by A. J. Aalto
“Do you see… running and funning?” I asked, scrunching my nose. “Gotta be honest, that’s what I’m good at. Throw in a little sunning on my days off.”
The fairy showed tiny white teeth in a smile. “With you, the path is neither right nor left, the motives are varied, the lines are blurred. There is no black and white! There are chances! Opportunities! Oh.” He calmed down a bit, but still he vibrated with anticipation. “That one, the big one, he will do one thing and one thing only. It’s all he knows. Remember that, my ever-shifting one. Some in this world are more predictable than you, and it will be hard for your hurricane-wild mind to understand and see that.”
“My mind is a hurricane,” I heartily agreed, shooting my companions a smug glance. “Hurricane. Hear that? Don’t forget it.”
Harry pursed his lips in silence, but the grand roll of his eyes spoke volumes. Batten smiled down at his boots.
“Predict it!” the fairy advised, waggling a finger at Batten. “Ask yourself what he is. He is the river as it moves through rock, pushing his way, pushingpushingpushing, never does he stop, eating away at the obstacles, dragging you under. Doesn’t he drag you under?”
I didn’t answer that, but I really didn’t need to.
“The river swallows. It does not stop, ever moving to the end goal, the release into the ocean. But you expect things to fluctuate in others as they do in you.”
“Because of my hurricane brain,” I repeated, not entirely sure I was getting it, but enjoying the metaphor. Hurricanes were badass.
“Aye, your murderous river man… it’s all he is.” The Lord High Treasurer gazed at Harry. “There isn’t another level. There is one function, one motive, one reason, one action. The other…the cold one. Even shrouded in their mysteries, slipping through time and shadow, the Falskaar Vouras are at all times predictable, too; they have a base, single need that must be met. Theirs is a stealthy advance, feeding in the darkness. And so, when there is doubt, you may always return to this need in order to judge their hearts. The cold one is the glacier, creeping slowly, encroaching and retreating, the smothering blanket of ice. Claiming. Concealing. Overpowering. Guy will always do what is best for himself, and by extension, what is best for his DaySitter. His need for you, and the continuation of his precious Bond, goes deeper, deeper than human want and need. Where the murderer will not fluctuate, the undead cannot. Do you see?”
Harry cleared his throat uncomfortably and jingled some coins in his palm. “Lord High Treasurer, your toll.”
“You are ill at ease with my assessment, Guy, very ill at ease, yes.” The fairy raised his voice. “But she is the wind, untamed, following only the shifting sands of her own judgment. And how, my lord, how can she follow that judgment if she is not properly educated? For shame, Guy, for shame.”
“Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m fine right here for a while,” I said, moving from my uncomfortable squat to sit cross-legged. “Me and my hurricane brain are fascinated by this brand new information. Tell me more, Lord High Treasurer.”
“I will, I will,” he assured me, digging in a pocket that was sewn onto the back of his green cloak, making his silver mantle caps tinkle. A little skin flask appeared. “But first, we drink, and you will guess my name.”
Now, even I know not to drink fairy wine or go about guessing their true names. I may never have met any fae of the jiekngasaldi, but I didn’t have to, to know this was the worst idea I’d heard today, including “Sure, let’s bring Kill-Notch the vampire hunter to the revenant seat of power.” But how does one politely decline fairy wine? Harry jumped to my rescue.
“She would enjoy the opportunity, and on our return trip, we shall gladly stay a bit longer and indulge with you, Lord High Treasurer, if the invitation stands. However, we regret to inform you that we are in rush.”
“Yes, as are the others of your kind. Beware, Guy…” The little man frowned. “Mithridates can keep out the unwanted, but those who belong here are of equal danger to you. I fear for your sentry, here.”
Sentry? My mind flashed back to the orc mystic. All other sun sentries…must what? I couldn’t quite dredge it up. I’d have to look it up later.
The fairy continued. “There is an uncertainty in the air, yes, a question, a shifting. Even the oldest ones are jumping at shadows and second guessing their allies. Houses are not on firm foundations these days. Even the mightiest rock will crumble over time, Guy. It would be wise to play one’s cards close to one’s vest, and take nothing for granted.”
