This being the real world, this meant we got passed by almost everyone, honked at three times, and flipped off once. We passed that last car again several minutes later, the driver having gone off the road and slammed into a retaining wall. Someone was standing by the vehicle, talking frantically into a cell phone, but I couldn’t tell if the driver was okay.
Laurie had a vicious little smile on her face as she drove by at precisely the speed limit, and I shivered. It was certainly within the hag’s abilities to hex a driver into crashing, and it was a potent reminder that hags were Unseelie fae. They didn’t tend to be nice people, and it seemed Laurie was no exception to that stereotype.
Thankfully, that was the only incident on our way, and she eventually pulled us into the parking lot of a midsized hotel and conference center in the southwest quadrant of the city. A central tower stood by the road, proudly proclaiming its western-themed name, with one wing stretching along the major road and one stretching away. On the base of the large green-and-yellow sign, I readily recognized the delicate script of fae-sign, invisible to mortal eyes.
This was the joint Seelie-Unseelie Court. The physical home of fae authority in Calgary. The place I had consistently avoided even learning the location of since I got there. Also, and most important today, here was where Oberis, fae Lord in Calgary, would pass judgment on his subjects.
Laurie pulled into a staff only parking spot and stuck a plastic parking pass on the SUV’s rearview mirror.
“Let’s go,” she ordered, the first words she’d spoken since I came out to meet her. She led the way, and I followed her into a lushly decorated lobby done tastefully in dark blues and greens. Display signs behind the reception counter announced the bookings for conference rooms A1 through C6. All of the C-block conference rooms were booked by “Callahan Enterprises”.
“C wing is always booked,” Laurie told me as she led me toward the door with its two security guards. “We change the name every few days, but we don’t let mortals in—it’s the permanent Court.”
Apparently, she was aware I hadn’t been there before, and I was grateful for the unexpected explanation. Maybe she wasn’t all bad.
The two guards shifted slightly as we approached, and I realized what they were with a shock. Both were gentry—the second highest class of Fair Folk, physically equal to the nobles but almost lacking in the mystical gifts that made Laurie, for example, so terrifying.
Of course, “physically equal to the Nobles” meant “faster and tougher than human tanks,” so the gentry were plenty terrifying in their own right. At the sight of Laurie, both bowed slightly and stepped aside.
The door swung shut behind us, and it was suddenly very clear we’d entered a region mortals didn’t enter. The lights were dimmer, calibrated to the fae’s superior vision. Gentle murals of forest landscapes covered the walls, and if you looked at them out of the corner of your eye, you could swear you saw animals moving.
The carpet didn’t change immediately, but as we moved farther into the Court, the dark blue fabric of the lobby carpet gave way to a thick mass of dark green moss, warm and comfortingly moist on the feet. The air in there, a space belonging to the fae, felt more alive than anywhere I’d been in a while.
I breathed deeply. For all that I avoided the politics of the fae Courts as best as I could do, even I could not deny that being there was more relaxing than walking in the mortal world outside.
Finally, Laurie stopped at a set of double doors and gestured, swinging open both sides. With a deep breath, I preceded her through, and she allowed the doors to swing shut behind us.
“My lord, I present the prisoner,” she announced loudly, and the mutter of conversation in the room ceased, leaving me to study the people I’d been brought before.
The Court of the fae in Calgary resembled a business conference more than anything else. Twelve large tables filled the room, with half of them empty and small meetings going on at the others. The twelfth, the largest table, stood on a raised platform at one end of the room, and Oberis himself sat at it, looking down over his people.
Maybe two dozen people were in the room, mostly true fae with a scattering of changelings like myself. This was, as I understood it, about a third of the fae in Calgary. There was easily enough space in the room to hold all of the eighty or so of us in the city.
“Bring him before me,” Oberis ordered.
