Roadside Magic

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Not that there could be much worse. She shook her head. “I’m . . . well enough. You—the wound. It pains you?”

  He shrugged, his wet coat flopping. His thumbs moved slightly against wet velvet. “It’s not bad now; we’re in the mortal. We shouldn’t linger. The Hunt won’t take kindly to being balked, and may find our trail.”

  Not likely, with the Markets closed up. Still, there was profit to be made, so the goblins wouldn’t keep it sealed for very long. Perhaps only until dawn, which was more than enough time to scatter again. Now that she knew a hunter was after her, well . . .

  And yet, he said protection. So Summer wished her whole? Such news was not as comforting as one might think.

  “I can find my own way, thank you.” But she didn’t move. Why? “You asked my life of the Queen? Truly?”

  “She granted it with good grace. Robin—”

  After you took her the ampoules. Has she opened one? “Then I’d best be merrily away, in case you intend to offer her another gift at my expense. She will no doubt welcome thee warmly, Armormaster.”

  “Robin—”

  “Leave her be, Gallow. The lady wants no part of your suit.” The hunter laughed. It was a rich, mellow voice he had, deep and fine, but too bitter to be even remotely soothing.

  “You stay out of this, Al.”

  They know each other, in some fashion. Interesting. In the end, though, it didn’t matter.

  She found the strength to push his warm hands from her shoulders. “You may stay and argue, sirs, but I’d best be gone.” Where are we? A mortal city, and—

  Pepperbuckle’s head made another quick movement. His low, thrumming growl rattled the Dumpsters along one side of the alley, and she was suddenly conscious of her own weariness. Would every night for the rest of her perhaps-short life be this tiresome?

  “Robin.” Very quietly, Jeremiah Gallow spoke. “You’ll not stir a step without me. I mean to see you safely through this.”

  Do you mean what you say? No matter what he meant, if the Queen had sent Crenn and also thought Gallow sought to kill her himself, setting them both at each other might buy Robin precious time to escape what either of them had planned for her. “And what safety can you promise me, Armormaster? A man is led by the string in his trousers, and I know who holds the end of yours.”

  “I don’t think you do. Come.” He yanked on his torn sleeves, settling them as best he could. “This is not the place to wait for dawn.”

  A thin thrill of silver, far in the distance, underscored the words. Robin shuddered and set off for the mouth of the alley. Pepperbuckle paced beside her, but his great head drooped. He was probably hungry, and she hadn’t the faintest idea of what to feed him. “I know,” she whispered to him, and perhaps to Gallow as well. I know many things, but none of what I’d like to.

  “Lady Ragged.” The hunter, trotting after her but observing a careful distance. “Your cu sith, does he like fowl?”

  I don’t know. “He may, sir.”

  “Then I shall find him some. He drove off Unwinter’s dogs and did me a service. It’s the least I can do.”

  Why, how kind of you. As if she didn’t know better than to trust a man’s good humor, especially a sidhe’s. “I ask the price for this favor.”

  “Freely given, little bird. You interest me.”

  Well, that was a relief, and absolved her of any commitment to repay. “I am not easily snared.”

  “Christ.” Gallow caught up with her, moving stiffly, his hand sealed to his side again. “You’ve become a sweet-talker, Crenn. Don’t listen to him.”

  I have little choice. She smoothed Pepperbuckle’s ruff, peering out of the alley’s cave-mouth. She sniffed, deeply. No familiarity, and very little sidhe-tang in the air.

  Well, it will have to be good enough. She tested the wind, found it chill but favorable, and set off in search of a hole to spend what remained of the night in.

  And—useless to deny it—to see if Gallow would follow.

  SEEK ANY CURE

  30

  It was Crenn who found the abandoned warehouse, Crenn who brought Robin’s sidhe-dog sleepy, city-fat pigeons from the rafters—which the dog swallowed whole, at first, then settled into cracking and slurping at the bones of after three—and Crenn who built a fire, striking a spark from flint and a knifeblade, nursing the glitter with shreds of sere winter-weeds before tossing larger chunks of wooden pallets on the tiny, hungry blaze. Fire-chantment would draw other sidhe, if there were any about, but this mortal magic stood lesser chance of doing so. The iron in the warehouse walls was a better protection.

