by Mike Shevdon
“You’re late,” I told her in a low voice. “I will speak to you later.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, leaning forward to put her hand on her thighs and catch her breath. “You’ve got to get out.”
I sighed. “No amount of dramatics is going to get you out of this one, Alex. You’re in deep trouble.” I lifted the baby high and called out to the assembled court. “I give you, William, first son of the Court of the Gifted, may he live in happiness and peace.”
“To William!” they shouted, raising their glasses, trying to ignore the theatrics from my daughter.
“You have to leave!” Alex shouted at them. “Go now!” The room fell into an uneasy silence.
“Alex, that’s enough,” I said to her.
She ignored me. “You’ve all got to get out!” she said. “While you still can.”
“Alex!” I shouted.
She turned to me. “It’s a trick, don’t you see? This isn’t Grey's Court, it’s a trick to get you all here. You’ve got to get out, while there’s still time.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Blackbird.
Another figure pushed forward through the crowd, slowly this time. They parted around her, and there were murmurs of unease as she advanced through them. Finally she stood beside Alex, looking up into her face. Alex looked down on her with a mixture of revulsion and fascination.
“So this is the girl,” said the spindly figure in her crackly voice. She reached up with her oddly formed hands — no thumb but a little finger at each side articulated inwards. The wispy material of her sleeve fell back revealing alabaster skin so thin it was as if you could see the bones beneath. Alex stepped back to avoid her touch.
“Kareesh,” said Blackbird. “What are you doing here?”
TWENTY-ONE
“I thought you’d be taller,” said Kareesh to Alex. “So many of the young ones are tall these days.”
“Who the hell are you?” said Alex, staying out of reach.
“Pretty, though,” said Kareesh. She spoke to me. “She has your eyes.”
“I came to see you,” I said quietly to Kareesh. “Gramawl is looking everywhere for you. We need to talk.”
“Too late for talk,” said Kareesh, hobbling towards Alex who backed steadily away into the people behind her. “The girl has it right. You should listen to her.”
“What is this about?” asked Blackbird.
Kareesh turned her glass-black stare on Blackbird. “Ah, girl, a Lady at last and so beautiful. So sorry it has to be like this.”
“Like what?” said Blackbird.
Kareesh turned her gaze back on Alex. “Tell them,” she said.
Alex stared at her, mute.
“Tell them,” she insisted.
“I was with Tate. He recognised the house. It’s not what it appears to be.”
“What were you doing with Tate?” I asked her.
“Not now, Niall,” said Blackbird.
“What do you mean, not now?” I asked Blackbird. “What do you know about this?”
“You have to listen!” Alex shouted over us. “It’s called Grey’s Court now, but it was the Wraithkin Court. The National Trust doesn’t own it. It belongs to the wraithkin. It is the home of the Seventh Court!”
Murmurs spread throughout the crowd, between those who didn’t know what the Seventh Court was, and those who did.
“It can’t be,” said Blackbird. “We beat the bounds. The wardings — I’d know.”
Kareesh spoke. “Not for centuries have they been here, not since they were exiled — nigh a thousand years. In all that time it has lain fallow and empty. No one renewed their wardings, no one beat the bounds of the court. It has all but been forgotten, but for a few of us who remember.”
“I knew I felt something,” said Blackbird in disbelief. “I didn’t know what it was.”
“It was a trick,” said Alex, “to bring you here. Can’t you see?”
“We have to get everyone out,” I said to the assembled company. “Everyone down to the Way-node in the village,” I told them. “Go now! It doesn’t matter where you go, just get out! We’ll find you later.”
The doors behind us that led to the garden room drew back and opened wide. I caught Blackbird’s hand and drew her away as the doors drew back into the darkness beyond and figures emerged. We pressed back into the crowd behind us, facing the doorway.
“I think you’ll find,” said a voice I knew well, “that the Way-node in the village is not the safe, happy place it once was. Anyone who wants to leave is going to have to run, and keep running.”
“Raffmir,” I said.
He moved to one side of the door, another wraithkin I did not recognise moving to the other side. In between them was someone I had only ever seen once before once, at the High Court of the Feyre.
“It’s been a long time since the Wraithkin Court had visitors,” said Lord Altair.
“You…” said Blackbird. “You should not be here.”
“Why so?” asked Altair. I was struck again at the rich musical tone of his voice. It had timbre and lightness where you would have expected something harsh and mean.
“You are banned from this world,” she reminded him.
“You forget yourself,’ he said, letting his eyes wander around the room, taking in the decor. “I do believe the old place has had a lick and a promise,” he said. “It’s almost as if we were expected.”
“You cannot be here,” Blackbird said.
“Cannot?” said Altair. “Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do.”
“The barrier…” said Blackbird.
“You forget,” said Altair, “assuming you ever knew in the first place. The barrier was created after we left. We were not sent away, we took ourselves apart. We crossed the void so that we might have peace and safety.” He looked around at the gathered faces. “What we could once cross, we can cross again.”
Kareesh hobbled forward. “Always the tricksy one,” said Kareesh in her crackly voice. “Never to be trusted.”
