Summer (9 page)

“Has Katherine told you tales of Nightingale, Detective Healy?”

“No, what’s that?” He stuck his hands into the front pockets of his coat, probably to keep his fingers from twitching, and slouched along at Siobahn’s side. Morris drifted three steps behind, watchful. “Not another magical sword, I hope.”

Siobahn smiled politely. “Believe it or not, enchanted weaponry is a rare thing, even at Court. By all logic,
Buairt
should never have been our problem.”

“Right,” Bran said, obviously unconvinced. “What’s a Nightingale? Other than the obvious, anyway.”

They crested a low hill and looked down on the sleeping carousel. A layer of snow glittered on the roof and on the low evergreen bushes against the building’s foundation. Several benches sat nearby, dripping icicles. An empty can of Diet Coke rolled by, clattering along the concrete path, chased by a wind Siobahn didn’t feel.

“Goddamned slobs,” Bran muttered, “whatever happened to ‘Clean and Green?’ There’s a fucking recycling bin on every corner.”

He stepped forward, apparently meaning to rescue Central Park from a single aluminum can, but Siobahn stopped him, slapping her hand against his chest, holding him in place. She watched the Coke can as it reversed directions, bouncing back in front of the carousel, leaving a track in the accumulated snow.

“Wait,” she said. “Katherine needs to stay out of my business, Detective Healy. Winter is my business; the tasks I set him are also
my business
, and none of her concern. If she is, as you say, ’distressed’ over my children’s safety, she should have offered her aid when I asked it. It’s not an easy journey I’ve sent them on. Like as not they’ll be hunted the very moment they set food in Cornwallis Cave. In fact”—Siobahn wouldn’t let the words stick in her throat—”as it’s very likely I’ve sent the last of my blood to their deaths, I’ll admit I find Katherine Grey’s ’distress’ both laughable and insulting. What does she know of sacrifice?”

The human visibly flinched. “I don’t think you understand. What I meant to say,” he paused, distracted, squinting down at the dancing Coke can,”is that—”

“Music, yes.” Siobahn grinned through her teeth. “Or poetry. It’s always been irrationally fond of its own voice.”

“Voice?” Bran protested. “That’s an aluminum can.”

Only it wasn’t, of course it wasn’t. It was an instrument, as was the unnatural wind skirling in small gusts at the foot of the carousel. The wind tossed the can against brick and concrete, frozen dirt and dead grass. A rhythm emerged, at first dull and thin, but quickly deepening in tone and intensity until Siobahn could hear a veritable chorus of unearthly voices in the aluminum can’s clatter.

“Clever,” Siobahn agreed. “It was always clever, until it got caught in the politics of our kind and was forced to make a choice of queens. Come, Detective Healy. Katherine will never forgive you if you miss this. Morris?”

“Ready, my lady,” Morris answered in that distant, sleepy tone that meant he was preparing defensive magics. “Step cautiously.”

Bran drew a pistol from beneath his coat. Siobahn might have scoffed, but she supposed the gun was one of Winter’s modified toys, which meant it was possible the weapon wasn’t entirely useless.

“Dangerous?” he asked briefly, sighting the dancing can.

Siobahn didn’t laugh.

“More likely than not,” she replied, and started down the hill to the carousel, Nightingale’s odd symphony rising in the unnatural wind.

There were no guards at the entrance into the mountain, only a gaping hole half-again as tall as Richard and wide enough to allow a pair of
sluagh
to pass without scraping folded wings.

“What point security?” Water-Bearer murmured. The one-eyed
sluagh
was beginning to make a habit of answering Richard’s questions before he spoke them. “We are the only inmates in this prison.”

The passage into
Reilig na Rí
was narrow enough that the Host was forced to walk single file. Richard, trapped somewhere in the middle of the living worm, could see nothing but feathers ahead and hear nothing but the susurrus of labored breathing behind. If he walked close to the wall and stuck his good hand out as far as possible against the manacles, he could brush the tunnel wall with the tips of his fingers. The stone was rough and scored with many shallow hollows, as though it had been scraped with multiple spoons.

Every twenty steps a single patch of cold blue light gleamed in the ceiling. Richard recognized the light for what it was; Gathered starlight, but static and sickly, trapped in the stone. The dim light cast thin illumination: just enough to see by, more than enough to cast strange, misshapen shadows against the wall and ceiling.

“Bones,” Aine murmured into Richard’s ear. She trembled against his spine, frightened or chilled. “Look, in the walls.”

He’d seen the bits of skeleton from the very beginning; long finger bones pressed into the stone, a single femur half-absorbed by the ceiling, a fan of what must be the bones of an entire wing, the puzzle of bones and joints reminding Richard of the dinosaur fossils he’d once studied at the Met.

“
Sluagh
bones.” Richard’s mouth was bleeding again. He had to spit twice to clear the words on his tongue. “What killed them?”

