And yet, still she ran.
Cursing inwardly, he could only follow.
BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLES
44
Summer cringed under the lash. They were everywhere—trow and drow tearing down the apple trees, biting into the bark and drinking the sapblood as the trees fought back with lashing, ineffectual branches. Ghilliedhu girls fled screaming from satyrs and dark hobs. There were even black dwarves there, though none of MacDonnell’s clan she could see.
The Seelie knights held the doors of Summerhome. Some few of them were armored, and brughnies shrieked in the battlements among the dryads and wood nymphs, whose bows hummed. Stink and wrack flooded the white roads, and the sun, which would have been a bar to their passing, was a low white disk in the fog-choked sky.
Robin plunged to the side, her heels clattering, dodging a knot of kelpies with their great gnarled clubs and dreadlocked manes. Puck had been busy indeed—the frost-giants, their tall blue-peaked caps dripping crystal icicles, were generally held to be free sidhe, but they wrestled with the trolls who had rallied to Summer’s banner.
The Queen of Seelie was in the midst of the throng, her handmaidens either cowering or lifting their daggers, but Robin had no interest in them. Still, they made for the safety of the door, and she had to follow, because Gallow would be here somewhere. He had to be, and she could see him defending Summer with her own eyes, and hope the sight would tear the traitorous softness out of her silly half-mortal heart.
Besides, she had a task to accomplish. Not the one Puck had given her, oh no. A personal matter. Once she settled this one account, she could run, and hope none of the Seelie would guess who had offered invitation to Unwinter.
They might even think her dead in the chaos, if she was lucky, and that assumption would grant her a measure of safety.
The Unseelie took no notice of her even in the fray, and those few Seelie who put up resistance had far more to worry about than her sudden reappearance. Robin scrambled for a south passageway, pelted up its length, and found herself before the servant’s door to the Great Hall. Summerhome, the great Keep of Seelie, the home of the Jewel, throbbed like an infected tooth, and quick as Robin was, she was not quick enough.
The great doors were flung open and Summer stalked through. The throne-couch, on its dais, blazed with gold, and a shadow to the side was a slim amber sculpture. Robin skidded to a stop, long black bubbling marks blooming on the floor. It wasn’t her heels doing the damage, but the scars of Unseelie’s attack biting into the heart of Summer’s power.
Summer gained her throne and dropped down, spreading her arms slightly. The Jewel, above and between her eyes, filled with poisonous emerald light. Robin gasped for breath, four in, four out, and she could—
“Hold!”
He stalked into the hall. The doors, smoking, were shivered and cast aside, splinters hanging from their shrieking hinges. A pall of sick smoke rose from Unwinter’s helm and shoulders, and his step cracked the flooring still further, spiderwebs of dark decay multiplying from each footfall. “There she is,” he continued, as Unseelie knights, spattered with blood and other fluids, poured in past him. “The lady herself.”
At the back of the band, Puck slid along, a shadow with greenyellow eyes. He capered, unable to contain himself.
Summer’s gaze flickered over the room, snagged on Robin. She looked surprised for a brief moment, before her dark eyes narrowed and she returned her gaze to Unwinter.
“You have broken the Pact, Unseelie.” Her tone sliced the hubbub, and the knights of Unwinter’s guard stilled. “And attacked my holdings without provocation.”
“I cannot break a bottle you have broken first, Eakanthhe.” He spat her name, and Robin’s knees almost turned to jelly. “You did this.”
“I? I? Mark my words, you foulness—”
“Give us the cure, and we shall withdraw.”
Summer drew herself up. Her handmaidens had no doubt scattered, fleeing or slaughtered. Robin could name every one of them. Some of them had been kind to her, once or twice.
Look how you’ve repaid them, Robin. And Parsifleur, and others too numerous to count.
Puck melded into the shadows. Did no one else see him there?
“I shall give you naught, oathbreaker.” The Jewel flashed. “I shall pronounce doom upon thee, Haahrhne of Unwinter, and soon there will be only Summer.”
The words curdled in Robin’s throat. She could stop this now, if she—
“Robin Ragged.” Summer darted another glance at her. “Sing this oathbreaker into his grave, and I shall restore thy Sean to thee.”
