“L-let me pass,” said Dion, refusing to clutch at her aching shoulder, which had met the wall first. “You’re p-presuming on your uniform, sir.”
“So proud!” said the Fae, in wondering tones. “It’s no good throwing back your shoulders, sweeting; I can see your pretty lips trembling. I’m much nicer than the Watch House, you know. They’re rough and really quite rude there.”
Her voice scratchy and choked, Dion said: “You’ll r-regret it if you don’t let me go.” There was a buzzing in her ears that threatened to swallow her, and a crease in her chin was trying to make her cry. But behind it all there was the hot, full sensation of magic building, hidden and potent.
The Fae didn’t seem to see it: perhaps he was used to Fae magic, or perhaps she was merely doing a very good job of hiding it. He said: “We’ll start with a kiss first, I think. Don’t kick me, sweeting, or I assure you that it will be much more...unpleasant...for you.”
He moved forward as he spoke, with a swift, snake-like movement of his arm for her waist; and Dion, snake-like herself, struck. The Fae was thrown violently back into the next street as a bolt of raw magic punched into his chest, his purple eyes blank and wide. She saw recognition and deadly determination in those eyes as he tried to rise again, and called the stones to hold him. He sank into the street immediately, flailing in panic, and although Dion knew that a Fae wouldn’t escape the clutches of stone very easily, she ran for her life, her breath ragged in her throat.
She managed to halt her mad, panting progression just before she burst into the main street again. Wriggling into a small, walled garden where the gap between gate and brick wall was just a little too big to prevent visitors, she tucked herself behind a tree and tried to think. There was something very wrong in Bithywis. Tokens of citizenship hadn’t been seen in centuries, and Dion was very well aware that no laws had been passed to that effect, either. There had been a bill, quite a long time ago, requiring aliens and non-citizens to carry a mark of their status, but this was something quite different. All the humans she had seen were clearly Llassarian stock: they were tall, either pale or ruddy with their white skin, and hair inclined to curling. There was no reason for any of them to be displaying a non-resident marker.
Dion stayed where she was, cold and unsure, until the light of the evening began to fade. She would have liked to think that it was for purely strategical reasons—she would be harder to see after dark—but she was quite well aware that it was simply because she was afraid. When she did finally slither back under the garden gate, it was with a carefully constructed glamour in place, despite the cover of darkness. That glamour, as uncomfortable as it made her feel, was the glamour of a Fae. She hadn’t seen any Fae wearing the markers, and while she wasn’t yet willing to consider why that was, it seemed safer to glamour as if she was from Faery. People were less willing to accost Fae. Even lesser Fae had a formidable amount of magic and were dangerous targets, no matter how foolhardy the assailant. As Dion walked the main street of Bithywis, her eyes darting from side to side in fear that the Fae guard would still appear, it seemed that she was not the only one who considered the night streets safer for Fae. In her carefully casual stroll along the cobbled road, Dion saw many Fae, bright and dark, glittering and dangerous, laughing and enjoying the night. Of humans, she had not a single sight. Were the streets of Bithywis so dangerous that none but Fae dared to walk them? And if so, why had she not seen official paperwork– requests for succour and help from the Crown? Dion knew her mother and father would have sent special troops to assist if they were needed.
The town hall was closed when Dion approached it; and, made wary by her encounter with the Fae guard, she couldn’t bring herself to approach the Watch House for help, Royal Seal or no. That being the case, thought Dion a little desperately, the best thing to do was to find somewhere safe for the night, and get off the street. It was no doubt her fear speaking, but she seemed to hear footsteps behind her that slowed when she slowed, and stopped when she stopped. When Dion looked over her shoulder she couldn’t see anyone following her, but the feeling of being watched didn’t abate. She retraced her steps to the lower main street, where she’d first passed by alehouses and inns, and chose the smallest, most modestly lit inn. Its windows were low to the cobbled streets and Dion descended four stairs to gain entrance, which pleased her insofar as she was capable of pleasure at the time. Casual passers-by were unlikely to take any notice of her sitting at one of the taphouse tables when her head was somewhere in the region of their ankles. Dion didn’t particularly feel like eating, but she knew from past experience that as little as she might feel like eating in unpleasant circumstances, it was always advisable to eat anyway. She had to duck her head to enter but once inside the ceiling was high enough not to feel as though it was crushing her.
