just kill some time until Pete was done, come back later, have whatever meetings I could have, and figure out what to do from there. It mighta been a little annoying, just sitting around, but it’d certainly be simpler. And the girl’d been missing for sixteen years, so a few more days probably wouldn’t make a difference, right?
But that was an awful important point to hang on a “probably,” and I couldn’t shake Bianca’s warning that Fino could go to war over this if he learned what was happening. Plus, I was just feeling damn ornery over being given the brushoff. So, time for a new plan.
I picked a random bench and just watched for a few hours, observing as the high mucky-mucks, the big (and medium) cheeses, emerged from their offices to converse with their various and sundry minions. It took a while, but eventually I had a pretty good sense of who treated their secretaries and chamberlains like dirt, and who was a little more friendly to the little people who worked for them.
And once I had that little nugget of information, it was just a matter of time before…
Yep. A guy wandered in from outside—probably one of the ghillie dhu, or what some of you call a “green man,” considering he was dressed in a suit actually woven from moss—and made a beeline for one of the file clerks. The young aes sidhe closed his ledgers, spoke to the ghillie dhu for a minute, and then pointed him toward one of the judge’s chambers. The outsider tipped a hat with a brim of leaves, and started that way…
“Hey!” I stood, elbowed my way over, and planted myself (no pun intended) in the green man’s way, right beside the clerk’s desk. “What the hell you think you’re doing, pal?”
The ghillie dhu recoiled—they’re kinda shy, most of ’em, unless they’re protecting their woodlands. “I beg your pardon, sir?” he asked, his voice not quite steady.
“You think I don’t see what’s happening here? I was just told I’d hafta wait weeks to see somebody, and now you think you can just waltz in, throw your weight around, and jump the line? I don’t think so, bo.”
“I assure you, sir, I did nothing of the kind!” His peepers were zipping back and forth like pixies on caffeine, and I think he really wanted to cut and run. I gotta say, I almost felt bad for what I was doing. “I merely asked… That is, I…”
The clerk came to his rescue, just as I’d wanted. “Back off, mister! He didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Ah!” I spun, jutting my chin as far over the desk as I could without toppling forward, and it was the younger guy’s turn to recoil. “So it’s your fault then! You’re the one who decided, hey, Mr. Oberon’s just a nobody, it’s okay if I treat him like garbage! Is that it, kid?”
“What? No, I—”
I glanced back at the ghillie dhu. “Sorry about that, buddy. Didn’t realize it wasn’t your fault. You’re free to go.”
There was no reason for him to go, of course—indeed, he hadn’t done anything wrong—but he was so glad to be off the hook, he was pretty much sprinting as he blew the joint.
Everybody else around us was starting to stare, as they got the picture that something was up.
“And you,” I said, going back to the kid, “you wanna be insulting and disrespectful, fine. I’m more’n happy to give you satisfaction.”
You humans have an expression “White as a ghost.” I’ve seen ghosts, so you know I’m on the square when I tell you that the clerk went a lot whiter’n they are. “Wh-what?”
“I’ll pick…” I paused dramatically, considering. “Rapiers. Dawn give you enough time to get your affairs in order?”
“You—you can’t…” I think he was about to cry, and everyone around had gone quiet as a mouse’s whisper. The kid had no idea what to do about me, which was my whole point. See, a Fae of the Seelie Court ain’t required to accept or even acknowledge a challenge from anyone of lower status, and anyone of “quality” would know better’n to challenge a servant (and the scion of a more powerful Fae, too) over something of this sort.
One of those things that Just Wasn’t Done—but there wasn’t any law that it couldn’t be.
“What’re your terms?” I pressed. “Death? Yeah, I bet a hothead young punk like you prefers to the death, don’t you? All right, fine, I can do that.”
He was whimpering openly now, and if the glares I was getting got any heavier, they’d crush me down into the toes of my shoes. If this didn’t work—and so far, I wasn’t seeing any trace of the response I was looking for—I was gonna have a problem. I didn’t actually wanna hurt the kid, and I was just scrambling for an excuse to back out (or at least let myself get talked out of a duel to the death), when the gamble paid off.
