The ill-luck below crested, and one or two of the artists in the studios—their windows facing blank brick walls, their floors humped and buckled as the building settled into gracious decay—saw tiny darts of light in their peripheral vision, gone as soon as they turned their heads. One thought he was having hallucinations, and began to furiously paint the two canvases that would make him world-famous before he slid into a hole of madness and alcohol. The other, her recording equipment suddenly functioning again, began to play cascades of melody on her electric piano, and for the rest of her life never played from sheet music again. Her compositions were said to cause visions, and she retreated from the world years later to a drafty farmhouse in Maine.
Rocking, still. Tipping on the horn-thick edge of the bony shell on its back, sliding into blessed coolness for a moment as the shadow swallowed it, back the other way, teetering on the opposite edge, a sharp whistling cry as it rocked back into the shadow, hesitated on the brink…
… and toppled over, landing with a flat chiming sound in the shade.
Stillness. Below, paint splashed, music floated down an empty hall, printers suddenly rebooted, the two mini-fridges just as inexplicably started working again. A hush descended on the Savoigh Limited, and as the sun-scarred creature huddled under its shell in its dark almost-hole, a rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
The spring storms were on their way.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks must go to Mark Sanders, whose dream provided the impetus for Gallow’s world, and to Mel Sanders for telling me I could certainly write it. Additional thanks must go to Miriam Kriss for encouraging me, to Devi Pillai for putting up with me, and to Lindsey Hall for not strangling me when I change things at the very last moment.
Lastly, as always, thank you, dear Reader. Come a little closer, just around this corner, and let me tell you a story…
extras
meet the author
Photo credit: Daron Gildrow
LILITH SAINTCROW was born in New Mexico, bounced around the world as an Air Force brat, and fell in love with writing when she was ten years old. She currently lives in Vancouver, Washington.
introducing
If you enjoyed
TRAILER PARK FAE
look out for the next book in the
Gallow and Ragged series
by Lilith Saintcrow
A Very Thin Shield
Dusk turned to dark well before true nightfall as the storm’s wing passed over a small trailer park on Guayahoya Avenue. The sun, as it sank, peered underneath the clouds, turning the west to a furnace of gold and blood. The last streaks and flashes of crimson and yellow faded to indigo dusk. Quiet fell, broken only by cars grinding to a halt and quick bursts of supper-scent puffing out before trailer doors slammed. Evening thickened, swirling under trees whose wet branches now had hard little green nubs, spring bursting out all at once.
A soft breeze rattled droplets from bough and bush. Night tiptoed over the city, thief instead of grand dame.
The cat’s hiss brought Robin into wakefulness with a terrified jolt, a taste of bitter almonds on her tongue and every nerve taut-prickling. The cat, her formal black and white disarranged by the puffing of her fur, hissed again, and Robin was off the bed in a flash, instinct driving her toward the closet before she halted, her skirt swinging.
No. Be canny, Ragged.
They were not close, not yet. She shut her eyes, listening, taut as a bard’s lutestring, the mortal house a very thin shield indeed.
There. A silver thrill against the nerves, a faraway ultrasonic thrilling most mortals wouldn’t hear. They would feel it, though—a cold brush against their backs, a sudden uneasiness.
Huntwhistles. Unwinter’s knights rode tonight, perhaps even Unwinter himself. She was no longer stumbling-weary, milk and rest had soothed her aches. She had two pins, the bone comb, her wits, and the music below her thoughts—the massive noise that could kill if she let it loose for long enough. Not to mention the knife at her belt, and the pipes tucked in her secret skirt pocket—a collection of age-blackened and use-lacquered reeds, lashed together with tendons too fine to be animal.
Puck’s treasures, now hers.
But it was night, and only spring instead of the full season of glory. Even though Summer had opened the Gates, Unwinter could still ride dusk to dawn if he chose. Slipping into Summer to rest might have been an attractive option, save for the thought of some sidhe remarking upon her and carrying tales to the Queen. Robin did not wish to face her again so soon, either.
