by Scott Duff
“Why?” I asked, “Can’t you just go home?”
“No, sir,” he stopped and squeaked at me. “I accepted a contract through the assassins’ guild. If I come back and they don’t, I’m a dead pixie. And they will root out my entire family for generations, if they can. My whole family is doomed because I am stupid.”
“I don’t understand why,” I said, “You said your job was to keep me busy. What part do you play with the assassins’ guild?” Like I knew what the hell an assassins’ guild actually was and what rules it followed. Outside a few novels I’d read, I had no idea how such a guild would work. Or what elves looked like. Or pixies, for that matter. Or any Fae, as if they existed at all!
“None, directly,” he said. “But they will think I betrayed my team to get away or I will spread the fact that the Black Hand failed in its job throughout the Courts of the Fae. They are the elite of the guild. They do not fail, and yet they did. Either way, I am doomed.” He sunk back down to the sidewalk.
“You can’t just stay here?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t survive for long outside of a community,” he said. I was getting used to the high pitch. “There are too many predators, too many things to watch for by myself.” I sighed heavily. Looking down on this little thing, this pixie, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, knowing it was going to die… It was like leaving a puppy on the side of the road. Like leaving me in the middle of a forest. I stood up.
“Come on,” I said, patting my shoulder, “We’ll figure something out.” I went back into the garage and grabbed the bags. As I went deeper, I noticed the weapons and bolts had disappeared along with the bodies and blood smear on the wall. I kept going toward the car to see Kieran and I-not-I waiting there. I hit the remote to pop the trunk and unlock the doors. Kieran looked at me askew.
“So you have a name now,” I said to my double, “’Brother in the Fires of Creation’ seems a bit long, though.” I smiled crookedly, ignoring Kieran’s question for a moment while I packed the bags in the trunk.
That shocked Kieran. “You translated that?” He tossed both swords and scabbards on top of the bags, and added, “Don’t touch those,” as I slammed the trunk. I got in the driver’s seat, Kieran beside me and my double in the back seat. The rock, crossbow and quiver went into the floorboard behind me. “Don’t touch those either,” said Kieran.
“He means the weapons are enchanted and will kill you if you touch them,” piped the pixie from my shoulder, dodging the seat belt as I pulled it around me. Kieran nodded when I looked at him with raised eyebrows.
“Good to know, thanks,” I said quietly to the pixie.
“Why is the pixie still here, with us?” Kieran asked.
“Because he doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” I said and started the car.
“How did that become your problem?” Kieran asked me. I could feel the coy smile on his face as he watched me navigate the car out of the garage.
“The same way that Eth…” I stopped. I knew the phrase, Eth’anok’avel. I knew what it meant. It rattled around in my mind like the steel ball in a pinball machine with no tilt, banging on bumpers and bells like crazy. My tongue just wouldn’t form the words against my palate. I veered out of my lane and almost hit another car concentrating on trying. “Why can’t I say it?”
“Speaking the language takes training,” Kieran said quietly. “It will be easier in time since you seem to have an innate understanding of its meaning.”
I grunted. “And until then?”
“’Ethan’ is a decent Anglicization of it. Will that work?” he asked. I looked back at the I-not-I in the mirror. I didn’t look like an “Ethan” to me, but it wasn’t my decision. I turned into a chain supermarket. Late on a Monday evening, it was pretty empty so we parked near the front. We all got out of the car. Locking the doors with the remote, I asked my double, “Is ‘Ethan’ okay with you?”
He hesitated, then said, “I believe Kir du’Ahn has overestimated my abilities in comparison to Eth’anok’avel.” There was a ripple in reality with each non-English phrase he spoke. There was absolutely no doubt that Kir du’Ahn was Kieran. It felt like the entire universe pointed to him with the phrase.
Kieran sidled up beside Ethan, putting his arm around Ethan’s shoulder companionably, and said, “Have you seen them?”
“Who, sir?” he asked, and again, there was a small inflection in his voice this time. Just a little like mine.
