Reap the Wind

by Karen Chance

  “Because they wanted something!”

  “Of course. When else do the powerful notice the rest of us? But it didn’t matter to the tribes of dark fey, who suddenly found themselves decked in the colors of the great houses, with golden chains around their necks and important-sounding titles before their names. They who had been nothing were now valued auxiliaries, and in some cases, even front-line troops—”

  “Cannon fodder!”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I guess they didn’t have cannons yet. “They put them out to absorb casualties, to save the light fey numbers.”

  “Yes, and the dark knew this. But they thought if they fought hard enough, did well enough, proved their worth, their families would be honored. Be given lands to live on, titles to hold, be able to hold their heads up among any in the land . . .”

  “And when the war was over?”

  He sat back against the tree. “What do you think? What do you see?”

  I looked back at the spectacle and the ring of watching faces and didn’t answer.

  “But the scars didn’t heal,” he told me. “The dark fey clans who were on different sides in the fighting still despise each other. For old wounds, for older resentments, and because they cannot fight the ones who were really the cause of their suffering. The light fey are too strong, and the gods . . .”

  “Have a lot to answer for. So do their servants!”

  Their children, I thought, looking around. Yes, the percentage of godly blood might be small now, might be minuscule even, but once, these had been their sons and daughters. How did you throw away your own flesh and blood? How did you look at a tiny child and call it a monster?

  “If it’s different from you, it’s not so difficult,” Pritkin said softly, because I must have spoken aloud without realizing it.

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “No, I don’t believe you could. But you aren’t fey. And the light fey . . . aren’t like us.”

  I glanced back at him, because there had been something in his voice. And discovered that there was something in his face, too. And this time, I didn’t need a translation.

  I’d seen the same expression often enough, in the mirror.

  It looked like the dark fey weren’t the only ones who had felt abandoned.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  The crowd was rapt, watching their two heroes courageously battle to keep us from going over the rocks, while showers of sparks sprayed around like fireworks. Or like massive waves of water, suffocating even in the air. All of a sudden, I was finding it hard to breathe.

  I sat back against the tree trunk and concentrated on my beer.

  “I never knew my parents,” I told Pritkin. “They had . . . an accident . . . early, and I was left with a guardian who . . . didn’t like me much.”

  He waited, but I didn’t elaborate. I wasn’t sure how much I could tell him, how much he’d remember later. We’d shared some pretty memorable events already, but let’s face it, the sixth century was the sixth century. I’d probably end up just some crazy witch he met, a crazy witch named Ohshit. I stifled a half-hysterical laugh with my mug, because he was looking fairly serious for once, but it fit. Oh, God help me, but it did.

  “Mine didn’t like me, either,” he finally said.

  “You had guardians?” I hadn’t known that. Although I supposed I should have guessed. Rosier wouldn’t go to all this trouble for a child without seeing that he grew up.

  Pritkin nodded. “An old farmer and his wife. My mother was part fey, but she died, and my father . . . I suppose he didn’t want the burden of raising a child alone. He told the old couple that he would come back for me someday, but the woman told me not to expect it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Part-fey children sometimes turn out . . . strangely. She used to watch me; I think she was waiting for me to sprout a tail or grow donkey ears or some such! I never did, but she never stopped checking my ears, on the pretext of washing them. I think she was disappointed that they weren’t even pointed. She said my father was probably relieved to be rid of me.”

  “Charming.”

  Pritkin shook his head. “She was all right. Just superstitious and fearful. They both were. The world was changing, and they didn’t know how, or where, or if they’d fit into the new one. I think that’s why she didn’t like me. She could tell I wasn’t afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything. According to her, the whole world was a danger, especially to a child. Venture too far into the marshes, and the will-o’-the-wisp would lead you to your doom. Wander into the forest, and the monster Afang would drag you back to his cave, littered with the bones of disobedient little boys and girls. Go swimming, and the mermaids would lure you into dark water until you drowned. And then there was always the bwgan, who would get you for almost anything else!”

  “But you weren’t worried?”

  He shook his head. “I was . . . intrigued. The stories were supposed to keep children safe by giving them reason to avoid dangerous areas. But they had the opposite effect on me. I wanted to see if the mermaids were as beautiful as everyone said. To find the Afang and see the fabled spikes on its hide. To follow a will-o’-the-wisp, in case it would lead me into faerie . . .

  “I listened to her stories, the most frightening ones she knew, and then asked for more. Why not? They were the most exciting things about my life! And most of them were about faerie, where I wanted to go more than anything.”

  “To find your mother’s people.”

  He nodded. “I didn’t know why they’d left me. Just that the fey were different; you never knew why they did what they did. But everyone always said the same thing: they would come for me someday. They always came back for their children.”

  But they hadn’t. Pritkin had repeatedly shown a lot of knowledge about faerie, even going to negotiate with the dark fey king, or the guy calling himself that, in my day. He’d also made a later visit to find out some information about a would-be assassin. But neither of those trips had exactly gone the way I’d have expected for someone who had spent the majority of his childhood among the fey.

