Twelve Days of Faery (6 page)

He was so caught up in those delicate movements that it wasn’t until Althea said: “Markon,” that he recalled his surroundings. It was the deliberate, careful usage of his name that made him really pay attention. Althea’s back was still to him, but she said crisply: “Duck
now
, please.”

Markon dropped to his haunches while she was still speaking, and felt the swish of something rather hefty sweep over his head. Then Althea wasn’t in front of him anymore, and a brief, violent struggle was taking place directly behind him.

It was all over in the miniscule amount of time that it took him to turn, still crouched. To his vast amusement, Althea was sitting on the old fae, twisting up one scrawny arm behind the fae’s back without deference to her age. Beside them in the fallen leaves was a good sturdy walking stick that had just whistled over his head in an attempt to knock Markon out, if he wasn’t mistaken.

He heard Althea say, very softly: “If you try to hurt my human again, I will flay the skin from your body and use it as a rain duster.”

“Mercy!” squealed the fae, her skinny legs wriggling. “Mercy, lady! Wouldn’t have killed him, I just wanted to come through!”

“A stick!” said Althea, her voice thick with scorn. “You really did need that magic, didn’t you?”

“Wouldn’t really have hurt him! Just quieted him and sold him on.”

“Oh, be quiet!” Althea said, with a pinching motion. The fae abruptly stopped talking, though Markon would have been willing to bet that she did so only because Althea had laid a spell on her. “And be still! You will not be free to move until we are gone from Faery. Be silent. Be still.”

“Are you going to leave her like that?” said Markon, his eyes dancing.

Althea stood up, smoothing her hair and tugging her bodice straight again. “Yes, and serve her right if a passing will’o’the’whisp decides to dance on her nose until she can move again! She won’t bother us now. If I’d known how little magic she really had left to her I would have left her locked in the cottage.”

“That would have been a pity,” Markon said, despite aching legs, sweaty clothes and general tiredness. “I wouldn’t have missed that little scuffle for the world! Who taught you how to twist an arm like that?”

For a brief moment Althea looked taken aback, and Markon was afraid that he’d accidentally stirred more unpleasant memories. Then she laughed; a real, amused chuckle of mirth that warmed him from head to toe, and said: “They taught me that at Holbrooks when I was studying to become an enchantress. The Head said that magic isn’t always reliable and that sometimes a well-placed punch can do more than a spell.”

“I’m inclined to think the Head was right,” said Markon, with a last, amused look at the prone fey. She gave him a glare with her golden eyes that made him step rather more quickly to Althea’s side, grateful that the Door now seemed to be well and truly open. It was achingly good to see the darkened interior of the castle.

              Markon slept only a little later than usual that morning despite the fact that he didn’t get back to his room until it was already early morning. He might have slept in longer if he hadn’t gone to bed in his sticky, leafy clothes and woken just as sticky and uncomfortable a little after his normal rising time. Markon stripped himself hastily before he rang for his valet, disposing of the worst of the Faery leaves out the window, where they danced away in a rather curious manner. They seemed to chase the wind, joyfully tumbling in the early morning sunlight.

Markon left them to flit away any way they would and then rang for his valet, who brought with him a fresh set of underclothes, outerclothes, and the intelligence that Doctor Romalier wished to complain about the enchantress.

“He can complain to my steward,” said Markon firmly, rubbing his hair dry with his facecloth much to the valet’s dismay. “What is it this time?”

“He claims that she’s been encouraging the female staff to, well, make snide remarks when he questions them,” said the valet, trying not to laugh.

Markon grinned. “
Has
she, now?”

“He also claims that she’s been interfering with the surveillance magic he set up with your permission. He says that the recorded data has been tampered with.”

“I suppose it’s too much to expect that he has any proof?”

“No, your majesty,” said the valet cheerfully. “Just hot air!”

“That settles it,” said Markon. “He
can
complain to my steward. I’ll be in my library, working on trade agreements and not to be disturbed.”

              When Markon got to the library Althea was already there. Much to his amusement, she was fast asleep on his fattest armchair, her cheek resting on the plump red armrest and her head cradled in one arm. The other arm had dropped over the side of the chair, lost in the folds of her skirt, and her feet were curled up beside her. The russet-red of the armchair showed up the paleness of her face and the smudges beneath her eyes, so Markon left her to sleep instead of waking her to mendaciously demand if she was leaving Faery dirt on his chairs from her shoes. It would have been a more pleasant past-time, but Althea needed the sleep and the trade agreements wouldn’t revise themselves, after all. He resolutely sat down at his desk and forced himself to concentrate on the papers, and when lunch came and went without Althea doing more than stirring vaguely and muttering in her sleep, he shook off the languor that always came with a morning spent hunched over papers, and went to fetch his own lunch. He could have had it brought into the library, but his legs needed the stretching and Althea looked as though she was likely to sleep for a while longer anyway.