The trembling was all through Robin now. Puck, across the room, peering out from behind a pillar, smirked. He watched her as he flitted between the carven trees, and she wondered if it was true, if the one who had sired her was not Seelie at all, but a free sidhe old and cruel and merry, with pipes and a sharp white smile.
Yet she had invited Unwinter in, and now Puck would think to hold her silenced through fear of Summer’s reprisal. Games within games, the Fatherless perhaps expecting her to perform as a spy within Seelie halls—or forcing her to other acts.
“If the bird opens her beak, silence her.” Unwinter took a single step forward, and his knights moved as one, in Robin’s direction.
Then, from behind her, yet another voice, as a silvery shape lengthened beside her. “Cause harm to my lady Ragged, Unwinter, and the Sluagh shall have a new master.”
It was Gallow. Rolled in mud and melted ice, his green eyes blazing, he looked every inch the sidhe. Especially since, hanging at his chest from a thick chain of dwarf-forged links, Unwinter’s Horn glimmered at her, its true shape trembling underneath its seeming of a simple medallion.
She lost all her breath, staring at him. How in the name of Stone or Throne… He took Unwinter’s Horn? That’s not possible!
It didn’t matter. Gallow gazed at the Unseelie King, his mouth a straight line, and suddenly she was not so sure of anything to do with him.
“Robin.” Jeremiah didn’t look at her, halting just before and to her right. The lance’s blade hooked, turning sawtooth-deadly, and flushed with cold iron. “I think we should leave. This does not concern us at all.”
Summer spoke over him. “Sing for me, Ragged.” She had not moved, but still sat, taut and straight-backed, on her couch. Next to her, the amber statue glowed with its own inner life. “I shall return him to thee whole and undamaged, I vow it by my Name.”
Pulling at her, tugging her in different directions. Caught between impossibles. Sweat stood out on her skin, her mended skirt fluttering on a breeze from nowhere, and Robin Ragged found herself inhaling smoothly as Summer’s smile widened, relieved.
A creaking flicker of motion. A shape of yellow-golden, solidified honey, toppling. The statue waltzed on its bare feet, tipping back and forth, and the shadow behind it had yellowgreen eyes and a wide white smile, soft supple leather moving as Puck stepped backward into shadows.
The amber boy… fell.
The sound of his shattering was lost in a sudden cacophony. Seelie knights poured through the door, their gold-chased armor flowing with them, swords flickering and chantments humming as blackwing curses spattered into life. Unwinter turned, and Jeremiah moved forward, the lance flickering. The song swelled inside her throat, tearing chunks of the glossy stone flooring free, grinding them to powder, and she whipped her head aside to keep it from swallowing Gallow whole.
The arrow of destruction boiled over twitching, jagged slivers of amber, each particle exploding under the force of Robin’s song. It curved, but Summer was no longer on her throne. Puck danced aside, columns older than mortal history crumbling as the massive noise blasted them.
Clashing, screaming, battle cries, a sudden noisome stench. Unwinter blurred forward, the greatsword that had not been unsheathed in centuries humming as it clove resisting air. Jeremiah leaned back, the same eerie floating speed shaking ice and water droplets free of him. A tearing so
und, the lance doubling back, impossible, but Unwinter was past him, and the sword hummed as it descended toward Robin.
She fell, her heels scrabbling, the song dying because she had no more breath to fuel it. Time to think it’s all right, at least it will only hurt for a moment before Jeremiah crashed into the Unseelie lord from the side, the lanceblade whistling too far away.
Unwinter, light on his mailed feet, whirled with deceptively ponderous grace. His sword was flung wide, clasped in one hand, but the other hand, full of a black-chased hilt, flicked.
Gallow screamed as the short wicked-curved blade pierced his side. Robin had her breath now, and the song rose again, a dreadful wall of force tearing free from the very bottom of her chest. It was tar-black, no sunshine to be found in its glossy thrumming depths, and it threw Unwinter into the knot of fighting knights, Seelie and Unseelie jumbled together like tin soldiers swept from a gameboard.
