Nevernever

by Will Shetterly

  Sai said, “Do we tell Leander and Wiseguy?”

  Strider shook his head. “No time to assemble the forces of good, m’love. The three of us will have to do.” He looked at her bike, then at the two of us. “Damn.”

  So we made our plans, and once again, you may assume they worked out, at least at first, ‘cause I’m not going to tell them to you now. A minute or two later, my notes safely burned so no magician could learn my side of the conversation, Sai and I were on the Harley, taking a speed tour of Bordertown.

  (That’s a parenthesis at the beginning of this sentence: A digression starts here. This is your last warning.

  (I like a lot of things about writing down what’s happened to me. It sorts out parts of my life, helps me see things that didn’t make sense at the time. It also makes me look smarter than I am, as if I was figuring these things out as they happened, instead of doing whatever seemed right and hoping for the best.

  (But I hate it when I have to tell about something that I already told about, like Ho Street at night. Sure, I love it, and sure, the kids who’re still up are dressed in wild clothes, and sure, the stars are impossibly beautiful over Faerie, and sure, passing an open club gives you a burst of picture and a snatch of sound like cruising through TV channels. But after a while, I just want to give it a rest. Like what I’m telling you about now: Sai and I rode through Soho. It was grand, even though I worried about how everything would work out, and sometimes Sai would laugh simply ‘cause she likes to race through the night. But do I really need to tell you about all that?

  (I think not.)

  We assumed simplemindedly that because Orient’s finding talent was the surest way to track me, Crystaviel’s people would stay together to follow Orient’s instructions. At a major intersection in the scandal district, we had an unpleasant surprise. Three silent bikes whipped out of a dark alley, each with two riders. All six wore burning helmets, and fire raced from their tires.

  Beneath rippling flames, mirrored faceplates hid their identities. They were equipped like part of Dragonfire, the rich brat elf gang from Dragon’s Tooth Hill. Their bikes, jackets, boots, and helmets were sleek and new. Each helmet burned in a different hue: orange, purple, blue, green, yellow, and red.

  “The Inhuman Torches,” Sai said.

  Which was more fuel for fretting. The Hill gangs, human and elf, can be scary; any gang can be scary. But most Dragon’s Toothers are posers, rich kids who live in comfort on the Hill and come down to Soho when they’re bored. The Inhuman Torches, though, may be the baddest of B-town’s baddest. They’re famous for hating humans and halfies, and they like to pretend they’re an advance guard for an army that’ll someday come from Faerie to conquer Bordertown and the World.

  The orange Torch shot right at us, clearly intending to knock us over if we didn’t stop and trusting their gear would protect him and his passenger. On the blue Torch’s bike, the rider flipped open a makeup compact like it was some Superspy toy and said into the mirror, “It’s the dog kid.”

  Sai said, “Hang on,” as if I had a choice.

  We leaned low. At first I thought Sai was trying for a tight U-turn, but as we began to skid, I thought she was simply going to slam into the approaching bike and see who could do the most damage. But the orange bike, trying to sideswipe us, went down first, spilling its riders. Sai’s Harley peeled rubber as we narrowly dodged them.

  Someone screamed from the downed bike. Trying to ram us had been a stupid move. Someone was going to have a bad case of road rash, and maybe much worse. Whether they deserved it or not, I hated the sound of people in pain. If I’d been driving one of the other bikes, I would’ve stayed behind to help my mates.

  But the other drivers were too caught up in the thrill of the hunt or Crystaviel’s orders were to be obeyed at any cost. The two remaining bikes stayed close behind us. Since there was no longer anything to be gained by trying to lead Orient all around town, Sai shot back toward Soho.

  I looked back as we passed under a working streetlight. Behind us, burning globes hovered over wheels of fire, then became humanlike bikers. Flames, stars, and streetlights glinted within their faceplates and from their dark blue patent leather boots, jackets, and gloves. The Torches showed no skin; they could’ve been mechanical men or demons made of flame.

  The remaining Torches seemed to remember I was supposed to be the heir. They made no attempts to ram us or throw things at us. Sai had the Batcycle’s throttle wide open, but their bikes must’ve been equipped with the best spellboxes in town. We couldn’t outrun them.

