Late Eclipses

by Seanan McGuire

  My catalog of impossible pain was growing daily. Before Amandine changed my blood, I would have called being hit by elf-shot the worst thing in the world. Before the elf-shot, I would have given that honor to forced physical transformation. Now severe iron poisoning was threatening to put all the other kinds of pain out of the running—and believe me when I say that wasn’t a race I’d ever wanted a winner for.

  I held my position until I was sure I was stable before trying to stand, tucking one knee under my body as I braced myself against the floor. I had to stop twice and wait for the dizziness to pass before I managed to get to my feet.

  Once I was upright, I couldn’t remember why I wanted to get up in the first place. I was still standing there, trying to decide what came next, when I heard footsteps outside the door. Hope surged forward, threatening to overwhelm me. The Queen changed her mind. She realized she was making a mistake, and she changed her mind; she was going to let me go. “Oh, thank Oberon,” I whispered.

  Relief died as the Queen’s voice came slithering into the room. Her Siren blood meant she only had to whisper to make herself heard. “Not Oberon,” she corrected. “Flattering as the comparison is. Are you comfortable, October?”

  “Your Highness.” I swallowed. “Now that we’re alone, maybe . . . maybe we can talk. I need to explain.”

  “No. You really don’t. You see, I don’t care whether you killed the Lady of the Tea Gardens, or attacked the Duchess Torquill. Your failure is in thinking I would.”

  “I . . . what?”

  “We were peaceful while you were gone. Your mother ceased her meddling, and my Kingdom was untroubled. But you had to come back, didn’t you? And murder and madness and chaos followed in your wake, as it always had to, daughter of Amandine. Well, I’m through with your games. You killed Blind Michael. That’s more than enough to bring you here. You’ll burn, October. And like the Harvest Queen, who burns to bring plenty to the land, your death will bring peace back to my Kingdom.”

  “Highness—” I began, and stopped. There was no point to it. The rustling had stopped; the oily presence of her voice had faded. She was already gone.

  The Queen’s words echoed in my head as I started pacing. Had things really been that much better while I was gone? I didn’t want to believe it. Considering the world I’d come back to, I wasn’t sure I should. Just how out of touch—just how insane—was she?

  The room was about eight by eight feet square. The air near the walls was so saturated with iron that it hurt to breathe there. Only the center of the room was at all clean, leaving less than four square feet where the iron wasn’t pressing in on me.

  I was on my third circuit when my foot hit a slippery patch in the straw. I toppled, unable to catch myself. My cheek hit the iron-laced stone wall, and I screamed. Jerking away, I staggered back until I hit the wall on the opposite side of the room. Even my leather jacket couldn’t offer protection from the iron. I screamed again as it hit the wounds in my back. I crumpled forward into the straw, forehead cracking against the stone floor beneath it, and the blackness took me.

  I woke up some unknowable time later, dizzier and more disoriented than ever. “Oh, no,” I muttered, trying to sit up. The straw slipped beneath me, making it impossible. “No, no, no.” I’ve had iron poisoning before; I knew the symptoms. I was dizzy, aching, and unable to focus. The room was warm, probably to keep the walls radiating poison, but I felt like I was freezing.

  I curled into a ball and buried my face in the straw, using it as a sort of primitive air filter. It smelled like mold, urine, and decay, but it was better than the alternative. I was holding on as tightly as I could, for all the good that it was going to do me. There was no way out, and with the iron manacles burning against my wrists, even breathing through the straw wasn’t going to help for long.

  Iron has a physical presence for the fae. Give it enough time and it starts making a sound, like fingernails on a blackboard inside your head. If you leave a fae prisoner in an iron cell for a few days, you won’t have to worry about them anymore; the iron prevents them from using magic to escape and breaks them at the same time. It’s practical cruelty. When you drive your prisoners catatonic, you don’t have worry about them escaping and coming back for revenge.

  The length of imprisonment before execution varies depending on the severity of the crime; the worse you were, the longer they keep you locked up before they let you die. I was starting to understand why. After three days of this, I’d welcome death with open arms. Part of me realized dying would mean Oleander and Rayseline won, but the rest of me didn’t give a damn. It just wanted the hurting to stop.

  Time slipped away as I drifted in and out of fitful, iron-soaked sleep. I rose and fumblingly relieved myself at the edge of the safe zone at least once, kicking the soiled straw against the wall. No one brought me food or water. That didn’t matter. I wasn’t hungry. During my increasingly rare moments of lucidity, I tried to figure out a way to escape with my hands chained and my strength fading. There wasn’t one.

  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 surpri
se, 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?”