“Really, Mr. Oberon.” The voice was resonant, cutting through the sounds from elsewhere in the hall, and deeper than a gnome’s basement. “Have you nothing better to do with your time than to terrorize our faithful civil servants?”
I straightened. “Afternoon, Judge Ylleuwyn. Good to see you.”
The judge—an earl of the Court, just so you know—was a gaunt shape looming in an office doorway, draped in robes of formal black, the cuffs and collar stitched with traditional litanies in Old Gaelic. His hair and beard were storm-cloud grey, and his unblinking eyes looked quite capable of staring down his own reflection. I kept his gaze only by reminding myself, over and over, how humiliating it’d be to back down now after everything I’d done to get his attention.
“I’ll not lie to you,” he said, “by claiming the same. Do you truly intend to challenge my clerk to a duel? Or was this merely an uncouth pretense to attract attention?”
“Why, Your Honor, what a dreadful thing to suggest. But since you are here, and since your previous appointment seems to have canceled…” I smiled broadly.
He didn’t. I could actually see the refusal forming behind his lips, until he glanced one more time at his clerk’s corpse-pallid mug, and the amount of work that wasn’t getting done as everyone watched to see what happened next. He sighed, loudly.
“Step into my office, Mr. Oberon.” He managed, without being overtly rude in the slightest, to make my name sound even more an insult than the leprechaun at the front desk had done.
I reached out to pat the young aes sidhe’s cheek—he yelped and actually fell over his chair as he backpedaled—and followed.
Ylleuwyn’s office was nice and roomy; probably more so, actually, than could naturally fit into the space allotted to it. (Fae architecture at its finest.) His desk was carved in patterns of oak leaves but looked more like mahogany. The entire far wall was a single large, overflowing bookcase, and a plaque directly behind him held a saber and a Tommy gun. I had to take a second glance at the gat: this was a genuine Chicago typewriter—imported from your world, made of wood and steel—not one of our magic-driven copies.
“Have you any idea,” Ylleuwyn asked me as he rounded his desk, “whose son you just challenged, in violation of hundreds of years of tradition?” He sat down in his great, high-backed chair. I sprawled in one of the others, opposite his desk, without waiting for an invitation that I knew wasn’t coming.
“No doubt someone damn important, who’ll never forgive me, and will swear himself my enemy until the end of days. He’ll do everything he can to destroy me, and blah, blah, blah. Tell him to get in line.”
“I’ll do that. I thought we were well rid of you, Mick. Have you returned for any purpose other than making a deliberate mockery of our customs?”
“It’s ‘Mick’ now, is it? When did we get to be such close pals, Yll?”
Fire flashed in Ylleuwyn’s pupils—and if you’re wondering if I’m being metaphorical or not, well, I wasn’t so sure myself. “I’ll not stoop to forgetting my manners with you in public, you wretch. But neither will I address you privately by a name to which you’ve no right! As though it weren’t enough that a prince of the Court should be unseated and banished, you deliberately spat in the eye of every Seelie when you chose to take your cousin’s name to go amongst the mortals! You are a living, breathing affront, Mick. A smirch on the honor of the entire Seelie Court! And some day, I will learn precisely what offense you committed to earn your current status, and should it be something that is even remotely criminal by the statutes of the Chicago Court, believe you me, I shall ensure that you suffer the full penalties permitted me by law!”
He was breathing heavy by the time he was done, not remotely as composed as he’d have been in public—and I was right there with him. My fists were clenched tight enough to draw blood, and I was seeing red flashes in the corner of my vision. I honestly dunno which it was that stopped me from lunging over the desk and slugging him one across the button: that it simply wasn’t appropriate, that it’d cost me whatever leads he might have to offer, or that I wasn’t entirely sure I could take him.
What you gotta understand is, I wasn’t banished, wasn’t stripped of my title. I walked away from it. My choice, nobody else’s. But when the rumors started, traveling from Court to Court on wings and wheels of whispers, I didn’t say a thing. In fact, I even helped spread a few of ’em. I thought it’d be a good way to make sure that nobody came to me asking for favors, or trying to rope me into whatever garbage political scheme they had going, or just begging me to come back.
I’m a lot less angry now than I was then, and I’ve long since abandoned my determination never to have anything to do with the Courts—but now that those rumors are doing me more harm than good, it’s way too damn late to do anything about ’em.