Did Summer know who had invited the lord of the Hunt into her lands? Could she guess? Goodfellow perhaps had not told her, but Robin could not trust as much. Then there was Sean. All the stars of Summer’s dusk ground into shattered amber dust, the child she had cared for gone into whatever awaited mortals after death.
No, when she saw Summer again, Robin wished to be thoroughly prepared.
First, though, she had to survive the night. The silver huntwhistles were far away, but the cat began to growl low in her chest, an amazingly deep noise from such a small animal.
Robin kept breathing. Four in, four out, you could not sing if you could not breathe, and though her hand wrapped itself about the cold hilt of the loathsome dagger, the song was still her best weapon.
A scratching. Much closer than the huntwhistles. The knights were coursing abroad, probably hoping to find any prey at all, a net she might be able to elude. It was the silent hunters she would have to worry about.
More scritch-scratching, and a desire to laugh rose in Robin’s throat, killed by the discipline of breath as soon as it was born. Who is that nibbling at my house?
Only the wind, she replied silently, the child of heaven. Mortals never realized how much truth was in the old tales. Sometimes they slipped through into the sideways realms—mostly children, but also adults who had not lost the habit of seeing. Usually a swift death awaited them, or a return to the mortal world full of slow lingering illness, not realizing what they pined for. A few survived somewhat unscathed, and their stories passed into myth and fairytale, warning and dream.
Her gaze traveled across the bedroom, to the neat dresser and the invitation card with its tinsel. She ghosted across cheap carpet, still listening to the scratches. Mortals did not bury iron under their doorsteps anymore, or nail up horseshoes to bar ill-wishing. There was salt in the kitchen, she could have poured thin lines over every windowsill and doorstep, but that would simply tell any passerby that someone wished to guard something of value.
Sidhe were a curious, curious folk. Always peering and poking, prying and noticing.
Soft, padding footsteps. More scratching. How many of them? Why had they not broken in already to lay waste to flesh and trailer alike? She was an ill guest indeed, bringing destruction to such a neat, humble home.
The wedding invitation was heavy paper, and inside, written with purple ink under the printed date and time, was a round, childish hand. Uncle Eddie, you’d better be there to give me away! Love, Kara. The moonglow tinsel on the card unraveled under Robin’s quick fingers, whispered chantment dropping from her lips. The Old Language slipped and slithered between the strands, the pins and needles of Realmaking spreading into her palms.
Realmaking was precious, but it required something to begin with. She could not simply spin chantment out of empty air, that was a fullblood’s trick. When given something, though, she could make something else, something that wouldn’t fade or turn into leaf and twig come daybreak. It was strange that a tinge of perishable mortal in one’s blood was necessary for Realmaking. They were rare, those architects of the real, and no fullblood, highborn or low, had ever been among their number.
A flick of the wrist, another, silver glitters attaching to her fingertips. A full complement of ten, and a swift lance of pain through her temples as a jolting impact crashed into the side of the trailer, rocking it on its foundations.
What in Stone’s name is that? She skipp
ed down the hall, past the tiny scrubbed-clean bathroom with its strangely unsmelly litterbox. Her shoes lightened, their chantments waking too as she called upon speed and lightfoot, and by the time the living room window shattered she was in the kitchen, her fingernails throwing hard sharp darts of hungry moonlight as she tweezed open the cabinet near the oven. A blue canister of salt tucked behind other spices, her hand darted in and the small bottles and cans holding pepper, garlic, onion salt, oregano, thyme, swept out in a jumbled mass, falling like rain and most shattering. She whirled, and it was not as bad as it could have been.
Not barrow-wights, with their subtly wrong, noseless faces and their strangler’s fingers dripping with gold leached of its daylight lustre. Not fullborn knights either, or Unwinter’s narrow-nosed, leaping dogs with their needle-teeth. Instead, it was two lean graceful drow and a woodwight, accompanied by a looming silver-necklaced shadow that chilled her clear through until she realized it was a stonetroll on a moonfire leash, making a low, unhappy grumbling sound as one of the drow poked it with a silver-tipped stick.
