Bigfootloose and Finn Fancy Free (9 page)

I glanced up at Sal to gauge his reaction. Thankfully, he seemed more concerned at the unconscious girl's state than caught up in the crowd's anger toward me.

My feet squelched and slipped in the damp earth as I followed after Silene.

I saw that the girl actually appeared to be nineteen or twenty, but waifish, a faint glow around her visible now in the tree's shade, pulsing to her heartbeat. A will-o'-the-wisp. A hint of her normally compelling beauty could still be seen, but shadowed by the effects of withdrawal from the mana drug, her delicate features now too thin, her shimmering hair clumped by sweaty knots, her lips no longer whispering half-heard promises but instead dry and cracked and twitching around moans. And she had nasty scratches around her throat and chest that I guessed were self-inflicted, which explained why her wrists were bound.

I didn't remember any will-o'-the-wisps in my grandfather's little army. Not that wisps were fighters anyway. Sammy said a lot of them had found success creating websites of easily shared web content, full of videos and articles with titles like “Most Embarassing Celebrity Stripteases Involving Sauces—With Recipes!” or “9 Mistakes Every Man Makes on Dates—Number 6 is Illegal in Kansas!” meant to lure people and lead them down a never-ending trail of hyperlinks through forests of advertising and off the cliff of distraction. But I doubted my grandfather had been hip enough to organize any kind of online campaign, either.

“I thought Grayson only gave the drug to a handful of feybloods.”

“Your brethren continue giving it to many brightbloods,” Silene responded.

Damn it. The Arcanites, grandfather's little extremist group of Fey haters, it had to be. He must have given the formula to them. “They are not my brethren, the ones doing this.”

“Then you will help?” Silene asked.

“I … I don't know how. I would need to talk to an alchemist, and—”

“We tried that,” Silene said, and knelt beside the wisp. “It did not go well. Do you not have a healing potion?”

“No. Sorry.” Heather had been willing to brew them for my family cheap, but was unfortunately no longer around to help us out. Even more unfortunate was the reason—she'd tried to freeze me on behalf of my power-mad grandfather, and then went fugitive. Too bad, too, because if anyone could help these feybloods, it would be her.

Silene sighed. “I shall have to do what I may, then.” She placed her hand on the wisp's forehead, and closed her eyes. Her tree began to sway back and forth gently, each sway greater and longer than the last. The sunlight glistened off the swooping cedar fronds, and a green light rose up around the moaning woman. Silene started to sway back and forth in time with her tree. The wisp arched her back, and the green light rushed up through Silene's hand and along her arm, until it surrounded her. It faded, and Silene slumped back to sit on the mossy earth, her legs folded to one side. The tree slowed in its swaying, and the wisp lay still, breathing slow and steady.

“You healed her?” I asked.

“No,” Silene said, and her voice sounded strained, tired. “I drained the poisons from her body, filtered them through my tree. She will rest a while. But the craving will rise in her again, and she will require more of the drug or she will die. I have only bought her a brief rest.”

I frowned. “I'm sorry, but … I've never learned what the drug does, exactly. Why would your cousins use it, knowing this might happen?”

Silene looked up at me, her eyebrows raised. “I find your ignorance surprising indeed.” Her mouth pouted to the side, as if she were uncertain whether to tell me more or not. Then she said, “Not all brightbloods take it willingly. But for those who do, it offers many temptations. Pleasure, of course. Escape from unhappy memories. For Elene, I believe she took it to heal the Fettering. She desired offspring, but none was approved.”

The Fettering was a kind of spiritual birth control, on par with having a vasectomy or your tubes tied, that prevented brightbloods from having true offspring without ARC intervention. It was used to enforce the population controls approved in the Pax. Even waer couldn't infect others if they were fettered. Which explained how Pete was infected, if the drug had unfettered the waer who attacked him.

“Oh.” I felt awkward. “So, does this have something to do with why the enforcers were here?”

“In a way, yes.” She tried to stand, but fell back to the ground. Sal stepped forward and offered his catcher's mitt-sized hand to help her up. She frowned at his boots. “You are the one who has been wrapping trees in yarn for the humans to see.”