I smiled at the strange little warning, and got to my feet while slipping off one glove. “It’s been an enormous pleasure to meet you, Lord High Treasurer,” I said, extending a bare hand to shake his tiny one, summoning a subtle whisper of psi. He slapped his palm in mine hard enough for our skin to make a loud pat, more like a fairy high five. The Blue Sense tingled and swirled between us, offering a fun image of a couple of Red Angus cows sporting old man beards, and William Butler Yeats wandering somewhere.
“We will meet again, Marnie Baranuik,” he promised.
“Yes, Aengus Yeats,” I replied, “we absolutely will.”
His little mouth fell open, and he shot Harry an angry glance before tossing his cloak back over one shoulder and strutting off into the underbrush in a huff.
Before I lost sight of him, I heard him mutter, “Feckin’ psychics.”
Chapter 12
When you go far enough north, there are certain things you expect to see, and certain things that should eventually fall away as the Arctic tundra begins to devour the landscape; if you’ve never seen the tundra before, it might seem an abrupt change. Pine and Siberian spruce shelter brown bears and reindeer, and then polar bears and walrus skirt the ice floes along the coast. Long-tailed skua and black-legged kittiwake dominate the skies. We left the odd, bright sanctuary of the jiekngasaldi as suddenly as we’d entered it, plunging back into the perfect night of the high north. When Captain Rask met us post-fairy inspection, there was a lot less fight in his eyes; we’d passed some sort of test. Maybe the Lord High Treasurer’s manticore cut Rask’s passenger list on a regular basis.
The Meita was a time warp, for sure, and I didn’t know enough about ships to say what sort it was, but it felt more solid and real than anything in the jiekngasaldi had; ropes creaked, sails drummed on a single mast, the crew barked at one another from one end of the ship to the other. The ocean was a noisy bastard, never silent, unlike the giant captain who navigated her frosty waves. I felt like I had returned to the real world, and I welcomed it. It was cold as a witch’s left tit, but I could trust my eyes, here.
Belowdecks, all non-revenants feasted on red king crab and filled our cups with karsk, which I discovered much too late was coffee mixed with moonshine. After draining a couple of heavy mugs, I was fairly certain I hadn’t been anywhere near this drunk since the time I’d shared whiskey with Declan Edgar and ended up river-dancing on the bed in my underpants. A sobering sit in the cold air proved to be effective medicine, so I split my time for the next few hours between eating crab in the dining area, and freezing my butt off on the deck where Rask indicated it was okay for me to sit. He did so with a silent stay-outta-my-way chin motion toward a bench. I wobbled from the bench, down several stairs to the dining table, practicing my sea legs and my drunk legs. Probably, it wasn’t the best idea to combine those lessons, but I didn’t fall once alternating between lots of company and laughter and food, and the cold night air and Rask’s surprisingly pleasant non-verbal company. His directives to his crew were mostly hand gestures, and though he seemed irritated, I came to suspect he just had resting mad face, shaped by the harsh winds and how seriously he took his job.
The Meita passed the Svalbard archipelago as the long, unbroken night progressed. I could no longer feel the difference between night and day, and this form of jet lag was going to be a real thrill, I predicted. I braved the frigid air and staggered out to the deck while the stars became brighter and more brittle
above me. The night deepened and the ocean spread out before us like a swath of black velvet, its constant liquid motion a mercury-slick ripple below. I tried not to think of how deep the water was, and how many unknown horrors could lurk in the lightless fathoms, slithering beneath the ship, noting our passage, aware of us without our being aware of them.
As the bow of the ship sliced into slush and icebergs loomed as white fingers in the distance, I searched behind us to see if I could mark the last bit of Svalbard. My last hope to view the edge of mankind’s mapped world had been swallowed in a hungry swirl of fog, and I felt a moment of disorientation and concern. I do not belong here, I thought, but the Bond reported like clarion bell: oh yes you do, DaySitter. This was not cruise ship territory. This was not a friendly place for humankind. Men were not built for this weather and the risks below the waves. Very few mortals came this way for pleasure. The old mapmakers had a phrase for the world beyond where cartography ceased: Here there be serpents.
