The massive mahogany counter the long-haired ghilliedhu girls had clustered at was a shell, the walls dappled with smoke and water damage. No sign of Ardie Meg, the brughnie proprietor he had once almost considered a friend; no sign of anyone else. Just the vibration of screaming and smoke—and a very faint, almost unsmell of bitter almonds.
Unseelie, again. Scavengers, or besiegers? Had open war been declared on free sidhe without him knowing? Of course, if he’d known, would he have cared?
Not before today.
No, Gallow, be honest. Not before Friday night.
He told that sneering little voice in his head to fuck off and eased around the long shoal of burned and shattered mahogany, his boots making the floor wobble alarmingly. He’d thought this place was built on concrete, but maybe that was glamour. Exhausted ghosts of cinnamon steam and faint breaths of coffee-smell rose, brushed his cheeks and the backs of his hands.
There was a scorch in the back hallway leading to the little-used restrooms, scorch-smear clawing down from the ceiling. Up near the top the wall was eaten away, and he sniffed cautiously, smelling the peculiar fading ozone of an electrical fire. This wall was shared with a mortal bar that faced onto 73rd instead of Challer; perhaps some catastrophe there had spread.
Wood and field burned easily, and so did their spirits. He shook his head, deciding it didn’t matter, and headed for the bar.
The shelves behind the mahogany wreck were twisted and warped. He crouched right where the cash register had been, and reached back. He had to actually put his head under the bar, into the smoking darkness, and for a moment the thread of screaming and fear rose to overwhelm him.
Yes, a mortal fire. Brughnies didn’t burn like ghilliedhu or other wood-spirits, so Ardie might even be alive elsewhere. Who knew? They were homefast wights. They didn’t like to move, but would one stay here?
His fingers closed around oiled black canvas. He pulled it free, gently, and his fingers sensed no breakage. He didn’t breathe until he had the little bag safely cupped in his hands, straightening his legs so he could check the interior again. No movement, and his instincts weren’t tingling.
Still, it wouldn’t do to stay here, now that he had what he sought. The few small tokens he’d taken from Summerhome might possibly be useful. It was a wonder they hadn’t been found by scavenger or fortune-hunter.
If Ardie was still alive, she was underground. Good luck finding her; brughnie though she was, she owed Gallow a favor or two. There went his best chance of finding what he wanted without cost. Still, if Ardie had left this here… either she was dead, or she guessed Gallow would come back for it, and did not dare to brave his wrath if he found it gone.
Daisy had been here once. Just once.
You and a mortal, Ardie had sneered, her nut-brown face screwing up with distaste. Don’t bring her to the Folk places, Gallow. You know better.
He’d waited long enough none could accuse him of leaving Summer for a mortal, but he still knew better than to bring one to places sidhe frequented. If anyone still bore him a grudge from his Armormaster days, well, Gallow was hard to harm, but a mortal girl was not. In the first flush of being able to openly court Daisy he’d been silly as a pixie and twice as scatterbrained.
Pixies. Now, there was an idea. If he could get them to concentrate long enough—
The air changed. Jeremiah’s head snapped up. The little bag slid itself into his pocket, and he was out from behind the bar in a flash.
“Over Hill and under Sea, what do I now see before me?” A high, almost girlish giggle, and Jeremiah’s skin chilled. “Come to pick the bones of the dead, Armormaster?”
“Goodfellow.” He didn’t sound surprised, at least. “This was once a nice place.”
“Not long ago, as mortals reckon.” A slim boyshape melded out of the shadows in the back corner, where the great clock had stood, its small gilded figures hopping out to chime the hours. If mortals entered this place, they would have noticed the clockface was blank—except at night, when the full moon rose and glowed through the skylights. Only then the clockface would be a sleeping woman’s, the eyelashes and pores drawn with a hair-fine brush, the mouth slackly open and sharp teeth visible.
Now the clock was shattered, and the spirit sleeping inside it loose to ride the night winds. Bits of ebony and glass crunched as the boy skipped forward on glove-shod feet. Brown leather molded itself to his slenderness; his hair was a raggedly cut cap of chestnut streaked with fine bits of gold. His ears came up to sharp points, poking through the fine smooth strands, and a leaf-sheathed dagger rested at his hip.