              There were voices issuing from the library when Markon returned. He’d brought a tray with him, dismissing the footman who would have carried it for him, with the unformed idea that the smell of it might waken Althea– and that waking, she would be bound to be hungry. To hear voices, therefore, was something of a surprise. Markon halted and listened: that was Parrin’s voice, of course, readily recognisable. After it came Althea’s, friendly and pleasant. The library door was already ajar, so he shouldered it open and trod softly into the room with his tray.

Althea was no longer on the fat little armchair she’d been sleeping in: instead, she was sitting close to Parrin on the love-seat by the window, both of them leaning forward slightly, both of them engrossed in their conversation. When they saw Markon, the conversation stopped abruptly and each of them sat back a little. Parrin’s face looked distinctly conscious, and even Althea looked slightly taken pink: they were the very picture of lovers interrupted.

And let that be a salutary lesson to you
, thought Markon bitterly to himself.
She’s at least fifteen years younger than you and she’s promised to Parrin. Keep your mind on breaking the curse.

Aloud, he said: “Hungry, children?”

“I should think so!” said Parrin eagerly. Markon couldn’t help feeling somewhat sardonic. The boy was fond of food, it was true, but his powers of misdirection and concealment hadn’t improved since childhood and it was far too easy to see that he was merely trying to divert his father’s attention from the somewhat intimate setting in which he and Althea had been found.

Althea, it seemed, was rather more sincere in her acceptance of the food Markon had brought. Not only did she eat more of it than Parrin did, she also failed entirely to notice that he’d left the library while she was solemnly engaged in choosing comfits from the silver-and-pearl box of sweetmeats.

When she did
notice that he’d gone, all she said was: “We may as well get on with it, then.”

Markon, filching the box of sweetmeats before she could eat all of them, said: “Get on with what?”

“Planning, of course,” said Althea seriously. “Didn’t I tell you? No, I fell asleep before you got here. I pulled more fae magic from the infirmary: it’s led me to another usable Door into Faery.”

              There was someone sitting next to him on the bed. Markon’s breath hissed between his teeth, one hand on its way to grasp his assailant’s throat before he realised that it was only Althea. Markon’s hand dropped back to the bed and then dug through his rumpled hair as he huffed his relief into the darkness of the room.

“I’m beginning to think Doctor Romalier is right,” he told her.

Althea, who hadn’t so much as flinched at his instinctive lunge to attack, tilted her head and said: “Really? I wouldn’t have thought it was very likely.”

“He says that you’re a disrupting influence and a drain on the monarch’s resources.”

Althea gave her low, delighted chuckle. “I suppose it’s true, really! A case of the cherry tart calling the raspberry red, though, isn’t it?”

“I thought you didn’t like pie rhetoric,” countered Markon, pushing aside the bed covers. He’d been better prepared last night: he’d worn a pair of loose trousers and one of his old fencing shirts to bed. Neither of them were particularly fine (the shirt in particular had more than a few darning scars, hence his mother’s insistence upon shirts specifically for fencing) but they were loose and comfortable, and had the benefit of not creasing easily.

“I don’t,” said Althea, watching him tuck in the shirt and grope blindly for the light shoes he’d set aside. “It makes me hungry. I think I might have caught some of your Montalieran ways.”

“Just as well,” Markon said, carefully light-hearted. “If you’re going to marry into the family you’d best start practising now.”

Althea was difficult to see in the shadows, but Markon thought he caught a small, private, and entirely delightful smile as it flitted across her face. It was still in her voice as she said: “I had, hadn’t I? Your shoes are over here.”

              They went through the back passages, following a thin, winding way through narrow halls and steep staircases that stirred in Markon’s mind as vaguely familiar. It wasn’t until Althea stopped at a meeting of corridors and counted three sconces from the left as they walked that he remembered why it was so familiar.

“Third to the left, warp and weft,” he said. He reached past Althea and found the hidden catch in the sconce, which clicked beneath his fingertips and set off a dusty scraping of bricks in front of them.

“Oh,” said Althea. She sounded disappointed. “How did you know which one it was?”

