Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free (29 page)

But as her parents boarded the ferry, what she felt was a growing anger. They were leaving her, leaving Kami, when they could have fought, should have fought, to stay.

But they would rather abandon her than upset their mundy oppressors.

*   *   *

Hiromi did not trust the old unicorn, standing there in his gray suit amidst the squalor of poorly maintained steading housing. There was something in the way he looked at her and Kaminari with those silver-blue eyes that caused the spider in her to stir, to want to bite him, and—

She shook herself. The power of unicorns to seduce was a rival to that of a jorōgumo. But he had assured her she would not have to bed him. More importantly, she had little choice.

The brightblood clans were preparing for war against the arcana, and with the Silver and many rogues siding with the humans, few other clans were willing to trust a rogue brightblood who suddenly wanted to join them. Kaminari needed mana for her Fey spirit to grow healthy, not damaged or stunted, and they both needed protection from the arcana.

This small clan pledged to the Hidden Vale was the only who'd been willing to take them both.

“Don't worry,” Antipas said, flashing his white, perfectly even teeth. “I will take good care of your sister, if you but fight for our clan.”

*   *   *

Hiromi paced her cell in the processing facility at Fort Worden. The war had been lost. The Hidden Vale destroyed in the Other Realm by some arcana superweapon. She had been captured, and held for nearly six months. Three months since, she'd earned communication privileges, though she'd still had to dictate the letters to one of the newly minted Department of Feyblood Management enforcers. No response from Antipas, or her sister, in all that time.

She had used the skills taught her by her parents to survive the endless questioning, the “conditioning,” the subtle hints that perhaps she would be happier if she simply killed herself. She had endured the news that her mother had died in the internment camp from illness; and her father, upon being informed by the oh-so-helpful enforcers that Hiromi had fought for the Bright Lords against the arcana, had refused her letters. Even though they had no evidence that she'd killed a single human.

Why was Kaminari not responding? That question filled her days and nights with fears, tested her control over her more violent impulses. Why was Kaminari not responding?

*   *   *

Hiromi decapitated the redcap she found on top of Kaminari, and pulled her sister free of the tangled and bloodied bedsheets, lifted Kami in her arms. She stepped back out into the hall, and over Antipas's body. Kaminari moaned but did not give any other sign of awareness that Hiromi now held her safe.

“Shhhh,” Hiromi said, “I'm here now, Sister.”

Kaminari only stared at her with the slack face and dull eyes of someone dead.

“Come back to me, my little Kami. Please come back to me.”

She rummaged through the filthy housing units for food, and mana, and gently washed her sister's face with a cool wet cloth. As she did, she sang one of the rhymes her mother used to sing to them:

“The itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout,

down came the rain and washed the spider out,

out came the sun and dried up all the rain, and—”

Kaminari stirred, and sang in a weak voice, “The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.”

*   *   *

I felt like I was drowning in Hiromi's pain, her sorrow, her memory as her spirit overwhelmed me.

I panicked. And in that panic I scrabbled to the surface of the chaos, found the shape of my own will again, and imposed it on Hiromi's mad spirit.

I regained control.

“Are you okay?” Reggie asked. “Are you … you?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I'm not possessed. Well, Alynon notwithstanding. I just need a second.”

I took several deep breaths, and considered breaking off the summoning. But I still had not learned what we needed to know.

“Hiromi. Focus! I want to help little Kami, but you need to help me. Tell me what your mission was?”

“Ghost talkers death walkers Gramaraye curse bringers!” her voice echoed out of her body. “Liars liars blood buyers curse hawkers!”

“I'm not—” I stopped. I was getting nowhere. But I knew from her memories that she was still in there somewhere.

“You need to threaten her,” Reggie said.

I frowned. Tradition held that threats against the dead were bad luck. That might just be a necromancer superstition, but I preferred not to test it out if I could help it.

*Use Ned,* Alynon said.