“The Fires of Creation,” he said, starting them toward the door, smiling slightly.
“No, sir,” said Ethan.
“I have, Ethan,” Kieran said, patting him on the shoulder and stepping forward a bit. Ethan ducked his head and blushed. Good, he was developing a personality. I couldn’t tell if he was using my personality though or if this was something else burgeoning out of him. I wondered how much I would like myself being around all the time. Probably not.
I put the convoluted thought out of my head as Kieran grabbed a cart out of the vestibule and pushed through the double doors into the delicatessen section. I blanched at the smell of roasted chicken as it turned in the rotisserie, seriously overcooked. It emphasized the taste in my mouth and brought the memory of the four dead faery back to the forefront. I almost ran to the checkout line for gum and a soda. I didn’t want to even think about food, though admittedly I remember about fifty horror films that were gorier than what I saw today. The elves didn’t even look real.
Except there was a pixie sitting on my long lost brother’s shoulder as he walked through a grocery store that I drove them to. I need my dad. But until I could find him, all I had were a couple of very strange men who killed to protect me. At first, it was fun to be here all by myself, then boring, then lonely. Now it’s scary. Assassins are trying to kidnap me. Assassins? Why assassins? Why me? I don’t have any enemies. I don’t know anybody, outside of a dozen or so tutors my parents brought in over the years. I was acquainted with a few businessmen my parents dealt with, but not the sort of business done. I’d never been exposed to any kind of magic before I caught one of my tutors teaching his son one day when my parents weren’t around. Now I’m rolling in magic. And all I could do was make a little light and noise. Kieran did things that ate people and Ethan ate people’s magic. Damn, Dad, where are you? These aren’t the kinds of problems I know how to handle.
My more immediate problems are roaming the store someplace. I paced the front of the store looking down each aisle for them. They hadn’t made it past the first aisle. Apparently, the bread confused them. I had limited room in the car and limited patience in general. I grabbed two loaves of bread that I liked and laid them in the kiddie seat of the cart. They were relieved as I pulled the buggy back into the produce section. This side of the shopping trip was definitely all mine, though the pixie did flit onto my shoulder and ask meekly for some fruit. Twenty minutes later, we left with enough food for three days and some restocking of some staples. Tonight’s dinner would be frozen pizza. I wasn’t getting stuck in the kitchen tonight—I had work to do.
Chapter 4
The drive back home was just as quiet as the drive into town. It gave me time to think about how I was going to go about finding my parents. It was depressing how little information I actually had at my disposal. I didn’t even know how my bills got paid. The card I use had to be attached to some method of payment after all. I knew how the financial aspects of life worked, but I had no experience doing them. Mom showed me how, several years ago, using household accounts as examples and some of her financial accounts and some joint accounts. It never occurred to me to wonder why there were so many. Now that I can’t ask, where am I gonna find a paper trail? How much could I actually find out?
“Pixie, we are about to cross a ward,” said Kieran, holding out his hand for the pixie. I didn’t understand the exchange, but apparently, the pixie did, flitting down from the dashboard onto Kieran’s palm making as small a package as he could. Kieran cupped his other hand tightly o
ver the pixie as I made the slight turn in the road just before the turn to my drive. I felt the pull of the ward as we passed over its boundary, not exactly for the first time. Just that distinctly for the first time. And I could feel the presence of Kieran and the pixie. Ethan was less sharp but still there. Kieran released his prisoner.
“Wow!” squealed the pixie, shooting up to almost bounce off the ceiling. “Was that your ward? That hurt even with your protection!”
“Not mine. His,” said Kieran, his crooked smile gleaming as the garage door rose and the light kicked on. “Just remember that you are under the Rules of Hospitality in his home while you and he decide your fate. You’ve seen what Ethan and I can do first hand. Just imagine what we will do should you break Hospitality.”
