Courts of the Fey Read online

  And now I cannot ask who else has come looking. Gooseflesh rose all over him. Goodfellow was a bad enemy to make. “Thank you.” He even managed to sound sincere. “I’ll return, Puck.”

  “Don’t.” Goodfellow tensed, muscle by muscle. “There is no amends for this, Gallow.”

  “Sweet nothings,” Jeremy replied, and backed away. They whispered even more as he left, and the rain outside was just as cold as the sick feeling under his breastbone.

  Robin, where are you?

  She was a creature of the Summer Court, and they loved air and light. So why would she make her home here, in a hole cut into the north wall of the tunnel leading uphill from Fenwicke Station? The subway roaring past at intervals was not conducive to quiet dreaming.

  But it was hers, there was no question. There was a low armchair in just the shade of blue she wore in eye and dress, the peacock-shade of a summer sky just as dusk first unloosed its mantle. A narrow pallet and bits of colored glass strung on the weeping concrete wall. Cobwebs in the corners and one lone black high-heeled shoe right next to her bed, the covers thrown back as if she’d been pulled loose by force.

  He only had a doublewide trailer, but it was better than this. “I wouldn’t have touched you,” Gallow murmured, only half aware of speaking. “You could have just . . . ” Lived with me. In my trailer. Christ. When you were used to the Summer Court’s luxury, even if you were only Half.

  And with memories of her dead, purely mortal sister lingering in every corner, would any woman, fae or human, consent to stay? Especially after . . .

  You did not treat her well, Jeremy.

  Yes, she had been treacherous. What else could he expect from the Seelie Queen’s plaything? Ragged Robin, a full Half-fae, taken to Court after a childhood of neglect as her mortal sister’s shadow, seeking a chance of escape.

  So treacherous.

  But he had been downright cruel.

  He ran his fingers over the back of the chair. How many nights would Robin have sat here, her legs drawn up, and watched the trains rumble past, spilling their diseased yellow light?

  Under the tang of iron and concrete, exhaust and pollution, there was the warm perfume of spice-pear. He filled his lungs with it, and the markings ran with fire on his arms. The lance was unsatisfied, and his own unease added to it.

  Unease? Call it what it is, Gallow. Fear.

  There. A glint on her tumbled bed. He approached, cautiously, and looked at the silver coin, half hidden under the threadbare sky-blue sheet.

  The quirpiece gleamed as he tweezed it delicately free with two callused fingers. Memory threatened to swamp him—she was a Realmaker, her craftings not vanishing into leaves and sticks like other fae’s. Was this the same piece she had left to break her trail the night he met her?

  It didn’t matter. For shoved further under the sheet was another small, stray gleam, a thin gold chain, smelling of truemetal but broken now, as if it had been violently yanked free. He slid the quir into his pocket and lifted the necklace, turning it to catch the faint illumination from the mouth of the hole, fluorescent glare from Fenwicke Station slipping wearily down the tracks to creep into the corner here.

  He remembered clasping it, Robin holding her redgold hair aside, the scent of her filling his lungs and bright spring sunshine gilding his bedroom window. The supple curve of her naked back and how the pear-spice of her had lingered on the sheets after she left him.

  I will never need you, Gallow.

  A shrieking clatter tore through the memory; he was in an instinctive crouch before he realized it was merely another subway train. It flashed past.

  Who was she punishing? Or was she hiding? From whom? Me?

  “Robin,” he breathed, and the thin golden chain twitched, tugging against his fingers. The necklace would lead him to her.

  And then God help whoever had torn it from her throat.

  Dawn was rising in veils of gray as Jeremy drew the shadows over himself and bit back a curse. The necklace tugged insistently in the hollow of his palm.

  The entrance to Craigie Park held a high-crowned pair of gates, set in a chunk of ivy-festooned wall that only stretched for ten feet in either direction. Mortals probably thought the rest of the wall had been pulled down as the city grew, pressing in on the little bit of tamed wilderness full of thorny bushes and crazy-looping jogging paths. They wouldn’t guess that the walls simply stepped sideways. Disappearances in the park were blamed on human criminals.

