Boots for the Gentleman (31 page)

“Querrilous,” the fey panted. “What are you doing here? Get out!”

“You’re hurt,” Querry said. Tears fell from his eyes and instantly evaporated from his cheeks. “Let me help you!”

“I am fine. Just, tired. Must finish. You, ugh—You must go back.”

“Not without you. I need you.”

“Very well. Help me up.”

Querry put his arm around the gentleman’s waist, and they staggered to their feet. The gentleman took a small bottle from somewhere within the hide loincloth he wore, uncorked it and held the open end out to the unconscious lizard. His body convulsed in Querry’s arms, and he stumbled back with a grunt. “Can’t trap it. Too weak.”

“Can I help?” Querry asked.

“Concentrate on drawing it in,” the faerie said.

Querry tried as hard as he could. Soon his whole body shook, and he couldn’t keep his footing, let alone support the faerie. Both of them crumpled, but the faerie’s arm remained extended. He cried out, and his bottle sucked the creature inside. He replaced the cork and promptly went limp in Querry’s arms. Querry tried to lift the gentleman but found himself too depleted. Instead he draped his body over his back like a shawl and held his forearms in front of his chest. Slowly he made his way toward the silver rectangle so far in the distance. When he reached it, though, he hadn’t the strength to push through.

“Sir!” Querry hissed. “We need to get through. I can’t do it. Please wake up.”

The gentleman didn’t respond. Sparkles danced at the edges of Querry’s vision; he knew he wouldn’t survive much longer.

“Sir!” He reached over his shoulder and swatted the side of the faerie’s head. Finally he jolted awake, grumbling. “Get us out of here,” Querry urged.

He waved his hand and said a word like soft rain against the surface of a lake, and the two of them somersaulted through the portal. They landed on their backs in the stone room, and Querry didn’t even have the energy to lift his head. His skin still felt on fire. Even his innards burned. His charred throat choked on a sob of pain. His eyes closed on their own, and he didn’t know if they’d open again. With his last scrap of strength, he turned toward the gentleman and said, “If I don’t make it, please promise me you’ll fix Frolic anyway.”

“Don’t, make it?” the fey croaked with a dry chuckle. “Ridiculous.” He said another word in his tongue. To Querry it resembled gentle thunder. He could smell the storm, and soon felt refreshing rain on his face. When he could open his eyes again, he saw dark clouds covering the ceiling. Healing water fell over his singed body and pooled inches thick on the floor. Querry opened his mouth and let it trickle down his throat. For a long time he just lay in the cool dampness. Soon he felt as good as new. He looked at his exposed fingertips, expecting blisters, and found none.

The gentleman sat up beside him, his wet hair dripping down his svelte torso. He looked at Querry with unmasked awe and admiration. “I wasn’t wrong about you,” he said, touching Querry’s cheekbone. “You were brilliant. I never would have imagined one of your kind could accomplish something like that. We two shall do great things. We’ll be legends.”

“What was that thing?” Querry asked.

The fey held the bottle out to Querry, who took it. He studied the tiny lizard twisting and turning through the ether within.

“Elemental salamander,” the gentleman said. “The very spirit of fire.”

“Two out of four, yes?”

“Indeed! And the worst is over. If you feel well enough to continue on, we can collect the rest of what we need with ease. What do you say?”

“Actually, I feel incredible,” Querry said.

“Jolly good!” The faerie got to his feet and extended his hand, helping Querry to stand. “You and I, then. What an excellent match we’ve made!”

“
D
ON
’
T
fidget, Querrilous,” the gentleman scolded. “I’ve assured you we’re perfectly safe. They cannot see us nor hear us. Calm down before I take offense at your lack of faith in me.”

“No, sir,” Querry said. “You’ve been perfect, and I thank you. This place is just so mournful. I can feel the sickness and despair.”

“Yes, now that I’ve given you my sight, you’ll sense such things much more acutely. For what it’s worth, it is worse for me.”

