Trickster Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 2)

by Cedar Sanderson

  I got out of the truck, closed the door none-too-gently, and walked to the porch, ignoring the insistent mosquitoes. Raven popped out the front door.

  “Had enough of the city lights?”

  “More than. Give me a hand with the groceries?”

  I had no idea where he wanted them, and was afraid if I waited until sun-up, Harve would drive off with them. We unloaded the truck companionably.

  “Anything perishable?” He asked once they were all on the kitchen table. I shook my head.

  “Sleep, then.” Raven clapped me on the shoulder. “There’s work in the morning.”

  We settled into a routine. I got up, and started in on wood, winching the log out of the woods, and he made breakfast, with the green stuff. I did lose it once, and threatened the old man with mayhem if he tried to make me take it again that morning. He walked away down the steps into the yard, shaking his head and muttering that missing a day could set me back.

  Harve came back with another load of wood. He was driving a big one-ton with a hydraulic bed, which was a neat trick. I glared at Raven.

  “Just how many loads of this?”

  He had the grace to look abashed. “One more.”

  I went back to splitting wood. I was wearing gloves, having broken out in blisters the second day of winching the log by hand. Raven wasn’t giving me time to stew in my own juices, because once I finished the stack of wood, he handed me an ancient rifle.

  “Freezer’s getting low. Go find a deer.”

  I slung the Winchester 30-30 over my shoulder and tucked the three extra cartridges he gave me in my pocket.

  “Why only three?” I thought I knew, but wanted to hear his explanation.

  “One shot, kill. Two shots, make sure. Three, bloody idiot. And I gave you extras for bear.”

  “Why, thank you.” I’d discovered that layering the sarcasm on thickly amused him greatly. I walked out of the clearing toward the south, where he’d pointed, on a tiny trail I’d missed before. Thread-thin, but well worn, it curved off to the west after a while. I walked slowly, in no hurry.

  For one thing, there were no deer in this part of Alaska. Something he knew, for a certainty, and didn’t know I knew. This was one of his little jokes. I’d play along, though, if it got me out of chopping wood for an afternoon. For another thing, I was feeling surprisingly good, today, even after a few hours of slinging wood. I’d gotten the log but-end into the clearing, and was at the point where I could contemplate how to set it up and lash it to the broken leg.

  I had my small pack that I carried any time I left sight of the house, something Raven had insisted on. It hadn’t taken me long to see the usefulness of it. Outside, with no magic, this land would do its best to kill me. Bears were the least of my worries. Had I dropped that tree wrong, and it landed on top of me, or today, if I lost my way and couldn’t get back to the cabin, I was doomed.

  It hadn’t occurred to me to miss magic, the whole time I’d been here. Granted, with the elfshot poison coursing through me most of my life, I hadn’t ever relied on it to the extent the majority of Faerie did. I felt my bicep. My muscles were redeveloping very well, with all the manual labor, and if nothing else, I could put on a great show as the dwarf lumberjack. Which reminded me unpleasantly of the incident in the bar. I missed Bella, with her calm assurance and elegant ways, unaffected but a lady through and through.

  I sat with my back against a tree, welcoming a moment of shade, I hadn’t expected the summer to turn this warm. Lunch was a peanut butter sandwich and a handful of beef jerky washed down with a canteen of water. I had no idea how long Raven expected me to follow on with his wild-goose chase, but I was enjoying my walk in the woods.

  I was half-drowsing when a nearby rustle brought me fully awake and on my feet, rifle at the ready. I couldn’t see what was in the brush, but it sounded big. There was a shaking of leaves, and a sharp-snouted black head poked out, peering at me near-sightedly. Black bears, I remembered, have poor vision, but very good noses. I stood still, aiming from the hip and hoping it would choose the raspberries it was feasting on over me.

  Wet black nose questing, he fixed on me, but didn’t move. We looked at one another for a long moment, and then old bruin retreated into the bushes, thrashing around in search of the red berries. I backed slowly up the trail for a long ways before I was ready to turn my back on the bear.