It was either very good fortune, or very bad, to meet him here. Gallow’s weight shifted back, carefully, and the boy’s eyes peered from under his messy hair.
Bright and changeful between yellow and green, those eyes, thickly lashed and beguiling, with hourglass-shaped pupils. His pipes hung at his silver-buckled belt, and his extra-jointed brown fingers dipped, stroking their soundless mouths. Goodfellow swept a graceful bow, doffing an imaginary cap. “Hail and well-met, brother mine. Did you come for coffee? The brughnie’s hospitality hath grown cold of late. Seven days ago it was scorch-hot, a mortal fire burning quickly and snuffed too late.”
A week, and just a bad-luck fire, not an attack. That was likely all Puck would give for free, and could be a lie as well. The marks on Gallow’s arms tingled. “What is a free woodland spirit here for? Picking bones as well?” Let him think me carrion, if he’s stupid enough.
Which Puck was emphatically not, and likewise did not take umbrage at. An almost-insult for an almost-insult, and all even.
It felt so familiar, measuring his words against the arcane rules of sidhe etiquette.
Puck’s smile widened a trifle. “Oh, searching, brother. One of our wayward girls has gone so much further astray than usual.”
“Who’s missing now? And why would you seek for her here?”
Goodfellow laughed. The sound was a crystal bell, wrongly tuned. He capered sideways. “You’ve grown dull among mortals, Gallow, and you reek of barrow-wight-death. The Unseelie ride hither and yon, striking down all in their way. Have you heard of the plague?”
“Some little of it.” Gallow eased the backpack on his shoulders, a loose rolling motion. “The Folk do not often fall prey to sickness.”
How quickly the odd speech of the sidhe fell back into his mouth again. Then again, Goodfellow might not answer if you spoke to him with what he considered impoliteness. It was rarely politic to piss off one of the truly unaligned.
“Oh, times have changed. Are about to change more, if you are a-wandering without your mortal doxy.” Goodfellow grinned, and the pearly edges of his teeth were sharp enough to cut his whistling laugh as it slid past them. “Did you tire of aging flesh?”
Rage rose, red wine turning to vinegar, but Gallow forced his hands to remain loose. Still, he traded insult for insult, openly this time. “What sidhe are you hunting, then, Goodfellow? A woman? Hardly your usual quarry.”
“Boymeat is sweet, but this is not for eating. News has spread that His Majesty, unhallowed be that name, seeks a certain winged sidhe-girl. The reward is vast.” Goodfellow cocked his selkie-sleek head. “So vast I almost think it a risk to tell you. For if once Gallow rides in pursuit, how can one little bird hope to escape?”
It can’t be. If Puck was looking for her, and musing aloud that Unwinter wanted her caught, it would be better if Gallow was there when she was found by anyone. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll hear it on the wind anyway. To see you hunting here in the ruins, Goodfellow, makes me think that I should perhaps simply ride in your wake.”
Amazingly, the boy laughed. “And I thought you would take convincing. Come, let us taste some ale. You are not the best drinking companion, but the ash in the air makes my eyes misty. It must be my age.”
Gallow’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “It would be an honor.”
The boy’s smile widened, too far to be human. His eyes twinkled
with sheer sickening goodwill. “Then come. I shall show you where to ask questions, and require no tithe. It suits me tonight. How long has it been since you tasted proper ale?”
I think I prefer Coors. But oh well. “Long and long, Goodfellow. Lead on.”
It was not a short walk, and night had risen with cold, penetrating rain on a moan-soaking wind. He knew where they were bound halfway there, but still he walked with Goodfellow, whose light banter had vanished. The silence might have been a warning.
In any case, the Rolling Oak was as good a place as any to begin his search afresh.
The entrance was a shopfront that looked vaguely foreign from the outside, and would give mortals a subtle chill. Except for the lonely or suicidal; those would feel a pull right through their marrow, a false promise of relief.
