The Iron Queen if-3

by Julie Kagawa

  Ash’s lips curled in a smirk. “I would think you’re better suited to the task, Goodfellow,” he said without turning around. “After all, that’s what you’re best at, isn’t it? Watching?”

  “Oh, keep it up, ice-boy. You’re gonna have to sleep sometime.”

  I rolled my eyes at them. “Fine. You two fight it out—I’m going to try to get some sleep.” Unshouldering my pack, I stalked to a corner, dumped out the contents, and unrolled my sleeping bag. Lying on the sandy floor, I listened to Ash and Puck’s back-and-forth banter as they set up camp, throwing out insults and challenges. Strangely, it seemed more normal than it had been until now, and I fell asleep to their voices and the sound of the rain.

  HE WAS WAITING FOR ME in my dreams again.

  I sighed. “Machina,” I said, facing the Iron King, my voice nearly lost in the surrounding void, “why are you here? I thought I told you to leave me alone. I don’t need you.”

  “No,” he murmured, smiling as his cables cloaked him in a cage of glimmering steel. “That is not true. You’ve come far, but you’re still not there yet, Meghan Chase. You still need me.”

  “I don’t.” I didn’t move as he approached, the cables reaching out to snake around me. “I’m stronger now than when we first met. I’m learning to control the magic you left me with.” With a thought, I pushed the cables away, causing them to rear back in surprise.

  “You still don’t understand.” Machina withdrew his extensions, folding them like shimmery wings behind his back. “You use the magic like a tool, like a sword that you swing in awkward circles, cutting wildly at those around you. If you are to win, you must embrace it fully, make it a part of you. If you would only let me show you how.”

  “You’ve given me enough,” I said bitterly. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want it. If you were alive, I would be happy if you took it back.”

  “I could not.” Machina regarded me with depthless black eyes. “The power of the Iron King can be given, or it can be lost. It cannot be taken.”

  I frowned. “Then…why is the false king trying to kill me? If the power can only be given away, why is he trying to take it by force?”

  Machina shook his head. “The false king has never learned how a king is chosen. Believing he can wrench the power from you by force, he has become blind in his obsession. He does not realize his actions only make him less worthy.”

  “If I die…then the power is lost?”

  Machina nodded. “Unless you give it away yourself, or it chooses a new successor.”

  “Can’t I just give it away now?”

  “No,” Machina said flatly. “If the power is to be given, it must be given at the moment of death. When the bearer knows they are going to die, only then will the power leave the body. If the bearer dies without choosing a successor, the power will lie dormant, waiting, until someone comes along who is worthy to bear it. But no, you cannot just give it away whenever you please.” Machina sounded faintly insulted at the thought. “Besides, Meghan Chase, who would you give it to? Who would you find worthy enough to carry that burden?”

  “I suppose that means you somehow found me worthy,” I muttered, “though I really wish you wouldn’t have bothered.”

  The Iron King only smiled.

  “I will be here,” he murmured, fading away, his brightness becoming less and less, though his voice still echoed in the void. “You cannot win without me, Meghan Chase. Until we are one, you are destined to lose this war.”

  I OPENED MY EYES TO SILENCE. The rain had stopped, and a warm furry weight was pressed against my ribs, vibrating with purrs. Careful not to disturb Grimalkin, I rose and pushed back the covers, gazing around the cave. Puck lay on his back in the corner, tangled in blankets, one arm flung over his eyes. A jackhammer snore echoed from his open mouth, and I grimaced.

  Ash stood at the cave mouth, silhouetted black against the cloudy sky, gazing out at the distant city. From the sickly light coming in, I guessed it was mid to late afternoon. By the subtle tilt of Ash’s head, I knew he’d heard me, but he didn’t turn around.

  Padding up behind him, I slipped my arms around his waist. His hands folded over mine, lacing our fingers together, and we stood like that for a moment, breathing in tandem, me listening to his heart through his armor.

  “Are you all right?” His deep voice vibrated in my ear, pressed against his back.

  “Fine.” I pulled back to stare at the back of his head. “Why? Reading my emotions again, are you?”

