The Faerie King

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “No problem there,” I replied, but I felt the walls begin to close in once I was left to consider my options in uneasy solitude.

  CHAPTER 17

  * * *

  As I’d anticipated, Moyna was none too pleased when I darkened her door that evening. “I assume Toula relayed my message?” she asked, trying to sound imperious and disdainful but achieving only petulant.

  “She did.” I stepped through the wards, concentrated, and began my quick examination of Moyna’s mind.

  She jerked and rubbed her temples, but bound, she couldn’t keep me out of her head. “Oh, so you’re the thought police now, too?” she snapped once I’d withdrawn. “You don’t believe me?”

  I blinked hard, trying to clear the images I’d seen. “Now I do,” I muttered, and retreated through the door.

  Moyna ran after me, but she bounced off the wards holding her prisoner. “What about the bind?” she yelled, her voice echoing off the cellar walls. “Toula said you’d take it off!”

  I stopped a few paces from the door and turned to face her frantic eyes. “She made no such promise, and you know that,” I replied. “While I appreciate your help, Moyna, I also know I can’t trust you. Stand there and tell me to my face that you wouldn’t go after Meggy or me as soon as I took the bind off. Go on, do it if you can.” She remained sullenly silent, and I shrugged. “I’m willing to work with you,” I continued, approaching the invisible fence. “I want to work with you. But letting you go now is out of the question.”

  “You’re afraid of me,” she challenged.

  “No, but I respect what you’re capable of.”

  She stepped back and hugged herself, but her reply was defiant. “So that’s it, then? I’m to stay down here until I crack and run to the bosom of my loving family?”

  “Not exactly. I’d prefer to move you upstairs,” I said, leaning against the door frame. “Make you comfortable. You could have your old suite back, if you’d like.”

  Moyna seemed unimpressed by my largesse. “A gilded cage is still a cage, Coileán.”

  I decided to let the slight go unnoted. “But surely it beats a dungeon. Come upstairs, see some daylight, perhaps realize someday that I’m not the worst thing that ever happened to you. Or would you prefer to return to Rigby?”

  Her lip rose in a little snarl. “You expect me to go back to that hellhole and pretend like nothing’s amiss? Back to geometry and the pep squad, is that the plan?”

  “Just an option, in case you decide you can’t stand the sight of me.”

  After mulling this over, she muttered, “A valid point. And would that be with my memory intact, or were you thinking of raping my mind again?”

  I sighed, forcing my blood pressure down. “You’ve a flare for the dramatic, haven’t you?”

  “Ever had your memory wiped?” she retorted.

  “Get a few more years on you, and you’d be grateful for selective erasure.” I stuffed my hands in my pockets and watched my daughter boil with the righteous indignation of long-suffering youth. “Tell you what,” I said, “if you go back, you go back as you are. No further binds, no wipes, no false memories, just you and Meggy and high school and all that jazz. Tell whomever you like about Faerie—no one except Wizard Stu will believe you.” She twitched, and I took advantage of the momentary crack in the dike. “Stuart’s the only guy in that town without a Fringe connection who’s a big enough nutjob to believe in faeries—and if you want to convince him, you’ll have to shrink a few feet and sprout wings, so good luck with that. I mean,” I continued, taking secret pleasure in her agitation, “you’re bound, so you’re not going to be able to prove anything. Start raving about magic, and your little friends will think you’ve lost your damn mind.”

  “They’re not my friends,” she muttered.

  “Your merry band of streetwalkers, then. Go back, and you’ll be keeping a low profile unless you plan to start brewing potions with Stewie and his cats. That’s your choice.”

  Moyna stared at me as if she could make my head explode through ocular pressure alone, then flounced across the room and jumped onto the foot of her bed with an exaggerated sigh. “You’re an impossible bastard, you know that?”

  “So I’ve been told. But think about it, let me know. We’ll get you moved upstairs tonight, if you’d like.”

  “Can’t get much worse,” she sniffed, glaring at the damp walls. “I assume I’m not to have free run of the palace, then?”

