A Fair Fight
Authors: Katherine Perkins,Jeffrey Cook
A Fair Fight
Book Three of the Fair Folk Chronicles
by Jeffrey Cook and Katherine Perkins
Cover by Clarissa Yeo of Yocla Designs
Text Copyright © 2016 Jeffrey Cook and Katherine Perkins
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, and events are either imaginary or used in a fictitious manner.
All Rights Reserved
Dedicated to three of the great popularizers of mythology:
Edith Hamilton,
Joseph Campbell,
and Roy Thomas (writer of Thor #279)
Table of Contents
Chapter 2: Atypical Senioritis
Chapter 6: A Perfectly Normal Pizza Date
Chapter 9: Proactive Princessing
Chapter 11: Basket Woman to Gray Lady
Chapter 12: Unconscionably Terrible
Chapter 14: Diplomacy by Other Means
Chapter 15: Eel-Infested Waters
Chapter 18: Revelations with Illustrations
Chapter 21: The Right Kind of Lullaby
Chapter 23: Shakespeare in the Park
Chapter 28: A Crazy Engineering Folk Song
Chapter 32: Flowers, Silk, and Reality
Chapter 38: Time and a Saved Dance
Chapter 39: End of the Beginning
Chapter 40: Event of the Season
The will o' wisp provided the only illumination in the depths, the pale blue orb bobbing slowly ahead of the Gray Lady as she descended. Once she neared the underground river, blue light began to contrast with the pale greenish-yellow of bioluminescent fungus growing across the stone.
Two sentries bearing pikes with cold black iron at the ends crossed them in front of her path. "You're a long way from home."
The blue light drifted forward as the Lady stopped. "You should let me pass," came the whispering voice from the glowing orb.
"No one recognizes your authority here. Go home."
"I'm no longer seneschal, and I'm not here on the King's business. I will, however, have words with Tiernan."
The guards tensed, hands tightening on their spears. "Is that so?"
The Lady remained perfectly still, looking right past the pair. "It is so. He'll want to hear what I have to say."
The pair glanced between themselves, "Then pass your message along. We'll see that he gets it," the one who hadn't been speaking before offered.
"I will deliver the message to Tiernan myself. Tell the boatman."
The pair exchanged glances one more time, then the spears parted. "Tell the boatman yourself, and if Tiernan doesn't like what you have to say, it's your funeral."
"Perhaps so." She continued on to the water and lit the torch that signaled for a boat. The boatman hesitated, but gestured her aboard when she offered a pair of coins. Tiernan did love his symbolism.
The trip into the depths was a long one, and they passed three more guard stations along the only route, with dark-clad sorcerers and archers watching the passage.
A tall, especially pale young sidhe with wide, dark eyes and shock white hair—just one remaining streak a familiar shade of red—waited for her at the docks of the underground village. He was flanked by eight more warriors, bearing more of the long spears tipped with cold iron, holding them at the ready.
“
How did you know where to find us?” he asked.
"I have my sources. You keep the pikes?" the wisp asked. "Here?" Despite the threat, the Gray Lady stepped off the boat.
"Any fight that happens with our own kind will be a real one," he said. "I'm more surprised that you're here. The middle of nowhere, a place that is barely a rumor as a den of 'renegades too far beyond the concept of order to qualify as criminal.' Something terrible could happen, and who would hear?"
As the wisp answered, "You would hear," the Gray Lady's pale lips parted.
A gesture from the white-haired man, and the pikes were all carefully raised to be less threatening, and all but one of the warriors, Tiernan's right hand man, stepped away. "It'd be a real fight indeed. But it isn't necessary if you don't think it so."
The bean sidhe's lips closed again. "I do not."
Tiernan nodded. "Who sent you? My aunt? Her lapdog? I'd ask about your boss, but I hear that he kicked you out."
The Gray Lady narrowed her eyes slightly at mention of Riocard, but let the comment pass without any other note. "No one sent me. I'm on my own business."
"I'm not used to the King's hand having her own business. Is this something to do with the mortal?"
"The mortal was a tiny piece of something far larger. The ice is breaking."
Tiernan nodded. "So Balor wasn't all there was to it. I'd heard rumors, but Inwar, curse the Northerner, keeps things close."