I didn’t wait for anyone to enforce the order—if nothing else, both Oberis and Laurie could theoretically force me to obey by puppeting my limbs. I suspected that they couldn’t do so through the geases being the Queen’s Vassal had left on me, but I also knew that revealing that would be a bad thing.
“Jason Kilkenny,” Oberis said flatly as I reached the space directly in front of this table. “You stand accused before this Court of risking the Covenants of this city, of pursuing vigilante justice against the best interest of this Court and of falsely using the name of this Court to support some quixotic quest against this cabal of vampires you believe has infiltrated the city. What do you have to say for yourself?”
I took a deep breath. Getting out of this without pissing off Oberis enough to get myself killed, or revealing why I had been hunting the cabal, was not going to be easy.
“It is not a belief,” I started. “I now have seen proof that a group of vampires, in slumber and refrigerated to give the appearance of being corpses, was brought into this city nine months ago. I do not believe that pursuing this cabal, by its nature a deadly threat to our Court and this city’s Covenants, is against our best interests.”
“Even if you are correct in your belief,” Oberis barked, “there are avenues and authorities this information should have been passed on to. It is not your mandate, child, to hunt down feeders in their homes and wield fae power in a way that risks our secrecy. It is not even within this Court’s mandate to hunt feeders in this city.
“If there was truly a cabal in this city,” he continued, “the Wizard would know and would have dispatched his Enforcers to deal with them. That is their mandate and authority, not ours.”
I wondered how much that pissed him off. It was not in the nature of fae lords to submit easily to external authority, even that of the higher Courts, let alone a Wizard’s.
“You lied to Clan Tenerim and have embarrassed this Court by stating you had orders from us,” Oberis said, his voice cold. “By such, you have risked our reputation and authority in this city—reputation and authority won with sacrifices you don’t seem to comprehend!”
“I did not state I had orders from this Court,” I said quietly. “Nor were they from this Court.”
“Then who were they from?” he demanded. “I am the authority for the fae in this city!”
“I cannot answer that question,” I told him, staring at the moss carpeting the ground. This was where things were going to get awkward.
“You will answer the question,” Oberis told me, his voice low and dangerous. “You claimed to the Clans that you had authority no one in this Court gave you. If this was not a lie, then who gave you that authority?”
“I cannot answer that question,” I repeated.
“You appear to be under the illusion, child,” the fae lord said, his voice approximating ice in temperature, “that you are allowed secrets from me. You are not. You will answer the...”
Oberis’s ice-cold rant was interrupted by the double doors slamming open and the small figure of Eric von Radach stomping in. For all that the gnome was less than half the height of the doors he had just come through, he was suddenly the center of all attention in the room.
Eric was the Keeper. The Keeper was the neutral arbitrator in fae affairs, the keeper of secrets, one whose word that something was true would be taken, even when the secrets themselves could not be revealed. It was tradition that a Keeper did not enter Court except in that capacity.
“I claim Right of Confidence on this trial,” the gnome said simply into the silence that had descended. “We have
passed beyond—far beyond, my lord,” he noted pointedly, “affairs that should be public knowledge of the Court.”
For a moment, Oberis looked torn between having Eric thrown out and ordering everyone else out, both of which would be possible but...unusual. Finally, he sighed.
“Fine,” he said. “You and you”—he pointed at me and Eric—“follow me.”
He pushed his chair back from the table and stalked toward a door in the corner of the banquet hall cum courtroom. I hurried to follow, after a quick glance to make sure Eric was coming as well.
The door led back out into the moss-carpeted hallway with the conference room exits, and Oberis strode confidently down the hall while Eric and I hurried to keep up. We quickly left the conference center and passed into a—still moss-floored and hence fae ground—hallway of offices. On a Sunday, they were all empty.
Oberis led us into the office at the end, which turned out to have been re-walled in stone-and-mahogany paneling. A massive black walnut desk occupied pride of place in the small room, and the stones that made up the bottom half of the walls had been carved into bookshelves—every one of them full of well-worn copies of books on a thousand topics. Oberis’s library covered everything from quantum physics to electrical engineering to philosophy, and I didn’t doubt he’d read every one of the thousands of books in his office.
