Brown River Queen (27 page)

Evis opened his mouth to protest, but the halfdead brushed past us, his dead eyes wide and dry, his mouth open as if trying to speak.

He took his place amid the other dancers, and began to spin and turn.

“That isn’t possible,” said Evis.

I beg to differ.
Stitches stared, eyes moving back and forth like those of a dreamer, behind her tight-sewn eyelids.

The capture of dancers is increasing in frequency, at a rate that appears commensurate with the expansion of the shadow.
 

“So we can either be grabbed by whatever is in the dark, or be forced to dance until our legs wear down to stumps, is that it?”

Not entirely. That which lies beyond the shadow is beginning to emerge. In doing so, it is inducing small but fundamental changes to the nature of reality within the
Queen’s
shield.

“The air feels funny,” agreed Mama with a frown. “So somethin’ is aimin’ to choke us out?”

It appears so. If I am correct, the changes exerted by the shadow will soon render our reality compatible with that which lies beyond.

“Which lets them just stroll out and snack on the dancers,” I said.
 

Stitches nodded.
Unless I collapse the shield.

“Doing that leaves us open to an ambush by Hag Mary and her pals,” said Evis. “Someone has thought of everything.”

A new pair of skeletal hands appeared from the growing shadow. Evis barked a command, and his ring of foot soldiers turned and fired.

Finger-bones shattered and flew.
 

Something in the dark howled with laughter.

A door slammed. I heard shouts, arguing, a man’s voiced, raised and furious, and a woman’s, soft but stern.

Lady Rondalee herself took the stage.

“The band can’t stop playing,” she said to Evis. “Am I right that those folks can’t stop dancing?”

Evis nodded. “You should get to your room,” he said. “It isn’t safe here.”

Lady Rondalee laughed. “Child, it’s not safe anywhere on the Brown River tonight. But I was hired to sing and sing I shall. Maybe I can do some good that way. Ease these poor souls’ pain.”

Evis frowned. Mama spoke before he could.

“I reckon we all best be doin’ whatever we can, and no mistake,” she said. “If’n you knows the risk.”

“All too well.” The Lady Rondalee smiled down at Mama. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hog.”

“Likewise, Lady of Bel Loit.”

And the Lady Rondalee began to sing.

She didn’t have music. The musicians were playing, all right, in that their hands were moving and they were making noise, but it was just noise now—tooting and twanging and discordant strumming.

The Lady Rondalee didn’t need music. She carried her own deep down in her voice, and when she sang the dancers slowed and the musicians slumped, panting and sweating, but able to steal just a moment of precious rest.

Evis gave orders. In a moment, the recorded music began to play, and the Lady used it, her voice soaring and soothing with the foreign, melancholy tune.

“She’s buyin’ us some time,” said Mama, glaring at the music box. From the look on her face, I could tell she was weighing the risk of taking one last spiteful swipe at it. “We’d best be about puttin’ it to good use.”

Darla dodged out of the way of a new dancer. “Mama, how is she doing that? Slowing them down, I mean?”

“Don’t know. They got their own magic, down Bel Loit way. I’ve heard the name Rondalee. They say she can sing up hexes like nobody’s business.”

On stage, the Lady Rondalee must have heard, because she bowed and smiled, never missing a beat.

I hauled Darla away from the weary dancers and back to our makeshift cauldron, Mama and Evis and Stitches in tow.

Armed halfdead prowled the deserted casino. More skeletal arms began to emerge from the dark. Evis forbade his men from wasting ammunition by firing on them. He held a quick conference with a trio of black-shirted day folk, and they hurried toward the main doors and out into the night.

“Let’s get this done,” said Evis, glaring at our boiling stew pot. “Stitches, Mama, how much longer?”

Another hour, perhaps an hour and ten.

Mama dropped to her haunches and started poking at her pile of trinkets and herbs. “‘Bout the same, I reckon.”

Another vacant-eyed reveler raised a ruckus by tangling with the halfdead trying to keep people away from the stricken dancers. The new dancer broke free and started twirling while the halfdead watched helplessly.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “What if I throw yonder music box into the shadow?”

“How you reckon on movin’ it at all?” Mama shook her shaggy head. “I tell ye, boy, it might as well be bolted to the floor.”

“Mama. That rope that got you here. Still got it?”

Mama nodded. “Right here in my sack.” She wanted to ask me what made me think a banshee-hair rope would be able to pull the music box when she couldn’t budge it, but she was wise enough not to ask it aloud.

I was glad. Because I didn’t have an answer. For all I knew a rope woven with Buttercup’s golden locks wouldn’t do a damned thing against a magical item of such potency, but then again I doubted even a summer-born Elf suspected a banshee was nearby.

“I need it, if it’s handy.”

“If it please ye.” Mama rummaged in her burlap sack, withdrew a number of ragged dried birds, and finally produced a tangle of what I first took for twine.

She pitched it to me.

“You call this a rope?” It was as thick as a pencil and already beginning to unravel here and there.
 

“At two pence a foot, you’re damn right I call it a rope,” said Mama. “I weren’t aimin’ to pull no millstones.”

I sat and started untangling the mess. Mama went back to her piles, muttering all the while.

“Angels and horses,” said Evis, lifting his weapon. “Stitches, can you spare a moment?”

The darkness on the wall disgorged a human skeleton—whole, complete, and animated. It bore a long, curved sword, and managed to take half a dozen tentative steps toward the nearest of the Avalante guards before an invisible barrier halted its advance.

Another bony revenant stepped from the shadow, and another, until a dozen of them pressed against a wall we couldn’t see.
 