  The smoke drifted up, thinning to almost-lost before finding a gaping hole in the roof at the south end of the cavernous space and escaping into the night. As long as they kept the fire small, it would likely go unnoticed.

  Robin sat curled against the dog’s side. The thing was the size of a pony, and it looked nothing like a cu sith or a gebriel, or any other hound Jeremiah had seen among the sidhe. Its coat almost-matched her hair, and its eyes were just a shade or two lighter than hers. Where had she found it?

  Did it matter?

  Gallow peeled the shirt away from his side, examining the wound in the firelight. Crenn, crouching easily, equidistant from both him and Robin, hissed a little through his teeth as he recognized what had made the slice on Gallow’s side.

  This particular scar was livid, unlike the pale others crisscrossing Jeremiah’s belly. He’d lost some of the blurring of mortal life and was just as lean-muscular as he had been before Daisy. The body remembered.

  You just couldn’t hide from what you were, ever.

  He squeezed his fingers along the scar. Clear drops welled from the lower end, and he pressed a filthy, oil-soaked rag from the warehouse floor against them. The fabric smoked as the poison ate at it.

  “What did you do this time, Jer?” Crenn tossed another pallet-bit on the fire, taking care to keep his hair shaken down. You could only see the gleams of his eyes and a few odd flashes of copper flesh, nothing to build a coherent picture on. Maybe he didn’t want to show Robin his ruined face.

  Jeremiah bared his teeth, occupied in catching the last bits of the poison.

  It was Robin who answered, softly. “He challenged the Lord of the Hunt himself.” The dog’s crunch-slurp and low, happy growl underscored her words.

  “Why on earth did you do that?” Crenn leaned forward a little, as if he couldn’t believe his ears and needed confirmation. “Even for you, Gallow-my-glass, it’s a stupid move.”

  Jeremiah flung the rag away, into a dark corner. It hissed, a soft, caustic sound, and he immediately felt better. It would be short-lived. What could he say? “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Crenn’s laugh, short and disdainful, fell dead instead of echoing in the cavernous space. Another piece of pallet cracked in his capable hands. “I had heard you besotted with a maid, old man. Is that what this is?”

  “No,” Robin said, immediately.

  Just as Jeremiah said, “Yes.”

  Another short silence, this one full of sharp edges under the crackling of the fire. Crenn glanced at Robin, back at Jeremiah. Shrugged, easily. “Does your hound require more, fair Robin?”

  “I think he’s all right.” She stroked the dog’s shoulder. It made another low, happy noise. “You are very kind, sir.”

  “Who could not be, to you?”

  Oh, for God’s sake. Irritation bit at Jeremiah’s nerves. “You were never a womanizer before, Alastair.”

  “I am not now, either.” A glitter of teeth, another sharp crack of wood. “I’ll leave that to you. Remember Chicago?”

  They’d drunk their way through every speakeasy in that town, and there had been that pair of dancers—Mona and someone else, both with long legs and marcel waves. He couldn’t remember their faces, but he did remember the fight where he got knifed, and Crenn turning on the low-level mobster with that wide, white, unsettling grin under his fedora�
�. . .

  “I’d rather not.” Gallow exhaled, hard, shaking off memory. The firelight painted Robin’s black coat with gold, turned her hair into a lower, sullen flame. She was right there, drooping next to the dog, whole and breathing. She looked . . . tired, in the way only a sidhe girl could. No bloodshot eyes, no dark circles, but a certain wan transparency. Sodden and in motheaten velvet—where had she found it?—she looked . . .

  There weren’t words.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jeremiah.

  She studied Crenn, a faint line between her dark eyebrows. “You two are . . . friends?”

  “We used to be.” He stretched his hands out to the fire. Smears of wet dirt across the back, grime under his fingernails—looking from that to Robin’s pale, flawless cheek did something strange to his chest. A nameless aching.

  “Ah.” She asked no more. Swayed slightly, and the dog glanced back at her. It clearly considered Robin its mistress. The blood-clotted glass shard was safe in Gallow’s coat pocket, and that was a good thing. Who knew what someone else would do with it?

  Did she think he meant to carry her head back to Summer? Still? “Robin?”

  “Hm?” Her eyelids were falling. She could fall asleep at a moment’s notice, just like any battle-weary soldier.