  “You were talking in your sleep,” he continued solemnly. “I wasn’t listening, but you said ‘Machina’ once or twice.” He paused, and my heart flip-flopped in my chest. “It’s the Iron Kingdom, isn’t it?” Ash went on. “Being back here, it’s making you remember.”

  “Yeah,” I lied, pressing my face to his back. I didn’t want to tell him about my conversations with the old Iron King, whom we had killed on our last trip here but who was supposedly lurking inside me. “It was just a nightmare, Ash. Don’t worry about me.”

  “That’s my job now,” he replied, so soft I barely heard it. “Meghan, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You’re not alone. Remember that.”

  I squirmed uncomfortably, hoping he wouldn’t pick up on my feelings of guilt. “So, this knight-and-lady thing,” I said to change the subject. “Do you have to do what I say? Or is it more of a strong suggestion? If I ordered you to…I don’t know…stand on your head, would you do it?”

  I wasn’t trying to be serious, but he hesitated, and I wondered if I touched on a sore subject. “You know my True Name now,” he said after a moment. “Technically, yes, if you order me by use of my full name, I would be forced to obey. But…” He paused again. I’d never heard him sound so unsure. “The understanding is that it will never come to that. That…the lady trusts the knight enough to…”

  “Ash,” I interrupted. “Turn around.”

  He obeyed, spinning slowly to face me, his expression carefully guarded. Lacing my hands behind his neck, I pulled him down and kissed him. For just a moment, he was stiff and unyielding, but then he relaxed and his arms slid around my waist, drawing us closer.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered when we pulled back. “I don’t want you to regret…being here with me, being my knight and all.”

  He ran his fingers through my hair, brushing it from my cheek. “If I’d thought I would regret it,” he said calmly, “I never would have made that oath. I knew what becoming a knight would mean. And if you asked me again, the answer would be the same.” He sighed, framing my face with his hands. “My life…everything I am…belongs to you.”

  My eyes prickled as Ash leaned in and kissed me.

  A particularly loud snore came from the cave, and the lump in the corner rolled toward us suspiciously. Ash sighed again, drawing back after giving the “sleeping” Puck a resigned look. “We should leave soon,” he murmured, glancing toward the city. “If we go now, we can reach Mag Tuiredh before nightfall. Also, I saw Puck’s metal insect, flying around out there. It’s definitely following us. And if it does attack, I’d rather be able to see it coming than have to fight it in the dark.”

  I shivered and dropped my gaze, staring at the amulet on his chest. The crystal was no longer perfectly clear. Inside, the swirls were silvery and metallic, like the mercury inside a thermometer. It gave me a chill, like staring at the falling grains of an hourglass, reminding me that his time in the Iron Realm was limited. “Right,” I said, breaking away. “Let’s get going then. Puck, I know you’re awake. We’re leaving.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Puck snorted and hopped to his feet. “I was afraid I’d have to listen to you two slobber all morning. I’m already feeling slightly sick—please don’t make it worse.”

  “Indeed,” Grimalkin added from the mouth of the cave, though he had been sleeping on my blanket a second before. “Let us go. We are running out of time.”

  Quickly, we gathered our supplies and set out again. The looming Fomorian city
beckoned in the distance.

  As we left the cave, following Grim and Puck over the rocks, I caught a shimmer from the corner of my eye, like a heat wave, darting behind a boulder. I stopped and glanced back, but empty sand and rock greeted me when I turned my head.

  “Did you see it?” Ash muttered as we started down the dusty path again.

  Frowning, I glared around the landscape, wincing as the sun flashed off the random metallic objects scattered everywhere. “I don’t know. I thought I saw…something. Like a shimmer almost, but a clear one. You saw it?”

  He nodded, his hunter’s gaze never still, constantly scanning. “Something is tracking us,” he said in a low voice. “Goodfellow knows it, too. Keep alert. We could run into trouble soo—”

  It attacked from the top of a boulder, leaping at us with a scream. One second, there was nothing. The next, that strange shimmer rippled through the air again, and something slammed into me, raking my armor with invisible claws that screeched against the dragon-scale. I staggered back as a long feline shape, large as a cougar and translucent as glass, leaped away from Ash’s sword and darted into the rocks again.

