Hunter's Oath

by Glynn Stewart

  “Jason, I’m glad you could—”

  “Kilkenny, I claim blood right to speak for my dead!” Andrell snapped. “Four of my kin are dead, and you were the one to call it in. Why are my people dead? Why did you kill them?!”

  He was leaping to conclusions, though it was hardly an unreasonable one—beyond the fact that four prepared redcaps should probably have been able to take me.

  “Do you claim them, then, Lord Andrell?” I asked as I reached him and Eric. “Were they of your Court, bound by Fealty, that you are responsible for their actions? For their crimes?”

  “What crimes?” he demanded. “That they ended up dead in the streets?”

  “If they were yours, Lord Andrell, are you prepared for the war they tried to start?” I asked quietly, lowering my voice and forcing the entire Manor to silence themselves to hear me. “Will you bear the blood-gild for the mortal they killed? The consequences of launching an attack on the Clan Speaker’s people?

  “Are you prepared to go to war with Calgary’s Shifter Clans, Lord Andrell?” I demanded. “Because I see no grounds to summon Lord Oberis to aid you if you do. If you brought feeders into this city without reporting them, you are in violation of the Covenants you swore to uphold.”

  I smiled thinly, hoping that I could at least force him to realize the thin ice he stood on.

  “So, I ask again, Lord Andrell, do you claim them as yours? Do you admit to breaking Oath and Covenant within days of assuming your Court? Or should, perhaps, we compare notes and see just what happened to bring four redcaps into this city and loose them upon a friend of our Courts?”

  Andrell flicked a dark glance over at Gráinne, and I wondered what layers were moving within layers in Calgary’s new Court.

  “We have no grounds to assume they were feeders merely because they were redcaps,” he pointed out carefully. “Allowances are made and promises kept by many of their kin.”

  “I do not generally give much credence to the promises of men who introduce themselves by killing mortals and attacking shifters,” I said. “I do not know who they were, beyond redcaps. I do know that they attacked Mary Tenerim, a friend of these Courts and this Manor, without provocation or warning, killed a mortal taxi driver, and started a gunfight in the middle of the street.

  “I do not know how things work in Ireland, Lord Andrell, for I am a child of this continent—but here, we prefer to avoid open battles in the middle of the day!”

  There was a long silence and then Andrell sighed.

  “I see your point, Vassal Kilkenny,” he allowed with forced politeness. “Perhaps you can tell me what occurred before either of us leaps to unnecessary conclusions, yes?”

  “Of course,” I allowed, pulling one of the barstools up and taking a seat. The immediate situation apparently defused, Eric dropped down behind the bar and poured us both beer. I was guessing that Andrell’s didn’t come with the warning look, though.

  “Mary Tenerim is one of the armorers and administrators for Clan Tenerim, and she works closely with Speaker Enli,” I explained quickly. “For…various reasons, I have a receiver on my phone for an emergency alert built into her phone.”

  If there was anyone in Calgary’s Court who didn’t know I was dating a shifter, that would be news to me.

  “When I received the alert, I walked Between to her location, where I found that the redcaps had rammed her taxi with a truck and killed the driver. Ms. Tenerim had managed to fight them off and escape, but they chased her and trapped her behind a strip mall…at which point I arrived.”

  I shrugged.

  “They’d underestimated their prey, and Ms. Tenerim actually had the situation in hand,” I noted. “My intervention helped resolve the situation quickly, but the redcaps refused to surrender and forced us to kill them.

  “Taking such an action to protect a friend of the Courts, Lord Andrell, is entirely within my authority—as is neutralizing such a blatant threat to the Covenants of Silence. My understanding was also that there were no redcaps in Calgary—the four I encountered appeared to be imported freelancers.”

  I shook my head.

  “Which begs the question, my lord, of why exactly freelance fae hitmen were in our city.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Andrell said slowly. “I apologize for my rash initial response, Master Kilkenny.”

