Late Eclipses od-4

by Seanan McGuire

  At first, I thought the knocking on my cell door was just another symptom of iron poisoning. I groaned, burying my face in the straw. The knocking continued, getting louder. Lifting my head, I shouted, “Go away!”

  The knocking stopped. I sighed, content in the knowledge that I’d vanquished my hallucinations. I wasn’t completely crazy yet.

  And then I heard Quentin whisper, “This one! She’s in here!”

  My eyes snapped open. “Quentin?” At least I was hallucinating people I liked. That was a nice change.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  A hallucination wouldn’t say that. A hallucination would bring me a blanket and offer to hold my hair while I threw up. “You’re real.”

  “Um, yeah.” He sounded unsure. “Are you … Toby, are you okay?”

  “You can’t be here.” I slumped back to the floor. “It’s death to be here.”

  “Just relax, okay?” A barred window scraped open in my door, letting a dim glow into the room. Quentin’s face appeared in the opening. “Guys, she doesn’t look so good …”

  “Move aside,” said Tybalt, stepping into view. The light brightened as he approached. I flinched away, closing my eyes. I’d been in the dark too long.

  “Turn it down,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tybalt, earnestly. The light receded. “Can you stand?”

  “I can barely breathe.” I opened my eyes. “Are you real?”

  “Real as I’ve ever been. Connor, we’ve found her.”

  “Thank Maeve.” Connor’s face appeared next to Tybalt’s, looking as pale and worried as the rest. Some of the worry vanished when he saw me, replaced by relief. “Hang on, Toby. We’ll have you out in a second.” He ducked out of sight. A steady scraping noise began. “I told you teaching me how to pick locks wasn’t a waste of time.”

  “Don’t touch the door!” I protested. “It’s iron!”

  “I know,” he said, unperturbed. The scraping noises continued.

  “Connor left his skin in my Court,” said Tybalt.

  “What?” A skinshifter without his skin was essentially human. Connor wouldn’t even be able to see large portions of Faerie without the aid of faerie ointment. “Why—”

  “Got it.” Connor stood, coming back into view. This time I was looking closely enough to see the faerie ointment ringing his eye. “Get back as far as you can.”

  I had just enough time to roll to the edge of the clean zone before the door swung open, banging against the wall. The sound sent sympathetic vibrations through the iron in my blood, and I whimpered. Tybalt stepped into the room, letting out his breath in a low, angry hiss as he got his first good look at me.

  “She’s chained,” he said, deceptively calm, “I can’t move her with iron on her.”

  “Coming.” Connor pushed past him, ignoring the iron in the doorframe. Mortality has its advantages. Then he stopped, eyes widening. “Oh, Toby …”

  “I look like hell,” I mumbled, closing my eyes. “Point taken, move on.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. I heard him kneel, and he gripped my wrists. I whimpered. He stroked my hair one-handed, saying, “Relax. I’ll have these off in a second.”

  “Be fast,” said Quentin. “The guards are gonna be coming down here to check on her any minute.”

  “What did you guys do?” I asked.

  “A minor diversion,” said Tybalt.

  “There are seventy rose goblins enchanted to look like three hundred rampaging through the Court,” said Connor.

  There was a snap as the lock on the manacles gave way. I opened my eyes and pulled my hands around, staring at them. My head was already starting to clear. The pain and the low, chattering hum of iron were still there, but I could think again. “You have to get out of here,” I said.

  “What?” Quentin stuck his head into the room. He was wearing leather gloves thick enough to let him knock without hurting himself. “What do you mean?”

  “Get out,” I repeated, pushing myself up onto one elbow. “Leave me and get the hell out before the guards show up and give you cells of your own.”

  “No,” said Tybalt.

  I glared at him. “Just listen to me for once. I’m not worth this. Get out and save the others. Stop Oleander.”

  “Not without you,” said Connor. I turned toward him again, distracted enough to miss Tybalt moving into position behind me until he was scooping me off the floor.

