“It means we’ve used up one quarter of the time we have to find these kids,” said Branwyn.
“You’re sure it’s a proportional release?” asked Rhianna, her wide eyes narrowing in thought.
“Pretty sure,” said Branwyn. “But don’t ask me to explain the math, or how long we were in the belly of Death.” She stared at her hammer. The energy going into the black diamond had been streamers of light. She really wished it returned the same way. She eyed the pavilion supports. The dark shockwave was dangerous.
But—“I think we’re doing okay. No need to worry yet, time-wise.”
Severin leaned forward in the chair, resting his hands between his knees in a posture that was more crouch than sit. He was on edge, but his hands were relaxed and his eyes, while narrow, were mostly human. When he glanced over and met Branwyn’s eyes, his mouth twisted in a grim smile far removed from his normal shark smile.
The handmaiden walked to the pavilion and ran her fingers over the cracks in the supports. “This goes deep. It will have to be repaired before I can transport the Queen’s son.”
“Ugh,” said Branwyn, standing up. It was bumpy, but she could keep her balance with a minor effort. “Maybe I can do something.” Doing something was always better than worrying.
The handmaiden neither assented nor refused the offer, but remained touching the support, her mouth turned down. As Branwyn touched the other supporting column, Rhianna said thoughtfully, “I wonder what the price of breaking the Queen of Stone’s private yacht is. It seems like it might stretch the expense account…”
The handmaiden turned quickly. “Price?”
“Reimbursement for breakages?” Rhianna suggested. “Is that not a thing here?”
Severin said, “That would make it so much harder for faeries to play with mortals.”
Branwyn shook her head and concentrated on the pavilion. There was a purity about faerie materials that was distinctly different from traditional materials. In general, the Geometry of Faerie was more obscured, the mass of glowing lines and clusters she normally worked with replaced by the thing itself. She could still determine and adjust the properties of objects, but it was like translating from a second language she spoke imperfectly.
With the pavilion, it took concentration, but she could observe the damage the handmaiden had described. What looked like a crack from the outside was a fracture, and one that extended through the supports into the structure of the sailing stone itself. The magic of the stone still functioned, but there was a darkness coating the fracture that reminded Branwyn uneasily of the virus that had infected Titanone the previous year. She’d solved that by helping Titanone develop an immune system, but Titanone was, magically speaking, alive. The stone, while a sophisticated creation, was not.
She pushed at the fracture for a few moments, trying to meld it together once more, then disengaged and asked the handmaiden, “How would it be repaired normally?”
“I… am not sure,” said the handmaiden. “It should have been trivial to knit the stone together again, and then the magic regenerates naturally. But the energy of your… your signal lingers and cuts through the world.”
Severin stood up. “Show me what it looks like, cupcake.”
Puzzled, Branwyn said, “You want me to draw you a picture? I don’t think it would mean much.”
“Not that way,” he said, moving over. He turned her back to the pavilion, raised her hand back to the support, and placed his over it.
Like this, he whispered in her mind.
Branwyn swallowed, keenly aware of Rhianna’s sharp gaze. “W-Why?”
Just show me, cupcake.
For a moment, Branwyn yearned for a simpler time: when she had just hated Severin; when rebelling against both his commands and closeness was right and natural. She’d felt strong and certain then. Had it been so long ago? Or only yesterday?
He leaned his head forward, bumping it gently against hers. Embellish your scrapbook later.
Branwyn shook her head. He was right. Wishing for the past wouldn’t bring it back. She focused herself and examined the structure of the pavilion and the sailing stone once again. This time, even when she concentrated, she couldn’t escape the sense of Severin right behind her, looking over her shoulder. She’d never been a fan of being watched while she worked.
Severin’s fingers laced through hers as they looked at the dark fracture. Once again her self-consciousness rose, threatening to take away her perception in a welter of emotion.
Shhh, he whispered. Don’t distract me, Branwyn.
“What are you doing?” she mumbled.
