by J. M. Frey
“What’s it doing?”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” I say, flapping my hands harder at the beast. “She’s an infant still. There’s nothing for you to do here, of course she’s still a virgin. Off with you, off.”
The unicorn swings around to look at me and aims its horn at my face. Pip gasps again and grabs my sleeve, ready, I assume, to yank me out of the way should the beast charge.
“You’re fooling no one,” I tell the unicorn, not even remotely concerned. “And you’re not having her. She can’t even walk well enough to follow. Be off now.”
“What’s so wrong with—” Pip begins, but I just shake my head.
“It gets messy. Either you must let them take your daughter, or you must take them in, and unicorn shit smells atrocious. Like lilies, ever dying. Overwhelming.”
That is when Capplederry stands, stretching and yawning with a deliberate, toothy grin and a short, rusty yowl. The unicorn startles and rears up, and on the other side of the cart, Capplederry does the same. For a long moment, they both stand rampant, framing the nest of pillows where my daughter sleeps, sweetly ignorant of the fuss around her.
The unicorn, stymied, snorts at me one last time, paws the ground, and, rearing again, spins on its delicate hind feet. Just like that, it is off, a silver shadow in the underbrush, its mane, tail, and those nonsensical ankle tufts flapping like a particularly attractive banner. How they never get tangled with burrs, I’ll never know. More unicorn magic.
“Wow,” Pip says, still clutching my sleeve as the creature vanishes into the gloom. “Wow. A unicorn.”
I snort myself, and chivvy my wife back toward the fire. The men sit, but Pip keeps glancing back at the cart, where Alis is sleeping.
“She is fine,” I say. “I saw her. She slept through it all.”
“I know, I just . . .” Pip sets down her dinner again and rubs the back of her neck. “I don’t know, I have the heebie jeebies. Lemme just check. I’m kinda paranoid now.”
“Very well, go, go.” I gesture with my own dinner, and then take a bite. Ah, just as wonderful as I remembered this dish being!
Pip goes, and I am absorbed with watching Wyndam settle the great cat and brush out its mane, praising it with affectionate smiles and hums for protecting his wee cousin. Capplederry purrs and preens.
We are all feeling the camaraderie of another small disaster averted, and are very pleased with ourselves, smug in the security that Capplederry provides, when I realize Pip has not returned. It’s been long enough that her own dinner has grown cold on her trencher, the fat from the venison congealing in dark spots on the bread.
When I begin to look around, wondering perhaps if Pip has gone off into some bush to answer the call of nature, Bevel and Kintyre’s heads also snap up. Wyndam remains oblivious at first, but as soon as the rest of us tense, Capplederry is back on its feet, and Wyndam has his curved sword drawn.
And that is when we hear it: a leafy shuffle, a sort of muffled yelp, and then the high, piercing scream of a terrified child.
“Alis!” I cry, but I cannot tell from which direction the sound is coming, so I spin like a helpless top on the spot.
And then, most odd of all, a young man’s voice rings through the forest, laughing. That it is a young man is not the odd part; it is the reaction that the sound of his voice causes in Kintyre and Bevel that I find the most strange.
Both men freeze, faces instantly going white and hands balling into fists. Then they swing their eyes around and look directly at Wyndam. Wyndam’s eyes are still on the forest, even as he climbs—with a grace that belies his continued fatigue—onto Capplederry’s back.
“What?” I hiss, ears still primed.
“No, no, no!” the young lad’s voice calls again, further away now. “Behave yourself, Aunt Pip.”
Capplederry is off like a shot, but not so quickly that I don’t have the opportunity to catch sight of the look of horror that has blossomed on Wyndam’s face before both lad and cat are nothing but a shadowy blur in the underbrush.
“What is wrong?” I ask as I charge after them.
Bevel and Kintyre both quickly and easily pace me, Kintyre drawing ahead.
“Brother!” I entreat, even as I am drawing my sword and crashing after him through a shrub in his wake.
“It’s Wyndam!” Kintyre calls back, and I cannot, I cannot afford to stumble now. “That was Wyndam’s voice!”
