Shards of a Broken Sword

by W. R. Gingell

  Althea looked impatient. “How ridiculous! When it comes to the point, even your line wasn’t always royalty, as ancient as it is.”

  “Treason!” said Markon, laughing. “Ah well, speculation bakes no pies, after all. We said we were going to talk about what we did know. Has there been any Fae magic in your new suite?”

  “No,” said Althea. “But then, I’ve taken care to ward my room rather strongly now. I’ve still got the shard, by the bye. May I keep it?”

  “I don’t see why not,” said Markon. “I doubt there’s anything Montalier could do with it that Avernse won’t do twice as well.”

  Althea, looking troubled, failed to acknowledge the compliment. “I’d like to know why Carmine gave it to us.”

  Markon looked at her curiously. “He didn’t. You tricked him out of it and the girl.”

  “Yes, I think that’s what he’d like us to believe.”

  Markon thought it over, and found that he agreed. He opened his mouth to ask what she thought Carmine meant by it, but found himself asking instead: “Did he really try to buy you?”

  “A few times,” said Althea, with a small smile that worried Markon slightly. “Not all the Fae are the same, you see: they don’t reason like us and I don’t think any of them quite see us as equals, but they’re not all monsters. At first I thought it was only kindness in him, trying to rescue me. Then I realised that he was actually interested in me.”

  “Wouldn’t your mistress sell you?”

  “Master. No. He was trying to drive the price up and he didn’t like Carmine much. I think he enjoyed watching him get rebuffed.”

  “Did he get rebuffed?”

  Althea’s cheeks went slightly pink, and she sipped her hot chocolate with great attention. “I may have let him kiss me once or twice.”

  “Really?” said Markon with great affability. To his great amusement, this made Althea’s colour deepen.

  “Well, he was a very good kisser, and I was only eighteen! I knew exactly what kind of Fae he was and the sort of fun he liked to have with Fae or human women. I had no idea that it was marriage that he was after. If I had–” Althea stopped and considered this, frowning.

  Markon, his amusement suddenly and utterly deserting him, said: “Would you have married him if you’d known?”

  “Perhaps,” said Althea. She looked up at Markon and the frown cleared away as suddenly as it had come. “I’m glad I didn’t know. I made my own escape on my own terms. Carmine is rather delightful but he’s also rather exhausting.”

  She curled her fingers around the dwindling mug of hot chocolate and fell into an appreciative silence, which Markon was happy enough not to break. He had his own thoughts to think, and if they weren’t exactly pleasant, they weren’t unpleasant either.

  It was only after he’d disposed of his mug on the occasional table beside the armrest that a weight nudged itself into his shoulder, and he realised Althea’s silence was because she’d fallen asleep. It seemed a pity to wake her, so Markon gently removed the chocolate mug from her fingers and placed it beside his own. Then he manoeuvred himself into a more comfortable position, put his feet up on the footstool, and went to sleep as well.

  Day Ten

  Markon woke with a feeling of deep satisfaction quite some time after midnight. He was confused to find himself sitting in the library, his back sore and his neck stiff, one weight across his stomach and another against his shoulder. Althea muttered in her sleep and shifted beside him, bringing Markon to the pleasant realisation that it was her arm curled around his waist and her cheek resting against his shoulder. Someone had also tossed a rug over them, which brought another memory with it: his steward entering the library to discover if he required anything. Markon, warm and comfortable, had said sleepily: “Just a blanket,” and gone back to sleep. He grinned at the darkened library. Apparently his steward had done just as he was asked.

  Althea muttered again and tried to shift her legs, but since she’d curled them up beneath her on the couch some time during the night, the action almost sent her tumbling from the couch. Markon caught her before she fell and said: “Careful, darling,” without thinking.

  “Ow,” said Althea thickly. “Can’t feel toes. Where am I?”

  “The library,” said Markon, propping her against the seatback before she could wake properly. “You fell asleep again.”

  “Oh,” she said, half-heartedly swiping a hand across her face. Then, eyes snapping open, she said: “Oh! What time is it, Markon? Is it much past midnight?”