  His publicly rash initial response. That wasn’t going to come back to bite any of us at all, I was sure.

  “You are correct that I am not aware of any redcaps in the city,” he continued. “And given your story, I most specifically do not claim them as mine, protected by Court and Fealty. I will investigate their presence; I promise you this.”

  We shared a long look. There was something about the man that was starting to worry me, and not just that he was Unseelie. He was swinging too quickly between friend and foe—it was starting to give me whiplash!

  Glancing around the room, I found myself meeting Gráinne’s gaze as well. She seemed much less willing to accept my story, if the hard edge to her eyes was any sign.

  “We are all tasked with keeping the peace and the Covenants, my lord,” I told Andrell. “Any assistance I can provide in finding how these rogue Unseelie came into the city, I will, of course, provide.”

  “We shall find them,” he replied grimly. “I will speak to those responsible for covering this up and make certain that proper measures are taken for the dead mortal’s family as well. I will not claim these men as mine, but they were Unseelie. I will see their victims taken care of.”

  That wasn’t required…but someone had to step in to see that the mess was covered up and the victim’s family covered. We tried to be better about our obligations to the mortals in this day and age, a task that usually fell to the Keeper.

  “You will also want to speak to Enli,” I warned him. “Grandfather will not lightly let this attack on his people go.”

  Andrell sighed.

  “You are, of course, correct, Master Kilkenny,” he agreed. “May I impose on you to arrange a meeting?”

  …Yeah, okay, I’d walked into that one.

  “I can do that,” I promised. “Let me know when you’re available, and I will reach out to the Speaker.”

  With the floor show that everyone had been anticipating short-circuited by the measure of people actually being adults and talking out their problems, the crowd in the bar slowly began to disperse. Andrell wasn’t the first to leave—that would be a sign of weakness, something no Fae Lord could afford—but he left quickly enough for it to be obvious.

  Oberis didn’t hang around for long afterward either, and the Nobles followed the Lords out.

  Within an hour of my arrival, the bar was down to under half a dozen guests, which Zach and Tarva were easily able to take care of. At that point, Eric gestured for me to follow him with a sharp nod and led the way into his apartment under the bar.

  The bare concrete floor of the apartment was covered in artful rugs, and the walls were smothered in heavy drapes. Other than the lack of windows, the room seemed well lit and cheerful, and Eric gestured me to a familiar overstuffed purple couch.

  “Not bad,” he finally allowed. “Someone had wound Andrell up and set him to ticking. He was about ready to explode and demand blood for blood when you showed up and neatly cut him off at the knees.”

  The gnome sighed.

  “Which, of course, is going to have problems all of its own,” he continued. “Enough people here guessed that he was planning on demanding your head to make you undercutting him like that at least a little humiliating.”

  “And no fae ever, let alone a Fae Lord, likes being humiliated.” I sighed. “What else, exactly, was I going to do?”

  Eric snorted.

  “Short of challenging him to trial by combat in the middle of the Manor? You did the best you could. I’d make sure you set that meeting up, though.”

  “I’ll add it to my to-do list,” I snarked.

  The gnome threw me a bushy-e
yebrowed warning look.

  “And what else is on your to-do list, if I may ask, my friend?” he said quietly.

  “Chernenkov was involved in the attempted hit on Mary,” I told him. “We took one of the redcaps alive—and the Pouka put a cold iron round through his head.”

  “Shit.”

  “It gets worse. The Tenerims followed her home—to a safehouse you and I don’t know about, owned by the Unseelie Court, guarded by no other than Bryan Milligan and our friend Gráinne. A safehouse packed full of guns and Unseelie newcomers.”

  “Andrell is bringing more Unseelie into the city,” Eric said carefully. “But not many. Including his Nobles, he’s brought maybe a dozen people with him. He was sent to split the Unseelie from an existing Court, not to build a new one from scratch.”

