The Eighth Court

by Mike Shevdon

  “What’s going on, Fionh? What’s he done?” I asked her.

  “Done?” she asked, as if it were a joke. “He doesn’t have to do anything.” There was a frayed edge to her voice that I didn’t like. Fionh was normally an island of still calm in a sea of trouble – this was not the Fionh I knew.

  “Something’s happened,” I said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “You’re not wrong,” she said. “Look at him.”

  “I am looking at him. What’s he done?” I repeated.

  “Not him, you idiot! Look at Fellstamp!”

  I looked at the body on the table. His face was pinched. He didn’t look like he was in pain but he was even paler than before. It couldn’t last much longer. In its comatose state, his body was slowly consuming itself.

  “What’s this about, Fionh?” I asked, stepping forward into the room.

  “Stay there!” she warned. “You’re only bringing the inevitable closer.”

  “What’s inevitable about it?” I asked. Alex moved to the other side.

  “Stay back!” said Fionh. The edge of the blade held at Sparky’s throat left a red line at her warning. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to resist the urge to swallow. Behind them both, the sky darkened as the clouds gathered above the courts.

  “I only want to help,” I said.

  “Help yourself, you mean,” said Fionh. “You’re no better than the rest of them, stealing scraps from the plates of your betters. Pretending you’re part of something.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “You don’t even know not to lie,” said Fionh. “You’re like all the rest of them.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “The rest of what?”

  “The rest of the mongrels,” said Garvin, standing in the doorway behind me. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it Fionh?” I glanced at him, taking my eyes momentarily off Fionh. He was entirely focused on her.

  “You betrayed us,” said Fionh to Garvin.

  Garvin shook his head. “I haven’t betrayed anyone,” he said.

  “You led us down this path and now there’s no way back,” she accused.

  “I’m not the one doing the betraying, though, am I?” he said. “I couldn’t figure it out. Our loyalty has never been in question – until now.”

  “And it would have stayed that way,” she said.

  “It would, except things started leaking out. Small things at first – a word here, a nod there. The obvious suspect was Niall. He’s the newcomer. It only started happening after he joined the Warders.”

  “He’s not a Warder,” her scornful glance barely registered my presence. “Where was he when we needed him? Changing nappies? Chasing his daughter? He’s been more trouble than he’s worth since the beginning.”

  “I couldn’t figure out where they were getting their information from,” said Garvin, continuing his train of thought. “That was the problem. Where were his sources? Who was feeding him? Did he have some hold over one of the Lords and Ladies? One of the other Warders? I was looking in the wrong place, wasn’t I, Fionh?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She glanced at the form lying draped in the sheet. “Nothing matters now.”

  “And then it got worse,” said Garvin, “Just when Blackbird was chosen as head of the Eighth Court, the leak went from a trickle to a stream. All of a sudden Altair knew where we were going to be, when we were going to be there, what we intended to do.” He laughed. “In some ways I’m as guilty – I’d already made the connection. I figured that Blackbird was telling Niall, and Niall…”

  I was having trouble believing what I was hearing. “How could you think that?” I asked him. “I’ve shown you nothing but loyalty, right from the beginning. I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

  “And more beside,” said Garvin, “which is what I expect. But a little thought nagged at me. The wraithkin have always been close. What if they’d overcome their prejudice and offered you something in return for information. What if the fact that you were one of them made the difference? What if they’d cut you a deal?”

  “That would mean betraying Alex, Blackbird… My son…”

  “Blood calls to blood, Niall. It always has and it always will.”

  “What are you saying? They are my blood.” I nodded towards Alex.

  “I’m saying sorry, Niall. I should have trusted you, but I didn’t. Instead I kept you busy, trying to minimise the damage until I could figure out who your source was. It didn’t do me any good, did it Fionh?”

  “You should have killed him when you had the chance,” said Fionh. “Then none of this would have happened.”

  “Always just at the edge of things,” said Garvin. “Always there when she’s needed, always listening attentively. That alone should have been a clue.”

  “That’s not how it was,” she said.

