The Eighth Court (21 page)

Arriving back at the courts, I left Amber to her duties and went up into the house. With Kareesh unavailable, there was one other person who could help me figure out what this was all about. I went to see if Angela was back.

“
Altair?”

“I have warned you not to use that name,” said the whisperer.

“It has to be now. He’s fading. If we don’t reach him soon, it will be too late.”

“After the solstice.”

“Now. He needs you now. You promised. After all I’ve done for you.”

“Done? Anything you’ve done has been for your own reasons.”

“Help him, or I’ll tell them everything.” Her voice was a low threat.

“By all means, tell them. Your part in it will be obvious. You’ll be executed on the spot. It won’t help him.”

“You have to help him. You promised me.”

“I said I would help Fellstamp, and I am helping him. He’s about to embrace the void that claimed him.”

“You said you would bring him back.”

“No, I said I would help him return. We all come from the void, and we all return to it. It’s inevitable,” said Altair.

“That’s not true – only the wraithkin return to the void,” she said.

“Ultimately we all come from the void, and we will all return to it,” he said. “Everything else is transitory illusion. It’s simply a matter of time.”

“You lying wraithkin bastard! You lied to me! You’ve betrayed me and Fellstamp!”

“You’re the one who’s been doing the betraying, Fionh, and if I were you I’d keep very quiet about it. Fellstamp must find his own peace with the void. I can’t bring him back, but I can give you revenge on the ones that placed him there. In a few days they will be at your mercy.”

“I don’t need you to deliver revenge,” she said. “I can do that for myself.” She walked away, no longer caring whether anyone saw her.

“Shall I follow her?” said a low voice.

“Only as far as the edge of the wardings,” said the whisperer.

“What if she tells Garvin?”

“She won’t. She’s too proud.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

When I reached Angela’s door it was closed and I wondered if she was still out with Blackbird, but when I tapped lightly on the door there was a noise from within, and Angela opened the door.

“Blackbird’s downstairs somewhere,” she said. “She went to speak to Mullbrook.”

“I wasn’t looking for Blackbird. I came to see you,” I told her.

She opened the door a little wider as if she were wondering who was with me, and seeing I was alone, opened the door further. “You’d better come in then.”

I couldn’t recall being in Angela’s room before, but I could see that she’d made it her own. She must have been being bringing items from her house, since there were trinkets that were nothing to do with the courts, and she had an ancient mechanical typewriter set up on the bureau. The rest of the space was covered in typewritten drafts and documents that she’d been working on. I looked around for somewhere to sit.

“There isn’t much room,” she said, clearing a space on the bed. “I don’t get many visitors.” I sat in the space she cleared, and she sat on the chair at the bureau. She waited until I got the hint.

“I came to see you because I dreamed again,” I said.

“That’s hardly a surprise.”

“I have a lot of the pieces now, and I know how some of it came to be. I just don’t know how to fit them together. I wanted to ask if you would help me.”

“Help you how?” she asked.

I paused for a moment to think how to put this to her. “I think you were right, this is important. Whatever this is that I’ve become involved in has an impact on all of us – it’s affected us all along. This isn’t new, it’s been going on for years. There are clues… some of this has been planned.”

“I don’t see what I can do,” she said.

“You can help me piece it together,” I said. “You’re the only other person that knows all this stuff. You gave me these memories – help me make sense of them.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“You must.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head. “I gave you the memories I had, but none of it made any sense to me. You say that you have pieces, and that’s good. I never had more than a jumble of tattered fragments with no order or sequence. You saw what I had; it was all over the walls of my office.”

“But you have the rest,” I said. “You have the missing pieces. Between the two of us we could put it all together.”

“You’re wrong. I don’t have anything. I only got any of this when I touched you in the cells under Porton Down.” She sounded angry now, and I couldn’t really understand why. “You infected me in a second with images I didn’t recognise, messages I couldn’t decipher, and memories that weren’t mine. None of this came from me, Niall. It came from you. Before I touched you I was fine. Afterwards… I couldn’t get any relief from it.”

“That’s how I feel,” I told her. “There must be more. Maybe if you stirred something into a drink?”

“I gave you everything. Your brain… it’s making the connections, do you see? All of this is related, and it comes back to you as a dream or a memory. You have all you need; you just need to tease it out.”

“No. There are things missing, I’m sure of it.”

“Then maybe those things were meant to be missing, or maybe they were never there in the first place. I don’t have anything else for you. You took it all.”

“So you won’t even try.”

“I can’t help you, Niall.” Her mouth was set in a determined line.

I stood up, disappointed by her reaction. “You did this to me,” I reminded her. “You share some of the responsibility.”

“You did it to yourself,” she said. “And to me.”