  “What I did, I did to free you from Summer. And Unwinter—” His side twinged, sharply. The longer he spent in the sideways realms, the more the poison would swell itself inside the healed-over wound.

  Unwinter’s prey never truly escaped.

  “Why did you do that?” She shivered, pulling the damp velvet closer. Wise, not risking a chantment to dry it, even if they were relatively safe here. “I had not time to ask, before.”

  “Do what?” Don’t ask me this with Crenn listening. It’s not the time.

  “You let him strike you.” She sagged still further, curling to pillow her head on the tawny-red shoulder.

  “There was no letting.” Still, though, he hadn’t been thinking.

  “He meant to kill me, before I could sing.”

  He would have, too. Jeremiah hadn’t really decided. Everything in him had simply rebelled at the thought of Unwinter’s blade cleaving the life from Robin Ragged’s slim, so-vulnerable frame. “I know. Sleep, Robin. I’ll wake thee, should trouble approach.”

  She closed her eyes. The hound cracked another bone, slurping, and sighed.

  Crenn said nothing for a long while. He cracked no more wood, and the tilt of his head could mean he was studying the beast or the woman. The fire settled into its temporary home, more comfortable than any other creature except perhaps the dog, who eventually put his head down in the ruins of an albino pigeon and began to snore.

  Finally, the hunter settled cross-legged, the swordhilts short, stubby wings behind his shoulders. “You’re marked by Unwinter.”

  Stating the obvious, Crenn. “I have a plan.”

  “Don’t you always. Is she yours, then?” A slight movement, thrusting his scarred chin at Robin.

  She looked so peaceful. Glowing, serene, almost childlike, reminding him of Daisy’s tranquil face on the pillow next to his own, lit with the innocence of mortal rest. But Daisy had been the mortal shadow, and Robin the flame. It could burn the poison right out of him, that heat. “What do you care? And what does Summer really want, Crenn? I didn’t figure you for an errand-boy.” Two questions for one, an insult to boot, and he would likely not get a single answer. Unless they were speaking as they once had. As friends, as mortal men, the rough camaraderie of roofers or haulers, construction mockery or the half-insulting beer-banter that passed for affection among them.

  How much mortal was left in Alastair? Or in himself, for that matter?

  “I care little what Summer wants.” The hunter tossed another piece of dry wood onto the fire, and sparks whirled up. “I care little for your courtship, either.”

  “Then why are you still here?” And not back in your swamp, nursing your grudges?

  “Perhaps she interests me.” Crenn shrugged. “Or perhaps I’m simply waiting to rob you of something you care for, Gallow. Which would you prefer?”

  Don’t make me kill you. “There’s your mistake, Al. There’s nothing left I care for.” The words sounded hollow even as he spoke them. “My wife was Robin’s half sister, and she is long dead.”

  “Ah. Shall I ask permission to court your kinswoman, oh Gallowglass?”

  “She needs no trouble from you, Alastair Crenn. Your quarrel is with me.”

  “Is it?” Another short laugh. He had many of them, it seemed, each one bleaker than the last. “Get some rest.”

  “And trust you?”

  “You’re marked; all I have to do is wait. There’s only one thing that can cure you.”

  “Yes.” His throat was dry. “But before I seek any cure, there is business to finish.” Figure out how to trade the Horn to Unwinter, and get a good bargain for it. Then, to get Robin somewhere Summer can’t—

  “Indeed. I’ll take the first watch.”

  That felt familiar. Even fresh out of the orphanage, they had understood the need for watchfulness. Jeremiah took one last long look at Robin, sleeping peacefully. He stretched out on his side on the cold cracked concrete, pillowing his head on his left arm, and stared at the fire. He’d need all the rest he could get.

  Especially if Robin took it into her head to slip over the borders into the sideways realms again.

  Crenn fed the fire in handfuls and spoke no more. Gallow finally fell into a thin, troubled rest, his side aching and the taste of lies in his mouth.

  BAD JUJU

  31

  They called old Pete Craddock crazy. He coulda told them what was, really. Crazy was the goddamn capitalists. Crazy was the nine-to-fivers in their offices. Crazy was the gummint that sent a boy to the jungles to murder Commies and then, when he came back, spat on him and called him a babykiller.

