The Borderkind v-2

by Christopher Golden

  Half of the tables were taken, mostly by humans. Amongst them were several men and women who were simply too perfect or too big to be ordinary people, and who must, then, have been legendary. Heroes, perhaps, or demi-gods. At one table, two harpies crouched without chairs, their hideous vulture bodies lurching toward their plates, pecking at the raw flesh they had been served.

  Many of the dishes served in Lycaon’s Kitchen were raw. It was part of his legend, after all. Once a king, he had been a cannibal who slew his guests and ate them. Upon encountering Zeus, Lycaon had tried to feed him human flesh, only to have the god take vengeance upon him by transforming him into a true animal, the first werewolf of legend.

  Lycaon knew what his customers wanted. And the customer was always right. He claimed not to serve human flesh any longer, but Lycaon had been made Borderkind by the world’s lingering legends of werewolves, and Blue Jay wondered if from time to time he made forays into the mundane world for fresh human game.

  Beside him, Chorti grunted and tugged on his sleeve.

  Blue Jay glanced at him. “You can speak. Why don’t you?”

  Cheval lanced him with a withering glance, as protective of Chorti as if she were his mother. “He prefers not to.” Then she turned to Chorti, touching him gently upon the arm. “What is it?”

  But Blue Jay had already seen what had upset the wild man. At a table in the corner were three Keen Keengs, as sorely out of place there as Chorti himself. They were Australian, and he Guatemalan, but the difference was that Chorti was Borderkind and rumored at least to be welcome here. The Keen Keengs were nothing of the sort.

  When the Veil had been raised, those among the legendary who retained a connection to the mundane world-who still lived in the hearts and minds of humanity through folktales and bedtime stories-had become Borderkind. The magic woven into the Veil allowed them to travel back and forth between worlds…but only if they wished it.

  Many among the legendary had wanted nothing to do with humanity, and their disdain prevented them from becoming Borderkind. But there were those, the Keen Keengs amongst them, who had wished to be Borderkind but could not, because at the time the Veil was created, the humans lacked enough belief in them.

  Not all of them were bitter and unpleasant, but Keen Keengs tended not to like Borderkind very much. Blue Jay stared at the giant winged bat-men, deeply disturbed. The Keen Keengs crouched at their table, chairless like the harpies, and studiously avoided looking toward the entrance.

  “Shit,” the trickster muttered.

  A broad-shouldered man with a cruel, bestial face broke away from conversation with a waiter and strode toward them. His hair was thick and unkempt and his face covered by a dark stubble. When he smiled at them with utter insincerity, Blue Jay saw his teeth were large and pointed. He raised enormous hands as though to punctuate his question.

  “What have we here? Strangers in our midst. Which marks you as desperate, or foolish, or both.”

  Blue Jay stepped forward, wrapping himself in trickster magic even as he did so. A blur of azure swished in the air around him, but he did not attack with his spirit wings, nor did he transform. He might have done either, or might simply have challenged the man who approached, but Cheval prevented this by stepping in front of him and bowing to the cruel-faced man.

  “Both we may be,” the kelpy said, her silver hair cascading along beside her face as she bowed. She glanced up at him without rising. “But we are also kin, Lycaon. Will you not hear us speak, cousin, before deciding?”

  Lycaon. Blue Jay felt foolish. Cheval had guessed, of course, but he ought to have seen it right away. The bestial features, the unruly hair, the cruel glint in the eye. This was likely the werewolf himself.

  Again he bared his teeth in that false grin. His gaze shifted to take in Chorti and then Blue Jay before returning to Cheval. “I have never had much use for the kinship the Borderkind have presumed since the creation of the damnable Veil,” he said, voice low, as though he did not wish to be overheard.

  “Yet we have heard that you have welcomed others of our cousins to remain here until danger has passed.”

  Lycaon grinned now, and this time it seemed sincere. “The soft-hearts and thinkers who crafted the Veil are also those who made up rules for this kingdom, and forged a truce with Yucatazca. I don’t like them. Anything that vexes them is a pleasure.”