  “Not yet. Be a good girl and we’ll see.”

  “Bastard,” she repeated. “And what do you plan to do about Huc, hmm?” she called after me as I turned to go. “You know I’m not lying. Can he get through these wards?”

  I thought I might be imagining it, but I could almost detect a trace of fear in her tone. “They won’t bother you,” I said stiffly, hoping she’d drop the issue.

  But Moyna was nothing if not difficult. “Oh, really? You plan to bind them, too? If not, I’m unprotected, I’m defenseless—”

  “I said they won’t bother you.” I glanced at her over my shoulder, trying to decipher her expression. “Like it or not, you’re my daughter, and I will protect you.”

  I was halfway to the staircase when her voice echoed around the cellar: “Do you love me, Ironhand?”

  The mocking reverberations died away, and I gritted my teeth to stop the lie that would prove I still understood the terms of the great social contract. “I’m trying,” I said, and when no new insult was forthcoming, I took my hasty leave.

  Darkness fell early that evening—I had no interest in staying the daylight, in any case—and I tasked my guard with seeing to Moyna’s re-housing. Working in tandem, Valerius and Toula crafted a fresh, doubly-secure ward system around my daughter’s rooms, but I didn’t press them for details of its construction. When I last saw them that night, they were making fine tweaks to the magic in the walls, working back to back in comfortable silence, and I found myself envying the apparent ease of their relationship. They had been acquainted a bare month, and yet there they worked, anticipating each other’s movements and speaking quietly in the indecipherable code of the technically skilled.

  Meggy had locked herself in my room, and having no desire to thrust myself into a fight, I stationed a pair of guards at the door for her safety and turned my steps toward the barn. Halfway through the rose garden, I looked up at a passing shadow that blotted out the crescent moon, then traced Georgie’s descent to a skidding halt outside the sheep pen. By the time I picked my way down the path, Joey had slid off and was holding his hand up toward his passenger. “All clear, no droppings,” he said, oblivious to my presence. “Just kick your leg over and slide off—Georgie’s not going anywhere.”

  Make it quick, the dragon thought. I’m hungry.

  The passenger—Helen, I realized, catching the silhouette of her long hair as it bounced behind her on her descent—grabbed Joey’s hands and let him swing her to the ground. He promptly released his hold, and she patted her tangles into a closer approximation of presentable as Georgie lumbered off to terrorize the flock. “Okay, you were right,” I heard her tell him, half-laughing as Georgie’s swishing tail almost knocked Joey off his feet. “That’s a pretty incredible ride. And she really doesn’t mind?”

  Joey waited while the chorus of bleats rose and fell, then said, “Nah. Georgie and me…it’s kind of hard to explain, but she’s my best girl. Aren’t you the best?” he called to the gorging lizard in Fae.

  Georgie glanced up, her red eyes flashing in the dim moonlight as her muzzle dripped. You know it.

  “And that’s kind of, uh…gross,” Helen remarked as the sounds of breaking bone and slurping flesh intensified.

  Joey shrugged. “Circle of life, amiga. She’s got to eat.”

  “Yeah, but…you know, never mind,” she sighed, shaking her head. “I used to feed the corn snake frozen mice in high school bio, and that was disgusting, too.” She moved into Joey’s orbit with effortless grace, standing close e
nough to him to let his body block the worst of the night wind. “It got chilly, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he said, stamping his feet, then hooked his arm around hers. “Come on, we’ll go warm up—I’ve got some soup to reheat in the loft, and I’m pretty sure Aiden left his Wii out here.”

  I lurked by the hedge, watching in the shadows until they disappeared, arm in arm, and then I heard a soft thought from the far side of the pasture: I see you.

  “Shh,” I whispered to the night.

  Georgie snorted and continued to feast. What are you doing over there?

  “Spying.”

  Why?

  “Because I want to give them a moment’s privacy.”

  But you aren’t, she pointed out.

  “The illusion of privacy, then.” I slid out of the garden and hiked through the tall grass to the fence. “What were they up to, anyway?”

