Dame of Owls (12 page)

             
“For time out of mind the Spring and Autumn Courts have used us to balance out their influences. We are acting out without permission. I, for one, would rather not discover the Autumn Court’s idea of suitable punishment.”

             
“Self-serving little prick,” Sid sneered.

             
Bors shrugged it off. “I’ve served your sister well enough, haven’t I? And you.” He made an idle gesture towards Juniper’s crumpled form.

             
Sid made a strangled noise that was half anger, half grief. Chris couldn’t imagine how she felt. The sting of betrayal for him must have been but a drop in Sid’s well. She wasn’t crying. He wondered if she ever would.

             
“What does Ruby want us to do?” Chris asked, hoping against hope that it didn’t involve much murder.

             
Especially and specifically
his
murder.

             
“There are parts of the Thoroughfare that have long stood as neutral ground.”

             
“Because of their danger,” said Sid, voice as cold as her blood.

             
“Any more dangerous than this? At least there you can’t be set upon by your own people.”

             
Sid let out a heavy breath between clenched teeth. “And what will
you
be doing?”

             
“Discussing these matters with my queen,” said Bors. “Go to the Dead Lands. I’ll see you there in a week’s time, if I haven’t been summarily executed.”

---

              It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Sid wasn’t happy. The way she clenched the steering wheel was one bad driver away from road rage and flaming wreckage. Chris wished he knew where they were headed, would have taken the wheel in an instant. The acid sadness in his gut wasn’t making him explosive; his anger was dull and throbbing, as ever-present reminder as a black eye.

             
If Ruby were anything but sincere in this, he’d have her head. Somehow. What more lies would do to Sid at a time like this didn’t bear thinking about.

             
He reached across the emergency break and laid a hand on her thigh. She didn’t shake him off.

---

              “Welcome to the Dead Lands,” Sid said, spreading her arms wide to indicate the scorched land around them. They’d walked a long, long way through the trees of the Thoroughfare before coming to the edge of this desolate place, and then they’d walked a long, long way further into it.

             
No rocks, no trees, nothing on the horizon in any direction. Just slightly charred dirt and a sky the same color.

             
“What is this place?” Chris asked.

             
He could feel it weighing on him, draped over his shoulders.

             
“This is where Spring and Autumn warred, before our creation. This is where fae are mortal.”

             
Chris could sense the Spring and Autumn Court around them. They didn’t even bother trying to take form, or else they couldn’t; they were hazes in the air, gray smudges at the edge of his vision. Their very presence made it hard to breathe, and the way they hung in the periphery made it impossible to focus. His eyes kept darting, trying to catch a smear of thing and pin it down.

             
Sid squeezed his fingers, but from the way her head kept twitching, little jerks, he knew she was having the same problem. Probably worse, considering her training. If he felt helpless and hated it, then those feelings would be festering ten times worse in Sid. All Chris wanted to do was gather her into his arms and promise her it would be all right, but he hated making promises he couldn’t keep. More than that, he hated the thought of the things here watching them.

             
He hadn’t come this far to be judged by whatever odd standards formless beings from the beginning of time held their progeny to, thank you very much.

             
Their footsteps echoed ceaselessly in the Dead Lands, and he thought they might go on forever without seeing anyone. He thought, perhaps, that Bors had tricked them. The Summer Fae, even now, seemed like the type of man to send them on a fool’s errand into eternity just to spite them.

             
But then, on the wavering horizon, a blotch of red. Sid picked up her pace. Ruby stood in the middle of these badlands like she owned them, her gown as dust-free and regal as it’d ever been. Chris hadn’t known Ruby long enough to be anything other than wary of her, but in that moment he was impressed. He could see how she and Sid were cast from the same mold.

             
“This is insane,” Sid told her sister, in lieu of any outpouring of affection. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

             
Ruby continued staring calmly off into the middle distance. “And you were doing so well for yourself, too.”

             
“What’s the plan?” Chris asked. “We can’t just camp out here forever.”

             
Ruby’s lips quirked up. “No? Well, blast.”

             
“Can we all please stop fucking around? As a group?” Sid demanded.

             
“We’re waiting,” Ruby said.

             
Chris stared around him, and the great vast expanse of nothing stared back. “Waiting for what? For who?”

             
“For our new friend Bors. And our queens.”

             
“And we’re banking on the Summer Court to save us?”

             
“Not only the Summer Court. I have gathered other allies.”

             
Sid turned in a broad circle, her arms swept open. “What allies?”

             
Chris wasn’t usually on board for much shouting, but he wondered the same thing. Hopefully Ruby hadn’t suffered a break with whatever the fae considered reality.

             
The air next to Ruby shimmered, and the horrid wrongness of limbs they had met his first time through the Thoroughfare popped into existence. Chris couldn’t say he’d missed it. It stared sightlessly through him, and by the time he’d gotten over the sensation there were other Spring creatures all around them. Most were approaching bodiless – he saw a few shapes of light, one of glass, and something like lightning walking – though a few had managed something almost fae. One standing at Ruby’s side might have been a woman, if it only could convince its facial features to move.

