Ink and Steel pa-3

by Elizabeth Bear

  The lamia Amaranth found him puzzling over books in strange languages, and with her dapple-scaled tail coiled between chair legs and occasionally, unsettlingly, brushing his calf, she set about to teach him the backward writings of Hebrews (which informed Kit of the names of three of the five symbols Baines and his friends had burned into his flesh: mem, he, and lamel) and Mohammadans, and the brush-sketched characters of far Cathay. Although her smile was cool and she would not answer questions about herself, Kit thought she courted him. He permitted it, expecting her purpose to be revealed hesitantly, but before too long. Wrong again: her silence and amusement remained, counterpointed by her flickering tongue.

  And so he continued, restless and although often in company alone. His thoughts were clearer now that he had a goal, but the passive means of accomplishing it and his lack of success as bait flustered him. More unsettling, it wasn’t any easier to keep track of the days when he was focused on it. He went so far as to carve notches in a candle, and stopped when he began to realize that the number of notches changed. As his head cleared further, though, the craving in his belly grew. He had to talk to Morgan. Jilted lover or no.

  Of course, a jilted lover might be expected to wish to speak to her. If not too often. And I am tired of being treated as a pet.

  He frowned, thinking that he would not trust himself with matters of import, as mooncalf as he had been.

  Hell, I can ask her about love-in-idleness, too. And why Amaranth said she was cruel.

  Kit dressed as Will would have it like a cobbler’s son: a shirt of cambric, a leather jerkin, and brown wool breeches. He slipped the iron bootnail from the pocket of the doublet he had been wearing and was about to drop it into a lacquer box on the stand beside his bed when he hesitated. He could almost fancy the sound of a cobbler’s hammer, familiar from childhood, and smiled for a moment at the memory of his father with a mouth full of tacks just like this one. It might have been the scent of leather, or the way the light caught on the worn surface of the nail, but he suddenly couldn’t bear to set it aside. He slipped it into his purse and let it clink against coins he’d had no occasion to spend.

  Here is the palace, and the court. But there is no Faerie city. No tradesman, no farmlands, no ports for ships trading the wide and wandering sea …How strange.And then Kit smiled, because there was a lyric in it.

  He stomped into his boots, and left his cloak and his sword behind. Should anyone ask, he was only going for a ramble. How far to Morgan’s cottage, he could not estimate. Murchaud had said through the beech wood, but Kit’s explorations had not found a farther edge. They had taught him that the wood changed from day to day; on one the brook might bend beside an enormous gray boulder like a menhir, caked with moss and lichen; on another it would run straight and tossing over rocks through the spraddled roots of a rogue oak, rough-barked and errant among the smooth-boled beeches, vast enough to build an Ark. Then again, there might be no brook at all, and the wood might sweep up the flanks of rolling hills, spacious and silent and lit like a green cathedral.

  Kit followed a graveled trail through the palace’s sprawling gardens. It became a sort of bridle path at the verge of the wood. He paused there for a moment to settle the leather bottle of water on his hip and get his bearings. Then Morgan’s house,he thought, and set his foot upon the path.

  Today it was late summer under the trees, the day bright and serene, shade and a light breeze welcome in the morning’s heat. He regretted the jerkin, but knew he’d want it if the sun set while he was in the wood. He didn’t object to sleeping rough and hungry for a night, but he wasn’t overfond of shivering in a pile of leaves until morning. The trail tended east, gladdening Kit’s heart, and it passed over the brook; there was a brook today, brown water dappled by sunshine on a well-maintained footbridge. Kit was wise enough to step off the trail and leave prints down the muddy bank, crouching on gravel to cup water to his mouth. He drank deep to spare what he carried, smiling at the hop and splash of infant frogs the same bronze as the silt.

  “Hurm,” croaked the troll under the bridge as Kit hopped to the first of four rocks on the way to the far bank. “Harm.”

  “Good morning, Master Troll.” Kit’s hand would have dropped to his swordhilt if he had been wearing one.

  “Good morning, Sir Poet.”