What? How? Ned's dead.

*There are few tortures more cruel than to be separated forever from the one you truly love,* Alynon replied, his tone subdued.

I tried to think of an alternative. But time was my enemy, and Hiromi was not exactly a friendly ghost.

It seemed I had no choice but to invite bad luck after all.

“Hiromi,” I said. “Ned is dead. He sacrificed himself to be with you in the afterlife. If you don't tell me what I want to know, I—I will destroy his spirit, scatter it to every part of existence. Everything that was Ned will be lost, and his death will be for nothing. You will never be together.”

Hiromi did not respond. If I did not feel the cold presence of her spirit, and the continual draining of my life energy, I might have thought the summoning lost.

“Hiromi, I swear I will—”

“Assssssk,” Hiromi hissed, and her voice quivered with fury.

I exchanged glances with Reggie, then said, “You were responsible for Veirai attacking the alchemist?”

“Yesssss.”

I waited for her to expand, but she was obviously not going to offer any information freely.

“You infiltrated Silene's group posing as Romey, a waerfox?”

“Yessss.”

“Did you do these things under orders?”

“Yessss.”

“Who gave you the orders?”

“Little gnomes naughty gnomes.”

I frowned. “You took your orders from gnomes?”

“Yessss.”

“But—” Oh. I rolled my eyes. “You mean the gnomes handed you the actual orders. Who gave the orders to the gnomes?”

Hiromi was silent.

“Hiromi? Were your orders really from your Forest of Shadows patrons?”

“Yesss. I obey obey betray the betrayers all will die die die.”

“Can you tell me why they ordered you to cause so much trouble for Silene?”

Hiromi went silent again.

“Hiromi, I
will
destroy Ned.”

“I won't betray, I won't betray, go away away away,” Hiromi cried.

“Hiromi, does your Archon know why you were sent after Silene?”

Hiromi wheezed a laugh. “No no no no. He sends bends me uses me but he sees nothing nothing you all are blind little blind fools. You won't see your death death death.”

*The Shadows would not work directly through a vassal without informing the Archon,* Alynon said. *Unless—*

Unless what?

*Unless they are not just trying to create conflict between our brightbloods and arcana. The Shadows are preparing for a war against the Silver Court itself.*

“A war?” I said out loud.

“War?” Silene asked, alarm in her tone.

The summoning began to wear on me. Dizziness and nausea lurked on the edges of my senses.

“Hiromi, I release you!”

“Ned!” She pleaded, her voice distant.

“He'll be waiting for you,” I said.

*You do not know that.*

I choose to believe it.

Hiromi's spiritual presence faded.

I wavered, and Reggie put a hand on my back. “Steady there.”

“Thanks,” I said, and swallowed back some bile that rose up sharp in my throat.

“You spoke of war!” Silene said. “Please, what did you mean?”

*We must needs warn the Silver Court,* Alynon said. *If they are not aware of this—*

“Everyone, remain where you are,” a voice rang out, and three DFM agents strode out from the tree line.

“Yay,” I said with a complete absence of enthusiasm. “We're saved.”

 

20

Don't Dream It's Over

I paced the interrogation room of the Department of Feyblood Management compound, back and forth over the line of ward runes embedded in the floor, watching myself in the one-way mirror. I wore a gray jumpsuit loaned to me by the enforcers and had a nasty bruise on one cheek, and still kept finding chalky bits of powdered fossil in my hair and the lines on my skin.

The fact that I was becoming familiar with an interrogation room, I thought, might suggest that I really needed to reevaluate my life choices.

Interesting fact: thaumaturges once had a booming business in inventing clever magical interrogation devices. Once such devices were no longer needed or as popular due to truth spells and ethics and such, many of them ended up being reimagined for commercial use by the Arcana Ruling Council in much the same way NASA gave us freeze-dried ice cream. But, you know, less delicious. The most successful adaptations were toys and board games. Mouse Trap was based on an interrogation device, of course, but so were Mr. Mouth, Don't Break the Ice, and Hungry Hungry Hippos.

