The Faerie King

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Narcing in your sleep. Well done,” I whispered, and saw myself out.

  As befit a young man of his age and degree of inebriation, Aiden slept until the late afternoon, then wandered into my office with a large tumbler of water, a pair of sunglasses, and mismatched socks. “Have fun last night?” I enquired as he curled up on the couch and pulled his sweatshirt’s hood down over his face.

  “Yeah,” he grunted in a rasping bass. “’Bot was a hit. Did a kegstand.”

  “You or the robot?”

  His glasses hid his eyes, but Aiden’s expression suggested he was in the mood for none of that nonsense. “Hung over?” I asked, coming around my desk.

  “Maybe. Head hurts, feels like something furry crawled in my mouth and died.”

  “Sounds right.” I touched the side of his head and concentrated, and Aiden looked up in surprise. “Those headaches are easy enough to fix,” I explained. “I can’t help you with the dehydration, though. Live and learn, kid.”

  He pulled his glasses off, blinking at the low light, then nodded. “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” I took the couch opposite him and waited while he downed a pint of water. “Now, tell me about Olive’s boyfriend.”

  Aiden looked momentarily panicked, then guilty. “How did you—”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you talk in your sleep?”

  “Damn it,” he muttered, and drank again—stalling, I assumed. When he came up for air, he said, “Look, I don’t know if they’re really going out. I only saw her there for, like, half an hour, and then they left together.”

  “That’s supposed to reassure me, is it?”

  “No,” he countered, “that’s to say I don’t know for sure what’s going on. But they kind of had a boyfriend-girlfriend vibe, you know? Touchy, always together. She got giggly before they split.”

  “And does Prince Charming have a name?”

  Aiden made a face at the ceiling mosaic. “He wasn’t a football player—they all came in their jerseys. Everyone called him ‘G.’”

  “As in the letter?”

  “Yeah. Nickname, I guess,” he said with a shrug. “Hey, you’re not going to tell Olive I told you, are you? She’s getting close to tolerating me. I mean,” he backpedaled, “she doesn’t roll her eyes every time she sees me anymore, so I think we’re making progress.”

  “You’re doing better than I am,” I muttered, refilling his glass. “And keep drinking, you have a long way to go.”

  “Noted,” he said, but paused with the tumbler halfway to his lips. “Hey, you remember how you said Joey knew about the merrow? He said I should talk to you. What gives?”

  I was wrestling with the proper response when a large shadow flashed against the wall, momentarily blotting out the sun. “Hold that thought,” I said, racing to the window, and threw it up in time to hear Joey yell from the garden, “Trees ahead! Bank! BANK!”

  A thud followed, and I climbed out the window onto the balcony for a better look at my stately oak stand, which was now adorned with a black dragonet flailing in the treetops. “Need a hand?” I called down to Joey.

  “Need a ladder!” he bellowed, and sprinted off to coax Georgie back to earth.

  By the time Aiden and I ran downstairs and out the back, Joey was dancing around beneath a rain of leaves and broken branches, yelling reassurance to Georgie, who was terrified and floundering for her footing. She had crashed into the confluence of two canopies and was being held aloft by their joint support, but only barely. “Just stay still!” Joey begged. “It’s all right, hon, we’re going to get you down! Stop moving!”

  Before I could assist, Georgie rose into the air, squawking in panic to find herself floating, then drifted down through a clearing and landed, scratched and scared but unbroken. Joey ran to her side to stroke her face and murmur reassurance, and I turned to see Valerius behind me, shaking his head and grinning. “Ahead of schedule, that one,” he remarked. “And about as graceful as her predecessors. I’d hide anything breakable until she learns to steer.”

  “Nice to see you back,” I replied as Aiden jogged over to join the dragon consolation effort. “You had a pleasant trip, I trust?”

  The captain seemed suddenly uneasy. “My lord, I apologize, Toula insisted you wouldn’t mind—”

  “She’s right, and I don’t,” I interrupted, cutting his explanation short. “I’m glad you got out. Just…if you intend to remain in my guard, please give me some sort of a rough timetable before you disappear. In case of emergency, yes?”

