“Nothing we wish to see in the human world,” Mr. Black said.
He gave her a look she thought she recognized and hurriedly, she said, “There’s no advantage in killing me.”
“This is hardly behaving,” he pointed out. “But yes, that would also be… awkward.” He hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “I cannot let you take the Machine. You may leave without it and we will pretend this never happened.”
“I need it,” said Branwyn flatly.
“To free humanity’s enemies, those who have already wreaked havoc on your own family. Really, girl, I would have expected better.”
Sourly, Branwyn said, “Shouldn’t humanity have a say? A lot of people seem to quite like what they’ve seen of the faeries.”
“Is that what this is?” he asked incredulously. “A pettish fit because we have the temerity to protect humanity from the monsters? And, yes, even from its own dangerous desires? Oh, the audacity!” He added acidly, “I should have retired decades ago and let you silly brats destroy yourselves.”
Branwyn glared at him. “I never said that. You seem to be okay at managing the monsters, although there’s a few I wish you’d focus on. But you didn’t exile the faeries, did you? That was the work of the angels. They’re the angels’ enemies. They locked them away three times. Parole them and perhaps they’ll help you out. If they don’t, leave the final lock in place.”
He frowned. “You are ignorant. Don’t be stupid, too.”
Branwyn crossed her arms. “And now we’re on to name-calling. All right, I’m done. I’m going to walk out that door and take the elevator now. Anybody stops me and there will be, and maybe I mean this literally, Hell to pay. Goodbye.” She walked past him toward the door, every muscle quivering with tension.
He watched her silently. As she reached the door, she saw his posture change from the corner of her eye.
Suddenly she wanted to run, very badly.
She resisted. She opened the door and stepped out. The security team standing in the hall shifted in surprise, but when Mr. Black said, “Let her go,” they fell back. They trusted him.
Branwyn didn’t.
She sped up, and took the stairs down instead of the elevator. There was no lock on the ground floor exit; they were emergency stairs, after all. As she emerged from the stairwell, she saw Simon walking across the empty shopping court. He paused when he saw her. “Branwyn! What are you doing here?”
“Leaving,” she said. “Working late?”
“Mr. Black called me,” he said. “He wanted to see me immediately. Said he had a task for me. Something for me to hunt down. A big, immediate threat he’s just discovered.”
Branwyn’s heart, already racing, skipped a beat. Simon cocked his head, then froze. “Oh.” He met her gaze and she checked her long stride. “Go,” he said softly.
“Simon—” She had no idea what she had been going to say.
“I haven’t got any orders yet, except to see the boss. I don’t know what you’re up to. You said you were leaving? Leave, already.” He started walking toward the elevators again. As he passed her, she heard him mutter, “You should probably run.”
Once she left the building, she did.
-twenty four-
Branwyn went home. To her own home, not her family’s home—to the apartment she shared with Marley. It was the middle of the night, but Marley was still awake, curled on the couch with a book. She always had a book. Branwyn was pretty sure it had been the same one for the last few weeks, too.
Without preamble, she said, “I think Simon may show up any minute and try to kill me. Can you protect me from him while I do what I need to do?” She locked the front door behind her.
Marley scrambled off the couch. “What the hell?”
Branwyn fished the disc-shaped Machine fragment out of her bra and held it up. “From Senyaza’s Repository. Their chief of security didn’t appreciate my ingenuity as much as he thought he would. And apparently he’s got a vicious sense of humor.” She smiled bitterly. “Corbin’s grandpa, you know.” She felt the gentle brightness of the shield close around her even as Marley goggled at her.
“You’re doing it, then? Finishing the Key?”
“I’m doing it for Penny,” Branwyn said, then hesitated. “And for me.” She ran to Marley’s bedroom and pulled the unfinished Key out from the box of books she’d hidden it in.
