Sixty-One Nails cotf-1

by Mike Shevdon

  I reached down and felt for the connection. The Way swelled beneath me and rose. I stepped forward and felt it pick me up and rush me away. Unlike the wild ride of the other ways, this one had only echoes of the vast emptiness I had felt before and lasted mere moments. Then I was stepping into a brightly lit room which smelled neither damp nor musty. Blackbird was there with Garvin and I walked forward out of the Way across the stone tiles to allow the others to follow me. I turned around, noticing there were no windows, and realising there was someone behind me. The figure stood behind me was the size of a man. His pelt was brown like warm chestnut and his arms and legs were long under the dark grey cotton of his loose clothing. The long fur on his head fell forward over his face and there was the bright glint of dark eyes under the stringy fringe. He smiled, baring rows of sharp pointed teeth in a grin far too wide to be human. He was holding a short spear with a long, double-edged blade, held so the point angled down towards the floor. The blade looked clean and sharp and he was poised, like a dancer.

  "This is Slimgrin. He's here to make sure only invited guests arrive this way."

  "Where are we?" I asked Garvin.

  "Somewhere else," he said offhandedly. He turned to Slimgrin. "When the others come through, tell Amber and Tate to follow us upstairs and have Fellstamp help you here. Close the gate as soon as they've arrived."

  Slimgrin nodded. The way they used names was arrogant, as if it didn't matter that we knew them.

  Garvin turned and walked towards the bottom of a stairway, gesturing us to follow.

  The stairs were wider than those we had descended and doubled back on themselves to rise to an open doorway. At the top was a grand hallway of the type that might have graced a small country mansion or an upmarket townhouse. The tall ceilings gave the building a Georgian feel, as if ladies dressed in bustles and panniers would appear at any moment. There was an open door into a sitting room with armchairs loosely arrayed around a large stone fireplace. The curtains had been drawn across the large windows and a couple of Regency-style standard lamps were left on, providing a soft and unobtrusive light. The fire had been set, but was unlit.

  Garvin escorted us into the room.

  "Sit here for a moment until they're ready for you. It shouldn't be long."

  Blackbird went to an armchair and sat on the armrest. I walked to the fireplace and turned to face the room. I was too nervous to sit. Garvin stood next to the doorway, not blocking the exit exactly but making it clear that we were to stay.

  Amber and Tate appeared together. Tate went to the chair opposite Blackbird, the wood frame of the chair making protesting creaking noises as he eased himself into it. He rested his head on the back of the chair, placed the axe across the arms and looked at ease. Amber stood inside the door leaning back against the wall, the sword in her hand resting against the side of her leg. She watched me like a cat watches a mouse-hole.

  We waited in complete silence for ten minutes. I found myself listening to Blackbird breathe. The tiny sounds of the overburdened chair under Tate overlaid the faint nameless noises from the rest of the house. If I listened carefully I could hear my own blood pumping in my ears.

  Approaching footsteps warned us of the arrival at the door before she appeared. In contrast to Amber, she wore a midlength shift dress, in charcoal grey like everyone else, but it was short enough to show off her bare legs and clung to her curves. She was tall and pretty and moved with a lithe grace that said she knew it. Her hair was blond and fell in long curling ringlets around her shoulders. Strangely, her curls appeared to move on their own, even when she was standing still, giving her an unearthly quality at odds with her pretty girl image. In her hand was a short baton, thicker and shorter than Garvin's staff and polished with a glossy black lacquer.

  She nodded to Garvin and smiled at us. "Hello, I'm Fionh. Blackbird, they will see you now." She stepped back from the doorway and waited for Blackbird to rise.

  I stepped forward to go with Blackbird, but Tate lifted one hand. "Just the girl," he rumbled.

  Blackbird came to me, turning her face up to accept a chaste kiss. "Good fortune," she whispered.

  She turned and walked through the door, Fionh and Amber falling in behind, the footsteps fading as they went deeper into the house. There was creak as Tate shifted in his chair. Garvin didn't move.

