by Emma Bull
“Bother. I was hoping you’d forgotten.” He refolded his legs. “Why you. A short question with a long answer. You met, as I’ve said, the few requirements of the Court. The rest were mine.”
“I kind of figured that out. You have an axe to grind in all this, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Then he closed his lips firmly and looked stubborn.
“Phouka.” She leaned forward and pinned him with her eyes. “You’ve run a lot of risks, and gone to a lot of work, and all to turn me into a bullet for your gun. But I’m a bullet that thinks for itself, and I want to know what I’m being shot at.” He winced. “Are you a traitor?” she asked gently.
“No! At least, I devoutly hope I’m not.” He massaged the bridge of his nose. “Ah, Eddi, Eddi. If I fail, I will become a major figure in the history of the Seelie Court. Reviled for centuries, I imagine.”
“And if you don’t fail?”
“Well, that’s the cream of the jest. If I succeed, I will be barely noticed.”
“What is it you want to do?”
He rubbed his hands along his trousered thighs, as if his palms itched, or were damp. “You may have seen, my primrose, that the Fey Folk are the merest bit class-conscious. We would, by our nature, make very bad anarchists. We do make excellent monarchists, however, under ordinary circumstances.” He cut the air with one hand in a frustrated gesture. “There are no mortal structures to which I can compare this. None have lasted so long. A very bad analogy—do you remember bad King John and the Magna Carta?”
“A little.”
“John was not bad, precisely. But he’d a tendency to do as he pleased without regard to the lesser lords whose men-at-arms kept him in power. The situation became untidy for a while, until those lesser lords forced John to be a little more thoughtful.”
“And you want a Faerie Magna Carta?”
The phouka shook his head. “As I said, there is no proper human analog. The Sidhe have a habit of rule cultivated over more than two thousand years. What mortal government has lasted so long? And the rest of Faerie has a habit of obedience of corresponding length. Even the most solitary of the Folk will not run directly counter to the will of the Sidhe, though they may, when convenient, fail to hear the expression of that will.”
“Like the brownies?”
“And the oakmen, and others. But none of the Seelie Court would rise up, as King John’s lordings did, and bring the Sidhe to book.”
“Do they need it?” Eddi asked, thinking of Willy, and not knowing what to think.
The phouka drew his knees up and rested his chin on them. “They have ruled for so long, my sweet. They are an unbroken dynasty, and while there have been faction fights and quarrels, there has never been a voice raised to say that perhaps the Sidhe have led us long enough. A thousand years and more of consent. After so long, who can blame them for forgetting the obligations of monarchy, and ruling only for themselves? Who can blame them for thinking that those who never speak are voiceless?”
“Have they . . . done something awful?”
“In time, I think they would. They have forgotten the Folk they govern, and how to feel for them. And so the Folk slip away from them, looking increasingly toward the only other part of Faerie with a tradition of rule.” He let out a long breath. “There are high lords of the Unseelie Court as well, you see.”
Eddi did see. “This really is a civil war, then.”
The phouka looked away to a distant, invisible point. “When I explained why the Seelie Court must win—”
“I remember.” Visions of bitter, frightened people in gray cities . . .
“But it cannot win if the Unseelie Court lures its warriors to the opposing side, and if the Sidhe help them on their way. The Lady and her kin will see it at last, but by that time the damage will be done, the Court splintered.” He pressed a hand over his eyes.
“Where do I come in?” Eddi asked, after a respectful pause.
“We need a third element, a possible rallying point for both the Sidhe and the lesser ranks.”
“If this were American politics, I’d tell you that splitting the vote is a lousy idea.”
The phouka shrugged. “Perhaps it is. But what can I do? The Sidhe will not be led by one of their subjects. Nor will their subjects break tradition and lead themselves. But I thought . . . if I found a mortal, unhindered by ancient habits, bringing with him no ancient associations . . . And I needed someone who might command the respect and admiration of both the high and low ranks. When I found you, I knew you could do all that, if only I could arrange for you to have the chance. So I informed the Court that I had found their mortal.”
