Everbright

by Ken Altabef

  Eccobius grew more and more impatient. “We must turn her over,” he insisted.

  “We don’t have to,” corrected Moonshadow. “They don’t even know her name. And she did tell us the truth. I think she can fit in here if she wants to. But that’s the real question. Why does she want to? Bekla?”

  “Because of this place,” Bekla said. “What it promises. What it could be. All the faeries. Together. United.”

  When Captain Abercrombie came to her cell next day Theodora could see he hadn’t stopped by for idle chatter. Not this time. The Captain’s weather-beaten face looked clearly troubled and he did not greet her with his usual semi-cheerful good morning. He dragged a little wooden stool behind him and placed it across from her cot.

  He sat in silence for a minute as if considering how best to begin. Theodora was not fooled by this bit of theatre. She refused to be intimidated.

  At last he said, “I’ve treated you all right, haven’t I?”

  Theodora wanted to point out that shutting her up in a filthy little cell for—how long had it been? Two weeks?—on a ridiculous charge was not at all what she considered to be fair. Perhaps, she thought, best not to speak just yet. No need to make things worse.

  “I left you unbound,” he continued, “arranged for you to wash up, allowed visitors even.”

  “I appreciate your efforts, Captain.”

  “And for the record I don’t think you’ve done much wrong. There are faeries here done a lot worse.”

  She would neither confirm nor deny such sentiments.

  “Aye,” he said. “But no faery has ever been tried in the King’s court.”

  “No. Why bother? When you can just string them up straightaway and be done with it?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched with the slightest hint of a mile. Probably just pleased with himself for getting a reaction out of her. “Quite a mess it would be. Not even sure, I’ve been told, that greenies have the right to representation in the courts. I mean, you’re not even human beings, are you?”

  Theodora resumed an attitude of stony silence.

  “But of all of them, Lady Theodora, you are considered a citizen. A titled Englishwoman. You can be held to account.”

  Theodora bristled at that. Her allegiance to the British Empire had waned considerably in recent months. She was a faery first and foremost. That her title should be used against her, against all faeries, left a bitter taste in her mouth.

  “Yes,” continued Abercrombie, “you can be held to account. You have to be. And so it falls on me to decide what to do.” He worked hard to conceal his smugness behind a conciliatory tone.

  “Do what you have to, Captain. I won’t beg.”

  “I don’t want you to beg. Wouldn’t think of it. No ma’am. I’m prepared to be very lenient here—that’s what I’m saying. You see, I’m not interested in confrontation. The smoother things run here at Everbright the better as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want trouble. I want information.”

  Here it comes, thought Theodora.

  “What are you hiding down there? Down below, I mean? You can tell me.”

  Theodora shrugged. “Just the filthy little caves we’ve been forced to live in for the past hundred years. Dirt and stone, that’s all.”

  “Come now…”

  “Griffin Grayson and his cronies hunted us down like animals. At first we tried to hide, to blend into the countryside, to take refuge among the green hills, in the forests and dales. In our mounds and woodland homes. But still they came. They killed faery mothers in their beds. They used packs of hunting dogs. I held my dearest friend in my arms, my poor dear Katydid, beautiful Katydid, who never harmed another soul in her entire life—I held her as she gasped out her last breaths, a gaping hole in her forehead where a musket ball had found its mark. An iron musket ball, certain to kill a faery.”

  Abercrombie clicked his tongue. “Pulls at the heartstrings, it does, but I knew all of that already. And I think there’s a lot more to Barrow Downes than just dirt and stone. How do the entrance portals work? Some type of trick? How do you use them?”

  She shook her head.

  “You might as well tell,” said Abercrombie. “If we went down there by force, what would we find?”

  “Be careful, Captain. You know the stories. Mortals who enter faery nests, who spend even just a few short minutes there may find that decades have passed, that they have aged their whole lives away.”

  “Witch tales. Nonsense. I rather think those are just stories meant to frighten us away.”