On an instinct, I reached out and grabbed her. The contact should have been shocking – an instant flash of mind-crushing recollection and foreign memories. Instead I felt my hand, tight around her arm. The muscle was warm under my hand, where I held her firmly. She looked at my hand, surprised by my sudden rush to touch her and then resentful at the liberty I’d taken.

“It would have served you right if you’d been a gibbering wreck on the floor,” she said.

“I’m not, though, am I?”

She plucked at my grip with her free hand and I released her. “What happened?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing happened. You have everything I can give you, there’s nothing else to take. I’d like you to leave now.”

“You know more than you’re letting on,” I accused her.

“What I know and what I feel are separate things,” she said. “You know what I know, but what I feel I’ll keep to myself. It can’t be taken from me, not even by you.”

I went to the door. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I had to try. You should understand that, at least.”

She stared at me for a long while. “It is by our choices that we know ourselves,” she said. “You could have asked.”

“You would have said no,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t give you the right to take that choice from me.”

I left her then, feeling that I’d made a mistake. I felt like I was being backed into a corner and that the choices that remained to me were limited and none of them were ideal. I went back towards the suite that Blackbird and I shared, wondering if there was some way I could make amends. Angela was right, I’d taken a liberty that was not mine to take, and it had got me nowhere.

As I emerged into the head of the stairs, Alex was coming the other way. “Dad! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. She’s going to kill him!”

“Who is? Kill who?” I asked.

“Fionh!” said Alex, as if I were stupid. “She’s going to kill Sparky.” She turned and headed through the door and down the corridor. Running after Alex, slowed down by the healing wound in my side, I followed Alex as she raced ahead. Sure now that I would follow, she guided me up through the house until we reached the room where Fellstamp lay.

Alex stepped into the room warily. “You’d better let him go now. Dad’s here.”

I moved into the doorway, unsure of what to expect. Fellstamp was as I’d left him, draped up to his shoulders with a white sheet. Towards the back of the room, the big French doors had been thrown open. Fionh stood, her back to the sky, outlined against the light. Beside her, Sparky was held by the hair, throat exposed while Fionh held a wickedly sharp blade under his chin. They were both standing on the balustrade over the three storey drop to the paving below.

“What’s going on, Fionh? What’s he done?” I asked her.

“Done?” she asked, as if it were a joke. “He doesn’t have to
do
anything.” There was a frayed edge to her voice that I didn’t like. Fionh was normally an island of still calm in a sea of trouble – this was not the Fionh I knew.

“Something’s happened,” I said. It was a statement, not a question.

“You’re not wrong,” she said. “Look at him.”

“I am looking at him. What’s he done?” I repeated.

“Not him, you idiot! Look at Fellstamp!”

I looked at the body on the table. His face was pinched. He didn’t look like he was in pain but he was even paler than before. It couldn’t last much longer. In its comatose state, his body was slowly consuming itself.

“What’s this about, Fionh?” I asked, stepping forward into the room.

“Stay there!” she warned. “You’re only bringing the inevitable closer.”

“What’s inevitable about it?” I asked. Alex moved to the other side.

“Stay back!” said Fionh. The edge of the blade held at Sparky’s throat left a red line at her warning. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to resist the urge to swallow. Behind them both, the sky darkened as the clouds gathered above the courts.

“I only want to help,” I said.

“Help yourself, you mean,” said Fionh. “You’re no better than the rest of them, stealing scraps from the plates of your betters. Pretending you’re part of something.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“You don’t even know not to lie,” said Fionh. “You’re like all the rest of them.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “The rest of what?”

“The rest of the mongrels,” said Garvin, standing in the doorway behind me. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it Fionh?” I glanced at him, taking my eyes momentarily off Fionh. He was entirely focused on her.

“You betrayed us,” said Fionh to Garvin.

Garvin shook his head. “I haven’t betrayed anyone,” he said.

“You led us down this path and now there’s no way back,” she accused.

“I’m not the one doing the betraying, though, am I?” he said. “I couldn’t figure it out. Our loyalty has never been in question – until now.”

“And it would have stayed that way,” she said.

“It would, except things started leaking out. Small things at first – a word here, a nod there. The obvious suspect was Niall. He’s the newcomer. It only started happening after he joined the Warders.”

“He’s not a Warder,” her scornful glance barely registered my presence. “Where was he when we needed him? Changing nappies? Chasing his daughter? He’s been more trouble than he’s worth since the beginning.”

“I couldn’t figure out where they were getting their information from,” said Garvin, continuing his train of thought. “That was the problem. Where were his sources? Who was feeding him? Did he have some hold over one of the Lords and Ladies? One of the other Warders? I was looking in the wrong place, wasn’t I, Fionh?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She glanced at the form lying draped in the sheet. “Nothing matters now.”