  The dragon tossed a chunk of raw sheep into the air and snapped it from its descending arc. Talking. Too much talking. If they’re going to mate, they should do it already.

  “Mate?” I chuckled. “What do you know about mating, little one?”

  Enough, she replied, nonplussed. I asked Joey about my mother, and then I asked about my father, and then he told me about mating. I knew some of it already, but what he said made sense.

  “You…knew already? How?”

  The question seemed to confuse her. I just know. Don’t you? It’s not complicated, if you need to me to tell—

  “No, no, I’m, uh…I’m well informed,” I said in a rush, hoping to cut her off before she could elaborate. “Anyway, Joey and Helen aren’t going to mate. They barely know each other.”

  So? She sounded legitimately perplexed. Male, female, compatibility, no competition…

  “Georgie,” I said, leaning over the fence to be better heard, “it’s not that simple. She’s not going to be here long.”

  And?

  “And she’s a few years younger than he is.” This failed to change the dragon’s bemused thoughts, so I tried, “She’s a wizard and Aiden’s sister, and he’s a lunatic with a sword and a gig in Faerie. There are…complications.”

  Like what? she asked, bending back to the meal at hand. How long does mating take for you, anyway? They mate, she leaves, who cares?

  “Human mating isn’t that simple,” I began, but paused at the sound of footsteps approaching behind me. When I turned, I found myself staring down the barrel of a flashlight, which clicked off as I winced in pain.

  “Sorry,” said Aiden, sidling up to the fence. “Who’s mating?”

  Georgie raised her head and cut her eyes to mine. I was no expert on draconic moods—and my temporarily shot night vision limited what little I could see of her expression—but I hastened to fill the void before she could try to be helpful. “No one. What are you doing out here?”

  He waved the darkened flashlight toward the barn. “Figured Hel was around. Joey told me he was going to keep an eye on her, and…” His thought died unfinished as something clicked into place, and he cleared his throat. “Okay, please don’t tell me that what I think is happening is happening.”

  “Leftovers and video games.”

  “Thank God.” Aiden exhaled in a loud rush and slumped against the fence. “I don’t need that right now, I really don’t need that right now.”

  He seemed simultaneously older and younger in that moment, wise to the ways of the world yet somewhat squeamish about the details. “I thought you liked Joey,” I teased.

  “I do,” he replied, shaking his head. “But that’s my sister.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is that if she’s going to fool around, I’d rather not know about it. Or think about it. Can we change the subject, please?”

  “Have you two come to terms?”

  “Not exactly,” he said with a soft sigh. “I, um…I’ve been avoiding her all day.”

  I nodded toward the warm lights of the barn loft. “Well, kid, now’s your chance,” I began, then sobered, feeling my guts clench for the hundredth time that day as my thoughts circled back to Moyna. “Seriously, go to the barn and stay there,” I said quietly. “I’m going to post a guard, and if anything seems amiss tonight, go with Helen. I’ll come for you when it’s safe.”

  Aiden’s eyes went wide. “What’s wrong?”

  Briefly, I considered keeping him in the dark, but I decided forewarning was better than false reassurances. “I have it on decent information that our siblings are conspiring against me, and no, I’m not paranoid,” I murmured, bending to his ear. “They sent someone after Moyna, and with you around…”

  I didn’t need to finish the thought. Aiden nodded curtly, then turned his troubled gaze back on the barn. “Do they know?”

  “No. Are you armed?”

  “Nope.”

  “Come with me, then.” I opened a gate into his room, and Aiden followed me through into the debris field. “Is there a projectile weapon in here?” I asked as I turned the lamps on from the safety of my relatively clean patch of floor.

  He skirted a few half-finished projects and the remnants of the past weekend’s experimentation, then plucked a piece of white PVC pipe from the rubble. “Could be. I need you to stretch this.”

  “To what dimensions?”

  “Just a minute, I’ll sketch it out,” he muttered, reaching for a battered notepad. “And I’ll need propane. How much time can you spare?”