  His face clouded. “Yes, my lord, of course, I…” He paused, trying to interpret my expression. “I suppose this is probation, then?”

  “No, but I…uh…” I glanced over my shoulder, but Aiden and Joey were still occupied, and I drew closer to Valerius. “I didn’t know if you would want to keep the position, all things considered.”

  “Is this about Mab?” he asked, frowning. “I was there, I did nothing to help her. If any blame should fall, it must fall partly on me for not stopping you.”

  “Besides that.” I took a deep breath, searching for the right words. “Valerius…you were a high lord long before I was born. Why would you want to serve me now?”

  He folded his arms and watched as Joey coaxed the dragon back to her feet, then said quietly, “I’ve been a soldier most of my life. It’s who I am. If I was ever a high lord, I knew nothing about it, and once Mab was thrown out…” He shrugged. “I served your mother because of a lie. I’ll serve you because I believe you’re trying, my lord, and because someone needs to watch your back. Is that acceptable?”

  I nodded, listening to Georgie’s faint psychic protestations that she was never leaving the ground again. “In that case, there’s one thing you can do for me.”

  “My lord?”

  “Call me Coileán. My friends call me by name, and I, um…I would value your friendship.”

  He briefly regarded me in silence, then said, “And I would gladly give it.”

  We watched the trio stumble back toward the barn through the lengthening shadows. “So,” I said once Georgie’s voice had been silenced by distance, “where’d she take you?”

  “Home.”

  “Oh?”

  He nodded slowly. “The city…my city…is all but buried. But the city built from its bones—you’ve seen it?”

  “A few times. Did you do the tourist thing?”

  “All of it,” he replied, his face breaking into a wide grin. “There is this vehicle, quite large, horseless—”

  “A bus?”

  “Yes! All of iron, unfortunately, but the deck is pleasant. And it goes all about the city—the roads, have you ever seen their like? Marvelous things.”

  I thought of Rome’s warren of alleys and side streets, reminded myself that Valerius had never seen a highway, and nodded. “Quite nice.”

  “And the temples! No…Toula called them something else, but…ah, well, it’s the same thing,” he said, brushing the matter off with a shrug. “Magnificent. And the art, she took me to this place…oh, gelato,” he added, interrupting himself. “Such an improvement, and it’s everywhere! And the lodging house—but I take it you’ve seen this all before,” he said, catching me on the verge of laughter.

  Not wanting to offend him, I subdued my mirth. “I was in that realm for many years. The novelty wears off.”

  “Perhaps,” he allowed. “Oh, but Toula—she’s amazing. The language, it changed, but she speaks it well enough. And several more besides, she told me…she taught herself Fae, did you know that?”

  “Explains the accent.”

  “Yes, that will take some effort to improve,” he said, nodding to himself. “But beyond that, she’s brilliant. Why do you two irritate each other? How has she offended?”

  “What,” I asked, heading back to the palace, “she didn’t tease you with every third breath?”

  “Not at all,” he replied, sounding perplexed. “She was patient, informative…she couldn’t have
been kinder. Is that not your experience?”

  I chuckled and stuffed my hands into my pockets. “Congratulations, you may be the first person ever to see what’s under that shell of hers. Well, maybe you and Meggy—”

  “Shell?” he echoed.

  I turned down the path to the rose hedge and waited until Valerius latched the ornamental gate behind us. “Did Toula tell you much about herself?”

  “About her father and the Arcanum, you mean? Yes, she was forthright about everything, though I suspect she doesn’t like discussing it.”

  “Probably not. You know, when we met, she was living in a shitty little apartment about as far from the Arcanum silo as she could go, and they’d had a bind on her practically from birth. Toula…how to put this…has some issues.”

  Valerius paused a few feet from me with a strange look on his face, then said, “All of this talk of issues is coming from the man who killed his brother, spent a few centuries avoiding his mother, and got a child on one of Oberon’s brood?”

