Ironside (13 page)

“But they don’t want your lands. Your sister’s dead.”

Silarial looked surprised for a moment. Her fist tightened around the plum. “Yes, dead. Dead before my plan could break her. I spent all the long years of peace between our people building my strategy and biding my time, and she died before my bereavement could be sated. I will not give her court the chance to plan as I planned. I will take her lands and her people and that will be my vengeance. It will secure the safety of all of the Bright Court.

“This is your home, whether you wish it or no, and your war. You must pick a side. I know of your pledge to Roiben—your declaration—and he was right to rebuff you. He went to the Unseelie Court as a hostage for peace. Do you think he wants you to be tied to them as his consort would be? Do you think he wishes you to suffer as he’s suffered?”

“Of course not,” Kaye snapped.

“I know what it is to give up something you desire. Before Roiben left for the Unseelie Court, he was my lover—did you know that?” She frowned. “Passion made him occasionally forget his place, but oh, do I regret giving him up.”

“You forget his place now.”

Silarial laughed suddenly. “Let me tell you a story of Roiben when he was in my court. I think of it often.”

“Sure,” Kaye said. She felt strangled by the things she could not say. She didn’t believe Silarial meant anything but harm, but to let the Queen know that would be foolish. And she did want to hear any story about Roiben. The way that Silarial spoke gave her hope he was still alive.

Some of the tension went out of her, some of the dread.

“Once there was a fox that got tangled in a thornbush near our revels. Tiny sprites darted around, trying to free it. The fox didn’t understand the faeries were being helpful. It only understood that it was in pain. It snapped at the sprites, trying to catch them in its teeth, and as it moved, the thorns dug deeper into its fur. Roiben saw the fox and went over to keep it still.

“He could have held its muzzle and let it twist its body deeper into the bush. He could have let go of it when it bit him. He did neither of those things. He let the fox bite his hand, again and again until the sprites freed it from the thorns.”

“I don’t get the point of the story,” Kaye said. “Are you saying that Roiben lets himself get hurt because he thinks he’s being helpful? Or are you saying Roiben used to be good and kind, but now he’s a prick?”

Silarial tilted her head, brushing back a stray lock of her hair. “I am wondering if you aren’t like that fox, Kaye.”

“What?” Kaye stood up. “I’m not the one who’s hurting him.”

“He would have died for you at the Tithe. Died for a pixie he’d met only days before. Then he refused to join me when we might have united the courts and forged a real peace—an enduring peace. Why do you think that is? Maybe because he was too busy disentangling you and yours from thornbushes.”

“Maybe he didn’t see it that way,” Kaye said, but she could feel her cheeks go hot and her wings twitch. “There could still be peace, you know. If
you
would just stop biting his hand. He doesn’t want to fight you.”

“Oh, come now.” Silarial smiled and sank her teeth into the plum. “I know you’ve seen the tapestry of me he slashed to pieces. He doesn’t just want to fight me. He wants to
destroy
me.” The way she said “destroy,” it sounded pleasurable. “Do you know what happened to the fox?”

Kaye snorted. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to tell me.”

“It ran off, stopping only to lick its cuts, but the next morning it was caught in the bushes again, thorns buried deep in its flesh. All Roiben’s pain for nothing.”

“What do you want me to do?” Kaye asked. “What did you bring me here for?”

“To show you that I am no monster. Of course Roiben despises me. I sent him to the Unseelie Court. But he can come back now. He is far too biddable to lead them.

“Join us. Join the Seelie Court. Help me show Roiben. Once he gets past his anger, he will see that it would be best if he ceded control of his court to me.”

“I can’t—” Kaye hated that she was tempted.

“I think you can. Convince him, that is. He trusts you. He gave you his
name.
” Silarial’s expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes did.

“I’m not using that.”

“Not even for his own good? Not even for peace between our courts?”

“You mean make him surrender. That’s not the same thing as peace.”

“I mean convince him to surrender the terrible burden of the Night Court,” Silarial said. “Kaye, I am not so vain that I cannot appreciate that you outwitted me once, nor so foolish that I cannot understand your desire to preserve your own life. Let us be at odds no more.”

Kaye sank her nails into her palm, hard. “I don’t know,” she managed to say. It was a seductive thought that the war might not go on, that everything could be so easily resolved.

