by G. D. Penman
“Madam! The Fae have been true to their word.”
“Their word?! What word?! They don’t have words! If you think you’ve got a deal, that is just because you haven’t said no to them yet. You’ve fucked us all.”
Blackwood crab-walked backward, wailing. “The situation is under our control!”
Gormlaith’s face had gone hard and cold. Sully recognized that expression. She was already throwing up a shield between them before the spellfire came flooding out of Gormlaith’s hands to wreath her. “Mother!”
The old woman drew her magic back inside and swallowed enough of her fury that it started to show on her face again. She snarled at Sully. “This is your fault as much as his. If you’d stayed like you were meant to. If you’d learned our history like you were meant to then you’d have known what it meant. You’d have known better.”
The opaque shield collapsed unused, and Blackwood was almost to the door before a whip of flame leapt from Sully’s hand to snare him around the ankle.
“Mother, can we please focus?”
“You think those rocks out there were for nothing? Summoning circles grew like mushrooms? You think the magic got called into the world by chatting with the hopeless gobshites in the hells?” The old woman hunched down by the fire, stirring the embers with a wave of her hand. “The Folk have been before and every one of the langers that were calling them thought that they had it under control. That the circles would hold them forever. Even the weakest of the Folk knows magic the way a fish knows swimming.”
Blackwood had stopped squirming. He was curled up on himself on the bare floorboards, scrubbing at the smoldering wool around his ankle and listening to every word intently. Gormlaith breathed life into the fire again, stoking it up until the whole room felt like a furnace. As if the warmth could ward off the chill her words were spreading through every one of them. “Every night they’d come around. Them that could afford it wore a bit of cold iron round their neck to ward the Folk off. Those were the days witches commanded respect. When we were all that stood between man and the hunt.”
Sully could still feel the touch of the thing in the Archive in her shoulder. With a touch they could kill. With a thought they could conjure like a Magus. How did you fight something like that? How did you even face it? “It took us all together to stop them. Wishes and spells to patch up the walls and block the way. It were a thousand years before they stopped coming. Before we could start over and build again.”
The lines cut into Gormlaith’s face were deepened by the shadows and for a moment she almost looked her age. “If you had a child, you never took your eyes off it. The Folk loved them the best. But they’d take anyone and keep them forevermore. If luck was with you, they’d kill you quick, but few enough were lucky.”
Sully could only muster a whisper. “When they took people . . . They left something behind?”
Gormlaith turned to her slowly. “A stock. That’s what we called them. Carved wood.”
Sully’s expression was all the confirmation her mother needed. “Started already, has it?”
They both turned to look at Blackwood. He was still curled up on the floor. Staring into the fire. Sully walked over to him calmly and when he looked up at her she kicked him in the face.
He went down hard and Sully dropped on top of him, fists moving of their own volition. She watched it happen as though somebody else were doing it. So fast she couldn’t even keep track of her own movements. She hit him and hit him as if all the evil he had done could be broken as easily as his cheekbones.
Gormlaith dragged her off before the old man died, but it would be a long time before the mess on the front of his head was recognizable as a face again. Sully’s hands were aching. Blood was dripping onto the floor. Some of it his, some of it hers where the bone had bitten into her knuckles. He was sobbing and wailing through the mangled mass of swelling and bruises. Still alive, still conscious. That was fine. That was all Sully needed from him. She went to the mantelpiece and plucked out one of Gormlaith’s tarry black cigars. They were foul smelling things that used to turn her stomach when she stole a puff, but now she found she needed one. At the door she paused and looked back at her mother where she was lingering over the beaten man. “Prop him up and settle your terms—Ireland secedes from the Empire today, we’ll keep him safe and return him when the fighting is over—the usual kind of deal.”
She lit the cigar in her hand with a flick of her fingers. “Give me a shout and pull out the mirror when you’re done. I’ve got an army of demons hanging around France, just waiting to chew the redcoats out of Ireland and make us a beachhead.”
She turned, then paused for a moment. “I never got a chance to say, I don’t forgive you either. You never loved me. You never wanted me, just what I could do for you, and you asked for more than any girl could give.” Gormlaith didn’t have the decency to deny it. She just hoisted Blackwood toward a chair and let Sully walk away.
November 13, 2015
Mol Kalath and Ogden were together in Manhattan when Sully’s mirror-call reached them, her voice echoing up out of a puddle near the town square where they were arguing, until they finally found a mirror that was more or less intact in an old tavern house. They had a few questions that Sully tried to get through as quickly as possible, but after the first rush of relief, they put Pratt on speakerphone and completely ruined her good mood. “I’ve established a beachhead near Cork in Ireland. And Ireland is no longer a part of the British Empire, so the wish that was keeping the demons out won’t affect us here,” she said.
“Kindly explain to us this extraplanar Archive that you have visited, Sullivan.”
Sully sighed. “It is exactly what you thought it was, Prime Minister. A pocket plane where they could track any reality alterations.”
There was some crackly chuckling. “Oh, the pompous hypocrisy of the British. Condemning everyone and anyone for working with the demons while secretly using them to orchestrate the mechanics of the entire Empire.”
