Ironside (4 page)

“Or a deadly one,” the grinning petal girl supplied.

“Not that we think he would send you on a quest like that.”

“Not that we think he meant to hide anything from you.”

“Leave me alone,” Kaye said thickly, her heart twisting. Lurching forward through the crowd, she knew that she’d gotten far drunker than she had intended. Lutie squeaked as Kaye shoved her way past winged ladies and fiddle-playing men, nearly tripping on a long tail that swept the floor.

“Kaye!” Lutie wailed. “Where are we going?”

A woman bit pearl-gray grubs off a stick, smacking her lips in delight as Kaye passed. A faery with white hair cropped close enough to her head that it stuck up like the clock of a dandelion looked oddly familiar, but Kaye couldn’t place her. Nearby, a blue-skinned man cracked chestnuts with his massive fists as small faeries darted to snatch up what he dropped. The colors seemed to blur together.

Kaye felt the impact of the dirt floor before she even realized that she had fallen. For a moment she just lay there, gazing across at the hems of dresses, cloven feet, and pointed-toed shoes. The shapes danced and merged.

Lutie landed close enough to Kaye’s face that she could barely focus on the tiny form.

“Stay awake,” Lutie said. Her wings were vibrating with anxiety. She tugged on one of Kaye’s fingers. “They’ll get me if you go to sleep.”

Kaye rolled onto her side and got up, carefully, wary of her own legs.

“I’m okay,” Kaye said. “I’m not asleep.”

Lutie alighted on Kaye’s head and began to nervously knot locks of hair.

“I’m perfectly okay,” Kaye repeated. With careful steps she approached the side of the dais where Lord Roiben, newly anointed King of the Unseelie Court, sat. She watched his fingers, each one encircled in a metal band, as they tapped the rhythms of an unfamiliar tune on the edge of his throne. He was clad in a stiff black fabric that swallowed him in shadow. As familiar as he should have been, she found herself unable to speak.

It was the worst kind of stupid to be pining after someone who cared for you. Still, it was like watching her mother onstage. Kaye felt proud, but was half afraid that if she went up, it wouldn’t turn out to be Roiben at all.

Lutie-loo abandoned her perch and flew to the throne. Roiben looked up, laughed, and cupped his hands to receive her.

“She drank all the mushroom wine,” Lutie accused, pointing to Kaye.

“Indeed?” Roiben raised one silver brow. “Will she come and sit beside me?”

“Sure,” Kaye said, levering herself up onto the dais, unaccountably shy. “How has it been?”

“Endless.” His long fingers threaded through her hair, making her shiver.

Only months ago she’d thought of herself as weird, but human. Now the weight of gauzy wings on her back and the green of her skin were enough to remind her that she wasn’t. But she was still just Kaye Fierch and no matter how magical or clever, it was hard to understand why she was allowed to sit beside a King.

Even if she had saved that King’s life. Even if he loved her.

She couldn’t help but recall the beetle-woman’s words. Did the dreadlocked girl with the drum intend to make a declaration? Ask for a quest? Had the girl with the cat tail already done so? Were the fey laughing at her, thinking that because she had grown up with humans, she was ignorant of faerie customs?

She wanted to make things right. She wanted to make a grand gesture. Give him something finer than a ragged bracelet. Swaying forward, Kaye went down on both her knees in front of the new King of the Unseelie Court.

Roiben’s eyes widened with something like panic and he opened his mouth to speak, but she was faster.

“I, Kaye Fierch, do declare myself to you. I…” Kaye froze, realizing she didn’t know what she was supposed to say, but the heady liquor in her veins spurred her tongue on. “I love you. I want you to give me a quest. I want to prove that I love you.”

Roiben gripped the arm of his throne, fingers tightening on the wood. His voice sank to a whisper. “To allow this, I would have to have a heart of stone. You will not become a subject of this court.”

She knew that something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. Shaking her head, she stumbled on. “I want to make a declaration. I don’t know the formal words, but that’s what I want.”

“No,” he said. “I will not allow it.”

There was a moment’s hush around her and then some scattered laughter and whispering.