  “You forgot providing muscle to fringe priests and running away from Meggy once I knocked her up, but yeah, that’s otherwise accurate. I know issues, Val.”

  He nodded and strolled past me down the lane. “As long as we’re clear on that point, my lord.”

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  Time, unless it’s finally catching up with you, has little meaning in Faerie. Oh, it passes, but the days blend together, and they have an annoying habit of varying in length. You can make all the plans you like, but sometimes darkness comes a few hours earlier than you’d anticipated, while other times, you may be drop-dead exhausted and faced with full daylight. As far as I’ve ever been able to tell, it’s the realm’s aggravating side effect of being magical ground zero. Granted, in the long-term, the days roughly parallel those of the mortal realm, but on a micro-scale, well, good luck keeping any bi-realm appointments without a proper clock.

  Certain older Arcanum texts describe faeries as capricious, in part because they never show up when they’re supposed to. That’s not entirely fair—sure, faeries are capricious and worse, but it’s awfully difficult to coordinate anything when, say, “high noon” is a variable concept.

  I’d gotten around this with a clock—a boring, analogue, plastic-housed affair I’d picked up at Walmart for ten dollars and religiously checked against Meggy’s stovetop readout when I visited. After several months, I’d begun to relax my vigil—the background magic seemed to have no effect on the little battery-powered motor—but I hid a stash of double-As in my desk so as to be certain I could keep track of the time in Virginia.

  As such, I knew exactly when Saturday rolled around, and Sunday after that, and felt the pressing weight of my silent phone. I’d broken down and told Valerius the extent of the situation, and he agreed with Paul that the best course of action was to wait—but then again, he wasn’t the one sitting there with a knotted stomach, hoping for a call. And so I tried to keep my mind on other matters that weekend: Aiden’s quest to retain his title as Party King of the Nerds, Joey’s attempts to cajole Georgie back into the sky, and Valerius’s occasional non sequiturs about events that had transpired on his Mediterranean fall break.

  On Sunday evening, Grivam sent a request asking for another audience, and, lacking a better plan, I agreed to meet him at a friendlier location than my throne room. There were such things to consider as diplomacy and tact, and making the old fellow totter in a second time for a chat would have been a petty and unnecessary power play. I sent word that I’d see him the next morning and retired early to read an old bargain-bin paperback, trying not to think of Meggy and Stuart extending their stay in Richmond.

  As I’d feared, I slept little and fitfully, and I was on my way to my office before dawn, leaving Valerius to decide with the rest of the guards who among them wanted to go for a boat ride with me. I pushed the door open, ticking through a list of back-burner projects and ignoring the nagging voice of the realm—I had no patience for it that morning—and almost jumped when Meggy stood from the couch. While I clutched my chest and shut the door, she gave me a once-over and said, “You too, huh? You look like shit.”

  “How did you—”

  “Toula opened a gate for me. Said it’d be easier than teaching me to do it at, to paraphrase, three in the goddamned morning. So.” She crossed her arms and regarded me with grim determination. “I’ve always liked to make my apologies in person.”

  “What are you talking—”

  “Shut up and let me get this out, okay?” she interrupted, and sighed. “I’m sorry I hit you. I shouldn’t have, it was uncalled for, and I was wrong to do it. In all honesty, I’d probably do it again since you went off the fucking reservation, but anyway…sorry about that.”

  I waited to be sure she had finished, then replied, “It was entirely warranted. You were defending Stuart.”

  “No, see, I tried telling myself that for two days, and then I admitted that I was just thoroughly pissed at you. But thanks for the out,” she said, and sat back on the couch. “God, I need coffee. You want coffee? Is there a protocol here involving coffee?”

  “Do you want me to make it?”

  “Nah,” she muttered, “I can do this…”

  She squished her eyes closed in deep concentration. An instant later, a white mug appeared on the table before her, and when she noticed its presence, she took a test sip and grimaced.

  “Not right?”

  “Bitter.”