Dion knew too much about being unnoticed to try and skulk in the shadows. Instead, she kept her light Fae glamour and sat at one of the window booths, wearing face #30– polite, distant unconcern. She ordered a small meal and when it arrived she ate it methodically, despite the leaden way it sat in her stomach. Her neck ached with stifling the urge to look around every few moments, and after her meal arrived, she used the window as a glass to see what was happening around her. Thanks to her Fae glamour, no one had given her more than a passing glance. Dion, automatically eating food that had no savour or taste, was free to be bewildered by her thoughts and impressions, and soon forgot to look in the glass at all.
What had happened in Bithywis? It was a completely different proposition from the town she had driven through and stopped in briefly to be presented with a ceremonial birthday present. Where were the beautifully decorated shop-fronts; the air of festivity; the bunting in royal colours? Where had the humans gone? So far Dion had seen only Fae. In fact, there was an air of alienness to the whole town, a creeping sort of feeling that crawled up her neck and scratched at her scalp. It wasn’t just the Fae guard who had accosted her, it was in the very bricks and awnings and even in the sparkling cleanliness of the alehouse around her. Everything sparkled a bit too bright; everything was a bit too reflective. There was a cold, distant kind of handsomeness even to the fire, which didn’t manage to warm her as it should have.
A door opened and closed, bringing with it a swift draught of cool night air. Dion shivered in her window-booth, and felt something warm and sinewy slide around her shoulders. A shock of numbing confusion seized her, but when she opened her mouth in a shriek of protest it was immediately and forcibly silenced by the pressure of lips against her own. Dion found herself thrust against the window and unable to move; her arms pinned to her sides by two iron-like ones in green, her ankles pinched painfully against the corner by a leather boot, and her head trapped immovably between the booth corner and person who was kissing her. There was nothing she could do, in fact, except be kissed.
In the midst of her panic, Dion’s first thought was, What would Aerwn do? Unfortunately, the single answer that question inspired was that Aerwn would kiss the stranger back, so Dion went with the second, which was to bite down as hard as she could bring herself to do on the stranger’s lower lip. She tasted blood, terrified and elated at once, and the stranger released a gasp of slightly ale-scented breath. Then he purred a lascivious “Ow!” in Dion’s frightened and astonished ear, and added: “Do that again and I’ll tell everyone in the house about that clever glamour you’re wearing. Don’t scream.”
“Get off!” panted Dion, her cheeks hot and red. There was a buzzing of magic in her fingers but she didn’t dare let it loose while she was so surrounded by other patrons. “I won’t scream, get off, get off!”
He pulled back without quite moving far enough away, and Dion found that she was being laughed at by a pair of very bright blue eyes in an almost stunningly handsome face. Her face went even redder, and she said chokingly: “Go away!”
“Oh, cherry, but then I wouldn’t be able to enjoy your beautiful colour!” he said.
Dion self-conscio
usly wiped blood from her mouth, aware that the stranger was still watching her with laughing eyes and a curling smile. He didn’t seem to feel the need to wipe the blood from his lips, and Dion, averting her eyes, said again: “Please go away.”
“Well, now,” he said, “if you hadn’t started to scream when I sat down beside you, I wouldn’t have had to kiss you.”
“I didn’t want you to sit next to me!” gasped Dion, needled into looking up again.
“Don’t be like that, cherry,” he said. “I was curious to know why a human girl is wearing a Fae glamour, and it didn’t seem likely that you’d want attention drawn to it. If you hadn’t squeaked when I put my arm around you, I wouldn’t have had to silence you. Fae don’t notice an interlude, but they do dislike shrieking.”
“We’re not having an interlude!” said Dion, flushing even deeper red than before. She hadn’t been imagining that someone was following her.
