Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre (2 page)

  "There have been fewer incidents," I agreed.

  "Fionh says she's exhibiting some clear signs of control, but she says you're babying the girl."

  "She said that?"

  "Not in so many words, but that was her meaning."

  "What did she say, exactly?"

  "Niall, you can't carry on babysitting her. She won't take responsibility for herself if you're there making excuses for her every time she screws up."

  "I'm not making excuses. She was tortured – abused. She needs time to adjust."

  "It's about time she was responsible for her actions. She can't learn if you keep stepping in for her."

  "She's fourteen, Garvin. I'm her father. I'm supposed to step in for her."

  "In fey terms she's an adult. She's come into her power, responsible for her own actions, or she would be if you let her."

  "She wants to see her mother."

  "We've discussed that, Niall. It's not a good idea."

  "You said she was responsible for herself. She's an adult, you said. She can take her own decisions. Well, the adult has decided she wants to see her mother."

  "It's better that Katherine believes that Alex is dead. It'll be easier."

  "For whom? For Katherine? I find that hard to believe. I can't imagine a worse situation than losing your child. The loss of her daughter will be the first thing that comes into her head when she wakes up, and the last thing in her mind before she sleeps – if she sleeps. I know, I've been there."

  I consciously softened my tone, forcing down the anger that bubbled up inside me when I talked about what happened to my daughter. "Discovering that she's been lied to will be hard. Knowing what's been done to Alex will be harder. But none of it as hard as living with the loss of your only child. It doesn't compare."

  Garvin met my stare for a few moments and then looked down at the desk. He sighed, then took the folder from the top of the pile and began laying out press cuttings in front of me.

  Shopping Centre Bomb Terror – Flash Flood Swamps Village – Is this the Beast of Balham?

  They were tabloid headlines, and the stories below them were no less sensational. The last was accompanied by a blurry photo, probably taken with a mobile phone. Without any scale to reference the image against, it was impossible to tell how big the animal was.

  "Looks like silly season," I said.

  "Thankfully the shopping centre was closed, though one security guard died and another was injured in the explosion." He picked up a sheet from the folder. "The fire officer's report on the shopping centre is inconclusive. They can find no trace of an explosive or an accelerant, but the fire spread from shop to shop despite fire barriers and a suppression system. It happened in the late evening, so there were only security staff on site. The surviving guard said the security system was on the blink and the screens went dead, but just before the fire he saw someone on the concourse. Two of the guards went down to investigate."

  "Arson?"

  "Terrorism – possibly eco-warriors or anti-capitalists – at least that's the official version. They think the dead guard might have been involved. The alarms didn't go off and the devices appeared to be timed – a professional job. The guard who died had military training – demolition. The destruction was total, everything burned."

  "Sounds bad."

  "Could have been worse. It could have been full of shoppers." He picked up another sheet. "Village of Sawlby in Derbyshire washed away three days ago. It's a Pennine village, pretty little place – or it was. Sixteen dead at the last count. Stream came up into a raging torrent." He picked up the cutting, "A wall of water seven feet high swept through the sleepy hamlet." He replaced it on the desk.

  "As usual it's the vulnerable that suffer – the old and infirm, or the very young. They're digging bodies out of the mud, trying to clear up the mess. Sound familiar?"

  "Alex was here. Fionh's been with her most of the time."

  "Alex isn't the only one, though, is she?" Garvin picked up another sheet. "Reports of very large cat-like creature stalking the streets of Balham. Several people have seen it, usually at night, and there are an increasing number of missing pets. It seems to have developed a taste for rabbit."

  "Could be an urban fox?"

  "One that can open a hutch with a combination padlock on it? The police have been called in, suspecting vandals. They found a trail of paw prints – big ones."

  "So there is a cat?"

  "The paw-prints vanish in the middle of a park. They just run out."

  "What do you mean, run out?"

  "The ground was soft, it had rained earlier in the day. They had a specialist with them – she reckoned it was panther of some sort. She tracked the creature into the park, hoping to trace it back to its lair. They had a marksman with a tranquilliser gun on standby. She followed the tracks to a kiddies playground. The tracks go into the sandpit, but they don't come out."

  "There were other tracks?"

  "Oh, plenty. Kids and parents had been there all day. The only cat tracks were going in, though, not out."

  I had a sudden memory of encountering a large black cat in the passages below Porton Down. It had stared at me with knowing eyes while chewing on something that might once have been human.

  Garvin laid his hand on the pile of plain brown files next him. "Secretary Carler was good enough to let us have the files from Porton Down. It's difficult for them to tell whether these people are dead or at large. There were some identifiable items, but they could have been dropped or discarded. There were no bodies found, of course, other than the staff."

  I winced slightly. Some of the bodies that had been found were people who had died because of me. Raffmir had been particularly ruthless with the medical staff, and my own hands were hardly clean. I had the sudden flashback of a man in military uniform crawling backwards away from me after he'd tried to blow my head off with a shotgun. The fear in his eyes as my hands closed around his throat would never leave me.

  I shook my head, trying to clear the image. "You're saying that these incidents are being caused by the escapees from Porton Down – they are doing these things?"

  "I'm simply pointing out the correlation between the traits documented in these files and recent incidents in the press. Secretary Carler has requested our cooperation in tidying up the loose ends. He's dealing with the official inquiry. We're dealing with the escaped inmates. These... stories are an embarrassment for all of us. The courts ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen. I want you on it before it gets out of hand."

  "It looks like it's already out of hand."

  "Quite."

  "What do I do with them if I find them?"

  "Bring them in. It's better for them if they come to us. They can join the courts, gain some protection. We'll find a place for them. They can be with people of their own kind."

