“Oh, like a dream,” Palleday assured her.
“With about as much substance,” Mix contributed. “Ain’t no one seen Palleday’s towers in use for decades. Even longer since we had a city of them. If you believe there ever was one.”
“Course there was, you disrespectful punk,” Palleday said. “How you gonna understand, you ever even sniffed those tunnels?”
“Only you,” Fresko said, “are old enough to remember that.”
“What’d it look like?” Pax prompted, the chatter helping distract her from spilling their precious powder. So far only a few grains outside the bottle; Mix winced at every one.
“The population bringing these beauties to life was one thing,” Palleday reflected, “but the plants made it. If you’d seen the way they lit the place. Ah – the colours –”
“Like, glowing plants?” Pax frowned. “From the weird underground weeds?”
“The Magnus family harvested them,” Palleday explained, “for medicinal uses and the like. This was before dust was so ubiquitous. They took a real blow when we were driven above ground. But Valoria’s people weathered it better than most.” His bitterness returned. “Found new interests, didn’t they. Kicked the old ways to the dirt.”
“We’re working on that,” Pax assured him. She stepped back from the fizzing beer, thoughtful. “You must’ve known the Sunken City well, back then. You ever come across caves that nothing went in? Older chambers, shaped like –”
Palleday scoffed. “What’re you messing with Chasm Shrines for?”
“Chasm . . .? Okay, so that’s a firm yes. Tell me what you know.”
“What’s to know? Rooms where things never worked proper? Difficult to fly, even. Religious types used them for meditation, superstitious Fae steered well clear. Rumour was some Fae held out in the Shrines, when the monsters came, but you couldn’t get out again, could you? One entrance, one exit. Bloody open graveyards.”
Did that negative energy keep the blue screens at bay, too? Something for later.
“You done already?” Mix interrupted Pax’s chain of thought.
She indicated the beer. “You think that’s enough?”
“Would’ve done about two dozen of our stubbies,” Fresko commented.
“Should work about twenty times longer than what you gave me before, then,” Pax decided. Then paused. “If I down the whole bottle.”
“Yeah, better put more in,” Mix said.
“Unless the effects are exponential,” Fresko suggested.
“That amount could kill a Fae,” Palleday said.
Pax stared at the cocktail. Equally likely to be too weak to give her time to complete their plan and too strong to survive. “This is really idiotic.”
“And exactly why are you doing it?” a female voice asked from above, and Pax jumped back. Unannounced, there she was, the brightly-suited menace of a fairy, posing at the peak of a tower, just above Pax’s head height. Lightgate’s face was impassive as she watched, the opposite of the others’ fearful concern. Mix uttered, “Ah, fuck.”
“How long have you been following me?” Pax asked, scolding herself for thinking she’d ever been safe from the fairy. Besides senseless murder and holding her liquor, Lightgate’s chief talent was sneaking up on people.
“You think I have time for that?” Lightgate sighed. She tilted her head, demonstratively, to show a smear. Blood, or a charred patch? “Fresh from Salt Wharf, where a spirited young lady was being harassed by Val’s people. She went to join the others. Third one today. Makes fifteen, twenty total? I’m not sure.”
“Twenty what?” Pax said. “You’re rallying an army?” The suggestion had been there before, with Lightgate’s continual disappearances. Rounding up the outcast Fae. “Where?”
“They’re out working. But I got the ball moving and thought, hey, the old man’s missing out.” She pointed her index finger and thumb in a pistol at Palleday and winked.
“We were about to invite you,” Fresko said, tense.
“I’m sure you were,” Lightgate said. “What else would you be conspiring about?”
“Well. We might’ve hesitated after seeing what you did to that councilman.”
“Ah, you were there?” Lightgate beamed. “That’s how you got away, Pax? I should’ve stuck around, but I never quite trust that lunatic Valoria’s swarm.”
“You’re calling her a lunatic?” Mix said. “Saints alive.”
Lightgate laughed. “Yeah, well, she outdid me. Have you heard she took deliveries from the Rostov Fae?” She directed the question to Pax, who said nothing. “Poisons. Spread across Ordshaw. Though I wouldn’t trust her to follow through.”