“Dear me,” Eddi murmured. “And Dad always said I’d never get anywhere playing rock ‘n’ roll.”
He choked on his coffee. “Eddi McCandry, you are infinitely more than I deserve. Do you forgive me for not telling you all of this immediately?”
Eddi shrugged. “Much as I hate to give you the credit, I wouldn’t have understood a third of that before last night. No, scratch that. I would have understood it all and still spit in your eye.”
“But not anymore?” He cocked his head at her.
Eddi took a bite of bread while she thought about that. “I like these people,” she said finally. “I like Hairy Meg. Even though I hate his guts, I like Willy. And I like you.” The phouka looked at his feet. “I haven’t seen any lovable qualities in the opposition yet.” There was another reason, too, though she didn’t quite understand it herself, not well enough to explain to someone else, anyway. But she’d been in danger and fought back, fought with the Seelie Court against their enemy. It was hard to be indifferent to them after that.
Then she remembered—“Omigod. And Hedge. Willy wasn’t just saying that to drive me crazy, was he?”
The phouka looked shamefaced. “No, he wasn’t. I am profoundly sorry, my primrose. I should have told you, I know. But so much was different then, and when it changed, it changed so quickly.”
“Quit apologizing and tell me now. I suppose you thought you needed help keeping an eye on me?”
“Well. . .” The phouka looked at the ceiling. “Yes.”
“So you brought a ringer into the auditions, knowing that he was too good a bass player for me to turn down. Did you know about Willy, too, before he showed up?”
The phouka’s smile faded. “When he came in the door that evening—I didn’t know what to do. I knew who he was, of course. But what he intended . . . No, I didn’t know.” He looked away, and hugged his knees as if to keep from doing something else. “And when I did know, I wanted to tell you, and I couldn’t. There are habits of obedience in me as well, it seems. He is my liege lord, Eddi, and I couldn’t, though I knew you would hate the deception and perhaps the deceiver as well.”
Eddi sat with her chin in her hand, watching him. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “I don’t blame anybody. I’d blame Willy, but. . .” She shrugged.
“But he still doesn’t know what he did wrong?”
“Exactly.”
“We are an inconstant lot, my sweet,” the phouka said. He spoke as if amused, but his face was harsh. “We take love lightly, and we’re hard on those who love us. Willy has no model for his behavior but that of Faerie. By that model, he has done nothing amiss.”
“You sound proud of it.”
“Well, I’m not,” he snapped, “and you know it perfectly well.” He stood up abruptly and took his coffee cup to the kitchen.
“Do I?” Eddi murmured to the air. Twisty, untrustworthy, mercurial phouka. Oh, but surely some of these emotional U-turns must be genuine, if only in part? If he wanted privacy, she ought to stay out of the kitchen. But he might want her to come jolly him out of the sulks. . . .
She dialed Carla’s number and got her answering machine. Silly broad. I told her I’d call and explain today. Where would she be? A possibility occurred to her; but she decided against calling Dan’s.
“Hi, party girl,”
she told the recording, “practice and fairy tales at four-thirty today, the old same place.” She itched to add, “Did you have fun?” but resisted. “Good luck,” also came to mind, but she didn’t say that, either. The end-of-message beep sounded, and she shrugged and hung up.
Then she called toward the kitchen, “I’m going to get dressed and drive down for a little solo practice.” No reply, except the rattle of dishes, and the thump of the refrigerator door. “You want to come with, or do you want to delegate it to Willy or somebody?”
That got him to poke his head out the door. He asked, sour-voiced, “Would you prefer Willy?”
“No, you little twink,” she replied gently.
“Oh.” His head disappeared into the kitchen again. After a moment, he said, “Then I suppose I’d best go with you.”
Eddi rolled her eyes and went to get dressed.
They rode the Triumph through a balmy afternoon wind, dodging downtown traffic. Eddi swung off Washington Avenue, parked the bike next to the iron stairs, and would have gone up them. But the phouka caught her arm.
“Chivalry, my primrose, must give place to safety. I go first.” He trotted up the stairs, and Eddi followed him.
