Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
The black slammed in across her eyes; she erupted to her feet. He readied himself, thought that in the time it would take her to pounce, he might just clear the sgian dubh from its sheath…
“I came,” she gritted, “to warn you.”
“You’re a little late for that.” Forcing himself to breathe. He tapped the score mark across his skull. “Had an interesting time getting out of the Forest with Mimi Rush last week.”
“I had no hand in that. I told you at the time it could happen.”
“Aye, and you had Hardy waiting at the other end anyway, just in case we made it through.”
It was a test, and she passed it with flying colors. Her stance broke, she twitched as if from an insect at her ear.
“I don’t know Hardy,” she said irritably. “But the trees told me that your own kind turned on you. Tell me, how does that feel?”
“I spent four years slaughtering my own kind. It doesn’t feel new.”
She smiled. “They were not your tribe, though. I know of your Great War; every Huldu across the Continent does. We heard your screams. I have thralls who fled to the Forest rather than serve and die in the fighting.”
“Smart men.” Change the subject. “But if you didn’t call down the Huldu on me that night—if you gave orders against it, upheld Stordalen’s word—then who broke the bond?
Who thinks so little of the Final Isles?
Because that wasn’t a few disaffected youngsters pissing on the old ways.
That was a planned assault. Who called it, if not you? ”
Something happened to the Fae queen’s mouth—as if she held something back behind her fangs, unsure whether to chew it to death or spit it out.
“Svalenkari,” she said finally.
The name, like an autumn leaf wafted from the bonfire, edged in worms of fire. The stillness in the darkening park held the syllables like perfume, and he breathed it in.
“Ahh.”
“You must know how much hate he holds for you.”
“Aye, I’ll have embarrassed him, I imagine. Escaping the way I did.”
“Embarrassed?” For the first time ever, he saw Mebhuranon at a loss.
A kind of flicker went through the inky black of her eyes, brought the violet pupil back, inked it out, brought it back again.
She coughed—a soft sound like another chestnut burr falling.
“You think Svalenkari’s embarrassed? Don’t you know what you did? ”
“Evidently not. Do you want to tell me?”
“You killed his grandson, Duncan.”
Duncan blinked. “Stordalen? That prick was—”
“Not that preening waste, you fool! You killed Isnorvi! Isnorvi, son of Tragvinada, daughter of Svalenkari, future heir to the northwestern range, and you butchered him when he had barely one foot out of the cradle!”
The memory flashed forth, jagged, bloody, blue lit with the dawn, and somehow sharper than anything he recalled from the trenches—
Slashing hard, overarm, full force, back and forth, and every strike rips fresh lines of fire, fresh shrieks from the Huldu boy.
Isnorvi staggers backward, both hands up now, warding, Duncan carves lines of fire across them, too.
Isnorvi stumbles, goes over, falls on his side between the cairns.
He tries dizzily to ward off his attacker one more time, but Duncan stomps down the arm, is on him, on top of him, punching down everywhere with the nail…
He shivered a little.
“Svalenkari never…treated him…like…” A gesture; even he felt how weak it was. “I didn’t know.”
The Fae queen shrugged. “Why would you? We are not like you, Duncan. How many times must you be told? We do not raise our young the same. We do not love the same. You were not with us long enough to see the nurseries, to understand. But Svalenkari will be avenged, and he is laying his plans. That is what I came to tell you.”
“He’s taken his sweet fucking time so far.”
“And why would he not? He is immortal. Time was on his side. His vengeance was to be fitting, prolonged, to fall on your children when you had them, for you to see and feel before it fell finally on you in turn.”
“You said was? Time was on his side?”
“Until you failed the path, yes. Instead of siring heirs, you went to war. You never returned to the northern range. The arc of his vengeance withered unclaimed.” Another regal shrug.
“And then what you call the Unbinding came instead, overthrew everything that had been. A new era dawned, we were overwhelmed with new power, new hopes, past dreams resurrected. I would say that you were almost forgotten in the tumult—until word came from the midranges. A new figure, a woodsman consumed with rage, at ease with magic and the Forest, bringing out lost children from under our noses, leaving red ruin in his wake. It did not take long to ascertain who this was.”
Duncan sneered. “And still he did not come.”
“The local clan masters would not permit it. It was their territory you trampled upon, their honor you sullied. It was theirs to avenge. When none proved equal, they sent to the Final Isles for a neutral champion, and Stordalen came with his traps and plans. Svalenkari was permitted as an observer only. Now, with Stordalen slain and no satisfaction, he has faced down the clan masters, sent his own sworn clan fellows after you, taken charge of the midrange for himself.”
“That must make you look bad.”
“I have other concerns that press me more.”
“Aye. Stealing defenseless weans out of their cradles, like every other Fae fuck that ever lived.”
“Miriam is not just another human child.”
“So I’ve heard. Ancient blood descendant of someone you know, is she?”
Something shifted in the violet eyes. “You do not understand.”
“She’s four fucking years old, Meb. She doesn’t care about your tedious ancient blood grudges. And nor do I. You’re going to live a thousand years; you’d better learn to let go of things.”