  “Hey!” I yelped.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said, walking toward the door. “Connor, leave the shackles.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said, following.

  “This is suicide,” I said.

  “If it’s suicide, it’s our choice,” said Quentin. “You can’t stop us.”

  “I’m getting that,” I said, letting my head drop and closing my eyes. The rolling motion of Tybalt’s steps was almost enough to lull me back to sleep—an honest sleep this time, brought on by exhaustion, not hopelessness and terror.

  We were halfway up the last flight of stairs when Tybalt spoke again. “Did you think I could walk away and let you die?” I didn’t answer. He shook me, demanding, “Did you?”

  “Easy, Tybalt!” said Connor. “She’s sick.”

  Tybalt subsided. I could still hear him growling in the back of his throat. “She’ll recover.”

  “Not if you break her first.”

  “I won’t,” said Tybalt. He took another step. “October, are you awake?”

  I considered lying, but cleared my throat and whispered, “Barely.”

  “We’re going to take the Shadow Roads.”

  “What?” I opened my eyes, staring up at him. His face was only a foot away, but it was blurry and hard to focus on. “Tybalt, I can’t—”

  “You have to,” he said, gently. “There’s no other way out of here.”

  “I’ll suffocate.” Not long before, I’d been waiting to die; now, I wanted to avoid it if I could. It’s amazing how quickly things can change.

  “You won’t. Not if you trust me and hold your breath. Can you do that?”

  “I …” I realized that he’d try to take the overland route if I said I couldn’t handle the Shadow Roads. Quentin and Connor couldn’t move through the shadows without him, and all three would die or be imprisoned for the crime of trying to save me. I wasn’t worth their lives; if they’d made it this far, I wouldn’t stop them from making it the rest of the way. “Do what you need to.”

  He kissed my forehead, whispering, “Hold your breath.” Quentin gave him a sidelong look. Tybalt quelled it with a look of his own. Then he tensed and took a great leap forward, throwing himself into a running start. Quentin and Connor grabbed his belt, straining to keep up. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, and Tybalt dragged us all into the shadows.

  The world turned to ice, making me feel like going to sleep would be not just comforting, but final. I screwed my eyes more tightly closed, hands seeking Tybalt’s arm and clinging. I’d been through these shadows before. I could make it out the other side, if I could just hold on …

  Sometimes I think Tybalt times our little runs to match the absolute limit of what I can take. I was about to breathe in when we broke through into warmth and light once more, Quentin and Connor coughing and wheezing behind us. It was too much light; even with my eyes closed, it burned. I whimpered, burying my face against Tybalt’s chest. He covered my head with one hand, barking an order, and the lights dimmed until I could look up and slowly open my eyes.

  We were in an alley. The streetlights were swathed in fabric; that explained how Tybalt could have them dimmed. Cait Sidhe in feline and human forms watched from every flat surface. What I could see of the skyline reflected Berkeley by night, with the familiar form of the University clock tower rising above everything else. We were outside San Francisco. I was as safe as I could get without leaving the Kingdom entirely.

  That was all the encouragement I
needed. “Tybalt?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are we safe now?”

  “Fairly, yes.” He sounded amused. I lifted my head to face him, and frowned at the undiluted relief in his eyes. Looking at him, you’d think saving me was some sort of miracle. “The Queen’s guards can’t enter my Court without my consent.”

  “Good,” I said, closing my eyes on the strange satisfaction in his expression. There was too much iron in my blood, and I was too tired; I couldn’t cope. “Wake me when the world ends.”

  “Your wish is my command,” he said.

  I would normally have called him on that. I’m not normally exhausted and trying to shake off a bad case of iron poisoning after an unexpected run down the Shadow Roads. I went limp against his chest, trusting him to hold me up, and slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  “OCTOBER.”

