“Oh, we’ve no love for each other, that’s true.” Puck straightened, his slim brown hands kept carefully away from hilt or pipe. “But you’re a just lord, and a wise one. Your steward let me pass.”
Unwinter did not answer. Those crimson pinpricks burned steadily, unblinking.
Puck did not smile. Set and grave, his boyface looked much older now, and the unforgiving light etched hair-thin lines at corners of mouth and eye.
Finally, Unwinter’s gauntleted fingers on one hand twitched. Five phalanges and a thumb, all a joint or two too long and encased in exquisite dwarf-wrought armor, the metal making a slight chiming sound as it moved. “Speak, then.”
“The Low Counties are withered. Your realm bears a sickness, too. Do you care to know its source?” Puck stuck his thumbs in his belt, spraddle-legged, and lifted his chin.
“I have only to look at who does not suffer to guess the source, Fatherless. Her corruption grows.”
Puck nodded thoughtfully. “And rumor, that winged beast, whispers she says the same of you. What am I to believe?”
A slow, chill-grinding sound echoed and boomed through the throneroom. Unwinter laughed, and ice flashed, droplets hanging in the air. Puck’s breathing warmth sent steam out in questing tendrils that froze and fell, tinkling merrily.
When the sound faded, Puck’s expression had turned hard. “You laugh, Unwinter? My own are dying, and yours, too. Summer seeks to blame you, and you laugh.”
“Who do you believe, Goodfellow? Do I care?”
“You would scorn me, then?”
“We are not lovers.”
“And not allies, either.” Puck did not move, even as ice melted on his lashes and in his brown hair. “Yet that may change.”
“Ah. Now we come to it.” Unwinter did not move, but the chill sharpened. His attention was well and truly engaged now. The hangings and pennants overhead, some of them the rotting remains of the standards of fallen foes, snapped as the breeze turned brisk for a moment. “What price, Fatherless? I know better than to trust your generosity.”
“I have one of Summer’s own,” Goodfellow said. “Who will invite you over her borders.”
Unwinter stilled. The breeze halted, fell into a hush. Even the stoneflames quieted, dying to a low indigo glow. The crimson pinpricks intensified, bright points of bloody light.
Puck waited. The frozen crystals on his hair grew heavier, and his ear-tips flicked, ridding themselves of tiny ice-globules. Here in the heart of another’s realm, it would be difficult to step sideways through the Veil.
Not impossible, though. There was a faint itching along his arm, where a mortal’s desperate glass fang had bitten him. He ignored it.
“When?”
“I shall send word. If, that is, you bear an interest.”
“I bear much, Goodfellow. Get thee gone, now. You stink of her perfume.”
“And yet,” Puck observed, as he turned, “you remember its smell.”
Unwinter said nothing, but the cold intensified as Puck marched across slippery obsidian. The narrow doors opened again, the ruby glow swallowed his shadow, and when he was gone, Unwinter was motionless for a long, long while. Perhaps his attention followed the free sidhe as he danced through the Keep’s dust-thick, glass-floored halls, and perhaps he took note of the moment Puck cavorted across the drawbridge, ignoring the Watcher’s hiss of displeasure from below. For it was shortly thereafter that Puck Goodfellow stepped sideways and disappeared, nipping through a fold in the Veil…
… and all through Unwinter’s realm, a secret subtle thrill ran, as its lord rose slowly from the Throne.
The hunter had stirred.
WHAT WOULD PLEASE
32
Gallow’s breath came high and hard, but he had his balance now. The lance hummed, splattering steaming green ichor, and savage little rips of pain smoked all over him, both from exertion and from the caustic of the monster’s blood.
Robin was nowhere to be seen. Of course she thought he was a faithless bastard. He’d bruised her, dragged her, insulted her over breakfast—and an awful breakfast it had been—and she knew Summer’s effect on anything with a cock. The fact that desire was mixed with loathing made it all the sharper, and the worst was knowing Robin was probably right. Of course Summer would think Jeremiah eager to worm his way back into her graces, and bring the vials back.
