by Holly Black
Corny lunged forward, grabbing the knife and cutting at the thorns.
“No, you idiot,” Luis yelled. A knot of branches suddenly ripped free of Lala’s mouth, wormlike white roots sliding out of her throat, glistening with saliva. The great vine blackened and shriveled.
Lala started to cough. The woman knelt by her, weeping and smoothing back the girl’s hair.
Luis’s arms were striped with scratches. He stood up and looked away as if dazed.
Lala’s mother helped the girl to her feet and began to lead her toward the door. “Gracias, gracias,” she muttered.
“Wait,” Luis said. “I need to talk to your daughter for a minute. Without you.”
“I don’t want to,” Lala said.
“Can’t she come back once she’s rested?” the woman asked.
Luis shook his head and after a moment, the woman relented. “You saved her life, so I am trusting you, but be quick. I want her home and away from all of this.” She closed the door separating the hall from the room.
Luis looked at Lala. The girl swayed a little and caught herself by bracing her hand against the wall.
“What you told your mother,” he asked, “that’s not exactly what happened, is it?”
She hesitated, then shook her head.
“One of those boys gave you something to eat—maybe you just ate a little bit? Maybe just one seed?”
She nodded again, not meeting his eyes.
“But now you know better, right?” Luis asked her.
“Yes,” she whispered, then fled to join her mother. Luis watched her go. Corny watched him watch her.
“Your pixie talked to my brother, didn’t she?” he demanded, nodding to Kaye.
“What do you think?” Corny replied.
Luis yawned. “I think we’re out of here as soon as possible. I’ll show you where to sleep.”
Corny arranged himself on the floor of mattresses spread out over what might have once been a dining room. Dave had already rolled himself into a shroud of blankets against the far wall, beneath what was left of a chair rail. Kaye staggered in from the parlor, curled herself around a throw pillow, and fell immediately into sleep. Luis lay down nearby.
Flexing his fingers, Corny watched the rubber tighten over his knuckles. Already the sheen had gone off the gloves. They might be brittle by morning. Carefully, he slid out one hand and touched the edge of Luis’s duvet. The thin fabric tore, threads fraying, bleeding feathers. He watched them blow in the slight draft from the window, dusting everything like snow.
Luis turned in his sleep and feathers caught in his braids. One settled at the very corner of Luis’s mouth, fluttering with each breath. It seemed like it would tickle. Corny wanted to brush it out of the way. His fingers twitched.
Luis’s eyes slitted. “What are you looking at?”
“You drooling,” Corny lied quickly. “It’s disgusting.”
Luis grunted and rolled over.
Corny pulled his glove back on, heart beating so hard that he felt light-headed.
I like him, he thought in horror, the unfairness of that on top of everything else filling him with unfocused rage. Shit. I like him.
Kaye woke to sunlight streaming through large windows. Corny was sprawled beside her, snoring slightly. Somehow he had stolen all her blankets. Both Dave and Luis were gone.
Her mouth tasted stale, and she was so thirsty that she didn’t think about where she was or why she was there until she went into the bathroom and gulped down several handfuls of water. It tasted of iron. Iron seemed to be everywhere, bubbling up from the pipes and sifting down from the ceiling.
Padding across the cold floors to try to find something to eat, Kaye heard a strange noise, like a purse upended. The smells of mildew were more intense now and she could feel her glamour being worn away. She looked down at her hand, green as a leaf. Heading in the direction of the noise, she came to the scavenged-sofa room, where a fire blazed in the grate.
A middle-aged man with short curly hair and an overstuffed messenger bag stood near the windows. As Kaye walked in, the man started to speak. But instead of sounds, copper coins fell from his lips to clatter and roll on the worn wooden floorboards.
Luis put his hand on the man’s arm. “Did you do what I told you?” he asked, bending to pick up the pennies. “I know the metal tastes like blood, but you just got to do it.”
The man nodded and gestured wildly to his mouth.
