A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  She would have succeeded in turning Patrick into a murder weapon set against his own love had I not been able to intervene, not quickly enough to stop her first attempt, but before she could make a second. The cost of his freedom had been my servitude, and to my shame and dismay, it had not chafed. Not then, and not now.

  Serving my lady satisfied a need in me that had always been there, but which had been all too often set aside. I was happy to dance attendance on Amy, but her role was wife, not regent, and she was rarely pleased to set me the type of tasks that my lady was. In Eira’s eyes, I was a useful tool, not a partner. In Amy’s eyes, which were the most beautiful jewels ever to grace our world, I was . . .

  Well, I was not a partner to her, either. The more time I spent with Eira, the easier it became to see that my love, my heart, my treasure had never been able to care for me as I did for her. The distance between us was too great. It was as if Patrick had fallen in love with one of his pixies, and not with a woman who was at the very least his equal and might arguably be his superior.

  I was a pet.

  That was a grim understanding to reach about the mother of one’s child, and each time my thoughts led me inexorably back to it, I set it firmly aside. I love my wife. August was as yet too young to allow us to divorce, even if I had wished it; to be Amy’s pet, cared for and cosseted and disregarded, was better than to be without her, cast off and alone. I had no illusions about which parent our child would choose, in that unhappy future where we were no longer together. No. My life was as I wished it. I had a wife to love and a daughter to raise, a lady to serve and a garden to tend, while Patrick drifted ever farther away from me, finding safe harbor in his own lady’s arms.

  Might that she would be kinder to him than my own keepers had ever seen fit to be to me.

  I clipped a stalk of new rhubarb, adding it to my basket. Like many of the herbs and simples I would be brewing, it was poisonous when raw, tempering to something safer as it cooked. The effort of brewing the tonic would occupy the rest of my day, well into the night, and provide the distraction necessary to keep myself from dwelling on the aspects of my life I would rather set aside.

  I was reaching for the basil when a swirl of light and color raced into the garden, ringing like a klaxon bell, and proceeded to loop several times around my head. I am ashamed to admit that my first instinct was to swat at the motion, and I only stopped myself when I recognized the lights. One yellow, one orange. These were Patrick’s pixies.

  Carefully, I set my scissors into the basket and motioned toward the berry bush in front of me. “Please, land,” I said. “You know I get dizzy when you try to communicate and move at the same time.”

  The pixies settled at once, tiny faces drawn in clear consternation, wings still vibrating with barely suppressed anxiety. They chimed more softly now that they were no longer moving, but still they chimed, uncomfortable and anxious.

  “You also know,” I said, trying to swallow my own sudden concern, “that you aren’t permitted to visit me here. I enjoy your company, and my daughter finds you charming, but my wife is less easily endeared. She was raised to consider you as vermin, and vermin are not welcome in her garden.”

  Poppy snapped her wings shut and glared at me, before making a rude gesture with her hands. I smiled.

  “Fair enough; that is a rude word to use for one’s friends, although I might argue it less rude when it is in echo of someone who truly holds that opinion, and is inclined to express her desires with occasionally violent vigor. But still, you should not be here.”

  Daffodil made an inquisitive chiming sound.

  I picked up my scissors, holding them out for her to see. “I need to finish gathering herbs. The specific tonic I’m attempting to brew requires that all ingredients be collected within an hour’s time, or they fall out of synchronization with one another, and the effect is not as potent as desired.” I needed it to be as potent as possible. Anything else would expose me to the effects of my own poison, and while I am not the most talented or subtle potion-maker in the Mists, I am very good at brewing poisons. Call it a sometimes inconvenient natural gift or call it the reason I am no longer allowed to make jam; the outcome is the same either way.

  Daffodil chimed again. I cocked my head to the side.

  “Please flare your wings twice if that meant what I think it meant, and you’re offering to finish my harvest for me,” I said politely.

  She flared her wings twice, while Poppy looked silently on. Both of them had worried, drawn expressions, something which was not encumbered by our language barrier.

  I nodded. “Excellent. Everything I need is in this area of the garden.” I gestured to the herb bed in front of me, flanked with berry bushes, and to the ones on either side. “If you’re not sure what a plant is, bring me a leaf and I’ll tell you if you’ve got the right thing. Agreed?”

  Both pixies nodded vigorously and launched themselves into the air. I sat back on my heels and began naming off herbs and simples, watching as they zipped from plant to plant and collected the pieces I had requested. Leaves, stems, flowers, seedpods, even the occasional root, they gathered them all with the quick efficiency of long-time scavengers, zipping over and holding them up for my inspection before dropping them into the basket. In a matter of minutes, they had completed a task that had been set to take me the bulk of the allotted hour. I dropped my scissors into the basket atop the gathered greenery and clapped my hands.

  “Oh, well done!” I said. “Well done, indeed, both of you!” The prohibition against thanking someone for their service doesn’t extend to pixies, of course, but as Patrick had always treated them as if they were full members of Faerie, deserving of the civility and respect we afforded one another, it seemed right to speak to them as I would have to any other who helped me in my tasks.