  “A little,” he said. The chimes had sounded for a quarter to four just a few moments ago. “Are we visiting Faery today?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Althea said, lifting the rug and looking around her doubtfully. “Where are my shoes, Markon?”

  “Under the cushion,” said Markon, unable to repress a grin. “Can you feel your toes now?”

  To his delight, Althea sat down and wiggled them quite seriously. “Now I can. Was I talking in my sleep again?”

  “You were. Do you often talk in your sleep?”

  “Quite often,” she said, slipping her feet back into her shoes. “Hopefully we can be in and out quickly today: I took a piece of magic from the hairless girl that I’m fairly certain is Seelie, so at least we won’t run into any old friends this time.”

  “Well, that’s something to be thankful for, at any rate,” said Markon, happy to be spared another Carmine. After all, Althea was all but engaged to Parrin– an argument, he was well aware, that bore less weight in the light of his own behaviour toward her. He would have to be more careful.

  Althea looked more amused than insulted. “Honestly, Carmine is about the sum of it when it comes to friends in Faery. It isn’t a place that encourages friendliness.”

  Markon thought of the glass spikes that had all but ended his life and said: “It’s not, is it?”

  The Door let in a blinding light that almost felt warm. It was so bright that it took several minutes for Markon’s eyes to adjust, and when they did there was still such a moving glitter of light on water that it was hard to tell what they were looking at. He hadn’t expected to see water, and the instinctive step he took forward had Markon stepping into Faery just a little before Althea, who only just seized his hand in time.

  “You’re getting awfully casual about walking into Faery,” she said, releasing him.

  “It’s beautiful!” Markon said. For the first time when entering Faery, it felt as though the sunlight was actually touching him. He found himself on a rock ledge that was being lapped at by the sparkling sea, a vista of sun, sea, and island stretching out before him. He walked on ahead of Althea eagerly, making his way over the rocky ledge until he could look straight down into the water, and found to his delight that he could see right to the bottom. It looked shallow enough to wade in. Behind him, Althea was frowning, her eyes darting from island to island and scanning the gentle waves. Markon wasn’t sure if she was looking for something or if she recognised the place. If so, lucky Althea! He hadn’t seen anything so alien or exotic in his life: the very air was heavy with heat, the waves turquoise and inviting. They looked cool, sparkling and clear– or almost clear. Was that something curving through the water?

  Behind him, Althea said slowly: “Oh. Markon?”

  “Mm?” There was something in the water. A flash of something pale, and ripples of golden...was that hair?

  “Do you remember me saying that we shouldn’t run into any old friends in Seelie cantons?”

  A radiant face broke through the water, followed by a woman’s shoulders and torso that were almost indecently free of clothing. She smiled at him, as beautiful and inviting as the waves.

  Markon said: “Yes, I remember.”

  “I think we may have run into some old enemies instead. We’d better go back and try another piece of magic.”

  He thought he was safe. He wasn’t close enough for the lady in the water to reach him, he was certain. The sandy bottom seemed so cl
ear that he was assured that it couldn’t be too deep. And yet, when Markon turned to say: “I think you should see this, Althea,” he only had time to feel something icily cold grip his ankle before he was hauled backwards with incredible strength into the sea. He heard Althea scream for the brief second before his ears were plunged below the water. Then he was swallowed by salt waves that curled around his arms and legs until he could barely move, the world a riot of sand and sea and sky.

  Markon’s first thought was, ridiculously, that the water was far, far deeper than it had appeared from his rock ledge. The clarity with which he could see the sandy bottom had deceived him, and no matter how often it flashed past in his spiralling descent, it didn’t grow any closer, though it remained just as clear. His second thought was that the water was neither as restrictive nor as cold as he had at first thought: the reason he couldn’t move his arms and legs was because the golden-haired Fae had wound herself around them, and her skin was icily cold to the touch. Cold, smooth arms wrapped around his torso, stronger than seemed possible for so delicately formed a creature. Below that an eel-like tail encircled his legs, effortlessly crushing. After that it was hard to concentrate on any thought but his desperate need for air. As the last of it left his lungs and bubbled upwards in its eagerness to see the sky, Markon convulsed within the waterfae’s embrace, salt water engulfing his nostrils and flooding his mouth.