  The voice was distant enough to be of no concern; if people wanted to talk to me from a million miles away, that was their problem, not mine. The iron singing in my blood was doing its best to drown out everything else. It was almost like being back in Blind Michael’s mists—that horrible place where there was nothing but suffering and songs I never quite understood—except for one crucial difference: when I was in Blind Michael’s mists, I didn’t hurt. Sure, I was the captive of a mad Firstborn who planned to make me his unwilling bride, but I wasn’t in pain when he wasn’t actually beating me.

  Now that I had the cold gray fog of iron-song burning through me, I was starting to wonder whether that hadn’t been the better deal.

  “October, please.”

  The voice hovered on the very the edge of the category I’d internally dubbed “almost worth bothering to pay attention to.” I wanted to tell whoever it was to shut up, go away, and let me fall back into pain-free oblivion, but I couldn’t get my body to obey me. It was vexing as hell.

  “I know you can hear me.”

  Did he? Something in the tone made me realize I knew the speaker: Tybalt. Oh, well. If anyone had the right to bother me while I was trying to figure out whether I was going to die, it was probably him.

  “Please listen.” He paused. The nuances of his tone were becoming clearer. I couldn’t move—Oberon’s balls, I couldn’t even tell him he was right about my being able to hear him—but I could at least try to figure out what he was talking about.

  The pause lengthened, stretching out until I thought he might have changed his mind and gone away. Then, much closer, like he was whispering in my ear: “What she did, what your mother did, you’ve done it before. Your scent was different when you left the pond. That’s why I followed you so closely those first few months. I was trying to decide whether you were you, or something else, trying to trick us all. The changes were subtler, but they were there. You did it to yourself to break the bastard’s spell.”

  There was real hatred in his tone when he mentioned Simon. That might have been a surprise, if I hadn’t been preoccupied with the dual stresses of pain and paying attention. I filed the surprise away for later.

  “I don’t know whose child your mother is, which of the Three made her, but it’s time to stop letting her lies define you. She’s Firstborn, October, and you’re the only child of her line I’ve ever known. You can change your blood if you have reason enough. And Toby … humans don’t die of iron. They die of time, but not of iron.”

  His breath was hot on my cheek. I realized, with a dim lack of surprise, that this wasn’t the first time he’d tried to talk me back from the edge of dying: I really did hear him begging me to live on that long-gone day when Devin’s hired lackey shot me and sent me staggering into the Tea Gardens to bleed to death.

  “Shift yourself the other way. Be as human as you can, and survive.” He paused. Something touched the side of my face, too faint to be identified as anything but contact—kiss or slap, my iron-riddled body couldn’t tell the difference. And then, quieter still: “Don’t leave me again. Please.”

  And he was gone, leaving me alone in the darkness where the iron sang songs of suffering and eternity. With a sigh that felt a thousand times too large for my aching body, I surrendered and let myself topple back into the black. Tybalt’s words had been a nice dream, but they were silent now.

  Only the iron remained.

  Another voice, some untold time later; this one was tired, and sounded almost disinterested as it asked, “Is passing out your hobby or something? Because if I were you, I’d get a better one. Like, I don’t know, bank robbery.”

  “What?” The fact that I could answer surprised me into opening my eyes. I found myself looking at an oaken ceiling covered in a coat of dust thick enough to give Hobs heart failure. I didn’t recognize it. I searched for words, settling for: “Where am I?”

  “Like you don’t know? Welcome back to the Court of Cats.” The speaker coughed. “What’s left of it, anyway.”

  I grudgingly turned my head, eyes widening as I saw the tiger-striped changeling sprawled on a pallet of crumpled rags to my left. “Julie?”

  “Currently. Check back in a few hours and you may get a different answer.” Sweat matted her hair into cherry-red spirals, and her voice was raspy and strained. That’s probably why it took me so long to realize who she was. “Forgive me for not getting up and killing you, but I hurt too much to move.”