I wondered what kept Konrad Rask and his crew on his journey to and fro; though his body temperature must be the same as other revenants, Rask thrived here. Frost had formed in his pale, knotted beard. He did not notice; in fact, it seemed a part of him. While I took a seat on the bench to huddle for a moment of warmth under a pile of blankets, swaddled in wool everywhere but my eyeballs, Rask strode by wearing a neon yellow rubber coat that was fixed with hooks and fasteners and doo-dads, and thick, black, knee-high rubber boots, not pausing to look at me. The air crackled subtly in his wake like he created an electric current, his aura a blue shock. Etiquette demanded that I be subtle and respectful with my own Talents, so I didn't purposefully summon psi and probe him. Rask’s scruffy, bare-bones politeness had been reserved to quietly bitching about us coming aboard with Batten instead of Golden, and seeing that the steward served our dinner correctly. Since then, he hadn’t said a word, directing his crew primarily through curt gestures and stern looks.
The black water, seen up close, was far from smooth. The ship churned through dark slush in patches, and pale, glowing, snakelike appendages writhed beneath the surface, looking like part of something much bigger lurking in the deep, slowly uncoiling in the soupy mess. As the ship slid past, these luminous fingers perused at the water’s surface, as if tasting the wake of our passage. I stepped back from the rail just in case, but Rask hadn’t warned against being snatched by giant squid tentacles, and neither had Harry, so I figured I was safe onboard. I wouldn’t like to go plunging into that dark water in a colony of those whipping tentacles.
I wondered about all the revenants taking ships to get to Svikheimslending; when an immortal crossed running water, be it a trickling stream or a vast ocean, it lessened their powers. Declan always took ships; in that way, he was able to decrease his preternatural signature and land in America largely “unseen” by the senses of other immortals. (“All the best by sea and sail.”) Malas hadn’t been aware of a new immortal in his territory until Declan had crossed into the Denver area, approaching as his powers rebounded. Would all those arriving by ship have their powers temporarily squelched? It did allow for a quiet, unobtrusive arrival, but it also left those who were accustomed to being powerful much more vulnerable.
In the dense fog, I thought I heard the low drone of a foghorn. That could hardly be; we were so far from any land that—there it is again. Rask paid it no notice, but he did cut his eyes to me, tasting, as any immortal would, my rise in anxiety. He didn't break his plodding, prowling silence to reassure me with words, but the weight of his command settled on my shoulder as palpably as if he’d lowered one of those big mitts across it, and with a single dip of his chin he declared he had everything in hand. I almost believed, in that moment, that the fog was his doing, horn and all. After a long stare out at that black blanket, fog thickening and creeping in around us, I fled belowdecks.
Unlike Rask, Harry hadn’t stopped talking, going into overdrive the minute I was within earshot. He was now swathed in furs in elegant little sleeping quarters that were set up for revenants of an older time; a little pot stove burned coal, the small writing desk was stocked with ink and quills, and a big tub was filled with water. I stared at the water as it sloshed slowly back and forth with every subtle pitch and yaw of the ship.
Harry’s yammering mouth had as many instructions for me as he had criticisms for Batten, who was apparently too common, too simple, and too complicated, depending on the second-to-second fluctuations of Harry’s mood. It seemed the closer we got to our destination, the more wound up my Cold Company became. Little by little, the fine threads of Harry’s decorum were unraveling. After each accusation, Batten would shoot me a questioning look; this was an amazing improvement on his former method of dealing with Harry. Last year, Batten would have answered back with a shot of his own. I didn’t know if Batten’s change in behavior was based on respect for my feelings where Harry was concerned, or an increased understanding of Harry’s fickle moods and how to navigate them using the enthusiasm of my eye rolls as a guide.
I interrupted Harry’s latest tirade about torn denim trousers and farmer’s tans with a question about Harry’s debt vulture that I knew Harry wouldn’t be able to resist. “Why does Ajax never follow you to the revenant homeland, Harry?”