  There was an explosion of bubbles in a fierce arrowhead somewhere nearby. Markon, certain that he was to be drowned, found that the waterfae had put her mouth over his, breathing salt and fish and most importantly, air. Impossibly and unpleasantly, he was breathing again, though the water still closed around him suffocatingly.

  “Better?” asked a bell-like voice. That was impossible, too, and Markon was fairly certain that he wasn’t actually hearing it. There was too much salt water in his ears to hear anything. Cautiously, he nodded.

  There was a tinkling laugh, like wind-chimes. “I forgot your kind can’t talk here. Never mind, soon we’ll be somewhere you can talk and eat without taking in the sea. I’m going to let your legs free now, pretty thing: we need to keep going. She’ll catch us if we wait any longer, and that’s a bit too soon for my liking.”

  She, who? wondered Markon. He could no longer tell what was up and what was down: the water was significantly darker where they were now. And then, as the waterfae loosed his legs and used that powerful tail to propel them, he saw Althea over her shoulder, dark in shadow with a face so pale as to be almost glowing. She was in her shift and swimming after them with powerful, practised strokes that seemed to be helped on by magic, so swiftly did she move through the water. Her eyes were fixed on Markon, and she didn’t appear to have any problems breathing. She, Markon realised coldly, and fought to be free of the waterfae.

  “Don’t be nasty, pretty thing,” said the Fae, readjusting her terrifyingly strong grip. “I don’t want to have to break your darling legs.”

  Markon was still struggling gamely when the waterfae darted around a formation of what he was reasonably certain was coral, and wrapped herself around him again. “Just you wait, pretty thing,” she said, her hair settling around her head in an aureole. “Now the fun begins! No need to worry your pretty head about it: I’ll make sure nothing hurts you.”

  There was a white blur in the darkness of the water and then Althea was there, still swimming determinedly after them. This time the Fae let her get close, which worried Markon in a vague kind of way, and said: “You can’t have him. He’s mine.”

  “No he’s not,” said Althea, her voice odd and familiar all at once. It had something of the bell-like quality that the waterfae’s had. “He belongs to himself. I suggest you let him go.”

  “You have such a lot of magic,” said the waterfae, her eyes calculating. “Clouding out like ink behind you and hiding things, but I know who you are.”

  “What nonsense,” said Althea, but there was a tension to her shoulders that Markon could see even underwater. “You’re a silly little water sprite. What do you know?”

  “I know about the changeling human who killed the king and stole his magic,” said the waterfae. “And I know that the Queen wants to see you so very much.”

  “Well, I don’t particularly want to see her,” Althea said. “Thanks all the same.”

  “I know,” said the waterfae. “That’s why I had to make you chase me. Oooh, she’s going to be pleased with me!”

  Althea’s smile was a fearsome thing. “Only if you can catch me.”

  “I don’t have to,” the waterfae said.

  To Markon, unfamiliar with his watery surroundings, it seemed as though a shadow grew around them. That wasn’t likely, leading to his next thought, that they were encompassed by a vast school of fish. A few moments later it was obvious that it was neither shadow nor fish– in the strictest sense of the word. No, an army of waterfae had segued from the dark waters around them, myriad and multi-coloured tails undulating gently against the current, their silver armour palely gleaming in the small light that penetrated the depths.

  “Let him go,” Althea said. Her chin was set, as were her shoulders: she looked as though she was preparing to fight to the death. Perhaps she was. “If I have to fight my way out of this, a lot of you are going to be hurt.”

  “Yes, but if I see even the tiniest spark of magic from you, I’ll break his pretty neck,” said the waterfae who held Markon. Her slick fingers slid up and around his neck, twisting together until Markon’s face felt tight and hot and ready to burst at the seams. He opened and closed his mouth, desperate to tell Althea to go, to leave him to the results of his own folly; but the constriction around his neck and the water in his mouth didn’t permit him to do anything but gulp.