A strand of green vine with starry purple flowers was twined in the door handle. The phouka snorted and pulled it free.
“What is it?”
“A little May Day hate-mail. Pay it no mind.” He tossed the vine over the railing.
“Did I tell you you could read my mail? What did it mean?”
“It’s nightshade. It would do you no damage; it’s purely a message of ill will. And it could be”—he grinned with a great emphasis on teeth—“from anyone.” He held out his hand for the keys, and she gave them to him.
She dreaded the opening of the door for a moment, but the room was untouched. She turned on her amp, to let it warm.
“Can they get in here when we’re gone?” she asked the phouka.
“Curiously enough, this place is safer with us out of it than in it. It is not a dwelling, you see, and different magical customs apply.”
“I’ll have to trust you on that,” Eddi said. She plugged in the Rickenbacker and began to tune it.
She’d brought a sheaf of song lyrics with her. For the next hour and a half, she made up guitar riffs and fit them together into the melodies in her head, wrapped the melodies around the words. The phouka lay on his stomach on the floor. Just when she would decide he’d fallen asleep, he’d say, “I like that,” or “More distortion.”
At last she let a long minor chord die away. When the phouka looked up at its last trembling edge, she said, “So how do I do magic?”
He rolled onto his back. “Deceptions, illusions, and tricks of the light, my child,” he told the ceiling beams. “That’s what you’ve got from Faerie. A few things more as well, but they come and go. The power to cloud men’s minds is always to hand.”
“Could I make you believe something that wasn’t true?”
He studied her through his eyelashes. “You could make me believe anything at all.”
“I believe I’ll just play my guitar.” Eddi sighed.
Hedge was the first to arrive for practice. He seemed surprised to see Eddi and the phouka.
“Afternoon,” Eddi said. “How are you?”
Hedge shrugged and mumbled.
“Take any direct hits last night?”
Hedge peered at her, narrow-eyed, then turned to the phouka.
“Willy told her,” said the phouka. When Hedge scowled at him, he added, “Don’t blame me, old hedgehog. I was asleep when he did it.”
“Didn’ think y’ were ‘lowed to sleep,” Hedge said darkly. Other than his singing, it was the clearest utterance Eddi had ever heard from him.
“Lighten up, troops,” she ordered. “There’s no harm done.” She turned to Hedge. “I don’t know how long you promised to play in a rock ‘n’ roll band and keep an eye on the mortal chick. But as of right now, that contract is void. Fizzled. Poof.”
Hedge’s eyes got round for just a second. Then they squinted again, and his face was sullen and shuttered.
“I want you in my band,” she said to him. Hedge blinked, and all his shutters seemed to come a little unhinged. “But it’s my band, and you don’t have to play in it because he says so”—Eddi pointed to the phouka—“or because the Sidhe say so. You stay if you want to. If you don’t want to, you’re free to walk.”
Hedge looked sideways at her. “Wha’ ‘bout Willy?”
“As soon as he shows up, he gets the same choice. That’s no concern of yours. In the band, you answer to me.”
Hedge shot a glance at the phouka.
“You’ll get no help from me,” the phouka said. “Except that she can’t get rid of me, I am her slave in all things.”
The decision hung in the air for a moment. Then Hedge startled Eddi with a growling chuckle. With no more comment than that, he picked up the black Steinberger bass, plugged it in, and turned on his amp. He started up a fast pattern in the key of G, and Eddi shook her head wonderingly and followed him into it.
Carla came in a few minutes after that, and Dan behind her. They were carrying a snakepit’s worth of cables and patch cords, and a wedge-shaped, suitcase-sized box with a handle. . . .
“A mixing board?” Eddi squeaked.
Carla and Dan looked equally pleased. Dan said, “Dude in South St. Paul had a backup board. He needed some studio work. So we did a little trade.”
“What about speakers?”
“You can help carry ‘em up,” Carla said, wrinkling her nose. “They’re heavy as boxcars, but the cones are JBLs.”