Elemental constructs,
said Stitches.
I presume they are the vanguard for more sophisticated entities which cannot yet exist in our world.
She sounded almost disappointed at the pronouncement
. Still. The volume of influence is expanding more rapidly than I expected.
 

“If we shoot them, will they fall?”

Yes, if they suffer sufficient structural degradation. Make your shots count. Their numbers could range from finite but uncountable, to practical infinity.

Evis barked an order. Rifles cracked. Bones splintered and skeletons fell.

Immediately, more began to march out of the dark. This time, they advanced half a step farther than their now-broken brethren.

A new pair of dancers lurched toward the stage. Evis’s men made no move to stop them. While I watched, another halfdead joined the dancers, his black cloak rendering him nearly invisible as he moved.

Another volley of rifles sounded, and another wave of bones fell, only to be replaced by twice their number. I fought off the urge to open fire myself, and concentrated on unraveling Mama’s damp tangle of banshee-hair rope.

Two of the three men Evis sent outside came racing back. One was bleeding from a chest wound. The other was wrapping his bloody hand with a towel while he whispered to Evis.

I saw it in his eyes before he could speak. “I sent them to the piston deck,” he said as they left to tend their wounds. “The wheelhouse is gone. Full of that.” Evis pointed to the shadow. “Can’t get below decks either. Shadows and bone-men where the hatch used to be.”

The
Queen’s
pistons still beat beneath my feet. I could hear the wet slap of her wheel faint above the music.

“We’re still moving.”

“She was built to be unstoppable.” Evis fired, causing Mama to cuss and a skeleton man’s skull to explode. “Damn it, Markhat. Is this stew-pot and that contraption the best we’ve got?”

“No.” I’d been waiting for the right moment and decided this one was as good as any. There were people milling about. The odds that one of them was our Elf probably wouldn’t be improved by waiting. “We’ve got this.”

I pulled the false huldra out of my pocket and held it up for all to see.

Mama sprang to her feet, yelling and cussing. Evis took a step back, genuinely startled.

The last time I’d held a huldra—the real one—I’d nearly killed Evis and Mama both.
 

“Damn, boy, have you lost your mind?” Mama reached into her bag with both hands and pulled out dried, ragged bird-corpses by the handful. “You know that cursed thing will eat you alive!”

“I was told you destroyed it,” said Evis. “I was told it was gone forever.”

“It’s the only way, Mama.” I lowered the thing. Everyone on the floor had seen and all were listening. “Even it might not be enough by itself. But with this rig and Stitches’s help, I’m going to add Elf meat to my stew-pot by sunrise. Wait and see.”

Mama shook birds at me and muttered softly. Evis kept his rifle aimed at the floor, but I could almost see him trying to decide how quickly he could bring it to bear if I showed signs of being taken by the huldra.

Darla made a remarkable good show of trying to grab the thing. When I resisted, she pretended to weep, keeping her fists balled over her eyes so no one would notice the lack of tears.

“You’ve all got things to do,” I said. “What’s done is done. Let’s get back to work.”

I slipped the tortoise shell back into my pocket.

Well played,
said Stitches in her secret whisper.
I knew you would find a use for it.

I didn’t reply.
 

The last time I’d walked with the huldra, I’d become a giant, my eyes far above the rooftops and the spires and the smoke-belching stacks of the crematoriums and the foundries. As I’d walked, the huldra had whispered things to me, things I could only now recall as vague, dreamlike memories.

I’d been offered power. Been shown dark wonders. I’d been able to see into the spaces between shadow and light, and the secret things I’d seen within had allowed me to not just work magic, but bend it to my will.

As I let go of the fake huldra, a small greedy part of me wished for that power again, if only for an instant, and the hair on the back of my neck rose at the faint memory of having such a thing in my grasp.

Mama cussed and rose to her feet, her cleaver appearing in her hand.

Evis dropped his rifle.

I turned. Darla caught my elbow, real tears forming in her eyes.

Walking down the grand staircase, her movements jerky and halting, came Gertriss.

Her stare was vacant. Her mouth moved, but no words came out.

Buttercup skipped along beside her, a doll in each hand, holding them up to Gertriss, waving them about her, trying to make her play.

Gertriss reached the bottom of the stairs and made for the rest of the dancers.

“Oh hell no,” said Mama, starting off after her. “Not my kin.”

There is nothing you can do for her, save keep working.

Evis charged after, unarmed.
 

Three halfdead responded to Evis and his orders to keep Gertriss from joining the dance. Two took an arm each. The third tried to wrap his arms around her knees and hold her still.

She dragged them all, one halting step at a time.

Darla put her head on my chest.

“Buttercup,” I called. Instantly, the tiny banshee appeared before me, her face somber, her dolls hanging still at her side.

I pushed Buttercup into Darla’s arms. “Tend the child,” I said. Darla looked up at me, hurt.

He must pretend to be falling under the huldra’s influence,
said Stitches.
It must seem real.

Darla pulled away.
 

I thought back to the times I’d actually held a huldra, to the power I’d felt rushing through my soul.

“I shall make me a manikin of this Elf’s skin and bones,” I said aloud. “I shall take a bite of his heart before it is stilled.”

Mama caught up to Gertriss and had no more luck than the vampires. Gertriss joined the expanding ring of dancers, spinning in slow circles to Lady Rondalee’s nameless song.

Angels above, bear me down this here river,

Bear me safe over snag and shoal,

Angels above, from heartache deliver,

Angels bear me safe and Angels spare my soul

Mama let go of Gertriss and screamed as she danced away.

Chapter Fourteen

It took five halfdead to wrestle Evis away from Gertriss.