Roadside Magic

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Unwinter waited. Patiently. Of course, he had all the time in the world, now.

  The lance drank, and drank, until there was nothing left. Finally, Gallow tore the blade free. The blunt end smacked the hillocked, crumbling roof, and he straightened. The Savoigh Limited shuddered, and now he wondered why Puck had led him here, of all places.

  He was just trying to tire me out. Then he could, what? Take the Horn, certainly. And probably Robin’s locket.

  The instant he thought of it, Robin’s necklace twitched in his pocket. Was she still alive?

  She has to be.

  If she wasn’t, he would tear apart Hell itself to find her. Though she would probably go straight up to the angels. Maybe they would deal with her more kindly than he had.

  He faced Unwinter again, without the thin protection of holy ground. The lance hummed, the sick heat of stolen life coursing up its length and through his hand, up his arm to jolt in his shoulder. The scar ached, burned, and even the unhealthy surging fire of the lance couldn’t keep the poison back.

  Okay, Jer. Make it good.

  He dug under his chestplate. The medallion came out, and Unwinter’s crimson eyesparks narrowed. The collected host, crowding the roof, spectral knights and fanged drow, made an uneasy, restless movement.

  “You amuse me,” Unwinter said, finally. “Do you still seek to trade my property for your own miserable life?”

  Gallow shook his head. “No. But I’ll hand it over without a whisper for your promise.”

  “And what promise is that? The Horn is mine.”

  Not right now it isn’t. Possession is nine-tenths, motherfucker. “The same as last time. Protect Robin Ragged. Keep her safe, let her live. Revenge any hurt done to her, guard her.” The Horn became heavier, unfolding into its other shape. An alien curve of blackened metal polished to high silver where runes of no make mortal or sidhe were hammered into its surface—starmetal, the dwarves said, and denied any making of the thing. They said it had simply been dropped whole onto the screaming, shuddering earth before the Sundering, even before Danu’s children woke in the forests during the Long Night. Long before the mortals had crawled forth to begin wrenching iron from the depths.

  Unwinter made that same grinding noise. “So much trouble for one little Half bird. Tell me, Gallow, why I should not simply strike you down? You challenged me, you robbed me, you insulted me, and you slew one I held dear.”

  He’s not asking about the poison. Jeremiah shrugged. “Because you’re not Summer.”

  One of the drow gasped, as if Jeremiah had screamed an obscenity.

  “You’re a just lord,” Gallow continued. “And I’m dead soon anyway. I might as well get a fair price for my exit.”

  Unwinter stared at him for a long, empty, cold moment. Please, Jeremiah thought.

  Please let him be amused.

  Finally, the high-crowned helm dipped slightly. Unwinter nodded.

  “Bind him,” he said. “Take him to the Keep, deliver him whole and undamaged.”

  Wait, what?

  He fought, but the drow were many, their nets tangling, the lance vanishing as chantment sparked in the hair-fine golden strands. They searched him as they cocooned him, and the Horn bit and sparked with cold as they sought to tear it from him. Since they could not, they settled for the next best thing—Robin’s locket gleamed, ripped from his neck and sizzling against drow flesh.

  “My lord!” the creature cried, and dropped it, chiming, to the ground.

  “Ah.” Unwinter sounded thoughtful. One of the knights dismounted, carefully tweezed the chain up, and tossed it from hand to hand as if it was too hot to hold. Of course, it was truemetal, and Robin was of Summer.

  He struggled as the knight handed it up to his lord, and Unwinter dangled the locket thoughtfully, seeming not to notice the steam that rose from his gauntlet. “Pretty jesses, for a little bird.” At least Unwinter did sound pleased. Terribly, fully amused.

  No! Jeremiah thrashed. It made no difference. His side cramped again, and blood burst between his lips. The Horn tangled in the netting and snarled, its cold breaking through the strands, but more crowded to take their places.

  Before the sweating sickness of the poison and the dragging languor of net-chantment robbed him of consciousness, Gallow heard Unwinter’s final command.

  “Ride in hunt of the Ragged. A prize to whoever catches her alive, and whole!”