  Every block or two, the passenger on the blue Torch’s bike screamed street names into the mirror, keeping someone up to date about our precise location. I imagined bikes from all over Bordertown converging on us, and I wondered how many people Crystaviel had to call upon.

  Sai had a better idea of where we were than I did, until I saw oil lamps burning on poles in an open field. The Endless Rave happens at the edge of Soho proper. Some people say the first humans to return to Bordertown decided to celebrate by dancing there, and the dancing has never stopped. The dancers come and go, of course, and so does the music: sometimes it’s made by seedyboxes, and sometimes by B-town drummers gathered to jam, and sometimes by a dancer or two stamping a rhythm and humming a tune. No one knows how large the Endless Rave has been, but everyone swears there’s always at least one kid dancing there.

  As Sai and I came closer to the field, I saw there must’ve been two or three hundred kids dancing—mostly humans, but some elves stood to one side, watching, and at least one had joined the dancers. A band was playing at the center of the Rave: a drummer on a trap set, another on congas, a trumpeter, a flautist, a harmonica player, and four or five singers. It looked like an impromptu band. It looked like fun. It looked like we were going to ride right into the heart of the Rave.

  Appearances aren’t always deceiving. We did.

  Sai flashed her headlight and let her engine scream, and I felt us slow a little before we left the street for grass and dirt via a gap in the curb that Sai must’ve known was there. I closed my eyes. I figured the next thing I’d experience would be shrieking and broken limbs, most notably my own.

  The Ravers were too deep into dance trance to run away. They opened a path, flowed around us, and closed behind us, swallowing us in their rhythm, incorporating us into the Rave. Sai killed her light and her spellbox’s motorcycle growl, and we wove through the Ravers’ patterns, circling with them around the musicians.

  One set of Torches were lost in the Rave as we slipped away. The last two, on the red bike, had circled the block. The passenger pointed at us just as we turned down Market Street. I took some consolation in noticing that they had no mirror. I would have given almost anything to know what the blue Torch’s passenger told Crystaviel while they were trapped in the Endless Rave.

  Our race continued. Without headlights, we hit several potholes, but none so badly that Sai lost control. We passed a few people on the street, and a bike or two going the other way, but there was no danger of colliding with anyone. No one stayed in the path of the speeding fireballs that followed us.

  Then I noticed a bike with a single rider coming up fast behind the Torches. I started to tap Sai so she’d look, and stopped as I recognized the newcomer.

  Taz whipped by the last set of Torches as though they were on a Sunday cruise and she was late to a very hot date. Two flaming helmets turned in unison as her headlight announced her approach; she passed them before they could finish looking back. The movement of their heads was small, but it told me enough about their surprise. When Taz drew alongside us, she called, “If I help you shake ‘em, you’ll owe me big time!”

  Sai glanced over her shoulder. I nodded.

  Taz and Sai conferred briefly, then Taz shut down her headlight, too. We veered into a dark tangle of narrow residential streets. From the Flames’ point of view, their prey rolled from dimly lit streets into a solid wall of shadow.

  The Torch
es’ headlights pierced the wall, but our bikes were beyond their light. They rolled through cavelike darkness, undoubtedly wondering if they had lost us, when suddenly they saw a single bike’s headlight snap on in the distance and heard the growl of its engine. That light and that sound sped away, rapidly becoming more distant.

  The Flames slowed then. What alternative was there? If they followed the headlight, the bike they wanted might slip past them. They listened and watched the shadows to see if the second bike had stopped or had turned onto a branching street. And because the blue Flames listened carefully, they heard rubble spray under the wheels of a second bike that was picking its way toward Soho.

  And they followed that dark, quiet bike.

  Sai and I raced on as quickly as Sai dared. Then she turned off her headlight and her engine’s roar. I stared back into the darkness. We had lost Crystaviel’s agents—for the moment.

  Chapter 5—Understandings

  Sai left her bike by the curb. (Nah, I’m not going to tell you where we were. Wait for it.) The front door was ajar, so we stepped cautiously into a quiet hallway, then climbed the stairs. The apartment door showed no signs of having been forced. No one was in the living room, but an oil lamp was burning on an end table. The kitchen door opened an inch, then swung wide, and Strider grinned as he saw us. “You’re the first to arrive, kids.”