Ignoring Marley’s frown, she sat down on the floor with the Key and the disc of Golden Memory arrayed in front of her. According to the notes she’d scanned while waiting for the security team to liberate her from the Repository, it often raised forgotten or nearly forgotten memories when the bearer concentrated on it. It hadn’t done that for Branwyn, and she wondered if it still would after she’d incorporated it into the Key.
She stared at the pieces in front of her, but she couldn’t focus. Marley moved between the window and the couch restlessly, and Branwyn kept wondering what would happen when Simon showed up. She wondered if the Repository was behaving itself now that she’d left the building. She thought they should be able to communicate with it somehow, get it on their side. But they might need her help for that.
Branwyn shook herself. “This isn’t working. I need to get out of here.” She picked up her materials and tucked them away.
“Where?” asked Marley instantly.
“My workroom at Underlight, I think.”
“I’m driving.”
At her family’s house, they ran into a problem: a party was in progress. Branwyn vaguely remembered her mother mentioning it. This one was a lot more crowded than the last, with music and light spilling out into the night. The front door stood open to the breeze and several of Jaimie and Holly’s friends were on the porch. Branwyn hesitated, then ducked behind the band van, pulling Marley after her. She activated the charms Zachariah had given her for opening a gate on her own. Immediately, she saw that the entire property was a soft spot in the curtain. Tearing open her own hole in the curtain while hidden behind the band van was easy.
But she didn’t expect Tarn to appear. He filled the window, his appearance so startling and his face so bleak that she scrambled backward. “Get in here,” he said, reaching out of the window and yanking her through by her arm. The gap sealed behind her and she felt Marley’s protection vanish.
He put his hand on the wall in Underlight, and Branwyn’s still-active charm recoiled off a suddenly diamond-hard curtain. “You acquired a Machine,” he said grimly.
Branwyn brushed herself off. “It turns out that the best way to get out of a cage is to get them to open the doors. Did you have to be so abrupt? I wanted Marley here, too. Although I suppose you can keep Simon off my back just as well.”
He stared at her, apparently speechless, then held out his hand. “Give me the Key.”
“I haven’t finished it yet.” She moved toward her workshop.
“And you won’t,” he said fiercely. The long hall became longer, an impossible distance between her and the door to her workshop.
Branwyn turned on her heel to give Tarn a disbelieving look. “Have you lost it? You arranged everything so this would happen. Underlight needs the door to be opened. You told me you want this!”
“I changed my mind,” he growled and stalked toward her, murder in his eyes. “Underlight will recover eventually. Your family deserves better than the attentions of Rime and her kind.”
Penny doesn't have that long. She'd seen that yesterday, in the slow beeping of the monitor. Planting her feet, Branwyn crossed her arms. “Go ahead. Tell me you don’t want me to finish this Key.”
“I don’t want you to finish the Key,” he said as he reached for her. The room trembled at his words. He stumbled.
“I thought so,” said Branwyn. She turned and ran down the hall. The shaking grew more agitated and knocked her down; when she bounced to her feet again, the workshop door was right in front of her.
Tarn caught her arm again as she opened the door. “It’s complicat
ed,” he said softly.
“I know,” said Branwyn, and kicked him away before darting into her workshop and slamming the door behind her. She locked it with the courtkey.
This place might have been carved out of Underlight, out of a faerie’s realm, but it was hers now. She’d made it hers, reaching into the substance of the world and reshaping it over and over again. It responded to her whim.
“Keep him out,” she said, and the door merged with the wall. Almost immediately, light flashed where the door had been, settling into a burning glow. Her whim against his command. She didn’t have much time.
She set to work, and here she could concentrate. Here, it was easy. She took the partial Key and introduced it to the golden disc. With barely a touch of her finger and her will, they reached inside of her and merged together, becoming one whole thing. It was like they’d been made for this purpose, shed from the cosmic Machines so they could come together in this final shape, for this ultimate purpose. It just needed a bit of guidance.