  I drew my sword with a raspy screech as Puck pulled his daggers, his eyes darting around the empty landscape. “Anyone wanna tell me what that was?” he said, just as a second transparent cat-thing leaped at him from the opposite direction. I yelled and he ducked, the cat barely missing him. Landing in a spray of dust, it bounded into the rocks and vanished.

  We moved to stand back-to-back, weapons out in front of us, searching for a glimpse of our invisible assailants. No, I thought, not invisible, that didn’t make sense, not in the Iron Kingdom. Grimalkin could become invisible, using normal glamour to do so—in fact, he had already disappeared. Regular glamour was the magic of illusion and myth, things the Iron fey could not work with, so how were they hiding their presence? What was the logical explanation?

  There was a blur as the monster cats attacked again, rushing in from opposite sides. I didn’t see them until one was right on top of me, and I felt hooked claws raking my side. They were frighteningly quick. Thankfully, the dragon-scale armor held, screeching and sparking in protest, but the cat darted away again before I could react.

  Puck snarled a curse, swiping at empty air as the second cat flashed behind the rocks once more and was gone. Blood dripped down his arm to spatter in the dust; he hadn’t been as lucky, and my desperation grew.

  Think, Meghan! There had to be an explanation. Iron fey couldn’t use regular glamour, so how could a solid creature appear invisible? I could feel the Iron glamour circling around us, cold, patient, and calculating, and suddenly I understood.

  “They’re cloaking,” I said, as the pieces clicked into place. “They’re using Iron glamour to twist the light around themselves so they appear invisible.” I felt a thrill of discovery, of knowing I was right. All those years of watching Star Trek had finally paid off.

  Ash spared me a split-second glance. “Can you use it to see which direction they’re coming from?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Closing my eyes, I reached out, searching for our attackers, expanding my senses until…there. I could feel them in my mind, two clear, cat-shaped blobs of glamour, creeping forward along the ground just a few yards away. One was edging up on Ash, muscles quivering, and leaped forward with a shriek.

  “Ash, high left! Seven o’ clock!”

  Ash whirled, exploding into motion. I heard a yowl, and the cat shape in my mind split in two just before something hot and wet splashed over my face.

  Not stopping to think or gag, I saw the second cat leap straight at me, claws extended, aiming for my neck this time. My sword came up, and the monster slammed into my chest, its leap carrying it right onto the blade. The cat’s weight knocked me backward to sprawl in the dust, driving the air from my lungs with a painful gasp.

  For a few seconds, I could only lie there with my mouth gaping, crushed under the body of the killer feline. Up close, the dead cat was a strange metallic gray, its fur short and shiny like a mirror. But its teeth were the same yellow ivory of all big cats, pointed and lethal, and its breath stank of rotten meat and battery acid. That was all I noticed before Ash dragged the huge feline off me and Puck pulled me to my feet.

  “Well, that was fun.” Puck wore one of his sarcastic grimaces. “You okay, princess?”

  “Yeah.” I gave Ash a quick smile to ease the worry on his face, and turned to Puck again. “I’m fine—but you’re bleeding, Puck!”

  “What, this?” Puck grinned. “It’s just a scratch.” His grin turned into a grimace as I sat him down on a rock and started tearing off his sleeve. His arm was a mess, blood everywhere, and I could see the four nasty claw marks that ran from his elbow to wrist. I winced in sympathy.

  “Ash, I’m going to need some of that salve you brought,” I muttered, dabbing away the blood. When he didn’t move, I turned on him, narrowing my eyes. “All right, I’m tired of this. I know you two don’t get along, but you need to figure something out or we’re never going to make it out of here alive.”

  I received a rather cold stare, but he opened his bag and dug out the jar, handing it to me stiffly. Puck settled back on the rock, grinning as I bent over his arm.

  “You’re good at this, princess,” he purred, shooting Ash a smug grin over my shoulder. “Been watching ice-boy, or are you just a natural caretaker? I could get used to—ow!”

  He glared as I tied off the bandage with a jerk.

  “Don’t push your luck,” I warned him, and he gave me a huge, doe-eyed look full of innocence. It was the first glimpse of the old Puck I’d seen in a long time, and it made me smile.