“I went searching for these passages when I was a boy,” said Markon. “I never found this one, but Parrin did. It was one summer while he was recovering from a lingering chest infection. He was wrapped up in shawls and scarves, waddling around the castle with one of the younger upper maids and trying to find all the passages. He was so proud of himself for finding it. We made the rhyme so we’d remember.”

“Warp and weft?” Althea said quizzically.

“Maker’s mark,” Markon told her. “This part of the castle was restored about thirty years ago after a bit of a nasty incident with a dragon– secret passage and all. The iron sconces were sourced from a local consortium of blacksmiths here in the capital known as The Metal Loom. All of their work was stamped with the sign of the Metal Loom.”

“Now, that’s interesting,” said Althea thoughtfully.

“I asked them about it when Parrin found the passage and I recognised the maker’s mark. They said the passage had been caved in before the dragon incident, filled with half a century’s rubble, but my father had them clear it out and make it new. He was a great one for tradition, my father. Why do you suppose the Door was opened here? I didn’t think anyone else knew about it.”

“That’s what so interesting,” said Althea, and opened the Door.

              The first impression Markon had was one of brilliant moonshine. It gleamed along marble flagstones and marble colonnades, sparkled in the depths of decorative pools, and glided gently on wafting leaves through the high arches of a foreign courtyard. The breeze was soft, intimate, and delicately scented.

“Unseelie,” said Althea. “This bit of magic is particularly strong, so we can’t count on an easy excursion this time.”

Markon, who hadn’t thought their last venture into Faery had gone particularly well, nodded and tried not to look as wary as he felt. “Is that music I hear?”

“Most likely,” Althea said, drawing him through the Door and into Faery once again.

Markon stumbled slightly on the threshold, suspended for a brief moment between Here and There, and then the suspicion of music jumped in intensity as he found himself in the moonlit courtyard. It was a high, mad skirling of pipes and violins that tugged at his feet and made him smile instinctively. He looked at Althea and saw a gleam of sable in her eyes that suddenly made her seem fae again. Already she was floating rather than walking; and Markon, feeling that she might possibly float away into the wild revels he could hear through the colonnades, instinctively held onto her hand though they were safely through the Door.

“It must be a feast night,” said Althea. She wafted over to the arches at the end of the courtyard, trailing Markon behind her.

Much to Markon’s surprise, the courtyard wasn’t really a courtyard: it was more of a vast balcony, left open to the stars and overlooking another courtyard below. The lower courtyard was paved in black and white marble like the upper was, but only small, shifting bits of it could be seen through the whirling throng. The music was louder here, too: it felt as though it was making its way, living and wild, into his very blood.

“We’re not fine enough to go down there,” Althea said regretfully. “If I’d
known
...never mind, we’ll just have to steal some clothes.”

“
Steal
clothes?” Markon repeated numbly. He found himself being led by the hand back across the courtyard without being able to summon up the words to express how little he wanted to steal clothes from the fae.

With an air of reason, Althea said: “We’ll give them back, of course.”

“Of course!” echoed Markon. He let Althea drag him through another of the interminable arches and halfway down a silvery hall before it occurred to him to ask: “Where are we going to get clothes?”

“The laundry.”

“Fae have laundries?”

“
Everybody
has a laundry,” said Althea. “Even the fae. Someone has to do the washing, after all. And on a feast night there are bound to be some fae who’ve sent down multiple ensembles just in case they change their minds. They think it’s amusing to create more work for the servants. Ah! This way!”

              Half an hour later Althea had calmly breezed into the laundry to appropriate two matching ensembles and Markon had found them a suitably shadowed alcove in which to change. He went first, eschewing his comfortable trousers and loose-fitting fencing shirt for a carelessly laced and ridiculously fine black one, with matching black trousers that held a hint of moonlight in silver thread. While Althea changed he went in search of boots to match, his stockinged feet padding lightly against marble flagstones, and finally managed to pilfer a newly polished pair that were sitting outside one of the doors upstairs. They were slightly tight, but nothing a few hours of wear wouldn’t stretch out.

When he returned to fetch Althea she was far from her usual tightly laced and upright self. Fortunately Markon saw her before she saw him. That gave him a chance to stifle the surprised hiss of breath that slipped from him and wipe the stunned expression from his face.

Where Markon was wearing black threaded with silver, Althea had chosen to wear silver beaded with jet, darkly glinting in a soft and shimmering dress that caught every curve on its sweep to the ground. As alluring as that was, it was her unbraided hair that caught his gaze, falling in great, full curls well past her waist.

