Puck settled himself more comfortably. His feet had stopped stinging. Clasping the branch with both palms, his knees wide-splayed, he smiled his sharp white smile and wondered if the Ragged would, as she sometimes did, weep at her mother’s grave.
This time she did not, and she did not linger overlong. She did whisper something the breeze almost failed to carry to Puck’s waiting ear, but he pursed his lips and blew a little. The air itself was happy to carry tales, for a sidhe such as himself.
“Mama, I’m sorry.”
Puck’s grin widened, his green eyes twinkled, but he waited until the Ragged had disappeared over the far rise—she was, it appeared, making for the entrance to Summer in the weed-choked lot on 176th, and using this place to break her trail most handily.
Then, when he was sure she could not hear him, the Fatherless threw back his head and laughed, a merry, boyish chuckle that chipped a few pebbles from the top of the stone wall and blackened the moss on the side that faced St. Martin the Redeemer’s Church.
MORTAL WORTH
15
Leafshadow and droplets of golden Summer played over Robin’s skin, the sweet breeze lifting the hem of her skirt. Here there was no pavement to bruise a sidhe’s feet, just good honest cobbles, and the air was silken with a warm afternoon breeze. The orchard was full of whispers, laughter, and the plucking of a sidhe harp, high-pitched and thrilling, the notes carrying bright spangles through dappled shade.
The first surprise was that she had arisen from her couch, and come to meet Robin in this dell. Over the slight hill, behind a screen of cloud-flowered trees, the Court was a murmur and a singing, laughter like silver bells cruel and wondrous.
The bark of every tree held carvings, faces twisted with fear or remorse, none of them serene. At least, it was easy to pretend they were carvings, if one did not look too closely.
The tall, pale Belle Dame sans Merci paused, swaying like a young willow. White skin, crimson lips, the dazzlement of utter beauty in her heavy silken indigo mantle—did she feel cold, the Queen of Summer? Who knew why she did as she did?
Who had the right to ask? She was the fount, and Sidherie flowed forth like her golden hair. At least, so the harpers said, flattering; none now dared speak of plagued Unwinter and the peasants of the free sidhe catching blackboil ill.
Sometimes Robin suspected… well, why flatter Summer so, unless she needed the reassurance?
Her features betrayed none of this dangerous idea. Her thoughts had grown bleaker of late, a thing Robin had not thought possible.
“Dearest Robin,” the Queen murmured¸ and her robe rustled. Beside her, staring adoringly at her so-perfect profile, was a boy with corngold hair. A changeling kept his place in the mortal realms, and sometimes the young man would tilt his head as if listening to the faraway music of his life passing outside the sideways realms. Straight nose, a lush mouth, wide blue eyes. The Queen had preferred her toys to be brun, and Sean’s arrival at Court had been via a stealer with long grasping fingers, Archane the Quiring. A beauty for you, my liege.
Who could guess what the Queen thought—maybe that Archane was currying favor too openly, or that he presented the dazed child not as Summer’s by right, but instead something only he had the power to convey?
Sing him a song, Robin. Thank him for this gift. And oh, the Ragged had.
Then, as the boon for her service, pressed by Summer to take a reward, she had asked for the boy. For some short while, she had even been allowed to keep him as a mortal pet, until the Queen—maybe bored, maybe simply cruel—had paid the boy special attention one afternoon, caressing his cheeks and breathing in his golden hair, the drug of her presence turning him glaze-eyed and lost while Robin stood frozen, her face a mask.
Watching.
Sometimes Robin had thought of finding the changeling and singing it to death, returning the little one to his mortal family. She had not. One more day, she would promise herself. What harm could one more day do? Is it not better here than in the pale mortal realm?
Because he was wide-eyed and charming, and his laughter was like bells, and because he called her Robin-mama, and sometimes, on her narrow pallet, they would sleep together, the boy sucking his thumb and Robin dreamless, for once. The top of his head smelled of dust and a haze of golden healthy mortal youth, just like another, remembered child.
His warm living weight reminded her of other nights spent listening to mortal breathing, wondering why she was so different.
