Silver Borne mt-5

by Patricia Briggs

  Ariana didn’t seem to hear the queen’s taunts. Instead, she said clearly and slowly, “I take hold of this fae, who will change—the first shape of fire counts as one. After that, for every time he changes, one of my comrades will go free. He will change five more times, three minutes each form, and if I succeed, all shall leave. If I don’t, one leaves for each shape I hold.”

  As she was talking, Ariana set Phin down next to Gabriel. Even under the queen’s thrall, Gabriel put a hand on Phin’s shoulder to steady him.

  “Four times,” said the queen. “Five shapes. I will not let go of Mercedes Thompson, who holds the Silver Borne.”

  “It’s all right,” I told Ariana. “I’m a survivor. Ask anyone. I can deal with the queen about the book when all of you are safe.”

  “Six forms,” said Ariana. “One for each. It is in the rules. ‘The bargain requested, all prisoners invested in the outcome tested.’ ”

  The poetry didn’t flow well, but I suppose that it didn’t need to be very good poetry to record the rules of a fairy queen.

  The queen’s eyes fluttered in irritation. I had a hard time not looking away—or blinking too fast myself.

  “Agreed,” she snarled. “But Mercedes is the last to be freed and your grandson first.”

  Samuel said, “Phin, Jesse, Gabriel, Ariana, me, and Mercedes, then.”

  “Phin, Ariana, then the rest followed at the end by Mercedes,” counteroffered the queen.

  I saw what she was doing. By putting Ariana and Phin at the beginning, she thought she was reducing Ariana’s motivation even as the bargain became harder and harder to keep.

  Samuel shook his head. “Phin, Jesse, Gabriel, Ariana, me, and Mercedes.”

  “I am getting bored,” said the queen. “Agreed. The bargain is struck.”

  Ariana gave Samuel a narrow-eyed look—I think it was because he put her before him. But I agreed with him. Get the helpless ones out first, then those who could best protect themselves. That meant Ariana before Samuel.

  “The bargain is accepted,” agreed Ariana, and she stepped forward, embracing the flaming fae. As soon as she touched him, her hair burst into flame as did her clothing, and what was not burnable dropped to the ground, including the stone Zee had given her to hold. Its steady light was almost unnoticeable against the flames as the rest of Ariana smoldered a moment before lighting up as well.

  “She holds earth, air, fire, and water,” Samuel told me. If I hadn’t known him as well as I did, I might have thought he was disinterested. “It is what made her able to do great magic after most of Underhill was out of reach. Magic fire will do her no harm.”

  The queen was speaking to the witch. After she was finished talking, the witch stood up, a steel knife in her hand. She gathered up her chains and moved to the farthest extent, which left her just able to reach the forest lord. She plunged the knife into the tree-like creature, and it bellowed, shook, and bled amber fluid onto the knife. The floor moved under my feet and the ceiling roots contracted and wiggled.

  Samuel put a hand under my elbow to steady me—so I knew the blood had worked. He could see through the glamour to the reality of what we dealt with.

  The witch licked the knife and dipped a finger into the cut she’d made in the trapped fae. She used that finger to draw symbols that hung in the air where she’d put them, and glowed a sickly yellow. She pulled up her shirt to expose the skin of her belly, then she reached into the air and grabbed the symbols and slapped them onto her bare skin. When she was finished, she walked back to the throne, sat down, and finished cleaning the blade with her tongue. She caught me watching her and smiled.

  Maybe she didn’t know about the glamour, or maybe she thought I was afraid of cats. One thing was for sure: she knew that I was scared of her. I wished I knew what she had done.

  Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be helpful to us. And we needed help. Three minutes times six is eighteen—and Zee had already been holding the entrance open for a while. Adding eighteen minutes was going to push him well beyond the hour he’d promised. The fairy queen wouldn’t need Zee’s opening to allow them to leave—but if it was still open, then they would walk out on the same day they’d entered.