Inside, it was close and warm, full of the smell of wet earth, burning applewood, and splashed ale. The fume of candles in squat lanthorns, the barely perceptible spice-tang of sidhe flesh with only the slightest tinge of mortal blood to tarnish its edges, meat roasting on a spit, the rich illusion of coffee. Down three age-blackened steps, brushing aside the branches—wood coaxed from the walls, leaves pale from lack of sunlight surviving by drinking in the aura of strange and delicious and making little whisper-chuckle sounds as they fingered each patron.
Bark-skinned sweet-loving brughnies and woodwights at the bar, kobolding in a corner sharing a keg the size of a fat pony, the flittering that was pixies with their gossamer shrouds and the gleam of their wicked-sharp teeth. Hobs and grenteeth and jennies or jacks of every shape and size, galleytrots and churchgrims with their snouts in brass bowls on the floor, their sad wise eyes half closed. And more. It all closed about Jeremiah Gallow, and he took a deep breath.
Puck capered for a dark corner, pale mushrooms crawling the wall in pained corkscrews. Here the black vinyl booths were sticky, and the tabletops spattered with scorch and other marks scrubbed at the end of the night with bleach and muttered chantment. A kelpie, broad shoulders straining at a dark coarsewoven shirt and his ropy hair long wet draggles, hunched in one, staring into a bowl of smoking fly-covered chunks of wet glistening meat still twitching from its former owner’s agony.
In the furthest booth, a russet gleam. A pale flash—but she relaxed as Puck swung away. She had her back to the wall; the Rolling Oak had only one exit. Unless she planned to brave Peleaster the Cook’s wrath, and in the smoke-hell of the kitchen such a thing was not to be done lightly.
She studied Jeremiah as he settled across the table from her. A single glass of silty red wine, with a faint glow in its depths. Evergrape, called lithori. Expensive, but what could a Realmaker not afford if she chose it?
His palms were damp.
“He brought you.” The same contralto. The same tilt to her head, and her fingers played with the glass’s stem. Its top was a tulip, frozen cunningly in sidheglass. “I thought him…” A shadow across her face.
You thought him a liar? Wise of you. “We happened to cross paths.” He may be seeking to sell you to Unwinter, but you’re safe enough for the moment.
A tangle-haired brughnie girl, her green coarsewoven skirts hiked enough to show her knobby barklike ankles and bare horn-toed feet, slammed a foaming mug of nut-brown bitter down before him. She whirled smartly away, and Jeremiah winced inwardly. Now Goodfellow had stood him a drink. The debt was slight, but it could be a wedge. Yet he could not be impolite, so he lifted it and took a long draft.
When he wiped his mouth, the tingle of good sidhe ale all through him and his nerves suitably bolstered, he bumped the backpack below the table with his boot. It was a reassuring weight. “Ragged.” He accorded her the courtesy of a surname.
She nodded slightly. Her eyes were close to indigo now, and he thought she was perhaps weary. Through the smoke and fug of the Oak’s closeness, he could not catch a breath of that cherryspice perfume, and he dared not lean forward to try.
“Gallow.” She accorded him the same. “I bring word. She wants you.”
He dropped his gaze, staring into the mug’s blind eye. A messenger? She said she was under commission.
“The Queen.” Her voice had dropped, but she said it slowly, in case he was stupid enough to not take her meaning. “It pleases her to have your presence in Summer.”
It does not please me. “She can go to Hell.” He could not help himself, glancing up to take a sipping glance of her face.
He couldn’t pretend she was Daisy, but he couldn’t look away, either.
Her expression had not changed. She studied the lithori, with a slightly distracted air. “Do you think such a place would accept her?” It could have been an incautious sally, or a warning.
He shrugged. Why did they have to talk about Summer? He wanted to ask her…
… what? What did he want to say? You look like a mortal I once knew. An insult to any reasonable sidhe. There had been no hint of changeling on Daisy; it was impossible. All of this was impossible.
Wondering why Daisy’s face was now a haze in his memory was, too. He was just like every other faithless sidhe. Would there come a time when he could go a day, a week, a month, without thinking of her?
