by K. C. Lannon
She shut her eyes and kept repeating the mantra in her head, clenching her fists hard, willing her heartbeat to settle down and the magic to go away. After what felt like many minutes, her head began to clear and her hands went cool. Just as she sighed in relief, her stomach began to churn and she had to shut her mouth quickly to avoid heaving. Keeping her magic plugged up felt as good as drinking sparkling cider down the wrong way.
But I kept it in, she thought with a small smile, opening her eyes. And I’ve got to keep doing that. Can’t let it hurt anyone or anything…
“What is wrong with you?” Alvey’s voice suddenly broke through, sounding harsh.
Deirdre blinked a few times and swallowed the sick feeling in her stomach before answering weakly, “Wha… what do you mean?”
“Just forget about it,” Iain joined in, beginning to take bites of his food. “That innkeeper’s just bad mannered.”
“You’re just saying that because she gave you a dirty look for asking for seasoning,” James muttered a bit bitterly.
“She did?” Deirdre asked in a shallow voice, furtively wiping perspiration off her brow.
“She thought I was insulting the food. Didn’t you hear her?” Iain frowned at her; to Deirdre, his expression looked suspicious.
“Of course I did,” she said lightly, smiling and unrolling her fork out of the napkin, beginning to pick at her food, hoping she wouldn’t throw up.
As dinnertime continued, the patrons in the pub thinned a bit, with those who came just for food, leaving for the night. Those who remained, stretched out, taking their time with their drinks, and either sitting in companionable silence or chatting in low, relaxed voices.
As their own table was mostly quiet, Deirdre was able to listen in to the conversations around her. A large table behind her was especially talkative.
“The solstice is in a week,” one farmer grumbled. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
Everyone at the table had a different reply, guessing things about the full moon and faeries, farm faeries expecting cream as a sign of respect for their continued service, and so on.
The first man took a drink and shook his head at their replies. “No, no. The Wild Hunt. You got to watch… for the Wild Hunt.”
The others at the table and the nearby bar and the surrounding tables suddenly went quiet.
“Shut your trap, Anderson,” someone from the adjacent table advised.
“Just mentioning it’s no crime,” the man slurred. “Some of my sheep were stampeded right over last year.”
“But those ghosts don’t ’urt anything,” said another diner.
“Those aren’t ghosts, you bleeding idiot,” the man closest to Deirdre said; his accent was slightly different from the others, more Northern. “The hunts are the Courts, the faeries.”
“Yes, they come. Riding the four… winds. Riding… bears!” The first man then laughed loudly, his alcohol breath making everyone else at the table cringe.
Deirdre frowned and looked back at Alvey. “Are there bears in the Summer Court?”
She just shrugged.
“…So, there are some?”
“Nay, there are not,” she snapped without warning. “Why does it matter?”
Someone’s getting sleepy, Deirdre thought with a small grin, suddenly feeling nostalgic for the younger girls at the orphanage and their various ways of getting confused, grumpy, or even snippy when they were ready for bed but didn’t want to admit it.
So she stood up, saying, “I’m tired. I think we should all go to bed now.”
Iain barely nodded, and James grumbled something, but it sounded affirmative enough.
Deirdre shoved her chair in, asking, “Alvey, do you need any help with getting to bed?”
“Nay, I manage on my own well.” She rolled her chair from the table.
Deirdre gasped, seeing the girl was not lame, like she expected, but partially legless.
“Aye, they are not there, and aye, I was born like this. ’Twas not the work of faeries,” Alvey said in a flat, bored voice as she began to wheel away toward the first-story inn rooms.
“Oh. Are you really sure you don’t need—”
“I said I am fine!”
“Fine. Good night!”
Alvey just waved in reply.
Chapter Five
Neo-London was the most silent it had ever been. Even when it was first being converted and built up from a smaller town, when shell-shocked, ill, and sullen refugees from old London were herded in after the Cataclysm and the country was struck numb with mourning, the city had not been so quiet. After the military took control after the assassination of the king, most stayed inside their homes as soldiers patrolled the streets. Even Ferrier’s Town, usually cacophonous with music and voices, had dimmed its noise to an anxious drone.
Perhaps they sense what’s coming, as beasts do.
The house was quiet as well. Maybe it had been quiet for some years, but now there was a difference that made it noticeable. The house stood still, as if frozen. Alan moved through the rooms like an apparition, touching and changing nothing.
Boyd was sitting on the sofa in the living room in front of the fire he had prepared in the hearth when he’d ducked inside and claimed it was cold. Alan had not noticed the chill in the air. His own comfort seemed so low on his list of priorities now that his years of careful planning were beginning to pay off.
Silence was preferable, but something… felt amiss. Something nagged at the back of Alan’s mind, something that irritated him in its lack of logic, though he did not know yet what it was.
Boyd’s hands rested on his bouncing knees, twitching restlessly. The skin on his knuckles was split and dotted with scabs and dried blood from where he’d struck the wall several times. He had his own way of dealing with grief, which Alan found unproductive.
“Better to use your fists on something that can bleed and relent,” Alan told him. “Only blood will release you from your pain.”
