Tithe (25 page)

As they turned a corner, she saw a shape slide between the shadows. It was slender and vaguely human.

“Roiben,” she whispered.

“The keepers of secrets,” he said, not looking
back. “They will tell no one of our passing.”

Kaye shuddered. She wondered what was written in the tomes that lined the shelves of the library if the idea was to keep secrets. Were the shapes custodians or guardians or scribes?

As they came to a crossroads in the bookshelves, she saw another dark shape, this one with long, pale hair that started too high on its forehead and large, glittering black eyes. It slipped into the shadows as easily and soundlessly as the first one.

Kaye was very glad when they came to a small, oval door that opened easily to Roiben’s touch.

Heavy draperies hung on the wall of the chess room. The entire floor was inlaid with black-and-white tiles, and five-foot pieces loomed on the edges of the room. Corny was sleeping on the floor, his body overlapping two chess squares.

“Cornelius?” Roiben knelt down and shook Corny by his shoulder.

He looked up. His eyes were vague and unfocused and he was a mass of bruises, but even worse was the satiated smile he turned up at them. His face looked aged somehow, and there was a tuft of white in his hair.

“Hello,” he slurred, “you’re Kaye’s Robin.”

Kaye dropped to her knees. “You’re okay now,” she said, more to herself than to him,
reverently smoothing back damp strands of hair. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Kaye,” Roiben said tonelessly.

She turned. Nephamael was stepping into the room, from behind the draperies on the far wall. His hand stroked the marble mane of the black knight chessman.

“Greetings,” Nephamael said. “You will pardon my humor if I say that you have been the proverbial thorn in my side.”

“I rather think you owe me,” Roiben said. “It was I that got you the crown.”

“From that point of view, it’s a shame that life is so often unfair, Rath Roiben Rye.”

“No!” Kaye gasped. It couldn’t be. Roiben had been so far away from the others when she’d used his name. She had barely been able to hear herself. He’d killed all the knights close by, all the ones that could have heard.

“No one else knows it,” Nephamael said as though reading her thoughts. “I killed the hob who thought to ingratiate himself with me by giving it over.”

“Spike,” Kaye breathed. It wasn’t a question.

“Rath Roiben Rye, by the power of your true name, I order you to never harm me, and to obey me both immediately and implicitly.”

Roiben’s intake of breath was sharp enough to mimic a scream.

Nephamael threw back his head and
laughed, hand still stroking the chess piece. “I further order that you shall not do yourself any harm, unless I specifically ask you to. And now, my newly made knight, seize the pixie.”

Roiben turned to Kaye as Lutie screamed from her pocket. Kaye sprinted for the door, but he was far too quick. He grabbed her hair in a clump, jerking her head back, then just as suddenly let her go. After an amazed moment, Kaye dashed through the door.

“You may be well versed in following orders, but you are a novice at giving them,” she heard Roiben say as she ran back into the maze of the library.

Before, she had simply followed Roiben through the winding bookshelves—now, she had no idea where she was going. She turned and turned and turned again, relieved that she didn’t see any of the strange secret-keepers. Then, careening past a podium with a small stack of books piled on it, she turned into a dead end.

Lutie crawled out of her pocket and was buzzing around her. “What’s to do, Kaye? What’s to do?”

“Shhh,” Kaye said. “Try to listen.”

Kaye could hear her own breathing, could hear pages fluttering somewhere in the room, could hear what sounded like cloth dragging across the floor. No sounds of footsteps. No pursuit.

She tried to draw glamour around her, to color her skin to be like the wall behind her. She felt the ripple of magic roll through her and looked down at her wood-colored hand.

What were they going to do? Guilt and misery threatened to overwhelm her. She put her head between her legs and took a couple of deep breaths.

She had to get them free.

Which was absurd. She was only one pixie girl. She barely knew how to use glamour, barely knew how to use her own wings.

Clever. The word taunted her, the sum of all the things she ought to be and was not.

Think, Kaye. Think.

She took a deep breath. She’d solved the riddles. She’d gotten Roiben out of the court. She’d even more or less figured out how to use her glamour. She could do this.

