Imperative: A Quinn Larson Quest

by P. A. Wilson

I unlocked the front door and invited him in.

  “I have information,” he announced.

  My stomach clenched. “Why should I trust your information? The last time we talked you caused a fight with a bear spirit and left me to resolve it.”

  “Don’t whine it’s not attractive, you did survive after all. Look, wizard I have information that will save the humans. You know I have an interest in protecting the humans, right?”

  Olan had run afoul of the Pacific Coast Real Folk before I was born. “Yeah, I know the story. Is it true you caused the death of an entire village?”

  “No, it was not that bad. And it was an accident.” He winced at the memory. “But I did have to accept Raven’s punishment. Now I have to protect the humans for another four bloody centuries.” He climbed up the side of my favorite easy chair and sat on the arm. Preening his pink hair he asked, “Would you have any thistle tea?”

  I put the kettle on and looked around for a suitable cup. I found a screw top on the back of the counter and rinsed it under the hot water tap. “Okay, how do I know I can trust you? I did survive the last trick you played, but barely.”

  He shrugged. “How do you know anyone be trustworthy?”

  “Yes, but not everyone has your history.” I didn’t want to add to my problems, but Olan was right. He did have an interest in humans; maybe he was more afraid of Raven than interested in playing games. “What about the time you made Mark’s beer turn red and smell like blood?”

  “It was just a joke. It was still beer after all. Besides it was a very long time ago.”

  The kettle boiled and I made a mug of tea, pouring some into the twist top before passing it to Olan. “What is your information?” I figured it was worth hearing him out. It was up to me to decide whether I trusted it or not.

  “I was in the park and overhead two iris fairies. There’s a problem with their breeding. Well the problem is they aren’t breeding.” Olan cocked his head and looked at my bookshelf. “That’s rather attractive.” He pointed to the top shelf where I kept a few trinkets that held my protection spells. “It would be nice to get one of those as a present.”

  “I’m sure it would. Is that all you have to tell me.” I could make a replacement charm but I had a feeling Olan wouldn’t bother coming here just to tell me that fairies couldn’t have babies.

  He looked at the charm again and I saw a bit of lust light up his green eyes. Then he shrugged and looked back at me. “It seems that it just started happening, or not happening if you get my drift. Some of the clans are almost gone.”

  “Shit.” Having clans of the Real Folk die out is bad for everyone. It’s like they take their share of the power with them. When the Vamps were killed, we all lost a little bit of our ability. “So what does this have to do with killing humans?”

  Olan sipped his tea. “I really like that pretty charm, Quinn.”

  There was something desperate in his tone. “Why do you need a protection charm, Olan? You are a pretty powerful being. Who have you pissed off now?”

  “Well, thank you Quinn. I am a powerful creature and I think a mighty handsome one. I have a bit of a problem with the Irish bird.”

  “You pissed off The Morrigan? Man, I thought you were supposed to be smart.” Olan was probably stronger than The Morrigan all around, but she was focused on death and war and sex. Pull your power from three essential aspects and you get what the economists call ‘a multiplier’.

  “It was more a prank that she took offense to. I forgot she has no sense of humor.”

  Despite myself I laughed. “And you should develop a sense of danger. Jeez. Do you have any more information before you go? I don’t want that crow attacking my place to get to you.”

  “No, I don’t have any details. I was thinking we could work together. Between us we could save the day, so to speak.” Olan jumped up and walked along the arm of the chair.

  “Yeah, and I suppose you thought I could protect you from the crow.” I sighed, but Olan knew he’d won. We both had Irish problems, and maybe it would make sense to team up.

  “Yes, if it comes to that, I hope so.” He gave me a wide grin.

  I took down a small silver charm and showed it to Olan. “I’ll go refresh this. Do you think you can wear it?”

  “Of course, it will shrink to fit. I thank you, Quinn.”

  I went back down to my workroom and found the potion I’d made yesterday to refresh my charms. I dipped Olan’s in the pot and dragged a fine silver chain behind it.