Boyd’s blue eyes were clouded with red as he looked to Alan for guidance. “I can’t believe Philip’s done this,” he muttered through gritted teeth. “He’s gone and gotten himself killed. For what?”
“Philip died like a soldier, Boyd. He died attempting to complete his orders. You will complete them for him, in the Prance name.” Alan sat down across from him on the coffee table, lowering his gaze to meet Boyd’s eyes. “He did not die for you to question our mission. He remained loyal until the end.”
The fact that Philip had betrayed him was of no consequence. It would do no good for Boyd to hear it, though it would not shift his loyalty. It would only serve to further upset Boyd. Alan had no use for a mourning, grieving soldier. His anger, however, he could use.
“I’m not questioning the mission,” Boyd protested. “I would never do that. You know I would never do that.”
“Then what is the issue?”
Boyd’s eyes narrowed, his fingers straining as they dug into his knees. “I warned you, General Callaghan, that Iain didn’t have your purpose in mind.” He spat the name like a curse. “You didn’t see it, but I did—”
Perhaps Boyd saw the flash in his eyes, because he broke off and lowered his gaze before finishing his accusation. Boyd clenched his jaw, looking away like a dog when faced with its own mess. Alan did not even have to say anything or raise a hand in warning to muzzle him, which pleased him.
Iain. That’s it. That must be it… that’s what’s wrong.
He looked to Boyd, who had grown into the perfect instrument with a vital role to play in the betterment of Neo-London and the entire country. While Boyd had not arrived a blank slate to be filled, he had taken great care to raise Boyd and Iain the same. Everything was done with the intention of shaping them into soldiers so they would vie with their loyalty for his respect. Each action had been deliberate, and while Iain had occasionally strayed and rebelled from his path as Boyd never had, he had thought his son finally compliant.
Bitte
rness at the hand dealt to him and a need for direction had always fueled Boyd, as well as his desire to see Alan’s vision fulfilled for the betterment of his country. Iain, on the other hand…
He had fed Iain the same haunting stories of faeries, the same sobering truths about the bombing and the Courts and the fate of their country if they did nothing, just as he had with Boyd. He saw the same passion and loyalty in Iain as he had in himself as a young soldier. But something was different with Iain. He was not motivated by the same unstable emotions as Boyd.
He needed to understand why he had miscalculated—if he had miscalculated. He was still sure that Iain would return to his side. There was nothing stopping him from bringing the faery girl to him—he did not know why Iain would refuse his offer. She was just a faery, after all.
“Iain will come to see things as they are,” Alan finally said. “His loyalty still rests with me. I am certain of that.”
Boyd dared to meet his gaze, his eyes hard and glaring. He had gained confidence when Alan hadn’t shut him down quickly the first time, and now he seemed to fancy himself as his equal. If he were smart, Alan supposed he wouldn’t speak. But Boyd had never been smart.
“You won’t want to hear this,” Boyd ground out, “but that’s arrogance talkin’, General Callaghan. You’d be a damn fool to think—”
Without warning, Alan delivered a quick, hard blow to the side of Boyd’s face. He made sure to strike him so that he was not too injured to return to duty immediately, but he intended to hit hard enough to leave a mark, to make his head spin.
Boyd nearly toppled over but righted himself. He hunched over, breathing hard, his hands cradling his face and hiding it from sight. His shoulders shuddered, and he took a ragged breath. When he did look up, he appeared to Alan how he had when he’d first laid eyes on him as a teenager—broken, angry, and desperate for guidance.
His emotional instability was a liability, but his dedication and skill in combat had more than made up for it in the past. Philip, at least, had been more restrained even if he had turned out to be a weak-willed disappointment.
“You are meant to be my eyes, my wrath, my hand, my weapon in this war—nothing else.” Alan’s words were sharp, unrelenting. “I did not save you from your miserable existence when your criminal parents were killed for you to think. Don’t ever question me again.”
It took Boyd a moment to say anything. The defiance rushed from him as quickly as blood rushed to his swelling cheek. “You ever try that with your boy?”
Alan said nothing.
“No.” Boyd’s laugh was wry but subdued. “Why would you get your hands dirty or bruised on his face when you always had me to do it for you?”
“No one has gotten their hands more sullied than I have for this cause. There is no one else who has even gotten close to the sacrifices I’ve made. Don’t forget that.”
Boyd could not begin to imagine what he had lost, what he had given up.
Lowering his hands, Boyd lifted his chin and sported his mark proudly, his teeth tinged with blood. “But I’m glad to do it—to do everything you’ve asked of me. That’s why I’m your best soldier. And I certainly wouldn’t let some faery sway me.”
“The girl…” Alan gaped, exhaling sharply. “It must be that faery girl’s doing.”
She’s undone all this. Years of planning, undone because of her…
He wondered, baffled, how she had done it, how she had changed the conditioning of one of his soldiers. But Iain, Alan realized, was not motivated like Boyd was. At every turn, Iain was driven by more than just his infantile dream of being some kind of soldier knight from fairy-tale stories Kallista had read to him, more than just his dedication to his country…
Iain had always been motivated by those he cared about.