In response, the fracture abruptly fused together, with a gleam of light that reminded Branwyn of Severin’s molten glass weapons. The darkness that had limned the fracture fled from the light, twisting away and into the general Geometry.
“Ah!” cried Rhianna. The strange, startled sound from her usually unflappable sister jerked Branwyn from the Artificer trance.
“What?” said Branwyn, turning around and pushing Severin out of the way with one hand. Rhianna sat up straight in her seat, blinking frantically, her arms closed around herself. “Rhianna!”
Branwyn bounded across the jouncing sailing stone to her sister. Before she skidded to a halt, Rhianna had unclenched her arms. She shook her head. “That was… that was weird. I felt something move through me.”
An ice spike rammed down Branwyn’s spine. There was…
…a sparkle… on Rhianna’s skin…
But she glinted strangely in the mirror, as if the dim light was striking angles instead of curves, and then scattering wrong.
She looked hollowed, like something had been taken away.
Branwyn realized that, somehow, the black energy had damaged her sister in a mysterious but fundamental way. She’d never seen anything like it.
Something brittle in Branwyn snapped.
“Fuck!” said Branwyn, but already in her head she was downplaying, downplaying, don’t show her how upset I am because…
“Did it hurt you?” she demanded. “Are you all right?”
“Uh, nothing hurts?” Rhianna questioned herself as she patted herself down. “It was cold, but just for a minute.”
“Son of a bitch!” Branwyn shouted. Yeah, this was about right level of upset. This wasn’t killing somebody, possibly herself.
Rhianna scrambled back in her chair. “What? What happened?”
“What if it had hurt you?” unforgiveable lie “I keep screwing up!”
But Rhianna the liar would lie too. She’d keep smiling no matter how she hurt. She’d chased after Branwyn with both skinned knees dripping blood when they’d been children. She’d tried skating on a sprained ankle just so Branwyn’s birthday party wouldn’t be ruined. She’d once cracked jokes about a broken arm, denying her own pain until their stepfather had arrived to hold their anguished mother.
I cannot stand to see her pretend she’s fine.
“Dammit! Handmaiden, check the stone? Can it speed up again?” Branwyn stood up, because moving was better than stillness, action better than thought. Her gaze fell on Severin, who looking off the back of the stone.
Had he even noticed what had happened?
Then she thought This was him, he did it, he did it on purpose, he distracted me and she wanted to kill him. The urge swept across her with a strength she’d never before imagined. She’d stumbled a step in his direction under that drive before he turned and looked over at her.
Just a glance into his dark eyes and the bone-sharp guilt she’d started with resurfaced from the murderous rage. Whether he’d done it on purpose or not, it was her fault. She’d enabled him. She’d ignored the warning at the mirror. She’d learned artificing and dealt with Faeries. She, she, she…
Branwyn stopped.
She said, “No.”
No. This was not happening now. This was not happening here. She would not break now, while she had work to do. She could break later after everything was done.<
br />
“What’s happening?” she said icily to Severin. She’d be calm for now, perfectly calm. She would. It wasn’t easy; the guilt and rage surged within her, telling her she was hiding, denying, escaping—but later she promised herself. Later. She’d solve everything else first.
“Something is following us,” he said, an odd brightness in his voice.
Branwyn’s brow furrowed. She couldn’t, at first, see why it mattered, or how he could be so sure. Her thoughts raced wildly. Everything seemed like nonsense and noise. Calm. She would make herself be calm.
The handmaiden announced, “The structure has been adequately repaired, but the magic will take time to regenerate. We’re almost halfway to the Domain of Summer, though.”
“Great news!” said Rhianna, standing up and shading her eyes to look behind the stone. If she hadn’t had that glint, Branwyn would have believed she was fine despite the black energy passing through her. But she did, and she wasn’t, and Rhianna couldn’t know her sister had done this to her… if she didn’t know already. Bone-sharp guilt and hook-tooth lies, they’d fight to see who could destroy Branwyn first. But… later.
“Oh, wow,” Rhianna added. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” said Severin happily, like he was crazy, like it was the best thing he’d seen all day. “What do you think, lady?”