Readers
The unicorn was not part of Solinde’s plottings, but it was more useful than she could have anticipated. And, like the weather, Solinde can easily turn, changing her plans fluidly. Originally, she’d meant to tempt the men of the camp away by calling out to them in the boy’s voice. She had put it on for that purpose, but worried that calling them away would forewarn the Reader, and she would have magic prepared to thwart Solinde when she doubled back to the cart.
Simply waiting for the woman to wander into the darkness alone was much easier.
Getting her to be silent was another matter entirely. Even now, backed right up against the Desk that Never Rots with her squalling infant in her arms, both of them drenched from their transportation atop the cloud, the woman is still shouting.
“Take me back, right now!” she bellows, one hand curled around the babe, the other wrapped around the hilt of her laughingly small dagger. Solinde, standing in the middle of the Rookery, watching, one hand on her chin, the other on her waist, snorts in amusement.
“Are you finished, Reader? Or shall you continue to demand the same thing over and over, knowing that I shall not give it to you?”
The woman falters, dagger dipping, and the child screams louder.
“Hush, sweetie,” the Reader whispers to it, soothing it as much as she can, her eyes never leaving Solinde. “Hush now. It’s over, eh? So we’re a little wet; it’s okay. Just like bath time, honey. It’s okay.”
Solinde watches with rapt fascination as the stream of motherly nonsense soothes the child into hiccoughing sniffles.
“She is biddable,” Solinde observes. “A very good girl.”
“She’s not biddable because she’s a girl!” the woman grits out between clenched teeth.
“Ma ma ma,” the child says. “Daaa?”
“Your Da’s coming to get us, don’t you worry, honey,” the reply comes, and though her words are light in her child’s ear, it is clear that the promise in the threat is directed at Solinde. “And your uncles, too. Kintyre Turn and Bevel Dom, that is. In case you missed that.”
“Oh, I understand perfectly well from whom I’ve pilfered you,” Solinde says airily, entertained that the Reader seems to think that the names of her traveling companions would be a surprise to her. “I’ve known since I Dealt for the boy’s voice. You, though . . .” she says, pointing now at the woman.
The Reader takes a sharp step back, driving her hip against the unforgiving granite of the Desk and wincing.
“You were a piece I did not expect to find on the chessboard.” Solide says this idly, reaching out as the woman shrinks away from her touch. Solinde runs her nails over the edge of the scale the woman wears on a piece of rope around her neck. “And with this, no less.”
“I won’t be your pawn,” the woman spits.
“A pawn?” Solinde laughs, startled by the sheer ignorance of her own worth—potentially her own power—that her captive holds. “No, no, my dear. You are a queen. You must know that you are the most powerful piece on the board. And I . . .” Solinde says as she leans close, mindful of the loose-held dagger, but enjoying the way the woman’s eyes widen, and how she tries to crane away from her looming captor. It’s amusing. “I am the other.”
The Reader slips to the side, ducking away from Solinde, putting the Desk that Never Rots between them, as if it will be any sort of barrier against whatever magic Solinde would care to wield. As if the Reader needs any kind of barrier beyond that which she herself must be capable of creating. Solinde keeps hold of her necklace, whipping it o
ver the Reader’s head as she ducks past, content to let her squirm away for the moment.
“A queen who will not be moved around the board by outside hands ever again.” She holds the necklace, the scale, the thing that could have her summoned down and bound to a tableau, to a disadvantageous Deal, above her head. Lightning turns it to cinders between her fingers.
The Reader jumps, curling her hand over her daughter’s ears, and shouts: “Then why am I here?” the Reader asks. “Again.”
“You are the perfect confluence of all that I require,” Solinde admits, deciding that explaining a little of her reasoning might entice the Reader to aid her. After all, she is a mother as well, a fellow woman. Surely she must have a mother’s feelings, too. “I need my son back, and I need revenge on those who have harmed him.”
“Again, I’m not seeing how I can help,” the Reader says cautiously, but she has straightened up now, her eyes darting, assessing the distance between her and the stairs that lead up out of the sunken cavern.