“I need not go back so far. Four years past, I sat at a bonfire in the south with mortal men held high among your kind. Accords were made. A token was agreed, a symbol I might carry back to the Bright Folk as proof of the good faith of mortal men in this new age, and my standing in our relations with them. This was promised to us. She was promised to us.”
“Not by me.”
The Fae queen grinned. “And with what authority do you think you speak?”
He reached to his back, found the sgian dubh. Drew it, held it toward her, point sideways, wrist upward, unthreatening. Ceremonial. The blade glinted like a lewd wink. “The iron will speak for me. Ask your slaughtered kin at Maltby what authority it holds.”
He’d known Huldu to flinch physically at the sight of an iron blade. Mebhuranon just wrinkled her nose in disdain, as if he’d flashed at her with some withered, wrinkled excuse for a member.
“I just told you—they were of Svalenkari’s clan, not mine.”
“You’re not getting her back, Meb.”
“And yet you do not have her either.”
Long pause. They stared at each other. Feeling slightly foolish, Duncan lowered the sgian dubh. Mebhuranon opened one taloned hand like a blade, looked at it askance, as if unsure what it might do.
“Mimi’s changeling found me,” she said. “It said you named me as its sire. Sent it to me.”
“Aye.”
“To what purpose?”
“What purpose do you think? She was falling apart, dissolving. I thought you could do something for her.”
“I did. I sent it back to the Gray.”
He thought about the sad, sagging version of a child that had dragged him back out of the meadow where Hardy left him for dead.
The way it clung to Mimi Rush’s rag doll when he handed it over.
“You really are a cunt,” he said.
Abruptly, faster than he could react, she’d leapt the bench, landed inches from him, at his back.
One hand fastened him at the wrist, turned the sgian dubh blade effortlessly away.
Icy numbness raced through his flesh, outward from her grip.
At his nape, by contrast, hot fingers of her breath, as she whispered to him.
“And if Mimi’s changeling was in rot without purpose, in hopeless dissolution, who do we find to blame for that, Duncan? Who robbed it of its reason to live?”
The sgian dubh slipped from his numbed fingers, fell away.
He tried to rise, to break from her hold.
Her other hand came to press hard against the side of his head.
She dragged him back from the bench, onto the gravel path.
More spreading chill from this new grip, enough to chatter his teeth, ache the socket of his closest eye.
He felt himself robbed of will, ready to follow his blade to the ground, if she let him go. “Who, Duncan?”
He barely managed through gritted teeth, “Fuck…you.”
She dumped him hard to the gravel, let go his numbed arm, slammed her freed hand against his chest instead, as if pushing open a heavy door. He felt his heart flop in his ribs like a fish in the net. Felt fingers of ice tighten around it. She hung over him with lips skinned back from her fangs.
“You,” she hissed, “have mistaken your place in things.”
And then she let go.
Right hand spasmed open and trembling, arm numbed to the shoulder, head chilled through with worse cold than he’d felt since winter on the Somme, an icy lump in his chest, a dull droning hum in his ears…
He twisted on the gravel path like a stomped bug.
Mebhuranon stood, towered over him, glitter-eyed.
He’d forgotten how tall she was. The spider came sidling out from under the bench, snuffled along his thigh and body, put soft forelegs and mouth palps on his chest. Not clear if it intended him harm, or, like the family dog it had put him in mind of earlier, was just worried about him because he’d fallen over.
“A wolf may be swift and strong and feared throughout the Forest, Duncan.” The Fae queen’s words, like dull axes falling, far off in the droning that drowned his ears. “But when he howls at the moon, the moon is not moved. Do not mistake your relationship with me again.”
The spider tapped him on the chest a couple of times with one limb, as if for emphasis, or maybe just testing for hollowness, a good place to bite.
Then it spun away from him with spidery aplomb and left. From his worm’s-eye view, he watched it scuttle away across the park, into the thickening gloom.
“And now, mortal, we are done.” More dull axes falling, a little clearer through the now-fading drone.
“I came to warn you. And so you are warned. Svalenkari wills vengeance, and he will not be stopped. With Stordalen dead and the hand of the Final Isles seen to fail, the midrange clans will no longer stand in his way. With this new age, the old order trembles, and it may yet fall.”
Duncan rolled over and dragged himself back toward the bench. Maybe he could crawl under its iron rails for protection. He tried to get his arm, his heart, his chattering teeth back under control. He felt her watching, like the spike of tiny icicles all across his shoulders and nape.
“W-w-why?” he stuttered.
“Why what?”
He changed his mind about direction. Fuck this, he would not crawl and hide.
Had he not done enough of that in fucking French and Flemish mud?
He hauled himself instead, by crippled fractions, back up onto the bench where he’d been sitting.
The stiff cold in his arm might, he thought, be thawing, one tiny, dripping fraction at a time.
He rolled himself awkwardly to face the Fae queen.
“The w-warning,” he shivered. “W-why t-tell me at all?”
Once again, the regal shrug. With the mess she’d made of his senses, he couldn’t be sure, but he thought there was an impatience there now, and not just with him.
“The trees seem to like you,” she said finally. “That has to count for something.”