  After Olan left I crawled into bed. We’d agreed to gather information and get back together later. First I needed to restore my own power. Sleep is the great provider of energy and I’d had too little lately.

  After too short a nap I headed out. I figured the fairies themselves would be the best source of information and Stanley Park, only a few blocks away, was full of fairy clans. I took a bottle of water and some sour candies and sat on a bench in the sun.

  “Wacher got?” I looked to where the sound came from and saw a tulip fairy standing at my elbow.

  “Hello, brother. I need some information. In exchange I have these.” I held out the sour candies and bottle of water.

  “Kinda information?” He kept his eyes on my hands. “I might know what you want.”

  This was the tricky part. I needed to obligate the fairy so he had to give me information, but I needed to know if he had what I wanted. If I gave the candy and he only had information about how to plant bulbs for the best flowers, I was stuck with that. If I told him what I needed, he might decide the price wasn’t good enough.

  “The Irish ones are doing something.” I watched his eyes shift from my hand to flick around the park.

  He licked his lips. “No.”

  I felt sorry for him. He looked like he hadn’t eaten for a while, but I couldn’t give him anything for free or the other fairies would think I was a sucker and I’d never get anything out of them at a reasonable price.

  “Do you know who I should talk to?” It would be worth a few candies if he could get me someone.

  “Yes. For seven sweets I will bring them.”

  “For five.” I had plenty of candy but fairies didn’t trust anyone who didn’t bargain.

  He brightened. “Three now, two when I bring him.”

  “Two now, three later.”

  He nodded and held out his hand, tossing one candy into his mouth before running off to a stand of bulrushes near the pond.

  I waited, sipping some of the water. There was a pleasant buzz floating around adding a drowsy quality to the air. I felt my eyelids droop and my head jerk.

  Dammit, a spell!

  The fairies must figure if they stole the candy, they didn’t owe me. Sometimes I’m way too trusting.

  “Stop.” I snapped upright. “If you take these without fair trade you are violating code.”

  “I told you,” a voice squeaked next to my left elbow, Tulip. He pulled on my pant leg. “Okay here is Bob. He will tell. He owes me.”

  I looked at Bob who was taller than Tulip and had a bush of brown hair topping a skinny frame. He was a bulrush fairy. Bob did not look like he wanted to tell me anything. “Are you passing me the obligation?” I asked.

  Tulip nodded and held his hand out for payment. I considered holding on to his candy until I was sure Bob was going to give me the goods, but he looked so hungry I dropped an extra candy in his grubby palm. Tulip turned his big fairy eyes on me and split his face in a grin. I knew it meant the same thing as when I smile, but fairies have pointy teeth set wide in their faces, so it looked more like he was thinking of taking a bite out of me.

  Tulip raced to the shade of an oak tree, putting the extra candy at the root. I liked the fact that he gave an offering to the park spirit even though he was hungry.

  “So, Bob.” I looked him over. “Did he tell you what I wanted to know?”

  “Yes.” Bob kept his gaze on me.

  “Do you have the information?”

 
“Maybe, but I don’t know if what is known is what you want.”

  And so I start the negotiations again. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  He shrugged. “It’s dangerous. You might want to keep out of it when you know there’s no going back.”

  “Well, thank you. But I think I can take care of myself. If you know what’s going on with the Sidhe, tell me.”

  Bob hitched himself up on the bench beside me. “Do you have any more candy?”

  “Yes.” I took a handful out of the bag. “You can have this if you tell me what you know. I will add more if it is good information.”

  Bob’s eyes flickered from the candy in my hand to my face. With this much sugar he could attract a lot of females. Most fairies liked to have multiple partners and to breed with as many others as possible even though they formed lifelong partnerships with one mate. Bob gave a little smile and I could see he was counting the females in his mind. Then the smile dropped and he frowned. He must have remembered that they weren’t breeding any more.

  His shoulders dropped. “Why do you want this information?”