Once he was certain Robin had them, of course, and he had relieved her of them and her life. He’d been the Armormaster long enough to know what would please the Seelie Queen. Robin had robbed Summer of a mortal toy before the Queen was done with it, and for that, there was little forgiveness even if the Ragged was a useful weapon.
No doubt, if Jeremiah brought Summer what she wanted, he would be in favor for a short while, until the Queen remembered he had left Court for a mortal. He had been so careful, so cautious, thinking himself reasonably clever, but in the end it hadn’t mattered.
Stick to what you’re good at, Jer.
From now on, he intended to.
The passageway steamed as he slid along the left wall. The occupant of this place-between—a Tangle, well-fed and grown monstrous foul-tempered—observed a wary distance, its hairy tendrils and tentacles sliding along the right, waiting for an opening. He had greased the walls and himself with its green ichor before it decided he was too much trouble at the moment and withdrew, watchful. A single slip here would cause its many arms to swarm him again.
Robin had squeezed through a dwarven-made door. If it did not take her to a different location in the mortal city, it might dump her in the lightless lands of the little men. Of course, a Realmaker would be held in high honor among them, and she could pay for passage with a chantment or two. He could not, and he had no love for the little ore-snuffling bastards. Every time the lance moved he could still feel their needles in his flesh, and the clan that had given him these hadn’t expected him to survive.
Which meant the bad feeling was emphatically mutual. If his retribution for their betrayal hadn’t sealed the deal, his time as Armormaster certainly had. Summer loved dainty dwarven adornments, but if she felt cheated or desired a particular toy one of the smallfolk didn’t wish to part with, it was the Armormaster who obtained satisfaction.
One way, or another.
Still, he’d got what he went to the dwarves for. Only a Half could survive the Marriage of the Lance. More sidhe, and the iron would burn; more mortal, and the lance would consume its bearer. Jeremiah had the precise proportions to be valuable.
For once.
He forced the lance down, carefully not turning his back to the Tangle’s main cluster. He was about to force the small door and try his luck anyway when the steaming green and hairy vines filling the corridor shifted, shivering, and he scented cold blood and old hatred.
Unseelie. Here. His arms itched, but he denied the lance its freedom. Quick and quiet was called for, and that meant ceding the field instead of fighting.
He yanked open the next door past the one she’d disappeared through. It was narrow and tall, and as he wrenched at it, a puff of frigid air belched through. There was a slamming, and the rasping of tentacles.
He did not spare a glance over his shoulder to see what Unseelie was hunting him or Robin now. Instead, he flung himself through, hoping for the best.
He landed hard on concrete, lunging away from the closing portal behind him. A quick turn, the lance springing free again and taking on solidity between his palms, and he found himself facing an anonymous brick wall. Concrete rippled underneath him, and for a moment the world flexed, space and space-between struggling to find their proper places. Close enough, and you could ride another sidhe’s passage through the Veil, much as a motorcycle could follow a semi down the freeway. Just as easy, and just as dangerous.
He exhaled sharply, ready for pursuit… but the rippling halted between one moment and the next, and he found himself on the outskirts of the city, the interstate rumbling close by, staring at the back end
of a minimall. The sun was sinking in a cold spring sky, time as well as space drifting. How many hours had he lost?
Too many. He lowered his arms, the lance sliding into insubstantiality, dissatisfied. Took a deep breath. At least he hadn’t been carrying his backpack; he would have lost it to the Tangle.
He should have been angry. She’d played him neatly, a treacherous bitch of a sidhe.
On the other hand, she expected him to be duplicitous as well. Court-raised, she could doubtless fathom no less. Trust was a trap, rarely gained and even more rarely vindicated.
His attitude probably didn’t help, either.
His attitude never helped. You didn’t grow up in a charitable orphanage and make your living as a street rat or riding the rails by taking a helpful view of things. Strike first, strike hardest, strike fear into your opponents, protect your pride and do before you’re done to, that was all he’d known. It was still easiest, and best.
Daisy hadn’t been put off by it, though. She was so sunny, he hadn’t had to explain himself… or maybe he should have? Maybe she wanted to ask, but couldn’t?