  "And if they don't want to?"

  "We're not really offering them a choice, Niall. It's for their own protection."

  "But if they won't come?"

  "Persuade them."

  "And if they won't be persuaded?"

  "What do you want, Niall? A signed warrant? You're a Warder. Act like one."

  "You want me to eliminate them?"

  "If you choose to put it that way. Bear in mind that seventeen people are already dead, and there may be more we don't know about. What did you think they were going to do, blend in with the community?"

  "I couldn't leave them there. They were being systematically tortured."

  "And torture victims make such good citizens, don't you find? Alex is barely holding it together, and she's had help."

  "You said she was improving."

  "She is." Garvin stared at me. "You let these people loose, and you need to take responsibility for them. We can't leave them at large. If they come into the courts then all well and good. We can help them, give them support, keep them safe."

  "And if not?"

  He pushed the pile of folders across the desk. "I'm giving you Warder's Discretion. It's your call. Deal with them."

 

I left Garvin's office feeling resentful. Why was it my problem? It was hardly my fault that the people at Porton Down had been running secret experiments with half-breed mongrel fey as their subjects, was it?

  Subjects? Victims would be a better word. What had been done in the name of science was obscene. They had stuck needles in them, drugged them, tortured them and made them perform like circus freaks, all in the name of research.

  Wasn't anyone else going to take any responsibility?

  Of course, I already knew the answer to that. I could tell Garvin that I didn't feel capable of fulfilling the mission and he would shake his head and assign someone else − Amber probably. She would finish the job that Porton Down had started and kill them all, quickly, efficiently and without attracting attention. I ought to be grateful that Garvin was giving me a chance to find a better solution, but I didn't feel grateful. I felt manipulated.

  I mounted the stairs two at a time – the injuries I'd sustained breaking out of Porton Down had almost completely healed. I still felt a twinge or two in my shoulder where I had caught the edge of a shotgun blast, but only when I was duelling with whichever Warder Garvin chose to partner me with at our morning practice sessions, and even the twinge would soon pass – a benefit of my fey blood.

  Walking through the doors to the corridor on which Blackbird and I shared a suite of rooms, I entered quietly in case she was asleep, not that I often found her sleeping during the day, but since she was the one managing the feeds in the middle of the night I thought it would be unkind to wake her if she had finally managed to grab some rest.

  I needn't have worried.

  The curtains were drawn back and there were sounds of splashing coming from the bathroom. I left the files on the desk and peeped around the door. She had filled the small baby bath in the big bath and was in the process of introducing our son to the warm water. From the noises he was making, he was enjoying it, though that may have been because of the kicking and splashing. Having no wish to end up damp and smelling of baby bath, I eased the door closed and crept out to check on Alex.

  Crossing back across the hallway above the stairs, I made my way the far end of the wing where Alex's room was. The size of the house no longer daunted me – I had become used to corridors with room after room set aside for visitors that never arrived. It did mean that Alex could be well away from most of the rest of the occupants of the house – limiting the amount of damage and disruption to the plumbing for the rest of us.

  My daughter's affinity with water was both a relief and a problem. I had been worried that she would inherit my gift for the void, or at least the female form of it, and be able to feed from living things by spreading a corruption known as darkspore. It had prevented me from telling her about her potential to inherit my fey genes until it was too late. Instead she'd discovered her gift for herself with disastrous consequences, drowning three other girls after an incident of bullying. She had lost control then, and was still struggling to regain it now.

  Instead of the void, Alex had inherited her affinity with water – she called it a sympathy, I never quite understood why. I did ask her once and she told me she felt sorry for it. She said it always wanted to be somewhere else, that it never rested, leaving me wondering whether she was still talking about the water.

  I came to her room at the end of the west wing and knocked on her door. There was no answer. I knocked again and waited. There had been time when I would have simply entered, but having walked in on her naked one day – now I waited. No amount of "I've seen it all before" made any difference, apparently.

  Having waited again with no answer, I decided it was worth risking the door. I opened it slowly.

  "Alex, are you in?"

  The door opened onto a large bedroom, the double bed higher than usual and the furniture in dark polished wood that reflected the daylight from the big French doors in a dull auburn gleam. The French doors were open and I could see Alex leaning on the stone balustrade overlooking the gardens below. Fionh was with her, so I approached slowly, not wanting to startle her. Fionh noticed me and held up a hand in caution.

  "Gently now, Alex," she said. "Let it find its own way."

  I edged towards the French doors to see what she was doing. Alex had her arms folded on the rail and was staring intently down into the garden. At my approach, a floorboard creaked underneath me and Alex glanced back momentarily. There was a gurgling whoosh from the garden below.

  "Oh, now look what you've done," said Alex. She threw her arms up and turned her back on the garden, resting her back against the balustrade and looking annoyed at me.

  "What did I do?" I looked at Fionh, who smiled thinly.

  "The pond will take hours to settle now, won't it Fionh?" Alex sounded oddly pleased. Fionh raised an eyebrow.

  I moved onto the balcony and looked down onto the garden below. In the centre was a circular pond, water roiling with sediment.

  "That was your fault. If you hadn't distracted me, I wouldn't have disturbed all the mud at the bottom," said Alex.

  Fionh shook her head in resignation. "OK, enough for today. But I want five fish on the surface tomorrow."

  "Five?"

  "They're only fish, Alex."

  "Yeah, but they go all over the place. They've got minds of their own, right?"

  "Are you going to be beaten by five fish?"

  "Four," she said.

  "Five," said Fionh, heading for the door. "I have things to do in the morning, but there's nothing to stop you practicing before I get here."