  THE SAME AT NIGHT

  56

  Midnight came, and passed. She tossed and turned on a stranger’s bed, and little by little woke fully, goose bumps standing out all over her.

  What’s that?

  Now that she’d had a little rest, the pieces inside her head were a little less jumbled. Robin Ragged. She pushed herself up on her elbows. That’s who I am. I escaped. Her breath came smoothly, four in and four out, and her throat was no longer afire. Still, she craved milk. Even skim, that pale ghost, would do. Her shoes, half-tangled in the covers underneath her, jabbed at her ribs, so she drew them out.

  This late, the only other breathing noise in the trailer was a mortal woman with a little extra flesh on her rangy bones, propped against the kitchenette’s oven. A tiny travel-trailer—Robin looked up. There were no pictures above the cot, but it was eerily familiar just the same. She studied the woman’s face in the dim nightlight. Even slack with sleep, she looked determined and no-nonsense, her cap of dark curls not daring to disarrange itself much. She looked a little like a brughnie slumbering at a hearth. All she lacked were bare, horn-clawed feet and a kerchief made of spidersilk.

  Robin eased herself up to sitting. Her dress shed sand and guck alike, and the seaweed tangled in her hair had already crisp-dried, falling in flakes as a sidhe’s heat and breathing chantment loosened it. I fell. I was in Summer, I think, and I fell.

  Then what?

  She slid off the bed in increments. It didn’t creak or whisper, and she worked her feet into her shoes, sighing in relief as the tingle against her toes told her their chantments were still active. The bruises on her legs were glaring and garish, probably from rocks; her arms were scraped and salt-stinging.

  A tiny fridge hummed under the kitchenette counter. She eased down onto her knees, glanced at the sleeping woman. Threads of chantment worked over the mortal; she wouldn’t wake.

  Probably for the best. Robin’s head ached, a vise around her temples. She frowned—where had the men gone, both the sleeping one and the other with his glittering eyes?

  She decided not to care. Her belt was still fastened at her hips, the knife in its sheath and the pipes—probably ruined, who knew?—in their case as well. She flipped open the top of the case, stuck her pinkie in the largest reed—it met glass, a third of the way down, and she exhaled softly with relief. She couldn’t quite think of why that was important, but it was. If she could just get some milk, she could no doubt remember more.

  The slice of golden light from the mini fridge showed every wrinkle on the mortal woman’s face, the sand still clinging to her capable hands, her workboots grimed with it. The rest of the trailer was spick-and-span; she seemed a neat soul.

  There was no milk. No carton of creamer, even. There were, however, two sticks of sun-yellow butter, and Robin wrinkled her nose but took them both. The waxen wrapper on one peeled away just like a banana’s skin, and she began to eat. The first few bites were heaven, and she finished the first stick in short order, licking her fingers and scraping her tongue against her top teeth as the grease coated it. At least it was salted; that caused a pleasant sting all the way down. A lump of heat congealed behind her breastbone. It wasn’t milk, but it would do.

  Nibbling at the other bar, she slid past the sleeping woman, edged into the bathroom. Her velvet coat hung in the tiny shower, sand sluicing from it as Robin brushed her hand along its folds. She shook her hair, too, and whispered a small chantment that worked grit and seaweed free.

  The knife gleamed when she eased it from the sheath. In here, the nightlight�
�s glow was like a candle’s, and it showed a skinny sidhe girl in the flyspecked mirror, her cheekbones standing out startlingly and buttergrease smeared on her pale lips. She shuddered, and the mirror cracked with a whisper, from one end to the other. Its pieces reflected two Robins, and she shuddered again . . . but nothing else happened.

  I have to know. But know what? She stared at the dagger’s leafblade, tiny veins in the metal collecting a thick green smear. The edges would be whisper-sharp, even drenched in seawater, and the blade would never rust. The hilt was warm, and fit her hand exactly, even though his was shaped differently.

  Think, Robin. Think.

  It was hard. She took another bite of butter, grimaced a little. A brughnie could probably eat a whole pail of it in one sitting and call for more, but Robin was Half, and didn’t have the stomach for so much concentrated fat.

  Green venom collected at the knifepoint. She bit her lip, held her arm over the sink. Carefully, she tilted the blade this way and that, collecting a bead of liquid.