“Think on it. Should he no longer be the Lord of the Night Court, your pledge would be void. You would never have to complete the impossible quest. Declarations are only made to Lords or Ladies.”

Kaye wanted to say that it didn’t matter, but it did. Her shoulders slumped.

“Were you willing to help me, I could arrange for you to see him, even to speak with him, despite the declaration. He is on his way here now.” Silarial stood. The soft susurrations of her gown were the only sounds under the canopy of branches as she crossed to where Kaye stood. “There are other ways to persuade you, but I do not like to be cruel.”

Kaye took a quick breath. He was alive. Now she just had to do what she’d come for. “I want the human Kaye. Ellen’s daughter. The real me. Switch her back. If you do that, I’ll think about what you said. I’ll consider it.”

After all, it wasn’t like Kaye was really agreeing to anything. Not really.

“Done,” said Silarial, reaching out to stroke her cheek. Her fingers were cool. “After all, you are one of mine. You had only to ask. And, of course, you will have the hospitality of the Bright Court while you consider.”

“Of course,” Kaye echoed faintly.

“You’re a fool,” Ellebere said. He looked out of place in the city, though he’d glamoured himself a red pin-striped black suit and a silk tie the color of dried blood.

“Because it’s a trap?” Roiben asked. His long wool coat whipped in the breeze from the river. The stench of iron seared his nose and throat.

“It must be.” Ellebere turned, so that he was walking backward, facing Roiben. He gestured wildly, ignoring the people who had to veer out of his way. “Just her offer of peace is suspicious, but if she agrees to your absurd demand, then she must have some sure way of killing you.”

“Yes,” Roiben said, grabbing his arm. “And you’re about to walk into a road.”

Ellebere stopped, pushing back strands of wine-colored hair from his eyes. He sighed. “Can her knight beat you?”

“Talathain?” Roiben considered that for a moment. It was hard to imagine Talathain—whom he had wrestled with in patches of clover, who had loved Ethine for years before he’d found the courage to bring her a mere bundle of violets—as formidable. But those memories seemed old and unfamiliar, as if they belonged to another person. Perhaps
this
Talathain was another person too. “I think I can win.”

“The Bright Queen has a deadly weapon, then, perhaps? Or armor that cannot be pierced? Some way to use iron weaponry?”

“It could be that. I turn it over again and again in my mind, but I have no more answer than you do.” Roiben looked at his hand and saw all the throats he had cut in Nicnevin’s service. All the pleading eyes and trembling mouths. All the mercy that he could not bestow, least of all on himself. He let go of Ellebere. “I only hope that I am a better murderer than the Bright Lady imagines me.”

“Tell me that there is some plan, at least.”

“There is some plan,” Roiben said, with a twist of his mouth. “Although without knowing what Silarial intends, I know not what good it is.”

“You shouldn’t have come Ironside yourself. In the mortal world you are vulnerable,” said Ellebere, glowering. They crossed the road next to a too-thin mortal pushing an empty stroller and another furiously punching keys on her cell phone. “Dulcamara could have accompanied me. You could have explained what we were to do and sent us off to do it. That’s how a proper Unseelie King behaves.”

Roiben veered off the sidewalk, ducking under a torn chain-link fence that singed his fingers and snagged on the cloth of his coat. Ellebere clambered over the top, jumping down with a flourish.

“I’m not sure it’s
proper
for a knight to tell a King how to behave,” Roiben said. “But come, indulge me a little longer. As you rightly point out, I am a fool and I am about to make a series of very foolish bargains.”

The building behind the fence looked like several of the neighboring boarded-up buildings, but this one had a garden on the roof, long tendrils of winter-dead plants hanging over onto the brick sides. On the second floor, the windows were completely missing. Shadows flickered against the inner walls.

Roiben paused. “I would like to say that my time in the Unseelie Court changed my nature. For a long time it was a comfort for me to think so. Whenever I saw my sister, I would recall how I had once been like her, before I was
corrupted
.”

“My Lord…” Ellebere blanched.

“I am no longer sure if that’s true. I wonder if I found my nature instead, where before it was hidden, even from me.”

“So what is your nature?”

“Let’s find out.” Roiben walked across the cracked front steps and knocked against the wood covering the door.