Other than the chair behind the desk, there was no seating in the office, and he looked to Eric as we entered.
“Keeper, if you would be so kind,” he said, gesturing to the empty space in front of his desk, his voice suddenly tired.
Eric nodded and promptly pulled two chairs, copies of the ones I’d seen in his apartment, out of thin air and sat on one. Gingerly, I took a seat on the other and faced Calgary’s fae lord across his desk.
For all of the medieval trappings of the office, the computer that sat on the desk looked like something out of science fiction. Any CPU casing was presumably hidden inside the desk, and the monitor was paper thin—turned off as it was, I could actually see through it. There was no visible keyboard, though I recognized a box at the base of the monitor as the projector for a laser one. A black mouse, textured to look like a piece of obsidian, was the only other item on the desk.
“I think I have all the pieces now,” Oberis said quietly. Here, in private, he sounded much less powerful and more tired than he had in public, and I suddenly wondered just how old he was. A noble fae could easily live over a thousand years, and many of the older ones found dealing with the pace of modern politics and power difficult.
“I’m left with one question for you, Kilkenny,” he continued. “Which one?”
“Which what?” I asked, confused.
“One of the High Fae entered my city via the Between,” Oberis told me patiently. “I can only assume, now, that they came to visit you for Powers only know what reason. This High Fae would be the source of your orders and why you did not actually say this Court had given you your task—making you neither an embarrassment to this Court, if we can confirm this to the Tenerim, nor a liar to the Tenerim. So, I have to know which of the High Court commands you.”
There were nine members of the High Court of the Fae—the Powers who ruled our kind. The Queen ruled them, but the Horned King, the Lord of the Wild Hunt, the Ladies of the Seasons, and the Seelie and Unseelie Lords were all Powers—demigods like the Magus who ruled Calgary.
“I am a Vassal of Mabona,” I said quietly. There wasn’t much point in lying to him now.
He looked over at Eric. “And this is true?” Oberis asked.
“Yes,” the Keeper said quietly. “He is marked to those with eyes to see, like the Keepers. By blood right, he is a Vassal of the Queen, and She has claimed him as such.”
“Damn,” the fae lord whispered, eyeing me as he rested his head in his hands. “Do you have any idea how fucked up you’re making my life?”
He sighed, pulled something out of his desk and tossed it to me. I caught it—it was a small burlap bag, about the size of a sandwich ziplock.
“Take a look at that,” he told me. “That is what everything in this city is about.”
I opened the bag. Inside was a mix of dust and small stones, all the same shade of dark gray. I sniffed and realized the stone was giving off a faint cinnamon-like aroma.
“What is it?” I asked finally.
“Heartstone,” Oberis told me. “It’s a by-product of the oil sands production, it all flows through Calgary, and the Wizard has a complete lock on it. Ninety percent of the world’s production comes from here, and everyone wants to control it.”
“Why?” I asked, passing the bag back to him. It smelt nice and looked odd, but it was hardly the first unusual material I’d seen since being dragged into the world of the fae.
“Mixed with gold, it is orichalcum, the alchemist’s key and a requirement for any magical artefact and much of a Wizard’s higher powers,” Eric explained, eyeing the bag on Oberis’s desk. “Mixed with mercury, it is quicksilver—an extraordinary drug for our kind that can make us stronger, faster, more powerful. Mixed with human blood, it is lifesblood and can temporarily allow a vampire to be, in almost all ways, truly alive.
“And mixed with silver,” Oberis finished grimly, “it is bane, instant death to any shifter, and capable of shattering any non-Powers’ magical constructs.
“It is through control of the flow of heartstone that the Wizard commands this city,” he continued. “He deals with the shifters to limit it, with us to supply it, and with wizards and fae elsewhere for it as well.”