“Why is it, Kareesh?” asked Altair, “that wherever trouble is, you turn up? Somehow I knew you’d be here.”
“I came to plead,” said Kareesh.
“For their lives?” said Altair. “They were never meant to be. This is your doing, old one. Their pain is your burden. Their blood is on your hands.”
“Not to plead for them,” said Kareesh. “For you. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Oh, please,” said Altair. “Not this again? Surely we are beyond that at least.”
“Long ago, I saw the future of the Feyre,” said Kareesh. “Long ago, I knew that without change they would stagnate and eventually die. It was as inevitable as the tide.”
“Spare us,” said Altair, looking at the ceiling.
“I knew my time was near, my last chance to save them all. It began with you, Altair. You had your chance,” said Kareesh. “You could have mixed the blood of the courts and all would have been well again.”
“You wish to justify your own perversions,” said Altair. “Purity will out.”
“And there’s none more pure than you, is there Altair?” she said, her voice wavering.
“You cannot sway me with compliments,” he said.
“And so there was another path,” said Kareesh. “By mixing the bloodlines with humanity the Feyre could endure.”
“Half-breeds,” said Altair. “Mongrels. Neither one thing nor the other. A dilution of the noble quality of the courts to be replaced by charlatans.” He looked around the faces, “Fakery, frauds and dog-witches, begging a seat at the hearth for a handful of herbs and a tin whistle.”
“You would have killed them all, but the barrier kept you apart. In time those children bore their own offspring, each generation renewing the pattern,” said Kareesh. “Now that pattern emerges again.” She searched the faces around her, looking for something she recognised.
“We tried to cleanse them,” said
Altair. “But the High Court would not listen. The Warders stepped in, and we were beaten back. Well, not this time.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Why not this time?” I looked between Kareesh and Altair, but they were focused only on each other.
Kareesh ignored me. “When the barrier fell, you would have wiped them away, but it did not fall.”
“Your meddling will be your undoing, old one,” said Altair.
“How you must have raged,” she said, “to find yourself denied by a stripling girl and an untutored novice.”
“We will be denied no longer,” said Altair. “Tonight it all ends.”
“So it does,” said Kareesh. “The sun will rise and they shall fall. So say I.”
“…they shall fall,” echoed Angela.
I looked between Angela and Kareesh. “What?” I asked them. “What does it mean?”
Kareesh looked up at me with those unblinking black eyes. “I am so sorry,” she said, “that the burden must be yours, but you would have died in any case, had I not despatched her to the platform at Leicester Square to save you.”
“…so much brightness,” said Angela.
“What is it?” I shouted at them. “What are you telling me?”
“They are telling you that tonight is your last,” said Altair. “It is the winter solstice and tonight the sun has reached its nadir. From tonight it will rise, each day a little higher in the sky.”
“And tonight,” said Raffmir to me, “I will finally have my revenge. You will die by my hand.”
“You can’t kill me,” I told him. “You are sworn not to harm me or mine. If you do then under fey law your own life is forfeit.”
“There is no fey law,” said Altair. “The courts have fallen. They are dissolved. There is only one law, and it is mine.”
“But Kimlesh, Yonna, Mellion?” said Blackbird. “If you do this they will stand against you.”
“Kimlesh is dead,” said Altair. “So is Yonna. Mellion has fled, and Barthia is fuel for her own pyre. Krane is a ragged pile of fur and dust, and Teoth? Teoth is buried in his own earth.”
“They have fallen,” said Kareesh sadly. “The sun is at its darkest. There is no night longer than this.”
A shadow emerged behind Kareesh. Altair saw it and called out, “No, don’t…!”
There was a soft punching sound, and the tip of a blade emerged from the front of Kareesh’s shift. She looked down, not in surprise, but in recognition. The blood welled around the blade, soaking into the soft grey cloth. “So it begins,” she said, and slumped forward, her body crumpling into a heap at Deefnir’s feet.
“Enough words,” said Deefnir from behind her, wiping the knife and returning it to the sheath at his side. “She talks too much.”
Altair looked on in shock. “Deefnir, you do not know what you’ve done,” he whispered. Then he shouted. “Kill them! Kill all of them!”
“Run! Hide! Get away if you can!” I shouted, passing the baby to Blackbird and drawing my sword, as the people behind her scrambled past each other to get away. I backed towards the door.
“This ends tonight,” said Altair. “I want them all, no matter where they run, wherever they hide.”
Raffmir stepped forward, baring his sword in one smooth movement. He extended his free hand and the lights died. In a second he was outlined in cold fire. “Hide and seek,” he said. “My favourite game.”
I turned and ran through the door, looking for Blackbird, Alex, and William.
Sparky grabbed the wrist of the dark-eyed girl and pulled her out of the press heading for the main door. “Vicky, this way!”
“Let me go,” she said, pulling back resentfully, trying to rejoin the outward flow.
“Where are you going?” asked Sparky in a hoarse whisper.
“We have to get out. Didn’t you hear?”
