by Sara King
He was making snow-angels—poor ones, because they kept melting—when his mistress—no not his mistress, he realized, giggling all the more—showed up in his vision, peering down at him like he’d dropped into a latrine and begun smearing himself with shit.
“Are you feeling all right, djinni?” she asked, nudging him with her toe.
He responded with another giggle, then lunged up, grabbed her full-on by the back of the head and the small of her back, dragged her bodily to his chest, and kissed her, long and deep, then, while she was gasping and flailed at him, heaved her up—with the Third Lander gone, she weighed only a hundred pounds, if that—and spun her around above him, laughing.
Then, still giddy, he brought her back down and crushed her to his chest. “Thank you,” he said, for the third time that day. He kissed the top of her head. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re leaving, then?” she asked against his chest.
‘Aqrab heard the fragility in her voice and hesitated. Slowly, he pulled the Fury back so he could look down into her soft brown eyes. “Do you want me to?” he asked. For three thousand years, she’d told him how much she wanted him to just disappear, and he hadn’t allowed himself the hope that she would actually wish his presence.
The Fury bit her lip and reluctantly looked up at him. “I want you to stay.”
It was the happiest words he had ever heard. ‘Aqrab felt his face stretch in another grin and he bent down to kiss her again. “Your wish,” he said, pulling her tight against him in another embrace, “is my command.” Then he resumed kissing her, deeper and more passionate this time. She tentatively grew wings—and a foot of height—and returned his kiss, wrapping him again in her downy feathers.
Something tapped his shoulder and ‘Aqrab ignored it, pulling Kaashifah closer to him instinctively, reveling in her touch, her feel, her presence—
“Hey,” the dragon said, tapping his shoulder again. “Don’t asphyxiate her, okay?” Reluctantly, ‘Aqrab released his Fury and turned, more than a little irritated at the interruption. He was pleasantly surprised, however, to see that the dragon was proffering a sword to Kaashifah. “Next time, use this.”
It was a huge claymore, longer than the Fury was tall, and looked heavy and barbaric enough that ‘Aqrab wasn’t going to embarrass himself trying to lift it. He stepped back, allowing Kaashifah to see the weapon. His magus extracted herself from his grip and reached out to take it, hefting it easily one-handed as she considered.
“It’s bigger than what I’m used to,” she said, “but I think I can make it work.”
“And here’s this,” the dragon muttered, offering her another, smaller sword, this one obviously of good manufacture. “My uncle Trellyn gave it to me to start my hoard.”
His magus had the good sense to take it with great respect. “Thank you, dragon.”
“It’s Savaxian,” he muttered. “And I want to help.”
“There might be treasure in the compound,” Kaashifah agreed.
“I don’t care about treasure,” Savaxian growled. “I want to help you break her ribs.”
Imelda passed in and out of consciousness, flopped around on the back of a horse, until dawn came, and it dumped her off.
One thing she had to give the horse, was that its back was warm, and almost silky-smooth. Like rabbit fur. The snow, on the other hand, was not warm and silky-smooth, but rather cold and painfully studded with hidden sticks and fallen logs, and she had never found the time to button up her stolen trenchcoat.
“Miserable horses!” she shrieked, trying to extract her chest and torso from the snow before it sucked away her body heat, but found she was too dizzy and uncoordinated to do anything more than flail.
She’d always hated horses. The Order had tried to put her through lessons, in her teens, under the excuse that Inquisitors needed to be able to hunt down their prey in any territory, using any means available to them, but Imelda had been bucked off by every animal they had. Even the tiniest, oldest, and most docile draft-ponies would launch her across the yard the moment her ass touched its back, then proceed to do their best to tapdance on her skull. All dogs had hated her on sight, and not even a cat would tolerate her presence. It was why she had fish. Fish were stupid, and didn’t have the capacity to rip hands apart as a gesture of their displeasure.
The horse whuffed at her, an unmistakable sound of irritation, and twisted to glare at her.
