Between Worlds: the Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories (3 page)

“Devereux controls it?” Giles guessed, thinking of the
red ruin of the potter’s house. “He made it kill the potter?”

“He must have. It wouldn’t attack an old woman unless
it was forced.”

“But why send it here?”

Kade threw him an enigmatic look. “There’s been too
much happenstance already tonight. She’s not trying to seduce a pack mule. She’s
after you.”

“Me?” he said, startled, but Kade was already gone.

* * *

Kade closed her eyes and pulled glamour out of the
night air and the dew, drawing it over herself. It was a hasty job, and it
wouldn’t have fooled anyone in daylight, but the creature below was not
intelligent and the dark would lend its own magic.

She grabbed the tackle that hung from the loft and
swung down, the heavy rope rough against her hands and bare feet.

The glaistig turned toward her, smiling and stretching
out its arms. It would see a young man, in shirt and breeches, barefoot,
details of feature and form hidden by the barn’s shadow. Kade moved toward it,
dragging her feet slightly, as if half-asleep. She was thinking through the
rote words of a binding spell, to tie the glaistig to her and let her call it whenever
she chose. The difficulty was that she had to touch the creature for the
binding to take effect.

Within touching distance, the glaistig hesitated,
staring at her. Its eyes threw back the moonlight like the glassy surface of a
pool, but Kade could read confusion and suspicion there.

Before it could flee, Kade leapt forward and grabbed
its hands. It shrieked in surprise, the shrill piercing cry turning into a
growl. It tried to jerk free and only succeeded in dragging Kade across the
dusty yard.

Kade stumbled, the gravel tearing into her feet. The
glaistig was a head taller than she and heavier. She dug her heels in and
gasped, “Just tell me why he sent you after my new favorite musician and we’ll
call this done.”

“Let go!” Far gone in rage, the creature’s voice was
less alluringly female, but far more human.

Straining to stay on her feet, Kade hoped it didn’t
get the idea to slam her up against the barn or the stone wall of the innyard,
but the creature seemed just as bad at advance planning as she was. “I’m giving
my word. Tell me why he sent you and I’ll let you go!”

The glamour had dissolved in the struggle, and the
residue of it lay glittering on the earth like solid dewdrops. The glaistig
abruptly stopped struggling to peer at her, confused. “What are you?”

“I’ve power over all the fay and if you don’t tell me
what I want to know now I’ll bind you to the bottom of the village well in a
barrel with staves and lid of cold iron. Does that tell you who I am?” Kade
snarled. She had no idea if that would tell the glaistig who she was or not. And
with her spell trembling like sinew stretched to the breaking point she couldn’t
have bound a compass needle to true north.

The glaistig shivered. “He didn’t tell me.”

“Oh, come now, you can do better than that.” Sweat was
dripping into Kade’s eyes.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” it wept, sounding like a
human woman again. “I swear, he told me to come here after the music-maker, he
didn’t tell me why. Do you think he would tell me why? Let me go.”

Kade released the spell in relief and the glaistig
flung away from her. It stumbled, then fled towards the river in an awkward
loping run. Kade sat down heavily on the dirt. She realized Giles was standing
beside her, that he had been outside watching nearly the entire time.

He said, “You could have been killed.”

She got to her feet, legs trembling with strain. “No,
only nibbled on a little.” She shook the dust out of her hair. “I can call that
glaistig back whenever I want it. Though I’m not sure why I would. This all started
out in a very promising way, but Devereux hasn’t tried to fight me, or set me
any puzzles to solve.”

There was a moment of silence, then Giles said, “What
do you mean?”

Something in his voice made Kade reluctant to answer. She
watched the glaistig disappear among the trees near the river. Beautiful as it
was, it was still just as empty-headed and perverse as the rest of the fay. It
might guide a child out of the forest or care for elderly fishermen, but it
would certainly kill any young man it could catch.

Giles asked, “Did he have any reason at all to kill
the potter?”

“No.” She could all but hear him drawing that last
conclusion. If Giles Verney, balladeer, knew enough about Kade Carrion to
realize that killing the village potter would bring her here, than surely the
local sorcerer would realize it as well.

“The potter did nothing to him, knew nothing about
him?”

Kade looked at him, his face a white mask in the
moonlight. “What did you think this was?” she asked quietly.

“I didn’t think it was a game. I didn’t think he did
it just to get your attention.” He didn’t sound shocked, only resigned.

With a snort of irony, Kade said, “It’s what we do,
Giles.” She drew the fallen, scattered glamour around her to cloak herself in
moonlight and shadow, and walked away.

* * *

Later in the night, when the moon was dimmed by
clouds, Kade walked up the cart track to the gates of the Warrender manor
house.  The walls were crumbling like those around the village, too low to
attract royal attention and be torn down. The house was small by city
standards, but it was better than anything anyone else in Riversee had. It was
two stories, with high, narrow windows shuttered against the darkness.

It had never mattered before what anyone else thought
of her. The fay disliked each other as a matter of course, and Kade had never
regarded her relatives on either side of the family with anything but anger or
contempt. Having Giles’ idealistic vision of her shattered shouldn’t twist in
her heart. But she hadn’t chosen this game, Devereux had; she would find out
what he wanted and end it tonight, one way or another.

Two servants were sleeping in a shabby outbuilding
that housed the dovecote; she heard one cough and stir sleepily as she passed
the door but neither wakened.

As she had hoped, there was a doorway near the back of
the house, open and spilling lamplight. A postern door here would make a
convenient exit for someone who wanted to leave or enter late at night without
drawing attention.