“What are you doing here?” Palleday rumbled. “You could’ve guessed I want nothing to do with you.”
Lightgate looked at him like he was talking a foreign language. “You’ve got two deadly klutzes and this volcanic mess of a human with you. You clearly need help.”
“They’re here because this place is neutral. Everyone knows that.”
“Oh, no one’s neutral,” Lightgate said. “As to what I’m doing here, now, I’m discovering what on earth you guys are up to?”
“Trying to survive,” Pax said. “At least long enough to see whatever insane plan you’re going to throw up next.”
“Mixing Fae dust in beer? You know what that does to a person?”
“You do?” Pax replied with concern.
“I’ve tried it. Twice. Not that they knew it. One went into this kind of” – Lightgate raised a hand, covering a wide yawn, like she was boring herself – “seizure. Shaking all over, eyes moving a mile a minute, then nothing. Second one, it was the opposite. Slowed. Right. Down.” She spoke in an extra drawn-out drawl. “Like wading . . . through . . . mud. Sort of fell asleep and never woke up.”
Pax stared wide-eyed. Of course Lightgate had experimented with this Fae taboo, spiking humans, and of course she had killed two people doing it. With wildly different results.
“It’s not a good idea, Pax,” Lightgate continued flippantly. “Feeling particularly adventurous today?”
“Yeah,” Pax answered, fighting down her own uncertainty. The startled looks on the other Fae’s faces said they were thinking the same thing. Had they just mixed her a death elixir? “Certain toxic people keep making my life more difficult. The more extreme relaxation the better, frankly. Don’t think it’s worth the risk?”
Lightgate glided down from her perch with a few wing-flaps, onto the lip of Pax’s beer bottle. She looked into the liquid to assess its contents. Pax waited, watching her. There was no telling how much dust Lightgate had given her victims; it might’ve been a huge amount. And Pax had tried it once . . . If she could get a good swig of that bottle, she could make a grab for the fairy. That’s all it would take. Right?
If the beer worked the same way as before, and didn’t outright kill her.
If Lightgate wasn’t too quick anyway.
“How are your Ministry friends?” Lightgate said, stepping around the bottle rim idly, amusing herself with her own steps.
Pax took her time. Did the fairy know about Monroe and her feigned escape from the MEE? Would she even care? “Hopefully they’re working on stopping your governor from getting everyone killed, right now. But I thought it best to leave them to it, seeing as no one entirely trusts me.”
Lightgate raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you their golden child?”
“Not quite,” Pax said. The fairy hadn’t kept abreast of the day’s events at all. “They got suspicious of my associations this afternoon. After someone tipped off my less-desirable contacts with a way into the Sunken City.”
The fairy’s eyes lit up. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re second fiddle to the bigger threat in this town,” Pax said. “You remember, the one I said latched onto your turnbold plan? Used you.”
“Used me to get what I wanted,” Lightgate replied. “Tragic.”
“What’s you
r endgame, Lightgate?” Pax demanded. “Where are we, now? Three attempts to spark a war? All you’ve done is helped the bastards below.”
Lightgate shrugged with a lazy smile. “Fun’s fun, isn’t it? I got Val shaking things up, for a start. That’s where Fae thrive, in the shaking of things.”
“Not all Fae. Edwing wanted peace. The FTC want peace. Valoria even wants peace, in her way.”
“Those aren’t Fae. They’ve lost their way. Know where I was two months ago?”
“Timbuktu?” Pax shot back. “Atlantis? Surprise me.”
“Varanasi.” Lightgate waited for a response. Pax eyeballed her, so? The fairy gestured towards their host. “Tell her about Varanasi, Palleday. Bet you’ve got some stories.”
“What’s to tell?” Palleday grunted. “Another lowly Fae city. Practically every Fae colony outside Ordshaw’s barbaric, them included.”
“They play a game, it roughly translates to the Moon Cull. Every full moon, there’s a prize to the Fae that pulls off the most public sacrifice. Without putting the Varanfae at risk. One of them cut the throat of Varanasi’s mayor. Or whatever their equivalent is. Probably made the news here?” No one responded. “Anyway, most places, Fae still know what it means to be Fae. What’s important.”