That, Alan knew, would bring him nothing but pain. It would ruin him. It seemed to Alan that it already had stripped him of everything—his title as an Iron Warden, his place in Alan’s war, and soon, maybe even his life.
Usually it was James’s doing whenever Iain disobeyed him. Iain had gone after his brother when he ran away with Deirdre, ignoring Alan’s orders to remain in Neo-London. But now it seemed James wasn’t the only person influencing him…
There was more to the faery girl than met the eye, more to her than could be gleaned from a file taken from the orphanage.
Despite the heat of the crackling fire at his back, Alan felt a chill in the house. It was an unnatural kind of chill—one that he recognized.
Alan stood. “You should leave,” he said to Boyd. “I’m sending you with another unit of the Iron Infantry to a town outside old London. There’ve been reports of Fae in the area. I believe they’re guarding something of importance that may be needed in our future war.”
“You told me I could go after Iain and the girl—”
“And you will, when the time is right.” Alan waved him away, clutching at his head as another chill wracked through him. “Go await my orders.”
Once Boyd was gone, Alan went to make tea. The kitchen was untouched, neat as Iain always left it. The herbs in the windowsill were starting to wilt a little, but Alan could not be bothered to water them. Alan quietly went through the motions of putting the kettle on, though his thoughts remained elsewhere. He never knew how he would be contacted, so he walked about the house with his steaming mug of tea and waited.
As he walked, he found himself taking note of small things he normally passed by without thinking about it. There were faint marks in the peeling paint of the doorframe of his bedroom; he squinted at them. His sons’ names were scrawled there in Kallista’s handwriting, a makeshift growth chart that marked their heights through the years.
The marks stopped at a certain point: Iain, just before he turned twelve, and James, nine, right before Kallista left. Of course, they had grown a lot since then… It was hard to imagine that they had ever been so small to begin with.
That felt like a different life—like the lives that only existed now in Alan’s photographs on the walls.
Absently Alan ran his fingers over the lines, over the handwriting that was barely even visible anymore, watching the paint flake off and dust the floor. Then he looked up, noticing the chill coming from his bedroom just inside the door.
Alan went inside, and he sat upon the foot of his bed in front of what was once his wife’s vanity mirror and waited. The mirror was old even when Kallista bought it from an antique shop; it was splotched with strange dark stains and wear, so much so that he’d thought it would be difficult to see oneself. But Kallista had never been one to primp, and she’d only needed it to tie up her hair in braids and adjust her head scarf.
Alan stared past himself. Another dark shape began to form, expanding like ink in water across the reflective surface. A face appeared—slowly at first so it was amorphous. Alan expected to look upon the Winter King or maybe one of his lackeys—he had heard tell that should a man gaze upon the face of the Winter King of the Unseelie Court, he could go blind from fear—but instead, he saw a woman’s face.
The face was a familiar one—masked in a glamor to appear more humanlike—belonging to Edith, his secretary, also known as Raisa. Her pallor was pale, like she was drained of blood, though she often wore an inordinate amount of rouge to make up for it. Her hair was the color of bleached bone and fell in waves past her thin shoulders. As usual, she was dressed in fine clothing—hiding what she really was underneath that human exterior.
Alan stared blankly, taking a sip of his tea. “This must be important if the Winter Queen is contacting me directly,” he mused. “I take it this is not a call regarding rescheduling any meetings, or you would have used the telephone.”
“The Winter King would like to know of your progress with the weapons.” Edith’s voice pierced the room.
“Then why does he not simply ask my secretary? Or, better yet, why does he not speak to me directly if he is so interested? ”
Edith’s eyes narrowed a fraction—anyon
e else would have missed the twitch of irritation.
“The vessel is behaving as expected,” Alan answered. “We are performing another field test today to view the progress. I have a candidate in mind—”
“The blood absorbed must be from a true Noble Faery, or it will not be powerful enough to destroy the barrier.”
“Then I will find a Noble Faery. You tell the Winter King that.”
“Not many true Nobles yet remain, and but a few of them reside outside the barrier.” Edith folded her hands in her lap. “A Noble Faery child was stolen away from the Summer Court in years past, but none know if it still lives.”
Deirdre, Alan thought but kept the revelation to himself.
“If the child still lives, it would possess a powerful magic because of its parentage, but it would not be in control of those powers yet. It would be too unpredictable for a mortal man to manage.” She looked aside, whispering half to herself, “The Winter King would like such a child to be left to him.”
Although his tea was now freezing, Alan drank it unflinchingly. “Interesting,” he said without conviction. “Perhaps the Winter King could tell me that himself.”
Edith looked up, meeting his gaze with her sharp, upturned brown eyes. “Your arrangement is close to completion,” she said.
Alan grimaced. “I was meaning to update you on that particular subject. Tell the Master that I’ve lost track of the boy for now but that I will deliver him shortly.”
Edith scowled and pressed her delicate fingers to her temple, as if the prospect of dealing with the Master had given her a headache. “I doubt there will be a problem. Last we spoke, he claimed the boy was on the exact path he needed to be. But I shall send him a messenger—a goblin, perhaps.”
“Very well then.” Alan set his empty cup aside on the floor. “I am certain the Master will appreciate that gesture.”