“Sorry.” Querry reached out and took his hand, squeezing the delicate bones as they moved between the closely packed, narrow cots. The faerie squeezed back with his smooth, cool hand. Querry wondered if it was wrong to love him, to want him. He wondered if his feelings were authentic, if he could trust himself. He decided to concentrate on the task at hand. He looked at the sick and dying around him. The religious order of women who cared for them had retired for the night. A few hanging lanterns lit the faces of the factory workers, orphans, and vagrants who’d come here because they had nowhere else to go. Querry knew most of them would never leave; the sisters would feed them and dress their wounds, but they could do little more than keep them comfortable until the end came. In the shadowed corners of the long, narrow room, Querry could almost feel Death waiting to claim his due.

Eager to leave, he approached the foot of one of the beds. A middle-aged man lay upon it, his left leg missing from the knee down and a foul smell wafting from the dressing. Querry knew the wound was likely infected, and caused the man to thrash and perspire in his sleep. “What about this fellow?” Querry asked, drawing his gentleman closer by the hand. “Looks like a fever dream to me.”

The faerie smiled coldly as he watched the injured man’s glistening face. “Yes, he is dreaming of hell. He left his wife and young daughter in the countryside, and promised to return for them as soon as he’d found work in the city. Instead, he squandered his meager wages on gambling, whores, and gin. His family starved to death. They’re pointing at him with their bony fingers while demons gnaw on his leg.”

“Won’t you gather it up so we can be off?” Querry said, sweating himself now.

“This will never do,” the gentleman told Querry. “The structure of the dream I choose to weave into the spell will have a profound effect on your companion. A horrible thing like this could turn him quite dark. Let’s check some of these others. This little girl is dreaming of the night her father beat her mother to death, and this poor bastard is being chased by circus bears.” He chuckled. “Many of them are dreaming about sex. Or eating.”

His statement raised a question in Querry’s mind. “If the dream we choose is so important, I can only assume the love oaths are just as significant. I mean, the squeals of back alley whores probably won’t do.”

“You’re correct,” the fey said as he continued to inspect the sleepers, bending close to some of their faces as if doing so gave him a better view inside their heads. “The words themselves are not important. It’s the passion behind them that the spell requires. We’ll need to find lovers with a strong desire for one another. But first, the dream! We may need to look elsewhere. There is nothing but misery within these walls.”

Querry passed baskets holding babies covered in the sores that resulted from diseases that went best unmentioned. He saw a poor woman with lumps deforming her face, and some lepers mummy-wrapped in filthy rags. “What about this one?” he asked, motioning his companion toward an elderly woman who’d probably once been quite handsome. Though she sweated and writhed, a smile twisted her lips and now and then she giggled like a girl.

“She’s very sick,” the gentleman said gravely. “The fever will take her soon. Tonight or tomorrow. Let’s see.” He held his long fingers above the gray, creased brow. “Ah! She’s dreaming of her childhood tending sheep in the northern mountains. Her dogs are licking her face and the lambs are frolicking about her feet. What’s this? Memories of my people? It seems she had some of my kind as friends and playmates, and she’s recalling fondly their games of hide and seek among the heather fields and forests. She’s lifting her skirts to run across a small stream—” He rubbed his thumbs against the tips of his fingers and his tongue worked against his upper lip as he concentrated. Querry noticed a round, glowing patch form at the center of the woman’s forehead. The gentleman snatched the end between his thumb and finger and slowly brought forth a long strand of shimmering greens and golds. It twisted in his grasp like a garden snake caught by the tail. He uncorked another of his bottles and stowed it away in his jacket pocket.

Just as the two of them turned to leave, the woman opened her eyes. A wide grin broke across her ancient face when she saw the faerie gentleman. “It’s you! You’ve come for me at last!” Then confusion stole her joy, and she shook her head despondently. “No, I’m mistaken, aren’t I? I thought you were somebody else.”