             
Sid spoke for Chris as well when she blurted out, “Holy
shit.
”

             
“My hunch was correct,” said Ruby. “The Spring Court does not approve. They have summoned our queen.”

             
“And you’ve just been
chatting
with them?”

             
“Have you forgotten so soon that we talk?” asked their friend.

             
“No,” said Chris. “No, we haven’t. But, all this. Why?”

             
“The world is a cycle,” said the not-woman. “It is balanced in its turning. If the spiral is stopped, we all fester. If it is drawn too tightly, we snap. We are the True Courts. Look around you at what our wars beget. Instead, we watch our children die. We do not mourn.”

             
Chris must have looked very startled indeed to Ruby. She caught his eye and spread her hands, silently acknowledging the absurdity of it all.

             
“What about the queen?” Sid asked, look like she’d just swallowed a lemon. “Ruby, is this a coup?”

             
Ruby shrugged delicately. Sid stepped forward, but their friend held out a hand to stop her, and she shuddered backward from it. She probably hadn’t really wanted to wring her sister’s neck anyhow.

             
“Walk with us,” said the not-woman, “to our meeting place.”

             
Chris’s life stretched ahead of him in an endless inevitability of walking. The only comfort he had was that he might not die at the end of it. That, and Sid’s hand slipping into his, the surreptitious squeeze of her fingers. Better not to walk alone.

             
The Spring Court was oddly silent around them, and from time to time not even present. They blinked in and out of existence with no warning, and their footsteps made no noise. Chris didn’t suppose they were breathing at all. Ruby simply picked up her skirts and followed as if she went trekking around deserted tracks of cursed land any day of the week, even in her Sunday best.

             
A dark spot on the horizon resolved itself into a shape that made Chris’s stomach churn. There was something horribly impressive about the Winter Queen in full battle armor, even though she stood alone but for Juniper at her side. Sid took a half-step forward towards her friend, but Juniper looked away and did not speak.

             
“This queen is not half of what her sister is,” the gray thing said, not bothering to keep its voice down. Ruby continued looking studiously innocent.

             
“Release my property, Lady of Owls,” said the queen.

             
“I see nothing that matches that description here.”

             
That earned Ruby a frost-bitten glare. “My prisoner and my knight.”

             
“My sister and her guest, you mean? Well, Lady Capella’s guest. I can’t imagine she consented to this breach of hospitality. It isn’t like you to forget your manners, Your Majesty.”

             
“But very much like you to forget yours. Now, before I am pushed to considering this an act of treason.”

             
For all that she only smiled, Ruby might as well have laughed in the queen’s face. “Do you not even notice what stands at my side, Quartz? It would be a true tragedy if you’ve been blinded.”

             
“
I
am queen of my kingdom, not these moldering things,” said the queen. “Look at them, so firmly bound to tradition that they couldn’t violate the laws of neutrality if they tried.”

             
“Are you trying?” Sid asked, dangerously eager. “I am your best. Who will you send to die against me?”

             
“You have already assaulted one of my knights.” Sid flinched, but the queen continued, “Do you think I would send another to be dishonored? I will be the one to cut you down.”

             
“That would not be wise,” said the not-woman, and the Spring Court nodded in unison behind her.

             
It was unfair to say that footsteps interrupted them. The footsteps were too soft to be much nuisance, and ther were only two pairs. Chris didn’t even notice them until Ruby’s gaze wandered away from her queen and stuck fast on something over his shoulder, oddly hopeful. Chris turned.

             
One set of footsteps belonged to Bors, fulfilling his promise to meet them. He hadn’t met the wrong end of his queen’s wrath. But he had met his queen, since the woman standing beside him could be little else. She was tall and copper skinned, with a riot of roses and thorns woven through her earth brown hair. The Summer Queen didn’t carry a weapon or wear armor, but she still managed to make Chris feel deeply unsettled. Nervous. And maybe that would have been warranted from him no matter what, but there was an odd, still hush to the air that told him his feelings were shared.

             
“I trust you have not begun the negotiations without me,” she said.

             
“These are not negotiations,” said the Winter Queen, standing tall.

             
“Finders keepers?” The Summer Queen did not seem convinced. She looked to the gathered Spring Court. “So your word is against this?”

             
“In every part,” said the not-woman. For the first time, it occurred to Chris that not only the Spring Court was represented there. He looked around for a flash of fire, but at least one of their strange acquaintances was avoiding them.

             
“And thus I have walked halfway across the Thoroughfare to be told my counterpart does not accept wisdom when she hears it.”

             
“Don’t blame me for your weaknesses,” said the Winter Queen.

             
Ruby stepped perilously close to her queen’s stabbing range. “Your Majesty. Quartz. Aren’t we kin? Have I ever misled or served you badly in anything? I have been your advisor for centuries, and now I advise you: stand down.”

             
“Move.”

             
“This will not win you your sister’s glory.”

             
“Move!”