“That sounds like the exact fucking opposite of what’s important,” Pax responded irritably. “You’re saying the Ordshaw Fae are the only ones remotely close to being civilised, so you absolutely had to stop them?”
Lightgate sighed and turned on the bottle again, stepping over the gap, stepping back again. “For my turn, I took out a kid. Son of a tech millionaire, died in an unfortunate hiking accident. But they never found the body. Kind of . . . missed the point of the game?” Lightgate looked to Pax for sympathy. Pax was sure she just wanted to highlight her own cruel depths. Such a small thing, capable of such terror.
“I’m happy to see you,” Lightgate moved on brightly, lifting up off the bottle and hovering before Pax. “All of you. You were discussing what to do about me, weren’t you? Will we, won’t we, where will we go . . . I’ve got good news. You don’t have to do anything. I’ve got enough people to blow a hole in Valoria’s world without you. Of course, I would consider it a personal favour if you would consider joining me. All of you.”
“Bollocks,” Mix said, loudly. “I’ve heard enough. We’re screwed, they’re screwed, what the fuck ever. You win, Lightgate. You’re a bloody star and I’m sure by the time the week’s out you’ll have ruined everything for everyone, big fucking deal. Can we drink already?” He raised his own beer bottle, and gave Pax a look. “If you’re gonna burn the city down, I at least wanna see this human lose her shit on dust, first.”
Lightgate grinned. She floated higher up, giving Pax space, and took her hip flask from a jacket pocket. As she undid the cap, she said, “You’re really game, Pax? I think we can do big things. If you survive.”
“Now you’ve painted me as a deranged killer?” Pax asked, pointing loosely at her beer bottle, asking permission. Lightgate tipped the flask towards it, go ahead.
“True Fae respect deranged killers,” Lightgate said, as Pax lifted the bottle. This was the moment of truth, then. Liquid hope. Or disaster. “You think I’m mad – imagine, Edwing thought we might talk our way to happiness.” Lightgate laughed. Pax felt the others’ eyes on her, tensely waiting.
Pax took a breath and said, “Fuck it.”
She threw back the beer bottle, gulping it down. The dust made it taste of earthy mushroom, and she gagged but kept going. She scarcely heard Mix’s impressed cursing. She put the bottle back down and breathed deeply, checking her body – not dead yet.
“I like this girl,” Lightgate told the others. “She doesn’t do things by haaalllllf –”
Her words stretched out, long, low, and as Pax looked up from the tower to Lightgate hanging in the air, the dust had an instant effect. The towers shimmered a ruddy brown; the three Fae on the ledge lit up, and Lightgate glowed brighter than all of them. A great, scarlet flare.
The fairy’s wings beat in a smooth motion; the only object fast enough to counter Pax’s slowed-down time. Lightgate’s mouth pursed, impossibly slowly, and Pax narrowed her eyes. Yes. It was working – she was focused, she had time. And she was glowing, too. Pax raised her hands, gently, in wonder at the colour bursting from them. Bright enough to show through her sleeves. It wasn’t the same as glo: there was the blue, but not only in her veins. It was all over her. Blurry, dazzling.
Something to explore later, Pax told herself, with an aside that she was calmer than she should be. With the world slowed down, she found serenity. She half-smiled at Lightgate. Zen Pax. Ready to seize the day with perfect clarity. Ready to seize the Fae. She laughed, a sound that bounced back as dull booms. The opposite of huffing helium, oh –
Pax shook herself out of it. She was giddy. Focus, focus, she picked out Lightgate again, and the Fae was slightly further back. Her face now fixed with concentration. Shit; she was moving away. Pax raised a hand, but it came slower than her thoughts, dragging through the air. Each passing moment, Lightgate flew further back, crazily slow but dangerously high. Her good arm drifted towards her hip-holster. Pax’s hand lifted, marginally faster than the fairy. She stretched her fingers, pushing, hard, towards the Fae. She glanced at the others: Mix’s mouth opening in a shout, Palleday and Fresko watching fearfully. She had to do it, for all of them.
