by Ari Marmell
“All right, then,” I said. “Just one last question, then we can start yappin’ about what to do with the two of you. How in two worlds did you pull this off? The odds that Eudeagh’d decide to pull an Ahreadbhar-related hoax at the exact time somebody’d actually found the damn thing are so small they make zero look fat. And even if by some miracle it happened, you’d hafta have some way of knowing about it. The Unfit ain’t exactly careless with their plans, and I don’t think you’ve got any spies high enough in her organization to suggest a scheme this big. So tell me, bo, how’d you manage to make all this happen in—”
It wasn’t much of anything. Raighallan was rock-steady, of course, not a blink or a breath to give anything away. But Lydecker… Lydecker was only human. He couldn’t quite suppress it, the tiniest catch in his breath, the faintest flicker and dilation of his pupils as he watched me.
Me… And the room behind me.
I dove forward, and it was just luck—real luck, even, not “I’d wrapped myself in enough magic to make physics cry” luck—that I’d glommed Lydecker’s tell in time. That was why the blade only slashed my back open, instead of punching straight through it to the more important bits.
I hit the floor, hard, and just barely managed to avoid a table leg as I rolled back to my feet. My whole back screamed as I bent and mashed it in ways it really didn’t enjoy, and I left a thick smear of blood in my wake.
I shot thick swathes of magic from the L&G before I was even fully upright, not at Raighallan or back at whoever’d tried to dry-gulch me, but at the curator. I stabbed my will through his face like a dagger, burying his thoughts under a couple irresistible commands and an unholy, unreasoning, unmanning terror. With a high shriek that disintegrated into a dry, rasping hack, he turned and ran—carrying the case with him.
Raighallan was on him in less time than it takes for a satyr to forget your phone number, but that still gave me a second or two to recover, try to get my bearings.
See who’d just ruined another perfectly good coat, to say nothing of almost gumming up a perfectly good spine.
Huh. Okay, gotta be honest, I hadn’t seen that comin’.
Grangullie the redcap stood where I’d been, grinning to show off his teeth like they were new babies. His pike was fully extended, with splotches and rivulets of blood that I really hadn’t planned on sharing running down the glistening blade. I swear he licked his lips as he doffed his fedora and ran it along the edge, soaking up a goodly amount of the red stuff.
Redcaps’re stronger, see, the fresher the blood soaking their hats. So he’d basically just fed offa me. Made me feel real slimy.
The aes sidhe’d just stood from where he’d tackled Lydecker to the floor, holding the rune-scribed case under one arm.
“Of course,” I said, watching him and Raighallan both. The last bits finally clicked. One conspirator in each Court, working behind everyone’s backs, hiding this and suggesting that, tugging on strings. “Lemme guess, Grannie. It was you who suggested the whole flimflam to Eudeagh?”
“Uh-huh,” he gloated. “Never even crossed her mind I might actually have the genuine article.”
Thoughts flickered through my noggin like a stuttering projector, now. I wasn’t gonna get ’em to stop and explain their scheme, but the way I figured, it was a matched power grab. One of ’em uses the spear to take over his half of Elphame Chicago, then turns on the other Court. They get their keisters stomped for a while, until the other partner steps up with some plan or another to defend against their newly empowered enemy. And since they’re actually workin’ together, his plan works where others hadn’t. The Courts go back to their usual stalemate, and two former no-names get to sit on the thrones.
Piece of me actually admired their ambition. Both of ’em were servants—useful, powerful, but in the end, nobody who’d ever end up running the show. Not without help, anyway.
But…
“There’s absolutely no way,” I said, “that you mugs can possibly trust each other to make this work. And you sure as hell ain’t gonna oath-bind yourselves to each other.”
They both grinned.
“It only works if we cooperate,” Raighallan told me. He didn’t seem real surprised I’d figured it out, or at least that I was talkin’ as if I had.
“Hostage trade don’t hurt, either,” Grangullie added.
Yeah, that fit. Even the Unseelie—well, most of ’em—have people they’d rather not see rubbed out. If they’d exchanged friends or family…
“All right, here we are,” I said.