  “I want to know why humans are being murdered. You know that will bring trouble eventually.”

  He sighed. “Yes. Human trouble may be bad. Sidhe trouble is bad.”

  “Maybe I can fix that.”

  Bob jerked back from me. “Why would you?”

  I laughed. “You know us wizards. We like to meddle in everything. Beside what is bad for the fairies is bad for everyone.”

  His eyes gleamed. “You can end the Sidhe?”

  Fairies were kind of in the moment creatures and didn’t understand the larger picture. I guess it comes from being tied to seasonal things like flowers. “No. It’s not good to end anyone. It’s better to stop them, but not end them.”

  “Okay. What you want to know?”

  “The Sidhe are paying the fairies to kill humans, right?’

  “Yes, they want us to kill with poison. Harder the better. More pain more payment.”

  “What is the payment?”

  “Breeding, only fairies who kill for Sidhe have babies.” Bob’s face crinkled.

  I took a few more candies out of the bag. “Do you know why they are doing this?”

  “Yes.” A tear dropped off Bob’s eyelash. “My wife wants babies. I don’t want to kill humans.”

  “Tell me what you know.” I put the whole bag of candy on the bench between us. Maybe I could stop the Sidhe before Bob had to make a choice.

  “Fionuir found some way to stop baby fairies coming. Now we have to give her human spirit power to get okay to breed. That’s all I know.”

  “Thanks, Bob.” I pushed the bag of candy toward him. “Let me see what I can do.”

  Damn Sidhe, I thought as I walked home. They are like spoiled teenagers. Never caring about the repercussions of their actions.

  Chapter Four

  Like I told Bob, all I needed to do was stop the killing. And do that before the humans found any clue that led to a Real Folk perpetrator. There is way too much history about humans and things they don’t understand. We may have magic, but they have bullets. Bullets win every time.

  So, I had to talk to Fionuir and she wouldn’t just let me walk in and chat. She was the queen and all the other Sidhe obeyed and protected her, or else. Getting an audience with Fionuir could be easy if she liked you. I’m not sure she had any feelings for me— yet. The Sidhe could be cruel and cold, but they could also be charming and funny. I just had to figure out how to get on Fionuir’s charming side.

  I needed a contact.

  The only one I had in the court was Melbe. He’s a sprite with a talent for management who runs the Sidhe household. And he owes me.

  I grabbed my crystal ball off the shelf. It’s not like you think, a big round globe of clear crystal. It’s a roughly round dingy pink lump of crystal. It gets clear when it’s ready to deliver the goods. I put the crystal on a black cloth which covered the dirt part of the floor and then I sat.

  Now I had to get my questions in order. I knew the Sidhe would be monitoring information requests and the longer I was on the crystal, the easier I would be to locate. And if I got caught, Melbe would also be caught— and he would be hurt.

  I cleared my thoughts and brought his face to mind. Sprites all look pretty much the same, only one or two differentiators exist. Mainly size; they came in all ranges from eighteen inches to the size of an ancient sequoia. If you know what to look for, you can recognize individuals at a glance. Melbe had a notch in his left ear from a duel with a pixie.

  I breathed on the crystal and whispered his name.

  The crystal cleared and then faded again. That usually meant someone was ignoring me. I breathed on the crystal again and whispered, “Melbe.”

  “Go away. I am busy.” Melbe’s brown face frowned at me. “Oh, it’s you. Just give me a minute to get someplace private.”

  I saw the background move nauseatingly for a second then Melbe’s face came back into focus. “I can only give you a few minutes before someone will come looking for me. What do you want? And whatever it is, we’re even right?”

  “Okay yes, we’re even. I want to know what’s going on with this fairies thing?”

  He nodded. “Ah, the breeding plan?”

  It bothered me that he seemed so blasé about it. “There’s got to be more to this than trying to control the flow of baby fairies. What else is Fionuir up to?”

  He glanced sideways. “What do you know about the Sidhe succession?”