“Given enough time, he would attempt to,” he answered, and the subject seemed to distract him. He looked fresh as a prince in top and tails at Royal Ascot, but I felt his exhaustion through the Bond; he had barely fed and hadn’t rested. Travel was hard on good days, but traveling under the pressure of an imperious summons, much less in the company of a vampire hunter, was starting to wear Harry down. “In order to come through the Bitter Pass, a debt vulture would have to face Mithridates and the eternal bright night of the jiekngasaldi, where local truth is different than reality. It confuses them greatly. Occasionally, a debt vulture manages to traverse these obstacles— the jiekngasaldi is, after all, a blessed place inhabited by children of light — and continues its search. It will reach the mare tenebrosum off Svalbard; as creatures of Heaven, they will be repelled. Pure light cannot bear the weight of this shadow.”
The fog. Konrad Rask’s fog? I didn’t voice this suspicion.
Batten, having been relieved of all his belongings except his gun upon boarding the Meita, made an insecure noise. “And those of us who are also creatures of light? What happens to us?”
Harry blinked in surprise at him, and then threw back his head to laugh heartily.
I snort-laughed. “Good one, Kill-Notch.”
Batten ran his tongue along the front of his teeth as though he was insulted by our amusement, but there was a soft lift in the corners of his lips; he’d cut the tension on purpose by offering himself up as a joke. He confirmed this with a sly wink at me. I liked him a lot for that.
Harry pressed a hand to his belly to quell his mirth, but it still leaked from his mouth. “You must not worry about environmental factors, my dreadnaught. I fear that your undoing will be your own misbehavior.” His ash grey eyes settled on me. “And you, my dove… at all times must you follow me. Right here.” He tapped the back of his left thigh like he was calling a dog to heel. “This is your place.”
“Your butt?”
Harry looked nonplussed, and Batten couldn't clench down fast enough not to blurt out a quick laugh.
“Don’t I always follow you?” Harry and Batten gave me matching looks that were an insulting blend of are-you-kidding and knock-that-shit-off. “All right, I’ll try.”
“You must not get lost at Svikheimslending, my Only One. There are myriad dangers for a mortal, especially a DaySitter. Third Canon: One who has been tasted by death…” He trailed off with an expectant look, waiting for me to fill in the rest.
“Is a warm invitation to the fang,” I obliged.
Harry nodded approvingly. “The blood of a mortal who regularly feeds the undead is a seduction that wets the enamel. When you are not at my side, you are at risk. They will sniff out your submission. The oldest
ones will work very hard to honor banners and respect boundaries, but their Youngers may not have the same willpower.”
“Blerg,” I said, trying not to think of some of the grey, dead mouths I’d seen in the past thirsting for my neck. I flashed back to an unfortunate tongue-feeding in a basement, a shrunken Gregori Nazaire and his dislocating jaw, his two sets of massive yellow fangs. Not all revenants were as appealing as my Harry. Then again, our Bond assured that I would only ever see my own Cold Company in the most appealing light. I wondered if Harry’s mouth looked disgusting or inviting to Batten, then shook off that as possibly the worst thing that had ever crossed my mind.
“And Fourth Canon,” Harry prodded further.
I quoted it by rote. “Safeguard oneself chiefly against the dead, for the mind of a DaySitter is far more vulnerable to the call of the grave than is the mind of a mundane. Good thing I have caller ID in my noggin, then. I can block unknown numbers with my hurricane-fu.”
Harry nodded. “There will be mortals with them, DaySitters and their Seconds. Surrounded by so much power, their Talents and your own will be sharpened, enhanced, perhaps to the point where they are overwhelming. I am trusting the other mortals will be told how to behave, but you must not assume that you are safe from their misbehavior, either.” He dropped his voice. “They may… toy with you, my love. Test you. Play games.”
“Yes, Harry,” I said, figuring if I was agreeable, it might stave off his recurring stress.
“Speak to no one without my authority,” he said, flicking a glance at Batten. “As a servant of the house, it is not your place to speak for the house. You will redirect all questions and comments to me. When in doubt, let your eyes find me. On Svikheimslending, you do not have an opinion. You do not have a voice. You do not speak for yourself; you are mine, and I am your voice.”