  He and Sai met in the middle of the room and hugged. Sai asked, “Any trouble getting here?”

  He shook his head. “Like strolling through a park on a glorious afternoon. You?”

  “I’ll bore you later.”

  I heard the door below being wrenched open, leaped into a stuffed chair, and landed with my arms folded and my legs stretched out on a hassock. Strider gave me a thumbs-up; Sai rolled her eyes and whispered, “Boys.” They both went into the kitchen and let the door close softly as a small gang of people charged upstairs.

  Orient entered first. His eyebrows unfurled, as if a toothache had gone away. Nothing else about him said he was glad to see me. “My own apartment,” he said. “Cute.”

  “Too cute.” The Voice lost a lot of its mystery when it came from a hallway instead of a mirror.

  Tick-Tick was standing behind Orient, but this wasn’t ventriloquism. She smiled at me, as if she admired my style in leading Orient on a hunt to his own home. Since I admired it, too, I winked at her as she stepped aside to let the Voice by.

  Hope you weren’t expecting a surprise—it was Crystaviel. I wouldn’t have recognized her in another setting. Her hair was in tight white braids, and half of her face was painted like the skin of some beautiful reptile with glittering blue scales. Her jacket, pants, and boots were all made from alligator hide.

  Behind her came her second in command, a too-familiar elf whose name I didn’t know. His presence probably helped me recognize Crystaviel: His short, tangled hair was dyed in shades of blue and white like a fire made of ice, and his eyes were the color of frost. He wore the dark blue leather of the Inhuman Torches. I wondered if he’d been driving the bike that we’d left caught up in the Endless Rave.

  Several more elves in new leather and designer denim followed them. Crystaviel had us outnumbered and outdressed; I had to hope we had her outthought.

  Tick-Tick said, “Please, no violence. Be it ever so humble—” She glanced around the room; Orient’s housekeeping did not inspire respect. “—and it is humble—Orient calls it home.”

  Orient said, “So fix me a vacuum cleaner someday, hey?”

  “I think there’s no need for violence,” Crystaviel said.

  I nodded, wondering if Strider and Sai were making out in the kitchen and had forgotten that I needed someone to make an entrance real soon now.

  “He’s older than I expected,” Ice Hair said.

  “Larger,” Crystaviel said, studying me. “Perhaps an effect of the wolf spell. Perhaps more time passed in Bordertown than we realized.” She suddenly dropped to one knee and bowed low. All of the elves, excepting Tick-Tick, followed her example. “It is a most excellent disguise, Your Majesty.”

  Tick-Tick blinked, a major loss of composure for an elf, but remained standing. Orient scowled, saying, “You never said I was hunting—”

  Crystaviel finished, “Not once did I suspect your identity when we passed in the street.”

  I shrugged modestly; no one saw that. The kitchen door opened. One hand gripping the door frame, the other on the handle, Strider leaned into the crowded living room and laughed. “Long time, no see.”

  Ice Hair lunged at Strider, but Crystaviel, standing, stopped him with a hand against his chest. “Patience, my hound.” She glanced at me just after she said it.

  Strider laughed again. “Relax, Tavi. Wolfboy’s no one’s hound but his own.”

  Ice Hair sneered at him. “I never thought to see you sink so low. Bordertown trash.”

  A smile stayed on Strider’s lips, but there was none of it in his voice. “You yap, little lapdog. Do you bite?”

  Sai grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back. “Sheesh, you sound just like Prince Bozo there.”

  Strider’s cold look moved from Ice Hair to Sai. I remembered that we weren’t doing this for an evening’s entertainment. People could get hurt, and the hurt could be stranger and more terrible than I’d imagined. Then Strider laughed again, lightly, without a hint of the Elflands in his voice, and said, “I do? I never thought I’d sink so low.”

  “Enough.” Crystaviel looked from Strider to Ice Hair. “In the presence of His Maj—”

  “Wrong,” said Strider.

