by M. C. Aquila
Alan’s pulse quickened. Why was he thinking of her? He felt no love or hatred or anything discernable. Instead, she was a song stuck in his head; her constant presence in his mind was as insistent as a heartbeat.
“Something has gone… wrong,” Alan said. “You did not do as I asked. Not completely.”
“Calm down, drink some tea, and don’t worry your dear English head about it,” the Master said. “I took from you what you asked—the proof of which is at my estate.”
“Then why—?”
“I think you already know.”
Alan closed his fist around the ring. Then he resolved not to look at it again before placing it in his front jacket pocket and buttoning it securely.
“It’s touching, honestly.” Clasping his hands to his chest, the Master tilted his head and said, his voice mocking, “Kallista has always been your true heart.”
It wasn’t enough. He wasn’t strong enough to do what must be done. There had to be more steps to take to ensure he could finish this war.
Flexing his bandaged hand, Alan glanced up at the gray sky through the veil of leaves. “What do I need to do to remove any doubts, any weakness?”
The Master’s golden eyes lit up, molten with frenzy. Then he paced around, restless and buzzing. “Oh, a challenge! I do love a challenge. But this—I’ve never seen what something like this could do—”
“You do have a solution.”
“It is more of a failsafe, actually. Should you find yourself faltering in your mission or should you fail along the way, this will certainly remedy your failings.”
As Alan took a breath, it swirled in the cold air around him in a shudder.
There was a flash in the air, the acrid and electric fetor of magic, and then something appeared in the Master’s grasp: crystal so snow-white it seemed there was pure winter in the Master’s hand—cold, dead winter.
“The essence and power of Unseelie magic, the Winter King and all his beautiful monsters…” The Master held up the crystal between two fingers.
The smell and sight of it reminded him of the magic Alan had felt during the Cataclysm. Swallowing down his revulsion, he asked, “What do you want in return?”
“This I’ll give to you for free.” The Master held out the crystal to him. “I want to ensure that the Winter King’s demands are obeyed, no matter the cost. So if you falter again, shatter the crystal.”
Holding out his bandaged hand, Alan accepted it. The crystal was surprisingly heavy in his hand, and the air around it crackled with energy. “What does it do, exactly?”
The Master stomped his feet on the ground like a giddy schoolboy. “That,” he finally said, “is a wonderful question to which I have no answer. Yet.”
The sound of lumbering footfalls through the brush interrupted them.
“General Callaghan—?” Boyd’s gruff voice called through the forest.
“Your dimwitted thrall’s looking for you.” The Master’s tone was dry. “Does he know about us—the bond we have? Because I’d imagine this would be difficult to explain otherwise.”
Just as Boyd crashed through the trees, the Master vanished before his eyes. But not quickly enough.
The moment he vanished, birds began to sound their calls again, and a breeze whispered through the leaves.
“General Callaghan?” Boyd gaped. “What was—?”
“Nothing for you to worry about.”
Boyd stared, slack-jawed, where the figure had just been. His chest rose and fell raggedly, and as his bloodshot blue eyes fixed on Alan, as desperate as always, the general’s mouth twitched in disgust.
Ignoring Boyd, Alan shoved past him as he walked back toward the Iron Guard base.
“That thing—his eyes—!” Boyd followed behind like an obedient mutt, his steps loud and clumsy. “It wasn’t human.”
“Well spotted, Prance.”
He heard Boyd suck in air in disbelief, but he was no longer concerned whether or not Boyd knew the truth. It was almost over, and soon nothing would matter at all.
“I thought—”
Alan whirled around to face his soldier. “You have one last chance to prove to me that you’re worth the trouble of keeping you around. One chance. If I were you, that’s the only thing I would be thinking about. Or do you need another reminder?”
Boyd looked stricken, his head lowering. “No, General Callaghan.”
“Good. Then gather your supplies. We’re heading to the Peak District at first light.”
Chapter Seven
As he walked, James occasionally glanced up from his notebook to squint at Cai behind him. The strange man flitted his gaze over everyone in the group before he focused on Iain, glaring at the back of his head. Cai was as wily as some of the tricksters from the old storybooks Mum used to read; only, James found he didn’t like them as much in real life.
Still, his curiosity outweighed his growing ire. He had questions. Mostly he wanted to prove Iain wrong so he would just forget about his stupid notion of bringing some madman with them; it was not like his brother to trust someone like Cai so easily even if he was a knight.
Strong emphasis on was.
James ever so subtly fell back from the group until he was walking side by side with Cai. He eyed the sword at the man’s hip, thinking of how it had so easily cut through the Red Cap’s flesh, and cringed.
I saw the Red Cap stab him with its claws. I saw them go in deep, and I heard his ribs snapping. How is he still alive and walking then? If Iain really did see him in the amulet, and he really was a knight, then how is he still young and not all decrepit and stuff?
That would take powerful magic. A sacrifice.
An answer slithered into his mind, and the thought of it made his stomach cold. Ignoring the sensation, he flipped to a fresh page in his notebook, his pen poised as if he were about to interview a celebrity.
