“She is at Court?” my mother asked about my wife, now.
“She was being watched by Melcar, but told me she would come home as soon as she could.”
Lucia nodded. “I will return here, then, but I must go to Elleria and make arrangements, inform the staff…” She took a deep breath.
“No banshee, mother. Not here.”
She looked at me oddly. I wondered if she knew about that night so long ago. Family tradition dictated that the death of a Mulvaney was always accompanied by the dree wailing of the Bane…
“Lom, there are no more banshee.”
I stood up, tucking that bit of information away. Why had she sounded as though I should know this?
“People will be arriving here soon. Devon…” I turned to him. He was leaning back in the deep armchair, tears drying on his cheeks. Now he opened his eyes and looked at me.
“Do I have to do anything? I don’t know what to do.” He looked and sounded much younger, suddenly, sliding backward from the young man he’d been only an hour before, to a child bereft.
“Come with me and we’ll talk.”
He stood up and followed me wordlessly. I knew him well enough to know that the best thing right now was to keep him busy, and not let him have time to brood on his loss. He followed me down the narrow steps to my Armory, buried deep beneath the house, and stayed cautiously behind me as I unlocked the door. The layers of defenses on my private place were well known to be unpleasant, or if tried too far, lethal. Never mind that it had been decades since anything had tried hard enough to actually get themselves fried, all it took was one smoking goblin corpse to persuade certain factions to leave me the hell alone.
Devon had likely never tried any of the protections. He was a most obedient child, and one who had from an early age held me in some awe. I hadn’t dissuaded him of that, being the black sheep uncle held much attraction, and I didn’t need Margot killing me should Dev follow me into trouble. I swallowed at the memory of my sister’s temper and swung open the heavy door.
“You know how to use a pistol. I taught you that much.” I walked toward the workbench, seeing in my peripheral vision that he was rubbernecking at the shelves of weapons all around us. Good. He was going to be distractible from his grief.
“Yeah.” He stood and looked around while I took my time finding his weapon. I knew exactly what I was going to hand him, but I had to admit the Armory was worth looking at. More than a century of trophies here, weaponry both mundane and magical. It wasn’t laid out fancy, very few people had ever been down here. But what had started as a handful of things had grown to be near enough kit for a small invading force.
I piled things on the bench. “Come here. Holster, semi-auto 9mm, ammo, more ammo, magazines…”
He was awkward with the shoulder rig I was giving him, and I made him put it on, take it off, and repeat until he was comfortable with that process. Only then did I hand him the pistol. He started to holster it, and I raised a finger.
“Ah!”
Devon froze and looked at me. “What?”
“Did you check?”
“Oh… sorry.” He pulled it carefully and checked that it was unloaded and only then did I hand him a magazine, which was full.
“Look, I know I’m being a hardass.” He started to shake his head, and I stopped him. “Yeah, I am. You just lost your mother and I’m treating you like a green recruit. I have good reason. Whatever got your mother is likely to come after your grandmother, and possibly Bella.”
He gulped, and lost some of the color he’d regained in his face during my lesson. “That’s why I have a gun.”
“Yeah. And I hope you don’t have to use it. But this is Underhill, and guns are not common. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I know I’m considered uncouth for using them, that it’s a sign of weakness because I didn’t have a lot of magic.”
He considered that. I could see on his face that this was something either he’d heard, or had been told to his face. Most likely at some social function. Kids are cruel, and although Underhill handles education differently than Above, in human realms, they still act like little packs of wild animals given the chance.
I continued, “So I’m giving you a gun. And I’m telling you something your mother never wanted you to know. She was a spy, of sorts. Your grandmother was her boss and is King Trytion’s spymistress with more underlings than you or I will likely ever know about. That’s why she died.”
The boy’s face was transparent as glass. I could see his thoughts chasing themselves around in his mind, like puppies with tails to catch. “Mother?”
“She was a brilliant woman, with a façade of a…” I trailed off. Dumb blonde didn’t translate well into Faery, where it just wasn’t the epithet it was Above. “Parents are usually more than their children give them credit for.” I told him gently. “I don’t know what she was doing that got her killed, but you should know she likely died a hero. Which also means this family is in danger, and possibly the whole kingdom. That’s what I have to go find out.”
He nodded, speechless. I’d given him a lot to think about. I handed him a canvas rucksack with the boxes of ammo and spare magazines tucked into it. “Keep this somewhere discreet, but nearby. You know your grandmother’s trick for luggage?”
His face cleared a little, and something that was almost a smile crossed it. “You mean the nospace?”
I hadn’t heard that name for it, but it fit. I nodded, and he picked up the bag and tucked it into thin air, where it slid through a slit in reality and disappeared. It would follow him until he wanted it and pulled it back out, but as it didn’t intersect with the real world, it wouldn’t bump into things. Very handy trick, and one I had long wondered where my mother had learned. Likely from Alger, and that brought me back to my next unpleasant task.
I squeezed Dev’s shoulder. “Now git, kid. I have people coming. When Ash shows up, send him down here, please. He’ll be the one running security for the Lodge. You will be staying at Elleria.”