Aine didn’t answer. Richard glanced over his shoulder, looking for Water-Bearer, but it had disappeared again into the press of wings. The
sluagh
behind Richard grunted and shoved, jarring Richard’s arm. Pain burst in stars behind his eyes, and he staggered, chains rattling, but managed to stay upright.

He counted steps, breathing shallowly, until agony retreated to a bearable red throb.

“Richard,” Aine said, small-voiced and frightened. “I don’t want to be alone. Don’t let them put me in the wall again.”

Richard remembered Aine crucified against the Metro tunnel wall, ensnared by stone and spell. He remembered Winter cutting her free, slicing flesh and hair, spilling blood on the tracks.

“Don’t worry,” Richard promised. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

Aine laughed. Her breath was soft and warm against his cheek. Richard shivered in surprise and then, incredibly, felt himself blushing.

“Aye, well, I’m not asking for a miracle,” the changeling said. “Only a promise. Don’t let them put my body in the wall, after.”

Richard knew it was a promise he probably couldn’t keep. He hated making promises at the best of times. There was no such thing as certainty in life, and Richard wanted no part of pretty subterfuge.

Doesn’t matter
, said his subconscious in Winter’s voice,
tell the lie.

“They won’t put you in the wall,” he said to Aine and Winter both, “I promise.”

“Thank you,” Aine said, and sighed out relief.

Richard exhaled slowly in echo, briefly grateful for those small, shiny parts of him that had been burnt clean by Winter’s friendship.

The tunnel rose straight into the mountain. Richard didn’t have Lolo’s knack for timekeeping and he’d retreated into that half-aware state where pain and fear were less sharp, so when the passageway suddenly widened and spat the Host into a large, bright chamber, making Richard gasp and blink, he wasn’t entirely sure how much time had passed since they’d marched into
Reilig na Rí .

He thought it must not have been long, because Aine was still safely on his back, and although she was small and light, he knew it was doubtful he’d managed to carry her far.

“This way,” Water-Bearer said, appearing at Richard’s side. “Come. You can sit and rest.”

The cave was oval, shaped like an egg. As the Host spread out, thinning, Richard realized the space was far more than large; it was gigantic. A white fire blazed high in the center, stretching from a circular pit in the floor, disappearing toward the distant ceiling, shedding light and warmth in great pulsating waves. The white flame flickered but made no sound.

“Here.” Water-Bearer led Richard ten feet along the curve of the wall. “There. Rest there.”

’There’ was a niche in the wall, a
sluagh
-sized shelf cut into the stone. Richard grunted, easing Aine from his shoulders. The girl half-crawled, half-climbed onto the floor, stretching on the ground with a sigh of relief.

“It’s warm,” she said, wonderingly. “Warm but smooth as ice.”

Richard sank down against the wall, which was equally warm and satin-smooth. He lay on his side, face turned to the white pyre, and concentrated on breathing. The air in the chamber was sweet, oxygen-rich. The radiating heat off the ground and walls lulled his aching bones and eased Richard toward a half-sleep. He dozed restlessly, but the sharp slashes of pain from his hand and the two forbidding
sluagh
very obviously standing guard to either side of their niche kept him from falling completely under.

Water-Bearer sat alongside Richard’s head, wrapping itself in black feathers.

“Watch,” it murmured, too low for any but Richard to hear. “Watch, mortal. Your life may depend on it.”

Richard was resigned to the fact that his life was a shortened line, worth very little in the grand scheme of things. Still, he shifted and sat up, groaning as his hand protested. It felt as though he’d had a hot knife shoved all the way from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow. He had to swallow hard to keep his stomach from rebelling but at least the agony chased the last of the fog from his brain.

“Infection,” Water-Bearer pronounced wisely. “You’ll have to lose the hand, I think.”

“Shut up,” Richard hissed out of the corner of his mouth. Cold sweat trickled across his face. He wasn’t worried about his hand. He didn’t expect to live long enough for it to matter.

“And if you succumb,” Water-Bearer asked, watching Richard out of its one eye. “Who will care for the
siofra?
Pay attention.”

Richard tried. The first thing he noticed was the precise shape of the room, an almost perfect egg-curve in all three planes, from the curvature in the walls to the matching concavity on the floor and likely on the vanishing ceiling. The niches in the wall were much smaller, matching ovals, but half-an-egg instead of whole.

“Machine-made.” He ran his unbroken fingers over the smooth-as-glass-floor, baffled. “Machine-cut, it must be. Impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible,” Water-Bearer corrected. “Although in this case you are incorrect. The chamber was carved from the mountain by a very powerful magic, when the Host was still strong enough to work such spells. What else?”

“The white flame warms but doesn’t burn,” Richard deduced. Most of the
sluagh
had arranged themselves around the white pyre, close enough to the flame that their feathers and tentacles rustled in an invisible vortex. Several of the monsters appeared to be standing half in and half out of the column. It was impossible to tell, but Richard thought those deformed faces wore expressions of pure pleasure.

