by Ari Marmell
A while longer’n the traffic started to fade. Fewer flivvers, and those there were sounded a good ways away. That bugged me. Wasn’t so late that traffic shoulda just dropped off like that, and there was no way the carriage had carried us far enough to reach somewhere this quiet. Hell, we shoulda still been within sight of the Pilsen factories’ smokestacks. It was hinky, and where the Unfit are involved, I hate hinky.
Course, where the Unfit are involved I hate everything, so that’s maybe lacking some of the emphasis I meant to give it.
Engines and tires weren’t replaced by silence, either. Rain started tap-dancing on the carriage roof. Driver must be getting awful uncomfortable out there. Boo-hoo. Now if the redcap would just go join him…
Tap-dance became a marching band. A charging army. A damn machine gun. The whole contraption trembled beneath what felt like gallon-size raindrops, and shook in the grip of a wind that mighta just been strong enough to pick me up and throw me if I’d been burning shoe leather out there.
“Windy City,” yeah, but this was a bit much. I was damn near positive that I’d have heard something if there was a hurricane skulking up on Chicago. Which could really only mean…
Second to the right, and straight on ’til morning.
Not that I guessed we were headed anywhere quite as swanky as Barrie’s Neverland.
“Thought you said she was on our side of the real,” I accused.
“Naw, you said that.” The redcap spit out something he’d finally dislodged with the rib. “I didn’t say nothing about it.”
“Yeah, I said it. And I don’t make mistakes, so she’s clearly in the wrong place.”
Little shit mighta had something to say to that, but he didn’t have the chance. Carriage trundled to a stop, and the door swung open all by itself, which is a neat trick if you’re nine.
The trick beyond the door was more impressive, though, even at my age.
There hadda be a world out there—though which one was up for debate. The storm was a wall, whipped sideways and made solid by gusts that must’ve rivaled the first breath of Creation, painted black by a night so thick I coulda stuck a straw in it and sucked up a few gulps.
It smelled like… after-death. That weird tang when whatever was left to decay has decayed, and there shouldn’t be squat left to smell at all, but there is? Yeah. That.
My buddy with the bad dentistry said something that was probably rude, but I didn’t catch it over the wind.
And that’s about when I got wise. Not wind, nuh-uh. A gale of souls rotten inside and out, howling and screaming through rains they couldn’t feel, rains made poison by the touch—or rather, the un-touch—of the profane.
Sluagh. Dead mortal spirits half-born again as Fae, for reasons even the oldest and wisest of us had never really understood. A flock of specters; the Host of the Damned.
One of ’em, anyway. It’s a sad and scary fact of life and death in Elphame that the Damned assemble in a lot of different hosts. Maybe they get bored easy.
Whatever kinda reality might or might not’ve been out there, beyond the sluagh-ridden storm, it wasn’t uninhabited. Two figures coalesced outta the dark, and if you still suppose, by now, that I’m usin’ words like “coalesce” metaphorically, you need serious lessons in paying attention.
First one was an old geezer, real grandfather sort. Tall, thin, smooth-shaven, sporting silk duds that shoulda been totally soaked through but only looked vaguely damp. His smile was kind, friendly, which meant he was anything but.
Course, I already knew that. I’d seen him, or one just like him, before.
Boggart. Nasty as they get.
Wasn’t him I was worried about.
The boggart held an umbrella off to the side, looking for all the world as though he were taking his granddaughter for a walk, and just tryin’ to keep her dry. He scooted forward so his companion could climb into the coach without getting her ’do all ruined. Close enough that I could see the umbrella was made of baby blankets, stitched together over a copper frame.
God, I hate these fucks. And at the time, none more so than…
“Lady Eudeagh,” I greeted her, correcting myself to “Boss Eudeagh” at her sideways glare.
“Mr. Oberon.” She sat down beside the redcap and waved her elderly escort over to my side of the carriage. I kept my grumbling in my head and scooted over.
“Mr. Téimhneach, Mr. Oberon. Oberon, Téimhneach.”
I offered my new seatmate a half-nod.