“Yeah,” said Sparky. “They’ll be waiting out there in the dark, you mark my words.”
“You think so?” she said, watching people pushing through the main doors in their rush to get away.
“Course they will,” he said. “Stands to reason doesn’t it? First you cause panic, then you divert everyone straight into the mouth of the trap.” He clasped his hands together like the teeth of a beast, and she flinched and looked away.
“What are you going to do then?” she said. “They’ll be here in a minute and then it won’t make any difference.”
“We’ve got to use our heads,” said Sparky, tapping the side of his. “Come on, follow me.”
“Where are we going?” she whispered after him.
“Where we’re not expected to be. We’ll hide out somewhere quiet and emerge when all the fuss is over. We can slip away when no one’s the wiser.” He ducked into a door under the stairs which she hadn’t seen before. Inside, he pressed the door closed until it gave a light click.
“It’d be better if we could lock it, but there’s no lock so that’ll have to do,” he whispered. “I daren’t put a light on in case it draws attention.” In the darkness they felt around.
“Oi! Pack that in,” said Vicky.
“Sorry,” said Sparky. I can’t see a damned thing. I was exploring with my hands.”
“Well explore somewhere else,” she said firmly.
She didn’t sound too cross, though, and Sparky was beginning to think he might have fallen on his feet. There were coats hanging from pegs along the wall. They smelled musty and faintly of wet woodland walks and stale dog. Sparky started going through the coats one by one.
“What are you looking for?” asked the girl.
“You never know what you might find and I figure anything useful is good news. It’s all gone a bit pear-shaped, you know?”
“You’re not kidding,” she said. “How long do you think we need to stay in here?”
From beyond the door, there was a long shriek which ceased quite suddenly. “We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Sparky.
“Is it me, or is it getting lighter?” said the girl.
“It’s your eyes, getting used to the dark,” said Sparky. “No, hang on a minute, it is getting light.”
A voice spoke from the darkness at the end of the row of coats. “Perhaps your search would be more productive if you had a little more illumination.” The tiny room chilled sharply, and the room filled with dappled moonlight.
“Aw crap!” said Sparky.
“Where are you?” called Raffmir softly into the dark. “Come out, come out.”
He could hear distant screams already in the house, echoing down the stairs. Perhaps they thought he wouldn’t be able to find them in the dark? Perhaps they simply imagined that if they couldn’t see him, he wouldn’t be able to see them either. Of course, if he absorbed enough power he’d be able to see them behind furniture and through walls, but where was the fun in that? He would find them all eventually. They were like rats in a barrel, they had nowhere to go.
Walking slowly through the parlour, he checked behind the sofa and upturned the chairs. “Hmm,” he said. “Not here.”
Moving quietly through the passages, he left the public part of the house and entered the area reserved for servants and underlings. It amused him that any of them would choose to hide here — he found it strangely appropriate. The door to the kitchen and scullery was beyond. They forgot, he already knew the layout. He knew where all the hiding holes were. He’d scoured the hallway niches. He’d checked the space under the stairs. Disappointingly he’d found nothing yet, but there was plenty of time.
Stepping gently into the darkened kitchen, he could hear the copper pans hanging from a battery above the table clinking gently as if disturbed by a night breeze. He lifted his sword and then ducked sharply just as the skillet whooshed past where his head had been.
Clang! It crashed into the battery, sending pots and pans tumbling noisily across the floor.
He stepped sideways. Clong! The skillet swished back and hit the wall.
He stepped in, grabbed the handle
and wrenched it from his assailant’s hand, tossing it aside. He twisted her around; he had his arm around her throat, her hand pinned against her side. Instead of struggling, she reached upwards and touched his face.
“I saw you before,” she said, breathing hard. “You were wreathed in white fire beneath the labs at Porton Down. “I wanted to touch you then, but instead I touched Niall.”
“Now you have your chance,” he said. “What do you see?”
“Death.”
He palmed the long kitchen knife from the worktop behind her where it had scattered with the cutlery.
“It’s Angela, isn’t it? Whose death do you see, Angela?” he asked.
“Yours,” she said. “Uh!”
The knife slipped between her ribs. “Wrong again.”
Her knees went first and she slumped to the floor.
He went to the sink and ran some cold water over his hands, carefully dipping the edge of the frilled cuff from his white shirt in the cold water where it had soaked up some of the blood. “I’ll never get the stains out of this,” he said. “Might even have to have a new shirt.”
Collecting his sword he regarded the body on the floor. “Shame, we were just getting to know one another.”
He went to the kitchen door. “This is too easy. Now where’s my delightful cousin? There are a few things we need to settle between us.”
He walked back towards the parlour.
Two people crashed through the scrub and brush. “It’s here somewhere,” said the first.
“For God’s sake, Hathaway, I’m not kitted out for tramping around in the woods. We did that earlier.” The woman struggled after, sliding on the mud as she tried to keep up.
“I could find it in the light,” he said, “but it all looks different in the dark.”
“Yeah,” she muttered. “It’s usually the other way around.”
“That way,” he said, suddenly. “It’s over here. I told you I could find it.”