  “It takes some practice.” A second mug appeared beside hers, and after giving it an uncertain appraisal, she tasted. “Columbian, two sugars, right?” I asked.

  “Okay,” she said reluctantly, “I’ll give you that one. So, you going to stand there all day, or are we going to talk like reasonable adults?”

  I took the facing couch, produced my own coffee, and stared into its depths. “About Stuart.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I…screwed up.”

  “Big time.”

  I looked up to find her watching me, her clean-scrubbed face a careful blank. “And I’m sorry, Meggy. Is he, uh…”

  “He’s fine, a little bruised. Had something new to tell his buddies at the convention, so you almost did him a favor, I suppose.” She drank slowly, letting her eyes wander around the room, then finally met mine again. “I love you, Colin,” she murmured. “But I’m not going to go through life walking on eggshells, hoping you don’t go nuclear every time something doesn’t go your way. Or someone you don’t like talks to me. And if what happened last week ever happens again, I swear to God, we’re through. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “And can you promise me no repeats?”

  “I…I’ll do my best. Yes.”

  Meggy mulled that over, then shrugged. “Well, you can be an all-powerful asshole, or you can be with me. It’s your call.” She cradled her mug in her hands and scowled at the table. “And I’ll do my very best not to hit you again. This makes twice, though, so I suppose I have something to work on.”

  “Pretty sure I earned it both times—”

  “You don’t raise your hand to me, I don’t raise mine to you,” she snapped. “That’s basic stuff.”

  We sat in silence, drinking as if the right thing to say was hidden at the bottom of our cups. When that proved fallacious, at least on my side of the coffee table, I cleared my throat and muttered, “How was Richmond?”

  “Weird,” Meggy replied, then considered her mug for a moment before sending it back into the ether. “Place was full of nutjobs, and Stuart kept trying to explain the wonders of cryptozoology to me. I’m thirty-six, damn it, I know what the Patterson-Gimlin Film is.” She shook her head, dispelling the memory. “And I made it clear to him that he’s firmly in the friendzone, now and forever more, amen. What,” she asked, seeing my face work, “you think I’m blind or something? He’s been hitting on me for the last month! I had the situation well in hand without your help, thanks.”

 
; “So you were leading him on, then? To what end?”

  “I was letting him down gently, not leading him on,” she retorted.

  “Then what was Richmond?”

  “Common decency. Being neighborly to the new guy in town, the lunatic with no friends and only Eunice for company. He’s not so bad when he’s not off on a rant,” she added. “The trick is getting him to talk about something normal—he’s a cat fancier, believe it or not.”

  “Oh, I believe it. I believe he’s over there in his lonely little store with his cats and some Harry Potter replica light-up wand, running around naked and chanting.”

  “Jerk.” She grinned.

  “Probably thinks that come the spring equinox, you two can do fertility rituals together as the Goddess and Horned God. It’d be for the greater good, after all.”

  “You are so full of shit,” she protested through a wicked smile. “And I mean it, Leffee—I talk to whomever I want to, I go on completely platonic work trips with whomever I want to, and you don’t get a vote. Got it?”

  We stood, and I pulled her into my arms with little resistance. “Seriously, Meggy? You’re going to come into my office, unannounced and uninvited, and threaten me? Here?”

  “Yup.”

  Her eyes challenged, and I blinked first. “God, you’re gorgeous when you’re sleep-deprived.”

  “Shut up, already,” she said, and went in for the kiss.

  When we parted, I murmured into her hair, “We should have timed this better, honey. I’ve got to go.”

  “Why?” she mumbled, her voice muffled against my chest.

  “Got to talk to a merman about a sea monster.”

  She pulled back just far enough to glare in exasperation. “Okay, that’s the weakest excuse I’ve heard in a long time.”

  “It’s the truth! I promised him we’d talk this morning.”

  Meggy cocked her head at the window and the moon hanging low in the pale sky. “You know, I don’t think you really have to rush. And fancy that, there’s a couch conveniently located beside us! How fortuitous indeed!”