  “We’re welcome, then?” Blue Jay asked.

  The werewolf hesitated a moment, then gestured to a table. “You’re welcome to eat. Welcome to pass through. But not to stay.”

  That would have to do. Blue Jay nodded. “You have our thanks.”

  “Keep them. I’ve done you no great favor. You could still be eaten on your way out of the Quarter.”

  He turned on his heel and signaled to a waiter to attend to them. Chorti did not wait, but moved quickly to a nearby table. Blue Jay was not at all surprised, given that the wild man was practically slavering at the scent of meat. After a moment’s hesitation, Cheval joined Chorti at the table.

  “What are you doing?” Blue Jay whispered as he went to her side. He did not take a seat, standing beside her instead.

  Cheval gazed up at him. “We have been offered a moment of haven and hospitality. It might do well for us to make an effort to be less conspicuous.”

  Blue Jay laughed softly and stared at her, wondering if her mind was quite intact. “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?”

  Already Lycaon had drawn a great deal of attention to them. He looked around and saw two of the Keen Keengs bent close, muttering to one another. The third he caught watching him, but it glanced away upon being discovered.

  “This is idiotic,” Blue Jay said.

  He strode toward the center of the restaurant, out into the open courtyard. Warm summer rain pattered his hair and jacket, fell upon his hands as he stopped and glanced around. If the whispers were true and there were Borderkind taking refuge in the Latin Quarter, he had not seen any of them here. As he surveyed those lunching at Lycaon’s Kitchen, many of them studied him in return. Human faces narrowed with concern or suspicion or simple curiosity. Blue Jay did not mind the scrutiny. In truth, he had counted on it.

  The waiters studiously ignored him. If Lycaon had not slain them or thrown them out, then his staff would not trouble themselves. Only the waiter assigned to the table where Chorti and Cheval sat would pay any attention to them.

  Yet there was one other.

  Blue Jay raised an eyebrow when he saw Leicester Grindylow emerge from the kitchen bearing a tray of sandwiches. Grin had been a frequent customer at Amelia’s and often substituted as a bartender there. But Blue Jay knew that the long-armed bogie had also been a friend of Jenny Greenteeth’s, and Jenny had betrayed them to the Hunters. He wondered if Grin was also a traitor.

  When the Grindylow saw Blue Jay, he lifted one hand in an amiable wave. Grin slid his tray onto the table before him and smiled at the trickster before sorting the plates out in front of the olive-skinned women at the table. They whispered to one another and looked at Blue Jay with gossip and scandal in their eyes.

  Blue Jay nodded to Grin and resumed his search of the restaurant.

  A pair of hooded men sat at a table near the kitchen. As an oven door opened, the heat and light of the fire inside rushing out, they glanced up. Their faces were wan and gray, eyes black, and their beards were white and braided. Blue Jay knew them on sight as Mazikeen.

  Yet if there were Mazikeen here, he did not understand why they had not revealed themselves. They were not cowards, that much he knew. Which meant they had come here for another purpose, and perhaps it was in his best interest to give them their secrecy for another few moments at least.

  As he searched, he noted the presence of a few other Borderkind. Several merrows sat together, feasting upon raw fish, their webbed fingers and large green eyes revealing their marine nature. Toward the front of the restaurant, bathed in the gray light that came through the pitted glass of a window
, a small man sat eating something that resembled burnt poultry. His features were unmistakably Asian, yet though he was the size of a child, his face was clearly adult. As Blue Jay studied him, he turned away, resolutely refusing to meet the trickster’s gaze.

  Borderkind. Blue Jay was certain of it.

  He started to walk toward the little man and crossed a place where the warm summer rain was frozen, icy sleet. Blue Jay flinched and glanced upward, but even as he did so he realized what had happened. The roof was open to the gray stormy sky, and Frost had passed above the courtyard, watching him, swirling in the wind and rain.

  Cocky and carefree as he normally was, Blue Jay felt a distinct relief at this reassurance that Frost was with him. Cheval and Chorti might be staunch allies, but neither their loyalty nor their skill as warriors had yet been tested.

