Twelve #2
“This is not what I meant when I said I preferred you avoid dangerous situations on your own,” he said. “I mostly meant that I would prefer you avoid dangerous situations.”
“Sure, but where’s the fun in that? Come on.”
Out of deference to his trauma, I didn’t turn back toward the bonfire, but started toward the main source of my own trauma: the stables.
While fae children would eventually have their minds erased and replaced by the psyche of one of Michael’s Riders, human children would be transformed into horses.
It was a horrific process, and twice as terrifying, since the humans who endured it had no idea what was happening to them.
Of all Michael’s cruelties, the stables might be the worst of them, and the most extreme. The memory of what Quentin’s human girlfriend had become by the time I’d freed her would haunt me for the rest of my life.
The stables were still as I remembered them, crumbling and draped in clinging briars, their thorns providing all the security the structure was ever likely to need.
A single Rider was there when we approached, still wearing their armor as they ran a curry comb along the side of a speckled gray mare.
The horse had probably been human once, but there was nothing to indicate that in her stance, or in the languid way she flicked an ear at the sound of our approach, continuing to stand placidly as she was groomed.
The Rider looked up, brush stilling, eyes a flash of brown through the slit in their helm.
We paused where we were, giving them a chance to retreat if they chose.
Instead, they went back to brushing their horse, and we resumed our approach.
Once we were only a few feet away, the Rider spoke, in a voice like stones rattling down the side of a hill: “Hello to our Lady’s guests.”
“Um, hi,” I said. “Do you … remember me?”
“It would be difficult for any among our number not to, given that you were the ending of our Lord, and hence the ending of all Rides,” said the Rider. “Yes, I remember you. Your companion I remember as well, for I have seen him before, at a distance.”
Tybalt tensed, but didn’t say anything. The “at a distance” made me feel a little better, since it implied that this Rider hadn’t originally belonged to the Court of Cats.
Not that there was any way of being sure without asking directly, and I was not going to do that.
Punching someone dead in the trauma is very rarely a good idea.
“Why are you here?” asked the Rider.
“We’re looking for Rayseline Torquill—the Lady’s granddaughter,” I said. “She was abducted and taken here via the Rose Road. But before we could recover her, someone else stole her from her kidnapper.”
“She isn’t in the stable, although you can look as you like,” said the Rider, still running the comb in long, smooth strokes over the hide of their mare. “I haven’t seen your missing girl.”
“Would you tell us if you had?”
The Rider stilled again, tilting their head as they considered my question.
Finally, they resumed grooming, and said, “I think I would. Not all of us would be inclined to assist you, even given the chance to, but I had brothers, once, and they will never join the Hunt because of what you did. I am loyal to my Lord. I am forever loyal to my Lord. And still, I feel joy that my brothers will be spared. For that, I can offer you a truth when asked.”
“Who were you?”
I blurted the question before I had a chance to think better of it, and yet I wasn’t sorry. If I was going to try to break the spells that had created Michael’s Riders, the more I knew about their origins, the better.
The Rider kept brushing, methodical and smooth. “Athan,” they said. “But that was a very long time ago. We have little need of names here, where the horn can call us all in a single sound and no one needs to speak of anything else.”
Tybalt cleared his throat. “You said you hadn’t seen her. Do you know where she is?”
“Ah. That is a different question, and different questions have different answers. I don’t know where she is. But I know where she was to be taken.”
I tensed. “What do you mean?”
Athan turned, slowly, to face me. “Why should she walk in the world where there is sunlight, where there are humans, when her grandfather made us as we are? When we were forbidden all but the Ride for His pleasures, His designs? Why should she remain free when she could be so much more than simply another creature of the dying day?”
“What did you do?”
“I did nothing. But some among our company may have been informed of what the girl’s mother intended, and may have gone to intervene. To convince her that the girl belonged where she had always belonged, where she should have been from the beginning.” Athan continued calmly grooming the mare.
Tybalt’s lips drew back, exposing the sharpened points of his teeth. Before he could snarl, I stepped forward, between the two of them. “Who informed them?”