  It was time to get back to the cabin, where Raven had some sort of arrangement, I was sure, to keep bears out of the way. I didn’t sling the rifle over my shoulder again, though.

  Raven was drowsing in his chair, and I knew he was fully aware of my presence, even though I didn’t see his eyes open when I walked past him in sock feet. My boots sat at the bottom of the steps where I had taken them off. I wondered if he could use the Sight, or if it was different for him. Based on the way he’d put my consciousness in a bird on our first meeting, I suspected he could watch through animal eyes, and might even have had something to do with my bear encounter.

  I put the rifle in the rack and sat on the steps. He still hadn’t stirred. The sun was warm, and I relaxed, thinking about tomorrow, and putting the cache leg back on. He’d wanted it splinted, but I figured if I did a full replacement it would be better. I’d finish the drag, dig a butt-hole, and pull it upright carefully. It wouldn’t do to pull the cache over. Then I could prop the small building on smaller poles, cut loose the old leg and peg the new one in place. I thought. It could all fail badly and kill me falling on top of me.

  “How much longer?” I looked up, startled, as Raven spoke.

  “How much longer what?” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, since I had been lost in my own thoughts.

  “Until you are ready,” he waved the pipe at me irritably.

  “I’ll be ready tomorrow.” I was still thinking about the cache, and wondered what he’d put me onto after that. Something occurred to me. “Saw a bear in a raspberry patch. Should I find a different patch and pick some?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “You are like a boy, again. Summer and you want to go fishing, too?”

  I hadn’t thought about fishing. But he was right, this was very much like a summer vacation I’d never gotten. Underhill, all of life is like leisure time, above. Except that I had spent decades working very hard.

  “Right now I want supper.”

  “Then cook some.” He settled back and closed his eyes again.

  Dinner wasn’t up to his standards of cooking, but Raven ate without complaint.

  I washed dishes while he went back to the porch. This wasn’t normal for him, to just sit. I wondered if he was feeling all right. I’d never seen him show a sign of age, for all that I knew he was ancient. Finished up in the house, I headed for the shower. He didn’t even open his eyes.

  Raven Interferes

  The long twilight of an Alaskan summer night had begun when I walked onto the porch with a towel around my hips. I wanted clean clothes. Raven, sitting in his rocking chair with the foul pipe, waved the stem of it at my feet.

  “Take your boots off, boy.”

  I raised an eyebrow. I’d shoved them back on after the shower over my bare feet to keep them from injury walking in his unkempt yard.

  “Why?”

  “What did I say about questions?”

  “Are you Yoda?” I growled, kicking them off.

  “Now, go fetch an armload of wood.” he instructed calmly.

  “It’s not cool enough...” I objected.

  “Go.” Raven could pack more punch in a single word than anyone I’d ever known.

  I started down the steps. He called after me.

  “Take off towel.”

  “What?!” I was fairly sure he wasn’t wanting to look at me, although he’d had no issue with my skin showing at various shirtless afternoons. Alaska got surprisingly hot.

  “Don’t worry, I prefer girls. Drop towel, boy.”

  With a sigh, I mooned him and left the towel slung over the hand
rail. His chortles followed me as I gingerly picked my way out into the yard. I knew, from my work earlier, that there were pieces of wood, rocks, and splinters everywhere. Oddly, though, I didn’t encounter one, and I started to feel warm, light-headed, and tingly.

  I stopped dead in my tracks, barely breathing. Placing both feet flat on the bare earth, I felt... a slow thrumming, like a string having been plucked. Raven, in great bird form, landed next to me, startling me.

  “Steady, boy.”

  “What is it?” I had forgotten temporarily that I was naked outside with an ancient spirit. Only the sensation rushing through me had my attention.

  “You don’t believe in a connection to the Earth?” He cocked a sharp grey eye at me. In human form, black eyes. As Raven, grey ones.

  “Spare me the mumbo-jumbo.”

  “But you are a being with an affinity for earth. And Bella, for the air,” he pointed out gently.