  The little man glanced at last toward Blue Jay as the trickster approached. Fire ignited his eyes and streamed to the sides, flames rising toward his hair. He was no Greek or Roman legend, obviously, and so he must be Borderkind, or have presented himself as such.

  Blue Jay strode to within several feet of him and bowed.

  The little man with flaming eyes nodded slowly, as though in resignation.

  The bang of wood on marble cracked in the air like a gunshot. Blue Jay twisted round even as Cheval called his name. The Keen Keengs had thrown their table aside. Wings spread, they lunged across the restaurant, banging chairs out of the way and driving a waiter to the ground. Chorti rose up in an explosion of fur and claws, huge jaws opening to reveal those perilously long metal teeth. The first of the Keen Keengs grabbed him and drove him to the ground with the power of its thrashing wings, long talons raking Chorti’s fur.

  Cheval staggered back several steps, retreating from the attack. But she was not fleeing. She transformed in the space of those steps from stunning beauty to horrid ugliness-from woman to the green-furred, muck-encrusted horse-woman form of the kelpy. She reared back and shot out a hoof, cracking the skull of the nearest Keen Keeng. The thing was shaken, but then it spread its wings wider and screamed fury, ignoring the blood that ran from the fissure in its face.

  Blue Jay ran toward his companions, and once again the blur of azure wings colored the air around him. One of the waiters reached out to prevent him from joining the fray and Blue Jay spun, dancing on the air, spirit-wings hammering the waiter, throwing him back onto a table that tipped beneath his weight.

  As he raced toward the Keen Keengs, he saw Chorti grip his attacker by the throat and lift him from the ground. The wild man bared his metal claws and slashed the bat-man’s right wing, shredding it entirely. The Keen Keeng reached for Chorti’s eyes, trying to gouge them out, and the wild man plunged metal claws into its chest and, with a splintering of bone and wet ripping of flesh, tore out a handful of pink organ flesh.

  The one with the cracked skull leaped toward Cheval. Again she kicked it. This time when it stumbled back, the Grindylow caught it in his arms. Blue Jay took flight, feet sweeping above the ground though he maintained a vaguely human form. The trickster was disappointed that he would have to kill the amiable bogie.

  Grin reached up, wrapped an arm around the Keen Keeng’s head, and with a swift jerk broke its neck. He dropped the dead thing to the ground.

  CHAPTER 9

  T he castle of Otranto stood on a hillside above a broad lake whose calm, silvery surface reflected back the image of the castle. It was a grim, practical structure built for the glory of war rather than pride. Round towers marked each corner and the outer walls were windowless. Near the top they were lined with iron spikes to prevent climbing. Even in peacetime, there were soldiers on the battlements and sentries on the tops of the towers and at the gate.

  Hunyadi’s flag waved in the breeze from a post atop the gatehouse.

  The king was in residence.

  Oliver rode alone toward the castle on a road that curved northward through fertile farmland. Men and women worked the fields, harvesting everything from berries to barley. In the distance, the span of two entire hills displayed an orchard full of fruit trees. Pickers carried barrels to wagons drawn by horses, and children ran amongst the trees. Despite the distance, Oliver fancied that he could hear their laughter.

  Small rowboats drifted on the lake, each carrying fishermen who had poles and nets. On the far side of the lake there grazed herds of sheep and cattle. Beyond that, near the forest, he saw several farmhouses spaced quite far apart, complete with barns and pens. There would be chickens and pigs and the like, he presumed. Oliver had the strangest thought-that this thriving community existed only when the king was in residence. Absurd, of course, that these people would simply disappear when Hunyadi was back in Perinthia.

  In truth, it was alive with more vigor and honest effort than any place he had seen on this side of the Veil. Rather than a step into another world, it felt to Oliver like a step back in time, to a simpler era. To a man willing to put in a hard day’s work, Otranto might have been paradise.

  Oliver rode on, toward the gatehouse. The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the land, and stretched the dark silhouette of horse and rider so that they were unrecognizable. The Sword of Hunyadi hung in its scabbard at his side. The letters for the king were in the saddlebag. He rode now toward a castle full of soldiers who had orders to execute him on sight. Oliver no longer bore any real resemblance to the man he once had been, but he wondered if that was because he had changed so dramatically, or because his true self had at last been given free rein.

