The Brightest Fell

by Seanan McGuire

  “Speak, or it will go ill for you,” said the Luidaeg. There was something almost soft in her voice, at odds with her appearance and the formality of her words. She was trying. Trying to do what, I wasn’t quite sure.

  “I remember,” said August.

  “Do you remember what you paid?”

  August swallowed hard. “You asked for my way home.”

  “Did you know what that meant?” The Luidaeg took a half step closer. “Did you listen when I tried to tell you? Did you hear the words as they left my mouth? Or did you walk away with the candle burning in your hand, already bound for the Babylon Road, so confident of your ability to do what no one had been able to do that you felt no need to listen to someone as ancient and irrelevant as the sea witch, who cleaves to the shore and never sees the road’s end?”

  August blanched. She looked around the room, finally focusing on me, eyes silently pleading. I was her sister. She didn’t know me; her first act had been to hurt me; but still, I was her sister, and she wanted me to help her.

  I couldn’t. She’d made me too human, and the Luidaeg had set too much of her humanity away for the sake of this confrontation. I couldn’t move. No—that wasn’t quite true. I could twitch my fingers. If I reached for the iron knife at my belt, it would cut away enough of the spell cast by the presence of the fae to free me to do . . . what? The Luidaeg was being intentionally terrifying, but under the circumstances, I couldn’t blame her.

  “Eyes on me, August,” said the Luidaeg. “Answer my questions.”

  “I was trying to save us.” August turned back to the Luidaeg, the first fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Simon winced, every instinct clearly telling him to go to his daughter, to gather her in his arms and protect her. Like me, he didn’t move.

  “You didn’t,” said the Luidaeg calmly. “You failed. I told you it wasn’t time yet. You didn’t listen to me.”

  “I had to try.”

  “‘Had’ is such a deadly word. Three letters, and it’s killed countless heroes in its day. What did I take, niece? What did you give me?”

  “My way home,” whispered August.

  “Your way home,” agreed the Luidaeg. “Until Oberon’s return, wander as you will, go where you may, but never will you find home, nor the light to lead you there. Your only guidance will be the light of a candle, and even that is gone now. Too much time has gone by.” She glanced at Simon, face softening slightly. “Time is always going by.”

  “I thought I could save us,” said August.

  “I know,” said the Luidaeg. She reached into the bodice of her gown, actually into her gown, hand breaking the surface of the fabric and sending ripples dancing across it, radiating out in a circle around the iceberg of her wrist. It looked like she was trying to tear out her own heart. Instead, she withdrew a small glass bottle.

  It looked like every bottle ever thrown from the side of a ship, a message sealed inside to bring comfort to the people still standing on the shore. Inside, a bird so small that it seemed impossible beat its wings against the glass, straining to reach August. Its wings were blue, and its tail was long and forked, like the fletching of an arrow.

  “Your debt has been paid by another,” said the Luidaeg, and removed the cork from the bottle. The tiny bird squeezed out the opening like a shot, wings tucked against its sides to preserve its speed. It spread them wide in the second before it slammed into August’s chest, vanishing through her clothing, into her skin.

  August gasped, suddenly sitting ramrod-straight under her bonds, straining against them. Her tear-filled eyes went terribly wide, mouth forming a perfect, pained “O.” Then she slumped forward, struggling for her breath.

  The Luidaeg turned to Simon. Her eyes were still black, but there was some mercy there now. I don’t know how it was possible for me to see it. I did. It hurt.

  “Go to her,” she said. “You don’t have much time.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. Simon rushed across the room and dropped to his knees next to August, reaching for her face with one trembling hand.

  “August,” he said. “My sweet girl, it’s me. I’m here.”

  “Papa?” She turned her head slowly, like she was afraid this was some kind of a trick: that she’d turn, and it wouldn’t be Simon at all, but some stranger. The last hundred years must have been an unending nightmare for her. First exile—and pureblood or not, exile is not a fun time—and then San Francisco after a century of mortal progress and rebuilding, with all the doors that should have led her back to the familiar closed against her.