But one of the most effective and insidious devices was reportedly turned into the See 'n Say. Its use as a magical brainwashing device apparently had something to do with mixing up the pictures and the sounds and forcing the victim to play them constantly Clockwork Orange style, until they accepted their torturer's new reality. To this day, there are believed to be sleeper agents out there ready to do whatever “The Farmer” tells them if triggered with a bit of magic and the correct phrase, such as “The
Cow
says … Oink Oink Oink!”

Thankfully, we now lived in more civilized times.

Enforcer Vincent had simply asked me probing questions—minus actual probes—for nearly an hour, while Reggie, Sal, and Silene were presumably being served a big heaping plate of the same with side dishes of hostility or suspicion in varying portions. And now, hopefully, the DFM had necromancers Talking to Hiromi and Ned to verify my story.

“I still don't understand,” I said, rubbing at my bruised hand. Just being in this place seemed to have made it flare up in remembered pain. “Why would creating tensions between arcana and brightbloods mean the Forest of Shadows is preparing for war against the Silver, and not us?”

*'Tis not just that they create tensions, but that they keep such actions hidden from their own Archon that is a telling clue. The Archons in the end are but powerful brightbloods, ever concerned first for their own kind above even their Aalbright masters, and would not willingly follow a plan that would sacrifice their clan in this world simply to gain advantage in the Other Realm.*

Okay. Then what is their plan?

*They wish to weaken the Silver Court before attacking, by removing our sources of support. We need to warn my Demesne. You need to have your enforcer friend get a message to Zenith, and the Silver Archon. He will not dare ignore a direct message from me to the Court.*

I can try,
I thought.
But first, I need to understand what the hell is going on.

*I have already told you.*

You've told me what you think is happening, but I don't understand why you think it, or why it's happening.

Alynon gave a frustrated sounding hiss, then said, *In short, all the ways the Silver Court has benefitted in your world since the last Bright War, including our much greater number of brightblood vassals, has added to our power and helped us to gain position in the Colloquy.*

That's kind of like your United Nations in the Other Realm, right?

*Something like, insomuch that representatives of the Demesnes do meet there. And there's a kind of game of power and position that is played within the Colloquy, much as is played in your Congress or ARC, though not to such self-destructive ends.*

Okay. And Hiromi's attacks on Silene would change that how?

*The Forest of Shadows and the Hidden Vale were the Aalbright leaders in the last war. The Vale was all but destroyed by the weapon sent in by Verona, but the Vale's destruction only served to strengthen the Shadows. They gained both sympathy and respect from the other Demesnes for the penalties placed on them by the Pax, and for having led the charge against an enemy who, in the end, proved the Shadows' fears true through use of the spirit bomb.*

Verona was only trying to—

*Reasons matter little. The results were the downfall of an entire Demesne, and the loss of a war the Aalbrights thought all but won. The Silver Court and the Forest of Shadows have since become the two most powerful Demesnes, at least in the area of the Other Realm closest to this land. As long as the Silver Court has the support of the arcana, and the greater number of brightbloods, the Forest of Shadows cannot be guaranteed a victory in any conflict.*

I don't suppose you'll tell me what exactly you Aalbrights
get
from your brightblood vassals if not memories?

*No.*

I sighed.
Fine. So if the Shadows drive a wedge between the Silver Court and the ARC, and remove the Silver brightblood's greater number and freedoms—

*Then the Shadows shall gain true advantage.*

Gods. If there really was a Fey war, even just between the Silver and Shadows, Pete and Vee would be forced to align with a Demesne if they hadn't already, or be held in an ARC compound. Neither the ARC nor the Fey would tolerate undeclared brightbloods during a real war. And whatever Demesne they aligned with would expect them to fight for their new Aalbright masters if needed. Lose lose.