“Liar,” Solinde says gently. “We are two queens. A Deal-Maker, and a Reader. The two most powerful creatures in this world. You know what you can do for me.”
“I don’t,” the woman insists. “I actually don’t.”
“I want you to summon the Writer. I want you to force him to tell me where my son is. My Varnet.”
“No.” The reply is firm, but a tremble has crawled into the Reader’s throat. “I won’t do that. Actually, I mean, I—honestly—I can’t do that.”
Solinde feels her ire swelling. How could a fellow mother deny her this when she is clutching her own babe so tightly? “You would deny a mother her child?”
“I know that Varnet is the Viceroy,” the Reader says softly, as if this is some sort of revelation. Of course, Solinde expected the Reader to know everything about her life, their lives. She is a Reader. “So even if I could, I wouldn’t help you.”
“Then you must also know where he is. And how he may be returned to me.”
Caught out, the Reader’s eyes widen. “That doesn’t necessarily follow,” she hedges.
“But you do know!” Solinde snarls, thunder booming in the distance.
The Reader raises her chin to Solinde, defiant, cupping her own child’s head against her neck, and the ire in the Deal-Maker boils and froths. How dare . . . how dare . . .
“How can you be so unfeeling?” Solinde demands. “How can you stand there, cradling your babe, knowing that mine was stolen from me!”
“St-stolen?” the Reader echoes, surprised.
“Stolen!” Solinde screams. “Got on me by force by a human who tricked me into Dealing to be his wife, and sold away by that same unfeeling wretch to the first scholar who would take a child of magic as his apprentice!”
“I . . . I didn’t know that . . .” the Reader insists. “That wasn’t . . . it wasn’t in any of the books.”
“And so you mean to say that the Writer did not even see fit to write of my suffering?” Solinde howls. “Am I nothing in our creator’s eyes? Am I so little!”
“Yes!” the Reader shouts back, for now a breeze has begun to whistle through the few remaining, straggling ropes of ivy that yet cling to the walls of the Rookery. “I hate to have to admit this, but yes! He really is that kind of a dick! He doesn’t care what kind of suffering he’s forced on his female characters! He never has!”
“And yet, I would bear any suffering gladly if I could be reunited with my Varnet!”
The Reader steps back again, flummoxed. “I don’t understand!” she says. “I don’t understand this obsession with finding him. With getting him back.”
“You are a mother!” Solinde cries, and above her, lightning jumps between the building thunderheads. “Would you not do anything for your child? Would you not snuff out the very stars themselves in your destruction of other realms in search of her?”
“So the stars are books?” the Reader asks, shrewdly.
“They were prisons where my son was being held away from me against both our wills. For he lives yet, he must. They are realms. He must be in one! And yet, I have snuffed every star, and their destruction has not released him back to me. He should have come back.”
“But he’s—” the Reader begins, and then snaps her mouth shut, biting down on the revelation she had been about to spill forth.
“Tell me!” Solinde demands. “You know! You know!”
“I don’t!” the Reader says. “I honestly don’t know where he is right now! Maybe he’s dead, and I’m sorry for you if that’s true, but I don’t know where he would have been taken if he’s not!”
Solinde howls and pulls at her hair. “Then I am nothing! If I am not a mother, then I am nothing! And there is no place for me in this, nor any other realm!”
“No!” the Reader insists. “No, that’s not true. You are defined by more than just your relationship to the villain! You are more than a wife and a mother. You can be! We are more than just women who stand at the back and hold the baby!”
“Why would I wish to be anything else but the one who cherishes and protects my child?” Solinde wails, baffled by the Reader’s insistence that such a glorious purpose is merely secondary, or lesser, or unworthy.
“Oh my god, fucking listen,” the Reader snarls. “If this is the climax, if we’ve come back to the same spot as a deliberate echo of what happened in the last book, then you have to listen to me. We don’t have to do this all again! You can undo this—bring back the stars, bring back the stories, and I promise you, I will help you find another way to be happy. I will help you find a purpose. Please!”
“Generous, thoughtless fool!” Solinde spits, and the winds have started in earnest now, tugging at her hair, her skirts, billowing them behind her like sails. “How dare you offer me compassion now, when I have lost everything? I cannot. I cannot be happy without him. I am only who I am!”