  I went to the armchair Blackbird had vacated and slumped into it. Her warmth lingered in the arm where my hand rested. I had hoped we would be able to see them together, to face them as we had faced other adversaries. We weren't being given that option. Still, Blackbird knew what to say if it came to it. We had no way of knowing why the council wanted to see us. It could be good news. They might want to reward us for the service we had performed, though somehow I doubted that. I had been summoned to numerous board meetings in the past and it was never to give you a pat on the back and tell you what a good boy you'd been.

  I pushed my mind away from worrying about Blackbird to thoughts of my work colleagues and what they would say when I resigned. Would they let me resign or would I already have been let go? If I was lucky then there would be a settlement package waiting to tide me over until Blackbird and I had our lives sorted out. That was assuming we still had our lives.

  The footsteps in the corridor brought me to my feet. Tate stayed in the chair until the last possible moment, only levering himself up after Fionh appeared in the doorway.

  "They will see you now," she said.

  "Where's Blackbird?" I asked her.

  "She is being cared for, don't worry."

  "If she is harmed…" I told them.

  Garvin interrupted. "She won't be harmed while she's pregnant."

  "How did you know about that?" I asked him.

  He shrugged, a seismic movement. "I make it my business to know about the people I have to deal with."

  Fionh led the way while Garvin and Tate fell in behind. We went back into the house, which was clearly a substantial property. We passed room after room, some with dust covers over the furniture as if they hadn't been used in years. We came at the end to a set of double doors facing us. Fionh opened one of the doors toward her, stepping to the side to allow me to enter.

  "Garvin will go in with you," she said.

  Inside, the room was dimly lit. I stepped through the doorway into a room buzzing with power. Outside there had been no trace of it, but within the room it was like walking through a cloud of static.

  There was a large domed ceiling with a mural painted on it, like the ones you see in churches, except the angels had far too many teeth and the wrong sort of wings.

  The room could originally have been a ballroom. There was a gallery at the far end where the musicians might have sat. In the centre of the floor was a pool of light within which there was a huge seven-pointed star.

  "Come forward, Alshirian, called Dogstar, also called Niall Petersen, so that we may see you."

  Arrayed in a semi-circle around the star were seven chairs, large enough to be called thrones and set back so they were in shadow. Six of the chairs were occupied, illuminated dimly by some unseen light source. The empty chair was dark.

  Whether it was some distortion caused by the power in the room or a quality of the light, the figures in the chairs were isolated, picked out against the dark.

  Some of the occupants had features I recognised. The strikingly beautiful blue-eyed lady wrapped in the deep blue cloak had hair that wound around the finials on the top of her chair of its own volition and was just as disturbing as Fionh's had been. The short fellow with the broad nose and the grumpy expression reminded me of Marshdock and Fellstamp. They shared common features in the way a son inherits his father's ears.

  A delicate figure with finely boned limbs ending in long spindly fingers sat to my right. Her skin was pale as moonlight and her ears came sharply to a point. She had a small pert nose and a mouth wider than a human mouth would be. Her eyes were slightly elongated and shone green in the dark as she turned a yellow g
old band on her left wrist. Next to her was a huge woman, her face broad and flat, her forearms the size of hams. Ivory teeth protruded from her bottom jaw, reminding me of Gramawl, but she was largely hairless and as pale skinned as her neighbour. Heavy silver rings dangled from each ear and she had a broad leather belt around her waist, pulled over a loose shirt with a great silver ram's-head buckle.

  Next to her was a man who I would have not looked twice at if I had met him elsewhere. Dressed in a red silk shirt, he had a feral look about him that spoke of something predatory. He regarded me with cold malice.

  For a moment, I thought the figure next to him was Slimgrin, the warder who had been waiting in the room downstairs, but the fur on his head had been caught into a topknot and he had a groomed, more cultured look about him. He also had a heavy silver chain around his neck that sat bright against the dark lustre of his fur.