  It was a damp night, even though the rain had stopped, and he pushed his cart down the sidewalk as dawn came up. Unbroken bottles piled high in the cart, and Pete’s bootsole was flapping a little. His head hurt from the cheap rye, but he had enough empties to turn in. You got up early, just like you did on the farm or in the service, and you got your work done. Those what stayed in bed lost out, or were throat-cut by the little crawling gooks in black pajamas.

  Rail-thin almost-elderly mortal man in a blue knit cap and boots held together with worn-down duct tape, shuffling down the pavement, bobbing his head as his long brown coat flopped. Winter had been damn hard, but down here you could set yourself up in one of the empty warehouses, if you knew how to get in. If you looked for the forgotten spaces.

  A flicker of motion ahead. Pete’s head jerked up, his bloodshot muddy-hazel eyes narrowing.

  Sometimes they came after him. If it wasn’t the pajamas it was the longhairs, and if it wasn’t them it was the pig cops who didn’t give a damn if you were a ghost, if you’d died for your country in a goddamn rice paddy and couldn’t get a woman or a place to stay now because everything slipped right through a ghost’s hands.

  The world was full of assholes. They’d set Jimmy McClintock on fire, poor Jim lost in a glue-sniffing stupor. Those drugs would get to you, bad juju. Liquor was much better. It warmed a man up, set him straight.

  In fact, Pete often thought, liquor was even better than a woman. It didn’t nag you to death.

  The flicker came again. His bootsole flopped as he slowed, staring.

  The old Emberly warehouse was locked up tight. The fence around it was topped with razor wire and pretty damn solid. At first Pete thought the delirious tremens had him, because there was a man balanced on the top of the chainlink, stepping between the sharp coils. Dressed all in brown leather, with a shock of nasty matted hair that looked almost green in the predawn glow. He coiled himself, the top bar of the chainlink fence flexing slightly, the wire rattling, and leapt, landing on concrete soft as a whisper.

  The man rolled his should
ers back, and Pete realized he had stopped dead, his jaw hanging. The tattered garbage bags covering his prizes flapped, a soft rustle as the usual dawn exhale filled the city.

  It was enough to make him think about Bad Mandy who lived under the overpass, smelling of sour lavender and whispering about the things that lived in the cracks and corners. “Aliens, dontcha know. Some of them can fly. They hide, and only come out when you’re not looking.”

  Bad Mandy, with her blackened teeth and her hissing, jabbing two fingers at you. “Don’t you look at me!” she’d yowl. “Don’t you dare!”

  The man in brown darted into the alley across the street between two falling-down brick heaps. He made no noise at all, but the fence was still quivering. Pete’s mouth was dry, as if he was back in the jungle with the shadows under every leaf, the steam and the stink and the shit and the blood.

  Trembling, Pete pushed his cart forward, wincing as the wheels grated. So loud in the hush, how hadn’t he noticed it before? What if the man came back, or suspected Pete had seen him?

  He sped up. His bootsole flapped harder and harder. Rancid sweat burned all over his body. By the time he hit Caroline Street he was running flat-out, the cart juddering madly, bottles jouncing free of the garbage bags, shattering like bombs.

  He was two blocks away from the collection center, and only one from the police station, when the massive heart attack seized his chest and dug its claws in without mercy. He screamed, a short cry because he had no breath left, and toppled to the cold pavement. The cart continued down the sidewalk, rolling with slow majesty before tipping, spilling glass and dirty clothes, a sleeping bag, and various other items into the road—a snail’s shell, brutally upended. Its wheels came to a stop, finally, and there was silence for a little while longer.

  ASK AND BEGONE

  32

  A fair, fine morning in Summer, but nary a sprite or nymph was to be seen. Crystals of dew sprinkling the lush grass, the finely carved leaves, and the glowing flowers went unharvested. No dancing in the dells, and Summerhome did not throb with merriment. The pennons hung listless, the green and white walls smoke-tarnished, the shell-white paths glowing as bleached bone under a harsh-glaring sun. No balmy breeze, no music floating in the air, and the orchard’s blossoms had closed tight. No open frills on the gnarled black branches, just white buds, shy and hard as a kraken girl’s nipple.