So what I said instead, after pausing to let my heartbeat slow down to something a little less than a cavalry charge, was, “I didn’t really violate any rules out there. There’s no law against the challenge I made. You call yourself a judge, you should probably bone up on this stuff.”
“No law, no,” he conceded, his voice gruff enough to polish glass. “But tradition! You know very well they’re nearly the same thing to us!”
“Yeah. Y’know what’s funny about something that’s nearly some other thing, Ylleuwyn? It ain’t actually that other thing.” Then, before he could launch back into his tirade—or find himself a new one—I continued, “But as it happens, you ain’t wrong. I am here for a reason.
“I’m trying to find a human child. The other half of a changeling swap.”
“Then why pester us about it? Go ask the Unfit, if you dare. They’re responsible for far more changelings than any of the Seelie.”
“More, yeah. But not even remotely all.” I leaned back, put a foot up on the opposite knee. “But more to the point, judge, ain’t that the kinda thing you guys keep track of? I know you watch everything else the Unfit do—and each other, too, at that. I could ask around for months, and not get the sorta info you can offer.”
“I see.” He, too, leaned back in his chair. “And I suppose you also have a reason why I might lift so much as a finger to assist you? Because I confess, Mick, that I cannot come up with a single one.”
“I could tell you it’s because you’d be helping out a family that’s worried sick about their daughter,” I began, even though I knew how well that argument would fly. And yep, he was already shrugging his black-robed, “honorable” shoulders before I’d finished the sentence. “Okay,” I went on. “How about because the last thing you want is me hanging around for days, or even weeks, investigating this, and your help gets me outta here that much quicker?
“And because, much as you hate me, you’re sharp enough to know that it’d be useful to have me owe you a small favor.” I practically had to use a crowbar to pry my jaw open around that sentence. Last thing I wanted was to be indebted to Ylleuwyn for anything, ever. But this was a fairly minor boon, all things considered, and if it got me what I needed, it’d be worth paying.
Probably.
For about a minute, the judge said nothing. If I’d seen fire in his blinkers before, I swore that I could see copper and brass gears clicking and winding in ’em now. And then, “All right, you make an interesting point. I’ll hear you out. Tell me of this human
you’re looking for.”
“Well, she was taken about sixteen years ago.” Then, since not all Fae are up on human physiology, “Assuming she’s aged normally while she’s been here, that makes her an older adolescent. Almost an adult, but not quite.”
“That’s still an awfully wide range. Continue.”
“She’s Italian, which means that she’s probably a little darker skinned than you are, but not necessarily. She was taken from a family called Ottati…”
He was good; very, very good. Even watching as carefully as I was, I almost missed it: a single twitch in the wrinkles beside his left blinker, a quick pressure at the corner of his mouth. I kept gabbing, throwing out a few more meaningless details, but it didn’t matter. He knew exactly who I meant.
And he didn’t want me to know he knew. That couldn’t bode well.
“No,” he said after I’d finished—and after he made a pretty convincing show of giving it some real thought. “I fear I know of nothing matching your precise description of events. I shall, of course, peruse our files when I have the time to do so—I must admit, I’m rather taken with the idea of you owing me—but I can make you no promises. Where might I reach you?”
“I’ll be staying at the Lambton,” I told him, rising from the chair. He did the same. (And no, I didn’t even consider lying about where I’d be. Even if I’d thought he’d try something unpleasant, a fella with his pull could find me in two minutes flat as long as I was in the city.) He stuck out his hand, somehow making it very clear that he did so only because courtesy demanded it; I can only hope I was able to convey the same when I took it.
I’m sure I got some murderous looks on my way outta the hall, but honestly, I didn’t notice. I was too busy going over it all in my head, and getting more’n more unhappy with it each time. The weather outside coulda been responding to my mood. Darkness had fallen, and the air was filled with a heavy, steady downpour—the kind that comes with no thunder, no lightning, just a wall of wet that never seems to end. In your world, it woulda soaked me and everyone out on the street, leaving us sopping for hours, but here… Well, I’ll get to that. Right now, anyway, I was drenched, but didn’t much care.