  They were clearly waiting for me, so I stepped forward into the circle of light and stood at the centre of the star. Garvin moved in behind me. The light caught the bright edge of a bare blade in his hand. His staff had transformed into a long slim blade and scabbard. I hadn't heard him draw it.

  "Is that necessary?" I asked him.

  "Not my decision." He shrugged lightly.

  I turned back to the dimly lit figures in the seats.

  "Is that it? Have you brought me here to slaughter me?"

  I was greeted with silence. The power in the room was making my ears buzz.

  "If not for that, then why am I here?"

  "That's a better question," said the lady in the blue cloak in a light contralto voice. "I am Kimlesh. I speak for the Nymphine Court, the undines and the greyne. That's one of the things we are here to consider. Why you are here."

  "You summoned me."

  "I meant why you, a wraith, un-bound of the Seventh Court and part-human, are here."

  "That, I don't know," I said honestly.

  "Blackbird has told you, I'm sure, that the Seventh Court are not known for associating with humans."

  "The fact I'm here means someone has been playing away from home, though, doesn't it?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "How else do you explain it?"

  "There was a time, long ago, when the Feyre were not as you see us today. Each of us here holds a strand of that thread. Teoth, there, holds the office of High Maker, held only by the luchorpán and the nixies. Mellion is the Hordemaster, ruler of all the goblins and gnolls of the Goblin Court. These boundaries were made, though. They did not appear by accident."

  "What does that have to do with me?"

  "We, in this room, made a decision some time ago, to allow our bloodlines to mix with those of humanity and repair the damage that was done. We allowed, and in some cases even encouraged, a liaison between the races."

  "I know. That's why the Seventh Court rebelled."

  "The Feyre has become more and more specialised as certain traits only manifest themselves inside a single court. It has made us fragile."

  "You don't appear fragile to me."

  "I don't mean fragile as individuals. I mean as a race. We have lost the ability to reproduce because parts of our makeup have become unstable."

  "But breeding with humans fixes that?"

  "We took a calculated risk. We have known for a long time that the union between Feyre and Human was fertile and had the potential to restore the fertility lost to us. Humans spread like moss on a damp tree. If we could acquire some of their fecundity then we would be restored. That was a prize worth the taking. Human blood has the missing pieces, as far as we are concerned. You are a demonstration of that. You already have a daughter and there's another child on the way."

  "Blackbird told you?"

  "We already knew. The prospect of a birth is important news amongst the courts of the Feyre."

  "Then you asked me here to congratulate me?"

  The answer was not a warm one. "The nature of the babe is uncertain."

  "You mean it could turn out like me, wraithkin, rather than like Blackbird."

  "It's more complicated than that. When we mixed our bloodlines with humanity, the capacity to have children was not the only thing altered. It was the risk we took when we allowed it."

  "What else changed?"

  "The Feyre are defined by physical form. Fey'ree are small and delicate like Yonna here," she gestured to the pale, slim figure with the green eyes, "whereas ogres like Barthia are much larger and stronger." She gestured to the huge woman, who accepted the complement with a nod.

  I looked back at Yonna. I could see now the resemblance from when Blackbird had transformed herself in the room above the inn, when we were in Shropshire. The pale skin and the way the eyes were elongated. "I am Fey'ree," she'd told me. "A creature of Fire and Air."

  Kimlesh continued. "Humans, though, do not inherit the full form of the Feyre. They can acquire aspects of it, of course, and some are more Fey than others, but none are quite like us."

  "Is that a problem?"

  "It makes it much harder to determine what gifts they have inherited, especially as human blood adds its own twist, bringing forth gifts that were formerly dormant."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that your Fey forebear could have come from any court, not just that of Altair, our missing brother. Your human blood threw the dice and you are the result. Just because you are wraithkin and Blackbird is Fey'ree does not mean your child will be one or the other. Human heredity has thrown us back into the hands of fortune. Your daughter, Alexandra, could take after any of us. As could your unborn son."