The door fell away. Tarn loomed out of the mist that curled through the door. Branwyn opened her hand, revealing the large key formed of twisted metal strands in her palm.
Tarn’s shoulders slumped. “You finished it.” He raised his gaze to her face, his eyes flashing. “You idiot.”
Branwyn quirked her mouth to one side, studying the Key. “Yes. I had to work from memory, though.” What she was about to do weighed heavily on her. She'd originally thought of the faeries as long-lived humans. That had been easier, at first. She knew now they were something else. Angels, once, who dreamt of being other than how they were made. Personalities bound to primal forces. And despite not being human, they were still people, still individuals. They deserved individual attention, not exile as a class.
But Tarn himself had repeatedly said the faeries thought in terms of centuries. Maybe eventually something could be done that would let people protect themselves from predatory fae without imprisoning all of them. They could work that out later. But Penny wouldn't last until later.
When she thought of it like that, it was an easy decision. The faeries could wait.
“Will it open the door?” Tarn demanded harshly. Then he answered himself. “Yes, of course it will. I could feel it when you completed it.”
Closing her fingers over the key, Branwyn raised her gaze to his face. “Yes. I know the door too well. But that’s not what it’s for. I lied. I’m sorry, Tarn. I need to get this to Penny.”
Tarn ran his hands through his dark hair, as if she’d driven him to the edge of reason. The world shook, and Branwyn wondered how he was lying now.
“You feel that?” he said. “Everybody bound to the Covenant could feel it when you completed the Key. All Faerie trembles in anticipation.”
Alarmed, Branwyn pulled her hand close to her body. “It’s for Penny. Why should they care? It’s not like it would have truly freed you. It was just one of two remaining.”
Almost gently, he said, “You are so human. Branwyn, the Duke of Nightwell has been working on the other lock since the first one was broken.”
Blankly, Branwyn asked, “How? Not Machines…?”
“Something to do with music. I don’t know the details, only that what he has created will work. I could feel it. It works on the lock even now.”
“Music. Oh.” She remembered Rime and the Duke of Nightwell speaking quietly in the recording studio. She remembered Rime saying Music opens doors. “Oh.” She put her hand with the Key behind her back. It was childish, but instinctive. “So I’m all that’s standing between you and complete freedom.”
“Yes,” he said deliberately. “And we did make a deal.”
“Was it a deal? I think it was more of an informal arrangement, really. And my sources tell me you can’t carry out your side of the arrangement. That saving Penny without her soul isn’t saving her at all.”
“Do you really think that all of those leashed outside the world are going to let you change your mind? He is coming, even now.”
“I didn’t make the deal with him!”
“He doesn’t care.”
Branwyn stared at Tarn in bewilderment. “Do you? If you’re trying to get me to give it to you—”
“I don’t care about the damn Key!” This time, the ground stayed rock-stable. “I care about making sure your mad head stays on your shoulders. I care about making sure my people aren’t fully unleashed on yours without at least time to prepare.”
“That’s new,” said Branwyn, subdued and wary.
Tarn spread his hands helplessly. “I wasn’t a Duke when last we were free. I thought the imprisonment had hardened me, but I’ve been watching your family all this time—” He shook his head. “Doubt is dangerous for a lord of Faerie, so I tried to ignore it. That wasn’t the answer.”
“Well, congratulations on developing a conscience, I guess,” Branwyn said. “What about Nightwell and the others?”
“If you hand over the Key, they’ll let you live. If you don’t, they’ll take it.”
“And your conscience is going to just let them do that?”
“No! Don’t you listen? Is your head stuffed with cotton? I don’t know how to save you now that you finished it. The door has drained Underlight so much. The Key can’t be destroyed, can it?”
Branwyn sighed. “Possibly. But that’s not going to happen. How much time do we have? Can his lock be closed? How does music open a door?”
Tarn’s gaze went far away. “It is a song, with a video attached. Each time the song is played, the lock temporarily opens. It remains unlocked as long as the song is being sung. And he is putting the song on your internet.”