  Some of them might even be guilty, for all Gallow knew. He eyed the unlocked gate, its spikes slick with dew and the ancient padlock dangling from a length of chain probably older than the city itself. Both sides of the gate were drawn back and perhaps rusted that way, for all that the metal wasn’t cold iron.

  The Seelie Queen closed the gates of her garden in fall and reopened them to unloose the spring, but Unwinter always stood waiting. When the Wild Hunt rode forth, this would be the gate they used, and when they brought their struggling prey back, the threshold would receive first blood.

  A shudder worked its way down his body. No wonder she had called his name, if the Unseelie had her. Was she prey for a Hunt? Not likely; his Robin was too quick, and she could sing her way free if she had to. He’d seen her singing unleashed and the destruction that followed . . . but there were ways to incapacitate a Tainted fae, even a full Half. She had been running from a plague-scored Unseelie rider the night he’d met her.

  The quirpiece trembled in his pocket, too. Jeremy hunched his shoulders under his work jacket. They would miss him at the jobsite this morning.

  He could always find another job. Maybe roadwork, and that would take him out of this city. Still, there were always entrances to Summer or Unwinter, if you knew where to look.

  I will never need you, Gallow.

  He was well within his rights to leave her there. Perhaps she was already dead.

  But the necklace quivered, and he saw her face when he had thrown the words at her, each one a wound. I loved your sister because she was mortal, fae. You’re a dalliance, and a traitorous one to boot.

  She was white as milk, her blue eyes darkening and the pulse beating in her throat above the necklace’s gleam. The thin crystalline sound of a heart breaking, and his own acid self-loathing. He had been foolish enough to think her dead Daisy’s replacement. The truth was, Daisy was the shadow and Robin the light that cast it.

  And still, afterward, she had stood at his back when the Seelie Queen’s part in the making of the fae-killing plague had been revealed. The Queen and her mortal scientist lover, mixing their poisons to kill Unseelie fae—but the Seelie themselves took ill as well, and there were those who had broken free of the Queen’s hold when all was revealed.

  Robin’s quick thinking and the threat of her song unleashed on the very Court she had always served had saved Jeremy’s worthless life.

  He had stupidly thought it meant she had forgiven him.

  Gallow faded further into the shadows. If he intended to slip into Unwinter, he would have to do it before dawn rose further.

  But he did not have to stroll in through the Hungry Gates and announce himself. There were other ways.

  With his hand against venous ivy over chill granite stone, he was glad of his flannel shirt and work jacket. The cold of Unwinter settled against skin and hair, his breath plumed, and the world became gray-misty, the Keep rising above him on a spur of rough stone.

  The Summer Court was white stone and fluid lines, golden light and bright shade, jewel tones and sparkling eyes. Unwinter Keep was... otherwise, a hungry collection of piercing towers, barred windows, a gated maw across a black-metal bridge tarred with filth, the moat roiling gray smoke over a fluid too thick to be water. The necklace scorched against his palm, and bloody accents in the gray and black mass above him showed through.

  Unwinter was colorless save for the rubies and red glass. Some Unseelie fae said the colors were too subtle for those born in the Summer Court to see.

&n
bsp; Jeremy examined his surroundings carefully, eased one foot forward. The yellow of his workboots had faded, parchment now instead of sunshine. The thread of gold in his palm was richer and brighter, elemental metal showing its truth.

  The lance itched and burned, scenting the danger around him. He slid free of the small entrance set in a long ivy-grasped wall and set off around the edge of the moat, moving silently as he could.

  If he remembered correctly there was a small secret stair on the east side, coming up through the donjons. The Keep did not change much over time, and entry was normally easy.

  It was the leaving of Unwinter that was difficult.

  Robin. Be alive, I’m coming.

  Silence filled dusty halls. Unwinter would be settling for the day, drowsing as the mortal world ploughed through its sunlit half. Once, to avoid a small group of trow as they cavorted through knee-high dust, he clung to a cobweb-wrapped chandelier, his left boot braced on a carved frieze and his right held high in empty air, work-hardened muscles protesting. He had lost very little of his flexibility.

  He had visited the Keep as an envoy and once or twice as an assassin, both honorable enough missions. What was he now?