“I have recorded it. It has been spoken,” said Ruddles. “You must not dishonor her request.”

Roiben nodded. He stared off into the brugh for a long moment, then stood and walked to the edge of the platform. “Kaye Fierch, this is the quest that I grant. Bring me a faery that can tell an untruth and you shall sit beside me as my consort.”

Shrieking laughter rose from the throng. She heard the words:
Impossible. An impossible quest.

Her face heated, and suddenly she felt worse than dizzy. She felt sick. She must have gone white or her expression must have turned alarming, because Roiben jumped off the platform and caught her arm as she fell.

Voices were all around her but none of them made sense.

“I promise that if I find who put this idea in your head, they will pay for it with their own.”

Her eyes blinked heavily. She let them close for a moment and slipped down into sleep, passing out cold in Faerieland.

The little hob shivered in the corner of the cage as Corny heaved it out of the trunk. Dumping the wire box into the backseat, he got in next to it and slammed the door. Dry heat pumped from vents as the engine idled.

“I’m a powerful being…a
wizard
,” Corny said. “So don’t try anything.”

“Yes,” said the little faery, blinking black eyes rapidly. “No. Try nothing.”

Corny turned those words over in his head, but the possible interpretations seemed too varied and his mind kept getting tangled. He shook the thoughts out of his head. The creature was caged. He was in control. “I want to keep myself from being charmed, and you’re going to tell me how to do it.”

“I weave spells. I don’t lift spells,” it chirped.

“But,” Corny said, “there has to be a way. A way to keep from being happily led off the side of a pier or craving the honor of being some faery’s footstool.”

“There is no leaf. No rock. No chant to keep you completely safe from our charms.”

“Bullshit. There must be something. Is there any human who is resistant to being enchanted?”

The little faery hopped to the edge of its cage, and when it spoke, its voice was low. “Someone with True Sight. Someone who can see through glamours.”

“How do you get True Sight?”

“Some mortals are born with it. Very few. Not you.”

Corny kicked the back of the passenger-side seat. “Tell me something else then, something I’d want to know.”

“But such a powerful wizard as yourself—”

Corny shook the crab trap, sending the little faery sprawling, its pinecone hat falling out through one of the holes in the aluminum cage to land on the floor mat. It yowled, a moan rising to a shriek.

“That’s me,” Corny said. “Very freaking powerful. Now, if you want out of here, I suggest that you start talking.”

“There is a boy with the True Sight. In the great city of exiles and iron to the north. He’s been breaking curses on mortals.”

“Interesting,” Corny said, holding up the poker. “Good. Now tell me something else.”

That morning, while the slumbering bodies of faeries still littered the great hall of the Unseelie Court, Roiben met with his councillors in a cavern so cold his breath clouded. Tallow candles burned atop rock formations, the melting fat stinking of clove.
Let our King be made from ice.
He wished it too, wished for the ice that encased the branches out on the hill to freeze his heart.

Dulcamara drummed her fingers against the polished and petrified wood of the table, its surface as hard as stone. Her skeletal wings, the membranes torn so that only the veins remained, hung from her shoulders. She regarded him with pale pink eyes.

Roiben looked at her and he thought of Kaye. Already he could feel the lack of her, like a thirst that is bearable until one thinks of water.

Ruddles paced the chamber. “We are overmatched.” His wide, toothy mouth made him look as though he might suddenly take a bite out of any of them. “Many of the fey who were bound to Nicnevin fled when the Tithe no longer tied them to the Unseelie Court. Our troops are thinned.”

Roiben watched a flame gutter, flaring brightly before going out.
Take this from me,
he thought.
I do not want to be your King.

Ruddles looked pointedly at Roiben, closed his eyes, and rubbed just above the bridge of his nose. “We are further weakened as several of our best knights died by your own hand, my Lord. You do recall?”

Roiben nodded.

“It vexes me that you do not seem to expect an imminent attack from Silarial,” said Ellebere. A tuft of his hair fell over one eye, and he brushed it back. “Why should she hesitate now that Midwinter’s Eve is past?”

“Perhaps she is bored and lazy and sick of fighting,” said Roiben. “I am.”