  When it broke free, falling, and splashed against her arm she hissed in a breath, expecting pain.

  Nothing happened. Puck’s poison did not burn her.

  She swallowed, hard. It’s true.

  Of course it was true.

  She grabbed her hair, held it away from her face, sawed close to the scalp. It fell, drifts of coppergold, probably clogging the sink. Dwarves would pay a high price for it, but a mortal would simply throw it out. She took care not to nick her own skin; her immunity might not extend that far.

  She finished the butter and laid the last hank of hair in the small sink. I should clean up. Chantment would serve her; she could spend some of her limited, slowly returning strength to erase her traces here. She rolled the hair into a club, whispering the strands together in a mess of stickiness, and clutched it in her palm, squeezing harder and harder. Her arm shook, and when she opened her fingers, fine goldenred ash scattered into the sink.

  She shrugged into the velvet coat. Whispered a word at the sand; it rolled itself into a ball, bumped over the doorsill, and continued along her scattered trail. The woman in the chair muttered uneasily, and Robin chewed at her lower lip as she watched the mortal woman’s sleep.

  It was no use. All she could do was breathe a little goodluck chantment, her fingers leaving a flushed-gold smear against the thinning flesh of the mortal’s aging cheek, and hope it was enough. Instinct and common sense demanded she move, get outside, get away from these fragile creatures. They had miraculously dragged her from the sea; it would be poor indeed to bring the wrath of either Court upon them.

  Thank God Puck’s dead. She felt at her left pocket, touching the familiar lump of a small blue plastic ring. Opened the door as the sandball, having dragged bits of kelp and a rather large dustball—Daddy Snowe had called them ghost turds—bumbled past her and scattered down the steps.

  Look who’s come home to visit!

  She shuddered. Bits and pieces were coming back, no matter how much she might wish them not to.

  Pepperbuckle leapt to his feet, his tail thudding against the side of the trailer with a hollow boom. She shushed him, bent down gingerly, smoothed his head and scrubbed behind his ears. “Good boy,” she whispered. The words burned her throat, rasping free with effort. “Best boy. I should never have left you.”

  Except if I hadn’t, someone might have killed you too, and all this for nothing. She sighed, and leaned on him. The night was fragrant and warm, and when she peered about she saw palm trees rising over a jumbled collection of trailers, electrical lines strung hither and yon. It looked strangely familiar, the circular bulk of a Ferris wheel rising dead and dark with evil red glimmers along its struts. The sea-sound was almost like a dust-laden wind.

  All carnivals looked the same at night. Who knew?

  The first thing to do was to leave this place. The butter was a lump high under her breastbone; it didn’t soothe her throat the way milk would, but it gave her enough strength for simple chantment and sealed the worst of the agonizing grating when she thought about speaking.

  “All right,” she whispered, testing the sound. Coughed a little, into her palm.

  Pepperbuckle’s head came up. He sniffed, deeply, and under her hand his shoulder turned hard as tile. A tremor ran through him, and his irises were now luminescent, a low blue glow.

  “What is it?” she whispered. “What is it, boy?”

  Then she heard.

  High silver whistles thrilling in the distance. A ring of them from every direction, piercing the formless mutter of the sea. The goose bumps came back. Robin swayed, closing her eyes.

  It would never be over. They would chase until they caught her.

  Pepperbuckle growled, and when she opened her eyes, a shadow loomed at the corner of the trailer. Dark eyes gleamed, and terror filled her throat, almost buckled her knees.

  “I’m a goddamn fool. I can’t leave you,” the man said, and beckoned. “Come on.”

  ANY MORE THAN I HATE MYSELF

  57

  Gaunt and pale, her eyes huge in a wan little face, Robin ran between him and the hound, her fingers wound in the creature’s ruff and her choking, labored breathing hurting Crenn’s own chest. Either she didn’t recognize him, or she was numb enough to have forgiven him, or she thought he was her best chance of survival, or . . . who knew? It didn’t matter.