“Are we not?” he asked, licking the blood from his lips salaciously.
“Don’t do that!”
He laughed softly and infectiously. “You’re just too much fun to tease, cherry. What are you doing out and about without your owner? I’ll not inform on you, mind.”
Dion gaped at him, even more bereft of words than his kiss had made her. At last, she said in a hiss: “No one owns me! What has happened in Bithywis?”
The stranger stared down at her, frowning; then put his arm around her again and ducked his head.
“No!” said Dion, a furious heat of magic rising in the hand that shoved against his chest.
He hissed and pulled away, but said: “All right, cherry, I’m not going to kiss you again. Tilt your chin up and smile at me, then lean your head into my shoulder. And keep your voice down.”
Dion, flexing her fingers and safe in the knowledge that she was prepared to attack if need be, did as she was told. She found herself shielded from the rest of the room by the stranger’s shoulders.
“We’re going to talk very, very quietly,” he said. “You’re as green as a new bean, think on! Where are you from? What’s your name?”
“I’m D–” Dion caught herself up just in time, and finished lamely: “Di. I’m Di. I’m from beyond Llassar.”
“Well, Di from beyond Llassar, I’m Padraig. It’s a happy thing you fell in with me, or you might have fallen in with trouble.”
Dion was rather certain that she’d fallen into enough trouble with Padraig but didn’t quite like to say so. Instead, she said: “What’s going on here? Has the town been overtaken?”
She already knew it hadn’t been overtaken: the Fae guard had been easy and practised in his assault, as if he had done it many times before, and his uniform was that of Llassarian guards. Padraig himself spoke as if this...this madness was nothing new.
“Ah, it’s a history lesson you’re wanting, is it?” said Padraig, his eyes glittering in the reflected light from the windows. “Well, then; it started with the opening of the rifts. Would you be knowing of those?”
“Everyone knows about the rifts,” she said, brushing the back of one hand against her cheeks. They still felt hot and stiff.
“I didn’t like to assume,” he said, with a slight gleam of white teeth. “Well now, it wasn’t long before Fae found the rifts and began to come through. They claimed they were running from a great evil, a group of Elder Fae—powerful, ancient beings—known as the Guardians. Fae they are, just barely, but they have none of the same weaknesses as lesser Fae. Neither silver nor cold iron affect them a jot. Such a formidable people could be conveniently fashioned into an excuse to invade the world of men. There have always been Fae who slipped through and lived in the human world, but this was a different matter.”
“They sent ambassadors,” said Dion, dismissing the implication that heavily laced Padraig’s flow of words.
“Aye, ambassadors were sent and accepted; treaties were signed and sealed. There was a steady flow of outcast Fae through and around us, and we were sent our portion as the Crown decreed. Houses were built, a portion of the town’s water and stock-land was set aside, and the Fae were among us.”
“Didn’t the local population welcome them?” It wouldn’t surprise Dion: there were some towns who had protested and written great, official letters to the Crown declaring their unwillingness to take in the outcasts. Fae had been given the cold shoulder and made to feel unwelcome– a great shame on the people of Llassar, whom she had expected to behave with greater generosity and freeness of acceptance.
“Oh, aye,” said Padraig, the ghost of a smile hovering about his mouth. “We welcomed them. Had a parade, mark you! We tossed flowers and sang, and saw them look down our noses at the display.”
“I’m sure they didn’t mean to be arrogant,” Dion said uncomfortably. This was the sort of talk that Aerwn used to come out with. Already off-balance with Padraig, she began to feel as though she’d got herself into dreadful company. “They’re used to such beautiful, magical things in Faery: our art and accomplishments must seem so– so earthy to them.”
Dion was almost certain that Padraig’s lip curled for the briefest moment. She had the uncomfortable feeling that he was one of the dissenters her parents had always cautioned her of: someone not to be spoken to, someone who could not be argued with, someone who would always pull a well-meaning advisor down to his level. The fingers of her other hand began to warm with the cautious growth of magic.