God.
She’s gone, Jeremiah. And you just lost another woman.
He could walk away, except…
I will keep her safe. I do not serve.
A sidhe’s word was his bond, but… did it truly matter this time? He’d given it before a creature who didn’t even understand the meaning of truth. True and false were whatever served a sidhe’s purposes. A lesson so hard to learn, you shouldn’t need more than one teaching. Still, those with the mortal taint often failed to learn it thoroughly enough.
Not to mention the fact that Summer wanted her dead, and he had been Armormaster. So of course Robin thought he would betray her. The bigger question was, had she killed Daisy?
Her own mortal sister?
I was twelve when I was taken.
Had she envied Daisy? A family murder was what he was supposed to think, right? Why else would Summer say it? She wouldn’t lie when the truth would do. Still, she’d only said Daisy met a sidhe that night, and there were none who owed Gallow enough grudge to kill his wife.
Or if they did, they would know he would avenge her.
Which left Robin, or Robin’s enemies, who were probably numerous.
Daisy never mentioned her sister. She sometimes let little remarks drop about her mother, more rarely about her father—Snowe, a cold name Jeremiah had left on her tombstone to keep even her bones safe—but anything else? No. If not for that lone picture he’d found in her jewelry box after the crash, he would have discounted the whole thing as a glamour-lie.
None of which helped him find Robin now.
Well, Jer, you don’t have to find her. Simple, really. He could head to the bus station and be gone by the time night unloosed her mantle…
… or he could find the Unseelie, and wait until they located her.
Because they would.
Jeremiah ran his hands back through his too-short hair, adjusted his coat, glanced at the sky again, and got going.
OF UNWINTER VINTAGE
33
The dwarves were filthy, but at least they traditionally took little interest in Summer’s machinations. The plague brushed them but lightly, their gates closed even to many of their friends. Robin was no friend, but she was Half and they valued Realmaking, and they knew she would chant for passage.
Black MacDonnell snorted and dug in his nose, extracting something large, hairy, and sooty from deep within his sinus-caverns, carrying it to his fleshy lips. Red lamplight licked the walls, and Robin suppressed a shudder as she surrendered the handful of golden threads—finer than even they could weave, those metalsmiths of dream and wonder, because it was made from mortal hair. “As promised.”
He snorted, squinting, testing each strand. His beard, tied into bunches with blue thread, almost swept the stone floor. This far underneath the earth, it was warm, and Robin felt the weight above pressing, pressing, even though there was plenty of air. “Aye. Thought you’d forgotten us, Ragged.”
“I could not forget you, MacDonnell,” she replied, politely enough. “Do you have them?”
He jerked a chin, and one of his clansmen—Figurh, with a lazy eye—scurried forward, bearing a pouch in his soot-blackened fingers. The uglier the dwarf, the more beautiful his wares, they said, and it was by and large true. They could not stand to make an ugly thing.
“Went to a fair ’mount of trouble to make these, songbird. Worth twice what you’ve paid.”
Liar. “Don’t be greedy, my lord.” She accepted the pouch, and did not check its contents. Playing her false would mean he disdained her, just as bowing and scraping would mean he feared her.
Neither was acceptable to a chieftain of his stature, or likely to be true. The black dwarves were almost Unseelie, it was whispered, but they were faithful to their word. Or at least, this particular one had a healthy enough respect for her voice to remain relatively so.
MacDonnell snorted and waved a begrimed hand, jewels worth more than a kingdom clasping his dexterous, fat fingers. His neck, probably unwashed since his beard began to show, was clasped with so many fine chains it was a wonder he could turn his head. Bone dipped in gold pierced both his ears, carved in high fantastical curves that gave him an antlered shadow, aping a highborn huntsman’s horned crown.
Here in his hall, soot veiled the high, ribbed blackstone ceiling, light reflecting wetly over carvings as fine as those trapped in Summer’s orchard. A massive fire roared in the pit in the middle, twisting leaping flamesprites feasting on wood and ethercoal, little piping cries of glee echoing with the snapping of kindling. They paid their board in heat and raw chantment the dwarves used, and some said they sometimes grew large enough to couch with their hosts.