  The time was up at last, and the fae Ariana held turned to ice. Three minutes is a long time to hold on to a giant ice cube. I couldn’t understand why Ariana continued to hug him close instead of holding him more loosely so not as much of her was against him. Especially as all of her clothes had burned away and she was naked, with nothing between her and the ice.

  “Flesh to flesh, remember,” said the fairy queen in such a grumpy tone that I knew she’d hoped Ariana would back off.

  I heard some murmurs from the fae around us, remarking upon Ariana’s scars. How ugly they were, how shameful. I thought they might be commenting on purpose, as some subterfuge of the fairy queen, but if so, their taunts seemed to have no effect I could see on Ariana.

  Three minutes was up, and Jesse was safe—and the fae Ariana was holding turned into smoke. She seemed to have been prepared for it, though, because as the ends of him started to dissolve, she reached out and snagged the cloak of the fae who was nearest her. She wrapped the cloak around herself and the fae, then touched the cloak with her cold hand, and a layer of ice covered it, trapping the smoke in the frozen cloth.

  Surreptitiously, I glanced around at the fae who were in the room with us. There had been a few in the hall when we’d gotten here, but the others had entered more purposefully afterward, as if she’d summoned them all. I counted twenty-eight, not including the forest lord, who, I suspected, couldn’t be numbered among her followers.

  I looked at their faces, and they seemed to be less . . . blank than the thralls, but I didn’t think that they were free agents either. Maybe it was the way all twenty-eight stared hungrily at the queen, as if they were waiting for any task, any order—anything at all that they could do for their true love whom they worshipped. I’ve been around the fae. I’ve seldom seen any three of them see eye to eye on anything, let alone twenty-eight.

  “Look at the scars her father gave her,” said one.

  “How could she live through that—it looks as though she’s been mauled by beasts.”

  “Don’t you know the story?” said a third. They all looked at Ariana, instead of the fairy queen, as the third one continued. “Her father called his beasts to torture her every morning for three years.”

  Ariana’s mouth tightened as she remembered, too. And then that three minutes was up as well—she’d won freedom for Gabriel.

  The fae under the cloak began to grow, and Ariana let the cloth fall to the ground. At first I couldn’t figure out the challenge. The creature had changed into another fae, a large male with almost human features. His skin was the color and texture of a silver birch, some places smooth and white and others rough and dark gray or black. His hair looked like shredded bark and hung around his face. He wasn’t ugly or horrible—but then Ariana started to shake.

  Beside me, Samuel stiffened, a low growl beginning in his throat.

  “Hello, daughter mine,” the fae-man with bark skin said. After that, he switched to Welsh; the accent was so obscure I couldn’t tell what he said. He raised his right arm—and I saw that it had no hand on the end of it—and petted her hair with it.

  Ariana’s father had been a forest lord, but evidently not the same kind of forest lord as the one the fairy queen held, because he looked quite a bit different.

  The fairy queen had been using her people to weaken Ariana for this moment, to remind her of what had been done to her by this man. But she had underestimated Ariana if she thought Ariana was going to lose this easily. Her arms tightened on the man and pulled him next to her.

  Samuel’s Welsh I could understand: he wasn’t talking over the phone, he was speaking slowly, and what he said was pretty simple. “He can’t call his hounds, Ari, my love. Don’t worry. They are dead and gone. I made sure of it. He’s not real, not real. She doesn’
t have that kind of power. My da, he killed yours. I killed the hounds, and they are not coming back.”

  Patiently, he kept up the refrain, giving her something to listen to other than the fae, who evidently wore the face and form of her abusive father.

  I was watching the face of the witch, and I wasn’t as certain as Samuel that her father wasn’t real. Witches can do some very scary things. The first three things the fae turned into—fire, ice, and smoke—those all smelled of fae magic to me. This one—other than the scent he bore, which was his own—this one reeked of black magic, witch’s magic—and witches could call back the dead.

  For three minutes, Ariana held the man who had been willing to torture her until she was mindless. At the end of the three minutes, she could have let go and walked out of the Elphame, leaving Samuel and me to stand prisoner. She was tougher than that. So when her father turned into a snarling werewolf that bore more than a passing resemblance to Samuel, she went to her knees so she could pull him close and stared—at Samuel. Her eyes grew black, and her face went blank, but she held on, mouthing one word over and over—Samuel’s name.