  A lawyer who buried himself in paperwork and lived in the shadow and the grasp of his father-that had been the way the world knew him. But this was a different world. The concerns that had governed his old life were no longer valid. He was desperate to save his sister, and to find his way back to Julianna. But all of the yearnings that had made a New England attorney seek out the freedom of the stage, to indulge fantasy as an actor no matter how foolish his father deemed it, had formed the basis for his survival here.

  Now, once again, the actor in him had to take the stage. In order to get in to see the king, he would have to create a character, and his performance would have to be perfect. But Oliver had always felt most confident on the stage. As an actor, he could be anyone and do anything. There was freedom in that.

  Kitsune had ridden behind him on the horse and had been as good as her word, guiding him along the path to Otranto. They had passed farms and residences, ridden through two small villages, and no one had attempted to question them-or even stop them-about their identity or destination. At a river crossing they had stopped at a grist mill and gratefully accepted bread that the miller’s wife had made with her own grain.

  When at last they had come over a hill and seen the towers of the castle in the distance, Kitsune had tugged his sleeve and told him to stop. She had dismounted and instructed him to wait half an hour, to give her that time to slip into the castle if she could. He’d rather not have had to ride up to the castle alone, but if he had any hope of going unrecognized, he could not approach the king’s men accompanied by a Borderkind, and by Kitsune in particular.

  Diminishing instantly to the shape of a fox, she gazed up at him with those jade eyes and then dashed down the hill and into a small copse of trees. She would work her way toward the castle and within its walls, if possible. Oliver would not know if she had succeeded until he saw her.

  He rode toward the main gates. The shadows grew longer and the horse snorted with exertion.

  On the shore of the lake, Oliver saw several fishermen pause in their work to watch him ride to the gate. One of them had waded up to his waist in the water and held his fishing pole with a singular nonchalance, as though catching fish was entirely beside the point and the simple act of fishing was enough.

  Oliver tore his gaze away from the lake, and he slowed the horse so as not to unduly alarm the guards. As he rode toward the gatehouse-the front gates open and the portcullis within already raised-the two guards in front we
re joined by two more. All four wore a heavy brown leather armor adorned with the insignia of the king, and helmets of leather and iron that were unlike any he had seen before. The iron was both cap and frame, and the leather hung down on either side and buckled at the throat for protection.

  The soldiers put their hands upon their swords but left them undrawn.

  “Dismount!” one of them said, stepping forward.

  Oliver presumed him the captain, or at least the ranking officer. During their ride, Kitsune had familiarized him with some of the general protocol of the Two Kingdoms. When he had first crossed the Veil with Frost, he hadn’t any reason to need to know such things. Now, though, he was quite glad that he did. He summoned all of the arrogance he could muster, slipping into character just as he would have on the stage.

  “I dislike your tone, sir,” Oliver declared, glaring at the soldiers from the superior position of his saddle. “My name is Gareth Terlaine and I ride from Perinthia with letters for the king. Letters that bear the royal seal. Matters of government are not for soldiers or couriers. We do our duty. Mine is to deliver letters. Yours is to stand aside and make way for one who bears them, as well as the colors of the king.”

  The soldiers all glanced at the banner tied around his arm, just as the real courier had tied his own. Kitsune had stolen the armband and Oliver thought it was the only thing that gave them even the most remote chance of success.

  “Those are the king’s colors,” said one of the men.

  The officer sneered him into silence.

  “You’re dressed oddly, courier. Like a peasant, more like, or a village merchant. Aside from the royal banner, you’ve no uniform to speak of.”

  Oliver smiled. They weren’t entirely stupid. “Indeed, gentlemen, when your uniform is having horse shit cleaned from the breast and the seat of your pants is being stitched and you’re called up suddenly as the courier on duty has fallen ill, you wear the best you have to hand, and the colors of the king. No shame in that, I hope.”