Laura Anne Gilman

by Heart of Briar

  “And so you owe me not only my prize, but our freedom. To leave here, and to be unmolested.” Tricky elves. Tricky. Not to be trusted. Get everything nailed down. The thoughts tossed through her head even as she was speaking, hoping to hell that she was doing the right thing.

  “Stjerne.” The consort looked over Jan’s head, down at the preter still waiting on the main floor. “Your request is denied. The human resisted you, and stayed true. More... She amuses us.”

  He looked at her then, and only then did she realize that his eyes had the same golden rim as Toba’s, although his face was fully, smoothly humanlike. Still, the way his hair moved in the nonexistent breeze, almost like feathers...she felt the urge to reach out and touch it.

  Mind games, something whispered in her head. Seduction. It’s what they do.

  She stepped back, and the consort smiled again. “Yes. She amuses us, and so little has, in so many days. More: never let it be said we do not abide by our word, within the boundaries of this Court.

  “You may go, human, and take your beast with you. Safe across our borders, and safe for...” He pretended to contemplate, but she knew he had planned what he would say before he opened his mouth. “Ten weeks and ten days and ten hours, you may have, for your audacity, and your honor.”

  Jan frowned. Something wasn’t right. “Ten weeks and ten days...and ten hours,” she repeated slowly. Here, or there? If time was twisty here...

  “You wish it shorter, human?”

  She had thought—she didn’t know much, but everything she had read told her that seven was the magical number. As odd as that seemed, as worried as she was about the time distortion, that wasn’t the real problem.

  They said she could go and take her beast. That meant Martin. But...

  “And Tyler,” she said. “I fought to bring Tyler home. Those were our terms.”

  The consort’s eyes glittered, and Jan had the uncomfortable feeling that there was something with sharp teeth and sharper claws standing just behind her, awaiting only a twitch to sink itself into her flesh. The sense of unreality that filled this land pressed at her, made her doubt herself and her right to demand anything.

  Jan. A whisper of a touch, the soft gurgle of water over rocks, the singing deafness of deep water overhead, and then she could feel the slickness of her keyboard beneath her fingertips, taste the sweet, acrid sting of coffee, smell exhaust and rain on the pavement, and hear the slow, steady thud of a heart at rest under her as she curled in bed, rain outside and coffee beside her, and Tyler, safe and asleep and where he belonged.

  “And Tyler,” she said again, firmly. “You may not deny me that which is mine.”

  “If he in truth is yours, then you shall take him, and be gone.” The consort smiled again, and Jan distrusted that smile that seemed to take immense pleasure in pain.

  “Unleash your pet, Stjerne. Let us see where he goes.”

  Jan turned, not wanting to look away from the consort, but needing to see what was happening, too. She saw Martin out of the corner of her eye; he had moved to stand near the doorway, his long face worried and drawn. But when he saw her looking at him, he lowered his chin slowly, his shoulders easing, and she smiled. Whatever happened, he was ready to take her home.

  Only then did she let herself look across the chamber, to where Stjerne had replaced her cloak, standing next to Tyler, a possessive hand on his arm.

  Jan forced herself to look at him the way a stranger might. It was easier somehow, now; he was Tyler and yet, here, he wasn’t. A slender, almost scrawny figure, his skin so much darker than her own, a color he said wasn’t “true dark” but low brown, his close-cropped head covered in glossy black brush not yet long enough to curl. And his nose and chin as stubborn as her own, softened now with a sort of slackness that was unlike him—Tyler, who was always wound up, always going, even when she wanted to curl up and be lazy...

  “Tyler. Ty, come with me,” she whispered. She knew her voice wouldn’t cross the space, not with such a high ceiling and the other preters muttering and shifting, but somehow he did hear her, his head rising and turning, his body straightening until he looked straight at her, and his eyes were awake, if not entirely clear. She could tell, even from where she stood, that Stjerne’s spell was slipping.