  The necklace tugged, drawing him deeper and deeper into the Keep’s gloom. The quiet was unnatural. He should have seen more fae before now—spreggan and more drow, kelpies and the dark brughnies leering, leprechauns with their clubs and their claws, the Hunt’s tall lords in ragged silks with their dark or silver-chased armor laid aside for the day.

  And the hounds. Don’t ever forget the hounds.

  It was a trap, of course. But he followed the necklace’s burning twitching, wrapped around his wrist now, and tried not to think of the possibilities.

  The chamber was round and thick-walled, the stone floor patterned in a compass rose, black and gray interwoven with thin threads of crimson. Jeremy eased into the room, the necklace tightening on his wrist, and was not surprised in the slightest when the door thudded shut and the roof folded back, huge clockwork gears grinding. The floor bowed, the rose became a dish, and he leaped sideways for footing, finding himself braced against the wall.

  “Welcome,” a cold, lipless voice echoed, and Jeremy stared up. His boots slipped as the floor turned slick, the gears grinding with unlovely screeches. The King of Unwinter, his high horned helm a cup of shadows lit only by two red-coal eyes, glared down from the gallery above. His spiked shoulders, cold silver-chased plate armor glinting in the dimness, held the rags of a tattered crimson cloak, and his gauntleted fists rested on the lip of the gallery’s balustrade.

  Around the gallery’s rim, other Unseelie clustered. Barrow-wights leered, their chill gray robes belted with pale gold and their rings chiming as they drummed fleshless fingers; beansidhes clutched at themselves, their mouths moving with silent screams and their long gray hair moving in runnels; the drow clung to rafters and peered down, their eyes lit with bloody glints. Seawater and freshwater dripping from kelpie hooves and their tossed manes dribbled down the wall, smoking with ice. The leprechauns rattled their clubs, and dark pixies crawled over the King’s shoulders, tiny unhealthy foxfire glimmers under their fluttering wings. Other Unseelie of every shape and size crowded, jostling for a look as the gears kept grinding and cracks showed in the floor, the compass rose dilating.

  Whatever was underneath it was bound to be nasty. The marks on his arms burned, the lance struggled for freedom, but he kept looking. Where was she? She had to be here, she must be—

  “Stop!” The cry rang like cold glass, shivering into pieces on a fullmoon night. It tore the air, flushing it with chill, and she vaulted the gallery’s rim with sweet grace, her blue skirt fluttering and bare battered white feet dangling briefly. Her bleeding feet came up, pushed against the wall, and she was airborne.

  Jeremy moved, sliding against the tipping, heaving, cracking floor. She was falling, her curling hair a russet flag, and the Unseelie set up a belling, baying scream that could stop a mortal’s heart.

  The floor juddered, his boots finding purchase, and she obviously had not expected him to catch her. They almost went over in a tangle of arms and legs, but he had his footing at last and broke her fall, shoving her behind him. The lance burst free, a column of truesilver, and he expected them to come leaping down behind her.

  The King laughed.

  The assembled fae cowered under the lash of that chill, deadly amusement. One of the brughnies toppled over the balustrade, twisting as she plummeted, and hit the cracked, sloping floor with an unhealthy, meaty sound.

  It’s stopped moving. Jeremy’s ribs heaved, his breath pluming on iron-frosted air. The gears had quit grinding. Now we see what the game is.

  “Stop!” Robin cried again, and her voice sliced through Unwinter′s laughter. “Or I’ll drop and break it, I swear I will!”

  The sudden stillness was eerie. The lance quivered in Jeremy’s hands. He could hold a bottleneck for a very long time, but here on uncertain footing with someone to protect . . . well. And the Unseelie were not known for single combat.

  It was then that he noticed the patches of greenblack corruption smoking on several of the fae. The brughnie’s twisted body sent up thin tracers of acrid steam as it rotted, a foul stench escaping it in a gassy whisper.

  The plague was here. It had broken Unwinter’s walls at last.

  His skin chilled, reflexively. Those Tainted by mortal blood did not take the illness—yet.