Pax’s arm was fully outstretched above her head when she closed her fingers. Snatching them shut. Time shifted gears again, catching up with accelerated speed, and Pax stumbled amid shouts from the trio of Fae at her side. Clarity was replaced by a painful, thrumming throb that made her vision blur, as her shoulder smacked into one of Palleday’s columns. She lost her footing as the tower cracked. The walls shattered around her like a breaking vase, and she fell heavily onto her back. A rain of building shards crashed onto her as she looked up, willing her eyes to focus, bracing herself against the floor to stop the whole world rolling.
Way above, near the shadows of the ceiling, Lightgate floated free, a white silhouette in the dark. She called down, “Have a nice trip?”
8
Sam watched one of Obrington’s hatchet-faced agents heft something large and dangerous-looking against his hip. Something near its centre hissed and gave the agent the smile of a child with a magnifying glass on a sunny day. Casaria jumped up and adjusted the man’s gun strap with some judging comment.
Unlike when the Operations team had geared up to take on the Fae, Sam was eager to see these preparations. She had half a dozen men taking up arms and a dozen more hunkered over computers, all to help Pax. To help the city. And Obrington was arguing with the London office, trying to establish back channels to the Fae. He genuinely seemed to be preparing her to take over, which might leave Ordshaw in her care at last. As long as her agents didn’t march into another slaughter.
“Reservations?” Obrington asked as he joined her in surveying the office. She shook her head, but he wasn’t interested anyway, continuing, “I’ve got a few okays from London, things I might offer the buggers. Creating a no-go zone around the FTC actually works well for us. It’d help if they’d talk to us, though.”
“We definitely can’t give them Pax.”
“Cross that bridge when we reach it. Talk to me about the purge.”
Sam did so, grateful for a sounding board. Protocol 38 was, as she might’ve expected, a half-baked idea. The more they recalibrated their weapons according to what they were learning from the Duvcorp scanners, the less effective they appeared. The main gun they assumed would neutralise the praelucente was a glorified taser, which Dr Galler freely admitted had only a 60% chance of damaging it. Pushed, he also admitted that percentage was a guess. From the little time he’d had studying the Fae weapon, he was confident the Dispenser was a much better option.
The other complication was that Protocol 38’s strategy assumed they would track the praelucente and its horde, advanci
ng on it from the rear, whereas the new plan assumed it would be coming to them, lured by Fae bait. Support were plotting the best tunnels to defend, to channel the horde down a particular route. Darren Barton was advising them on predicting monster movement by sight, while Holly, comparing her own findings to the papers Sam had given her, had concluded there was no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that the black spots were harmful. The horde’s aversion to these areas might make them ideal pockets for defending their bait until they could strike a finishing blow.
“And you’ve assigned the man responsible for that?” Obrington asked, once Sam was done explaining. He said it lightly, like the suggestion was harmless, while looking across the room to Barton. “Would be bloody good to use one of them, save us risking a better-trained, more trustworthy asset.”
“Sir?” Sam replied with shock. “We’re here to protect the people of –”
“Would be, I said,” Obrington told her. “Obviously we can’t rely on a civilian for something that important. It was a rhetorical question, Ward, we both know the answer.”
Sam paused. Her first thought was: does the captain go down with the ship? She’d already proved herself against those criminals and Duvalier, now she might have to shoulder the ultimate responsibility – but, no. That philosophy would put his role in question. The obvious choice, in risking losing someone, was the man they didn’t quite know what to do with. Too competent to discard, too unstable to embrace.
“Casaria shouldn’t even be here,” Sam said, quietly, watching him explain some detail of a pistol to another agent. “He lost a toe.”
“He could’ve lost a lot more and you know it.”
“But we don’t know what will happen, with the weapons discharged, with the praelucente hurt –”
“Someone’s got to do it. Perfect combination of skilled enough to do it and not too skilled to replace, should something go wrong.” Obrington paused. “Not that it will, Ward. Keep that in mind. We might pull it off. And either way, he gets to be a hero. You gonna tell me he’d want anything less?”
The Violent Fae Page 26