“I’ll be on my way then.” She paid him a pretty courtesy, her skirt swishing, and turned.
He made a deep grumbling noise. “Stay and dance for us, Ragged. Been a long while since we’ve seen one of the Fair Court down here.”
No, thank you. “If I dance, I must sing, and none of us wish for that.” Light and laughing, but she turned back as if saddened. All part of the game. “It pains me to leave you, Chieftain MacDonnell.”
“Pretty liar. I would give you jewels, Ragged, and a finer robe than ever she has worn.”
And no doubt after a week I should be forced to murder you or myself. “Ah, my lord, my lord. You honor a drab little bird.” Another courtesy, and she spun again, making her skirt flare the way she knew he liked. His gaze devoured her hungrily from under dandruff-caked eyebrows. “I have no dowry to bring you in return, and so must bid adieu.”
This time, he let her go with only a snort. Her shoulders relaxed a fraction as she tiptapped through the Hall’s great swinging doors, plunging into the labyrinthine warren of the MacDonnell holdings. From here it was easy—uphill, always up. Turning sometimes left and sometimes right, following the small tingling against her throat—the chantment on the golden chain, a Realmaker’s pathfinding, leading her to safety.
For a moment she contemplated what it might be like had she no Realmaking skill, and the prospect left her sweating. If she wasn’t quite unique—there were a handful of others in Seelie who could craft chantment that didn’t fade, none among the Free, and only one in Unwinter—at least she was valuable for scarcity. Her voice was held in caution for its destructive power, but she might have been traded to Unwinter long ago but for the Realmaking.
Or even paid as Tiend, the flint knife stabbing down and a small corner of the sideways realms forever Summer afterward. The borders grew slowly, if at all, and sometimes the Queen grew hungry for more.
Thank Stone and Throne Sean had avoided that fate. And yet, there was the changeling still in the mortal world to consider, too.
What’s to say she won’t Tiend Sean anyway, and his changeling as well? If he is alive in there…
Could he be? Closed in amber, struggling to breathe? Who knew?
&nbs
p; You need to know. You have to be sure.
“Pretty bird.” It was Figurh, trundling along in her wake. “Not that way, stormsong. You mean to leave us by the front gates. You mustn’t, you mustn’t.”
I didn’t think they would find me so quickly. “Why not?” She did not slacken her pace, so he had to scuttle, his short legs pumping. His lazy eye rolled, its crystalline iris a point of light in the gloom. Here there was no fire, and precious few torches—they could see much better in the dark.
It was how they grubbed out gold and… other things.
“There are those waiting for you.”
“Suitors? For such a spinster as myself? Oh, Figurh MacDonnell’s cousin, if only it were true.” Her heart leapt into her throat, traitor that it was.
Just like the rest of her. Figurh might be half deaf from the ringing of anvils, but she could not be sure there were not other ears in the dark.
“No, little bird.” He caught up as she slowed, her pulse smoothing out as well. “Dark ales, miss, of Unwinter vintage. You’d best leave another way.”
She added up her options; none that seemed very appetizing. This had been a calculated risk from the start; perhaps Gallow had not drawn off the hounds as well as he could have.
Maybe he had decided not to. She had, after all, left him a-Tangle.
“I have safe passage to the front gates.” Nowhere else. If I step off the path, I am forfeit. “You have my thanks, but I must leave the way I promised to.”
“I could…” He coughed, slightly, and under the soot on his cheeks, perhaps he was reddening. “A safer way. I could show you, Ragged.”
For what price? It wearied her, to constantly weigh the payment for passage. Did regular mortals feel this, too? Strange how she’d once thought life among the sidhe would be different. It took so much effort simply to navigate, let alone gain ground.
“You are kinder than I deserve.” The lie did not stick in her throat; perhaps it wasn’t quite a falsehood. “I have no wish to be forfeit today, though, even to your gallant clansman.”
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