  They landed, one on each shoulder, and rang imperiously. Poppy went so far as to grab my ear and pull, trying to guide me in her chosen direction. I coughed.

  “One moment, if you please.” Stasis spells are among the first any potion-maker is taught; without them, half our workings would curdle in the pot, misbrewed from the beginning. I waved my hands above the basket, murmuring a line of cradle poetry that my mother used to recite to me. The smell of smoke and rotting oranges flared in the air around us. I somehow managed not to wrinkle my nose or gag.

  I first noticed that my magic was changing in character some fourteen years ago, when the mulled cider scent I had been born with and had lived with all my life began to twist and decay, first becoming the sweet scent of oranges, and then yielding, as if inevitably, to rot. My lady was unconcerned by the change, saying only that it might be spurred by the magic I borrowed from her, the magic that allowed me to do such wonderful, impossible, essential things. The blood of the Firstborn is powerful, too powerful for their descendants, much like the poisons I used to resist yielding entirely to her will. If there was a tonic that would have protected me from the damage done by her blood, she had not as yet seen fit to reveal it to me.

  The pixies were the only ones I could freely cast in front of. My wife, my daughter, my best friend—all of them would have been shocked and horrified by the change in me, and would have demanded to know its source, meaning they would have demanded I reveal my lady’s true identity. That would destroy me.

  Or worse, my wife might not be surprised at all, might only smile her small and terrible smile and say that she had been wondering how long it would take me to tell her what was going on, and then I would know that she had allowed me to sell myself into service to her sister, and that she had not interceded on my behalf. There is some knowledge too terrible for a sane man to carry, and so I did my best to obscure what was becoming of me.

  But the pixies couldn’t tell anyone what they smelled, if indeed they could detect magic at all. Their own magic was visual; perhaps they thought all larger fae to be great wizards who could someh
ow suppress the manifestation of our magic.

  The stasis spell settled into place, and I returned my attention to the pixie as yet yanking on my ear. “Only lead the way and I will follow,” I said. “And if you could endeavor not to rip my ear from my head in the process, I would be most grateful for your restraint.”

  They both rang, then, and threw themselves back into the air, racing away—but far more slowly than I knew they were capable of moving. They were allowing me the time I needed to catch up with them, and I appreciated it, even as I worried about what it might mean.

  Amy’s tower is rooted in a semi-fluid spot in the Summerlands, untethered from the mortal world save in its set distance from other domains. Shadowed Hills is never more than a day’s walk away, for example, but there are paths, if one is clever and familiar with the land, that can let out almost anywhere in the environs of the bay when followed. The pixies knew them even better than I did. They zipped through a short stretch of marshland that I had only ever visited in passing, banking hard to avoid collision with a door set into a crumbling wall that had probably once been part of some larger dwelling. I matched their pace as best I could, slowing when they crossed a patch of swampy grasses or skirted over a thicket of brambles. Each time, they slowed and looped back, allowing me to catch up. Their wings never stopped ringing alarm.

  Whatever the trouble was, something was really and truly wrong, and so I was less surprised than perhaps I should have been when they dove into a dark den in the side of a hill, something that might have held a large badger or small bear, and I followed them to find myself climbing through a window into Patrick’s workshop.

  The rafters were a glittering sea of jewel-toned pixies. Patrick was nowhere to be seen.

  Still, better to be sure than to be sorry. I tugged my vest into place, not pulling a human disguise over myself, and cupped my mouth in order to call, “Pat! I do say, Pat! Are you present?”

  The pixies rang, scolding me. I blinked at them.

  “There’s no need for such language,” I said. “I simply wanted to be sure. Lead, and I’ll follow.”

  Daffodil and Poppy darted toward the door. I followed them, filling my hands with shadows and throwing a disguise over myself as we moved. This was leading to the human world, where they would be invisible, and I would not. Pointed ears were simply not the done thing in San Francisco.

  They led me out of the workshop and along the row of shopfronts to the pier where Patrick had often gone to meet Dianda. I was not customarily invited on those outings, nor did I attempt to insert myself, as it would have been less friendly than it was inappropriate.

  At the end of the pier there were several handfuls of broken masonry, and no signs of Patrick. I stopped dead, eyes going wide, and looked at the debris, trying to deny the story it was telling me. I have always been very, very good at denial.

  “Daffodil,” I said, and was proud of how calm my voice stayed. “Did you bring me here because Patrick was here?”

  She chimed confirmation.

  “And did he go into the water?”

  Yes.

  “With Dianda?” That, at least, would be normal; would be something I could understand.

  No.

  That was more concerning. “Did they argue?”

  Yes.

  That was the most concerning thing of all. I rushed to the pier’s end and knelt, scanning the water for signs of a half-drowned engineer who had foolishly leapt into the sea. There was no sign of him. It was the crumbs of masonry that caused me the most distress; if he and Dianda had decided to end their courtship, and the decision had not been mutual, could he have been so foolish as to do something that would cause him harm?

  I would never forgive him if he had drowned. I would go to my lady and demand a means of reaching the night-haunts, beg a boon from them, and find his spirit among their wandering shades, put it into a bottle, and shake it vigorously. Perhaps then he would understand what he had done to me . . .