“I’d say I’m pleased to meetcha…”
The boggart’s smile, the twinkle in his peepers, never faded.
“But we would hate to start off by lying to one another, would we not?”
“Something like that.”
Eudeagh kept right on talking, as though her goon’n me had just become best palls. “I trust you and Mr. Grangullie need no formal introduction at this point? He’s taken good care of you, I hope?”
I didn’t even look at the redcap. I didn’t need to. You ever been around anyone whose grin you could hear? Can’t say I recommend the experience.
“He hasn’t made me knock him off, so I guess that’s something,” I said.
“Indeed.”
For a few tics we just kinda watched each other, swaying a bit as the carriage started forward again.
Boss Eudeagh. Leader, sovereign, Capo di Tutti Capi of… well, not the entirety of the Chicago Unseelie, but certainly the single biggest outfit in their whole loco setup.
Most of us called her “Queen Mob,” though I’d decided not to say so to her face. No idea how she’d take it. (I occasionally wondered how the real deal, Queen Mab, would’ve reacted to Eudeagh’s moniker, if she’d still been alive to hear of it. Maybe it woulda struck her as funny. Maybe she wouldn’t have cared—Eudeagh mighta been a big cheese here, but in the Old World she wasn’t much of anybody—and maybe she’d have hunted down the first gink to’ve made the joke, flayed him alive, and choked him with the skin of his own elbow. Mab always did make the rest of us look collected and predictable.)
Hell, getcha mind back in the present, Mick. The dead ain’t your problem right now.
She hadn’t changed much since I’d seen her last, not that I expected she would have done. Mighta come up to my waist, if she was standing in heels. Hair black as her soul, and a whole lotta curves, held in place by a slick violet number that had to have been woven around her to fit like that.
And two eyes, for the moment, thank Heaven.
In fact, now that we were close enough for a good up-and-down…
“You hurt?”
She blinked at me, then—when I pointed—she reached a fingertip to feel the smear of dried blood by her left peeper.
“Oh.” She spit the glass eye out, letting Téimhneach scramble to catch it before it hit the floor. A fat, wormy tongue excreted itself from between the newly revealed teeth, licking the smear away. “Thank you for your concern, Mr. Oberon, but no, I’m fine. It’s not my blood.”
Think I told you before that the aes sidhe don’t vomit? Yeah, that’s the only reason I didn’t. Shoulda just kept my dumb trap shut.
“Kinda surprised the rain didn’t wash that away,” I said, mostly ’cause I felt I hadda say something. “Can’t imagine blankets keep you all that dry.”
“All a matter of what you grease them with.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, really needed to keep my trap shut around these monsters. Seemed like every time I didn’t, I learned something I was a lot happier not having in my head. Part of me wanted her to just get on with it, spill what this was about.
The part of me that already had a pretty strong notion of what she wanted told that first part to close its head and keep her jawing about anything else.
We hit a particularly big bump, making Eudeagh scowl, and I guess she decided on her own it was time to cut the bunk. She squinted her right eye, looked at the glass orb in the boggart’s hand, and then spit out the other fake.
; Wouldn’t want a mismatch, would we? Might not be stylish.
She smiled with all three pairs of lips and started to talk, switching mouths in the middle of sentences or even, now’n then, halfway through a word.
“I require a service from you, Oberon. It may keep you busy for some time.”
“I’m flattered, but I’m right in the middle of another—”
“I’m calling in my marker.”
Shit. Not unexpected shit, but still. Shit.
Short version, for you bunnies with bad memories, is that the Unseelie Court helped me out a short while back, when I needed some leverage in Elphame to find a missing kid. Which meant I owed them—owed her—and shirking a debt ain’t something the Fae make a habit of. Bad things happen to us if we try. Real bad.
No point even in arguing it. If she’d decided whatever she wanted was worth cashing in with me to get it, I wasn’t gonna sweet-talk her into postponing.
“All right. What do you want?” I asked.
As if I didn’t know, what with the timing and all.
Please don’t say it, please don’t say it…
“I’m quite certain, by now, you’ve heard something about a spear?”