He nodded solemnly, understanding that he would be in charge there, at the manor. He’d been in charge for months, since my assumption of the Dukedom and long illness coincided to make me unable to execute those duties. Until the changes in life that had landed Bella in our family, he’d been my heir. It occurred to me now, listening to his footsteps going up the stairs, that my children would supplant that inheritance. I wondered if he’d mind.
I had left the doors wide open, and sent a brief message to Ellie that those who arrived were to be sent down to me. I didn’t care how out of character it might seem. I knew they would come and there was no point in playing games. I’d made a splash with my noisy arrival at court. It was time to see what the ripples brought back to me.
Dean walked through the door, silent as always. I looked up from the pistol I was assembling and he nodded, reached out and squeezed my shoulder, then turned to the shotgun rack. We didn’t need to talk. There was enough water under that bridge to know where the course would take us. Violence and shadows.
We’d worked together off and on since we’d both been apprenticed to Alger at the same age. It had ended in tragedy for me, and to this day I didn’t know how it had ended for Dean. I didn’t ask any questions and he told me no lies. He was an outcast, never showed his face in Fae high society, and had spent years living Above as a human, which he could pass for better than I could. That, too, had ended badly. But he was a good man in a fight.
I’d moved on to a bigger gun, and Dean was assembling an impressively heavy load out even for him, when we heard the pipes. I felt my eyebrow go up on its own, and exchanged glances with Dean. They were coming closer, the mad skirl of the music crawling up and down my spine like a live thing. Without a word, we both headed for the stairs.
Ellie and Ash were standing in the open doorway, and when Ellie realized I was behind her, she stepped aside so I could fully see what it was. The garden was full of sprites. I’d never seen this many in one p
lace before.
“What the hell?”
The pipes screamed to an ending, a cacophony of shrill wails, and fell silent. I’d known about the pipes, but had never seen this many assembled in one place, either. They were ranked, like… like a military battalion ready for review. Sprites, like most of the wilding Fae, were not known for organization or regimentation, so this was beyond strange.
A familiar sprite popped into the space a mere foot from my face and snapped off a sloppy salute without waiting for me to return it.
“Reportin’ for dooty, sor!”
“Ewan? What is the meaning of this?”
“We haird y’had big troubles, mon, and t’Queen might need us.”
“The Queen. You mean Bella?” Ewan McGregor nodded with a wide grin. “Since when do your people have loyalty to a queen?”
“Sinc’t she’s a bonnie warrior lass who will gi’us glory and freedom!” He practically quivered in midair, his wings a shimmering blur.
“I… I don’t know what to say.” I had a garden full of a Sprite army, and I had no idea what to do with it.
He nodded, a sage look on his face. “Dinna fash yerself. M’captins will take their troops to assigned posts.”
“Where? Wait.”
But it was too late. Like a firecracker, he popped sharply out of my personal space, and into the ranked masses in front of me, setting off a chain reaction as the group broke into roughly four sections. With a ripple of popping, they transported out to who-knew where. One remained in the garden, and then there was another sprite in my space, saluting again.
“Ian…” I started. Then stopped myself. I was going to say something I’d regret later. “Report to Ellie and Ash.”
I turned on my heel and headed for the Armory. I needed a little space, and time to think. Then I needed to get out of here before it turned into a three-ring circus with more clowns. The thing about making waves, it wasn’t a very controlled way of getting results.
Past Intersects Present
Alger came late, as I knew he would, in the evening. I’d sent him a message urgently that morning, before my Court entrance, but I hadn’t known where he and his apprentice were, so there was no way of telling how long it would take them to get back. He could have been anywhere Above or Underhill. I was still in the Armory, alone, having billeted Dean to a room here in the Lodge, while most who came in during the day were given brief instructions and dispatched elsewhere. I wasn’t gathering an army. Not yet. Now, it was time to prepare and train. I didn’t foresee action for a considerable time, if ever. This could all be some small, petty thing. But I didn’t think so. There was too much pressure built up in my Court, and at the Low Court with the death of the Low King by my hands.
Something was coming, and it was ugly. When Alger walked into my Armory, I greeted him silently, unsmiling, with a grip of forearms and then I handed him Bella’s sketch. He and I had history, some good, most bad. But he was family. And he was arguably the most powerful magic user living. If anyone would know what that thing was, it was him.
As he looked at it, I turned to Mark and greeted Bella’s cousin with a more conventional human handshake. The man hadn’t even known his special skills were magic until he’d been part of a party of humans led Underhill by Bella in an attempt to rescue me that had gone spectacularly well. I didn’t remember any of it, having been rather badly damaged.
“I’m sorry to hear about your sister,” he told me, then looked around with a low whistle. “This is impressive.”
“Feel free to look around, just don’t touch… some of it is dangerous in ways that aren’t visible.”
He nodded and, as his gaze flickered back and forth between the tall, stooped Alger and me, I knew he got the subtext. I needed to talk to his teacher alone. Mark was no child, but his training was progressing. I wondered if Alger was learning anything in return.
“He’s a good kid.” Alger spoke softly as Mark disappeared into the shelves.