“Iself just trying to make humans stop and see the trees, realize the beauty,” Sal said.

“The yarn allows rot and insects to grow beneath,” Silene replied. “And you're covering up their true beauty, not displaying it.”

“Iself take the yarn down before rot begins,” Sal said. “Why youself be so badger-angry? Youself dryad, use beauty to protect trees, too.”

“Not anymore.” Silene's hand moved to her chest, but stopped just short, and closed into a fist. “I have a new purpose now.”

“We all do,” Romey said behind me. “And you're not part of it.”

*And here we go,* Alynon said.

“What?” I turned to find the feybloods had closed around me, looking like I'd just been caught eating filet of faun. I glanced at Sal, but he just stared back, giving no indication of helping.

*Clan before mana,* Alynon said.

Great.

“Uh, hey guys,” I said. “Crazy day, huh?”

Romey stepped forth from the crowd, her narrow fox-like features scrunched even narrower by her scowl. “Maybe we should take you prisoner, the way your enforcers took our cousins.”

“You could try,” I said. “But then, the ARC would come back with a small army.”

“They would have to find us,” the wolf, a shunka warakin, said. “And we would have you while they did.” He padded forward, his hackles rising.

Crap.

I whipped the spirit trap out from beneath my shirt, though it was useless as a weapon, and held the twisted metal amulet up as I shouted, “Anall nathrach, oothfas bethad, dochiel dienvay!”

The feybloods flinched back, some covering their eyes or heads.

“Touch me, and suffer!” I said, then lowered the amulet. “Or, we can talk. You can tell me what's going on and maybe I can help.”

Romey growled a little fox-like growl, and looked to either side. “He cannot stop us all.”

“Nope, but I can rip the soul out of most of you,” I lied. “So, you know, there's pros and cons I guess.”

Sal grunted. “Finn-mage is not problem.”

“Romey,” Silene said. “Stand down!” She struggled to her feet. “All of you, we agreed that we would not use violence to achieve our goals.”

The waerfox scowled, and she glanced at her fellow feybloods. “Maybe it is time for a new agreement.”

“How will that prove that we are more than beasts?” Silene asked, stepping up beside me. “That we are worthy of being treated as equals? Why would they ever allow us to move freely among the humans, or give us representation in their council?”

I looked at her, surprised. Feybloods on the Arcana Ruling Council? She really was dreaming. The council had only recently allowed women arcana in their highest positions.

*Fa,* Alynon said in a dismissive tone as the feybloods grumbled and mumbled between themselves. *Always there is talk among these children that they should separate from their patrons, form their own nation, and make of themselves partners equal to the arcana, la la la. But soon enough the arcana reject them, they feel the lack of our protection and magic, and need prevails over foolish wanting.*

Sal stepped up on the other side of me, casting me in his shadow. He looked over my head at Silene. “Brightbloods are not having to prove anything to arcana. Brightbloods can stay in forests, do what weself want.”

Romey snorted. “Bold words from a brightblood who sells his services to the arcana.”

Sal blushed. “Seeahtik tribe need mana sometimes, too, like any brightblood. Even fox spirits. Even dryads.”

Silene crossed her arms. “We should not have to be their slaves to get what we need.”

Sal looked angry now, and leaned over me toward Silene, making me feel like I was between a rock and, well, an angry sasquatch. “Iself nobody's slave. Grayson made sister-mine a true slave, and if heself were not dead, Iself would end him.”

*Awkward!* Alynon said. *What say we tell him your grandfather—or “Grayson”—may be alive in truth?*

Anyone ever tell you that you suck?

*Many indeed, starting with my parents. Which just goes to prove how few beings have any taste.*

Silene said, “Running and hiding is no more an answer than violence.” She looked at me. “If you cannot cure the curse, then how could you help us?”

Romey spat on the ground. “If you are going to deal with arcana, especially a Gramaraye, I will take those willing to fight and we shall start our own movement.”