“Let’s go. Please—let’s go,” Lutie said, settling on Kaye’s knee.

Kaye shook her head. “Lutie, there has to be something. If I just think.”

They were all faeries. Okay, then she had to think like a human girl. She had to consider things she knew how to do. Lighter tricks. Shoplifting. And she especially had to think about the things that faeries didn’t like.

Iron.

Kaye looked back at Lutie. “What would happen if I swallowed iron?”

Lutie shrugged. “You’d burn your mouth. You might die.”

“What if I
poisoned
someone with iron?”

Lutie shifted uncomfortably on Kaye’s knee, looking incredulous. “But there’s no iron here!”

Kaye took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her mind was racing ahead too fast, she had to slow down, calm down. There might be iron in the Unseelie Court, part of weapons, certainly, although she had no idea where any of that would be kept. It was all over outside here, everywhere.

She looked down at her body. What did she have that was from Ironside? Her T-shirt, panties, boots … the green frock coat was only glamour, after all.

Kaye unlaced her boots quickly. There was definitely iron in them, obscured from directly touching her skin, but there nonetheless. She pulled them off her feet and looked them over. There was iron in the steel grommets, she could feel the warmth, buried under the black plastic coating. There were steel plates buried in the toe of the boots too, although they would be much too big to use unless she could somehow file them down. Kaye took the knife Roiben had handed her out of her frock-coat pocket and began to pry the soles off the boots. There, as the soles were ripped up and off, were
exposed shoe tacks, shiny steel nails so small that that they could be swallowed without anyone the wiser.

Kaye took the knife in one hand, a boot in the other, and began digging them out.

Corny was awash in new emotions. He sat on the dirt floor of a massive palace beneath the earth. Courtiers played instruments, and Nephamael fed him fat globes of cloak-dark grapes. Around Corny were creatures, small and large, slaking their thirst, gambling with riddles and a game that involved hurling somewhat round stones.

The world shrank to those grapes. Nothing was better than brushing his mouth over those fingers, nothing sweeter than the burst of each black jewel in his mouth.

“I think you have entirely too much dignity. I command that you dance,” Nephamael said to his new prisoner.

Below the dais, a small crowd gathered apart from their regular activities to watch Roiben dance.

The knight’s body was a bow string loosed. His silvery hair streamed like a pennant, but his eyes seemed apart from his body, darting like those of an animal that would tear off its leg to be free of a trap. He did not falter, but his movements were sudden, his spirals desperate.
Corny did not want to pity him, so he looked away. A grape fell from the King’s hand, but Corny was no longer careful.

The knight danced on as the Unseelie Gentry laughed and japed.

“Too easy. It will take too long to tire him. Whip him as he dances.”

Three goblins stepped forward to do as he asked. Red lines opened along his chest and back.

Corny was very glad that Kaye wasn’t here now.

“What task shall I set him to for his redemption in my court? I want to keep him. He’s been a lucky talisman so far.”

“Let him find us a wingless bird that can still fly.”

“Find us a goat whose teats are filled with wine instead of milk.”

“Yes, bring us a sweet goat like that.”

“Boring, boring, boring,” Nephamael said and leaned back in the throne. Looking down at Corny, he smiled a smile that was like sinking your teeth into cake.

“You missed a few baubles,” he said teasingly. “Pick them up … with your teeth.”

Corny looked away from Roiben, not having realized that his eyes had strayed. He did as he was told.

It was hardly a plan, really. Kaye had glamoured herself to look like Skillywidden, the
only person she remembered well from the Unseelie Court that she could guess wouldn’t be beside the throne. She did impersonations of the crone quietly in the hall, but Lutie was no help at all, laughing so hard that the little faerie was barely able to control her flying.

Then with the thin iron nails burning the inside of her cupped palm, she went in search of the main hall. It wasn’t hard to find. Past the chess room, there were other doors, but only one stairway that led up.

The hall of the Unseelie Court was much as she remembered it and nearly as full tonight as it had been the last time. This time, coming as she did, from the center of the palace, she came directly behind the raised dais. Roiben was dancing there, raw red lines open on his back. Nephamael sat on the ornate, wooden throne, iron circlet burning on his brow. She saw him drop a hand to caress Corny’s hair.