Athan looked sharply up. “What?”
“The members of your company who were ‘informed’ that Raysel’s mother would be bringing her here—who informed them? Who told them where to go?”
It was impossible to be sure with the helm blocking most of their face, but I thought Athan smiled. “Ah. She finally begins to ask the right questions.”
Children’s logic, children’s rules. Don’t lie when the right questions are being asked, but don’t offer any information the questions don’t compel. It was so perfectly reasonable for Michael’s lands, and it made me want to scream even so.
“Who informed them, and where do you think Raysel belongs?”
“The news was carried by a woman gone invisible with place and position, who has been kind to us ever since her eldest daughter came to join our number, and by a man who ceased to be a brother once, by candlelight. They thought we deserved to know that the girl would be vulnerable one more time, before she was lost to us forever.” Athan shrugged.
“As to where Blind Michael’s granddaughter belongs, you know that answer.
She should have been here from the beginning. She should be here still.”
“Do the people who carried the news have names?”
“Yes.” Athan sounded surprised.
Right. I had asked the wrong question. I took a deep breath. “Can you tell me their names?”
“Yes,” they said, and nothing more.
“Will you tell me their names?”
“I will not.” They finally set the curry comb aside and straightened, taking their mare by the reins.
“What will be done to her is no better nor worse than has been done to all the rest of us, and we thrive, in our own ways. She is in no danger if you allow her to relax into the inevitable and become what awaits her. She will not be harmed.”
“Where is she?”
“That, too, I will not tell you.”
“She never agreed to this!”
“None of us did.” Athan braced their hands against their mare’s neck, and they were abruptly mounted.
I hadn’t seen them swing themselves into position; one moment they were on foot and the next they were astride, ready to challenge the night as Blind Michael’s Riders always had.
“The game is simple: hide-and-seek. We will not fight you if you find her, will allow her to be taken back to her daylit world and softened into something that can survive there. But if the hour grows late and the time runs out before you have her back again, the game’s lost, and the girl lost with it. These are the rules.”
“We didn’t agree to play,” I said quickly.
“No one in this land ever has,” said Athan, hauling on the reins. The mare turned without resisting, cantering away without any sign that she didn’t want to go.
I turned to Tybalt, at least in part to keep myself from chasing after the retreating Rider. He was scowling after them, hands flexing at his sides as he struggled to contain his claws.
“Tybalt?”
“Must everything here be a game?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “That’s how Michael designed this place, and I don’t think Acacia has ever cared enough to unmake those rules.
They play by children’s logic here, and they follow the rules of children’s games.
Athan probably thinks there’s no harm in stealing Raysel away from her life.
That was done to everyone here except for Acacia, and they’ve all made the best of it. ”
Like a Neverland where Peter never asked for permission, only took what he wanted and carried it away, leaving shipwrecks in his wake.
“So what do we do now?”
“We find her.” I tilted my chin up enough to meet his eyes, not flinching away from the misery in his expression.
“Athan told us more than they realize. We know there were two people involved in telling the Riders what Luna had planned, and at least one of them was probably a servant at Shadowed Hills. Servants are invisible in the noble houses. They can take advantage of that, if they’re clever about it, and anyone who’s served for more than a few decades is probably clever, to keep from being dismissed from their position.
I already thought we needed to go to Shadowed Hills, but now I’m certain.
Whoever we’re looking for is probably there. ”
Tybalt hesitated, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “We go to Shadowed Hills.”
“Or, well, I go to Shadowed Hills. You go home and give May a few hours of relief.”
For a moment, I thought he was going to argue with me. Then he sighed and leaned toward me, until he was resting his forehead against my own.
“Little fish, I adore you,” he said. “And that may be the only reason I can survive you. We’ll return to the house together, and I’ll remain while you journey onward. Just call before leaving Shadowed Hills. I want to be able to rejoin you when May is prepared to resume sitting for our child.”
“I will,” I agreed. “Let’s go see how close Acacia is to waking up.”
He stepped back, taking my hand, and together we walked back into the woods, away from the looming, tortured shape of Michael’s stable.