"You knew of O'Neill's goals?"
"That he was going after Balor's grave? I make a point of knowing about those things that remind my dear aunt of her own mortality."
"And yet she stood against the undead."
"That was the undead. I'm curious what would have happened had Balor risen. And skeletons aren't Fomoire. Well, they shouldn't be. But they certainly exposed weaknesses in the vaunted armies of The Last Home, didn't they?"
"Perhaps. We'll know soon enough if they've dealt with those weaknesses or not."
"Not going to hold out hope for some saving grace, now that the experts in Summer and Winter are both on the problem?"
"I place very little stock in hope."
“
Is that why the rumors can't sort out whether he fired you or you quit? Did you just cut your losses and run?”
There was another stretch of silence before the wisp spoke. “He has a daughter.”
"Oh, yes. I know. I make it a point of hearing when my aunt has a plan sabotaged, too. I'm in favor, obviously, whether I've any regard for the Unseelie or not.”
The blank-mirror eyes stared at him. “Are you?”
“
I am.”
“
I would have suspected you might have approved of the queen's plan, assuming your obviously discreet sources reported it in full.”
His dark eyes twitched. “They didn't need to. It was defeated by a mortal-raised child, so it was obvious that like most of her plans, it was based in high-minded intentions and no regard for reality.” He waved dismissively. “And then, again, the matter with O'Neill. Lucky the girl was along, weren't they?"
"Do you really think Riocard has ever relied on something as uncertain as luck?"
Tiernan paused, narrowing his eyes. "You're sure you're not still working for the King? You sound like you still think much of him.”
The Gray Lady faced Tiernan directly, so that he could look straight at her blankly-mirrored eyes, though the wisp continued to do the speaking. "I try to have a realistic assessment of the people around me."
Tiernan looked away, gritting his teeth, one hand curling into a fist, the other hand resting on his sword hilt. "You may wish to watch your words."
"You may wish to watch your temper before it gets you into trouble."
Tiernan relaxed slightly, hand moving away from the sword hilt, but only a small bit. "As long as we're talking about realistic assessments, Lady, what do you think the odds are that the Fomoire have kept your child alive, below the ice, all these years?" He finally lifted his eyes back to hers.
The Gray Lady tensed, and the will o'wisp darkened in shade slightly, staring back at Tiernan for several long, silent seconds, before she answered. “With these strange, growing cracks in the lake, we may find out before Midsummer, if the diplomatic efforts find no new solutions. They'll send messengers, and soon."
"Perhaps, or perhaps my aunt will be true to her word. Or perhaps she'll assume that we've already made some deal with the Fomoire. After all, they are the enemy of my enemy."
"And have you?"
Tiernan smiled. "Now we're getting to the heart of the matter.” But he didn't say any more.
“
In terms of the enemies of your enemy,” the whispers resumed, “does hating the ljosalfar, for instance, make people good neighbors?”
“
They're still Northern savages,” Tiernan said, waving dismissively. “But they've been mostly quiet ever since their last set of raids on the ogres. I'm not out to start wars, only to finish them. At any rate, be assured, Lady: if and when An Teach Deiridh sends messengers, we'll be ready and waiting for them."
Chapter 2: Atypical Senioritis
“
Senior year's gone by fast,” Lani said, sitting on Megan's bed, while Megan worked at her desk.
“
It has,” Megan answered as she brushed the pastels across the page. “It's been busy.” As she spoke, she added variations in the shading and texture of the ice that made up the background of her picture, showing a number of figures out ice-fishing. “It probably would have been even if school, applications, and first dates were everything. But then there's magic practice and … you know.” Because 'worrying about an imminent mystic-worlds war' was hard to say.
“
Yeah, I know,” Lani said.
There was a pause for a while, as Megan looked over the figures in chairs, with fishing poles, and lines put through holes in the ice. Megan picked up the red so that she could add a baseball cap to one.
Lani spoke again. “So how'd your mom take the latest doctor's appointments?”
“
Pretty well. I think she's finally re-adjusted to doctors who think doubling a medication dosage isn't always the answer. Not too surprising, since it's...well, it's been a really good year for her.”
“
You're thinking about telling her the whole truth soon, aren't you?”