She took a deep breath and stepped onto the dais, walking straight up to the redcap who was acting as wine steward, holding a silverand-lizard-skin carafe of wine ready for refilling the new King’s goblet.

“Eh, seamstress?” the man queried, giving her a grin that revealed sharp, yellow, overlapping teeth.

And then Lutie did exactly what she was supposed to do, buzzing past the man’s face so that he snatched for her with one hand and
didn’t notice Kaye dropping iron nails into the wine. Reverse shoplifting. Easy. Much easier than slipping rats into her pockets.

“Skilly widden.” Kaye turned to see Nephamael was speaking to her. “Come here, seamstress.”

Kaye looked around; Lutie had managed to flutter off, but Kaye couldn’t see her. Even though Kaye knew that was the better thing, the safer thing, she couldn’t keep from being worried. There were already so many people hurt because of her. Kaye took a deep breath and walked to Nephamael, curtsying in what she hoped was a fair approximation of the seamstress.

“Ah,” he said, gesturing in the direction of Roiben. “My new plaything. Strong, as you can see. Lovely, even. I need a costume for him. I think that I would like something in green. Perhaps the livery of a Seelie page? I think I would like that.”

Kaye nodded, and when he looked toward Roiben again, she began to back away.

“A moment more,” Nephamael said. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. “Come closer.”

She stepped obediently forward.

Grinning wickedly, Nephamael sprang from his chair and grabbed her by one spindly shoulder. His expression was near enough to glee to make Kaye’s stomach twist in fear. Magic surrounded her, ripping at her glamour.
She felt like she was being clawed apart. She knew she was shrieking but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t do anything as her glamour was rent. She fell to her knees, now in the shirt and underwear she had woken in, hair still stiff with brine.

There were loud gasps and shouts.

“Gag her,” he said, “then tie her hands behind her back and give me the leash.” One of his people came forward to do so.

Settling back on his throne, he gestured for more wine. Kaye held her breath, but he merely took the goblet and did not drink.

“Now this is an unexpected treat. A prop for my little games. Come here, Roiben.”

Roiben paused, his body trembling with the aftershocks of exertion and violence. The red welts across his chest and back, some still bleeding, were horrible to see. He came forward to stand in front of Nephamael.

“Kneel.”

Roiben sank to his knees with a small gasp of pain.

Nephamael reached into the folds of his cloak and brought out a dagger. It had a golden blade, and the handle was made of horn. He tossed it in front of Roiben, where it landed with a clatter.

“My command is this: When I say ‘begin,’ take the knife and cut the pixie until she dies. The game is whether you will kill her slowly,
making her suffer prettily for my amusement as you stall for time … or cut her throat in one easy swipe. That would be the considerate thing to do. Ah,” he sighed dramatically, lifting the goblet high above his head, “if only you could stop hoping.”

Roiben’s face went blank with shock.

She shivered. It was hard to take breaths with the gag in her mouth, and there was no way she could speak.

“Begin,” Nephamael said, saluting with the goblet.

Roiben turned, his eyes wet, his jaw trembling. He took a breath, looking at the knife in his hands and then at Kaye. He closed his eyes, and she saw him making some terrible peace with himself, coming to some terrible decision.

She wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. Instead, she tried to meet Roiben’s eyes, tried to plead with her expression, but he wouldn’t look at her.

As she waited for the knife to decide its angle, she saw Nephamael lift the goblet to his mouth, tipping it back for a deep draught. For a moment, there was no reaction; he only wiped the edge of his lips with two fingers. Then he coughed, looking startled, looking wildly around the brugh. His eyes met hers. Nephamael dropped to his knees, scratching at his throat. He opened his mouth, perhaps to speak, perhaps to scream, but there was no sound.

Then her vision was blocked by Roiben, taking a trembling breath, the golden knife still in his hand. She remembered that no counterorder had been given. Roiben was still bound to the command.

She thrashed, side to side.

And she felt tiny fingers working at the loops of the gag.

Roiben’s face was a mask of shock and horror as he watched his own hand lower the golden blade toward her skin.