  “Wasn’t it? What did they offer you? What was the price?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong,” she said. “They didn’t buy me. They didn’t have to. You sold us all, Garvin. You mortgaged our future against what… a bunch of no hope, half-fey, helpless, graceless nonentities? How could you?”

  “It’s simple,” said Garvin, “and as obvious to me as I thought it was to you.”

  “Obvious? The only thing obvious about them is that they are a poor substitute for the real thing.”

  Behind Fionh, lightning flickered in the clouds outside. There was a low rumble, a warning of what was coming.

  “You hear that?” said Fionh. “He thinks he can do to me what he did to Fellstamp.” She shook him, making him lift his chin even higher to avoid the knife and wobble precariously over the edge. “Take a good look down, lightning boy,” said Fionh. “It’s your future down there.”

  “Just let him go, Fionh. We can talk this through.”

  There was a bright flash. Fionh was outlined against the white. In my peripheral vision I saw Alex backing away. The thunder followed close this time, rattling the windows. Fionh didn’t waver.

  “You can’t control it, can you boy?” she said. “It’s beyond you. I’ll tell you what, though. I can feel it building, and just before it strikes, your head is coming clean off.”

  “It’s not me,” said Sparky through gritted teeth. “I’m not doing it.”

  “You don’t see it, do you? None of you do,” said Fionh. “You wanted the Feyre to have children, but what you got was human children with power. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. They’re not fey! They’re not anything!”

  “They will be,” said Garvin.

  “No they won’t! Look at Fellstamp. Look at him! That’s what they do. That’s what they are. They leech the life out of people until there’s nothing left. What do we call it when a creature lives off another? Parasites! That’s what they are. Parasites!” She pulled Sparky’s hair, so that he was forced to arch his body backwards, stretching his throat against the blade as he leaned back to keep his balance.

  “How long, Fionh?” asked Garvin.

  “Any moment now,” she said.

  “No, I meant how long have you been in love with Fellstamp?” he said.

  “What?” she said.

  “It must have hurt, seeing him bed everyone but you. He never saw you like that did he? Fionh the ice queen was untouchable, and that’s the problem.”

  “Shut up!”

  “It must have twisted in your gut like a barb every time he charmed some girl under his covers. Every time, a betrayal.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Fionh, but everyone in the room heard the lie.

  “It won’t bring him back, Fionh.”

  “I don’t want to bring him back!” The words hung in the air. This time it was the truth. They words were torn out of her, and tears ran down her face. “I don’t want him back,” she said. “It’s too late. I just want him to die.”

  The clouds behind them were luminous, bruised purple and black. The h
airs on my arms stood up. I found myself stepping back, involuntarily, away from the window.

  Garvin stepped forward. “Let him go, Fionh, and we’ll say goodbye to Fellstamp together.”

  Her face distorted with anguish. Her hand was shaking under Sparky’s chin. Sparky’s eyes were wide with fear.

  “Let him go,” said Garvin.

  When it came, the flash was brilliant. My eyes registered colours I’d never seen before. I didn’t hear the blast or the thunder that came with it. Instead, I felt it; the shockwave tearing through my body as if I were insubstantial mist. Even with my eyes tight shut, I saw the outline of Fionh against the window, her hair standing out from her head like rays from a sun. Even with my eyes screwed shut, I saw the look on her face.

  Strangely, she looked peaceful.

  My hearing came back slowly. My ears were buzzing, and at first all I could hear were what sounded like squeaks and chirps. My eyes showed blotches of green and pink colour, obscuring my vision. Then I realised that Alex was screaming. As the spots cleared from my eyes I could see that Garvin had leapt forward and was lying over the parapet, reaching down. Alex was screaming at me, but I couldn’t understand her. Then I realised she was screaming at me to help Garvin.

  I ran forward and grabbed hold of Garvin as he slid a few inches more over the balustrade. By holding onto his clothes, I could stop him sliding forward any more. I leaned forward, one part of me expecting to see Fionh dangling from his outstretched hand, the Warders loyal to each other at the last, but instead it was Sparky’s terrified face I saw staring up at me. On the paving below, I could see the outline of a body, slowly drifting into dust.