Strange, her mother had called her. You take after your father, she sometimes whispered. The anonymous father who had left with the death of a mortal summer fading into russet fall. Mama pregnant and finding herself the mortal Daddy Snowe, a proud peacock of a delivery driver. Mama swearing Robin was his, that she was just premature, and Daddy Snowe seeming to accept this until the whiskey rose in him and he called Mama a slut and Robin a slut-child.
Her earliest memories were of his loathsome bellowing, and Mama’s soft sobs.
When the younger baby was born, looking just like her older sister, Daddy Snowe believed Mama and began to shower Robin with attention, too, but by then the damage was done. Not only that, but Daddy Snowe’s hugs and too-heavy hands, his furtive glances and the way his breathing turned heavy around young Robin… She feared, without knowing precisely what she was afraid of.
At twelve, Robin Ragged had traded herself away to the Summer Court, because knowing everyone would be happier if you were gone was all the incentive a lonely young Half girl needed. Of course Puck Goodfellow had wanted her to join the free sidhe, but they often lived in the mortal world, and Robin, dazzled by Summer’s pavilions and greenery, wanted nothing more than to escape the gray drudge of mortals.
Maybe she should have driven a harder bargain. What girl, mortal or sidhe, knows her worth at twelve small orbits around the mortal sun? Whatever else, Puck had found her, and brought her to Seelie. You would not like Unwinter, my primrose dear.
All of which brought her here, standing before Summer and realizing once more that Court was a trap. Just a little prettier than a trailer and an older man’s pinching fingers, that was all.
“A rider and a knight named Gallow by the Fatherless. An interesting tale.” The Queen’s snow-white hand caressed Sean’s bare shoulder, and the boy trembled. He wasn’t more than eleven, but already tall. He slept on Summer’s couch now, and brought her honey with milk every morning in the favorite’s golden horn. Eyes for nothing else, and sometimes the tight-fitting velvet breeches showed the stiffening of a prepubescent boy’s dim, unconscious desire.
Robin tasted sourness, but did not look away. She held Summer’s gaze, that black ageless stare you could drown in. “I thought you would wish to hear it.”
The Queen did not waste words. “Where are the ampoules?”
“Safe.” Robin almost grimaced, thinking of Parsifleur’s death. A muscle in her cheek perhaps flickered, but she schooled her expression just in time, and it was lucky the Queen had bent her gaze to Sean’s lowered head. Some balance had tipped while Robin ran thither and yon in the mortal world, and he no longer recognized her at all.
Robin-mama. Feeding him bread and honey, thinking perhaps his teeth would not take to it, but they were still pearly and straight. And milk she had fetched every morning and night. His laughter when she made small bits of chantment glamour to amuse, and his greeting when she returned to what passed for a nursery, the brughnies she bargained into caring for him in her absence chirping a hello. His chubby arms, lifted, and the mortal scent of his hair as she opened the casement at night, teaching him the constellations of Summer’s dusk.
If he returned to mortals, what would he grow into? The poison was in the wound now. It was all too easy to imagine him crow-gaunt and scab-picked as Henzler, burning with a desire that would never be slaked. Hollowed out for a sidhe’s careless, momentary amusement.
The Queen’s gaze fell across Robin’s face like a blow. Those black eyes, with the little crystalline ligh
ts swimming in their depths, under the beautifully arched brows and the fillet holding her golden hair back, the Summer Jewel burning against her smooth ageless forehead, that cherry-red mouth a pout. “You could not bring them? Oh, Robin.”
“The Unseelie are about, even watching the Gates. And I am only one, while they are many.” Make of that what you will. She did not watch the white hands caressing Sean’s shoulder. Instead, she turned her attention to a single creamy apple-blossom. This particular tree held a face with its moss-stuffed mouth wide open, seeking to scream. Another changeling forever Summer, roots holding ancient chantment fast.
The Queen considered this. Robin kept breathing. Four counts in, four counts out.
Sean made a small piping sound. The snowy fingers, momentarily tipped with wicked bloodred nails, had dug in.