  He knew her. She could see it on his face. But he wasn’t coming toward her, wasn’t smiling in that sweet welcome, wasn’t shrugging Stjerne’s hand off his arm in disgust or shame.

  Once before she’d tried to hold him, and failed. If she failed now...he would be lost forever. Like the figures roaming outside, or...worse.

  “Tyler. It’s time to come home now.”

  “No. Stay. Here is pleasure and pain entwined, my pet. No cares, no worries, but only the simple act of being.” The preter’s voice curled around them like the swirl of oil in water, iridescently pretty but toxic if swallowed. Jan bit her lip and clenched her fist so tightly her blunt-cut nails dug into her palm, as she watched Tyler’s eyes start to fade over again.

  “Coffee,” she whispered. “Listening to the blues. Dancing slow on the balcony, watching it rain. Pizza and the click of the keyboard, the hiss of the radiator.” She was almost chanting now, pulling all the sensation she could remember, the ones she thought might pull him back. Real things. Solid things. Human things. Things she missed with a sudden lurch of yearning.

  “Four-way online Scrabble,” she said. “Yelling at the game on TV. Waffles with real maple syrup and cinnamon. Crossing against traffic and just barely making it, the way the number seven bus drivers yell when you bring your bike on, but you know they’re not really mad.”

  His lips moved; it was almost a smile.

  “Come home, Ty. It’s time to come home now. To the real things. To me, Tyler Wash. Come home to me.” Her cracked, hoarse voice broke, and all the pain she felt, all the frustration and the loss—the things she had gone through to get here, all dripped into her words, coating them with as much vinegar as honey.

  And he stepped forward.

  And then again. And he lifted a hand to his chest, curled his fingers around something, a chain of silver hidden under his shirt, pulling it over his head and dropping the chain on the stone floor.

  “No!” the preter cried, and rage filled the room, but it could not touch Jan, not now. Her fists clenched to her chest, barely daring to breathe, Jan watched as Tyler took another step, then one more, and was almost halfway across the room, halfway to her.

  There was a stirring in the crowd, as though someone might stop him, but it stilled, as though reminded that they dare not. The consort had said it: it was up to Tyler to decide.

  Another step, and he looked up at her. His gaze was still clouded, his face scrunched as though he worried over each step. She wanted so badly to step forward, to reach out and bring him to her, but she was held by the same knowledge that restrained the preter: this was not her choice.

  And then he took another step, and his hands reached up and she took them, feeling the chilled, trembling flesh under her own. Her chest clenched, but she turned to the consort, her back to the room, and said “mine.”

  The consort leaned back in his chair, his expression one of distant boredom. “Yes, yes. Go.”

  “Now.” And Martin was beside them, although it should have been impossible for him to move that quickly. “Before something happens, or they set up another challenge, we have to go.”

  “Who?” Tyler still looked dazed, but his skin was starting to warm again, the chalky gray color easing to a healthier brown.

  “No time,” Martin said. “We’re going, now.” And, one to either side of him, they moved out of the chamber, feeling the gaze of a dozen or more preters on them, the hottest one from Stjerne, who paced them, stalking them, the full length of the chamber, although she dared not touch them with hand or magic.

  And then they were through the door and into the antechamber, and Jan swore that the air rippled with some kind of weird time-distortion, quantum-folding, magic-
shifting thing, because they were running, all three of them, up the passageway and out into the mist-filled world in half the time it had taken them to descend, as though the Hill itself wanted them gone.

  She lofted her face to the clouded sky, breathed in the faint sunlight, and then bent over, hands on her knees, and started to hyperventilate.

  “Do you need your inhaler?” Martin was at her side, worried, solicitous.

  “No. Mmmokay. Just...”

  His hand on her shoulder, warm and reassuring, helped. Slowly, the hysteria passed, and she got her breathing under ragged control. His hand withdrew, and she stood up, slowly.

  “What...who are you?”