  “Not much, they keep pretty much to themselves and most of us find that to be a good thing.”

  He chuckled. “Yes, I understand why. Anyway, they choose a queen every fifty years. They can choose the same queen or a new one.”

  “So this is the end of the fifty years?” A political fight wasn’t going to be easy to resolve.

  “Yes, Fionuir does not want to give up power so she came up with a plan to make herself the best choice.” He glanced around again.

  “And that involves killing humans?”

  He didn’t turn back to face me, but I could still hear his words. “Yes. You know how lazy the Sidhe are. Well, the killing is giving them power for no effort. So far it seems to be working.” He turned back to me and I could see the tension pinching his face.

  I wondered if I could find an ally in one of the others, although no Sidhe could really be trusted. “If Fionuir is taking this much risk, the other contenders must be strong. Who is she most worried about?”

  Melbe glanced sideways again. “I have to….” He faded from the crystal. Whatever made him leave must have been dangerous, it would have taken all his power to break the summoning. I hoped he was fast enough not to get caught.

  At least he gave me some information. I could probably find out who the other Sidhe was and maybe she would be willing to stop Fionuir without extracting too big a price.

  I wrapped the cloth around the crystal and put it back on the shelf. I was thinking about a cold beer when the rapping on my window started again.

  I let Olan in the front door.

  “Did you get any information?” He asked as he climbed onto the kitchen chair.

  After I told him what I’d learned from Melbe he smiled and said, “So the Queen is worried. I’m sure she has reason to be. She’ll have made a few enemies while in power.”

  I shrugged, that was like saying rain was wet. “I still don’t get why the fairies are suddenly becoming barren. What if it’s permanent? What happens when sprites can’t reproduce, or wizards? Or, pixies?”

  Olan bobbed his head. “I’ve no expertise on fairy husbandry, and pixies are not having any problems in that direction. I doubt Fionuir is the kind to wait for fate to give her an opportunity. It’s my guess she created this whole situation.”

  He had a point. This seemed like too much of a coincidence to me, too. I really wanted it to be more than a coincidence because I can’t do anything about fate, but I can stop a Bean Sidhe
; maybe. “I need to talk to Fionuir. If I can get an audience, I might be able to get her to reconsider whatever the reason is for this.”

  Olan snorted and hopped down to walk into the living room. He jumped on the coffee table and stood on tiptoes so he could look out the window.

  I got tired of waiting for him to say what he had to say. “Do you know anything I can use to get to Fionuir?”

  He turned back to me. “Well, I’m thinking you don’t have to do this alone.”

  This was going to be a problem. I didn’t like to put other people in danger, and Olan was just unreliable. “I work alone. I could use information, but that’s all. This is going to be dangerous. Really dangerous.”

  “Yes.” Olan turned back to me. “I was here when the Sidhe arrived. That’s, what? Five hundred years ago? I knew they’d be trouble then. I’ve been proven right more than once since. Remember when they thought Father Bear was mocking them?”

  Father Bear was one of the old Pacific Coast Folk. They had been around since time began. Literally, they started time. “I’m only three hundred years old. What happened?”

  He sat down and laid his bodkin spear across his lap. “Ah, you kids, you don’t know anything about history. Well it was Fionuir’s mother who got it into her head that there had been an insult. In revenge she burned half the forest. Father Bear got a singed paw.” Olan gave another laugh. “Ah, well, it wasn’t that bad; no one got killed and the forest did need to be refreshed.”

  “Okay, we all know the Sidhe don’t have a lot of perspective when they’re mad.” I remember a few stories myself. “That’s why I’m going to do this alone.”

  “Alone is not good,” Olan said. “Better to have many talents together. When you spread the work, you make it harder for your enemy to break you.”

  Great, wisdom from a pixie. “I don’t want anyone hurt.”

  Olan walked back and forth. “Nor me, but doing it alone won’t stop the hurting. What happens to one of us hurts others. And, no matter how prettily you ask, Fionuir is not going to just change her plans to make you happy.”