Chapter Thirty-Seven

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Waking up was slow, difficult, and deeply unpleasant. I normally woke up quickly, but this hadn’t been sleep. It hadn’t even been like sleep, just a window of unconsciousness while I was seizing. And coming back from that usually felt a lot like this; there was a feeling like I was trying to push my way back while swimming in honey, the resistance and drag making every cognitive movement a struggle. I dragged myself out of it, but it took a while, and I was still dazed.

But I hadn’t been out long. Not long at all, in fact, which was convenient. That part was hard to predict; longer periods of unconsciousness usually indicated a more severe seizure, but it wasn’t consistent. I tended to be out for anywhere from five minutes to an hour; this seemed to have been on the short end of that range, under ten minutes.

I felt surprisingly calm about the groggy, dazed feeling. I would have expected the helplessness to be a huge anxiety trigger right now, but there was very little. I was almost sure before I was even fully conscious that we had won, simply because I had survived long enough to wake up again.

Reality did not deliver a horrible gut punch just when I thought I was safe, which was unwontedly kind of it, really. I opened my eyes and tried to sit up, and instantly regretted both, but there was no active harm, just an absolutely miserable headache, a bone-deep ache in my shoulder and one in my calf that was at least a quarter of the depth of bone, which got an honorable mention. My whole body had a generalized ache, and I’d definitely cracked a rib because it hurt to breathe, but not enough for the bone to be fully fractured. I’d sprained my right ankle falling, and had a long cut on that calf that I didn’t remember, shallow but bloody.

In short, I felt like shit, but I wasn’t dead. And rather than any of a number of hostile knives, it was Saori’s hand on my forehead pushing me back down to her lap. I didn’t have a problem with that.

“Shh, take it easy,” she told me. The kitsune had a loose, lazy sort of grin, nothing like the wide and feral grin she’d worn in battle. I could feel the fire in it, even while holding my filters in place as firmly as I knew how. “You hit your head pretty good on the way down.”

And that explained the headache, which wasn’t getting any lighter. Having been thus reassured, I closed my eyes and just rested back on her.

“What happened?” I asked. “I kinda. Lost track towards the end.”

“Yeah, that uh. Was pretty apparent. How far back do you have?”

I considered that for a moment. “I think right up until I went at Cormac,” I said eventually. “But everything past the door is really strange. I think it was strange while it was happening, too.”

“That tracks,” she agreed. “Pretty simple at the end, you just fell down and went into convulsions. Cut yourself with your own sword while you were falling, incidentally, which is embarrassing but not deep enough to be dangerous. But up to that point you were…definitely pretty high. There was a lot of manic giggling, and you didn’t seem to be getting language very much. Did a hell of a nice job for being high as a kite, though,” she told me, and the slight hesitance that had been in her tone a moment ago was gone now. Saori was grinning, I could hear it in her voice, and now it was her trademark slightly mad, wholly madcap grin.

“How many did I get?” I asked, feeling morbidly curious. I wasn’t sure whether I was proudly counting trophies or poking at fresh guilt, though I thought it was mostly the former. It was hard to feel guilt when I could say with almost total confidence that anyone I’d killed tonight had made the conscious decision to be here. If they worked with a guy who tried to assassinate people with car bombs and casually killed a bunch of civilians in the process, I didn’t think they had much grounds to complain when one of those people came and took their gang out with extreme prejudice.

“Lessee. One Sidhe at the door, three hounds in the brawl just after.”

“And one of the cat sìth as well,” Capinera chimed in. “It went down while she was getting up.”

Huh. I hadn’t remembered any cats, but then, I might not have. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen where Capinera was, but I assumed that the status report would get there eventually.

“And one cat,” Saori agreed. “Two more Court Sidhe there, then another up front, and Cormac. Who is, incidentally, very fucking dead. You got him with a bolt of lightning, and he was wrapped in way too much metal for that to be a good thing.”

“Gold is also very conductive,” I added helpfully. “Not as good as silver, of course. Or copper. But short of that, good as metal gets.”

“Lesson learned, I guess. You electrocuted him pretty good, and then his spell blew up in his face. By which I mean, it blew the front half of his skull off when it exploded.”

I blinked, which right now meant reminding myself of why I had my eyes nicely closed against the glare of a dimly lit room. “I was not expecting for it to be that literal.”

“I know, right?” Saori was grinning again, and I could not only hear it in her voice, but feel it in her hand on my head, where she was gently stroking my hair. “Priceless. So at that point it was pretty much done. There were more of them in both wings, but Shadow went south, Lily went north, and that was about it.”

“I was expecting more loose ends than this,” I commented.