  Jan’s heart froze, then she realized that Tyler was looking at Martin, not her.

  “A friend,” the kelpie said, his voice tight. Reassured that she was okay, he was scanning the horizon as though looking for something, maybe more of the greensleeves who had accosted them before. Jan rubbed her chest, still aching, and worried about that, too. Was the consort’s word binding on those who’d been cast off?

  “A friend.” Tyler sounded dubious, but Jan had other worries to deal with first. “Martin? How do we get home? How do we find the portal?” Worry threatened to turn into panic: had all of this been for nothing? Were they trapped here? Why hadn’t they thought about an exit strategy, damn it?

  Because neither of them had expected to survive.

  Martin shook his head, still scanning the horizon, not looking at either human. “You have the pass from the consort; call it!”

  Call it like a cab, raise her hand and have it come screeching to a stop at their feet? “You’re sure?”

  Martin let out a noise that was definitely a horsey snort. “No, I’m not sure. It would be just like preters to let us go and then leave us wandering here for the rest of our lives. But we’re not going to know unless we try!”

  “All right.” She’d just taken on a preter and won, stood against magic and come out alive, if not unbruised. Calling a portal should be easy, after that, right? “Um. How?”

  “Picture it in your mind.” Tyler, not Martin, answered her and they both turned to look at him in surprise. “Picture it in your head, a doorway taking you where you want to go. Just picture it in yourself, and walk, keep walking.” His voice was hazed again, but firm, as though he was speaking words someone else had told him.

  “All right.” She still held his hand in her left; she lifted her right and felt Martin’s larger hand slip against her palm, fingers twining.

  “I want to go back,” Tyler said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I just want to go back.”

  “I want...” She almost said she wanted to go home, but the memory of the last time she saw her apartment, Toba’s bloodied feathers filling the hall, the turncoats’ mottled skin and sharp-filed teeth approaching on her...

  “I want to go to the Center,” she said instead, remembering the prickly velvet of the grass, the feel of clean water on her skin, the comfort of Martin’s warmth next to her as she slept, and the knowledge that AJ was there, his eyes sharp on the sparrow’s fall, like her grandmother used to say. Jan had never understood what the hell that meant, until now. “The Center of Everything.”

  And she saw it—no, she felt it inside her, and stepped forward, and kept walking until something shimmered just ahead of her, a match to the feeling in her brain, and then another shade joined it, like a campfire in shades from white to blue, and there was a sense of her, and a sense of Tyler, and she knew that this was right, this was the way home....

  And then they stepped forward again into blindness and compression on her ears and nose and lungs squeezing her tighter than the worst-ever asthma attack, until she couldn’t feel either man’s hand in her own, and fought not to panic, not to let go.

  Her first time through, she’d been on Martin’s back; she hadn’t realized how much that had shielded her. Like being shoved into a vacuum, icy cold and burning hot at the same time, twirling her around or twirling around her, vertigo making everything spin.

  “Just the portal” she chanted inside her brain, focusing on those words and forcing her legs forward, step by step. “It’s just the portal. This is the way home. Keep moving.”

  Her lungs collapsed on themselves, her eyes burst, and then they were out and through, and there was air again, and noise, and sight; she could feel her hands again, sweat-slicked and cramped from being crushed in a death-defying grip. Released, she fell to her knees, not on close-cropped, emerald-green grass, but pavement.

  “About time you got back,” a woman’s voice said. “I was getting seriously sick of hot dogs.”

  Chapter 17

  “Sorry we kept you waiting,” Martin said. He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded exhausted.

  The portal hadn’t taken them to the Center. They’d come back out where they’d come from. “I want to go back,” Tyler had said, and not specified where. Had he been the one to open the portal, after all, not her? Or had they done it together? She thought about the feel of the portal itself as she looked around, taking in the so-familiar images of their world, and decided that either way, she was okay with the result.

  “Typical kelpie,” the woman said in response to Martin’s crack. “I’m Meredith,” she said to Jan. “AJ sent me— Oh!”