Even glamour could wound, if strong enough.
“Ah, forgive me,” Summer whispered. “I did not mean to hurt.”
Robin’s heart would have leapt like the traitorous mortal-tinged thing it was, but if it had, the Queen would hear. Those nails could draw blood instead of simply bruising. So Robin examined the blossom, and concentrated on the thought of the plague spreading over that flawless skin. The golden hair becoming dishwater snarls, the supernally lovely face a hag’s withered grimace.
A marvelous consideration, indeed.
Finally, Summer sighed. “Very well. Go forth and bring this Gallow to me, little Ragged. When will you bring me the ampoules?”
Now. She met the Queen’s gaze, and smiled. A wide, warm, inviting expression, as her breath continued in its steady cycle. “When Sean is returned safe, young, live, and whole to the mortal world and his safe, living, whole mortal parents, with no geas or ill-will on him or his relations forever, then, O Summer’s Queen, I shall bring them.”
She turned on her heel, and the hiss behind her was of a bright green asp. Robin treaded her measure forward, steadily, her shoes crushing the springy turf. Four in, four out.
Does she strike me down, the plague may take them lock and stock, for all I care. And she’ll never find the ampoules; she’ll never think to look in my pocket. It’s altogether too simple. They’ll throw my body in the bogs or the Dreaming Sea, perhaps, or into a mortal alley to rot.
“You have overreached yourself,” the Queen said softly, chiming ice in every word. “I will not forget this, Ragged.”
Nor will I. If Summer released Sean, then it would be time for Robin to set her wits to delivering the ampoules and escaping Seelie lands alive. At least Robin would have freed him, would have done something worthwhile.
For once.
So her reply was a simple statement of fact. “I go in search of the black-haired knight who may kill a plagued Unseelie, Summer. As you have commanded.”
Too risky to use the postern near the Gates, even at midday, and she didn’t want to use some of the other routes, including the one near her mother’s grave. Saving those for pressing need—for later, when she might have to slip in and out of Summer without any of the Court glimpsing her and carrying tales—was the wisest course.
It took a short while for the shaking to go down, but in this copse at the very edge of Seelie there weren’t even any dryads to see. They were all out among the fields, or sleeping inside their boles.
Which meant Robin could lean against a fir’s trunk, bark rough against her forehead, and think about what she had just done.
Nobody else had witnessed Robin’s intransigence. Her song was held in great caution, and Realmakers were valuable. It would be foolish to think Summer wouldn’t punish her anyway. There was a faint vanishing chance that the Queen would be distracted by another pretty toy, and only think to torment her Ragged when she grew bored.
Then leave. Give her the ampoules, return Sean to his family, and disappear. The mortal world is wide.
It was, but Summer was always reachable, no matter where the Gates made their home. The Veil was everywhere, if you had some of the sidhe in your veins. There was Unwinter to fear as well, and the free sidhe possibly catching sight of her. Rumor flew like the wind. Hiding in the mortal world was chancy if Summer truly wished revenge.
Was it better than Court? The velvet, the silk, the glances, the harpsong? The tall white towers of Summer’s Keep and its greenstone walls, the stars in their net of purple dusk? Sweet-smelling, soft and beautiful… and deadly.
What part of the Keep wouldn’t hold the ghost of a small blond mortal child? Robin-mama. Her presence might remind Summer of an insult during Sean’s mortal lifetime. Surely Robin could slip away until he was no more than dust in one of their graves?
Just like another child, buried—or a woman who was little more than a child herself, helpless and soft and broken, now sleeping under mortal earth. Robin squeezed her eyes shut. Solitude was a luxury, to be used to the full.
So she thought about the most hurtful thing of all.
I got me a man, Rob, and I want the rest of it, too. Please? You know I can’t have no babies, but maybe that root magic Mama was always on about… You know what I mean, don’t you?
Don’t you?
Her fingers still remembered the throbbing of the chantment she’d bargained so hard for. Waiting in the rain at their usual meeting spot, an hour and a half sliding past unremarked, no quick familiar footsteps or raucous young laugh. No breath of cigarette smoke, salt, mortal, and the same White Musk perfume Mama had favored.