“It calls to us,” Water-Bearer agreed. “Warms old, frozen bones, and recalls us to easier times, before war, before betrayal. Recalls us to hope. We rarely venture far from the center now, not for centuries.”

Richard meant to say something scathing about the one-eyed ghoul’s sudden chattiness, but his attention was caught by the Prince. The tall
sluagh
stood alone on one curve of the white column, ebony wings held high, shoulders curved forward in longing or anticipation. His monstrous face was lifted and the reflection of fire gleamed inhumanly in his eyes.

“Oh,” Richard said, because he’d seen that very same pose before, but on Winter, in front of a much darker, much smaller patch of magic.
Longing
, Richard realized, or
regret
. “It’s a portal. A Gate.”

“Through which the Wild Host entire was exiled, yes. That is the lingering flame of
Tir na Nog
, which we believed was lost to us until now.” One eye rolled in Aine’s direction, poignant and pointed, while the cluster of tentacles in the empty socket writhed and curled into small knots. “Some of her blood will go into the Gate itself, of course, to waken the old magic. The rest shared out between us who remain. The blood spells won’t be easy for her and it won’t be quick. He’ll keep her alive as long as possible, and with the Mending in her veins, that might be a very long time indeed.” Water-Bearer showed its pale tongue, amending: “Long enough to send us all through, I imagine.”

Richard stared again at the Prince and hated himself for seeing any resemblance to Winter. Winter would never sacrifice an innocent for his own sake, not even if it meant a way home, not even to save his family. Winter wasn’t a monster. Winter was good. The lodestone of Winter’s goodness kept Richard safe.

Water-Bearer tilted its head, bird-like,
sidhe-
like, Winter-like.

Richard closed his eyes and pressed his uninjured fist to the bridge of his nose. The shackles ground against his wrist bone.

“You’re missing the most important observation,” Water-Bearer said.

“Why don’t you just be quiet and let me be?”

“I have my reasons.” The
sluagh
swept out one wing, smacking Richard on his good shoulder, rough but not necessarily unkind, not very differently than how Richard sometimes swatted at a particularly tenacious sewer rat. “Aye, you’re canny enough for a mortal, and lucky. But I won’t hand it to you on a golden platter. You’re not Gloriana, damn her lovely head, and it’s not
fidchell
we’re playing.”

Aine knew how to play
fidchell
, Richard remembered. She’d played the game of chance against the Fay Queen and purposefully lost.

“Purposefully lost,” Richard whispered. He opened his eyes.

“Ahh,” Water-Bearer hummed. “I could almost come to like you, apostate. Very good.”

It took Richard at least three minutes of silence, seconds counted by the throb in his hand. Water-Bearer seemed willing to give him the three minutes but no longer.

“Well?” the monster demanded.

“Are they asleep?” Richard asked, puzzled. Almost every malformed
sluagh
face seemed turned toward the fire, contemplative, basking, worshipping. Even the Prince seemed lost, drawn to the white flame like an overgrown, over-used moth cliché.

The
sluagh
guards were turned half away from Richard, paying him no real attention. The white flames cast shadows in their eyes.

“They’re looking away,” Aine whispered, startling Richard. He’d assumed she was asleep or passed out. “Richard, they’re all looking
away
. Use your knack!”

Richard shook his head, remembering his escape up the alien hill, through unforgiving rock. “Aine, it won’t work, they’ll hunt us down, by smell. They can smell us.”

“Not if I prevent it.”

Richard blinked. Water-Bearer flashed its shit-eating grin.

“Go,” it said. “Use your ’knack’ and go quickly. There’s a tunnel on the east wall. It runs further into the catacombs. Carry the girl and go. I’ll catch up when I can.”

“But—”

“Hurry!” Water-Bearer’s grin became even less pleasant. “You’re wasting a brilliant and fleeting gift, mortal: Miach One-Eye’s goodwill.”

“Richard!” Aine reached a hand from the niche, tugged on his torn sleeve. “Please.”

Richard shook his head, because he knew it wouldn’t work, but he knew not trying would be just another unforgivable thing, so he took a long breath and made the universe think he was never born.

Richard first managed his knack when he was five, on a lovely spring Saturday afternoon when it seemed like most of the world was happy, but Bobby Lorimer was never like most of the world and Richard was scared.

Most of East Riverside was celebrating the warmer weather by sharing front stoops and Coors Lights and over-cooked bratwursts. The old lady in 2275 had Billy Joel on a CD player faced out the window, ’Captain Jack’ set on repeat. Nobody complained, because the song was a classic in anybody’s books, and also because the old lady’s son was a cop, so everybody, even Bobby, tried to stay on her good side.

Richard could hear ’Captain Jack’ all the way in the backyard of 2272, where he cowered under the branches of an early blooming shrub, trying to stay out of reach of Bobby’s wheels and hands. Bobby was stoned and pissed as hell, because Richard had tripped coming out of the back door and spilled bratwursts and slices of cheese into the dirt, and now Bobby’s barbecue was
ruined.