“Not really a kid.” I looked at him, but he was still staring at the paper, his bushy grey brows furrowed in thought.
“Look, boy,” he spoke without looking up, “From my point of view you’re all kids.”
“Bella created that after she’d scanned Margot’s body,” I explained. “I don’t know what she did, or how, but she was pretty certain that thing is responsible for Margot’s death.”
He looked at me directly, his eyes penetrating, his brows still drawn down. With the long beard obscuring the lower half of his face, it was difficult to read his expression as anything but glowering. I stood still and returned his stare.
“Do you know what it is?”
“No, I don’t and I’m less and less able to access my library these days. Something is keeping me out. I would have come back even before your message to compare notes with Bella about this lack of access. It’s important, and the answer is eluding me.”
He tossed the paper at me and I caught it. “The library is more important to you than Margot’s death?”
I’d known he could be cold and unfeeling, but this shocked even my cynical sense of familial duty. I’d avoided them all for so long, choosing to walk my own paths. I didn’t need them, and they sure as hell didn’t need me. Only now they did. And I was no longer so sure I didn’t need them. Alger had always seemed much more conscious of duty, and yet here he was brushing off Margot’s death.
“Not more important. But without it, I fear I can be of little use to you in hunting for answers.” His shoulders dipped a little. “I can only keep so much in mind, m’boy. The library has been the repository for all the things I needed to know, or knew and have forgotten. So while that…” he pointed at the paper I held half-crumpled in my hand, “is important, and I think I’ve seen something about it, without access to the library, I am unable to give you a direct answer.”
“You told me once the library was a physical place. Is that where you were?”
“No. It’s not… accessible easily from Underhill. And before you ask, it’s not Above, either. It’s on another plane entirely. I discovered it by accident, and I won’t return in corporeal unless I need to.”
He pounded his staff on the floor, glaring at me. I held up both my hands in a gesture of mock surrender. “Don’t get angry with me. I’m just looking for the easy way out. If you don’t know, I can only think of one other I can go ask, and he’s not exactly fond of me.”
Alger huffed, fluttering his mustache. “That fool. If he won’t give you an answer, take him to the nearest doorway and dump him Above.”
“I need Conrad alive and talking, not decaying in a heap. He may be impetuous, but he’s not, that I know of, linked with Low Court.”
Mark had come back to us, no doubt drawn by Alger’s staff pounding. I nodded at him, letting him know silently that he could stay and listen. Nothing I had to say was a secret.
“Low Court is behind this.” Alger muttered.
“Normally I’d blow that off, you say Low Court is behind everything. But this time I think you’re right.”
“We’ve been asking about Low Court on our travels,” Mark said. Both Alger and I looked at him, and he shrugged. “What? I know I wasn’t supposed to know, but after a while there was a pattern, and I’m not deaf or stupid.”
He glared at the old man, and I stifled a chuckle. Alger really had been treating him like a kid, but then again, the old man had never been discreet, either.
“So what have you learned?” I asked Alger. Mark might not have gathered the significance of everything he’d overheard or deduced.
“With the death of the Low King…” He began.
Mentally, I filled in the picture they wouldn’t know about, the shotgun jerking at my hands as I fired from the hip, the look of surprise on the Low King’s face as the shot took him in the belly, opening a huge red blossom of flesh and blood. I’d known I’d only get one shot, and I’d known I’d die right after it… why I hadn’t, I still didn’t know. Alger, obliviou
s to my wool-gathering, kept going, his voice falling into a familiar pedantic rhythm.
“There was a power vacuum in the Court. None who could have challenged him had been allowed to live, or have any power themselves. It took many months before another emerged from the shadows who the Court bowed to. They accepted her for two reasons. One, they needed a leader. Craven as they are, they were like weasels in a henhouse, unable to stop killing even when they were sated.”
I hadn’t known this. During my long illness, I’d lost touch with many of my informants. I wondered what had become of them, and shook my head. I needed to get back in the game. If I’d been more aware of this level of chaos, I might have been able to prevent Margot’s death. Alger was still talking.
“Second, and probably most important, they accepted her because of her connections. Like it or not,” I knew he was directing that at me, “fairies are considered by many to be the true ruling elite of Underhill.”
I really didn’t give a damn. Pixies had intermingled with fairy blood until it was more a label than an actual difference any longer, if there had ever been a difference. High Court might be mostly fairy, but that was a reflection of where it had come from, not where it was going.
“The newly crowned Queen is connected to fairy, and to High Court. In fact, she claimed from her coronation throne that she is entitled to rule all of Underhill. By blood and…” He paused, and I knew what was coming with a cold chill that sank to my bones. “By marriage.”
“Dionaea is no longer my wife, and House Mulvaney long ago renounced any pretensions to the throne of High Court.” I could feel the rage, wrapping around me like an old familiar lover.
Alger shook his head slowly. “You and I know that. But to a woman who is taking the reins of power, and who you know has had no other thoughts since she grew to womanhood, truth has no significance.”
“Whoa… you were married to the Blood Queen?” Mark broke in.
Dragon Noir (Pixie for Hire Book 3) Page 2