She’d waited as long as she dared, slipped back into Summer to attend Court, escaped again when she could… and found the grave. Not even near Mama’s, but whoever the nameless mortal man was, he’d laid her to rest where no sidhe could work nasty chantment on her bones.
Stop it. A deep breath, another, and Robin straightened. You’re not doing yourself any good.
A selfish thought. A selfish sidhe.
Perhaps once Sean was returned to his mortal life and family, perhaps once he had lived a long, full life and was buried safely, she might feel as if she had mitigated some small part of that selfishness.
In the meantime, Robin Ragged told herself, there was work to be done, the Veil to pierce, and pursuit to be eluded.
SENSE AND BREATH
16
Monday morning, while dank and cold, wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Except for the hangover, pulsing inside his head like a troll’s spiked club. He’d gone back to hard liquor for the first time since smashing the television, but it hadn’t helped a single damn thing. It had just blackened the already-dying mortal world, and the amount he’d been forced to drink to reach unconsciousness was nothing short of ridiculous.
Mortal liquor just wasn’t strong enough.
Spring had retreated again, as if the Ragged Robin had taken it with her. The day was damp and cloudy, a wet wind and near-constant drizzle not quite enough to coat his blue truck’s smear-cracked windshield. He didn’t even have the quirpiece to look at.
Clyde took one look at him, sniffed suspiciously—probably catching wind of the sour reek of metabolizing whiskey—and put him on hauling duty, where he wouldn’t hurt himself.
Or anyone else.
So all the chill raw day, Jeremiah heaved up and down. He didn’t break for lunch, either, just kept carrying, pushing a wheelbarrow, moving. Steel, brick, bags of concrete, refuse to be carted to the chutes and thrown with a grunt and a nasty feeling of satisfaction. The work was an anodyne.
Like the liquor, it didn’t help enough.
There is plague about… Carry iron with you. Good advice. Especially since the rider pursuing her had fallen apart with a green fume of sickness and leprous rot.
They did not sicken easily, the sidhe. Iron would do it. Longing also, perhaps, or poison. But any type of illness, a cold, a plague? That was a mortal thing.
Not my problem. Neither was the redheaded sidhe-girl. So she resembled Daisy, so what? There were other women who did, too. Mortal and probably otherwise, red hair and blue eyes, and fragile, pretty faces.
Jere
miah lifted the bag of concrete mix. Flipped it easily into the wheelbarrow; you had to be careful or the paper would tear and then there’d be a mess. When he straightened, Clyde was bearing down on him, hard hat shoved back and worry printed all over his seamed face. “Gallow!” he bellowed, jabbing his heels into the flooring. The building quivered, but only from the wind singing through it.
What now? He waited, empty-handed, feet braced.
A burning draft of fried food and worry followed Clyde’s solid frame, brushed Jeremiah’s face like the chill breeze. The foreman must’ve gone around the corner to McDonald’s for lunch. Jeremiah wiped at his forehead as if he was sweating, rubbed his hand over his cheeks and chin to hide his expression.
“What’ve you done? Was it the cops the other night?” Clyde’s stubble and fine white mustache was dusted with dirt; he’d been monkeying around with the bottom-level guys. “If you got something on you, now’s the time to book it.”
For a moment, Jeremiah thought the man had gone moontouched. “What?”
The man stopped two feet from him. He was out of breath. “Got two Feds in my office. They asked for you by name, flashed some badge. Christ, what’d you do?”
“I haven’t done anything.” As far as law enforcement knew, Jeremiah Gallow was a nonentity, not worth noticing. He paid taxes, yes—but a simple glamour had taken care of giving him a human identity. There was no reason for any mortal authority to take notice of him. “Is it about Panko?”
Clyde’s face screwed up like he smelled something foul. “How should I know? They’re in the office. Sylvia gave ’em coffee. I said I’d come and find you.”
Jeremiah’s nape tightened. The marks on his forearms tingled slightly. “I’ll go see. Maybe it’s taxes.”
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