“You are too young.” Ruddles gnashed those sharp teeth. “And you take the fate of this court too lightly. I wonder if you would have us win at all.”

Once, after the Lady Nicnevin had whipped Roiben—he could no longer recall why—she had turned away, distracted by some new amusement, leaving Ruddles—her chamberlain, then—free to indulge in a moment’s mercy. He had dribbled a stream of water into Roiben’s mouth. He still remembered the sweet taste of it and the way it had hurt his throat to swallow.

“You think that I don’t have the stomach to be Lord of the Night Court.” Roiben leaned across the petrified wood table, bringing his face so close to Ruddles’s that he could have kissed him.

Dulcamara laughed, clapping her hands together as if anticipating a treat.

“You are correct,” said Ruddles, shaking his head. “I
don’t
think you have the stomach for it. Nor the head. Nor do I think you even truly want the title.”

“I have a belly that craves blood,” said Dulcamara, tossing her sleek black hair and stepping so that she was behind the chamberlain. Her hands went to his shoulders, her fingers resting lightly at his throat. “He need not hurt anyone himself.
She
never did.”

Ruddles went stiff and still, perhaps realizing how far he had overstepped himself.

Ellebere looked between the three of them as if judging where his best alliance might be made. Roiben had no illusions that any one of them was in the least part loyal beyond the oath that bound them. With one lethal word Roiben could prove he had both the stomach and the head. That might cultivate something like loyalty.

“Perhaps I am no fit King,” Roiben said instead, sinking back into the chair and relaxing his clenched hands. “But Silarial was once my Queen, and while there is breath in my body, I will never let her rule over me or mine again.”

Dulcamara pouted exaggeratedly. “Your mercy,” she said, “is my mischance, my King.”

Ruddles’s eyes closed with relief too profound to hide.

Long ago, when Roiben was newly come to the Unseelie Court, he had sat in the small cell-like chamber in which he was kept, and he had longed for his own death. His body had been worn with ill-use and struggle, his wounds had dried in long garnet crusts, and he’d been so tired from fighting Nicnevin’s commands that remembering he could die had filled him with a sudden and surprising hope.

If he were really merciful, he would have let Dulcamara kill his chamberlain.

Ruddles was right; they had little chance of winning the war. But Roiben could do what he did best, what he had done in Nicnevin’s service:
endure
. Endure long enough to kill Silarial. So that she could never again send one of her knights to be tortured as a symbol of peace, nor contrive countless deaths, nor glory in the appearance of innocence. And when he thought of the Lady of the Bright Court, he could almost feel a small sliver of ice burrow its way inside him, numbing him to what would come. He didn’t need to win the war, he just needed to die slowly enough to take her with him.

And if all the Unseelie Court died along with them, so be it.

Corny knocked on the back door of Kaye’s grandmother’s house and smiled through the glass window. He hadn’t had much sleep, but he was flushed and giddy with knowledge. The tiny hob he’d captured had talked all night, telling Corny anything that might make him more likely to let it go. He’d uncaged it at dawn, but true knowledge seemed closer to him now than it ever had before.

“Come in,” Kaye’s grandmother called from inside the kitchen.

He turned the cold metal knob. The kitchen was cluttered with old cooking supplies; dozens of pots were stacked in piles, cast iron with rusted steel. Kaye’s grandmother couldn’t bear to throw things away.

“What kind of trouble did the two of you get into last night?” The old woman loaded two plates into the dishwasher.

Corny looked blank for a moment, then forced a frown. “Last night. Right. Well, I left early.”

“What kind of gentleman leaves a girl alone like that, Cornelius? She’s been sick all morning and her door’s locked.”

The microwave beeped.

“We’re supposed to go to New York tonight.”

Kaye’s grandmother opened the microwave. “Well, I don’t think she’s going to be up to it. Here, take her this. See if she can keep something down.”

Corny took the mug and bounded up the stairs. Tea sloshed as he went, leaving a trail of steaming droplets behind him. In the hall outside Kaye’s door, he stopped and listened for a moment. Hearing nothing, he knocked on the door.

There was no response.