“And then it got worse,” said Garvin, “Just when Blackbird was chosen as head of the Eighth Court, the leak went from a trickle to a stream. All of a sudden Altair knew where we were going to be, when we were going to be there, what we intended to do.” He laughed. “In some ways I’m as guilty – I’d already made the connection. I figured that Blackbird was telling Niall, and Niall…”

I was having trouble believing what I was hearing. “How could you think that?” I asked him. “I’ve shown you nothing but loyalty, right from the beginning. I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”

“And more beside,” said Garvin, “which is what I expect. But a little thought nagged at me. The wraithkin have always been close. What if they’d overcome their prejudice and offered you something in return for information. What if the fact that you were one of them made the difference? What if they’d cut you a deal?”

“That would mean betraying Alex, Blackbird… My son…”

“Blood calls to blood, Niall. It always has and it always will.”

“What are you saying? They are my blood.” I nodded towards Alex.

“I’m saying sorry, Niall. I should have trusted you, but I didn’t. Instead I kept you busy, trying to minimise the damage until I could figure out who your source was. It didn’t do me any good, did it Fionh?”

“You should have killed him when you had the chance,” said Fionh. “Then none of this would have happened.”

“Always just at the edge of things,” said Garvin. “Always there when she’s needed, always listening attentively. That alone should have been a clue.”

“That’s not how it was,” she said.

“Wasn’t it? What did they offer you? What was the price?”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” she said. “They didn’t buy me. They didn’t have to. You sold us all, Garvin. You mortgaged our future against what… a bunch of no hope, half-fey, helpless, graceless nonentities? How could you?”

“It’s simple,” said Garvin, “and as obvious to me as I thought it was to you.”

“Obvious? The only thing obvious about them is that they are a poor substitute for the real thing.”

Behind Fionh, lightning flickered in the clouds outside. There was a low rumble, a warning of what was coming.

“You hear that?” said Fionh. “He thinks he can do to me what he did to Fellstamp.” She shook him, making him lift his chin even higher to avoid the knife and wobble precariously over the edge. “Take a good look down, lightning boy,” said Fionh. “It’s your future down there.”

“Just let him go, Fionh. We can talk this through.”

There was a bright flash. Fionh was outlined against the white. In my peripheral vision I saw Alex backing away. The thunder followed close this time, rattling the windows. Fionh didn’t waver.

“You can’t control it, can you boy?” she said. “It’s beyond you. I’ll tell you what, though. I can feel it building, and just before it strikes, your head is coming clean off.”

“It’s not me,” said Sparky through gritted teeth. “I’m not doing it.”

“You don’t see it, do you? None of you do,” said Fionh. “You wanted the Feyre to have children, but what you got was human children with power. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it. They’re not fey! They’re not anything!”

“They will be,” said Garvin.

“No they won’t! Look at Fellstamp. Look at him! That’s what they do. That’s what they are. They leech the life out of people until there’s nothing left. What do we call it when a creature lives off another? Parasites! That’s what they are. Parasites!” She pulled Sparky’s hair, so that he was forced to arch his body backwards, stretching his throat against the blade as he leaned back to keep his balance.

“How long, Fionh?” asked Garvin.

“Any moment now,” she said.

“No, I meant how long have you been in love with Fellstamp?” he said.

“What?” she said.

“It must have hurt, seeing him bed everyone but you. He never saw you like that did he? Fionh the ice queen was untouchable, and that’s the problem.”

“Shut up!”

“It must have twisted in your gut like a barb every time he charmed some girl under his covers. Every time, a betrayal.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Fionh, but everyone in the room heard the lie.

“It won’t bring him back, Fionh.”

“I don’t want to bring him back!” The words hung in the air. This time it was the truth. They words were torn out of her, and tears ran down her face. “I don’t want him back,” she said. “It’s too late. I just want him to die.”

The clouds behind them were luminous, bruised purple and black. The hairs on my arms stood up. I found myself stepping back, involuntarily, away from the window.

Garvin stepped forward. “Let him go, Fionh, and we’ll say goodbye to Fellstamp together.”

Her face distorted with anguish. Her hand was shaking under Sparky’s chin. Sparky’s eyes were wide with fear.

“Let him go,” said Garvin.

When it came, the flash was brilliant. My eyes registered colours I’d never seen before. I didn’t hear the blast or the thunder that came with it. Instead, I felt it; the shockwave tearing through my body as if I were insubstantial mist. Even with my eyes tight shut, I saw the outline of Fionh against the window, her hair standing out from her head like rays from a sun. Even with my eyes screwed shut, I saw the look on her face.

Strangely, she looked peaceful.