  “Only if I have my magic...” I slowly stopped on the last word.

  “Yes?” He prompted, a twinkly eye tilted at me. I was grateful for the form change, less uncomfortable than standing here naked talking to him in human form.

  “I lost my magic.”

  He shook his head. “You were very damaged.”

  I closed my eyes and hesitantly reached for Sight, remembering how it had hurt the last time.

  “Your medicine worked.” I kept my eyes closed. He glowed, vastly, brightly, with a rippling shift of colors like the aurora.

  “Medicine?” He laughed, a loud, cawing laugh that went on and on. “That was just to see how much you’d take! Was joke! Bwahahaha!”

  I opened my eyes slowly to see him rolling on the ground, flapping his wings. Gathering what was left of my dignity, I marched back to the porch to put on clothing, wondering if the naked communion with the earth had also been his idea of a joke.

  Over the years I had learned to be comfortable naked when needed, but oddly, that one patch of skin exposed left me feeling completely vulnerable. Once I was dressed and feeling much more comfortable, I stood still and did a mental inventory.

  With having been so physically busy these last weeks, I hadn’t even thought about magic, most days, more worried about not losing a limb to an axe or a bear encounter or getting lost... Now, I reached for magic, pulling a little energy from my body and surroundings and forming a tiny spell in the palms of my hands. It glowed slightly. I couldn’t even feel the effort it took to create it, and that was something. I didn’t really remember the magic before elfshot, I had taken it for granted. After, even the smallest things took effort.

  Raven, back in human form, strolled over. “Now are you ready?”

  “I don’t know.” This was all very new, and I was reeling. I had been utterly convinced I would never touch magic again.

  He nodded. “Better answer.”

  “Last time I meant the cache.” I growled. I lifted the spell to my mouth and whispered, closing my eyes and focusing on a face in my mind’s eye. She had never faltered, even if I had.

  I opened my eyes, and my hands, and the spell vanished. I sighed, and wondered how fast I would get an answer.

  “It’s late, get some sleep.” Raven thumped past me. I had noted before that there were times he walked heavily on purpose, a sort of punctuation to his mood.

  “How can I sleep?” I asked his back, but he just closed the door with no answer. This had been too easy. All I had to do was work with him for a time and it came back? No, there had to be more. But the chances of getting an answer out of the old bird seemed slim.

  I got in the hammock, wrapped in my blanket, and looked at the sky. It was dark enough for the stars to show, a little, although not the carpet of lights overhead I’d glimpsed at late nights here. If it weren’t so damn cold, I’d want to come back in winter to see them, and the lights shimmer their dance across the sky.

  I faded slowly, still thinking about Bella and our first meeting, the desperate snow machine ride across country to try and get Underhill. She had gone along with it all, not asking too many questions or flinching from what needed to be done. And, finally, I could meet her as an equal.

  The next morning was cool and dewy. Raven wasn’t stirring, so I made coffee quietly and brought it out onto the porch, cupping my hands around the mug for warmth. I needed to finish the cache, and I was thinking.

  Perhaps it would be best not to let Underhill know how much of a recovery I had made. The Council... Low Court... I was now in a position to be severely underestimated, depending on how much magic I had. That was the first test.

  It ought to make putting the cache back on all four legs easier. But I still planned to wait until Raven was up and about. The old man was usually an early riser, this was out of the ordinary routine for him, just like his quietness the day before. I was beginning to get that feeling in my gut.

  I closed my eyes and opened my Sight, slowly expanding to see how far I could stretch it. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just looking. The uneasy feeling that something wasn’t right kept growing. Raven was not in the cabin. I’d assumed he was sleeping still, but unless he could switch off his lifeglow, he was elsewhere.

  Knowing him, I shifted my attention upward, and found him circling at high altitude, long, slow wingstrokes. Like he was checking on the area, or looking for something. I was suddenly grateful I was no longer blind to only my eyesight. Not seeing anything in the air, I brought my attention back to ground, and after a moment, even under the ground a bit. Not too far, this was a land of permafrost, and magic does have limitations.