  “You know me. I know your eyepatch,” the troll answered. “I know your errand.” Its eyes blinked like cloud-filtered moons from the gloom under the bridge sarch. Kit saw a knobbed and swollen nose, slimy skin reflecting the yellow glow of those eyes, and the splayed fingers of one weird hand balancing the thing’s crouch. He couldn’t make out enough of its body to get an idea of its size.

  The space under the bridge was darker than it ought to be and there was no silhouette cast against the light on the other side, so he saw only splinters of warty hide, the hump of a shoulder illuminated in the thin bands of sunlight that fell between planks.

  “Mine errand?”

  “Always on the Queen’s business, aye. One Queen or another.”

  Kit didn’t like his footing on the stone, which rocked under his boots. He stepped into the stream, calf-deep, a cold gout of water soaking his leg to the thigh.

  “How may I assist you, Master Troll?” From the sound, Kit would say that the troll sucked snaggled teeth as it thought that over.

  “Well. Tis a troll bridge, in it? So logic says you have to pay the troll.”

  “I went around.”

  “That you did, that you did.” The troll coughed, an unpleasant fishy sound. “But you drank my water, and you scared my frogs”

  Kit sighed. He was in no mood to haggle, and losing light. “A piece of silver?”

  “And what does a troll need with silver, Sir Poet?”

  “What does a poet need with a bridge?”

  “Useful things, bridges.” The troll brightened. “You can pay me with a song.”

  “A song. Mine own?”

  “What use is a poet, else?”

  “Do you intend to keep it, if I give it you?”

  “Keep and pass along,” the troll answered, lowering its glowing eyes and curving its hand as if it studied the cracked yellow pegs of its fingernails. “As anyone might a song. If anyone would listen to a troll sing. But if you mean, will I take it from you no, that’s a price worth more than a fording. And everything in Faerie has a price.”

  “I’m learning that.” Kit turned in the water to put his blind side to the bank, which was only marginally less discomforting than facing it to the troll. He might not hear the rustle of leaves over the splash of the brook, if anyone snuck close.

  “A love song, or a lament? Or something warlike, I know a few of those.

  The troll sighed, and Kit saw his shadowed outline settle on its haunches.

  “Harm, hurm. A love song,” he said in a dreaming voice. “There’s little enough of love under bridges.”

  “But plenty of frogs.” Kit winced as the words left his mouth. Too clever by half, Master Marley. Or Sir Christofer. Whoever you are today.

  “Ah, yes,” the troll answered. “A surfeit of frogs. Froggy frogs, froggyfrogs.” He followed it up with a froggy-sounding laugh; Kit glimpsed something like the white swell of a pouched throat. “Sing me a song, toad and prince.”

  “I know the song for you.” Kit drew a breath and steadied it, and didn’t sing so much as chant: ‘Come live with me and be my love’

  It was a simple song on the surface, an uncomplicated pastoral, but political on the bottom of it. Who was, after all, the famous shepherd who sheared his flock so close as to dine off golden plates? Reciting it made Kit feel he was getting away with heresy.

  The troll listened in silence, his hands with their old-man’s knuckles and old-man’s claws twined one about the other, and he chirruped once or twice in amphibian emotion. A few moments followed with only the wind in the trees and the water over the rocks, and then the troll said, “A right sunlit song.” A sound like ripping cloth followed
.

  Kit stepped back, feeling his way over slick stones. “You re welcome.”

  “No fear, no fear,” croaked the troll. He thrust a hand out from under the bridge, something brightly dripping knotted in the gnarl of it. “For your cloak. For the song.”

  Kit hesitated, but the troll stayed motionless, although its yellow-green mottles pinked in the sun. “For my cloak?”

  “Can’t be a bard without a cloak,” the troll said, and shook the bit of cloth. “Take it. Take it for your song.”

  Kit picked his way forward, following a sand bar scattered with stones. He stopped as far back as he could, and made an arch of his body to reach toward the troll. His hands closed on wet brocade, and the troll jerked its scalded hand out of the sun.

  “Hurm, harm. On your way then, bardling. I’ll see you again ere your cloak is complete. And I say that knowing: trolls have the curse of prophecy.” It withdrew under its bridge.

  Kit scrambled to the far bank, turned back, and bowed in wet boots once he attained its height. “Rest ye merry, Master Troll.” There was no answer, but he fancied he heard a muted chant taken up in a croaking voice before he was quite out of sight of the bridge.