It was then that Imelda saw the four-foot rod of twisted opal sticking from the forehead of the ‘horse’ as it scowled at her from behind it with cerulean blue eyes.
“Oh.” She sat, dumbstruck, as the snow melted to her body, dribbling down her naked chest.
Then she noticed the other differences… The shaggy silver mane that wrapped around its entire neck, the cloven golden hooves, the flowing hair around the fetlocks, the long, lionlike tail…
“Oh,” she said again, as the cold air against her wet skin began giving her goosebumps.
For a long moment, the beast simply scowled at her. Then, slowly, it began to condense, its outline blurring as it shrank and stood up, returning to the size of a man. He had his arms crossed over his chest and was peering at her expectantly, an eyebrow lifted.
Imelda winced. “Sorry.”
He eyed her a few minutes, like he was pondering whether or not to stomp a pretty golden hoof through her cranium, then sniffed. Turning, he started studying the trees around him, glancing up at the spruce. Then, saying nothing, he wandered off and started snapping dead branches from the trunks. As Imelda watched, confused, he collected a nice armful, then dropped them in a pile in front of her.
“No fire!” Imelda said quickly, tugging the wet, icy trenchcoat around her. “They’ll see it.”
The man hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at her as he denuded another spruce. Then he went back to breaking off branches.
Imelda frowned, trying to remember if she had heard him speak. He had communicated with her, when he’d been getting her to crawl to his cage, but had it been physical words, or just in her mind? She’d been too near-death to differentiate.
Then the beast was dropping another pile of twigs in front of her and squatting down in front of it. He rubbed his fingers together until she saw a bright, blue-white spark beginning to crackle between them.
“No!” she cried, hurriedly slapping a hand over his arm.
The man lunged away from her, startled.
“No fire,” she said, shaking her head and pointing to the sticks.
The beast glanced from her to the sticks and back, his blue eyes confused.
“Fiiiiire,” Imelda said, making motions of heat and billowing flames. She shook her head. “No fire. They will find us.”
Giving her a sideways glance, he eased back up to the bundle of twigs and squatted before it, then once more started rubbing his fingers together.
Instinctively, Imelda reached for his hand.
The beast yanked his hand away and scowled at her, and memory of that four-foot horn made Imelda quickly back away to watch from afar. Eying her like a wary cat, the man started rubbing his fingers together again and stuck them inside the tinder. Imelda saw the first signs of smoke snaking upwards in bluish tendrils and she felt her chest constrict. “You can’t,” she cried. “They’re going to see it.”
But then the fire was burning, and he was backing away, gesturing for her to use it.
Imelda crawled forward and hastily knocked the fire apart, patting snow over it, putting it out. “You don’t understand,” she said quickly, as he started to bristle, “we have technology in our helicopters that can see this. Satellites. It’s how we found you in the first place.”
For a long moment, the man watched her, then glanced off thoughtfully, and Imelda’s breath caught when she realized he was considering whether or not to leave her there. Then, slowly, he turned back and gave her a long look.
“You’ve already saved my life once,” Imelda said, realizing he was probably
trying to, in his mind, repay a debt. “You don’t owe me anything. I can find my way to a road from here.”
To her surprise, the creature chuckled and glanced at his feet, looking almost shy. “Uh, hmm.” He coughed and cleared his throat as he dug in the snow with his toes. Then, lifting his perfect blue eyes back to her, he said, “I think we’re in Yukon, but we might’ve crossed into the Northwest Territories by now.”
Imelda stared at the man a very long time, wondering if he was pulling some sort of hoax. Then, when his lean, expressive face remained sincere, she glanced at the forest around them. It had seemed to be moving past them at a phenomenal rate, though she had attributed it to her own disorientation and dizziness.
“So,” the man said, cocking his head at her curiously, “will you let me build you a fire, then?”
Numbly, Imelda backed away from the pile of sticks.