“Yes, sir,” said the pixie so high he barely registered in my hearing. I didn’t see the look on his face as I was idling the car into the garage. It wasn’t difficult, but this was my baby and I was particular about her. She didn’t have a scratch on her smooth, sleek black body and I intended to keep it that way, especially in my own garage. I waited as Kieran and Ethan gathered the weapons I wasn’t to touch and moved them into the house, then started unloading the car. The pixie was too small to help cart things around, so he flew around the house from room to room. It was then that I noticed I could feel what rooms Kieran and Ethan were in as well, though not as sharply.
“How is it that I know where y’all are now, in the house?” I asked Kieran when he came into the kitchen. I set the oven to preheat while I unpacked the bags and put the groceries away.
“The see in truth spell attuned you to the ward more strongly,” he said, flipping one of the pizza boxes over to read the back. “You’ve been living under it for a while, even if you didn’t know it was there. You should be able to tell if anyone or anything is within the confines of the ward. It extends quite far onto the property.”
I paused, then asked, “Did you translate that phrase or did I?”
“You did,” he answered, turning to look at me grinning. He did that a lot. “Try to say it.”
“See in truth,” I said.
“Good. Now try Kir du’Ahn and Eth’anok’avel,” he said.
“Kir du’Ahn,” I got out without too much trouble. The universe pulled its weird little shudder and the whole of my attention centered onto Kieran again. Briefer this time and less shocking to me than when Ethan said it. “Eth-, Eth-, no, that one still giving me problems.”
“It is a deeply conceptual language,” he said calmly. “Ethan is very high in the hierarchy of ideas, though ‘hierarchy’ is not quite the right word. I don’t recognize most of these ingredients. Have people discovered new foods since I’ve been gone? What does a hydrogenated soy plant look like?”
I laughed. It came out like a bark, really, sending the now-tasteless gum I was chewing into the back of the refrigerator somewhere. I explained about food preservatives and other additives while I hunted through the back for the lost wad. That led to a discussion of various food allergies that I didn’t know enough about to offer an opinion on. By that time, the gum was in the garbage and I was sliding two pizzas in the oven and setting a timer.
Kieran and I made our way into the den were the shopping bags were piled up. I grabbed the stereo remote off the coffee table and started some light jazz playing. Not my normal choice, but I needed something calming and anthem rock wasn’t gonna fit the bill. Ethan had the elven weapons laid out in front of him in the floor neatly. He was kneeling with the rock almost touching his knees, staring intently at it. The pixie sat on the coffee table, watching. I couldn’t tell he was doing anything at all, even with my newly enhanced vision. The ward, though, showed him more sharply than I’d seen him in a miasma of colorful power. This was the first hint of the Fires of Creation he was named for. And the weapons and the rock glowed an unearthly pink. They hadn’t done that in the garage earlier.
I started unloading the bags and removing tags from clothes and sorting them into piles to wash. Kieran helped, but a few moments into the task, there was a small pop in the room that felt like an air pressure change. I looked up to see Ethan picking up the rock with a small smile on his face.
“Seth, catch,” he said and tossed the rock to me. Dropping the clothes I held, I caught the rock with both hands without thinking. It wasn’t until the pixie’s scream of “No!” did it occur to me that this was supposed to kill me if I touched it. Instead, my hands closed and I felt its weight and texture. Then it was gone. Just “phpht” gone. I stared at my empty hands while the pixie flew figure eight’s around them and my head, squealing with concern.
“Good,” Kieran said smiling and continued to unload the bags.
“What just happened?” I asked, confused.
“Ethan is changing the enchantment on the weapons so that you can have the protection and use of them,” Kieran said, as if this happened every day. I suppose it could in his world. I wouldn’t know an enchantment if it kissed me on the mouth and bought dinner. “We will show you how to use them later, when he is done.”
Great, he was gonna show me how to throw rocks at somebody. I picked up a pile of clothes and made way to the washer through the kitchen. The timer chimed as I came back through, so I pulled plates out of the cupboard and yelled for help. I felt another air pressure pop then Ethan appeared with the gold and silver sword in one hand, the scabbard in the other.