  “Come live with me and be my love, hurm, And we will all the pleasures prove, harm, That valleys, groves, hills, and fields, hurm…”

  Three or ten hours later, he was forced to admit he was lost. Or, if not lost for he had never left the bridle trail, or what-you-may-call-it, and thought he glimpsed the spires of the palace once or twice, when the trees grew thin at the top of a rise at the very least he was sorely misplaced. He sat on a mossy trunk and drank water and inhaled the clean musty scent of the forest. The troll’s scrap he spread on his knee to finish drying, and he considered it as he considered his options. With the water wrung out, the brocade was as satiny red as rose petals, woven of some fiber Kit couldn’t identify.

  He rested his chin on his hand and scratched idly under his eyepatch, watching the light. What filtered through the widely spaced pewter boles of the beech trees was growing golden, although the breeze was still balmy. He didn’t think he’d find Morgan’s cabin before sunset, and if he slept here, he’d have the fallen trunk and the hollow under it to break the wind. A hungry night, but … crunch …

  Kit’s head came up, and otherwise he froze motionless against the trunk. A footfall, perhaps something as simple as a wild pig or a stag. Another crunch, and then a third. Hooves, he decided, the sound too crisp for a booted foot. He held his breath, hoping to see a stag or a hind and not wishing to disconcert a boar, if that was what minced toward him through last year’s leaves.

  Well. Not a stag, exactly, but the stag-headed adventurer whose poise and casual grip on his sword had so arrested Kit’s attention on his very first night in Faerie. He dressed richly, an animal’s smooth throat rising from the collar of his doublet, some Gyptian god made English. The stag drew up, a brief rustle accompanying his cessation of motion. His finely etched head went back as if he considered flight, warm sunlight gilding the velvet of new antlers.

  “Sir Christofer,” he said, and just as Kit was about to swing to his feet and remark on the unlikelihood of such an encounter, the stag pawed the earth and snorted. “I’ve been seeking you.”

  “Seeking me?”

  “Aye, Sir Christofer. Who else would be in the forest at this hour, save bogeys and creeping things?”

  “I,” Kit peeled the damp scrap of brocade from his breeches and tucked it into a sleeve, “am embarrassed to say.”

  The stag tossed his horns. “And I am Geoffrey.”

  “A pleasure to make your more formal acquaintance. Geoffrey.” Kit stood and stretched his shoulders. “Seeking me to what end?”

  “Conversation. Were you bound for Queen Morgan’s cottage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you found the way obscured. Unsurprising.” Geoffrey strode along the bridle path, and Kit fell into step beside him, crunching through leaves in the half-light.

  “There’s a glamourie on it: you cannot find the way unless you know the way.”

  “Ah.”

  “Fret not,” Geoffrey continued, tilting his antlers. “I will show you.”

  “Thank you. To what do I owe this kindness?”

  “My desire for a moment to talk.” Long practice kept Kit from checking his step. “At last.”

  “Surely a conversation could be had at less price”

  “Tis no price at all.”

  Strange and stranger, to see a man’s words fall from the lips of a hart.

  “A token of friendship.”

  “Friendship? Oh, aye. Follow me.” The stag left the path, leapt down a bank and pushed through a stand of laurel, Kit on his heels only stumbling once among the litter and sticks.

  “Never step off the path,” Geoffrey said. “Never look back,” he glanced over his shoulder at Kit, long neck twisting like a ribbon “and never trust the guardian. A toss of his head back, westerly, toward the palace and the troll’s bridge.

  “Unless you want to accomplish something. In which case you must risk, and intrigue, and sneak.”

  “And betray?”

  “Betrayals are a tricky thing in Faerie. You don’t wear Morgan’s mark of shame any longer. Does that mean you’re free?”

  “The heartsease?” Half consciously, Kit brushed the breast of his jerkin with his left hand, feeling cool, supple leather. “Why should I be ashamed of it?”

  Geoffrey stopped so suddenly that Kit almost slid into him. “Because of what it signifies.”

  “Curse it to Hell and beyond!” Kit stepped back stubbornly, folding his arms. “Somebody is going to tell me what it signifies, or there is going to be blood.”