The handmaiden and Branwyn joined them. In the distance, the meadowlands were smoking.
Branwyn tried to concentrate. “It’s a fire?”
“Something on fire,” said Rhianna, an odd note in her voice.
They stared for a long while, until Rhianna said, “It’s faster than we are.”
“I know,” said Severin, so cheerfully Branwyn wanted to stab him.
“I… don’t know this beast,” said the handmaiden. “It is not an aspect of Faerie I recognize.” She looked up at the blue sky. “And it is dangerous.”
Branwyn couldn’t see anything unusual in the sky, but as it caught up, she could finally make out the creature burning the meadow. It was very large; once Branwyn might have said ‘enormous,’ before she’d seen Night from a distance. It was easily the size of an elephant. While it bounded on four legs, it seemed to be constructed primarily of fire and thorns. Just looking at it made Branwyn uneasy.
The handmaiden returned to the table under the repaired pavilion and a moment later the sailing stone veered abruptly. In a clear response, the beast of fire and thorns altered its own course.
“Uh, how close are we to the Court of Summer?” Branwyn asked.
“Not nearly close enough,” said the handmaiden. “The beast will catch us before we even enter the Domain.”
“Nah,” said Severin. “I’ll deal with it. Be right back, cupcake.” He hopped the guard rail, stepped off the back of the stone, and was immediately left far behind.
Branwyn looked blankly at where he’d dropped. Well. That was handled. She returned to her seat.
“Aren’t you going to watch?” Rhianna asked.
“No.”
“Oh.” Rhianna paused to consider this. “Well, I am.”
“Feel free,” Branwyn said. “Cheer him on.” She stared at the landscape ahead, but she didn’t really see it. She was calm now, so next she made herself focus on something useful: the energy that had blasted through Rhianna, and how to avoid a repeat. There were three charges left in the hammer’s Machine fragment. Random fragments of ideas floated through her mind, nonsensical thoughts that slipped away before she could grasp them and turn them meaningful.
Before Branwyn could cudgel a coherent plan out of her tired brain, the handmaiden joined her. “Do you not wish for your monster to delay the beast?”
Branwyn shrugged. “I don’t have an opinion.” Once she might have scorned his bloodlust, resented him acting as rescuer, cursed his mere existence. Right now, all she cared about was avoiding further delay. The faster they completed their journey, the fewer opportunities for the dark energy to hurt somebody else.
She blinked and glanced narrowly at the handmaiden, wondering if she could see the change in Rhianna with that visor. She’d said she didn’t have eyes like mortals did. “Do mortals and faeries and monsters all appear the same to you?”
The handmaiden tilted her head. “How do you mean?”
“You’re one of the first faeries I’ve met who I could easily identify as ‘not human’ without using my magic Sight. Everybody else, monsters and angels and most of the faeries running around Earth, they… they may have a look but it’s a hint, not a guarantee of what they are.”
“Ah, mortal eyes.” The handmaiden sounded enlightened. “I believe I see all you do, but without the requirement of light. All mortal bodies—and this includes my own and the monster’s—have a unique composition of earthly materials, which is what I perceive. I can see both similarities and differences.” She gave a little chuckle. “Though when I’ve observed crowds of mortals remotely, I tend to have problems seeing individuals.”
Branwyn didn’t understand why that was funny, and didn’t care. Choosing her words carefully, aware of just how good Rhianna was at pretending to do one thing while paying attention to something else, she asked, “So you can see that Sev is what he is, while Rhianna and I are something else?”
“Oh yes. You both have natural mortal bodies, while his is a supremely crafted vessel. They’re very distinct.”
“How similar are Rhianna and I? Can you tell we’re related?”
The handmaiden rotated her head between Branwyn and Rhianna. “You are very similar. Full-blooded sisters? But… there are… some differences…”
Branwyn could hear the frown developing in the handmaiden’s voice and shook her head, holding her finger up to her mouth in a ‘shh’ gesture. Aloud she said, “I suppose there would be.”