The dry grass caught at her skirt as she stepped up to
the open door. The room inside was low-ceilinged and cluttered with the debris
of sorcery. Two long tables held heavy books, clouded glass vessels, curiously
shaped and colored rocks or fragments of crystal. Wax had collected at the bases
of the candles, their wan light revealing bare stone walls and soot-stained
rafters. Fortune Devereux stood at the far end of the room, his back to her,
leaning over an open book.

Kade held out a hand, took a slow breath, and tasted
the aether carefully. There was nothing, no wards that would set off nasty
spells if she touched the doorsill. She took the last step forward and leaned
in the doorway saying, “Now what do you need this mess for?”

Devereux turned, his smile slow and triumphant. His
doublet and shirt were open across his chest and she saw again that he was a
very attractive man. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

She added that smile to what she knew of sorcerers and
thought
so this room is warded
. She tested the aether again and felt the
tug of the spell this time.
Damn
. She hadn’t felt it outside because it
wasn’t set to stop her from entering the room; it was set to stop her from
leaving.
Idiot. Overconfidence and impatience will kill you without any help
from Devereux
. She didn’t like stepping into his trap, but she still
thought her power was more than equal to this mortal sorcerer’s. If he struck
at her directly, he would find that out. She smiled back, making it look easy. “I’ve
only just gotten here and you’re lying already.”

His expression stiffened.

“You bound a glaistig and killed an old potter in the
village you know by tradition I consider my property. Simply to get my
attention. But you expected me not to take the bait and appear? Really, that
makes you something of a fool, doesn’t it?”

Devereux lifted a brow. “I misspoke. I didn’t think
you would come tonight, since you were occupied with your musician.”

“I see.” She nodded mock-complacently. “Jealousy, and
we’ve only just met. Did it ever occur to you that all I had to do was point
you out to the villagers, explain how you used the glaistig to kill the old
potter, and this house would be burning down around your ears now?”

He laughed. “And I thought your loyalty to these
people was as fickle as that of the rest of the fay. I didn’t realize you were
so virtuous.”

Kade lifted a cool brow, though for some reason the
jibe about loyalty had hit home. “My loyalty is fickle, but at least they gave
me fruit and flowers. What did you ever do for me?”

“I have an offer for you.” Devereux took a step
forward. “You could benefit from an alliance with me.”

“Benefit?” She rolled her eyes. “I repeat, what did
you ever do for me?”

“It’s what I can do for you. I can give you revenge.”

This was new. No one had ever offered that before. Kade
watched his calm face carefully, intrigued. “Revenge on whom?”

“The court, the king. The tricks you play on them,
however deadly, aren’t worthy of you. With my help, and the help of others that
I know--”

“You want to use me against my royal relatives.” Kade
shook her head, disappointed, and added honestly, “It’s an audacious plan, I’ll
willingly give you that much. No man’s had the courage to suggest such a thing
to me before.”

His face had hardened and she knew it had been a long
time since anyone had refused him anything. “But it is not to your taste, I
take it.”

Kade shrugged. “If I really wanted to kill my mortal
brother I could have done it before now. What I want to do is make him and his
mother suffer, and I don’t think you or your supporters would agree to that. And
as soon as I wasn’t useful to you anymore, one of you would try to kill me,
then I’d have to kill one or more of you, and the whole mess would fall apart.”
She hesitated, and for some reason, perhaps because he was so comely, said, “If
you had approached me as a friend, it could have been different. Perhaps we
could have worked something out to serve your end.”

But from his angry expression he didn’t recognize it
as the offer it was, or he felt it was a lie or a trap.
Maybe it was,
Kade admitted to herself. Maybe what she really wanted was something else
entirely, something Devereux simply hadn’t the character to offer her.

“I suggest you reconsider,” Devereux said, his voice
harsh.

She said dryly, “I suggest you stick to sorcery and
leave politics to those with the talent for it.”

He stepped back, giving her a thin-lipped smile. “You
can’t leave. This room is warded with a curse. If you break the barrier, the
creature that loves you most in the world will die.”

Relieved, Kade laughed at him as she slipped out the
door. Fay didn’t love each other, and there was no mortal left from her
childhood who didn’t want to see her dead. He had chosen this spell badly. “Curse
away. I’ve nothing to lose.”

“I think you have!” Kade heard him call after her as she
ran through the tall grass. As she came around the side of the house, there was
a shout. Ahead in the darkness she saw moving figures and the glow from the
slow match of a musket. She swore and ducked.

The musket thundered and there was a sharp crack as
the ball struck the stone wall behind her.
If they hit me with that thing
,
Kade thought desperately,
we’re all going to find out just how human I am
.
The musket balls were cold iron, and her fay magic could do nothing to them.

But that protection didn’t extend to the gunpowder
inside the musket. She covered her head with her arms and muttered the spell
she had considered using on Warrender in the inn.

There was an explosion and a scream as someone’s
wheellock pistol went off, then a dozen little popping sounds as the scattered
grains of powder from the musket’s blast ignited.

Kade scrambled to her feet. The grass near the gate
had caught fire and she was forgotten in the face of that immediate threat. She
ran to the back wall with its loose bricks and crumbling mortar and climbed it
easily. At the top she paused and looked back. In the glow of the grass fire
she could see Devereux walking back and forth, shouting at the servants in
angry frustration. Revenge against her royal relatives would have been sweet.
But
it would never have worked, not with him, anyway
, she thought with a
grimace.
Too bad
.

* * *

It was barely dawn when she reached the inn, and
through the windows she could see that candles had been lit in the common room.
From just outside the door she thought there was more noise than seemed normal
at this hour, especially after last night’s drinking bout.