  Samuel went to his knees, too, his eyes white and wild.

  “Not here,” I told him, and it was my turn to talk. “You cannot change here, Samuel. You have to get her, Phin, and the kids out of here. You have to—she’s not going to be in any shape to do anything. Hold on.”

  She wasn’t going to be able to free me: first her father, then werewolf, and I could take a pretty good guess at what the final shape would be because the fairy queen had no intention of letting me go.

  She who had been Daphne thought I was the proper owner of the Silver Borne. She thought that when she released Gabriel, our bargain about my safety would be over. Evidently, I wasn’t human enough to benefit from the guesting laws that prevented a fairy queen from killing the humans who came into her realm. She could kill me and get the book.

  She’d have been right had it not been for one thing. I didn’t own the Silver Borne; Phin did. When she killed me, all she’d get was a boatful of trouble—and I’d do my best to convince her of that once the others were free. All I’d have to do would be hold out until Adam came to get me.

  Of course, if Ariana managed to hold on to the last shape the fae took, it would make my life a lot easier.

  For three minutes, Ariana held on to the werewolf—and then it changed. The hound looked a little like a giant beagle: white with brown spots, rounded ears that hung on either side of its face, but there was no sign of the friendly expression that most beagles live and die with.

  Ariana looked at the hound she held, her arms wrapped around its throat and her legs tucked almost under its body. For a moment, nothing happened and, despite myself, I felt a great leap of hope. I didn’t want to be left alone with the fairy queen, who wanted to kill me.

  Then Ariana rolled away from the hound, who must have looked like one of the hounds her father had tortured her with, and curled into a fetal position, her mouth open and screaming, but the sounds locked in by terror. Samuel picked her up and crooned to her. Not saying anything, just giving her his voice. He hadn’t forgotten who the enemy was, though. His eyes were on the fairy queen.

  “Five,” said the fairy queen, sounding moderately grumpy. “I thought I might get to keep you, werewolf, too, but she was stronger than I thought.”

  Samuel snarled at her.

  I noticed that Zee’s rock, lying on the ground under the belly of the hound, who was focused on Ariana, was flickering.

  “Samuel,” I told him urgently. “Zee will be waiting. Get the kids and Phin, too—” Especially Phin. Any fae willing to use a black witch and allow her to torture another being was not someone I wanted to give more power to. We needed to get Phin out of here and safe so the Silver Borne was out of her reach. “Take them and get out of here.”

  “Can’t you help me up?” Phin asked Gabriel. He knew what we needed.

  There was a momentary pause, but when the queen didn’t interfere with Phin’s request, Gabriel helped him to his feet.

  “You,” said the queen, pointing to the fae nearest to her. “You take them to Outside and let them leave. You’ll have to carry the human man.” She looked at Jesse, then glanced at Gabriel. “Go, children, and when you are outside my Elphame, be thou as thou wert.”

  The fae she’d pointed to bowed deeply and picked Phin up with the same ease that Ariana had displayed. Not all fae are so strong. Silently, Jesse and Gabriel followed him when he started out the door.

  Samuel stopped and kissed my cheek, still holding Ariana, who was shivering in terror. “Stay alive,” he told me.

  “Planning on it,” I said. I gave Ariana, who was very deep into a panic attack, a wary look. I remembered her concern when she’d returned to herself last time, and so I added, “You stay alive, too. Now get out while the getting is good.”

  “Semper Fi,” he said, glancing down at Zee’s rock. Then he hurried after the others.

  So far as I knew, Samuel had never been a Marine. But he’d known I’d catch the reference. The Marines never leave a man behind. He’d be back, and so would Adam. All I had to do was survive.

  We all waited until the fae who had escorted them out returned. He bowed to the queen, and said, “They are Outside, safe and alive, my queen.”

  I took a deep breath, and a few seconds later Zee’s stone was just another gray rock among the roots in the floor of the cave. They’d made it with almost two minutes to spare by my rough count—though probably Zee had held the opening until he saw them.