“I told you, the cure was to eat your words. That means every single coin that came out of your mouth. You’re telling me you did that?”
This time the man hesitated.
“You spent some, didn’t you? Please, please tell me that you didn’t go to CoinStar or some stupid shit like that.”
“Ugh,” the man said, and pennies scattered.
“Go find the rest. It’s the only way you’re going to be cured.” Luis crossed his arms over his chest, lean muscles showing through the thin fabric of his T-shirt and along his bare arms. “And no more deals with the Folk.”
There were so many things Kaye didn’t know about faeries.
The man looked like he wanted to say something, probably that he didn’t appreciate being ordered around by some kid, but he merely nodded as he took out his wallet. After counting out a stack of twenties, he gathered the coins on the floor and departed without a sign of thanks.
Luis tapped the bills against the palm of one hand as he turned to Kaye. “I told you to stay out of sight.”
“Something’s happening to me,” Kaye said. “My glamour’s not working so good.”
Luis groaned. “You’re telling me that he was looking at a green girl with wings?”
“No,” she said. “It’s just that it seems so much harder to keep up.”
“The iron in the city sucks up faerie magic quick,” he said with a sigh. “That’s why faeries don’t live here if they have a choice. Only the exiled ones, the ones that can’t go back to their own courts for whatever reason.”
“So why don’t they join another court?” Kaye asked.
“Some do, I guess. But that’s dangerous business—the other court’s as likely to kill them as take them in. So they live here and let the iron eat away at them.” He sighed again. “If you really need it, there’s Nevermore—a potion—staves off the iron sickness. I can’t get you any right now—”
“Nevermore?” Kaye asked. “Like ‘quoth the raven’?”
“That’s what my brother calls it.” Luis shifted uncomfortably, smoothing back his braids. “In humans it bestows glamour—makes us almost like faeries. Gets us high. You’re never supposed to use it more than once a day or more than two days in a row or more than a single pinch at a time. Never. More. Don’t let your friend near it.”
“Oh. Okay.” Kaye thought of Dave’s haunted eyes and blackened mouth.
“Good. You ready to go?” Luis asked.
Kaye nodded. “One more question—have you ever heard of a curse where whatever someone touches withers?”
Luis nodded. “It’s a King Midas variation. Whatever you touch turns to—fill in the blank. Gold. Shit. Jelly doughnuts. It’s a pretty powerful curse.” He frowned. “You’d have to be young and rash and really pissed off to toss all that power at a mortal.”
“So the King Midas—you know how to cure it?”
He frowned. “Salt water. King Midas walked out into a brackish river and let it wash away his curse. The ocean would be better, but it’s basically the same principle. Anything with salt.”
Corny walked into the room, yawning hugely. “What’s going on?”
“So, Neil,” Luis said, his eyes going to Corny’s gloves. “What happen? She curse you by accident?”
Corny looked blank for a moment, like the nickname had thrown him completely. Then his eyes narrowed. “Nope,” he said. “I got cursed on purpose.”
7
Not the sweet, new grass with flowers
Is this harvesting of ours;
&nb
sp; Not the upland clover bloom;
But the rowen mixed with weeds,
Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,
Where the poppy drops its seeds
In the silence and the gloom.
—HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, “AFTERMATH”
Snow fell lightly around the abandoned Untermeyer estate, dusting the dirt and dead grass with white. The remains of the old fire-blackened mansion showed through the bare branches. A vast fireplace stood like a tower, overgrown with dead vines. Underneath what remained of a slate roof, the gentry of the Unseelie Court had hastily prepared camp. Roiben sat on a low couch and watched as Ethine entered his chambers. She moved gracefully, feet seeming to only lightly touch the ground.
He had composed himself, and when one of his Folk’s clawed hands happened to push her, causing her to stumble as she crossed the threshold, he only looked up as though annoyed by her clumsiness. Beside him were bowls of fruit, brought cold from dark caverns; cordials of clover and nettle; and tiny bird hearts still glossy with blood. He bit into a grape, not minding the crack of seeds against his teeth.