  “There were at least two dozen Unseelie in that building, Eric,” I told the Keeper. “I don’t think we’re talking Gentry or Greater Fae, even, but…Mary says Chernenkov was definitely there. Somewhere inside the layers of security in that safehouse.”

  “And Milligan was guarding it?” Eric asked.

  “And clearly didn’t know about the Pouka being there,” I agreed. “I’m going to have to touch base with him, off the record, tomorrow. But that safehouse stinks to high heaven, Eric, and if the Pouka retreated there, then…”

  He sighed.

  “Then you have sanction. It’s still a damn stupid idea to charge in there, Jason.”

  “I’m planning on sneaking in there, thank you,” I told him. “And I’m talking to the Queen first. There’s more games afoot here than I think we know about.”

  For a moment, I was tempted to ask him about the Masked Lords, but from what Inga had said, he likely wouldn’t know…and the Queen would prefer that story stayed at least quiet, if not secret.

  “There’s only so much sanction you can actually level against Andrell on your own,” Eric pointed out. “Just from a practical perspective.”

  “And if he’s sneaking in Unseelie freelancers, ordering hits on shifters, and hiding a Pouka the High Court has marked for execution, what do we do?” I finally asked.

  “What do you think?” Eric replied, his voice harsh. “If you and I can’t handle it and it’s High Court business, there’s only one more level above us.

  “If you end up finding full sanction against Andrell, we’ll have no choice but to summon the Wild Hunt.”

  20

  By the time I finally made it home, Mary had passed out from adrenaline overload and exhaustion. I checked in on her, making sure not to wake her, and tucked the blanket up over her sleeping form with a content smile.

  Then I carefully closed the door behind me and went back into the main room to boot up my computer. Logging into Fae-Net, I dropped a request to the Queen’s phone, hoping she was available. It was early morning in Ireland, after all.

  It took a few more minutes than it had after the whole mess with Chernenkov, but the videoconference software blipped up with an incoming call. I was surprised on accepting it, however, to get only a piece of iconography, a complex Celtic knotwork image that was clearly intended to be Mabona herself.

  “My Queen?”

  “It’s me,” she snapped. “I just got out of the shower, but this seemed urgent.”

  Translation: my Queen was probably naked or similarly underdressed, hence the iconography. That was fair enough in an age where even the fae found it easier to use voice-over-internet calls via virtual private networks than to teleport around.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Our Pouka friend has allies,” I said simply. “She used redcap mercenaries to try and kill my girlfriend and is hiding out in a safehouse being run by either Andrell himself or his right-hand woman.”

  The call was silent for several seconds.

  “Fuck.”

  “MacDonald also warned me that the Masked Lords may have a hand in affairs.”

  “Fuck,” the Queen repeated, with more emphasis. “Damn it, Kenneth. I’m guessing Inga briefed you on the Masks?”

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “I’m sure I’m missing details, but they killed a number of the High Court Powers before I was born.”

  “Yeah. Calebrant stopped them, at the cost of his life,” she said bitterly. “We never found the fuckers, but every so often, a handful of fae in the damn iron masks show up and cause trouble. There’s an agenda behind it, but I haven’t worked out what it is yet.”

  “Recruitment?” I suggested. “As I understand, they need twenty-one Lords or powerful Nobles to implement their ritual.”

  “Likely,” she agreed. “If they’re trying to set up a conflict in Calgary…they’re trying to recruit Andrell. Possibly Talus or Oberis, too, though I wish them luck with that attempt.”

  “I don’t know if the Masks and Chernenkov are related,” I admitted. “But she hid—she may be still be hiding—in a safehouse Andrell’s people didn’t report to us. Guns, outsiders, high-security quarters. It all looks like something the Masked Lords might be using as a local base.”

  Mabona was silent again.

  “Jason.” She paused, as if uncertain how to continue the sentence. “If the Masked Lords are in Calgary, they will come for you. They’ll come for you as my Vassal and they’ll come for you for your bloodline.”