  “Get help,” Garvin spoke through gritted teeth. “I’ll hold him.”

  “If I let go of you, you’re both going over the edge.” I told him.

  “If you don’t let go, I’m going to have to release him, assuming we don’t get another strike first.” Above the courts the clouds roiled in purple and dark grey, lightning flickering in its heart. I glanced backwards and Alex was behind me, chewing her knuckles in distress.

  “Alex!” I shouted. “Get Amber. She’s down with the Ways. Hurry!”

  Alex disappeared behind me, while the thunder cracked and rumbled over our heads.

  “If you start to feel it building, let go,” said Garvin, through gritted teeth.

  “How can I let go?” I asked him.

  “You have to, or we’ll all fry. Just do what you’re told for once, Niall.”

  I glanced upwards. I could already feel the static rising in the air, taste the ozone tang. “Can you hold him for two seconds?” I asked Garvin.

  “Probably,” he said, clamping his hand on the balustrade. In truth there was little to hold on to.

  I released my grip hesitantly, expecting any moment for Garvin to start slithering forwards over the edge. In a panicked moment I darted backwards, grabbing the edge of the sheet that was draped over Fellstamp, dragging it from him while grabbing the leg of Garvin’s trousers, just as he started sliding forward again. I heard him grunt with effort as he reinforced his grip. Below him, Sparky wailed as he swung back and forth, buffeted by the sudden breeze rising under the clouds.

  I whipped the sheet around in my hand, whirling it into a twisted strand and then leaned forward, half lying on Garvin to dangle the sheet over to Sparky. He flailed his arm out for it and missed, swinging from Garvin’s grip, then caught it on the second swing. I took the strain, feeling the fine cotton strands’ tension as some of Sparky’s weight transferred to the sheet. Garvin was able push himself back momentarily, gaining a better grip.

  There was a flash as lightning stabbed down from the clouds, striking somewhere on the roof above us with a heart-stopping crack. Thunder reverberated through us, drowning out all sound and making my bones ache. I tried to ignore the prospect of another strike closer to home and started drawing in the sheet. Garvin pulled too, gaining a better grip on the parapet. The sheet was stretched tight over the lichen covered stone, and I leaned back to take the strain better. There was a tearing sound and I fell backwards as the sheet ripped in two across the edge of the stone. Sprawled in the doorway, I expected any second to hear the soft thud of another body hitting the paving. Instead, I looked up to see Garvin hauling Sparky over the balustrade, reaching forward to grab his waistband to drag him to safety. He was dumped unceremoniously into the rain gutter, while Garvin collapsed back breathing hard.

  “I thought I’d dropped him,” I gasped, lying on my back, winded by the effort and the strain of holding on.

  “I’ve got him,” said Garvin, lying in an ungainly sprawl. “If it hadn’t been for the sheet, I wouldn’t have held him. You owe Niall your life, boy.”

  Sparky lay looking up at the bruised clouds as the rain started spattering down in huge drops. In a moment, it was a downpour, hammering on the balustrade, streaming into the gutters that ran along the edge of the roof.

  “I’m alive,” he said, in a tone of wonder as the rain soaked into his clothes and ran down his face. Where the knife had broken the skin across his throat and the blood was diluted by the rain, it soaked into his white tee-shirt in a pink stain.

  “I’m alive.”

  By the time Alex brought Amber, it was all over. Garvin and I pulled Sparky in out of the rain and he lay on the floor, marvelling to himself.

  Garvin and Amber went down to stand in the rain and pay their respects over the place where Fionh had fallen. It didn’t matter to them that she had betrayed us all, they still went. I went out onto the balcony and peered over the balustrade at the place and in truth there was nothing there. The torrent of water overflowing the gutters had washed all traces of her away. I couldn’t find it in me to feel sad. All this time she’d been betraying us to the Seventh Court. All this time, Garvin had thought it was me.

  After a while they reappeared.