  "My son? It's a boy?"

  "Did Kareesh not tell you? Yes, if Blackbird survives to deliver him, you will have a son. Be warned, though, birth among the Feyre is a hazardous business. Blackbird must be careful."

  "I'll look after her."

  "You?" It was the first time the feral man in the red shirt had spoken. "You're not leaving this room."

  THIRTY

  Teoth broke the silence that followed that remark.

  "Unfortunately, Krane is right. We cannot allow you to leave."

  "I'm sorry? Why not?"

  "Blood price alone demands your heart," said Krane.

  "We talked about this, Krane," said Yonna. "Fenlock initiated the attack. Even Carris agrees. She cannot claim blood price."

  "It doesn't matter," said Krane. "He knows about the ceremony. He knows about the barrier and the arrangements we made. He cannot be allowed to leave this room with that knowledge. He could bring the whole thing down around our ears and there would be nothing we could do to prevent it. Are you prepared to set him free with that knowledge?"

  "He has a point," said the deep booming voice of the ogre. "Our position would be significantly undermined."

  "What about Blackbird?" I asked. "She knows as much as I do. What will you do? Wait until the babe is born and then kill her too?"

  "Her position is different," said Yonna. "She is bound to the Court of Fire and Air. We have taken her word that she will tell no one else. It's her life if she breaks that oath and she knows it."

  "Then do the same with me. Will you not accept my oath?"

  None of them would meet my eyes. Even Krane looked away.

  Barthia broke the silence that followed. "There is only one court that could have you, and that seat is vacant."

  "Because I'm wraithkin."

  "Even so," she said.

  Claire Radisson looked up to the gallery of Court Four to see if she could see Ben Highsmith. At that distance and in this light her eyesight wasn't good enough to distinguish faces, even with her contact lenses. She smiled anyway, hoping he could see her and not realise how nervous she was. She and Jerry had conducted the Quit Rents Ceremony many times before, but it had never had the significance it had today.

  When Ben Highsmith had appeared on Sunday, his clothes soaked through with river water, he had caused quite a stir. Security had refused to let him in and he had been threatened with arrest. It
was only when he'd asked for her by name and they had promised to bring her to see him that he'd calmed down enough to allow himself to be led to a side room away from the busy entrance.

  She'd found him standing in the security office, a grim smile on his face and the towel she had lent Niall in his gnarled hands. The knives had been wrapped in it. He'd told her what had happened and insisted the ceremony must go ahead.

  Elizabeth had expressed her concerns. The grey tinge underlying Jerry's complexion worried Claire too, but Blackbird's message had been clear. The best protection for Jerry, his family, and everyone else was the restoration of the knife and the performance of the Ceremony of the Quit Rents.

  Whatever Blackbird had said to Elizabeth in the hospital must have been enough because she acceded, though she could see her sitting in the front row, the set of her shoulders a testament to the enforced leave Jerry would be taking as soon as his duties were completed.

  Behind Elizabeth, the two figures dressed in red grandeur stood with chains of office hung about their necks. These were the candidates for the Sheriff of the City of London and for Middlesex. They were being presented to the Queen's Remembrancer, in his role as representative of the monarch, for approval. Since the City of London had picked the wrong side in the conflict between Simon de Montfort and Henry III, they had been required by the reigning monarch to present their sheriffs for ratification. They would have been brought up the river from the Square Mile and then walked through the Inns of Court in procession with all the pageantry this group of wealthy middle-aged men could muster.

  "And can you confirm for me," the Queen's Remembrancer called out in tones that carried up to the rafters, "that there was no repetition, when crossing Temple, of the disgraceful scenes of 1756?"

  The Comptroller of the City of London, wrapped in his bearskin cloak, shook his head and smiled.

  "I can assure Your Lordship, these fine men have behaved impeccably and were received with courtesy and respect wherever they walked."