  “Find out.”

  Abercrombie paused to consider his next move. It wasn’t clear whether or not he had anticipated this degree of defiance. He leaned forward and spoke in a low, confidential tone, “You don’t think I would flog a woman, is that it?”

  “I’m certain you would.”

  “You think I want to?”

  “No.”

  “Then tell me what I want to know. Who do you have down there? You’re hiding someone. Who is it?”

  No answer.

  “We know about those freaks you have down there. Those Changed Men. We won’t hurt them. Vicar told me he wants them to come to church even. But that’s not all. No, there’s something more…” He suddenly raised his voice and shouted, “What type of weapon are you hiding down there? Tell me!”

  Theodora was taken aback. Did he actually know about the weapon or was this merely a fishing expedition? She betrayed nothing. “Find out.”

  He laughed. “You’re not a typical Englishwoman. No, sir. They are soft and weak. Not you. No typical faery either, I’ll wager. I’ll bet you could take five strokes of the whip and not even scream.”

  She didn’t answer.

  He leaned closer. “What did you say? What’s that? I didn’t hear? Did you say ‘Find out’?”

  “I’ll scream. And I’ll bleed.”

  “And your faery healers will set you to rights the next day, eh?”

  “Find out.”

  “Hahaha! I’ll take your word for it, Lady Theodora. As I said, I like you.”

  Actually, she didn’t recall him ever saying that.

  He smiled and stood up. “I’ve enjoyed our little talk. You’re free to go, by the way. Orders came in this morning. You’ve still got friends in Westminster, I suppose. Let me see you to the door.”

  Chapter 20

  “Almost done.” Trask assured his patient.

  Roderigo stared down at his left forearm where the two shimmering orange leeches hung fat with blood. He looked up at Trask with puppy-dog eyes.

  “Almost done,” Trask repeated. He, too, was impatient for the leeches to finish their meal. The sooner he obtained the specimen the sooner he could get on with his work. Of course he could have drawn a blood sample from Roderigo or any of the Changed Men with a syringe, but the faery leeches served him much better. Their bloodsucking concentrated the Wild Tyme within themselves, giving him a better chance of finding out exactly what it was, to unlock its secrets, to hold destiny in his hands.

  The Wild Tyme, Trask was convinced, must be the element that gave the faeries their fantastical longevity and ability to heal wounds more rapidly than ordinary human beings. Trask had spent his entire life searching for the alchemist’s holy grail—the Elixir Vitae. The Philosophic Mercury, the Universal Medicine, the secret to eternal life. Trask had run himself ragged in the inevitable race against time, never losing sight of the goal, round after round, year after year, as it drifted further and further out of reach with each gray hair. He quaffed distillations of hawthorne root and gotu kola and any other herbal remedy that showed promise in prolonging life. Indeed, Trask was now eighty years old but appeared at least twenty years younger and felt half his age. But his alchemical remedies would not hold off the reaper’s scythe forever. He needed to isolate the Wild Tyme.

  Roderigo let out a little bark. He’d been through this process so many times he knew very well when the leeches had reached capacity. Trask hurried
over to him and attached a small handheld pincer to a leech’s head. He worked it gently side to side, increasing pressure until the teeth relaxed and the sucker popped off. Detaching first one and then the other, Trask placed the bloated worms into a small, round, glass container and carried them to his work table.

  Roderigo let out a little plaintive yip as he rolled down his shirt sleeve.

  “Yes, my friend. You may go,” Trask said. “As always, I appreciate your cooperation. I will set things right for you. Let’s hope today is the day.”

  Using the pincer again, Trask held a squirming leech aloft above a small glass tube and incised its belly with a surgical blade. Roderigo’s blood trickled down into the tube as the little worm-like creature deflated and went limp. When he’d drained the other one as well, Trask swirled his specimen around in the bottom of the tube. It resembled normal human blood, dark red with only the slightest hint of faery purple. But the Wild Tyme was inside. He was sure of it. The trick was to isolate the damned stuff.