She gained her feet in a graceless lunge and grabbed Gallow’s arm. He almost toppled, but she dragged him, and the chaos behind them as more Seelie came to the aid of their Queen clamored long and loud.
POISON, BREAD, SALT
45
Stupid, careless, idiotic—he hadn’t been thinking, but really, hadn’t he? The lance had shown him, clearly enough, what would happen—Unwinter’s blade descending, Robin’s eyes dimming, the bubbling as her cloven ribs and violated lungs struggled to function.
Everything in him had simply said no. Quiet, but final. The Horn had twitched against his chest, and everything had halted for the barest of moments.
A hot nail in his side. It tore with every jolting step, and he had no breath to curse as Robin pulled him along a dusty corridor. He was filthy, and fouling her as he leaned on her slenderness. He helped as much as he could, but the nail twisted, and he fell against the wall.
Robin swore, vile terms he heard through a screen of red agony. It was enough to make his lips try to smile, or was it just a rictus? “Leave… me,” he croaked. “Poison… blade…”
“I know, you bastard!” She hauled on his arm. “Unwinter’s dagger is always poison, and we have little time. Move, Gallow!”
“Jer… emiah. My name. Use… it.”
“Shut up and… here. Oh, thank Stone and Throne and Christ himself.” A rattling—there was a door here, perhaps locked, but chantment sparked against Robin’s slim fingers as Jeremiah bent into a fish-curve, his body racking against itself. Fire in his veins, he longed for water, for blood, for any liquid to cool it.
The door creaked, and Robin kicked it, then drove her shoulder against it. Battering like a moth against a flame, she grabbed him, yanking even as he screamed at the jolt…
… and they tumbled sideways into a spring morning, thin sunshine scorching faded white paint marching in a thin line.
Parking lot. The Horn hit pavement as he did, but it was still slaved to its chain. It made a low, nasty chiming that sounded like a laugh, and rolled back against his chest. When he died, what would it—
The sun drove the poison back. It could not cure it, but it eased the worst of the cramping, and he simply lay for a few moments, retching. When he could lift his head, he heard light tiptapping, and Robin Ragged was pelting across the acres of parking lot, her skirt flaring and her hair a tangled glory of redcopper.
Had she left him to shift for himself? More charitable than he deserved. His breath was ice; he lay against a streetlight’s pylon.
He squinted. It was a supermarket, the door whooshed aside. This early there were few cars in the lot; maybe he could manage to get himself upright and limp for the back. Dumpsters were cold iron, maybe that would…
A sudden blackness, night falling. Or no, his eyelids had slammed shut. When he opened them again he was no doubt hallucinating. The sunshine had strengthened, the parking lines corkscrewing crazily, and another cramping spasm was coming. Hot blood soaking into his side and coat, he wasn’t gutsplit but not for lack of trying.
Tiptap tiptap tiptaptiptaptiptap. Running feet. Was she still fleeing him? Time skipped, skewed sideways.
“Hold on.” A hoarse sob. “Oh please, Jeremiah, hold on.”
Daisy?
No, it was Robin. A prosaic blue paper canister of Morton’s salt; she set it down and ripped something—clear plastic, a loaf of fresh French bread from the supermarket’s bakery.
I don’t think I can eat, thank you.
She cracked the loaf open—it was still warm. Steam rose on the air, and chantment crackled. A swift, efficient yank, and his torn shirt ripped even further. She jammed the bread’s torn flesh against the bleeding wound.
Cold relief, a gush of sweat all over him. Her eyes rolled back in her head as syllables dropped from her tongue, the most ancient of languages pouring into the wound. She tore the bread free and cast it aside as it smoked with drawn poison, clapped the other half over the gaping.
Pain retreated. Great panting heaves, the spasming sliding away. A swimming weakness all through him, as if he’d suffered a mortal sickness and heaved up his dinner, that sweat-rimmed moment after vomiting finished and the body knew it had a moment to rest.
She pulled the second half-loaf away from his skin, cast it aside with a muttered word of chantment. It steamed against concrete, sending up foul caustic smoke. Robin grabbed the container of Morton’s and ripped it open, then paused, looking down at him.
He lost his breath, again. Sunshine in her hair, her eyes aglow, mud smeared on her cheeks, her nose and eyes red-rimmed from smoke or weeping.