“So what, uh, did you trade for it, for immortality?” James asked him, his voice low. “That is how you’re alive, isn’t it? What kind of faery did you make the deal with?”
Cai just stared ahead, his mouth a hard, stubborn line.
“Why did you want to live forever anyway?” James continued. “I mean if I were immortal, I would use my time to learn everything. But I don’t think that’s what you’re doing, is it, between the being a ghost story and sword fighting?”
The man narrowed his green eyes, absently scratching at his ginger beard as he asked, “Are you interested in making a deal with a faery?”
James blinked in surprise. “Well, uh, no. I’m not interested in making one, exactly. I’m just interested in how they work and what kind of faeries are involved.”
“Why?”
“I like to learn.” James forced out a careless laugh. “Also, I’ve just found out that I’m in a faery deal, you know, against my will. I was traded in one. But there isn’t a lot of research on them besides in fairy tales, which aren’t always factual enough to collect viable information from.”
He felt like he was speaking about some other boy who had been traded like an object. It was easier to focus on the information and see it objectively that way.
“Fairy tales are more accurate than you might think.” Cai avoided looking at him. “A lot of the little rules that the fairies follow—and the way they have no regard for most humans and how deceptive they are—that’s all true in real life.”
After scribbling that information down, James hummed thoughtfully. “You know there are fairy tales about the knights and stuff too. I’ve read those. Would you say those are reliable?”
Cai grunted. “Depends.”
James was about to keep pressing him on fairy tales when he realized He’s completely avoided my first question on faery deals. He’s got me talking about something else, changed the subject. He’s clever, but I can be clever too.
“So that’s what you’ve been doing with your faery-deal-given immortality,” James said knowingly, snapping his fingers like he’d figured out an impor
tant clue. “Reading fairy tales.”
The man’s smile was faint but amused. “Fairy tales are better than most material, that’s for sure. At least they’re honest about things that matter… such as the fact that no one can learn everything.”
“Well, no one person can learn everything in a lifetime by himself,” James conceded. “But if you learn from what others have researched before you, there’s no telling.”
For the first time in a while, Cai turned his head to look at him. His features were sternly creased. “Is that what you think then? That if you learn enough about faery deals, you’ll be able to just skip out of the one you’re in?”
“Exactly.” A jolt of anxious excitement rushed through James as he flipped to the pages he’d dedicated to information on Mum. “See, I know it can be done somehow because my mum, uh, traded her life instead. Now the deal is switched to her, but I’m still marked. By the way, what does it mean to be marked? Are you marked too since you made a faery deal?”
Cai was silent for a few moments, and James thought he might not answer at first. But then he said, “What your mother did was extremely odd. I’ve never heard of something like that.”
“What, uh, do you mean?”
The man shrugged and said, “But I’m not marked, not the way you must be. The deal’s effects are upon me. And I don’t know if they are upon you, but if you are connected to it… it might be like those watermarks that they print on papers. But you’d be better off asking a high-class faery of some kind about all this, if you find one you can deal safely with for information. If such a creature exists.”
James wasn’t writing that down, just staring at his paper with a sick feeling in his stomach. The deal’s effects are upon him? What does that mean?
“You didn’t make a faery deal either.” James inhaled sharply. “It just… happened to you, didn’t it, like it happened to me?”
Cai’s voice was rough and implied that James should drop the subject. “I would never make a deal with a faery. Never.”
“So that’s a yes then.” James clicked his pen. “Do you know who did it or why? I’m just curious.”
“You want a black eye?” Cai asked flatly. “Just curious.”
James felt his face drain of color, but he looked straight ahead and said casually, “You could do that. But my brother would give you much worse than a black eye.”
Cai gaped at him, perhaps trying to grasp that he had just been threatened. “Oh, you think so, do you? I’d like to see that, seeing as how I can’t die—”
“What?” James scribbled that down fiercely.
“Oi! What are you writing?” Cai grabbed for the notebook.
James darted out of his reach and up the path and in front of Iain. His brother jolted in surprise, then frowned behind him at Cai, seeing where James had run from.
“Everything all right, James?” Iain asked.
James just nodded, breathless, and hid a smug smile.
After a while of trudging down the muddy, damp roads, the sky darkened as evening arrived; it was still gray, but there were bursts of orange peeking through the clouds at sunset. James looked down at his mud-caked trainers and groaned, wondering if his feet would ever be dry again. He was distracted from his misery when Alvey sighed loudly ahead of him, pushing her chair slower than normal.
James jogged up behind Alvey’s chair, leaned down, and asked, “Need a push for a bit, Alvey? I’m not, um, tired. And I was thinking about something Cai said…”
Alvey slowed her wheeling to consider him, tilting her head up. When she did so, the light reflected off her skin just so, and James’s heart started to pound in his ears when he thought of how soft it would feel.
I know she’s part Light elf, but is skin supposed to glow like that? And her hair looks good too and soft. And—
“—well!”
“Um, what?” James’s face heated.
“I said, very well. You may push my chair for a bit.”
“Oh, right.” He jerkily pushed her chair along. Then, after a moment, he composed himself, and the wheels glided smoothly. “So, I was thinking…”
“About Cai?”