Me and Raighallan and Grangullie, three sides of a lopsided triangle with a table full of fossils smack dab in the middle. Each of us had his meathooks wrapped around something dangerous, and for a couple breaths, not a one of us moved an inch.
“So what now?” I asked.
“You ain’t all bad for a Seelie,” Grangullie generously offered. “I got no real need to ice you, and you… whadda you care who’s in charge in our Chicago? You spend all your days in this one. So blow. Walk away. We’ll even take steps to make sure nobody tries to drag you into the fightin’ once everyone’s gone to the mattresses. Right?”
Raighallan looked less than thrilled with the compromise, but he made no objection.
The redcap tried to throw me a non-threatening smile, which is sorta like tryin’ to shoot someone with a non-threatening slug.
“So whaddaya say, Oberon? Deal?”
Gotta admit, part of me was tempted. I was getting pretty well fed up with the politics and game-playing going on around me. I’d left my place in the Court to get away from all that hooey.
And it wasn’t as if I cared much for the current leadership in the Chicago Courts. Buncha backstabbing thugs, every one of ’em. Raighallan and Grangullie wouldn’t be any worse, right?
’Cept… Yeah, they would be. Redcaps ain’t known for restraint, and the idea of either Grangullie or Raighallan wielding the power of Gáe Assail made my soul shiver. Who was to say they’d be satisfied once they were done? What domains other’n Chicago might fall into their hands thanks to the Spear of Lugh?
And in either case, whether just Chicago or beyond, how many hadda die to make it happen?
(Plus, of course, I had no reason to suspect they’d keep whatever promises they made me. It may’ve worked for them, but I ain’t the hostage-trading sort.)
So really, I gave ’em the only answer I could.
A blast of magic rocked Grangullie off his feet, ripping luck and potency from his aura and channeling ’em to me. No way he was outta the fight that easy, not strong as I figured he hadda be, but it gave me an opening.
I didn’t even bother goin’ around the table. Two sprinting steps, a jump up on top of it, and then I hurled myself at Raighallan.
Raighallan who was, in that instant, fighting with the latch on the spear box.
I knew if he got the spear in his hands, I’d probably end up so dead I’d need a second corpse to hold it all. I might have tried to wrestle the box away from him, but he already had a pretty solid grip on it. So…
Remember I told you how, when I saw the box, I’d realized something? What I’d realized was why I’d brought the object I’d been clutching in my left hand this whole time.
I hadn’t planned on bringing it. Was just one of those urges I get from outta nowhere that I don’t really understand until later. Pure whim, same reason I’d asked for it in the first place. I’d just always figured, when the time came to use it, it’d prove vital ’cause of its symbolic value. Language of magic, and all.
Nope. Turns out it was mostly valuable ’cause of its shape, and ’cause the box was just the right width to make it work.
Even as I smashed into Raighallan, I raised the metal bracket—the old switch off the electric chair at Cook County Jail, which I’d gotten from Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Baskin as payment for an earlier gig—and slammed it hard into the box.
Or, more accurately, around it.
Wood peele
d, metal screeched, and just that quickly the hotsquat switch neatly clamped Raighallan’s box shut as tight as any vise.
Yeah. Fae whims and destiny dance some strange dances together.
Raiggy looked about ready to cry, even as he wrenched and tore at the bracket. Slivers of wood showered to the floor with every yank, and I saw real clear that it wouldn’t take him too long to work the thing loose.
But I had even less time to deal with him.
Grangullie was upright again, roarin’ loud as a volcano spitting tigers, and pounding across the room at me. His heavy, iron-booted tread made the fossils jump’n dance with every running step, and he held his pike almost at the butt, more like a baseball bat than a spear. No way he shoulda been able to get any sorta controlled swing out of it that way, but I learned centuries ago that “should” don’t carry a lot of weight with the Fae.
I threw myself backward and down, coiling my legs under me.
I hit the floor hard, back first. I woulda broken bones, or at least knocked the wind outta me, if—say it with me now—I were human.