Fuck. She said it.
“Yeah,” I groused, “I heard about it. Already got a good solid broderick from Herne, and a really annoying visit from the other side of your tracks, over the whole thing. I told them all I was out of it.”
If Eudeagh was at all surprised to hear of the Hunter’s or the Seelie Court’s interests, she didn’t show it. Not that I figured she didn’t already know.
“Then I fear I’m making a liar out of you, Mr. Oberon. You are most definitely in it.”
Again I wanted to try to argue my way out, and again I decided it wasn’t worth the stress. Not when I already knew it’d be a trip for biscuits to even try.
Instead, I asked, “Why? Why’s this dingus got everyone so worked up?”
“It’s one of the old relics. Enchanted.”
Well, yeah, I’d figured something along those lines. But it still didn’t add up.
“They ain’t common anymore,” I told her, as if she didn’t already know, “but there used to be a fair bunch, back in the old days. And I gotta tell you, most of ’em weren’t all that impressive, except to mortals without the tiniest knowledge of magic in their primitive noggins. Not even sure how useful most of ’em would be today, honestly. I think the whole lot of you mugs are wasting your time.”
And mine.
Didn’t say it aloud, but I’ll bet you a dime she heard it anyway.
“Unless,” I added, leaning in, “there’s something you’re not telling me?”
Grangullie snarled when I moved, reaching for the cleaver at his belt, but Eudeagh stopped him with a wave. The redcap grumbled, but obeyed.
“Mr. Oberon, you wouldn’t believe how many things I’m not telling you. And you don’t need to know them. In this case, however, there’s not a great deal to keep from you. You’re quite right that we wouldn’t have looked twice at this spear a thousand years ago. And you may well be right that whatever enchantment it boasts could prove of precious little use in this… modern world.” The revulsion in her tone was thicker’n the storm outside.
Well, thicker’n it had been. Storm had passed a while ago, and I could hear the growl and toot of distant flivvers again. And, almost inaudible on top of everything else, hoofbeats. Not from the horses pulling us along, either, but to either side of us.
Looked as though we’d picked up an escort when Queen Mob climbed aboard.
“If that’s the case—” I began.
“Because none of us can allow any of our rivals to have it, can we? What if we’re wrong? What if the spear’s magic yet holds some use of which we’re unaware? No, better safe…”
“Than skewered,” I finished for her. I leaned back and thought, not bothering to blink or fidget since I didn’t need to hide what I am from anyone here.
Mostly I thought about how to take a clean sneak from this whole deal, but, like I said, I had squat in the way of loopholes.
Now, I’m nobody’s sap, see? She was feedin’ me more lies than a public defender. No way was this just a precaution; no way was everyone goin’ to all this trouble for just “some relic.” Either this spear was more’n she was sayin’, or something else was going down. Maybe both.
But knowin’ all that didn’t make my current position any less bent-over.
“Fine,” I said eventually. “I try to find this pigsticker for you and we’re square. Debt’s paid.”
“Ah, no.”
Gotta admit, I didn’t expect that. “No?”
“Your task isn’t to try to find the spear, it’s to bring me the spear. I don’t give a chewed marmot how hard you try. You fail? You still owe me.”
“What?”
I was outta my seat, standin’ straight as I could without cracking my melon on the ceiling.
“You’ll get my best effort, ‘boss,’ but you are not gonna hold me accountable for shit beyond my control. That’s totally friggin’ un—”
Grangullie was standing, too, bayonet pressed against my gut. The boggart was somehow looming over me, even though my head was pressed against the ceiling. Goddamn shapeshifters.
I even heard the hoofbeats get louder on the street outside, like whatever was escorting us had moved in close. Real close.
Eudeagh hadn’t budged, hadn’t flinched, just looked at me—well, whatever her equivalent of “look” is—and waited.
Well, wasn’t this a fine jam of a pickle of a mess?
In a Fae conclave, I mighta been able to make an argument that Eudeagh’s demands went too far, that her interpretation stretched the bounds of what I could be expected to owe. Or maybe not. We do a lotta grey areas, us Fae.