  The realization that there were three, rather than the two she’d been expecting, caused her to back up and let out a howl that shook the windows of the storefront—thankfully closed for the night. Jan didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be late, based on how still and quiet the air was. But even in the small hours, there was more noise than there had been on the other side of the portal. Once the howl faded, she could hear cars honking and roaring in the distance, the occasional burst of music, someone’s high-pitched screech of laughter, and a man’s voice yelling, and underneath it all an almost audible humming of close-packed humanity that rattled Jan’s bones and made her so relieved she wanted to cry.

  When the lupin—Meredith—handed Jan her pack, saying, “This smelled like you, is it yours?” she almost did cry.

  Electricity. Sweet, sweet electricity. She pulled her cell phone out of the bag and checked, out of habit. The power was almost gone—how long had they been over there?—but she had signal. Full bars.

  Full bars, and nobody to call. Would Glory believe any of this, if Jan told her? Would anyone?

  Would she have believed?

  A sound drew her attention. At her feet, Tyler had gone down to his knees, clutching himself and keening. Meredith’s howl, after the portal, must have been the last straw; whatever alertness he’d reclaimed when they’d left the Court was gone now.

  Part of Jan wanted to help him, comfort him, and the other was irritated at him—he was home! He was safe now!

  “Janny.”

  Martin’s voice, soft, behind her.

  “Meredith’s called for help—we need to get him out of here, before someone comes to investigate, or—and I need to talk to AJ. There’s way more going on with the preters than he thought, this thing with the queen; if she’s here, he has to know.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” They couldn’t stay here; they needed to report in. And Martin needed medical attention, and she’d kill for a hot shower and some food, and...

  Her head was spinning the way it did when she’d had just that sip or two too much of beer and then lay down, and she wondered, sort of hazily, if she was going to throw up. She didn’t think so; she was pretty sure they hadn’t eaten or drunk anything the entire time they’d been in the other land, except maybe the water she swallowed, which meant...

  How long had they been there? No wonder she felt weird. The craving for a hamburger hit her, and Jan’s mouth watered at the imagined taste and smell. Pickles, and lettuce, and cheese, and red meat...

  Maybe they could stop at a fast-food place.

  She knelt down then and put her arms around Tyler. He shuddered but didn’t draw away from her. Then again, he didn’t ack
nowledge her, either, keening and rocking. She let him; maybe the movement gave him comfort, the way it did her when she was stressed.

  Not that she’d done much of it recently, Jan realized. She hadn’t been able to sit still long enough to try.

  “I thought he’d be okay, once we got him home,” she said, lifting her face to look at the supers. Martin’s expression was worried; Meredith just looked irritated, her muzzle wrinkled as if she smelled something bad.

  Maybe she did.

  “You don’t go with the preters and come back...the same,” Martin said. “He needs help. Help we can give him. Come on.”

  A car pulled into the street, another sleek black sedan. Whoever Meredith had called, they’d been nearby. Or maybe the supers had people lurking everywhere, just waiting.

  Jan put aside her annoyance and tried to make her voice calm and coaxing. “Tyler. Come on, Tyler, come with me, just a little farther, okay?”

  Her voice seemed to soothe him a little. He let her pull him upright and shuffled forward, his body heavier than it should have been, leaning against her. It was a relief to slide him into the backseat, and she had a brief desire to close the door and walk away, to pretend that it was all over, that nothing more would happen.

  Instead, she got in next to him, her arm sliding around his shoulder, and waited for Meredith and Martin to join them. They got in, sitting on the seat opposite, and the car pulled away from the curb.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To meet up with AJ, to start. Then...” Meredith looked meaningfully at Tyler, who had stopped shaking but wasn’t responding to anyone else in the car, leaning against the back of the seat with his eyes closed.

  “It’s not his fault,” Martin said sharply. “You would not do so well, after a week or more in the hands of the preters.”