  The iron in my blood still ached, but it had faded while I was floating in the black; it wasn’t singing any more, and it barely even burned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Where do I start?” She closed her eyes. “First I think I’m going to die, and then Tybalt puts you in the room where I’m trying to get better. This keeps getting less and less like fun.”

  “At least you’re not dead.” I tested my limits by ordering one unwilling arm to move. It lifted with a minimum of protest. Emboldened by success, I sat up. When this didn’t make me black out or vomit, I pushed myself to my feet, ready to grab the nearest wall if the world started spinning. It didn’t seem inclined to. Bit by careful bit, I relaxed. “Right now, that’s about the only positive thing I can see about the situation.”

  “True. You’re finally a felon, or whatever it’s called when the Queen wants you dead.” She opened her eyes, giving me an interested look. “Do you think they’ll torture you when they catch you? Before the execution, I mean. Which should be televised.”

  “Good to see that you’re as upbeat as ever. How long have I been here?”

  “Long enough for Tybalt to freak out twice because you didn’t look right, four times because he was sure the royal guard had been beating you, and six times because you weren’t waking up. It’s been a big circus of psychodrama. Thanks for that.” Julie shifted on her pallet. “It’s no fun around here when our lord and master isn’t slamming people into walls for breathing too loudly in your presence.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, looking around.

  We were in what looked like an abandoned hunting lodge; dust and debris covered every surface, save for the spots that had been swept clean to make room for more pallets. Each held one or more Cait Sidhe, all as worn and sick as Julie. A fire blazed in a vast fireplace that took up most of the far wall. It was obviously sustained by magic—real fires don’t burn that high for long without getting out of control.

  Cat-form Cait Sidhe covered the hearth, furry bodies obscuring the stone. The room must not have been as dark as I thought at first. My eyes adjusted quickly, picking out surprisingly clear details, like the pattern on a dozing calico.

  “You going to stand there all day?” Julie asked. “I bet the King would appreciate knowing you’re not planning to play Sleeping Beauty.”

  “I don’t even know where I am,” I said, keeping a careful distance from her. She said she was too sick to attack me, but I wasn’t taking any chances. “I mean, besides the Cat’s Court.”

  “You shouldn’t know.” She shook her head, and winced. “Ow.”

  “It still hurts?”

  The look she shot m
e was pure hostility. “I bet there’s some of that poison left, if you want to try it for yourself. Get a firsthand idea of what this feels like.”

  “I’ll pass. I’ve been abused enough this week.” I pushed my hair back, noting that my hands were entirely healed. That was something. “Still planning to kill me?”

  “As soon as I get the chance.”

  “Why?”

  She paused. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

  Maybe this wasn’t the time to try convincing her to drop her vendetta—the Queen had her own vendetta, and I doubted Tybalt could stop her by bouncing her off the walls the way he did Julie—but it was worth a shot. I needed this to be over. I missed my friend, and I didn’t need the extra enemies.

  “I mean exactly what I said. Why are you still trying to kill me?”

  Bitterly, she spat, “You killed Ross.” Ross was Julie’s lover, and he died when an assassin sent to kill me didn’t judge his aim quite the right way. Devin’s assassin. I was starting to feel like I’d be spending the rest of my life cleaning up that man’s messes.

  “I didn’t kill him.” I forced myself to keep looking at her. I started this confrontation; I was going to deal with it. “I blame myself for a lot of deaths—it feels like more all the time—but I didn’t kill him.”

  “He got shot by a man who was aiming for you. What do you call that?”

  “Bad timing. Neither Lily nor I knew the assassin was there. If we’d known …” I shook my head. “If I’d had any idea, I wouldn’t have taken you down that hill. I didn’t mean to let anyone get hurt. I’m sorry. But I didn’t kill him.”

  She glared for a moment longer before the expression faded, replaced by confusion. “You mean that.”

  “By oak and ash and thorn, I mean it.”