Problem was, I didn’t think she’n her boys would be inclined to just step aside for me to leave if I demanded an arbiter. In these confines, I didn’t think much of my chances in a dust-up, especially not knowing what was waiting for me outside.
But if I agreed… Well, that was it. I’d be bound by her interpretation, even if I didn’t think it was legit.
Which left me exactly fuck all for options.
“… Un… unimportant and not worth arguing,” I finished.
Pretty sure I’d had to have been three weeks pushing daisies to sound any less enthused, and I was so hot under the collar at the whole ugly mess of ’em that I’m amazed my head didn’t catch fire. Far as I was concerned, what I owed ’em now was a heap more’n just a debt.
A lot less pleasant, too.
I slump-slid back into my seat, letting Téimhneach find his own way clear before I ended up in his lap.
“Fine. I bring you the spear, and we’re clear.”
“That,” Eudeagh said, like I’d never popped my top, “is indeed what I’m offering.”
Heh. “Offering.” That’s rich.
Yeah, I was sulking. Probably shoulda kept my chin up, made like none of this bugged me at all. Honestly, though, it didn’t seem worth the effort. Somehow I wasn’t feeling as if I owed the Unseelie much in the way of good manners.
“Yeah. Swell, Whatever.”
“Oh, good!” The little twist actually clapped, smiling three times over. “I just knew we could come to some sort of agreement.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I won’t be staying to oversee personally, of course. The technology in this world is ghastly, gives me a frightful headache. I’ve no idea how you stand it.”
Now I smiled, even if there wasn’t a lotta good humor in it.
“I prefer the neighbors here.”
“Of course.” Pretty sure she caught the insult and decided to ignore it. “Mr. Téimhneach will remain here. You report to him, and should consider his words to be mine.”
“So I should ask him to say everything three times?”
She kept ignoring. Seemed pretty good at it.
“Should circumstances not permit you
to speak with him,” she continued, “you’ll answer to Mr. Grangullie instead, who will also remain as Mr. Téimhneach’s lieutenant—” I couldn’t begin to tell you how, what with the whole no eyes thing, but I swear she suddenly focused on me, hard “—and enforcer.”
Translation: Step outta line, gum anything up, and my next assignment would be carrying the redcap’s bullets for him.
Judging by the smirk on Grangullie’s trap, he was looking forward to it.
“You see,” Téimhneach said, leaning in to put a “friendly” mitt on my shoulder, “why it would have been such a poor idea for us to get off on the wrong foot?”
The only right foot is the one I’m gonna put so far up your keister you’ll be gargling toenail for a week, you lousy…
“Yeah, I hear ya.”
Guess they were done, ’cause the carriage rattled to a halt.
“Last stop,” Queen Mob announced cheerfully.
Door creaked open by itself again, which is even less impressive when you’re waitin’ for it. This time, the dark beyond it was just a normal dark, a shabby side street somewhere in the Windy City, with old newspapers and broken boxes and a busted streetlamp.
Oh, and redcaps. A pack of redcaps. A few of ’em had brass Tommies, like their boss, though most of those lacked bayonets (and the one bayonet I could see was a steak knife). The rest had empty hands, but bulges in their badly fitting coats announcing some kinda gat or other. And all of ’em had cleavers, or similar hacking blades, dangling from their belts.
I stopped myself from looking to see how fresh the blood was soaking their hats. Wouldn’t do me any good to know.
Climbed outta the carriage, which gave me a better slant on the welcoming committee, and… Huh. Not just redcaps, either.
Looming behind ’em, near invisible in the dark, were at least a couple of dullahan—tall, dressed in horseman’s rags, and headless. They also cradled brass choppers, but these guns had special baskets built on ’em to hold the dullahan’s noggins.
They didn’t often miss, I’ll tell you.
I thought I heard something whooshing and swooping above, maybe a handful of sluagh, but no way I could see for sure without magic. And I didn’t think the whole mass of walking psychosis around me would appreciate it much if I made any sudden moves.