  “What, they know who my father is?” I demanded bitterly.

  “They shouldn’t,” she said flatly. “But understand that they are the reason I conceal your lineage. If they learn…if they even suspect, they will come for you with everything they have. Listen to Inga, Jason. You must learn all she has to teach.

  “Before it’s too late.”

  Inga took the Queen’s instructions as an obligation to wring me dry. By the time she was done with me, she’d thrown me across the room half a dozen times and forced me to duel her blade to blade…with neither of us actually holding the swords in our hands.

  The difference between what I was capable of after a couple of weeks of her training and where’d I’d been when I’d first arrived in Calgary was stunning. I’d arrived in Calgary before my father’s blood had woken up in me—I suspected, in fact, that it was being claimed as the Queen’s Vassal that had awoken the power of that blood.

  Until then, I’d wielded the powers available to a changeling who was the grandson of one of the more powerful Seelie will-o’-the-wisps known in the last couple of centuries. Now…now I wasn’t entirely sure what my father had been, but my best guess was a Noble of the Wild Hunt.

  That certainly explained how Inga had clearly known him, even if it didn’t necessarily answer any of the questions I had about him.

  The one thing I’d realized, though, was that whoever my father was, he was dead. Most likely, adding up the pieces I’d been given, he’d died when the Hunt had ridden against the Masked Lords.

  From what Inga had said about that fight, that didn’t narrow the options down much.

  Half-collapsing onto the steps outside her dojo, I dug up Bryan Milligan’s phone number and called him.

  “This is Milligan.”

  “Bryan, it’s Kilkenny,” I told him in my slow Southern drawl. “How’s things?”

  He chuckled.

  “Messier than I thought, I’m starting to realize,” he replied.

  “Can we meet up? I could really use lunch.”

  And some answers, though without being sure who was listening in on his side, I couldn’t say that.

  “Yeah, I can do that,” he said slowly. “I’m at home, but there’s a neighborhood pub around the corner. Quiet place, the type no one knows about.”

  Meaning the type of place no other fae were going to be hanging out at. The Gentry seemed to understand just how much trouble we were digging for here.

  “Text me the address,” I told him. “I’ll meet you there.”

  “Can do. Looking forward to it, Jason. I think you can answer some of the questions that are getting under my skin of late.”

  The pub was in a small
corner unit of a strip mall tucked away in a quiet northwestern suburb. Well away from all of the major roads and malls; I hadn’t even been aware there was a commercial strip buried in the community.

  Though, admittedly, the city kept throwing up surprises for me. For all of the responsibility and attention I seemed to be gathering, I was still a newcomer there.

  I parked the Escalade at the far side of the parking lot and entered the pub. It was very much a seat-yourself type of place, with only two waitresses running around at what would have been the lunch rush in a restaurant closer to places people worked.

  Milligan waved to me as I entered. He’d found a booth tucked away at the side of the restaurant, well away from the kitchen or the bathrooms. It was awkwardly positioned next to the speakers, an additional aggravation for our enhanced senses, but a cover for a conversation we probably didn’t want any mortals listening in on.

  “How’s the new boss?” I asked as I took a seat. “Same as the old one?”

  He snorted.

  “That’s both more and less true than you think,” he pointed out. “Andrell and Oberis have a pretty similar management style. At first brush, he really is a good guy.”

  I nodded my agreement as I spotted the waitress approaching, and checked the menu. I ordered a burger and a beer and waited for her to move away with our orders before turning back to Milligan.

  “And at second brush?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Milligan admitted. “Secret safehouses? Sure, whatever, Oberis trusted Eric completely, and he still has a bunker tucked away that the Keeper doesn’t know about—and I’m guessing at least one more I don’t know about, either.”

  “But that safehouse is full of outsiders, isn’t it?” I asked. That was a Covenant violation all on its own. New arrivals were required to present themselves at the Manor. The High Court was supposed to know where all of our kind were.