“Kaye, it’s me,” he said. “Hey, Kaye, come on and open the door.” Corny knocked again. “Kaye!”

He heard shuffling and a click, then the door swung open. He took an involuntary step backward.

He’d seen her faerie form before, but he hadn’t been prepared to see it here. The grasshopper green of her skin looked especially strange when contrasted with a white T-shirt and faded pink underwear. Her shiny black eyes were rimmed with red, and the room beyond her smelled sour.

She lay back on the mattress, bundling the comforter around her and smothering her face against the pillow. He could see only the tangled green of her hair and the overly long fingers that pulled the fabric against her chest as though it were a stuffed toy. She seemed like a cat resting, more alert than it looked.

Corny came and sat down on the floor near her, leaning back on a satiny tag-sale pillow.

“Must have been a great night,” he whispered, experimentally, and her ink black eyes did flicker open for a second. She made a sound like a snort.

“Come on. It’s the ass crack of noon. Time to get up.”

Lutie swooped down from the top of the bookshelves, the suddenness startling Corny. The faery alighted on his knee, her laughter so high that the sound reminded him of chimes. He resisted the urge to recoil.

“Roiben’s chamberlain, Ruddles himself, along with a bogan and a puck, carried her back. Imagine a bogan gently tucking a pixie into bed!”

Kaye groaned. “I don’t think he was that gentle. Now, can everyone be quiet? I’m trying to sleep.”

“Your grandma sent up this tea. You want it? If not, I’ll drink it.”

Kaye flipped over onto her back with a groan. “Give it to me.”

He handed over the mug as she shifted into a sitting position. One of her cellophane-like wings rubbed against the wall, sending a shower of powder down onto the sheets.

“Doesn’t that hurt?”

She looked over her shoulder and shrugged. Her long fingers turned the tea cup, warming her hands against it.

“I take it we’re not going to make it to your mother’s show.”

She looked up at him and he was surprised to see that her eyes were wet.

“I don’t know,” she said. “How am I supposed to know? I don’t know much about anything.”

“Okay, okay. What the hell happened?”

“I told Roiben I loved him. Really loudly. In front of a huge audience.”

“So, what did he say?”

“It was this thing called a declaration. They said—I don’t know why I even listened—that if I didn’t do it someone would beat me to it.”

“And they are…?”

“Don’t ask,” Kaye said, taking a sip of the tea and shaking her head. “I was so drunk, Corny. I don’t ever want to be that drunk again.”

“Sorry…. Go on.”

“These faeries told me about the declaration thing. They were kind of—I don’t know—bragging, I guess. Anyway, Roiben told me I had to stay in the audience for the ceremony, and I kept thinking about how I didn’t fit in and how maybe he was disappointed, you know? I thought that maybe he secretly wished I knew more of their customs—maybe he wished I would do something like that before he had to send someone else on a quest.”

Corny frowned. “What? A quest?”

“A quest to prove your love.”

“So dramatic. And you did this declaration thing? You declared.”

Kaye turned her face, so that he couldn’t read her expression. “Yeah, but Roiben wasn’t happy about it, as in not at all.” She put her head in her hands. “I think I really fucked up.”

“What’s your quest?”

“To find a faery that lies.” Her voice was very low.

“I thought faeries couldn’t lie.”

Kaye just looked at him.

Suddenly, horribly, Corny understood her meaning. “Okay, hold on. You are saying that he sent you on a quest that you couldn’t possibly complete.”

“And I’m not allowed to see him again until I do complete it. So basically, I’m not going to see him ever again.”

“No faery can tell an untruth. That is why it is one of the nice quests given to put off a declarer—no endless labor,” said Lutie suddenly. “There are others, like ‘Siphon all the salt from all the seas.’ That’s a nasty one. And then there are the ones that seem impossible, but might not be, like ‘Weave a coat of stars.’”

Corny moved onto the bed next to Kaye, dislodging Lutie from his knee. “There has to be a way. There has to be something you can do.”

The little faery fluttered in the air, then settled in the lap of a large porcelain doll. She curled up and yawned.

Kaye shook her head. “But, Corny, he doesn’t
want
me to finish the quest.”