The handmaiden’s mouth quirked to one side. Then she placed her fingertips on Branwyn’s throat and whispered, “What is it? You may speak silently.”
“The differences… has something changed very recently?” Branwyn mouthed.
“Yes,” whispered the handmaiden. “The passing signal carried something away. Is that bad?”
“It’s hard to see how it can be good,” Branwyn managed. Calm. “Can you tell what it was?”
The handmaiden shook her head. “I can’t. I am not much of a scholar of mortals.”
“Not even by comparing to me?”
With a smile, the handmaiden said, “You’re not that similar, Branwyn.”
Frustrated, Branwyn sat back in her seat and pushed her hands through her hair. Behind her, Rhianna broke into a cheer. “Woo-hoo! I think it’s down!”
She bounced to Branwyn’s elbow. “He intercepted it a few minutes ago, but the fire kept burning. Just now, though, the wind took the smoke away, and nothing was left but the charred meadow. I wish I could have seen what he did. Will he be back soon, Bran?”
“How should I know?” Branwyn snapped and immediately regretted it. “I’m sorry. I’m worrying about the charges in the hammer, and what to do about them. Next time somebody could get hurt.”
Liar, came Severin’s voice in her ear, and, Let’s talk.
Branwyn held up one finger. “Actually,” she said, with brittle brightness, “Just give me a few minutes and I’ll go get him.”
Although she was expecting the yank, it came harder than she expected, and she sprawled backwards into the velvet darkness. Severin once again sat in the armchair. This time he had a ghastly burn on one side of his face and his clothes were shreds. But as she scrambled to her feet, the burn changed from a horrific mottled red, to shiny and pink, and then faded to his normal skin tone.
A single window floated at eye level, displaying Rhianna as she looked quizzically around the sailing stone. Her mouth formed a silent query, and then she flopped into Branwyn’s seat and started talking to the handmaiden. Even via the window, Branwyn could still see the glint along Rhianna’s form.
She dragged her gaze away to stare darkly at
Severin. “What are we talking about?”
He met her gaze impassively, his eyes shadow-grey. “So calm for somebody who wanted to kill me a few moments ago.”
“Later,” she said. That was all she intended to say. Everything but calm and focus and action was for later. That was what she intended, but she was tired and her mind went in dangerous directions when she was tired. So instead she also said, “Did you aim the energy at her when you fused the stone?”
Severin leaned forward in his chair, and suddenly he was standing right in front of her. Softly, he said, “You want me to say yes, and you want me to say no. A double-edged knife to use against yourself.” The shark smile passed over his face. “Ask me again later.”
Her own rage came rushing back, breathtaking, overwhelming, and she felt an answering creak of cracking glass in her chest. Her rage called to his own. She wanted to push him, push that cracking glass until it exploded in shards around her. Her vision swam and the black velvet space flickered.
She reached up, pulled Severin’s head down to hers and pressed her mouth against his. It wasn’t a kiss so much as an invasion, opening up and pushing into him like he was one of her projects gone wrong and she was angrily looking for the flaw. She wanted to draw that world-ending rage of his over her and drown herself in it, punish herself with it.
But he was holding her face; he was kissing her too. His mouth and tongue and hands devoured her, and that was right. Not good, so very bad, but right all the same. No matter how he touched her, or how good it felt, or how a part of her bleated about how she’d feel tomorrow, she couldn’t stop because his rage was what she needed right now: the way it wove through the tightening of his muscles under her fingers and whispered under his words. It was a rage at the whole universe, a rage as great as her own and nothing could cut through it. But this, for just a moment, could transfigure it.
Skin against skin and her nails on his back, and his teeth along her collarbone; his arms around her and his shoulders flexing. Then he was inside her, hard and moving, exquisite, exactly as she wanted, and she was still kissing him, wrapped around him, furious and hungry and aching. In her mind, she said, “Severin,” and he whispered, “Say it again,” and so she said it again and again. Then he said, “You don’t really mean it,” and she wanted to scream as she clenched around him.
Fury Convergence Page 13