I ain’t human.
Even as I landed, I kicked out with both heels. The heavy table left the floor, tilting sharply as it toppled. Tools and fossils skittered across the room, wise enough to flee a situation I was too mule-headed to leave. The redcap’s pike sank into the table with a nasty crunch, blade punching almost all the way through. But “almost” was just swell—it bought me the few seconds I needed.
A sharp roll and flex of my shoulders landed me back on my feet. Before the room’d even finished spinning and righting itself around me, I tossed the L&G to my left hand, squeezed a massive blast of magic through it, and drew my rapier with my right.
That magic surged and crackled over the bracket I’d jammed around the box. Reaching deep into the metal’s lingering aura, far into its past and the histories it represented, I drew its spiritual nature to the surface.
As I said, it was mostly useful for its shape, not its symbolism—but not entirely.
The traitorous aes sidhe reached out, grabbed the bracket again to give it another yank, and fell back screaming, dropping the box with a loud clatter. A sharp, ugly crackling swept through the room as a spiritual echo of the thousands and thousands of volts that’d snuffed out so many lives now poured through the bracket itself. If I’d gone right then and given Raiggy a thorough up’n-down, I wouldn’ta seen a trace of burning or injury, but that didn’t make the pain any less real.
Then I couldn’t focus on him or the box anymore.
The already damaged table split in half beneath a nasty kick and Grangullie stormed through, pike leveled more like a lance. I spun aside, sword twisted into a downward parry, and he pretty much swept right by me. Metal screeched on metal as the blades slid past each other, and my sword—my whole arm—shuddered.
This rapier? One of the best ever forged by human hands, savvy? Good, solid Toledo steel.
But it ain’t Fae-made. Ain’t enchanted. I’d deflected the pike, but no way my blade’d do anything but shatter into a zillion pieces if the two ever met head-on.
Not without help, anyway.
I shifted into a dueling stance, rapier before me, wand raised back’n over my head as if it were a parrying dagger. Even as I faced the rabid redcap, I was suckin’ power through the L&G, drawing on the luck and energies around me, and funneling most of ’em straight back down into my sword. (Most of ’em—I saved some for myself, since I ain’t quite that dumb.)
Grangullie let the haft of his weapon slide through his mitts until he gripped it more in the center, the way you’d normally wield the thing. Again, we both locked stares, each waitin’ for the other, each casting quick glances aside to see how Raighallan was managing. I caught him trying to use a small pair of pliers that’d spilled from the table to hold the bracket—and saw him fall back, cursing and screaming, as the tool did him no good whatsoever.
Then Grangullie lunged.
We circled, danced, blades flickering and clanging and bouncing aside before flickering out once again. It was impossible, how swift he was with that thing. The weapon was frickin’ bigger’n he was, and he had the control of a surgeon with it. He had reach on me by a good few feet, and he was stronger’n I was. Even if I hadn’t felt it in the impacts, I’d have known by the freshness of the blood that glistened on his hat and occasionally ran down one cheek.
On the other hand, Grangullie, same as most redcaps, relied on brute force. He didn’t have the know-how I did, and that was enough to keep me from decorating the edge of his pike.
Barely.
It was startin’ to wear on me, though. If I’d just been dueling him, that’d be one thing. But I was also constantly feeding mojo through my sword to keep it in one piece, and tryin’ to keep half a peeper on Grangullie’s partner.
Time to try something new, then.
The next time the redcap took a poke at me with the razor-tip of the pike, I moved into the thrust while twisting aside, instead of out. Sorta spun along the haft of the weapon like it was a yo-yo string, until I was good’n deep inside Grangullie’s reach, way too close for him to cut me.
On the down side, I’d also underestimated his lunge, so I was too close in to comfortably use the rapier.
Ah, well.
I dropped the sword, grabbed the pike, and shoved it sideways hard’n fast as I could. The back end swung inward and gave Grangullie a nice solid rap across the ribs.