“Aye, perhaps so,” he said dryly. “And yet, one day we went about our lives in peace, a Llassarian town of mingled humans and Fae outcasts. The next we woke to find that we were slaves, our rights taken away and our king and queen either powerless or unwilling to stop it. We stood against it, but the law was changing and we found ourselves on the wrong side of it.”
Dion had the sensation of being stuck in a dream. Of all the high-flown rhetoric to use! Slaves and outlaws?
“And worse, in Shinpo and Montalier,” he added significantly. “Or have you forgotten the atrocities committed in our neighbouring countries, Di from beyond?”
“Those are the violent Fae,” she protested. “The Unseelie, who love to make trouble, and the desperate! They don’t speak for the rest of the Fae, and the rest of the Fae don’t accord with them.”
“Violence or not, it makes no odds,” said Padraig. There was an impatience and an air of exasperation to his voice that stung Dion: she wasn’t being unreasonable, neither was she lacking in intelligence. “You’ll have it that the horrors these Fae perpetrate is the end in itself: something the deranged enjoy, and the desperate engage in unwillingly. It’s not. It’s a means to an end. What almost all Fae have in common is the desire to rule both the human and the Fae worlds according to their own will.”
Dion tried to protest at the absurdity of it, but he ignored her. “Some of them accomplish that through law, and accord, and friendly means that mask their intent until it’s too late. Some of them think it beneath them to treat with the humans and are assured of their right to take what they will, when they will. Thus we have towns and countries taken over by force.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Dion said, when she got her breath back. “How can you think such a thing?”
“Think it! I live it! Who are you, Di from beyond, to tell me that my experiences are ridiculous?”
Dion, flustered, said: “I didn’t! I said–”
“We live under the thumb of the Fae in Bithywis,” said Padraig. “As do they in the Shinpoan villages that were taken by force. There humans may not take to the streets without their owners or their token of self-ownership. They’re forced to keep to curfew, and to line up in the streets for their daily ration of food. We do the same here. Should we be grateful that our overthrow came by way of deceitful smiles instead of honest violence?”
“I don’t believe you,” Dion said quietly, her face as white as her muslin sleeves. “Humans forced to wear a sign of their humanity? To apply for a ration of food? The king and queen would never allow it!”
“I’m n-not going anywhere with you!”
“Must I threaten you again, cherry?”
Dion withdrew into herself as far as she was able, hunching away from Padraig’s surrounding warmth. “T-tell them if you must,” she said, and made a stiff effort to raise her chin. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Padraig looked down at her sharply, and said with unexpected gentleness: “Who hurt you, cherry? Tell me who he is and I’ll make him pay for it.”
“I already made him pay,” said Dion, in a tight, proud voice. “And you did worse, anyway.”
“I did? What, that chaste kiss?”
“It wasn’t at all chaste!” Dion said. Her voice was shaking again, she knew. “And you had n-no business forcing it on me, even if it was!”
Was that a slight touch of red high in his cheeks? There was certainly a deep line between his brows. “I’ve badly bungled the thing,” he said. “I was expecting you to be a wee bit different, think on. Sure, I thought you’d hit me! I’d not have kissed you like that if I’d known– ach, I shouldn’t have done it at all. Forgive me, cherry. It was badly done.”
“Oh,” said Dion. She looked at him properly this time, and couldn’t see a trace of guile to his eyes. She sat a little straighter and said at last: “All right. I forgive you.”
A smile lit Padraig’s face at once. “You’re such a lovely, soft thing,” he said. “Can I kiss you again?”
“N-no!” said Dion, thrown off balance once more.
“Now I really am curious,” he said, his eyes still bright and interested. “What did you do to your attacker, cherry?”
“Threw him across the street,” said Dion. “Imprisoned him in the cobbles.”
She flushed as Padraig hissed appreciatively, his mouth pursed. “Aye, I knew I’d like you, Di from beyond! Come with me. I swear I’ll not touch you again.”
Shards of a Broken Sword Page 29