  I wasn’t anticipating a close sisterly relationship with August. I already had a sister I loved and who loved me, and while May might have foretold my death when she first came home, she had never tried to make it happen. That didn’t mean I couldn’t feel terrible for August. The things she’d been through had earned her a little pity.

  Her eyes locked on Simon and filled with tears. The tension went out of her body as she stopped straining against the tape that bound her, although her fingers twitched, like she was trying to reach her hands out and embrace him. She leaned forward—not far, only as far as her restraints allowed—and Simon’s hand found her cheek, curving to cup her face. I started to reach for the silver knife at my belt, and hesitated, unsure how I should continue.

  The Luidaeg looked at me and nodded approvingly. Then she snapped her fingers. The tape fell away, dropping like so many harmless silver ribbons to the floor, all stickiness gone. It was a neat trick. I almost said so. Then I closed my mouth and swallowed my comments, because August had fallen out of the chair and into Simon’s arms, clinging to him for dear life.

  She was sobbing. My sister was sobbing. She pressed her face into the side of her father’s neck, crying in great, shuddering gasps that seemed to rack her entire body, originating somewhere deep below her breastbone, where the swallow-tailed bird that was her sense of home now roosted, once more intangible and safe.

  “Oh, Papa, Papa, I’m sorry,” she wailed, voice muffled by his skin. “I got so lost, Papa, I’m sorry.”

  “My brave girl,” said Simon, stroking her back with one hand. He was holding her as tightly as she was holding him, leaving no space between them, nowhere for the world to grab hold and drag them apart from one another. They were reunited, a single entity that happened to occupy two bodies, and seeing them like that healed and hurt in the same measure, because I knew it couldn’t last. Even if the Luidaeg had wanted to let Simon out of his bargain, she couldn’t.

  Could she? I looked at her. She looked back, shaking her head, making no effort to hide her own sorrow. The blackness was bleeding out of her eyes, leaving them the frosted green of driftglass thrown up on some distant, unforgiving shore.

  “You know better,” she said, and her words were an apology and a condemnation at the same time, like she was pronouncing sentence over us all. In her way, maybe she was.

  August was still mumbling apologies into Simon’s hair, while he stroked her back and told her over and over again that no, no, he wasn’t angry with her, he didn’t blame her; he understood the lure of heroism. Their magic must have been high, because even I could smell the traceries of smoke and roses in the air. Smoke, roses . . . and cider. Inhale as I would, I couldn’t find the faintest trace of rot, or of oranges.

  August wasn’t the only one who’d been lost. She was about to be the only one who knew what it was to be found.

  Slowly, the Luidaeg moved to stand behind Simon, hesitating before she reached down and touched his shoulder.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  He raised his head, twisting enough to see her, never letting go of August. “Please,” he said. “Please, just a few moments more. I beg you.”

  “If it were up to me, I would give you all the time in the world. It’s not up to me. This door can only be held open for so long.” She held out her hand. �
��Come.”

  Simon’s shoulders slumped as the fight went out of him. “All right,” he said. “All right.” He turned back to August, pressing a kiss against her forehead before he began, gently, to peel himself away from her.

  “Papa?” She didn’t go easy. She kept trying to reassert her hold on him, grabbing for his hands until he pushed her firmly away. August looked at Simon with wide, wounded eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “We had a bargain, and it stands as yet unfulfilled,” said the Luidaeg. She grabbed Simon’s shoulder, half urging and half hauling him to his feet.

  August made one last grab for her father before falling back, kneeling on the floor and staring at the Luidaeg in slowly dawning realization.

  “What’s happening?” murmured Quentin.

  I jumped. I had almost forgotten he was there. “It’s time for Simon to pay his daughter’s debts,” I said.