  Crystaviel glanced at Orient, who shrugged and sat at the table where he’d been when I spied on him earlier. “You wanted an elf kid with three moles. The signs pointed to yon Wolfboy.” Orient smirked just a bit; I think he saw we’d pulled something on Crystaviel, and approved. “Then you wanted a kid who looked like a wolf. ‘Less there’s more’n one in town, I did that, too. My job’s done.”

  Crystaviel addressed me. “Your Majesty, these traitors seek to use you for—”

  Strider said, “You got it wrong, Tavi.”

  This had gone on long enough. I stood, pulled up my left sleeve, and parted the matted hairs to show her a dark blotch on my skin, then another, then a third. If you connected them with a pen, they’d make a perfect equilateral triangle.

  Crystaviel pointed at my shoulder. “Did I? The proof—”

  “Evidence,” Sai said. “As in, circumstantial.”

  “An elf child—”

  “Human,” Strider said.

  I nodded.

  Crystaviel moved closer to me, to within an inch or two of my face, and studied my eyes, then my ears. “Shed this form,” she said.

  I shook my head and noted that she hadn’t said, “Your Majesty.”

  “He can’t,” Strider said, with just a trace of kindness.

  Crystaviel laughed. “You cannot expect me to trust you?”

  Strider said, “I still have some fondness for you, Tavi, for all we may’ve been opponents beyond the Border. I wouldn’t have you return to Faerie with a disguised human. It’d ruin you.”

  Crystaviel said, “You are too kind, m’Lord.”

  Sai said, “I can vouch for ‘im. I knew the kid before he became Wolfboy. He was as human as they come.”

  Crystaviel said, “And who can vouch for you?”

  Sai shrugged. So far as I knew, there were only two elves that Sai liked, Strider and Leda. Crystaviel wasn’t improving Sai’s opinion of the race.

  Crystaviel asked Orient, “Is it possible? A transformed human is no elf, whatever the pattern of birthmarks.”

  Orient repeated Sai’s shrug. “I don’t know how it works. Maybe the kid you want isn’t in Bordertown, but Wolfboy was close enough to your conditions that I came up with him. There’s certainly something of Faerie about him.”

  Tick-Tick said quickly, “No refunds.”

  “No,” said Crystaviel, “you’ll have the rest of your pay.” She said something in
Elvish then.

  When I didn’t answer, Strider said, “I told you.”

  Crystaviel said something else, more forcefully. A burning wind swept my fur, and my bones twisted to new shapes inside me. I screamed.

  The pain left a moment later. Strider had one hand around Crystaviel’s throat, Ice Hair had a jeweled switchblade at Strider’s neck, Sai had one hand on Ice Hair’s wrist and the other cocked in a fist. They reminded me of that statue of the family wrapped around with snakes.

  Orient, still in his chair, said, “Uh, let’s all be very cool, hmm?”

  Strider glanced my way. I was still the Wolf. I felt as if nothing had happened; magic can be like that. I nodded, and he and Sai backed away from Crystaviel and Ice Hair. The switchblade disappeared, which made me feel better.

  “Well,” Crystaviel told me. “Your spell’s very well wrought; my compliments to your wizard. Be flattered, human. For several minutes, I thought you my superior.”

  “Whom you’d have used,” Strider said.

  She looked at him from the corners of her dark gray eyes. “Whom I’d have restored to the throne of all Faerie, Your Highness. Since you know where the heir is not, do you know as well where the heir is?”

  “No.” Since Goldy hadn’t reported whether Florida was back at Elsewhere, Strider’s answer was scrupulously honest. “If the heir’s in Bordertown, surely you would’ve discovered that with or without the Finder’s aid.” I noted that when Strider ventured into half-truths, his Elflands’ diction returned.

  Ice Hair blurted, “Then why’re you in Bordertown?”

  Strider gave him a thin smile. “I like the music. Why are most elves in Bordertown?”

  “You seem well informed about the heir,” Crystaviel said. “And especially well informed about my search.”

  “Oh, that.” Now that he’d completely left the land of truth, Strider spoke pure Bordertown. “M’mate, Wolflad there, sees he’s being followed by some kids. So he returns the favor and finds they’re talking into a mirror about him being an elf with three moles.