“Yeah, about that. Ekaterina had a couple people who were only mostly dead, so she left posthaste at that point. Said to tell you that she’s pissed you took more people down than she did, and she wants a rematch at some point with both of you drunk. Not sure who she’s planning on being sober enough to count.”

I laughed. “Wow. Just. Wow.”

“She’s fantastic,” Saori agreed. “And that all brings us to the one notable loose end who’s still here. That fae jackass who is, incidentally, friends with Capinera. Hasn’t said a word, but he’s still standing right there.”

“Friends is an overstatement,” Capinera said. “Acquaintances, maybe. We were…in similar lines of work. He wants to talk to you.” From the wariness in her tone, I was guessing I knew why she wasn’t sitting next to Saori. Someone had to watch said acquaintance. I doubted she could keep him at bay if he wanted past, but she would feel obligated to at least pretend.

“Great,” I sighed. “Knew it was coming. Let’s go.” I opened my eyes and stood up, assisted by Saori, since my balance wasn’t fully recovered. My leg hurt, too, and wasn’t healing very quickly for such a shallow cut. It was still bleeding, in fact, though a simple dressing was enough to keep that to a sort of sluggish trickle.

It turned out that when Saori said that the man was standing right where he was, she meant it literally. If he’d moved his feet an inch since I fell, he could have fooled me. He was watching me with his sword out and the same bored grey eyes that had watched me through a rifle’s scope on several occasions.

I wondered why he’d missed. If he was as good a shot as he was a swordsman, it seemed unlikely that he’d miss that many times, for all that they had been difficult shots. More malicious compliance, maybe.

“What’s up?” I said, limping closer.

He bowed towards me, barely moving at all, just tilting his head forward a few degrees. I bowed back, feeling a little silly—I’d grown up with the gesture being commonplace, but I had been away from Japan for a long time now.

Capinera and Shadow were both watching him, and they were both just as still as he was. From all three, I got an impression of coiled tension rather than relaxation, a viper ready to strike. I felt much the same, though not nearly as static about it.

“Simeon. This is my friend Kyoko.” I noted that Capinera had freely called me a friend, while declining Simeon the same status, right in front of him. I wasn’t sure what that implied. “Kyoko, this is Simeon Flint.” She also didn’t provide him with a description at all, but I felt like that was probably a courtesy rather than a slight. It suggested that he didn’t need further introduction because people would already know who Simeon Flint was. Which I didn’t, but the point stood.

“A pleasure,” Simeon said, not sounding pleased. He didn’t sound angry, either, or anything in particular. His tone was as blank and disinterested as his eyes.

“An honor.” I didn’t sound especially honored either, though I picked that word instead for a reason. Lying, or even half-lying with an implicit sentiment, to the highly regarded, demonstrably highly lethal Sidhe sounded like a death wish. This might not be a pleasure, but I had to admit I did feel at least slightly honored that said Sidhe had wanted to talk to me specifically.

“Is your conflict with Cormac Goldenblade complete?” He sounded so blank it was a little eerie, lacking any emotional investment at all. He had not sheathed his weapon.

I looked over to where I could see said fae nobleman lying on the floor behind Simeon. He was lying over a considerable portion of that floor; Saori had not been exaggerating that part either. The mess was spectacular, and would be an enormous headache for whoever inherited the flooring.

“I would say so, and he doesn’t seem to be in a state to argue,” I said. “So, yes.”

The reaction was instant and sort of gratifying. Simeon took one step back and sheathed his sword. “Finally,” he said, and while the emotion in his tone was faint, there was real spite in his cold grey eyes. “I believe our business is concluded alongside my erstwhile employer, then.”

I blinked. “You’re just going to leave?”

He tilted his head to the side very slightly, the gesture reminding me of a cat. “Do you propose to stop me?” he asked, and the curiosity was similarly faint, but it was there.

“No, not at all,” I said. “It just seems odd that you’d walk out on your employer like that.”

This response wasn’t subtle at all. The ice in Simeon’s voice was so sharp I thought it might be literally able to freeze water. “I do not renege on my contracts.”

I held up my hands, shook my head. “No, and I didn’t mean to imply that you did; my apologies for having misspoken. If anything, it’s more that even the momentary thought that you might have was so unbelievable that it startled me, and I spoke clumsily.” Again, entirely honest. Simeon was Sidhe to the core, and they did not break their word, the end. And people in his line of work, if I understood what he did at all, were deeply reliant on their good reputation. The notion was laughable.