  “Blood.” Geoffrey said the word tastingly. Of course. Mortal man. We re all fools.”

  “Fools?”

  “Has been so long since a true mortal walked among us. Tis changelings and half-Fae, and, well. It makes me wonder what the Mebd saw in advance of us, to steal a mortal away. Your obvious talents aside, no offense intended, etcetera.”

  Kit, amused: “Of course.”

  “And why Morgan would so lightly set you aside.”

  He gestured Kit to follow with one expansive hoof. The beeches thinned, and yellow strands of grass began to thread between the leaves and roots.

  “Why would a mortal man be important to the Fae?”

  “We can’t fight a war without one,” Geoffrey answered, holding a branch aside. “A geas as old as the Fae. As for the heartsease. Its other name is love-in-idleness, did you know?”

  “I’ve heard.” The branch was whippy and fine: Kit almost lost his grip on it after Geoffrey handed it across.

  “Roses for passion and lilies for love and for death. Amaranth,” he smiled, “is undying love, eternity. And crocus is gladness, and pansy is thoughts but I do not think I’m so made mock of for a badge of thinking. So what, for the love of Hell, does a pansy signify?”

  “Bondage,” Geoffrey answered without turning. “There’s your mistress house, poet. We will talk again.”

  Kit turned to look through the gloom and the red twilight at a rose-twined cottage beyond a garden and a fieldstone wall. He turned back, to bid the stag thanks or something, but Geoffrey had vanished in a silence as utter as that of the dark wood behind him.

  “Edakrusen o christos,” Kit muttered, because there was no Fae close enough to hear him. He placed one hand between the curling edges of lichen and vaulted the wall, rough stone gritting his palm and the turf denting under his feet.

  A white gravel trail led him between beds of roses, red and white, and under an arch of blossoms damasked both. The beds below the roses were planted with mint, melissa, verbena, rosemary, lavender, and what seemed a thousand other sweet and savory herbs. The scent filled Kit’s head, almost dizzying, and he absently ran his hand across the bulge in his purse. The cottage was as earthed under with brambles as any in a fairy tale, and Kit smiled appreciation of the image. I
t didn’t look like the abode of a queen: the doorposts were skinned trunks, the door itself painted vermilionin a half-dozen coats that peeled as shaggy as the lichens. Lamplight gleamed through one small window, not yet shuttered against the night, and Kit’s breath ached in his breast as a shadow moved behind it.

  I can feel her,he realized. Like a hand twisted in his collar, drawing him forward, and although his strides stayed as crisp as if he knew what he intended, he shivered. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering if the stag watched after, but the wood was dark and silent.

  Bondage. His shoulder ached in a memory, blow of a silver dagger hard across its ridge, and he tasted an also-remembered trickle of lukewarm mint, and for a moment he wished he had, after all, brought his sword. Oh, he thought. Bondage. Yes, I see. More than her knight, her servant, her lover. More. Or less. Her slave.

  “Hello the house!” Until the door swung open. “Good even, my lady.”

  “Kit,” she said, gray-green eyes dark as moss in the twilight. Her hair lay unbound upon her shoulders, tumbling to her waist, its darkness shot with silver threads like a moonlit river. She wore only a low-cut smock with blackwork around the neckline and petticoat-bodies over it; a working woman’s home garb, her skirts kilted up to show a length of calf and a bare, clean foot, high-arched and more calloused than a lady’s foot ought be.

  She tilted her head, and he looked down, studying her feet. His hand tightened on the nail in his purse; it parted the cloth and pricked his hand, but he didn’t let go.

  [What brings you to my door, Sir Kit?” An arch smile, and her hand on his collar her physical hand, twisting the cloth and bringing him inside.

  He moved as led, helpless under her touch, and thought of a stud horse rendered passive by the twist of a twitch on his lip. Kit opened his mouth, would have spoken accused her but the taste of bloody iron choked him. A vividly tactile memory of powerlessness: the savage wrench of his dislocated shoulder, gory drool slicking his chin and choking his throat with the effort of screaming and breathing through a mouth full of barbed metal, thinking If I could talk, I could explain my way out of this. There hadn’t been any talking. Not for a long time.