None of them were familiar from song or rumor, or known to her. They piled pell-mell into the mortal living room, one of the raven-haired drow leaping atop the couch and hissing, his handsome face distorted as the teeth elongated, rows of serrated pearls. The woodwight swelled, his lean brown frame crackle-heaving between treeshape and biped, living green sprouting from his long, knobbed fingers. Serrated leaves, a dark trunk—an elm, a bad-tempered tree indeed.
The troll heaved forward again, widening the hole in the side of the trailer. Glass shattered, cheap metal buckled and bent, and Robin flicked her right pinkie fingernail with the pad of her thumb.
A silver dart crackled into being, splashing against the woodwight and scoring deep. Golden, resinous sapblood sprayed, and the wight’s knothole mouth opened bellow-wide. A furious scream made of creaking, snapping, thick-groaning branches poured out.
The troll halted, its tiny close-set eyes blinking in confusion. It withdrew slightly, and the second raven-haired drow peered over its shoulder, poking at it afresh with the silvertip stick. Robin flicked her right middle and ring finger, one dart catching in the woodwight’s branches and tangling, the other flying true and striking at the troll’s eyes. Index finger, another dart made a high keening noise as it streaked for the first drow, who batted it away with contemptuous ease. The spray of sapblood from the woodwight slowed, and the thing hissed a malediction at her, a black-winged curse.
The troll howled, the noise and its stinking breath fluttering Robin’s skirt, cracking the screen on the ancient television, and batting the flying curse aside. It lashed out, horselike, with each limb in turn, the first its left hind leg, catching the second drow with a crack audible even through the uproar. The first drow leapt forward, shaking out something that glittered gold with flashes of ruby, and Robin’s skin chilled all over.
She flicked her thumbnail now, and a high piercing whistle burst between her lips. Ruddy orange flashed, the dart becoming a whip of flame, and it kissed the edge of the woodwight’s trunk.
Golden sapblood kindled, and a new layer of noise intruded. Robin ignored it, skipping aside with the canister of salt now in her right hand. A fine time to wish I had cold iron, she thought, pointlessly, and dodged, for the gold and ruby glimmer in the first drow’s hands was a net, hair-fine metallic strands with red droplets at their junctures, supple-straining as it sensed its holder’s quarry. It retreated with a cheated hiss, and the drow snarled at her again.
So someone wished her taken alive. Unwinter had sworn to Puck Goodfellow that he would not hunt her, but drow were not of Summer unless they were half something else, whether mortal or another manner of sidhe, and in any case it did not matter.
The Ragged did not mean to let these suitors, or any other, press their attentions too closely upon her. The curse, flapping in the living room, vanished under a sheet of flame. Robin’s whistle ended and she whooped in a fresh breath, bringing her left hand forward.
The sinister hand. These darts would be more brittle… but far more powerfully malefic.
The troll, fire-maddened and half-blinded, heaved. The entire trailer lifted, foundation to roof, buckling and breaking. The woodwight, screaming and completely alight by now, blundered into the couch, thrusting itself straight into the troll’s face as well. The poor creature—stonetrolls were not known for their intelligence—was hopelessly entangled with the side of the trailer, insulation and sharp metal ribboning around its hard hide. It heaved again, and the drow with the net slip-stumbled between carpet and linoleum, his eyes widening as footing became treacherous.
Robin jabbed her left hand forward and the drow dodged aside, crashing into a flimsy closet door—but she hadn’t released the darts, and now she flicked them all, fanwise and deadly, a baking draft scouring her from top to toe and her eyes slitted against the blast. Smoke billowed, it would make the air unbreathable after a few more moments. The back door was behind her, she fumbled with her left hand for the knob, her right hand sweeping in a semicircle, scattering salt in an arc that would not halt Unwinter’s minion.
But it would delay him, and salt could be fashioned into other things. There was the song, too, her loosening throat scorched with smoke-tang, and just as the drow with the net shook himself free of the ruins of the coat closet and the troll heaved again, the knob turned under her fingers and she half-fell backwards, saving herself with a wrenching, fishlike jump as the wet wooden steps outside splintered.