“I’m impressed. Come on, gents.” Eddi nodded at the phouka and Hedge. “Let’s make like roadies.”
When they came out, Willy was leaning on the railing at the bottom of the stairs. At first glance, he looked insufferably proud. Then she saw his face, and how much his expression resembled the closed and guarded one that Hedge often wore.
With an effort, she grinned at him as she sailed past. “Oh, good. You’re just in time to carry some nice heavy speakers.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the surprise wash his features, and she wondered what he’d been expecting.
Carla opened the wagon’s rear gate. The speakers were homemade and odd-looking, but not excessively large. “Don’t let ‘em fool you,” Dan warned, rubbing his arms.
Hedge slid one onto the tailgate. He nodded shortly; then he looked at Eddi and raised one heavy eyebrow. “Go for it,” she told him.
He swung the thing easily to his shoulder, and held it there with one arm while he crossed the parking lot to the stairs.
Dan stared after him, and whistled finally. “But he’s a little sucker . . .”
“We’re all just full of surprises,” Willy replied. He slid the other speaker out of the wagon and followed Hedge.
By some unspoken armistice, they devoted themselves to setting up the PA, and ignored all the questions and mysteries. Eddi saw them working together, not quite a team yet, but no longer quite an unrelated group, either. It hurt her and warmed her at once. So much unresolved, so much danger.
“All right,” she said, when all the mikes worked and the monitor speakers had stopped feeding back. They all turned to her. Carla’s thin, mobile face and big dark eyes; Dan, wired and vague at once, peering earnestly through his square-framed glasses; Hedge, taciturn to the point of sullen, all street-kid looks and supernatural origins; Willy Silver, whose splendid face didn’t hide his feelings as well as he thought it did. Eddi realized, faced with them all, that this was the closest she would ever come to her dream band.
And the phouka, of course, sitting cross-legged on the floor looking wild and fey and foolish. He turned his eyes up to hers just then and grinned. She gathered up her courage and began.
“We’re not all of us what we seem,” she said. The phouka snorted. “Carla, how much did you tell Dan last night?”
Carla shrugged. “That yo
u were mixed up in a battle that was being fought by elves. You can probably guess what he said.”
Eddi turned to Dan. “Did she convince you?”
He shook his head. “I figure she’s convinced. Somethin’ funny’s going on, but I’m not buying little elves, girl.”
“I resent these comments about my height,” the phouka said. Dan looked narrowly at him. “It’s quite true, you know—all except the ‘little.’ ”
“He’s one of them,” Eddi said apologetically. “He’s a phouka. That much Carla knew. What she didn’t know”—and here she directed the apology at Carla—“is that Willy and Hedge aren’t human, either.”
From Carla she got a round-eyed stare. Willy looked uncomfortable. Hedge seemed to be getting a certain wry enjoyment out of the whole tableau. Dan said nothing, but frowned narrowly at Eddi. She decided she preferred his vague look.
“No kidding?” Carla said weakly.
“I just found out last night.”
“We’ve been had.”
“Fast-forward this shit,” Dan said suddenly, not loud but harsher than Eddi had ever heard him. “You all in on this?”
Eddi blinked at him.
“Yeah, I get kinda zoned out sometimes,” Dan continued, when he got no answer. “But I’m not brain-damaged. So if you think you can play games with the dumb nigger, you can find another set of keys.” And he began to turn off power to his equipment, snap, snap, snap.
“Dan!” Eddi said, and he stopped. Follow it up, girl, or you lose him. She was no good with clever arguments—but she was very good with the truth. “This band means too much to me to mess with. I’m not lying, and I’m not playing jokes. If anybody here is being tricked, it’s me. But I don’t think I am. These people”—she made reference with a sweep of her hand, to Willy, Hedge, and the phouka—“really aren’t human.”
Eddi nodded toward the phouka. “You’re the obvious proof,” she said reluctantly.
“Certainly,” said the phouka at once.
Willy made a sharp noise through his teeth. “Why go to the trouble? He can believe it or not. We don’t have to jump through hoops for him.” Then he stalked away across the room.