Wasn’t too solid a blow, but he grunted and staggered a step, and that did me fine. I moved in the last couple inches and started landing punch after punch—wand still wrapped in my left mitt, now channeling extra strength and extra pain through my knuckles—around his mug and throat.
’Cept near his mouth. Don’t ever take a poke at a redcap’s mouth. Might as well try to survive a bear attack by clogging up its gullet with your head.
Blow after blow, I kept him reelin’, didn’t give him half a breath to get his bearings. He took a few wild snaps at my fists, to trap one or maybe bite it off, but he was dazed enough to telegraph. I saw each one coming long before teeth got anywhere near skin.
My meathooks were startin’ to smart, though. Even with the extra magic oomph, I wasn’t gonna beat a redcap to death with my bare hands. Hell, I’m not sure I could beat a redcap to death with the Sears’n Roebuck clock tower.
One more poke; I dropped my shoulder into a half-crouch so I could land one in his gut, putting every last bit of extra sensation into it I could. Grangullie doubled over with some horrid combination of a groan, a growl, and a gag. I kneed him in the forehead, then grabbed him by the collar as the impact straightened him back up. Another surge of magic and extra luck, this time to me, and then I lifted him with one hand and hurled him straight through several of the shelves.
I hope none of those fossils or samples were irreplaceable, ’cause by the time the crashing and shattering stopped, a guy couldn’t hope to tell the bone fragments from the plaster fragments from the wood fragments.
Pain.
Agony washed over me. Felt like something was shredding through my aura, ripping away the bright spots of my life, scraping at the edges of my soul.
Raighallan. Bastard’d just shot me in the back with his wand.
I dropped to one knee, teeth grinding, and tried to counter him, tried drawing power from around me to replace what he’d just torn away. And if I’d started fresh, I probably coulda pulled it off, but I was already suffering, already drained. I couldn’t focus enough on the L&G to counter him; I just stem the tide a bit.
So I let myself fall forward, and land in a heap where Grangullie’n me’d been sparring.
Oh, and where his pike’d fallen from limp fingers while I was pounding the stuffing out of him.
Came nowhere near actually hitting Raighallan. Even if I wasn’t already weak and suffering an acute case of bad-luck poisoning, damn thing wasn’t exactly made for throwing, was it? Still, he flinched back as the pike I’d hurled spun
over his head, and one man’s flinch is another man’s opportunity.
This time the L&G fired first.
Instantly I started to feel better, draining away and reclaiming some of what he’d taken. I kept shooting, blast after blast, knowing if I let up for half a breath, he still had his own, stronger, wand ready.
He groaned, and swayed. I hit him again. He staggered. I hit him again, draining as much luck from him as I could, so that when he staggered a second time…
Zzot!
Gotta be careful where you put your hands when you got something nasty like that bracket lyin’ around, Raiggy.
He folded and collapsed like a sack-full of… well, nothin’ really. Me, I made for his side of the room, ready to get my mitts on the dang thing and get the hell out of—
Wood shrieked, strained, and splintered with an unmistakable crack! A shadow, huge but faint in the poor lighting, slid over me, wrapping me in an unwanted embrace. One of the shelves—massive, solid wood, weighted down with all manner of tools and samples—toppled toward me, inexorable as an avalanche. Pretty sure I heard Grangullie yelling “Timber, you fuck!” from somewhere behind it.
A quick “whip-crack” of the L&G snagged as much luck as I could from Raighallan and the room around me; several of the fossils crumbled to dust, the random chance that had allowed ’em to survive the eons suddenly drained. And then, with a mutter that mighta been a prayer, if I’d had anybody specific in mind to hear it, I jumped.
At the falling shelf.
Through the falling shelf.
Bits and pieces and gewgaws bounced off my noggin and shoulders, a rain of stone and metal hail, but it only stung. None of ’em were big enough to do me any real hurt. The thick wood—the sides of the shelves, yes, but also the two shelves themselves—scraped by me so close, as I passed between ’em all, that it damn near yanked my coat off my shoulders. There was barely room for me between those slats—took an astonishing amount of luck pass through unscathed.