“Everyone wants it,” I said quietly, “and the shifters want to leave it where it is. And mortal politics?”
“Inhuman politics have always had their reflections in the mortal world,” Oberis said with a nod. “You are correct: the designs of the various factions have shaped the politics around the oil sands in the human world.”
Oberis looked me in the eyes.
“The Court has been censured for your actions,” he explained. “Our supply of heartstone has been temporarily reduced in punishment, though as you did not break the Covenants, your punishment is left to me.
“Understand that you have embarrassed this Court, and I cannot let that pass,” he continued. “While I understand that you are bound to obey the orders of your mistress, I must demand that you do so more discreetly in future. It is within the limits of my authority over one such as you to demand that you do not interact with the other groups in this city, and so I lay that restriction on you.
“If you need aid in your task, turn to Eric or myself,” he instructed. “You will not make contact with Clan Tenerim or the other shifters, do you understand? This is my will and this is my city, so you will obey.”
I bowed my head in agreement. I couldn’t really argue—Vassal or no Vassal, Oberis could still kill me with a word.
“For the rest, I will regard your wounds as punishment enough,” he continued. “Is this satisfactory, Keeper?” He turned to Eric.
The gnome nodded. “You are within your rights,” he said simply.
Oberis hit an intercom button. “Laurie, attend, please.”
The hag entered the room after a minute or so.
“Take Mr. Kilkenny home,” the fae lord instructed. “The Keeper and I still have matters to discuss.”
Laurie drove me home, exactly as precisely obedient to traffic laws as when she drove me to the Court. When we pulled up next to the apartment, she locked the door before I could get out.
“It appears my lord has chosen to be lenient with you,” she told me, and for the first time since I’d met her, she fully dropped the glamor. Old, old black eyes glared at me, and I shivered as the full force of the hag’s attention hit me.
“I have seen the aftermath of your stupidity,” she continued. “Leave these affairs to those better suited for them, or perhaps next time I will not bother my lord with the affairs of troublesome children. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, fear ha
ving frozen my voice. She unlocked the door, and I was almost shoved out, standing on the sidewalk, watching her drive away.
Just to add to everything, Oberis’s pet hag had taken a disliking to me. I had no doubt that if she decided “not to bother” Oberis, my life expectancy would then be measured in minutes.
With a sigh, I went into my apartment building. Discretion was now doubly necessary, but I had no illusions about my ability to defy my Queen. Or even keep Her from knowing what was going on, as was pointed out to me when I logged onto Fae-Net.
I didn’t even know the email client I used for the Fae-Net had the ability to mark a message as “high priority”, but I had one marked as such. There was no return sender, and it was signed merely M.
You have done well, she started. Events are moving quickly, and you have achieved more than I had hoped.
Sigridsen’s capture would have been preferable to her destruction, as Oberis or the shifter Alpha could have forced her to reveal more, but the circumstances were beyond your control.
I request that you attempt to avoid being as drastically wounded in future. I have arranged for certain supplies to be delivered to your apartment. Use them wisely.
M.
A suspicion in my mind, I looked around my apartment. I was correct—a black hard-cased briefcase had materialized on my table at some point since Friday evening. I’d missed it coming in, since I hadn’t expected there to be anything in my house I hadn’t put there.
I opened the briefcase. The left half was occupied by a neatly folded cloth package. The right half contained one of the smallest pistols I’d ever seen. The receiver was marked with a cleanly filed flat space that should have held a serial number, and the text IWI Ltd compact Jericho 941.
Two ten-round magazines filed the space around the pistol, and two twenty-round boxes rounded out my “care package”. I pulled one of the bullets out of the box and shivered at the touch. I’d seen these rounds before, in the hands of fae security—it was a modified hollow-point carrying a mixed silver, cold-iron and garlic distillate payload.
Changeling's Fealty (Changeling Blood Book 1) Page 8