Silene raised one eyebrow to Romey for a second, then without taking her eyes from the waerfox, she said loudly, “We will get our cousins back, and we will continue the fight. Just as the Klallam firstmen have won the freedom of our river from its concrete shackles, so, too, we shall win our freedom from the shackles of the Pax. Our lives and our cause burn with the fire of the bright in our blood, and both shall endure long after those arcana who came here today are naught but bones and dust. We shall not give them an excuse to end our light, but we shall instead let our light shine upon their injustices for all to see, and, our cause being just and right and true, we shall prevail!”

A ripple passed through the feyblood crowd, of heads nodding and murmurs of agreement. Romey looked around her, and scowled like Archie Bunker at a Pride Parade down Martin Luther King Way, but didn't agitate any further.

“Come, speak with me,” Silene said, and Sal and I followed her around to the far side of her tree. Romey joined us. Because, of course. As I neared the river, my knees felt unsteady and my hands shook. I turned away from it.

Silene sat and leaned back against the cedar's trunk, facing the river. She let out a long sigh, resting her hands on the roots that cradled her to either side. “This all will change soon,” she said.

“The feyblood's role in the Pax?”

“The river.” She motioned to it. I risked a quick glance. The water ran clear and green, cutting through a gray, clay-like ravine beneath forested hills. In the cool breeze coming off of the river, I could smell the cooling sweat on myself. It held the sharp tang of fear as though I'd just run through a fine mist of Christian Dior's Holy Crap I'm Going to Die.

I took a step back as Silene continued, “Soon, the mundanes will take away their dams to let the river flow free and the salmon spawn. The Klallam firstmen did this, won the freedom of the river. Many trees may be lost along the riverbank when the river finds its new way. But many more will grow again where now there is a lake. All of this I learned the day after my tree was struck by lightning, when I lost my—beauty.”

Sal harrumphed. “Iself not seeing how youself lost beauty,” he said.

Silene looked away from us.

“So…” I asked. “Is that a good thing, with the river? Will your tree be safe?”

Silene shrugged. “The future is uncertain. But it awakened me. The lightning. The victory of the Klallam firstmen. I realized that if I had but a short time left, I might spend it winning a victory for my own clan, to ensure their roots were strong enough to weather coming storms and their ambitions great enough to touch the skies. So I began organizing a movement among those of us pledged to the Silver Court.”

“And that is why the enforcers were here? Because of your movement?”

“Because they fear it, yes. And … because one of my sister brightbloods was killed by an alchemist, and they cover for him.”

I frowned. Romey cocked her head, and said, “You do not believe your fellow arcana capable of such behavior? Or did you not believe us brightbloods capable of recognizing it, because we are just stupid beasts?”

“Neither,” I said. “Don't get me wrong, enforcers can be total tools, and they're a tad overzealous in the same way the Hulk is a tad unhappy, but one thing I've learned is they truly believe in truth and justice and the arcana way. They wouldn't knowingly arrest the wrong person—or feyblood for that matter—and certainly not to cover up a crime.”

“Of course you would defend them,” Romey said.

“Finn-mage may be wrong,” Sal said. “But heself is not responsible for enforcers. Heself is just spirit talker. And Iself see other arcana try to kill Finn-mage.”

“It is not our way to blame a falling leaf for the winter winds,” Silene replied, I assumed in agreement.

“Sal's right,” I said. “I can't control what the enforcers do. But do you know if the ARC necromancers have questioned the spirit of your dead cousin, the one killed by the alchemist?”

“If they had,” Silene said, “and they are as honest as you say, then they would not have had cause to come here and arrest us.”

“Then allow me to leave and speak to the spirit of your fallen cousin, to learn the truth of what happened.”

Romey scowled. “And how are we to trust you will do so, and not just try to blame her death on us somehow?”

“I won't lie,” I said, my arms crossed. “I give you my word as a necromancer that I will Talk to your dead cousin and convey the truth of what I find to both the ARC and yourselves.” I looked at Silene. “I will want to be quick, though. There's a cost to Talking. So if you can tell me what happened, and why, that will help me know what to ask.”

“We do not know what happened, exactly,” Silene said. “Only that the alchemist is to blame.”

“Okay, why do you think that?”