He shoved the sword into my right hand and, just like the rock, it disappeared. I watched this time knowing what to expect. Well, thinking I knew what to expect. The sword seemed to fold itself up lengthwise into a line and then a point and I felt its weight move up my arm into my head. Ethan did the same with the scabbard and I watched again as it folded itself up and traveled up my arm. This time I saw where it went in my head: it shined brightly with its own light in that cavern to the right side of the Pact sigil. Below it underneath the sigil sat the rock. And it had changed. Before it was just an everyday looking rock about the size of my fist. Here, it looked like a huge slab of cut marble with flowing script emblazoned on the sides in burnt amber. The Pact and sigil sat on top of it like it was its foundation and always had been. The gold and silver sword tilted slightly to the right of the marble slab in its scabbard, its colors accentuated in the Pact above it.
Ethan grabbed the plates off the counter and some napkins and left me alone in the kitchen with a chuckle. That brought me out of my reverie, tossing another pizza in the oven and following him into the den with the two plates of hot ones in either hand. Kieran was on the last bag of clothes when I came in. There were at least six loads of laundry piled against the wall, but they’d have to learn to do laundry sooner or later, so I decided on sooner, as in the next load.
The pixie landed on my shoulder and said, “He shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“Do what?” I asked, moving slices of steaming pizza to a plate for me.
“Change the magic. That’s very old magic, very strong. Even the Queens would have difficulty with that,” he said. His voice was very low in pitch as he talked to me then. I guess that was what passed for awe in a pixie.
I shrugged. “He’s Eth’anok’avel. He can do things.” Huh. I said it. I wonder if it has to do with seeing him under the wards. Kieran looked at me, smiling.
“You should be dead!” he shouted, as much as a pixie can anyway. He jumped down to the coffee table and stared at me wide-eyed. “Where are they going?”
“They’re tucked away in a safe place,” I said, not wanting to say that I didn’t really know the whole truth. “Do you have a name?”
“Yes, sir,” he squeaked, more moderately. “Shrank, sir.”
“Well, Shrank,” I said, thinking he had definitely been shrank in somebody’s washer, “we have to figure out what to do with you. Something at the very least not harmful to anyone, if not beneficial.”
“So I can serf on your land?” he asked, brightening and rising from the tabletop.
“No,�
� said Kieran, quickly, taking me by surprise. “There are implications to the word he doesn’t understand, Shrank.”
“Like what?” I asked, “Isn’t it like share-cropping?”
He thought about it for a moment, then said, “Yes and no. There are oaths of fealty involved that would bind you to this land. For instance, you could not leave here once the oaths were made because you could not guarantee his safety beyond your presence. It’s nothing against you, Seth, just your current position. Perhaps in a few years…”
The air pressure changed again and Ethan stood up holding the black and ebony sword in its scabbard. “What about simply employing him?” he asked, taking a slice of pizza and swinging the elegantly embossed sword on my left side.
“Is there a reason for the left side?” I asked him as I wiped my hand and took hold of the scabbard. It folded itself like the others and traveled up my arm, settling beside its kin. It made an interesting contrast to the gold and silver sword, but it was no less beautiful for the lack of precious metals.
“Only that you’re holding another sword in your right,” said Ethan, biting into the pizza, nodding appreciatively. “’S good.” He took the last piece and slid it on a plate and returned to the crossbow and bolts. Kieran must have been packing it away as I hadn’t eaten that much of it. The timer chimed in the kitchen, so I went to fetch the last pizza. Shrank flew with me into the kitchen, glowing a bright green as he went. When I pulled the oven open to remove the pizza, he started lazy loops in the air through the rising heat with gleeful little whoops. I left the oven cracked while I cut the pizza, letting him play in the updrafts. It was cute. He landed on the counter a few moments later, his face bright red from the heat, giggling.
“Why can’t I hear some of the words you say sometimes?” he asked, lazily fanning his wings to cool his body as he leaned back on the counter.