  Instead of, say, slipping through whatever portals he could find and running amok until they threw him out.

  “I was six years old the first time I ran away,” he told me, “six and convinced I had outgrown that sorry place. I recall packing my small belongings—not too difficult—and being on my way several times. To be honest, I am surprised they didn’t let me go.”

  I wasn’t.

  I’d met his father.

  “But they always brought me back, before I’d had a chance to see anything. They said it was for my own good, and of course they were right. I’d have likely died of exposure or been picked up by slavers or worse on my own. But I didn’t understand that. All I knew was that nothing ever happened on that farm. Every day was exactly the same: a list of chores, a bowl of soup, a cuff on the ear—or two. I was a terrible child.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Oh, I was. I asked a thousand questions and fair drove the old woman mad. The old man simply ignored me. I think he was half deaf, something for which he was doubtless grateful!”

  “Asking questions doesn’t make you a bad child.”

  “No, but running away does. And disobedience and defiance. I knew they didn’t want me, that I didn’t belong there, but they wouldn’t let me leave. Money came every year for my upkeep, money they desperately needed, and it felt as if they were keeping me prisoner because of it. I was too young to look at it from the other side, to see that they might feel trapped, too. As if they had no choice but to house a monster—”

  “You weren’t a monster!”

  “—a potential monster,” he amended, “because of their poverty.”

  “They were the adults, not you. It wasn
’t up to you to make excuses for them!”

  “Well, I didn’t. I resented the hell out of them and caused them no end of trouble.” His head tilted. “You didn’t feel like that?”

  “No.”

  “No anger at all?” His brow furrowed, like he couldn’t understand that. And I supposed not. Anger had always come naturally to Pritkin.

  “No.” I drew my knees up. They made a good table for my massive mug of beer. They also provided a barrier, but Pritkin didn’t take the hint.

  “Fear, resentment, bitterness, envy?” he persisted.

  “No.”

  “You must have felt something. It’s impossible to just feel nothing.”

  “No. It really isn’t.”

  He sat back and looked at me, and it was that look. That here’s-something-interesting-that-I-don’t-understand-but-I’m-going-to look. Only he wasn’t, not this time, and not merely because I couldn’t explain.

  But because he wouldn’t get it anyway.

  You learn some things when you grow up in the household of a psychotic vampire. Like not to interrupt a feed, unless you want to be dessert. And not to touch the boys’ gun collection, unless you want to play William Tell with real bullets. And that when Tony slammed through the house in that one particular way, it was probably time to go find a closet to hang out in for a while.

  And how to be small, which helped with everything else.

  Not physically so much, although I had tended to skulk around in corners, according to one of Tony’s gals, and I couldn’t argue with her. And not mentally, because if there was one thing you needed around Tony’s, it was to keep your eyes open. Just small.

  To the point of being able to walk across a room and have nobody notice. To the point of being able to practically blend in with the furniture and have people forget I was there. To the point that sometimes, I’d started to wonder if I was really there, or if maybe I could see ghosts because I was one, too.

  I’d eventually decided that anyone with as many scraped knees as me was probably human, but I’d never forgotten how to be small. In fact, I’d sometimes thought that the main reason I’d been able to avoid Tony’s guys for so long after I ran away was that I’d practically spent my life practicing for it. And in a household of creatures who read emotions almost as well as actual words.

  Vamps wouldn’t like the comparison, but they were like dogs in how tuned in they were to their surroundings. The extra-sharp senses helped with that, but it was more than just better eyesight or whatever. It was the need of a predator to tell who is vulnerable and who is not. Who will make a good victim, and who will fuck your shit up. Vamps don’t make those kind of mistakes often, especially vamps who work as the foot soldiers for a vampire mobster.

  Tony’s boys were good.

  But so was I. And I’d figured out that a major part of staying small was being able to detach your emotions from your surroundings, to flip a switch and just go dim, there but not there in some vitally important way. Vamps didn’t notice me a lot of the time, because I didn’t fall into the category of either predator or prey. I wasn’t dangerous, but I wasn’t afraid, either. So I was invisible, or as close as anyone could be to creatures with that kind of eyesight.

  I thought of Pritkin, that curious, stubborn, angry little boy at Tony’s, and shuddered.

  And looked up to find him watching me.

  “If I didn’t react, they didn’t notice me as much,” I said. “It was . . . easier . . . not to be seen.”

  He looked away, at the still-running spectacle, and his jaw tightened. The changing orange-red light limned his profile and lit his hair. For a moment, he almost looked like his fire-self: a glowing sprite thrumming with barely repressed energy. Then he suddenly looked back at me. “I see you.”

  You always did, I thought, watching sparks dance in his eyes.

  And then I drank beer. “Did you ever find any fey?”