  As I was gathering the medical supplies, Grimalkin appeared again, wrinkling his nose at the dead cats. “Barbarians,” he sniffed, leaping down from the rock, giving the bodies a wide berth as he trotted up. “Human, you might want to know that there are certainly other creatures that will be attracted by the commotion. I would advise you to hurry.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE CLOCKMAKER

  We reached the Fomorian city just as the sun was going down.

  Mag Tuiredh was enormous. Not just sprawling, but huge. As in I-feel-like-I’ve-been shrunk-to-the-size-of-a-mouse huge. Like Jack-in-the-Beanstalk huge. Everything was giant-size: doorways were twenty feet tall, streets were wide enough to drive a plane through, and steps were my height. Whomever the Fomorians were, I hoped that they were really gone as Ash said.

  The city was ancient; I could feel it as we made our way through the mossy ruins, which towered like broken giants overhead. The original buildings were made of rough stone, but the Iron Realm’s corruption was everywhere. Broken street lamps popped up at odd intervals, grown right out of the ground and flickering erratically. Cables and computer wires snaked up walls, spread across the streets, and coiled around everything, as if trying to choke the life from the old city. In the distance, near the center of Mag Tuiredh, black smokestacks loomed over everything, belching smog into the hazy sky.

  “So, where do we find this Clockmaker?” Puck asked as we walked through a square filled with strange metallic trees. The trees were in full bloom, not with flowers or fruit, but with lightbulbs that glowed with eerie brightness. A fountain in the middle of the square bubbled a thick, shiny black liquid that might’ve been oil.

  Grimalkin looked back at us, eyes shining in the gloom. “The most obvious place possible,” he said, and turned his gaze skyward.

  Over the tops of the buildings, rising up toward the clouds like a dark needle, a giant clock tower peered down on the city with a face like a numbered moon.

  “Oh.” Puck craned his neck back, staring at the huge timepiece. “Well, that’s…ironic.” He scratched the back of his head and frowned. “I hope the Clockmaker is still awake. He probably doesn’t get a lot of visitors after nine p.m.”

  Something about that statement put me on edge, even more so when I looked at Ash, who was staring at the
clock in growing horror. “It shouldn’t be here,” he murmured, shaking his head. “How is it even working? Time doesn’t exist in the Nevernever, but that thing is recording the passing of it, keeping track. With every second it records, the Nevernever gets older.”

  I remembered the way my watch stopped on my first trip to Faery, and looked at Grim in alarm. “Is that true?”

  The cat blinked. “I am not an expert on the Iron Realm, human. Even I cannot give you the answers to everything.” Raising a hind leg, he scratched inside an ear, then contemplated his back toes. “But, remember this—nothing lives forever. Even the Nevernever has an age, though no one can remember what it is. That clock is not recording anything new.”

  “It should be destroyed,” Ash muttered, still glaring at it.

  “I would refrain from angering its keeper until we secure his help.” Grimalkin stood, stretched, then suddenly went rigid. Ears twitching, he stood motionless for a moment, listening for something beyond the circle of trees. The hair slowly rose along his back, and I gulped, knowing he was seconds away from disappearing.

  “Grim?”

  The cat’s ears flattened. “They are all around us,” he hissed, just before he vanished.

  We drew our weapons.

  Thousands of green eyes pierced the darkness, razor grins shining like neon-blue fire, as a huge hoard of gremlins poured into the light. Like ants, the swarm flowed over the ground, buzzing and hissing in their static voices, to surround us. We stood back-to-back, a tiny circle of open ground in a sea of little black monsters with grinning fangs and glowing eyes.

  Thousands of voices chattered at me, like a hundred radios turned on all at once. The noise was deafening, nonsensical, high buzzing voices grating in my ears. But the gremlins didn’t attack. They stood there, dancing or hopping in place, teeth flashing like razors, but they moved no closer.

  “What are they doing?” Puck asked. He had to yell to be heard.

  “I don’t know!” I replied. The cacophony was giving me a headache; my ears were ringing, and it seemed the noise got even worse at the sound of my voice. Without even thinking about it, I raised my head and yelled “Shut up!” into the hoard of gremlins.