Except he had just gone an entire afternoon doing just that.
Eventually, Robin pressed on. “You’ve seen the plague. They are dying, Gallow.”
“So are mortals.” A bitter cut.
“Panko. I remember.” She nodded, those curls falling forward. The sun in her hair had diminished, a smolder now. “The mortal-Tainted don’t take the sickness. It began to grow marked last year, and the Queen did not open the Gates until the very last moment, and then only a quarter of the way. She cannot do so this year without risking a withering.” Her gaze drifted over the Oak’s interior, much as a warrior would study terrain.
She remembered a dead man’s name, at least. It was more courtesy than he expected. She was drawn tight as a harpstring, and she was indeed weary. Only a desperate woman would trust Goodfellow—and why had he, of all people, brought Gallow here, hinting at Unwinter? Did it serve him to make mischief? Had he told this Robin whom she resembled?
The bigger mystery was, of course, why she resembled his dead wife. Coincidence, just maybe.
To put his hands in her hair, make a fist, feel the slippery silkiness—
He took another long pull of the ale as she continued her soft recitation.
“Unwinter suffers the most, since his land is open to all. The Free brush against the sickness and take it more often than not. Mortal blood affords some immunity. Half are safe, and above to a quarter of mortal blood. ’Tis the fullblood who fear, and those who were yesterday so proud of their aristocracy now dig for peasant ancestors, hoping to find some insurance.” She took a small mannerly sip of her wine, set it down again with a click. “When the Gates open, of course the danger to her Court is greater. Yet I ask myself, Gallow, what will happen to Half and less, when Summer and Unwinter are gone?”
I don’t care. His lips were numb. Maybe it was the ale. “It cannot be that dire.”
“It is. Unwinter is ravaged, the Black and Low Counties unwonted quiet. The rest of the free spaces before the Second Veil, who can tell? The freefolk—those allied with Unseelie are feeling the blackboil bite more often. Cures are sought everywhere. Some delay the sickness, but cannot halt it entirely. Rumor flies hither and yon.…” She shook herself, studied his face again, earnestly. “You, though, faced a plagued rider and lived. It makes them strong before it kills them.”
I don’t care. “Where do you come from?” The sweat was all over him now, his heart hammering. The marks on his arms tingled, ran with excruciating sensitivity. “Who are your folk? Are you part ghillie?” They were held to be beauties, the ghilliedhu girls.
She shook her head, impatient. “Shall I convey to her that you heed her summons and come soon as you may? Returning with me would be better, but… should you not wish to, Gallow, I will do what I may to sweeten her temper at the news.” r />
It was a handsome gesture, and one from a Half who no doubt felt a debt to him even though told otherwise. Which was not usual among the sidhe.
He opened his mouth to ask again, to demand she tell him, but her gaze sharpened. She sucked in a quick breath, paling, and he did not have to look to guess at what had drifted through the Oak’s low, wide door. He could smell them, since they used no glamour to mask themselves here. Clammy rotten dirt, decaying linen, pale metal at throat, wrist, finger, and belt. A chill went through the Rolling Oak, and there was a general rustling movement as the Folk within collectively stiffened.
The lone wight moved aside, and others pressed behind him. The branches at the door shriveled to blackness, and behind the bar the half-giant, half-drow Kosthril the Mammoth’s four arms dropped to his sides. His long, narrow nose twitched, and the bartender made a scraping, rumbling noise deep in his barrel chest.
NO PART OF THIS
23
Robin’s fingers turned to ice. They curled around the stem of the wineglass—she had chosen lithori not because she preferred its sweetness, but because it held flame so well.
Six wights, and if there were so many coming into the Oak, there were no doubt others outside. Four counts in, four counts out. “There will be trouble soon,” she said softly. “If you do not wish to accompany me to Court—”
“I’ll go.” As if the words stuck in his throat. His eyes had lit with green fire, and a fine sheen of sweat dewed his forehead. “You knew I would.”
I knew no such thing. There was little time for argument. She slid out of the booth, wine slopping inside the bowl of the glass. Still, it rankled a trifle. “I did not.”