“I am sorry, Madam,” he said with no real compassion.

“Could you help me?” she pleaded, reaching for him with an age-stiffened hand. He stepped back to avoid being touched.

“I don’t know what I could possibly do for you,” he said, “or what you could offer me in exchange.”

“Oh, sir!” Querry said, but a dangerous glare silenced him.

“Aye,” she said bitterly. “You’ve already taken the only good thing I had left.”

Sighing with impatience, the gentleman made a quick, complex gesture in the air. When his hand stilled, it held a sprig of mountain heather. He placed it beside the old woman’s head. She nestled closer to it, breathed deeply of its fragrance and fell back to sleep. “I simply didn’t want her resentment tainting the dream,” he explained. Querry lowered his head to hide his smile. “Now if we could please take our leave of this ghastly place!”

“Thank you, sir,” Querry said, hurrying to keep up with him.

Chapter Eighteen

“
U
GH
, the stench,” the gentleman hissed, pulling a lace-trimmed handkerchief from his pocket to cover his nose. “Why have you brought me here, Querrilous?”

“For the oath,” Querry said gingerly, looking around the abandoned factory.

“In this desolate place?”

“This is the place where Reg and I… where we first—Could that energy still be here? Here in the stones and supports?”

Though the faerie looked violently annoyed, he closed his eyes and reached his hands out in front of him. A quarter of an hour passed before he finally said, “Yes, I can feel great love here, but it’s all buried beneath and tangled up with scores of other things. Hopelessness, fear, and death. It’s going to take me forever to unwind all of this mess and isolate it. Is there nowhere else we can look? Couldn’t we simply go back to them, and you could have him again?”

Querry chuckled. “What, while you watch with your jar at the ready? I don’t think he’d be able to, um, accomplish it. Besides, even though I still love him, I’ve never felt anything like that first time. Both of us were so overcome that we wept. It would mean a great deal to me if we could make that night part of Frolic too.”

“I could make you hate the sight of him,” the fey said, raising his voice. “I could make you to be sick whenever you touched his skin. Why, I could turn him into a toad with the head of a jackass! Why shouldn’t I? Why should I continue to suffer this insult?”

“I mean no offense to you,” Querry said, “but you could never make me feel that way.”

“I could kill him!”

Squaring his shoulders, Querry looked deep into the gentleman’s eyes and said, “I would never forgive you. For all of your power, you could never make me forget him.”

“And that is the only reason I spare him,” the faerie sighed, “because I value our friendship so highly. I couldn’t bear for your love of me to diminish over such a triviality. Honestly, it’s not as though I could feel threatened by such a person. I suppose I must get to work.”

Querry took a seat on a pile of rubble and watched as the gentleman searched around with his hands in much the same way Frolic’s quick fingers had moved among the gears in the clock tower. But the things the faerie sifted and sorted remained invisible to Querry. He closed his eyes and reached out with his newly found faerie sight, trying to locate some remnant of the passion he’d shared with Reg. After a few moments of hard concentration, he detected faint screams, the pop and hiss of fire, and the thick, suffocating stench of smoke. His eyes sprung open, and he saw shadowy figures at the corners of his vision, running for the single exit, trampling one another to save themselves. He shook his head, but the vision remained, the tragic events playing out over and over again as Querry shook and whimpered. He was about to collapse when a graceful hand wiped the scene from his eyes, the way one might wipe dust from a tabletop.

“Do you see?” the gentleman asked. “The psychic energy left by those who died in the fire is burying everything else. I cannot untangle anything from it, and besides, I—” He slumped down and took a seat beside the thief on the heap of scrap. He put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his palms together in such an inelegant way that it frightened Querry. He’d never seen the other man lose his regal bearing.

“Sir, what is it?”

“I feel very weak. This place feels desolate with the lack of magic. Dead.”