  And Althea said simply: “I yield.”

  They were escorted with triumphant speed through the dark and oppressive waters until Markon began to see light softly disseminating through the current. At first, too disoriented to know up from down, he took it to be the sun, and hoped soon to break free of the water. As the light grew closer, however, he saw that it beamed from a domed source on what he soon recognised to be the rocky, sand-teased bottom of the sea. They approached it at great speed, Althea in her own little circle of waterfae and Markon still held hostage by the female waterfae. The dome increased in size so rapidly that it actually seemed to be growing. By the time they were near enough for Markon to see the vague suggestion of a city through the dome, the dome itself towered over them. When they were only a few feet away he could no longer see around it and the top seemed as far out of sight as the surface above.

  “Here we go, pretty thing,” said the waterfae, and pressed them both into the dome. Something cool and slightly resistant met Markon’s face; then they were through, and there was actual air. Air, and freedom from the constant touch of water on his skin. Oddly enough, the sense of pressure only increased, bringing with it a heavy feeling of oppression. It didn’t occur to Markon that the waterfae couldn’t possibly move through this habitat with their long, supple tails until Althea was thrust through the dome after him, the Fae who escorted her emerging face first, their tails shortening and separating until they stood on two legs. His own Fae had done the same: and like the others, was now the possessor of a pair of muscular, finely-haired legs that were covered only to the knee by armour or—in his captor’s case—a graceful fall of light fabric that dried immediately upon entering the dome. Althea’s shift had not done so. She looked so small, defenceless and bedraggled that Markon could only wonder exactly what it was she’d done to be gripped so savagely on either side by two of the biggest Fae he’d seen yet.

  “Don’t dawdle, pretty thing,” said his captor. She forced Markon forward on a slick, shell-encrusted road that wound its piebald way through rows of equally shell-encrusted houses. Some of them were much the same as the houses back in Montalier, high and balconied and graceful, while others were more fanciful in design. Markon lost count after the first five conch-shap
ed houses, and didn’t bother to try and number the houses that were formed in the shape of a sea-snail’s shell: they appeared with a frequency that could only be ascribed to a current fad. And high above them, filtering a dark green light on the city below, the dome itself arched: untouchable, vast, and impossibly crushing.

  The ground began to incline beneath their feet before very much longer. The houses were blurring around him, but it wasn’t until the sea-shelled road also began to blur beneath his feet that Markon realised someone must be shortening the road ahead of them. He journeyed by magic quite often in Montalier and had never quite managed to get over his dislike for travelling under someone else’s power, despite his Doctors’ assurances of the safety of it. Here under the dome in Faery, it felt even more perilous.

  There was a subtle sense of stomach-churning halt, and a doorway solidified ahead of the group: huge, double-doored and intricately carved.

  We’ve arrived, thought Markon, his breath coming just a little too fast. Whoever it is we came to see, we’ve arrived. He looked for Althea between the muscled arms and scaled armour, but all he could see was the edge of one powder-white cheek and one glittering blue eye. Then the double-doors ahead of them were opened in a heavy sweep of stale air, and Markon lost sight of her in the forward torrent of waterfae that forced him into the foyer and up the cold marble stairs.

  They were expected: the first set of double-doors on the landing was wide open, and when the guard of waterfae jostled Markon and Althea into the room, a woman in blood-red robes of lightly wafting silk was waiting elegantly on a dais at the end of the room. The guard stopped a respectful distance away, propelling both Markon and Althea to the forefront of the group, and waited at salute until the elegant woman nodded careless at them.

  She had dark, brilliant eyes that pierced the room above a mouth painted exquisitely red, and when her eyes lighted upon Althea those scarlet lips curved in a thin, deadly smile. “My dear, it’s wonderful to see you again,” she said. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it somehow carried throughout the entire room. “I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting to see you! I did think that with the little accident that occurred when you left...”