  The whistles pierced every corner, a silver net. They’d even worked around the bluff toward the seashore, and there went his chances of getting her out of here quietly. He almost wished he hadn’t gone to steal her some milk, thinking she needed rest and he could at least begin to coax her into—

  “Crenn!” she gasped, in a painful husky whisper. Had she just now recognized him? She tried to slow down, but her fingers were caught in the dog’s fur, and he had her other arm, dragging her along the beaten-dirt pathway eastward. “You . . . you . . .”

  “Save . . . your breath . . . for running,” he told her. “Don’t try to sing. The weed.”

  “The what?” The words rasped hotly; she almost tripped over cables carrying electricity to each of the trailers, the two RVs, a field kitchen under a canvas tent. It reminded him of the Hoovervilles, the dust and the desperation, the babies crying and the police descending with their truncheons and shiny badges. The scars were gone, but he still felt them, a river of fire over half his body, the other half cold with the terror of any hunted animal.

  They burst onto the dark, shuttered fairway, and Crenn almost thought they had a shot at escaping unseen—until the shadows at the far end, under the Ferris wheel’s spidery bulk, birthed a cold gleam and silvershod hoofbeats rang on packed dirt. The rider, a black paper cutout, smoked with wrongness, and Robin’s despairing, mewling little cry ignited something in Crenn’s bones.

  Funny, how things became very simple once a man’s course was decided. It was the aimlessness of choice that made mischief, among both sidhe and mortals.

  “That way!” he said, and pushed her. The dog took over, hauling her up a rickety ramp, bursting through a chain stretched between pillars into a dark passageway beyond. A gigantic clown was painted above, its gaping mouth the entryway, its rubber-red lips leering in the low lamplight. FUNHOUSE FUNHOUSE FUNHOUSE, the painted boards cried, and below, IT’S A SCREAM!

  No doubt Gallow would do something stupid, like charging the rider with his lance out. He had always been one to rush in blindly, while Alastair hung back to see the shape of the battle before deciding where to intervene. It wasn’t cowardice, he told himself for the thousandth time, it was survival, and woe to those who did not obey its dictates.

  Crenn’s hands moved, the curve of wood strapped to his back yanked free, and a word of chantment snapped the bow out, its arms gracefully bending into tension as his fingers felt along fletchings and found the one he wanted.

  He nocked and drew back to his ear, the whistle-blast becoming a high keening of prey found, prey fou
nd!

  The needle-tooth hounds would be along any moment now.

  Still, he took his time, the world becoming a still small point as if he balanced on a bough in the Marrowdowne, waiting to send a flint-needle bolt through a sparrow’s eye. This arrow was fletched heavily, and its head was cold iron; the hoop in Crenn’s ear burned as chantment woke, humming.

  He loosed.

  The night-mare mount’s steady jog turned to a confused walk as the rider stiffened, a grotesque choking audible down the dust-trodden length of the fairway. The rider slumped, the arrow a flagpole poking from the jousting helm’s eye-bar. Crenn didn’t wait to see him hit the ground, just spun and plunged after Robin and the dog.

  Complete darkness. Choked cries, shattering glass. A whining bark, and he blundered into a hallway lined with mirrors, faint light from the end reflected over and over. Robin, trying to scream, reeled drunkenly from side to side, her reflections distorted-dancing; he ran into her with an oof! that would have been funny if he hadn’t heard more urgent silver whistles filtering in from outside.

  “Don’t look!” he snapped, and grabbed her, earning himself a flurry of blows as she thrashed. Maddened with fear, she even bit him as he hauled her through the hallway, and the flooring underneath shifted treacherously, groaning under Pepperbuckle’s weight. They pressed forward in a tangle, and he realized he was cursing, swallowed half an anatomical term a woman should never hear, and got his hand over her eyes. “Don’t look, damn you! Keep moving!”

  Turns in quick succession, and all of a sudden a doorway loomed, the dog leapt and carried it down in a shatter of splinters. Back on the fairway, Robin’s eyes tightly closed as she ran, clinging to his hand.

  Don’t just move, Jeremiah Gallow had always said. Move and think, that’s the ticket.

  As if that bastard had any other setting than just charging in with that goddamn pigsticker of his, confident Alastair would be there in the background to do the hard work so Jer could play the hero.