  “Please don’t do this,” whispered August.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” said Simon. His smile was like a hundred years of heartbreak, stretching out from here to eternity. “I believe in you. When you bring Oberon home, you’ll bring me home, too.”

  “Papa, no!” August scrambled to her feet, lunging for Simon.

  The Luidaeg’s hand whipped out like a snake striking its prey, so swift that there was no time for anyone to react, striking August across the face. August froze where she was, becoming a sculpture of a woman, not even seeming to breathe.

  “I have tolerated a lot from your bloodline over the years,” said the Luidaeg. “First Amy, and then you, and then your sister. I’ve put up with more than any of you have ever had any right to ask, and I’ve done it because I loved my own sister, once, and because I wanted to be a good aunt to my newest nieces, and most of all, because I miss my own father. Amandine’s line will bring Oberon home. You thought a century without your father was hard? You know nothing. Nothing. But I will not tolerate disrespect in my own home, and I will not allow you to cheapen what this man has done for you. You made a choice. This is the consequence.”

  The Luidaeg spun around before Simon could say anything, slamming her hand into his chest. It passed through skin and muscle, into the space behind his breastbone, and for a terrible moment, everything seemed to stop, because she was standing there with her arm buried halfway to the elbow in another person’s body. Simon went stiff, his jaw going slack and his arms dangling useless at his sides.

  “I truly am sorry,” said the Luidaeg, and pulled her arm free.

  In her hand was a bird, slightly larger than the one that had flown to roost in August’s breast. Its wings were green, and its tail was forked like the ribbon on a Christmas present. The Luidaeg moved her other hand, and was suddenly holding a bottle like the one that had contained August’s way home. Maybe it was the same bottle. It was large enough to hold the bird, but barely; when she drove the stopper home, the bird beat its wings against the glass, clearly pinned and uncomfortable, unable to comprehend its captivity.

  “The price is paid,” said the Luidaeg, and tucked the bottle into her gown. She snapped her fingers. August collapsed to the floor, gasping as the Luidaeg’s spell released her.

  Simon blinked. It was the first time he’d moved since the Luidaeg reached into his flesh to pull his payment out. Then he shook himself convulsively, like a dog trying to dry off after an unexpected dousing in a lake.

  “Papa?” said August. She stood slowly, uncertainly, her knees knocking together as she moved. She looked so lost. Who knew that it could cost so much to be found?

  “Simon?” I said.

  He looked at her, and there was no comprehension in his face. She might as well have been a stranger to him, as he had so recently been a stranger to her. Then, slowly, he turned to me, and smiled. It was the languid, oily smile of the man who had been Oleander’s lover and Evening Winterrose’s willing servant. He’d had good reason to be both those things, but they were what had helped him to get so lost.

  “Why, October,” he virtually purred. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Uh,” said Quentin.

  “Crap,” I said, and drew my knives, one in each hand. Silver is the most common metal in Faerie, and iron is the most deadly; used together, they can even kill the Firstborn.

  August’s eyes widened. She leaped to her feet, throwing herself between me and Simon. “No!” she shouted. “Don’t you hurt my father!”

  “Dear, you seem like a very nice girl, whoever you are, but I assure you, I’m not your father,” said Simon. He gripped her shoulders and shoved her aside, showing none of his former care. “October and I, on the other hand . . . we have unfinished business, don’t we?”

  “Uh, Luidaeg?” I said. “Little help here?”

  “He’s lost his way home,” she said. “He was using you as a map to get himself there.”

  “So shouldn’t he forget who I am?”

  “Apparently, no,” she said. “That wouldn’t be as absolutely isolating as only remembering that he hates you.”

  “Oh, swell,” I said. I returned my attention to Simon. “I know you can’t remember this right now, but we’re not enemies anymore. I’ve even sort of forgiven you for the fish thing. Can you chill, please, so we can work this out?”

  Simon’s response was a sneer, and a complicated motion of his hands through the air. The smell of smoke and rotten oranges rose around him, heavy enough that I had no trouble identifying it.