“Will you at least tell me what we’re doing here?” Ellebere asked. “Visiting exiles?”

Roiben put a finger to his lips. One of the boards swung open from a nearby window. An ogre stood, framed in the opening, his horns curving back from his head like a ram’s and his long brown beard turning to green at the tip. “If it isn’t Your Dark Majesty,” he said. “I’m guessing you heard about my changeling stock. The best you’re like to find. Not carved from logs or sticks, but lovingly crafted from mannequins—some with real glass eyes. Even mortals with a bit of the Sight in them can’t see through my work. The Bright Queen herself uses me—but I bet you knew that. Come around the back. I’m eager to make something for you.”

Roiben shook his head. “I’m here to make
you
something. An offer. Tell me, how long have you been in exile?”

Kaye rested beside Corny and Luis in a bower of ivy, the soft earth and sweet breeze lulling her to dozing. Night-blooming flowers perfumed the air, dotting the dark with constellations of white petals.

“It’s weird.” Kaye leaned back against the grass.

“It’s dark now, but it was night when we got here and it was bright then. I thought it was going to stay eternal day or something.”

“That is odd,” said Corny.

Luis ripped open his second protein bar and bit into it with a grimace. “I don’t know why she’s making me stay. This is bullshit. I did everything she told me. Dave is…” He stopped.

“Dave is what?” Corny asked.

Luis looked at the wrapper in his hands. “Prone to getting into trouble when I’m not around to stop him.”

Kaye watched the petals fall. The human changeling was probably returned to Ellen by now, taking up all Kaye’s space in the world she knew. With one quest done and the other impossible, she had no idea what would happen next. She very much doubted the Queen would just let her leave. Keeping Luis at court was both encouraging and discouraging—encouraging because maybe Silarial would let him guide them back at some not-too-distant point, but discouraging because the Seelie Court felt like a web that thrashing would only wrap more tightly around them. Like thorn bushes.

Not that she had anywhere else to go.

Silent hobmen brought a tray of hollowed-out acorns filled with a liquid as clear as water and placed them beside plates of little cakes. Kaye had already eaten three. Lifting a fourth, she offered it to Corny.

“Don’t,” Luis said when Corny reached for it.

“What?” Corny asked.

“Don’t eat or drink anything of theirs. It’s not safe.”

Music started up somewhere in the distance, and Kaye heard a high voice begin to sing the tale of a nightingale who was really a princess and a princess who was really a pack of cards.

Corny took the cake.

She wanted to put a cautioning hand on Corny’s arm, but there was something brittle in his manner that made her hold back. His eyes glittered with banked fire.

He laughed and dropped the confection into his mouth. “There is no safe. Not for me. I don’t have True Sight. I can’t resist their enchantments, and right now I don’t see why I should bother trying.”

“Because not trying is stupid,” Luis said.

Corny licked his fingers. “Stupid tastes pretty good.”

A faerie woman approached, her bare feet silent on the soft earth. “For you,” she said, and placed three packets of clothing on the grass.

Kaye reached over to touch the first one. Celery green fabric felt silky under her fingertips.

“Let me guess,” Corny said to Luis. “We’re not supposed to wear anything of theirs either. Maybe you’re going to walk around naked?”

Luis frowned, but Kaye could see his neck go red.

“Stop being a dick,” she said, tossing Corny his pile of clothes. Corny grinned as if she’d paid him a compliment.

Ducking behind a bush, she pulled off her T-shirt and slid the dress over her head. She’d been wearing the same camo pants and T-shirt since she’d left Jersey, and she couldn’t wait to get out of them. The faery cloth felt as light as spider silk when she pulled it over her head, and it reminded her of the only other faerie gown she’d worn—the one she’d almost been sacrificed in, the one that had come apart in the sink when she’d tried to wash the blood out of it. Her memories of the averted Tithe were still a shuddersome blur of bedazzlement and terror and Roiben’s breath tickling her neck as he’d whispered:
What belongs to you, yet others use it more than you do?

His name. The name she’d tricked out of him without knowing its worth. The name she’d used to command him and could use still. No wonder his court didn’t like her; she could make their King do her bidding.