  Wild animals were only dimly visible. Small ones, like squirrels and birds, not at all unless very close. The only thing I would be able to see at a distance would be magic. Which I wasn’t expecting. What Raven was looking for, I didn’t know, and if it would be magic, I also didn’t know. But I could help.

  Out I looked, further and further. Nothing... and then I saw something, what I wasn’t sure, at first. A dim glow, but much brighter than anything else I had seen. If my mental map lined up with the woods I’d been exploring, it was up north near the river. Not an animal, low to the ground, and moving fast.

  Trouble Arrives

  I opened my eyes cautiously, seeing double and feeling the price of using Sight for any length of time. I cupped my hands and quickly made a message spell, then after sending it to Raven, went inside for the rifle. I wasn’t going to trust to magic alone, and whatever was on its way to the cabin was moving fast.

  Raven’s clearing, I had noted early on and pushed to the back of my mind, was a good kill zone. The cabin stood roughly in the middle of it, with windows all the way around. He’d had me stack wood carefully around the northern one, something I had at the time presumed was for light during the winter when it was scarce. Right now, though, I wanted to be outside, where I could see and hear.

  Walking quickly, I set a ward around the cabin, roughly where Raven’s limit for the biting insects seemed to be. Always assume the oncoming visitor has hostile intent. The wards wouldn’t kill, but they would be a nasty surprise. That done, I waited.

  The old bolt-action rifle across my knees, three cartridges ready to go and more in my pocket, I sat on the porch steps. It was at least getting warm, now. I peered upward. Raven was visible, just, but spiraling tighter, and more to the North and our visitor.

  Whoever or whatever it was, it had to be coming for him. No one knew where I was but Bella. Now, what had the old bird been up to? Once upon a time I was sure he’d made enemies, but now? If he’d been up to anything, I would have known about it before I met him with Bella, and it wouldn’t have been the surprise it was. He’d been flying under the radar, as it were, for a long time.

  It was my job to know what was going on, above, at least when it came to odd occurrences, the paranormal rumblings, what the tabloids banner headlined. So this, now, was a curiosity. Raven had known something was coming, I believed. Why hadn’t he told me?

  He was coming down
, now, and I watched him stoop like a falcon, great wings flaring at the last moment to let him land like a falling leaf, gently. Dust stirred up billowed around us both, and he came out of the cloud in human form.

  “Very dramatic. Been practicing?” I greeted him drily.

  He cackled with apparent delight. “Not used to having an audience.”

  “So what is coming? And why haven’t you told me you were in trouble?”

  He shrugged. “Wasn’t time yet.”

  “So you were going to tell me, eventually. Does Bella know?”

  He shook his head. “Wasn’t time yet. She knew I needed both of you to help, that was all.” We were both looking in the direction I’d last seen the intruder coming from.

  “Any chance it comes in peace?”

  Raven grinned. “There’s always a chance.”

  “Great, that means shoot to kill.” I shifted the rifle. It was a sturdy old tool, and not light. He didn’t seem to see a need for a weapon.

  “Know what it is?” I asked, irritated. I didn’t like waiting.

  “Nope. Nothing natural, it’s moving too fast. But it’s staying where the trees are thickest and I didn’t get a good look.” He shifted, trying to look casual, but he wasn’t fooling me.

  “Any guesses?” I prodded. All this secrecy was getting old.

  “It will have come up the river from the sea, and from across the sea. I do not know the form, but I can guess is a messenger, possibly not an assassin.”

  I wouldn’t shoot on sight, then. “A messenger?”

  “I...” He stopped, and we both stared at the flicker of movement in the pink fireweed blossoms at the edge of his clearing.

  An arctic fox, a bit larger than I would have thought from the pictures I had seen, trotted into sight. His tongue lolled out from exertion, and his white coat was matted with mud on one side, and had burrs all along his belly. His head, which came up to perhaps my waist, hung low as he came toward us mindlessly, driven by whatever was riding him. An invisible presence, visible in my Sight when I closed one eye, swirled darkly around him.