  “Gallow.” Robin’s hand was on his shoulder, her fingers digging in. “What in the name of Stone or Throne are you doing here?”

  His throat was dry. The lance sang hungrily. “You called,” he managed, staring up at the crimson gleams of the King’s eyes, deep in the twisted helm’s shadow. “What are you doing here, Ragged?”

  And he could have kicked himself, because he sounded disdainful. Instead of . . . his heart knocked against his ribs. We are about to die, Gallow, and that is all you can say to her?

  “You called me.” She squeezed his shoulder, as hard as she could, her fingernails pricking the tough cloth of his work jacket. “And he said to bring it, for your life. The serum.”

  “And do you have it, Tainted songbird?” The King’s words split like gravel and the Unseelie writhed under that lash. A beansidhe′s open mouth worked like a fish’s, her sightless eyes rolling up until the gray-webbed whites showed, and she slumped against her sisters as the spots of greenblack danced on her pale skin.

  Robin stepped delicately forward; her dress flapped, torn and stained with various fluids. Her feet left bloody prints on the twisted compass rose, but she didn’t flinch. Jeremy hissed a warning—are you mad, woman? I cannot protect you if—

  Her slim, beautiful fingers flicked. He studied her profile greedily, taking little sip-glances, unable to stop himself. The same long nose and sculpted mouth, the same high gloss of sidhe beauty over a face that was not, in the end, very much like her sis-ter′s. Similar to Daisy’s beauty, but all her own.

  How could he ever have thought them alike?

  She held up a long, thin crystal ampoule, the colorless liquid inside sparkling as it moved, sluggishly. “I held a phial of vaccine back, yes.” Her voice shook, but only slightly. “You will not have it if you harm him, Unseelie. And I will sing thee into thy grave besides, on my name and my voice.”

  Jeremy all but flinched. “Robin—” A strengthless whisper.

  “Threats, little Tainted bird. Hand over the cure, and we shall perhaps let you live.” The King was deadly serious now, and the Unseelie rose, scrabbling forward. They would press down into the cup of the small chamber, and he would kill as many of them as he could, but—

  “Gallow.” She cast him a sidelong glance, and he saw the bruise spreading up her white throat. “You should not have come.”

  She drew back her arm, and hurled the crystalline ampoule upward. Unseelie crowded forward, each of them shoving the others aside in their haste to catch the cure, and the King roared.

&nb
sp; Jeremy stepped aside, the lance’s blade singing happily as it buried itself in the piebald kelpie’s stomach. The fae went down in a welter of half-horse, half-human, hooves scraping stone, and Robin’s voice trilled behind him, a low descant of unearthly beauty that struck the knot of beansidhe threatening to descend on them and peeled inhuman flesh back from spongy, blackened bone.

  “Run!” Jeremy screamed, and backed up, using his bulk to move her along. The music coming from her throat didn’t falter, spiraling up into a sustained note of chill glass murder, but Robin fell.

  The lance braced itself in his right hand; he bent and found her arm with his left, hauling her up. “God damn you,” he yelled, the blasphemy scorching the Keep’s wall next to him, “Run, Robin!”

  No longer singing, somehow she was on her feet again and stumbling, bloody prints left behind. He had a vague memory of kicking the door to the compass-chamber down as the Unseelie fought for the ampoule, even the King’s flickering, murderous gauntlets unable to restore order. Unwinter shook with rage, the fae turning on each other, and Robin’s head came up, her russet-gold curls tangled and tumbling as she pitched forward, leading him down a dust-choked hall.

  “Should be here,” she choked, somehow audible through the massive noise, and Jeremy snapped a glance over his shoulder. They were free of pursuit for the moment, but that could change when Unwinter restored order to his subjects and came a-hunting. The Hounds would be loosed, and the knights of the Wild Hunt would be given their names, and—

  Robin plunged aside, her feet almost tangling. He kept her upright by yanking on her bird-thin arm, and the thought of the bruises he would leave on her sent another bolt of hot self-loathing through him. She half-fell through a narrow casement, wood splintering as she forced it wide, and the Keep shuddered on its foundations again. The noise behind them cut off, deadly silence rising like a shark for the legs of an unwary swimmer.