Without another word, he crept forward and knocked as much snow from the sticks as possible, then returned them to their former pile. Sticking his hand into the tangle of tinder, he soon had a weak flame licking at the tinder. Adding more fuel, he built the fire to a nice roar, then backed away and again gestured for her to warm herself.
Hesitantly, Imelda crawled forward and opened her trenchcoat to the flames.
Seemingly unaffected by the cold, he continued to stand well out of reach, watching her. His behavior reminded her of a very reclusive—but curious—feline, like a snow leopard. And, much like a snow leopard, Imelda strongly suspected that one false move on her part and he would probably bound away through the snow in the same manner, leaving her alone with her tiny fire, trying to figure out which part of the Canadian wilderness she was trapped in.
“I need to get back to Eklutna,” Imelda said, when he offered no explanation as to why he’d helped her.
The lanky, silver-haired man hesitated a moment, but said nothing, merely began breaking spruce boughs and pilling them across a fallen log in a lean-to, then piling snow around the outside, insulating it. When it was obvious that the shelter was meant for her, Imelda just stared at it.
“Um,” Imelda said gingerly, not wanting to offend, “I really need to get back.”
Done with his construction, the man crouched beside a tree, watching her, saying nothing.
Imelda sighed and hunched over the fire, peering into the flames. A fallen angel was torturing and killing people in the name of God, duping her kinsmen into following along with her corruption, and Imelda was stuck in Canada, without food or supplies, huddled over a fire in a stolen trenchcoat.
“So why’d you save me?” the man finally asked.
Imelda looked up at him cautiously, actually surprised he was still with her. “I could ask you the same question.”
He glanced all-too-quickly at the snow between his knees and returned her question with a shrug. “You got a family?”
Imelda froze. Too often, that question came before something horrible, like, “You ever want to see them again?” She cleared her throat nervously, “Um, no.”
“Me neither.” The man took a deep breath, glanced up at the sun barely cresting the horizon, then back down at her. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then, softly, “You get headaches, right?”
Imelda jerked to look up at him, answering with a wary silence.
“So you do.”
Very carefully, Imelda said, “Yes.”
“Thought so.” He dug idly in the snow with his slender fingers. “Why you need to go back to Eklutna?” The way he asked, he made it sound as if it were a casual curiosity on his part, but Imelda could feel his intense interest. Like, she realized, a child that has not quite yet learned how to lie.
“I need to kill someone,” Imelda said.
“You can’t kill a Fury,” he said, looking up at her timidly through his veil of silky-silver hair.
Imelda laughed. “Something you learn, when you’ve worked my job as long as you have, is that, whatever the demon, there’s always a way to kill it.”
Too late, Imelda realized what she had said. The man stopped dragging his hand through the snow and shook his hair out of his face in order to scowl at her, reminding her greatly of the action of an annoyed horse. “Not a demon.”
And, with the near ringing purity that she felt flowing off of the creature, like a crystalline bell that seemed to be making the very ground he squatted on hallowed land, how could a unicorn be considered a demon? Even by Order standards, that was a stretch…
“Sorry,” she cleared her throat, quickly dropping her head. “You’re right. A lot of my…ideas…have been—” She swallowed hard, unable to finish. She felt the unicorn’s scowl like a brand against her skin. Trying again, she managed, “In the last couple months, my whole world turned upside down. I’m beginning to think the Order is…mistaken…about a lot of things…” For some time, she could only stare at the coals in shame. Then she lifted her head, and meeting his accusing blue eyes was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. “I don’t think you’re evil. What we’re doing is wrong.”
Instead of raging at her, instead of yelling and condemning her, cursing her soul to the bowels of Hell, the creature simply grunted and resumed picking at the snow with his slender fingers. “You know of any other unicorns around?” He said it nonchalantly, but Imelda heard the pain in his voice.
Reluctantly, she said, “As far as I know, they’re all in Rome.”
He jerked to look up at her, his face torn with anguish. “How many?” he breathed.
“Fourteen, at last count.”