“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” Corny said, stepping out from the branches and causing Kaye to start. He wore a brocaded black and scarlet tunic over black pants, and his feet were bare. He frowned. “My clothes are soaked, though. At least this is dry.”

Kaye turned, letting the thin skirt whirl around her. “I like my dress.”

“Nice. All that green really brings out the pink of your eye membranes.”

“Shut up.” Picking up a twig from the ground, she twisted up her hair with it like she’d done with pencils in school. “Where’s Luis?”

Corny pointed with his chin. Turning, Kaye spotted him leaning against a tree, chewing on what was probably the last of the protein bar. Luis glowered as he shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of a long brown jacket, clasped with three buckles at his waist. Kaye’s damp purple coat hung from the branch of a tree.

“I guess we’re supposed to go to the party like this,” Kaye called.

Luis sauntered closer. “Technically, it’s more of a revel.”

Corny rolled his eyes. “Let’s go.”

Kaye headed toward the music, letting her fingers run through the heavy green leaves. She plucked a great white flower down from one of the branches and pulled off one bruised petal after another.

“He loves me,” Corny said. “He loves me not.”

Kaye scowled and stopped. “That’s not what I was doing.”

Shapes moved through the trees like ghosts. The laughter and music seemed always a little more distant until suddenly she was among a throng of faeries. Crowds of folk danced in wide and chaotic circles or diced or simply laughed as though the breeze had carried a joke to their ears only. One faerie woman crouched beside a pool, conversing intently with her reflection, while another stroked the bark of a tree as though it were the fur of a pet.

Kaye opened her mouth to tell Corny something but stopped when her eye was caught by white hair and eyes like silver spoons. Someone threaded through the crowd, cloaked and hooded, but not hooded enough.

There was only one person Kaye knew with eyes like that.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, already weaving between a damp girl in a dress of woven river grass and a hob on crude mossy stilts.

“Roiben?” she whispered, touching his shoulder. She could feel her heart speeding and she hated it, she hated everything about how she felt at that moment, so absurdly grateful she would have liked to slap herself. “You fucker. You could have told me to go on a quest to bring you an apple from the banquet table. You could have sent me on a quest to tie a braid in your hair.”

The figure drew back its hood, and Kaye remembered the other person who would have eyes like Roiben’s. His sister, Ethine.

“Kaye,” Ethine said. “I had hoped I would happen on you.”

Mortified, Kaye tried to smile but it came out as more of a grimace. She couldn’t believe she had just blurted things she wasn’t sure, in retrospect, that she wanted even Roiben to hear.

“I have only a moment,” Ethine said. “I must bring the Queen a message. But there is something I would know. About my brother.”

Kaye shrugged. “We’re not exactly speaking.”

“He was never cruel when we were children. Now he is brutal and cold and terrible. He will make war on us whom he loved—”

It startled Kaye to think of Roiben as a child. “You grew up in Faerie?”

“I don’t have time for—”

“Make time. I want to know.”

Ethine looked at Kaye for a long moment, then sighed. “Roiben and I were brought up in Faerie by a human midwife. She’d been stolen away from her own children and would call us by their names. Mary and Robert. I misliked that. Otherwise, she was very kind.”

“What about your parents? Do you know them? Love them?”

“Answer my question, if you please,” Ethine said. “My Lady wants him to duel instead of lead the Unseelie Court into battle. It would prevent a war—which the Unseelie Court is too depleted to win—but it would mean his death.”

“Your Lady is a bitch,” Kaye said before she thought better of it.

Ethine wrung her hands, fingers sliding over one another. “No. She would accept him back. I know she would if he were only to ask her. Why won’t he ask her?”

“I don’t know,” Kaye said.

“You must discern something. He has a fondness for you.”

Kaye started to protest, but Ethine cut her off.

“I heard the way you spoke to me when you supposed me to be him. You speak to him as to a friend.”

Kaye shook her head. “Look, I did this declaration thing. Where you get a quest. He pretty much told me to fuck off. Whatever you think I know about him or can tell you about him, I just don’t think I can.”

“I saw you, although I didn’t hear the words. I was in the hill that night.” Ethine smiled, but her brow furrowed slightly, as though she were puzzling through Kaye’s human phrasings. “Still, one must assume the quest was not an apple from a banquet table nor a braid in his hair.”