Ogden interrupted, as he so often did, “Tell us more about these fairies everyone is so frightened about?”
“They are ten-foot-tall monsters that are more powerful and dangerous than demons. They don’t care about deals, they use humans like guinea pigs in their experiments, they are native to the Far Realms and they are probably what harassed and murdered you the entire time that Manhattan was trapped there.”
Mol Kalath’s voice was strangely comforting. “SHADOW-TWIN. I THOUGHT THAT YOU HAD DIED. I COULD NOT FEEL YOU WHEN YOU WERE IN THIS ARCHIVE.”
Sully smiled softly and watched her own distorted grimace rippling across the surface of the silvered glass. “I’m all right. I’m probably better off than when I went in, to be honest. I need to know what I’ve missed, though.”
Ogden spoke over the others. “The Hydra has returned to the sea. There is no trace of the other monsters that your fiancée described. The British have maintained their desultory bombardment and now we know why they were in no rush to push. The demons of Europe and the majority of the Magi who are not involved in our home defenses are in France at the moment. We can have them with you by the end of the day, although Mol Kalath and I will probably be a little later. We will have to establish portals to get our troops in motion. The natives have been restless since you vanished. The Republicans, too. It is almost as though they trust in your skill as a general and were disheartened by your loss.”
Gormlaith was smirking by the fireplace. “Surely not.”
Sully shot her a warning look. “Get here as quickly as you can. We need to start laying plans if we are going to take the Archive.”
Pratt spoke over the others. “Arrangements are already being made, Sullivan. Secure your position and wait for reinforcements.”
There was some commotion on the other side of the mirror and then Ogden sighed. “It seems that Mol Kalath was not content to
wait. It will probably be with you before everyone else.”
Sully smiled. “What is happening with the stocks? The wooden people?”
“We are conducting door to door testing under the guise of a health crisis and on average it has turned up a population loss of around one percent across the colonies, the United Nations and the impacted areas of the Republic, in the regions that our constabularies have canvassed so far.”
Sully blinked. “Wait. One percent would be almost two million people?”
The mirror smoothed out in the painful silence that followed until Ogden murmured, “Two and a half million.”
Sully felt numb. Everywhere that the Fae had touched her, that numbness spread like ice over her skin. “You understand that they are being tortured to death right now? Those two and a half million people.”
Pratt chimed in. “We have no way of knowing precisely what is happening to them, Sullivan. It is just as possible that they are being held hostage in comfortable environs so that they could be of use in negotiating a later peace on favorable terms.”
Gormlaith shook her head sadly but kept quiet.
Sully dragged her eyes back to the mirror. “Have we been able to work out how the Fae are being called in without summoning circles? The crop circles couldn’t work. They aren’t solid enough. Summoning needs permanence.”
Ogden fielded that one. “We are still seeking more information.”
Sully laid her hands on the rough wood of the mirror’s frame and sighed. “Let me know if you work it out. And try to get here soon. The longer we wait, the more people we lose.”
Pratt butted in again. “Hold your position and await reinforcement, General.”
“Yes sir.” Sully raised both of her middle fingers to the rippling glass.
The spell broke while she was still standing there like that. The surface smoothed out until she could see herself clearly; manic grin and all. She frowned and lowered her hands to her sides. She had forgotten how quiet it was out here after sundown, when all of the swamp bugs finally shut the hell up for the night. The thatch still rustled, and the cottage groaned as it settled, but beyond the walls there was nobody else. There was no world outside of this hut. Blackwood spoiled the illusion slightly by letting out a nasal whine from where he was lying in the far corner. A tincture of whiskey and herbs had put him under, once the agreement had been signed, then Gormlaith had set about coating his whole face with the bog mud to help it heal quicker, though Sully wasn’t sure why she bothered.
The old woman spat into the roaring fire. “Sad days when demons is the only ones you can trust, Little I.”
“You’ve got a problem with demons now? From what I hear, you dealt with them plenty before I was around.”
The old woman slumped down onto her makeshift bed and grumbled. “If you’d stayed, you’d know.”
Sully stalked over to the fire, drew in a deep breath and then settled herself cross-legged beside her mother. “Well, I’m here now.”
“Pah. You’d rather have your book learning. Rather run around the world than listen to me.” Gormlaith rolled over so her back was to the fire. Her spine was pronounced under the thin covering of her dress.
“I’m not fighting with you. If you want to tell me something, then tell me, but I’ve had enough bickering.”
Gormlaith grumbled some more, then rolled back over. “The demons, they understand magic. How the worlds all slot together. They understand that there is rules to it. We just guess at them rules but the rules are why we haven’t been up to our tits in Fae since the beginning. They need invited, same as a demon does. That’s the only way to come up. Your demons, they understood you can make rules to the invitations, too. That’s how their deals work.”
“Conditional invitations?” Sully nodded along gamely, as if she hadn’t heard all of this in a dozen lectures over the years.