  Pritkin looked frustrated, like he wasn’t ready for a change of topic yet. But in the end, he went with it. He sat back.

  “No. But it didn’t matter. When they were ready, they found me.”

  “What?” My head came up.

  He nodded. “I was young, but I remember it perfectly. A group of them, dressed in fine clothes, like nobles, but with no horses. I thought that was odd. How did they get around with no horses?”

  “How did they?”

  “I found out later that there was a portal in the woods, not far from the house. They’d left their horses on the other side. It seems that, every time they brought them into our world, some damn human stole them.”

  I grinned in spite of myself. “I’d have liked to see that. The mighty fey, sloshing through the mud.”

  “There wasn’t any that day, I’m afraid. But you should have seen the Svarestri this morning. They’d found some old mule and loaded it up as part of their disguise. But it was having none of it. It’s why I gave them a second glance: a too-tall group standing around in too-fine clothes in the middle of the road, cursing a mangy old mule.”

  “Did it help?”

  “Quite the opposite. The creature had stopped to eat some weeds, but when they began cursing it, and then striking it, it bucked and reared, almost hitting one in the teeth.”

  “Too bad it missed.”

  He nodded agreement. “After which it ran off, and they didn’t bother to chase it, despite the fact that it supposedly held all their goods. And I became . . . curious.”

  “You’re always curious.”

  “How would you know?”

  “You . . . come across that way.”

  “That’s strange. I can’t figure you out at all.”

  “Don’t try.”

  “But I want to try. A woman who wears peasant garb but carries a fortune in magic. Who travels alone, without guards, which many men would hesitate to do these days. Who knows about portals and recognizes faerie, but doesn’t know who the Green Fey are.”

  Damn it.

  “Who calls me by a name that isn’t mine, but who seems to know me . . . and to care what happens to me.”

  I always forgot how smart Pritkin was, and it always bit me on the ass. “Tell me about the fey,” I persisted. “You said they came to your house?”

  He regarded me solemnly for a moment, and for the first time, I thought he might not answer. I wasn’t exactly being forthcoming myself. But he surprised me again.

  “They showed up one morning, out of the blue. The old people were cowering inside, afraid to even speak to them, just praying they’d go away. I doubt they’d seen any fey before, but they’d heard the stories; they thought they were going to be abducted. And I . . . hoped to be.”

  “What did the fey want?”

  “To ask about my mother, my father, what I remembered. But I couldn’t tell them anything. I’d been too young when I came to the farm. It was all I’d ever known.

  “Then they wanted me to do some magic for them, but I barely even knew what it was. Magic was something out of the fables, and far less interesting than the monsters and the heroes who slayed them. Or the cauldrons that gave unlimited food. Or the great battles fought with mythical weapons. Magic was something for potty old wizards; I wasn’t interested in magic.”

  I smiled.

  “But they insisted, and seemed annoyed by my confusion. Finally, one of them showed me something.” Pritkin’s eyes grew distant. “He was blond, not dark like the others. And wearing plain gray instead of green. He raised a leaf from the ground without touching it, asked me to do the same. I didn’t know what he meant at first; I kept picking it up and handing it to him.”

  I bit my lip in sympathy.

  “I was only seven, and they were so tall, and they were all looking at me. One of the others smirked and said something I didn’t understand. But the one in gray was patient. He told me not to
think of the leaf but of the breeze. To call it to me.”

  “And did you?”

  “I didn’t know how. I just remember getting angry. I’d wanted the fey to come for so long, so very long, and now they were there, but instead of taking me away, they were asking me to do this impossible thing. This thing that no one could do, but that I wished I could. I wished the leaves would rise up and swallow us, so I wouldn’t have to see their smug faces anymore . . .

  “And then they did.

  “A little breeze blew up, all of a sudden. And the leaves—it was autumn, and they were everywhere—whirled up all around us, like a miniature storm. First a few and then more and more, until I couldn’t see the fey anymore, until I couldn’t see anything.”

  There was still wonder in his face.

  “I take it they were impressed?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “If anything, they seemed . . . unhappy. There was a discussion. I don’t know what was said; I couldn’t understand them. But there was a woman there, beautiful but cold, and she kept scowling at me. Looking back, I was probably ragged and dirty and ill-mannered, just a worthless urchin in her eyes, but at the time, I didn’t understand that. I just knew she didn’t like me, and in the end, they went away.”

  “They were stupid, then.”

  He smiled slightly. “Do you know, some of them came back? For several years, they came, by twos and threes, men and women in gray, and stayed for a while in the forest near the house. They didn’t invite me to their camp, but they knew I would come, and I have to believe that was why they were there. They taught me things: magic, the lore of their world, even some of their language. But they never took me with them when they left. And they never told me why.”

  “They were stupid,” I said again, more harshly that time, because there had been wistfulness in his voice, and the echo of the confusion and pain of a child who didn’t understand why he wasn’t good enough. Why nobody wanted him.