The troll heaved again, dragging his leash-holder with him, breaking through the remainder of the wall, and instead of backing away from the inferno, plunged forward, crashing entirely through the other side of the trailer. The noise was incredible—mortals would soon take notice. Her heels clattered on a narrow strip of damp pavement. The mortal whose home they had just destroyed had a charcoal grill set here, all rust carefully scrubbed from its legs and black bowl. It went flying as Robin’s hip bumped it, clattering and striking gonglike as it rolled.
Did I strike him? Please tell me I did—
The net-bearing drow bulleted out of the burning trailer. The wight’s scream had vanished into a snap and crackle of flame, a burst of hot air lifting smoke and sparks heavenward as the fire could now suck on the night air outside the shattered home, window-glass shivered into breaking. Robin kept backing up over the small concrete patio, light shuffling skips, and the urge to cough tickled mercilessly at the back of her palate. She denied it, and saw she had, indeed, managed to hit the net-bearer. Thick yellow-greenish ichor threaded with crimson stained his side, his face was a ruin of scratches and soot, his hair full of burning sparks, and one of his feet was tangled with a mass of glittering spikes, fading quickly as they burrowed through his boots, seeking the flesh underneath.
The song burst free of Robin’s throat, a low, throbbing orchestral noise. It smashed into the net-bearer head-on, and he flew backwards into the fire, which took another deep breath, finding fresh fuel, and grunted a mass of sparks and blackening smoke skyward. A wet, heavy breeze full of spring-smell and the good greenness of more rain approaching whisked it into a curtain of burning.
Robin halted, her sides heaving. The stonetroll, truly maddened now, dragged the other drow into the damp night, its grinding shrieks interspersed with the dark sidhe’s screams. It would not be calmed until it had exhausted itself.
She struggled to control her breathing, staring at the flames. The cat. Stone and Throne, the cat. Is she still inside?
Sirens in the distance. Some mortal had noticed this, and Robin did not wish to be here when they swarmed. Still, she darted along the back of the house, searching for any unburnt portion. I am sorry. I am so sorry. I did not mean for this to happen.
And yet. What else had she expected? She was a Half, mortal and sidhe in equal measure, a faithless sidhe bitch possibly sired by a monstrous ancient, the cause of more trouble and sorrow than any mortal could ever hope to be.
Ther
e was no sign of the cat, and Robin, smoke-tarnished, fled before anyone else arrived.
introducing
If you enjoyed
TRAILER PARK FAE
look out for
THE IRON WYRM AFFAIR
Bannon and Clare: Book 1
by Lilith Saintcrow
Emma Bannon, forensic sorceress in the service of the Empire, has a mission: to protect Archibald Clare, a failed, unregistered mentath. His skills of deduction are legendary, and her own sorcery is not inconsiderable. It doesn’t help much that they barely tolerate each other, or that Bannon’s Shield, Mikal, might just be a traitor himself. Or that the conspiracy killing registered mentaths and sorcerers alike will just as likely kill them as seduce them into treachery toward their Queen.
In an alternate London where illogical magic has turned the Industrial Revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare now face hostility, treason, cannon fire, black sorcery, and the problem of reliably finding hansom cabs.
The game is afoot.…
Prelude
A PROMISE OF DIVERSION
When the young dark-haired woman stepped into his parlour, Archibald Clare was only mildly intrigued. Her companion was of more immediate interest, a tall man in a close-fitting velvet jacket, moving with a grace that bespoke some experience with physical mayhem. The way he carried himself, lightly and easily, with a clean economy of movement – not to mention the way his eyes roved in controlled arcs – all but shouted danger. He was hatless, too, and wore curious boots.
The chain of deduction led Clare in an extraordinary direction, and he cast another glance at the woman to verify it. Yes. Of no more than middle height, and slight, she was in very dark green. Fine cloth, a trifle antiquated, though the sleeves were close as fashion now dictated, and her bonnet perched just so on brown curls, its brim small enough that it would not interfere with her side vision. However, her skirts were divided, her boots serviceable instead of decorative – though of just as fine a quality as the man’s – and her jewellery was eccentric, to say the least. Emerald drops worth a fortune at her ears, and the necklace was an amber cabochon large enough to be a baleful eye. Two rings on gloved hands, one with a dull unprecious black stone and the other a star sapphire a royal family might have envied.
Trailer Park Fae Page 25