  . . . and it wouldn’t matter, as no one short of Oberon himself has ever been able to call back the dead. I turned to the pixies, my voice dull and leaden as I asked, “Did he go into the water a very long time before you came to get me?”

  Yes.

  Yes. So he would already have been drowned before I delayed things further with my herbs and simples and my arbitrary timelines. I might have arrived in time to find his body. I could never have arrived in time to save him.

  I sat on the pier’s edge, covering my face with my hands, and tried to think beyond the cloud of grief that swirled around me, surging in to overwhelm my senses. I had been prepared to lose him to the sea, but not in so final a manner. What was worst, of the three most important women in my life, only my daughter would understand and respect my sorrow. Amy would dismiss it as a temporary thing; might even be pleased to have one of the distractions removed from my life, making more room for her to fill. She has never been overly fond of sharing when she didn’t have to. My lady had already all but disowned him, claiming that when he rejected her commandments in order to love a woman of the sea, he had rejected her as well, and she had no need to care or concern herself with his comfort or well-being. I would mourn the dearest friend I had ever known all but alone.

  No: not entirely alone. A pixie landed on each of my shoulders, their drooping wings still chiming faintly. I uncovered my face, taking only a moment to swipe my tears away, and looked first at Poppy, then at Daffodil.

  “You are his legacy,” I said solemnly. “You are a healthy, thriving flock of pixies because of his interventions. I was there when first you came to him, your damaged daughter in your arms, and trusted him with caring for her. He has loved and tended to you with a compassion that is all too rare among my own people, and for that I am sorry, and because I loved him as much as you did, I promise that you will remain safe.”

  Between my two ladies, both of whom considered pixies to be little more than pests, there was no way I could take them to the tower. Nor could they remain in Patrick’s workshop; even if it was not seized and reclaimed by the space-hungry humans who swarmed through San Francisco, it would be a haunted house, too filled with the memory of him to render any comfort unto us. Relocation was an inevitability.

  He would want me to see them settled as comfortably as possible, safe and secure and near nothing of any danger—ah. I smiled, despite the tears still running down my face. Solutions have always been pleasing to me.

  “We will build you a new paradise, in the marsh beyond my wife’s tower,” I said. “The land is unclaimed. You shall claim it. I have the size necessary to move your homes, your worldly possessions, all the things Patrick built for you, and to assist in the construction of whatever large structures you might require. Bridges and boardwalks and support beams for additional homes. The things that will make this transition easier for you.”

  Daffodil rang cautiously. I shook my head.

  The voices of pixies are too small and high-pitched for human-sized fae to comprehend, but I have learned more of the tones and meanings of their chimes than I would ever have believed possible, through osmosis if nothing else. “No, I will not tell my wife. You will be a secret from all save myself, and those who might wander through the marshlands—and I can set warding spells such as my lady lays around Goldengreen, to keep random strangers from wandering into your territory.” It would be a complicated working, but not outside my capability. I might even be able to do it without using my lady’s borrowed magic.

  That would be a good way to remember my friend. He deserved the truest heart of me, and not whatever I was becoming, one stolen spell after another. He deserved the world.

  Daffodil rang again, this time less cautious than sorrowful.

  “I knew we would lose him to the sea, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon, or so completely.” I had expected to have time. To be able to grill Dianda on her expectat
ions—who knew what the Undersea considered to be a marriage, or how they treated their spouses?—and to reassure Patrick that he could always come home if he wanted to. I had expected visits, and long days designing wedding finery, and to see them stand before King Gilad, unaware that one of the Firstborn was there and could have officiated their marriage, had she been willing to agree. Not that she would have been. My lady might be willing to let Patrick pollute his family line with a Merrow-maid, but she would never have agreed to formalize their union, however much they might desire it.

  I had expected more time.

  Laboriously, I stood, pixies still on my shoulders, and began to make my plodding way back along the pier toward the shore. I would have to go to my lady. I would have to tell her that Patrick Twycross, son of her lines, had stopped his dancing. Her fury would be beyond measure. She had still been holding out hope, however frail, that he might see the error of his ways and take up the company of a good Daoine Sidhe partner. I paused.

  I would have to go to her without protection of the poisons that shielded me from the sheer force of her will. The man I was when I walked into her presence might not be the man who left, depending on how angry she became. But if I delayed telling her what had happened, her anger would only grow, and the protections I needed would only become greater. There was no escaping from the fate I had crafted for myself, one small decision at a time.

  I closed my eyes. It was an ending I had long seen approaching, but which I had hoped to postpone a little longer. Long enough, perhaps, to see my daughter strike out in the world and find a home and family of her own, one that would serve her better than a mother who could not truly love and a father who had sold his soul to save another.

  If there was one gift I had received from my lady, it was this: I had learned through my time with her that the love of the Firstborn is not something their descendants were ever built to bear. It would burn us to a crisp if ever we felt it. Amy had never loved me. I wouldn’t have survived. And Amy’s love for our child was less the affection of a parent and more the pride of an owner. August would be the captive of her mother’s love for all the days of her life, and I might not be there to shelter her.