  In that regard, he’d found little satisfaction so far. He had stared at it under the microscope for hours, he had boiled it, spun it round and round, strained it, puréed it, distilled it against every oil and medicinal herb he could think of. He’d tasted it and compared it to the taste of his own, finding it slightly more acidic, but that was no real test. There were several factors that affected blood acidity. A simple case of melancholy could do it, and Roderigo was the embodiment of melancholy.

  As a point of interest, he’d found the blood of the Changed Men coagulated slower than human blood. But that wasn’t much to go on. He’d tested it against interaction with the other three bodily humors, accounting for differences of age, gender, temperament, and disposition. The influence of the humors changed with the seasons and time of day and with the age of the men. The spleen had something to do with it he was sure, and the gallbladder too. Heat stimulated action, cold depressed it. As with most bodily processes, the older the man, the slower the reaction. And that did not bode well. He heard the infernal ticking of the clock ringing in his ears, as his own personal chances drained away.

  If only he could isolate the Wild Tyme. He must. He must! But he’d tried nearly everything he could think of. He stared at the tube, the blood slowly darkening. It was there! If only he could drive it out. Drive it out! That’s the idea. He had tested the blood’s reaction against various tinctures of base metal but he’d never thought to use metal to force a separation. It might work. It just might. He felt his pulse race with the thought and the quickening brought the usual sharp pain in his chest and left arm. He must remember, he was not as young as he seemed. He sat down clumsily on his work bench, breathing deep and slow until the chill sweat dried across his brow and the cramping in his chest receded.

  He needed an iron ring with a diameter just larger than that of the glass tube. He had nothing like that here. He’d seen such rings used in hostelry, on saddle straps and other equestrian fixings. In the stables, small iron rings on the harnesses. The faeries didn’t use saddles on their own horses, preferring to ride bareback, and certainly used no iron rings. They couldn’t stand the stuff. The military stable, that was the place for it but Trask dare not go up to the surface himself, not in the light of day anyway. He only risked the fresh air once a week, under cover of darkness, when his lover could steal away from his duties at the compound. But he could persuade someone, maybe Threadneedle, to obtain such an iron ring. He stared down at the blood specimen, slowly solidifying in the tube. By the time he had what he needed, it would be too late.

  “Almost done,” he said.

  Roderigo, patient as always, slowly nodded his head.

  But Trask could not be so patient. He was on the verge of a breakthrough; he just knew it. He paced frantically back and forth. Was there something wrong with this batch of leeches? Why did they feed so damn slowly? Fey leeches. Perhaps they were as fond of practical jokes as all the rest of the inhabitants of Barrow Downes. Perhaps they knew what he was on about, sensed his excitement and had the natural inclination to frustrate him, as automatic as their reflex to seek out body heat? Oh, that’s ridiculous. Utterly absurd.

  The time seemed to be going so slowly because he was so excited and impatient. That was all. “Drink up,” he said. “Drink up my little friends!” Then, realizing he had actually spoken, he looked abashedly at Roderigo and added, “I’m sorry. Just getting ahead of myself. Today is the day, Roderigo. I feel it! Today is the day.”

  Trask sat down at his work table and forced his heart to slow down before the pains started again. He cleared his mind. He was acting like a school boy. He had no real right to expect that this latest idea would actually work, except that it felt so right. Well, he would know soon enough. Not soon enough! He wished there were some way to hurry the little bloodsuckers along.

  Roderigo yipped softly and Trask jumped up from his seat. The leeches were ready. He removed them and slit their bellies, draining the blood sample into the thin glass tube. A simple thing, yet his hands were trembling. He lifted the small metal ring and passed it slowly along the tube from the bottom upward. How fast should he move it? He thought slower was better but he was so damn impatient. He moved the ring as slowly as his frayed nerves would allow. Did he feel resistance? Just a little bit? Something was happening. The passage of the iron ring was definitely eliciting a reaction from the crimson fluid. Trask noted a ring of frothy little bubbles pushing forward ahead of the ring. It was working! The iron, that element most hated by the faeries, was driving the Wild Tyme out from the blood. He knew it would work! He just knew it!