The Reader has misplaced her caution in the face of trying to convince Solinde. She takes a step closer, around the corner of the Desk. Fool. “But that’s what I mean! I am a wife. I am a mother. But that is not the alpha and omega of my existence. I am . . . I am a teacher, and fangirl, and—”
“And this is what you want me to be?” Solinde sneers. “Emotional and complicated, conflicted? To busy myself in other things and forget him? No.” She brushes the image the Reader paints out of her mind, out of the air around her head, with a flip of her hand. “I am a mother. It was what I was written to be. And I can be nothing else. I shall not be anything else.”
Almost before making the decision to do so, Solinde has summoned a water spout into her hand. She is angry. She wants to attack, no matter how unwise attacking a Reader may be. If it means her death, then so be it. Better dead than without Varnet!
She throws the water spout directly at the Reader’s chest, half expecting it to bounce away harmlessly. What it does instead is throw the Reader back, and hard. Her child is dislodged, and Solinde darts forward and plucks the babe out of the air so quickly the little girl has nearly no time to cry out in her surprise.
The Reader slams back against the gravel bottom of the chasm, gasping and arching in pain, and Solinde commands the water to hold her down. It flows against the Reader’s chest, splashing under her chin, keeping her supine and vulnerable. She must crane her head away, painfully, awkwardly, in order to breathe.
Solinde stares in awe at the sight of the most powerful creature in existence being forced to submit to her magic, to her will. Incredible. Unthought of. Shocking.
Perfect.
Solinde pulls the babe against her body, an instinctive, motherly move that nonetheless fills her with the kind of fulfillment she hasn’t known in decades. The child feels right in her arms, makes Solinde feel complete in a way that she hasn’t since Varnet was taken from her. Makes her satisfied.
And makes up her mind.
“Hush, hush, honey,” Solinde says to the squirming child, mimicking as best she can the cadence and voice of her m
other. “Hush, see? Just like a bath.”
“Maa! Maaaa!” the babe wails, not a bit fooled. She wriggles and kicks and reaches for her mother.
“Yes,” Solinde says. “Yes. Mama. Mama. Worry not, my sweeting. Your Mama is right here.” She turns the child, dancing away with her in her arms, keeping her own body between that of the babe and its drowning mother. “Your Mama’s here.”
Sixteen
There is no way to track on foot a creature who travels by cloud. We hasten back to camp, and quickly saddle Capplederry and the horses. We secure our cart and supplies under a lean-to of branches stripped from a nearby fir tree, lashing down our packs and binding them in place with Words of Keeping. If . . . when . . . we return this way with my wife and child, we will be in want of the food and transportation the cart provides.
Stripped of anything unnecessary, we don what protective gear we own, belt our weapons in place, and mount up. Kintyre rides Karl, while I take Dauntless, with Wyndam and Bevel —the shortest of the four of us—upon Capplederry. Even so, the cat bounds with greater ease through the forest than the horses do, and they make it back to the place where we lost the trail with far more swiftness than my brother and I.
“Where now?” I call out, for Bevel is already on the ground, squinting in the low dawn light at scuffles in the grass.
Bevel makes a frustrated sound, punching the verge in his anger. Behind him, Capplederry paces. Wyndam is still seated, and trying to rein the creature in, but it will not be soothed. It is licking at the air, as if tasting for trails on the breeze, head thrown back, mewing piteously.
Kintyre and Bevel are talking, my brother bent down, hanging over the side of his saddle, their heads together and voices a rumble as they discuss what to do next. They are hiding their mouths, keeping me from being able to lip-read. Why would they do that?
I am angry, yes, and desperate, but I am not behaving unreasonably in my distress. Do they fear I will lose my temper if they admit they have no trail to follow? I am only clutching my sword so tightly and grinding my teeth thus because I am wild, yes, wild with worry for my family. And if Dauntless is dancing and whickering in echo of my agitation, then it is only because I am so rattled by the thought of my wife and child in the hands of that Deal-Maker, that weather witch who—