“Oh no.” Branwyn thought of all the video sites out there. “Is it catchy?”
His gaze flickered back to her, hard and unfriendly. “What do you think?”
“All right.” She caught Tarn’s hand and squeezed it. “It’s okay. I just have to get to Penny, and it will be all okay. Or at least no worse than if your lock had opened and theirs hadn’t.”
He stared at her in astonishment. “What are you going to do with Penny?” The world shook again, ringing like a bell, and she gave him a sharp look. But he only said, “He’s here. William!”
William materialized behind his master. Tarn pulled Branwyn past him and thrust her at the changeling. “Take her. Get her to her friend’s bedside. I have a guest to greet. Go quickly! He will only let me delay him so long.” He took a step and vanished. The hall behind William lengthened again, an endless dark and light with cracks running down the walls.
William grimaced. “Come.” He started running down the hall, towing Branwyn after him like she was a misbehaving child. She bit back a complaint and focused on getting her feet under her. After a moment, William said, without apparent effort, “You are slow. He is changing the realm for you, to move us closer to your precious Penny, but soon he will have to fight Nightwell directly. When he does that, we’ll be ejected into Faerie main. We’ll have to find the right path. Don’t do anything stupid, like letting go of my hand.”
Branwyn, concentrating on running, only nodded.
“Already,” he said. “Now.” The hall peeled away around them, dropping them into a verdant field dotted with carnelian flowers that reached to Branwyn’s thighs. She stumbled in the transition and almost fell, dragging against William’s hand. The light shifted around them, becoming the aquamarine of an underwater world. Her eyes and lungs burned. “Not here,” said William, his words hollow. The light changed again, the thistle-grey of stormclouds. “Here. Move!”
Instead, Branwyn, soaking wet from the dip into the wet light, gagged on the saltwater that had flooded her mouth and nose during the moment before. She tried to move forward, even though she could barely tell where the ground was.
“I hate mortals,” William grumbled, and slung her over his shoulder. After only a few leaping steps, the water had been jarred right out of her system and she had enough sense back to be aware of the abso
lute indignity of being carried from an enemy over an ally’s shoulder. It was nearly intolerable. It was everything she wanted to avoid.
It was also, she thought, the best way. William was actually moving faster now that he was carrying her. They ran through a shallow marsh, William leaping from hummock to hummock under a sky that danced with lightning. The only way Branwyn would be able to keep up was by letting him carry her for now. She thought she was okay with help—hadn’t she asked Marley for help in the end?—but it still rankled.
Oh well. At least he’d been human once, and made a choice as a human. He didn’t like her at all, but he loved Tarn and he was helping her because Tarn wished it, and how much more human could you get?
“Are we almost there?”
“Shut up,” he said. “There’s—” and darkness burst out of the ground in front of them. A figure, tall and slender with wild purple hair, advanced from within the maelstrom of shadows.
William dropped Branwyn into some mud and moved in front of her. “Get out of here. I’ll—”
Branwyn activated the charm to tear the veil before William finished speaking, but nothing happened. It was the same smoothed and hardened curtain she’d encountered when Tarn had yanked her into Underlight. She was trapped in the Backworld.
Scrambling to her feet, she started running. There was a clash and thud behind her, and a very human cry of pain from William, and Branwyn stopped short. She knew she ought to keep moving until she outran the curtain-hardening effect, but it was the second time William had been damaged on her behalf, the second time she’d heard that cry. How many times had he died already?
She turned around in time to see Nightwell fling William aside and smile at her. She scowled at him and opened her palm to show him the Key. It was heavy in her palm, and the light it shed made the dreary landscape seem like a momentary bad mood rather than a real place. He gestured, and the landscape compressed, bringing her closer to him. But the Key dragged against the land. He couldn’t take it from her without killing her, she could tell.
Infinity Key (Senyaza Series Book 2) Page 29