“Ethine. Be welcome.”
She frowned and opened her mouth, then hesitated. When she spoke, she merely said, “My Lady knows she dealt you a terrible blow.”
“I did not realize your Lady liked to brag, even by proxy. Come, have a bite of fruit, take something to cool your hot tongue.”
Ethine moved toward him stiffly and perched on the very edge of the lounge. He handed her an agate goblet. She took the shallowest of sips, then set it down.
“It chafes you to be polite to me,” he said. “Perhaps Silarial should have taken your feelings into consideration when she chose her ambassador.”
Ethine contemplated the earthen ground, and Roiben stood.
“You begged her to let someone else go in your place, didn’t you?” He laughed with vindictive certainty. “Perhaps even told her how much it hurt you to see what your brother had become?”
“No,” Ethine said softly.
“No? Not in those words, but I’ll wager you said it all the same. Now you see how she cares for those who serve her. You are one more thing with which to needle me and nothing more than that. She sent you despite your pleading.”
Ethine had closed her eyes tightly. Her hands were clasped in her lap, fingers threaded together.
He took her glass and drank from it. She looked up, annoyed, the way she had once been annoyed when he’d pulled her hair. When they were children.
It hurt him to look at her as an enemy.
“I do not see that you care for my feelings any more than she does,” Ethine said.
“But I do.” He made his voice grave. “Come, deliver your message.”
“My Lady knows she dealt you quite a blow. She further knows that your control of the other faeries in your lands is spotty after the botched Tithe.”
Roiben leaned against the wall. “You even sound like her when you say it.”
“Don’t jest. She wants you to fight her champion. If you win, she will leave your lands unmolested for seven years. If you lose, you will forfeit the Unseelie Court to her.” Ethine looked at him with anguished eyes. “And you will die.”
Roiben barely heard her plea, he was so surprised by the Bright Queen’s offer. “I cannot think but that this is either generosity or some cunning beyond my measure. Why should she give me this chance at winning when now I have near none?”
“She wants your lands hale and whole when she takes them, not weakened by a war. Too many great courts have fallen into rabble.”
“Do you ever imagine no court at all?” Roiben asked his sister quietly. “No vast responsibilities or ancient grudges or endless wars?”
“We have come to rely on humans too much,” said Ethine, frowning. “Once, our kind lived apart from them. Now we rely on them to be everything from farmers to nursemaids. We live in their cast-off spaces and sup off their tables. If the courts fall, we will be parasites with nothing to call our own. This is the last of our old world.”
“I hardly think it is as serious as all that.” Roiben looked past Ethine. He didn’t want her to see his expression. “How about this. Tell Silarial that I will take her insulting and lopsided bargain with one variation. She must wager something too. She must put up her crown.”
“She will never give you—”
Roiben cut her off. “Not to me. To you.”
Ethine opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“Tell her that if she loses, she makes you the Bright Queen of the Seelie Court. If I lose, I will give her both my crown and my life.” It felt good to say, even if it were a rash wager.
Ethine rose. “You mock me.”
He made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t be silly. You know very well that I do not.”
“She told me that if you wished to bargain, you must do so with her.” She paced the room, gesturing wildly. “Why won’t you just come back to us? Pledge yourself to Silarial, ask for her forgiveness. Tell her how hard it was to be Nicnevin’s knight. She could not have known.”
“Silarial has spies everywhere. I very much doubt that she was ignorant of my suffering.”
“There was nothing for her to do! Nothing for any of us to do. She spoke often of her fondness for you. Let her explain. Let her be your friend again. Forgive each other.” Her voice dropped low. “You don’t belong in a place like this.”
“And why is that, dear sister? Why don’t I belong here?”
Ethine groaned and slapped one open hand against the wall. “Because you are not a fiend!”