  “My bargain is done,” the queen told me.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You will exchange the book for your life.”

  “Nope.” I shook my head. “I’ve considered it—and decided that it is not going to happen.”

  There were no humans to protect anymore. Just me. Worry over what the witch might do if I freed her made me hesitate before I pulled my gun—and it was one hesitation too many. I reached under my T-shirt, and two of the queen’s people grabbed my arms. The gun fell on the ground, and the fairy queen kicked it aside—well out of the witch’s reach.

  “You misunderstand,” she told me. “I will take your life, and you will give me the book with your death.”

  “I thought I had to own the book before that worked,” I said in a puzzled voice.

  The fairy queen stared at me. “Did you give the book to someone before you came down here?”

  “Not the way you mean it,” I answered.

  “How would you mean it?” she said softly.

  “Why would I answer that?” I asked. The fairy queen gave a sharp nod, and the witch reached out and touched me.

  * * *

  I CAME BACK TO MYSELF LYING ON THE BED WHERE Phin had been. At least it smelled like Phin, but the room was made of roots and dirt rather than marble. I was confused for a moment, but then I woke more fully and realized that I’d never seen it without the glamour—just smelled it.

  My whole body hurt, though I had no additional bruises. I’d held out as long as I could, to give Samuel and Adam time to make everyone safe. I didn’t know if it was long enough. I’d expected to be dead when it was over. But I could work with unexpected results—even if it involved using a chamber pot. That had to be what the white porcelain vessel under the other bed was. The fairy queen had a kitchen with fridges and everything and didn’t have a bathroom? I considered it a minute and decided that maybe she just didn’t have a bathroom for prisoners.

  After a very long time that was probably no more than an hour after I woke up, the door opened, and the queen walked in with two female attendants, and two male.

  The first man was the fae who had seen Samuel and the rest out. He was tall, taller than Samuel, with seafoam eyes. For the first time, I realized he was the water fae who’d broken into the bookstore. The second man was short by human standards but not oddly so. His skin was green and rippled like the waves of an ocean at sea. Like the fairy
queen, he had wings on his back, though his were grayish and leathery and less insectlike.

  One of the women was carrying a chair. She was nearly human in appearance except that her eyes were orange and her skin pale, pale blue. The second woman was covered, head to toe, with sleek brown hair about two inches long, and her arms were a third again as long as they should have been. She was carrying a narrow silver ring just big enough to fit around my neck.

  At the sight of the silver ring, I tried to run. The tall man caught me and sat me in the chair while the woman who’d carried it in tied me into it: wrists, elbows, and ankles.

  Then they put the silver collar around my neck.

  Once she has them in thrall, only she can release them.

  “It took me too long to find your secrets, Mercedes,” she said. “Phin was the owner, but Ariana has him safely guarded in the reservation, where none of mine can get him. You gave it to your friend, but he has given it over to the werewolves, and we cannot go there either.”

  How long had I been out, and what had I told her? I didn’t remember all of it, and that worried me.

  The fairy queen was wearing a different dress than she had been. This one was blue and gold. Did that mean it was a different day? Or just that she’d gotten things on her dress and had to change?

  “They have left me only vengeance for now.” Her eyes gave that weird flutter. “Eventually, they will not guard the Silver Borne as diligently, and I will have it. Until then, I’ll take what I can get. I hope you enjoy your victory.

  “Mercedes Athena Thompson,” she said, putting a hand on my forehead. Look at me.

  The “Look at me” part was inside my head. It reminded me of the way Mary Jo’s voice had entered my head in the bowling alley. Maybe without that experience, the queen’s voice wouldn’t have seemed so clearly foreign.

  You want to serve me. Nothing else matters.

  Adam mattered.

  If I didn’t make it out of here alive, he’d think it was his fault. That if he’d been in better shape, I’d have brought him with me, and he’d have saved the day. He’d take responsibility for the world if someone (like me) wasn’t around to shake him up. So I had to survive—because Adam mattered to me.