She was glorious.
“This will hurt,” she said hoarsely, pouring the salt into her palm. A generous measure indeed, white crystals pattering against the concrete.
“Do it,” he husked, and would have told her how beautiful she was. But she slapped her hand against the wound, and a jolt of incredible black agony rolled through him like a thunderbolt, the lightning a cold white star at his chest.
He regained consciousness slowly, aware he was moving. Leaning on her, the two of them weaving like drunks, and her voice soft and low as she spoke to a mortal. Cajoling, a chantment under the words, a door slammed and they were moving without walking.
It was a cab. He wanted to ask where they were going, but she clapped another handful of salt to the wound and he died again, still trying to shape her name with his sick-sour, dry-cracked, stinging mouth.
WHO COULD FORGET
46
A green glimmer, gathering strength as night fell. Black brackish fluid swilled on the marble floor, great scars and gouges torn in the face of Seelie. Pale and perfect, though, the Queen was iron-straight, her snow-white hands clenched-bone fists.
She stood in the shattered hall, before her cushioned bench. The Jewel flamed on her brow, and she closed her black, black eyes. Her green finery hung ragged and soiled, her handmaidens cowering in bowers and her knights occupied in chasing the last stragglers of Unseelie from the borders. Summer was… alone.
Or not quite. A susurration, a whisper, and a flash of white teeth.
Summer’s eyes opened halfway. The Jewel gathered strength, glittering dangerously.
“Mischievous one,” she murmured. “Have you come to do me an injustice as well?”
“Unwinter has grown brave, and foul.” The boyshape sidhe melded from between two shattered columns. “I offer my services, Summer. He has ravaged my holdings as well.”
“The mortal?” She considered a moment. “Of science, the one we…”
“We?” Puck Goodfellow laughed, a low musical sound. He did not caper. Instead, he leaned against the ruins of a stone column far older than Rome, or even Babylon. “Unwinter found him.”
“Did he?” Summer swayed slightly, a snake’s supple movement. “Oh, Goodfellow. How clever you are.”
“Not clever enough, it seems.” His thumbs in his broad belt, he tilted his sleek head. His ear-tips twitched once. That was all.
“The Gates are open. Summer shall be renewed.” The Queen swayed again
. “Leave me, Fatherless. I have much to attend to.”
“As my lady wishes.” He swept a bow, but it was not nearly low enough to be mannerly. His mockery perhaps went unnoticed.
Or perhaps not, for Summer’s eyelids lowered a fraction. “After all this time.” Her tone was dulcet honey. “He still remembers me.”
“Who could forget you, Jewel of the House of Danu?” Puck spun, snapped his long brown fingers, spun again.
“And yet.” Her eyes opened fully, and within the tar-black depths every star had winked out. “Where is the Ragged? I wish to see her face.”
Did the Goodfellow hesitate? Perhaps he did. In any case, he merely danced another brace of steps, a waltz old when mere huts graced the shore of a muddy river named for a fleetfoot goddess, later to become the crown of an empire the mortal sun never set upon.
Except every empire fell, and every Court as well. Eventually.
Goodfellow finally spoke. “I do not know, my lady. Shall I find her for thee?”
“Do.” The Jewel vibrated, a high, sweet ringing beginning to tremble at the edge of even a sidhe’s acute hearing. The Queen swayed once more, then stilled, her paleness glowing as the moon might behind thin clouds. “Now get thee hence, Robin Goodfellow. I shall brook none within my borders who are not Seelie for some while yet.”
Another mocking half-bow, a laugh, and Puck vanished, stepping sideways again.
The Jewel on her forehead filled with radiance. Her head tipped back, her fists turned to bone spurs, and for a single breathless moment the Queen of Seelie’s true form shone in the wrack and ruin of her Great Hall. All through Summer’s violated dells and fouled rivers, in her ruined orchard and along the flour-white paths, a steady, low hissing gathered strength. The ladies of the Court, handmaidens and fullblood-in-waiting, cowered as they realized what the noise meant. In the forests and fields, each Seelie knight raised his head, a cruel smile playing on thin lips, his armor firing with new gold.
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