  “Whatever you require,” I replied, trying to make sense of his frantic scribbling. “What are you—”

  “Spud gun loaded with grapeshot.” He made a few more flourishes to his diagram, then ripped the paper loose and passed it to me. “The pipe’s the barrel. I’ll need a few specific fittings—don’t worry, I’ll draw them,” he said, returning to his work, “and a tank of propane. Oh, and a small lighter would be great. Any chance you’ve got a Bic?”

  “I…think I can rig something up.”

  “Good. And I’m going to need to melt this down,” he continued, approaching with a handful of scrap metal, “so if you could get a fire going, that would be most helpful.”

  I’d observed Joey’s process, his quick but methodical construction methods and contemplative moments of double-checking his design. Aiden, on the other hand, moved in a quiet, barely controlled frenzy, running back and forth between the gun on his workbench and the brazier with its bowl of molten steel. One moment, he was fitting a valve, and the next, he was pouring another batch into the molds I’d made to his specifications, filling the spheroid forms with glowing metal and plunging them into ice water. The resultant balls, he muttered in passing, were bound to be brittle, but he almost considered shrapnel a plus. “I’m not trying to shoot these through anyone,” he said, plucking the dripping pellets from their ice bath. “I’m trying to give my target a nasty burn. A swarm of wasps may not kill you, but you’d probably wish you were dead, right?”

  After an hour or so of crafting and tweaking, Aiden packed his gun full of pellets, tucked the canister of propane under his arm, and smiled grimly. “Faerie deterrent is a go.”

  “Unless they see you first,” I reminded him, opening a gate back to the barn. “Stay low near a window, be on guard, and shoot quickly. You’ll probably only get one round off, so if it comes to that, make it count and get the hell out of here.” I followed him into the pasture and considered the bulk of the barn, black against the night sky but for the single light in the loft. “I could put up wards around this place,” I mused, “but it’d take time and draw attention…”

  “Leave it to me,” he replied, and I considered my little brother, standing there with the barrel of his gun resting on his shoulder, his arms tensed, his face somehow older in an unnamable way. The sheep bleated, Georgie grunted from the depths of the barn, and I fought the sudden urge to rip open a gate to Greg’s office and shove the kid through, back to a place where broken bones could be easily mended and hurt feelings shoved under metaphoric rugs.

&nb
sp; But I couldn’t do that to him, and so I bade him a quiet good night and good luck.

  Aiden made his way across the hard-packed practice yard toward the resting dragon, and I contemplated the freewheeling stars, trying to augur the time until my siblings grew wise to the fact that their plan had gone awry. Surely, I told myself, no one would act before the dawn.

  But dawn came, and they were nowhere to be found.

  I couldn’t entirely blame the realm for failing to notify me—if anything, the intrusive consciousness seemed perplexed that I was upset at its oversight. Faerie was happy to feed me information when asked, but I had made no request concerning my family. To the realm, they were fixtures, nothing more—certainly nothing warranting the excitement of Oberon’s return or the anxiety of Toula’s visits. Mother’s children had come and gone for centuries, and the realm assigned this particular mass outing little importance.

  By contrast, I was ready to throw the realm into lockdown and warn Greg to shore up his defenses. If the five of them weren’t in Faerie, I reasoned, then they had to be hiding in the mortal realm, and that meant the Arcanum was a likely target. Surely they wouldn’t go after Oberon, but burrowing wizards were fair game. That also meant that I couldn’t in good conscience let Meggy or Helen go back, not when a sibling of mine could be anywhere.

  Despite the earlier oversight, the realm was perfectly willing to inform me that Aiden was asleep in the barn, and so I opened a gate straight into the loft, where I found myself on the receiving end of Aiden’s new toy. I threw up my hands reflexively, and Joey, whose dark circles spoke of a long vigil, lowered the barrel. “Warning is always appreciated,” he said, putting the gun on the ground. “Especially with that little pep talk you gave Aiden last night. What’s the situation?”

  “He filled you in, I take it.”