His eyes widened and, as she watched, his legs just seemed to weaken to the point where he simply dropped, kneeling, into the snow. “Fourteen,” he whispered, staring at her with a brutal mixture of awe and sorrow. Like she had told him there was a thousand.
Something about the way he said it gave Imelda pause. Softly, she said, “You thought you were the last.”
He swallowed and looked away. For a long time, he didn’t speak, merely stared at the peeling bark of a birch tree. Then, with agony in his words, “They…took…their horns.” It wasn’t a question.
Imelda winced. That was the first thing they took. A unicorn couldn’t work its magics without its horn. “I believe so,” she agreed.
This time, when he looked at her, there were tears in his eyes. “Why?”
Because we thought they were evil. Because we thought we were at war. Because we thought we’d been given orders by God. Because…
“Because we were blind,” Imelda whispered.
The man shuddered in on himself, wrapping his arms around his chest, hunching over, staring at the snow between his knees. Seeing his abject misery so clear on his face, Imelda’s heart went out to him. She crawled forward and gingerly put her hand on his knee.
Very slowly, the man lifted his eyes to hers, tears wetting his pale cheeks.
In the face of such sorrow, Imelda found she had nothing to say. She started to pull back and turn back to the fire, ashamed.
A warm palm caught her wrist. “Stay?” It was a combination of a plea and a whimper, and it had untold ages of loneliness ringing hollowly at its core. Again, Imelda thought of how odd his speech sounded, how stilted. Almost like someone who had learned from afar…
“Have you been avoiding people all this time?” she whispered. Then, when he merely looked away, she insisted, “Why didn’t you go back to your home Realm?”
He dropped his head again, and she saw him grit his jaw. More tears came, which he wiped away in silence. Then, after a long silence, he said, “Even the feylords prize a unicorn.” His face was filled with bitterness. “They usually train them as mounts.”
Which meant he had no safe place. Imelda took a moment to digest that. “How old are you?” she finally asked.
He shrugged.
“Do you have friends?”
His gaze once more timidly flickered to her before he gave a disgusted snort and wiped tears from his face with a hand. His other hand continued to
grip hers almost painfully-tight.
“Where do you live?”
The man just shook his head.
Frowning, she said, “Do you have a name?”
Instead of shying away from her, insulted, insisting that names were secret like most Second-Landers would do, he hesitated and gave her a genuinely confused look and said, “Why would I have a name?”
“Your parents…?” she suggested.
He shrugged again.
“You didn’t know your parents?” she demanded. Even she, more or less kidnapped from Barcelona when she was a toddler, remembered her parents. They were not all happy memories, with her father being violent at times, and her mother more interested in gambling than in caring for her family, but at least they were memories.
That made him bristle. “I was little when they went away. I don’t remember.” Then he fired back with, “Why? How old are you?”
“Not as old as you, I would wager,” Imelda said. Lowering her voice, she added, “I’m thirty-three…and you’ve been alone a very long time, haven’t you?”
The man stiffened like she’d hit him, and quickly looked away. Imelda wondered how long ago it had been since he’d talked to another sentient soul…
When a long silence had passed between them, the unicorn offering up nothing more about himself, yet making no move to release his grip on her wrist, Imelda glanced up at the sky and cleared her throat. She was cold, the snow freezing to the knees of her pants, the wet trenchcoat leaving her shivering. “Um, like I said, I really need to get back to Alaska. I have accounts they cannot touch. I will pay you…”
The man’s hand tightened on her wrist. Seeing that, Imelda cut off the rest of her thought. With desperate inner laugh, she thought, He’s never been around humanity long enough to gain a name, and I think I can pay him?
Still, she had to try. Zenaida was a cancer that needed to be removed. “Do you want a home? A place to stay? Clothes?”
With the hand not gripping hers, he started picking at a twig that was jutting from the snow.
“Um,” Imelda said, trying to reason her way through the situation logically. “Are you curious about technology? I could show you our many advances…”