Gormlaith let out a wet cough. “They don’t bother with the fancy laws your college made up. Physics and the like. They’ve got contracts. That’s their laws. They can’t break their word, you see. Can’t lie. Not any more than a rock can be a bird just by saying so. Where they’re from, it is all changing. If you aren’t true, you’ll get swept up in the change, too.”
Sully snorted. “So you’re saying to trust the demon I already trust?”
“I’m saying there’s consequences to everything and you’d do well to remember that.”
Sully shrugged. “Cause and effect. Feel like we’ve covered that before.”
She ducked under the little dart of green fire that her mother flicked at her. Smiling while somebody tried to kill you probably wasn’t a healthy response, but she blamed her mother for that weird response. Just like she had blamed the old woman for so much more. She nodded at Blackwood where he lay paralyzed in the dark. “You know he had a lot to say about you and me when I first met him. He told me about the deals you’d cut to make me into a weapon.”
Gormlaith growled. “Not saying sorry, if that’s what you’re after. I made you what Ireland needed. Never going to be sorry for that.”
Sully rolled her eyes. “That is all manner of fucked up. But it isn’t what I’m trying to talk about.” She pointed to Blackwood. “He had met me before—twice—and he’d tried to wish me away and failed. You know why he had to do that?”
“No doubt you’ll tell me,” Gormlaith grumbled.
“Because I didn’t run off to college. I didn’t go find my own life. I stayed here. I fought your war for you. And I won. They had to remake the whole damned world to undo what you had made me into. So, you don’t need to go on feeling bitter. You got your way.”
Gormlaith drummed her fingers on the hearthstone. “You didn’t betray the cause? You didn’t leave in the middle of the night without a word? You didn’t leave your mother to rot?”
“I did. And I’m not sorry. I’m nobody’s tool. Not theirs. Not yours.”
“Too much of me in you,” the old woman scoffed, “Never liked being told what to do neither.”
“I’m just saying that before they interfered, I was the daughter you wanted me to be. Maybe you can find some comfort in that.”
For a long time Gormlaith said nothing. Then she mumbled, “You’ll freeze in them rags. Your old clothes won’t fit you. Have a look through mine for something.”
This was the most maternal Sully could ever remember her mother being, so she made the most of it. For half an hour she dug through heaps of old clothes until she found a woolen dress that she didn’t hate. Her jeans weren’t in too terrible a state beyond the bloodstains, and the dress covered that nicely. When she settled beside the fire again, Gormlaith gave her a nod of approval. Which instantly made her doubt her choice. They sat peacefully for a while, then the smoke and the dark started to get to Sully. She hadn’t expected to sleep again for the rest of her life after seeing the Faerie, and she’d felt fairly certain that the idea that her whole life had been scrubbed and rewritten over and over every time she became a nuisance would have given her some sleepless nights. As it turned out in the end, exhaustion beat existential dread.
The sound of beating wings woke Sully with a start from her nightmare. She didn’t like to dream—she’d seen enough of war to know how easily it could follow you into your head—but it seemed like the old house was bringing back old habits. One of Gormlaith’s eyes snapped open when Sully stirred. She patted the old woman on the leg as she rose. “That’ll be my army.”
Gormlaith looked like she was about to say something, but then she thought better of it and rolled back over. Sully borrowed another cigar without asking and walked outside feeling strangely light. She had spent the night in her mother’s house and had a conversation that hadn’t ended in anyone screaming. The world really was changing.
The gryphon hit her as she was coming out of the door. Talons bit into her back and she only had the time to let out
a strangled yelp before it dragged her into the air. Sully opened her mouth to cast and suddenly found herself free-falling back toward the swamp. It had learned its lesson from last time, it wasn’t giving her a moment to think. Tartalo the blind giant was waiting beneath her, his head cocked to one side so that he could hear her coming. He’d uprooted one of the few solid-looking trees in the swamp to use as a club. Sully got a shield half formed before the wood smashed into her. She didn’t die from the force of the blow, but it was enough to knock the wind out of her as she flew toward Alecto the Fury hanging in the air ahead, glorious in her full aspect of vengeance. Her pus-dripping wings were spread wide in the moonlight and a razor grin split her face. The hands that had embraced Sully so gently in flight had twisted and elongated into chitinous claws. Sully managed a dart of white flame, but with a slash of those claws it dispersed in a puff of light.
Just as Sully was sure that she was going to hit the Fury, Alecto turned aside with a giggle. Sully soared right past. Straight into the waiting gryphon. There was no attempt to catch her. It raked down the length of her body with its claws and she dropped in a shower of her own blood. That was when the pain caught up to her. The punctures in her back. The cracked ribs. The fine ribbons of skin and flesh that had been torn from her chest and her stomach. Her lungs, straining for air. They burned. It all burned.
She dove into the shallow water and for one wonderful moment the chill calmed her wounds, then she sank into the grasping mud, realizing that she couldn’t get free. She struggled down there in the dark. Squirming and jerking. Trying to reach clear water. Trying to reach air. She couldn’t remember which way was up, but she still strained for it with all her strength. The mud held on and for a moment Sully had clarity. She was going to die in a muddy puddle, within a stone’s throw of the hovel where she was born, and a whole lifetime of running hadn’t saved her.