James raised an eyebrow, chuckling a little. “What? No— I mean, yes, but—”
When she tilted her head up toward him again, James focused on the woods to his right, feeling guilty for staring with her knowing and not wanting to be distracted again.
“Iain seems to think he is a knight of old,” Alvey said, a smile in her voice. “Methinks he is cursed, which would prove Iain’s visions correct.”
James brightened, snapping his gaze away from the trees as his brain went into research mode. “That’s what I was thinking, because he let slip that he can’t die!”
Letting out an airy sigh, Alvey fell back against her chair. “Iain certainly has been determined and aggressive about this whole amulet affair.”
James scoffed. “Uh, you said that like it’s a good thing. It’s actually really, really irritating.”
“Well, ’tis just that they are very masculine, human traits. They are not what I am used to.”
“Right.” James continued, confused. “You’re interested in humans, right?”
“I suppose one could put it that way.”
Gaining confidence, he said, “See, I could teach you about, um, humans and stuff. What it’s like to be human so you can embrace your human half. I can answer any questions you have—”
“Describe him to me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Iain. Describe him.”
James laughed loudly, hitting a pitch. Then he whispered, “Are you serious? Because that’s kind of strange.”
When Alvey slammed her palms hard on her armrests in response, James babbled, “Uh, he’s got, uh, brown hair, I guess. Our skin’s the same brown color. Uh…”
“Tell me, is he tall and strong? He is a soldier, after all.” She giggled into her hands, and the sound was unmistakably weird in the way that only girls could be weird.
James was winded like someone had sucker-punched him. As his pulse raced, he realized that Alvey liked Iain. His stomach twisted with jealousy; it left an acidic taste in his mouth.
She likes him. It shouldn’t be surprising. Why would she like me?
He hadn’t realized how long he’d been silent for until it began to drizzle and the sun had set. Alvey complained and covered herself in her shawl. Just ahead, caravans were parked alongside the road, their headlights illuminating the falling raindrops.
To the surprise of everyone, Cai shouldered past them (shouldering past Iain perhaps a little too hard) and waved to one of the groups that was sitting under an awning attached to their large caravan around a fire pit. They looked like a large extended family.
“All right, Cai?” one of the men said brightly. “It’s been a while!”
“Only a year,” Cai answered. “And yourself? Still up to no good, I’ll bet.”
Behind Cai, Deirdre and Iain exchanged shocked glances, and Deirdre whispered, “He has friends? I can’t believe he has friends.”
There was a brief exchange between Cai and the man before the latter beckoned them over, saying, “You and those young friends of yours are free to stay with us for tonight. But once we reach the festival, you’re on your own!”
James drifted over to Iain and Deirdre as Alvey wheeled herself ahead out of the rain with renewed energy. Iain looked uncertain, eyeing the caravans warily.
The family was nothing but warm and welcoming to them, offering them a place to sleep and food and drink. James threw himself down on one of the folding cloth chairs provided and glared into the fire.
Iain opted to stand, leaning against the caravan and mostly listening as Cai talked with the group, after offering thanks to their hosts. Then, when James heard Iain hiss, he looked up to see a woman bringing out four bottles of spirits from the caravan, two in each hand.
“Are you up for a drink with the lads, Cai?” Cai’s friend asked as he t
hrew his arm around him, laughing and already red-faced and slurring himself. “I think I already know your answer, but maybe you’ll—”
“I’ll knock one back, sure.” Cai grabbed an empty glass and held it out to be filled with frothy amber liquid.
Iain’s mouth formed a hard line, and he crossed his arms. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Cai. We have more walking to do tomorrow. Early. Crack of dawn, in fact.”
The two glared at each other, and James had no idea whose will was stronger.
But Cai looked away first. Then he threw his head back and downed his drink in one go. Afterward, he took a breath, wiped his mouth, and said to his startled friend, though looking directly at Iain, “I’ll have another glass of that. Cheers.”
Chapter Eight
Deirdre flitted around the caravans like a butterfly, chatting merrily with the travelers. The rain briefly let up, and dinner became a potluck event as several caravans that knew each other came together around a large fire in the middle of the road. Several trailers passed by, honking at the crowd and going around them.
After about an hour when the rain began to fall and she helped with the hasty cleanup, Deirdre spotted some men lurching away to their caravan, singing some nonsense and opening fresh bottles of brandy. They seemed surprised when Cai joined them but happily welcomed him into their circle. She was tempted to scold Cai, but the memory of the gin stinging her face stopped her.
“That venison was terrible,” Alvey said, rolling her chair next to Deirdre’s lawn chair about twenty minutes later.
Their hosts’ caravan had a very large awning on one side, looking out into the forest. And they were parked on high, stony ground on the side of the road, making for a dry makeshift patio. The rain fell steadily around them.
“I liked it,” Deirdre said, smiling at the memory of dinner. “It was nice to have meat for a change.” But then she spotted the bandages on her hands, and her smile faded. “Alvey?”
“What?”
“I need to control my magic, all my magic.”
“Why?” The younger girl grinned broadly. “Destroying the flask was stupid, but ’twas hilarious.”