  In the end, he’d forced a thin disc of pale isolate to the top of the blood. He carefully tipped the tube, pouring off the isolate into a small copper flask.

  And there it was! A thin film of fluid. It was quite a bit thicker than water, though still fluid. It resembled something like Quicksilver—the liquid mercury that all alchemists held in such high regard. But it was not silver in color, it was a bright whitish blue. It shimmered like liquid moonlight. It was the Wild Tyme. He was sure of it!

  Trask did a little two-step dance, nearly dropping the tube. He laughed with unrestrained glee, feeling half a faery himself.

  Then he saw Roderigo, still sitting at his place in the corner, staring back at him. In his haste to work the experiment he had forgotten to dismiss his prime subject. Oh, what the hell, the Changed Man deserved to bask in their success as well.

  “I have it!” Trask said. “Look here. This is what I’ve been after all along. See? See how it shimmers? See how it… moves? It moves! Look! It moves just a little, all on its own.”

  Roderigo tilted his dog-like head. He was less enthused than Trask would have imagined. He looked tired, and just a bit pale from the repeated bloodletting.

  “You’ll be alright,” said Trask. “Do you feel any differently?”

  Roderigo shrugged.

  Of course not. It was an idiotic inquiry. Why should he feel differently? He had given a blood specimen just as all the other times before. What Trask had done afterward could not affect him. He was losing his mind. His heart was beating much too fast.

  “I’m all right,” he assured Roderigo. “I’ll just need to sit for a minute or two.” Trask placed the test tube carefully on the wooden rack on his work table. Then he sat down on his bench.

  Roderigo let out a small bark.

  “Yes, of course. You may go. And thank you, my friend. Thank you.”

  Trask took a few measured breaths. He stared into the tube. There it was! Wild Tyme—the pure living essence of faery. He stared deep into the liquid’s lambent depths. Such a little dollop of the stuff, but he could get more. Liquid moonlight! Time’s quicksilver. He had it in the palm of his hand. And it did move. He watched it ripple and squirm slightly. Incredible!

  Now what the hell was he going to do with it?

  Chapter 21

  “Theodora!”

  Moonshadow ran across the sward. She threw her arms a
round her sister and peppered her neck with kisses. “When did they let you out?”

  “Just now.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  Theodora smirked, hoping Moonshadow didn’t see the real pain beneath her affected courage. “No. They just wanted to teach me a lesson. Abercrombie’s a fair man. Ooh, I must stink.” She pushed Moonshadow away. “Let me get home and wash up. And change clothes.”

  For the first time she noticed Eccobius had followed Moonshadow across the garden lawn. The tall scholar looked grim.

  He spoke in a low voice. “Since we have you here, perhaps it’s best you walk with us awhile. I’m sure our noses can stand the mild discomfort. There’s a… situation.”

  “What situation? What now?”

  Eccobius steered them into a narrow tree-lined avenue where they wouldn’t be overheard. Theodora breathed in the wonderful smells of the exotic flowers the faeries had induced to grow among the interwoven branches of the trees, flowers the north of England had not seen in hundreds of years. Theodora traced one of the petals with her fingernail. So fragile and delicate and incredibly beautiful.

  “Grenville passed a request through to me today,” Eccobius said.

  “Who?”

  “George Grenville. The new Prime Minister. The Earl of Bute has resigned. The Northern Secretary has been advanced into the post. As war minister, Grenville intends to conscript two faeries from Everbright to act as British spies. They are to be sent to the colonies to impersonate a pair of prominent citizens there—a farmer named Washington and another man named John Adams. Colonel Washington is a representative in the House of Burgesses, rather outspoken on the topics of taxation and mercantilism. I don’t know anything about Adams.”