  Garvin spoke. “The Warders are a team,” he said, “but we are also individuals. When you put on the greys, you take on the mantle and you make decisions of life and death. That’s what we do.” He looked in turn at Amber and me. “When I give you Warder’s discretion, I ask you to use your head, and follow your heart. I place my trust in your judgement and I leave you to decide. I did the same with Fionh. She made her decision, and I cannot blame her if she decided as I would not.”

  “She betrayed us all,” I said.

  “She followed her heart, as you follow yours” said Garvin, “and perhaps she was a fool for it, but that was her choice. As a Warder she made difficult judgements all the time. As a Warder, if you make a mistake, it’s your life on the line. That was as much true of Fionh as it is of any of us. If her judgement was clouded, then that is between me and her. I gave her Warder’s discretion. It was my responsibility. I should have seen the signs, and I did not.”

  I remained silent. This wasn’t the time and the place to point out that she’d deceived all of us.

  “She was a Warder,” said Garvin. “And she will be remembered for her spirit, her intelligence, and her courage, not for the mistakes she may have made. I would say the same of any of you, and hope you would say the same of me.”

  He looked at me, long and hard, and it was me who looked away. I glanced sideways at Fellstamp, and I thought I saw him move.

  “Garvin...?”

  “We will all need time to think through the implications of what we have learned,” he said. “This is not perhaps the time–”

  “Garvin, it’s Fellstamp…” There was definitely movement. The others moved forward.

  Alex spoke. “Is he waking up?”

  Garvin stepped forward, leaning over Fellstamp to place his ear over Fellstamp’s mouth. After a moment, he withdrew. “It’s time,” he said.

  Garvin took his place at Fellstamp’s head. We placed ourselves around him, Amber and I on either side of him, Sparky and Alex at his feet.

  “Should Sparky and Alex be here?” I asked Garvin quietly.

  “Why not?” said
Garvin. “Let them be witness.”

  No more words were said. I expected Garvin to give a speech, or at least eulogise his friend and comrade, but he was still and silent. The room that was host to such a recent drama was so quiet you could hear Fellstamp’s ragged breath – in and out, pause, in and out. There was labour in it now, an effort to draw in air and release it. His skin hung from him like the sheet which had draped him, in folds.

  “Not long now,” said Garvin quietly.

  When it came it was as a sigh. He released his breath and did not claim another. His body neither tensed, nor showed any sign of pain. He simply left, and his absent shell collapsed in on itself, the magic that had been held at his core, finally consuming his remains. Within moments there was only dust.

  Garvin looked at each of us in turn. “It’s done,” he said. “Fionh was right about the end being close, at least.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him, holding back the emotion that threatened to overwhelm me. “About both of them.”

  Garvin sighed. “Not your doing, Niall,” he said. “We make our choices and we wear the consequences, for better or worse.”

  “That’s an epitaph for all of us,” said Amber.

  Alex and Sparky left quietly, leaving the Warders present to their thoughts. I nodded to Garvin and took my leave, leaving him with Amber. Fellstamp was my comrade too, but even so I felt like an intruder at a private party. They had known and worked with him for many more years than I, and had shared both victories and defeats with him. I had no such claim and left them to their thoughts.

  Making my way through the house, I made my way down to one of the empty rooms and found a quiet space to think in an abandoned sheet-covered armchair. I didn’t bother to remove the sheet – the shrouded furniture suited my mood.

  Had Fellstamp shared Fionh’s secret hatred of the mongrel fey? I found that hard to believe and preferred to think that was what had kept the distance between them. I’d once fought Fellstamp in a duel, to earn my place as a Warder, and Garvin had hampered him with a broadsword, a slow, heavy, brutal weapon. Even so he had fought skilfully and with courage, until I’d pierced his shoulder with my sword. I remembered that it was Fionh who’d fallen to her knees beside him and pressed a pad to the open wound. We were supposed to be fighting to first blood – a scratch with the tip of the blade, not running him through. He’d pressed me with the broadsword until I had no choice but to use the lighter, faster blade with full force. I’d been lucky not to make a real mess of it, and pierce his heart.