  “Guess not,” I muttered.

  Simon didn’t say anything. He just flung his spell at me, hard and fast. Not fast enough: I got my knives up, crossing them in the air in front of me, and felt the impact up my arms as whatever he’d been trying to cast struck the iron and evaporated. Whatever it was, it had been strong enough that it rocked me backward, onto my heels. Simon snarled, hands beginning to move again.

  I was mostly human, standing in a room with two stunned, motionless purebloods and a Firstborn who was actively forbidden to raise a hand against any descendant of Titania unless they were entering into a bargain with her. So naturally, I did the only thing that made sense, and I charged, knives still held in front of me, ready to deflect whatever he might throw.

  Simon Torquill had been called many things over the centuries, and having spent time with the man, I was willing to accept that most of them were accurate. I’d heard him referred to as a monster, a cheat, a trickster, and a coward . . . but I had never heard him called a fool. When he saw me running toward him he spun on his heel and fled deeper into the apartment, heading toward the back door.

  I was perfectly willing to follow him until the Luidaeg’s hand on my elbow stopped me. I turned to her. She shook her head.

  “Don’t,” she said. “You can’t save him from what he’s done to himself. Let him go. I won’t lock my doors against him.”

  “What did you do?”

  We both turned. August was still standing where Simon had put her, staring at the two of us. She looked so much like our mother—so much like me—that I was briefly taken aback. Until that moment, she had been an obstacle, not an individual. Now . . . this woman, this stranger, who had attacked me the moment that we met, who had abused and enchanted my allies, she was my sister. We shared blood. It didn’t seem quite real.

  She took a step forward. “What did you do?” she repeated. There was menace in her tone now, like she thought she could somehow frighten us into putting her world back to normal.

  Even Quentin was unimpressed. “Simon fixed your mess,” he said. “You should settle down. You’re being sort of a jerk.”

  August stopped to blink at him. “Who, in Oberon’s name, are you?”

  “Quentin,” he said. “I’m her squire.” He indicated me.

  “Hi,” I said. “I’m your sister.”

  She frowned. “No, you’re not,” she said.

  “If you wer
e in charge of reality, maybe saying ‘no’ would change things, but sorry, I’m your sister,” I said. “Amandine is my mother. She’s yours, too. And she misses you. Badly. She’s waiting for me to bring you home.”

  August frowned again, more deeply this time, like she was offended by my words. “Why would she send you? Why didn’t she come and find me herself?”

  The Luidaeg put her hand on my shoulder, pulling me a half step toward her, so that it was clear to anyone with eyes that I was under her protection. “Amy has her limitations, as do we all, and you should know better than to question your mother. She sent October to find you. October found you. A hundred years gone, and it’s taken a changeling and your father’s love to bring you home. Don’t let his sacrifice be in vain.”

  “What do you mean?” August balled her hands into fists. “What did you do to him?”

  “Girl, I’m going to assume you’re too angry to think straight, because the alternative is that you’re too stupid and too far up your own ass to understand what these people have done for you,” said the Luidaeg. Her tone was calm, but her eyes were bleeding toward black again. “You sold me your way home for a candle and a promise. You said you would return my father. Do you remember?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Oberon isn’t here. Your father has paid your debts. Until my father comes home, yours will remain lost. He will not know you, nor take comfort from your hands. He will not find his own way. And if you think that’s not fair, remember how hard I tried to talk you out of taking that same bargain. I begged, August.” The Luidaeg’s voice broke. In that second, she wasn’t the sea witch. She was just an aunt, talking to her niece. “I begged you to go home and not do this. Everything that’s happened here is your fault.”

  “Especially the part that involved trying to turn me mortal,” I said, sheathing my knives. “Is that always how you say hello?”

  “I was defending myself,” snapped August.

  “I wasn’t attacking you,” I said. “You broke my nose and changed my blood before I even took a step toward you. That’s not self-defense, that’s assault.”