Markon took in another mesmerized breath through his teeth and went forward to meet her.

“
There
you are,” said Althea when she saw him, her eyes bright and glad. “I thought you’d gotten lost.”

“I had to go a bit further afield for the boots,” Markon said, displaying them for her inspection.

“Very nice,” Althea said approvingly. “We’d better get on, I think. The drums are getting faster, which means the stronger drink will soon be circulating.”

Markon offered her his arm with alacrity: the thought of Althea in
that
dress among heavily drinking fae was not something he wanted to contemplate. Moreover, if he wasn’t very much mistaken, both he and Althea were moving much more swiftly now as the music lightened their feet towards its source. It was an intoxicant in and of itself: it curled around them as they moved back across the upper courtyard and then became almost breathable as they descended the stairs toward the lower courtyard of shifting blue, black, and silver.

The babble of conversation and laughter rose around them, almost as loud as the music, and when Markon asked Althea: “Do you still have the trace?” he had to bend his head and almost shout it in her ear.

“Oh yes,” said Althea in his ear, her voice clear and carrying. “I saw her as soon as we looked over the balcony before.”

“If you knew who it was, why did we engage in this episode of dress-up?” demanded Markon, slightly annoyed.

“Because it’s
her
,” Althea said calmly, with a tiny jerk of her chin. “The Lady of the Revels.”

              The Lady of the Revels was a tall, graceful fae somewhere near the centre of the swirling throng, dancing swift and free amidst the laughing dancers, her silver hair flying. Some of the energy of the dance came directly from her, Markon was sure: it seemed to coil around her and whorl outward, sparking a wild circle all around her that was clear to him despite the fact that he was no magic practitioner. On the face of it, it seemed as though it should be very easy to get to her: she was alone and vulnerable in the centre of the dance. But that was only, thought Markon, used to looking for guards in a crowd, if you didn’t happen to notice the three
very
large fae who were part of the inner circle but also danced alone. Or the dozen that dotted the crowd all around, their eyes constantly moving, shifting and slipping through the dancers around them. Or even, he realised, his eyes slipping further afield, the slender young fae who was ostensibly drunk and well supplied with edible goodies, sitting in a tree just out of the dancers. That was certainly a quiver tucked behind him in the boughs—Markon could see the fletching of the arrows against the moonlight—and he was almost certain that he could see the curve of the bow as it blended in with the other branches.

“We wouldn’t get as far as the inner circle before her guards stopped us,” Althea said, unconsciously echoing Markon’s thoughts. “This way, at least we look the part. And if we play our cards right,
she’ll
come to
us
.”

“Which way is the right way to play our cards?”

“She’s female,” said Althea. Unnecessarily, as he thought, until she added: “Fae women are good leaders, but they have their weak points. For instance, in a Fae Lady’s court, whether Unseelie or Seelie, the unconscious bias will always be against men and for women.”

“For example?” prompted Markon, aware that Althea was leading up to an already decided plan.

“For example,” said Althea, giving him a prim, approving smile; “If a Fae Lady were to see a boorish human—or even a boorish fae—trying to foist his attentions upon a fae woman, she would intervene immediately and most likely personally.”

“Most likely?”

“There’s a chance she could order her archer over there to shoot you instead,” said Althea. “But only a very slight one, and if we move out of his eye-line you’ll be safe. She’s powerful enough to feel confident intervening by herself.”

“What do you mean by
foisting attentions
, exactly?” asked Markon, with deep foreboding.

“You’ll have to pretend to back me up against something and try to kiss me.”

“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be much to say to that, apart from: “What do you mean, try?”

“I’ll be resisting, of course,” said Althea.

“But–”

“I won’t slap you
very
hard,” she promised.

“
Althea
,” said Markon, somewhat exasperatedly. Heavens knew it wasn’t that he didn’t want to kiss her. The problem was that he
did
, and he was certain that he shouldn’t.

“It’s either that or you’ll have to pretend to be about to drive a dagger into me,” pointed out Althea. “It’s far harder to play that convincingly, and if you did it’s far more likely she’d send her guards to deal with you. You’ve–
oh!
”

Markon had the pleasure of seeing her for once utterly surprised, blue eyes wide and startled as he pinned her arms to her sides and kissed her. She put up an impressive struggle, but Markon had the advantage and it wasn’t until he let her go that she could slap him. He thought he might have been grinning when her palm connected with his cheek, and though he gasped he wasn’t sure it quite did away with the smile in his eyes.

“I believe the lady is requesting your absence,” said a cold, silvery voice at his ear.