She reminded Roiben so much of his old, innocent self that for a moment he hated her, for a moment he only wanted to shake her and scream at her and hurt her before someone else did. “No? Is it not enough, what I have done? Is it not enough to have cut the throat of a nix that dared laugh too loud or too long before my mistress? Is it not enough to have hunted down a hob that stole a single cake from her table? Is it not enough to have been deaf to their entreaties, their begging?”
“Nicnevin commanded you.”
“Of course she did!” he shouted. “Again and again and again she commanded me. And now I am changed, Ethine. This is where I belong if I belong anywhere at all.”
“What about Kaye?”
“The pixie?” He gave her a quick look.
“You were kind to her. Why do you want me to think the worst of you?”
“I was not kind to Kaye,” he said. “Ask her. I am not kind, Ethine. Moreover, I no longer have any interest in kindness. I mean to win.”
“If you were to win,” Ethine said, her voice faltering, “I would be the Queen and you would be my enemy.”
He snorted. “Now don’t go casting a pall over my best outcome.” He held out the cup to her. “Drink something. Eat. After all, it is natural for siblings to squabble, is it not?”
Ethine took the cup back from him and lifted it to her mouth, but he had left her only a single swallow.
Kaye cradled a large ThunderCats thermos of coffee as she walked to Corny’s car. Luis followed, wrapped in a black coat. It hung voluminously from his shoulders, its inner lining torn to pieces. He had taken it out of the back of one of the closets, from a pile strewn with chunks of plaster.
She was glad to keep moving. As long as there was something in front of her, something still to do, things made sense.
“You got a map of Upstate New York?” Luis asked Corny.
“I thought you knew the way,” Corny said. “What kind of guide needs a map?”
“Can you two not—” Kaye started, but stopped in front of a newspaper vending machine. There, in a sidebar on the front page of the Times, was a picture of the cemetery on the hill by Kaye’s house. The hill where Janet was buried. The hollow hill under which Roiben had been crowned. It had collapsed beneath the weight of an overturned truck. The photo showed smoke billowing up from the hill, fallen gravestones scattered like loose teeth.
Corny slid quarte
rs into the machine and pulled out a paper. “A bunch of bodies were found, too burnt to identify. They’re looking for dental matches. There was some speculation that maybe people were sledding when the truck hit. Kaye, what the fuck?”
Kaye touched the picture, running her fingers over the ink of the page. “I don’t know.”
Luis frowned. “All those people. Can’t the Folk kill each other and leave us out of it?”
“Shut up. Just shut up,” Kaye said, walking to Corny’s car and jerking on the handle. Pieces of chrome came off on her singed fingers. She felt sick.
“I’ve got to unlock it,” Corny said, opening the door for her with his keys. “Look, he’s okay. I’m sure he’s okay.”
She threw herself into the backseat, trying not to imagine Roiben dead, trying not to see his eyes dulled with mud. “No, you’re not.”
“I’m calling my mom,” Corny said. He started the car while he dialed, his gloved fingers awkward.
Luis pointed out the turns and Corny drove with the phone cradled against his shoulder. This time Kaye welcomed the iron sickness, welcomed the dizziness that made it hard to think.
“She says Janet’s coffin wasn’t disturbed, but the stone’s gone.” Corny pushed his phone closed. “Nobody saw anyone sledding that late, and according to the local paper the truck wasn’t even supposed to be making deliveries in the area.”
“It’s the war,” Kaye said, putting her head down on the vinyl seat. “The faerie war.”
“What’s wrong with her?” she heard Luis ask softly.
Corny’s eyes stayed on the road. “She was dating someone from the Unseelie Court.”
Luis looked back at her. “Dating?”
“Yeah,” Corny said. “He gave her his class ring. It was a whole big thing.”
Luis looked incredulous.
“Roiben,” Corny said. At the sound of Roiben’s name, Kaye closed her eyes, but the dread didn’t ebb.
“That’s not possible,” said Luis.
“Why do you think Silarial wants to see me?” Kaye demanded. “Why do you think it’s worth two messengers and a guarantee of protection? If he isn’t dead already, she thinks I can help kill him.”