“He deployed my skills with all the finesse of a bull in a china shop,” Simeon said calmly. “While repeatedly overruling my criticism of his plans, despite lacking expertise regarding you, your world, or the type of work to be done. Had he not done so I expect I could have killed you within the first three days. As it stands, he was an arrogant fool, and a rank coward; even at the end, he was so concerned with saving his own skin that he ordered me to focus on maintaining a defensive line rather than risk exposing himself to any hazard. I did so. I agreed to follow his orders in this matter until his conflict with you was over. I have done so. You can feed him to the vultures now for all I care.”

I blinked. That flood of vitriol was just…impressive, in several ways. First, that he had said the whole thing in a tone so lacking in overt malice that it felt like a blank sheet of paper. Second, that he had said it, because I got the impression that it took a truly impressive amount of contempt for Simeon Flint to say that; he seemed the type who rarely spent that many words on anyone at all.

It was exactly what I’d told Lily, not so long ago, when she said Silas had wanted a security consultant who considered it a gift. You don’t survive to be an ancient, powerful being without figuring out that pissing off the praetorian guard is a quick way to come down with a bad case of death. I had no idea how Cormac had done so, or how he’d survived in general when he pissed off everyone around him so much. Presumably he was under the aegis of someone who actually had a brain, but why they had been sheltering him was beyond me, since it seemed unlikely he was much of an asset. Made a promise to his father or something, maybe.

When I opened my eyes again, Simeon was gone. Though at least it wasn’t the eerie, instantaneous disappearance that Kali had shown me. I could feel a faint shimmer of cold, surgical-blade magic, and was guessing Simeon had simply drawn a veil around himself and walked away.

“That guy creeps me right the fuck out,” Saori said simply.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Capinera said darkly, finally sheathing her rapier. That reminded me that I hadn’t done the same to Thorn, so I looked around, found the sword on the floor, and corrected that.

I hadn’t been consciously feeling its power until I touched it again, but it hadn’t been fully gone, just muted. I knew that because when I slid it into the sheath and fastened the restraining strap around it, the sudden drop in tension was palpable in the air. I immediately felt better, too, not by a lot, but it was noticeable; my headache dropped a few notches in severity, and my balance felt a little steadier, my leg still oozing blood but with a little less burning pain involved in stepping on it.

Thorn didn’t try to stop me this time. It felt satisfied, almost smug. I looked at the sword, blade and sheath alike pristine and untouched by the blood they had spilled, and shivered. Optimistically, I decided to write the feeling off as me projecting, because I wasn’t ready to have a sword with emotions, even if it did instill them in me when I wielded it.

“We good in here?” Lily said, walking in the front door. The vampire was also satisfied, but there was no ambiguity there, nor in why; there was enough blood on her face to make that feel pretty obvious. I wasn’t sure whether she could drink from the fae, but apparently the answer was yes, in some measure; who knows, maybe she just liked the taste.

“Yeah, think so,” I said. “You heading out? Because you’ve definitely paid that debt off.”

“I had fun,” she said, and sounded like she meant it, though the satisfaction was still somewhat reserved; Lily, I thought, was probably just like that. “But yes. Time I’d best get going. Feel free to stay in touch.”

The vampire was gone, too, very nearly as instantly as Kali. I could feel her moving away into the night, but Lily was so damn fast that she was out of range of any sense I had in moments, leaving just a business card on the floor. Another for my…special set of those, though I was guessing I’d end up in at least sporadic contact with her. I had enjoyed her company. I wasn’t thinking too hard about what that implied right at the moment.

A thought did occur to me, though. I glanced around for Shadow, and realized that the achromatic spectre had also vanished. I hadn’t seen it go either, but in that case I was pretty sure I just hadn’t noticed. I wouldn’t have.

“Not going to lie,” Saori said, clearly realizing the same thing at much the same time. “Not bad company but wow does it give me the creeps with this shit.”

“It’ll be around,” I said, feeling quite confident in that. I was, after all, apparently the first person it had found even remotely close to a friend in quite some time.

“Yes. So, what are you going to do with the place?” Capinera sounded curious.

I blinked. “With what place?”

“This one,” Capinera said, sounding somewhat amused now. “You did a large portion of the fighting, and struck the final blow. It’s yours by right of conquest, as are the fallen lord’s armaments.”

I sighed. “Of course they are,” I said, sounding nearly as tired as I felt. “Because clearly I needed a sword made of gold. Who the fuck even thinks that’s a good idea? Gold isn’t even good material for swords, he must have sunk so much into just getting it workable. Such a pointless affectation.”

“What the hell are you complaining about?” Saori asked me. “You should be thrilled.”

I blinked at the kitsune. “What?”

Capinera laughed softly, a sound like silver and shadows. “It does seem to be to your advantage, on the whole,” she agreed.

I blinked at the half-redcap. “What are you two talking about? Keeping in mind that I recently hit my head while seizing.”

Saori sighed. “Fae law says they’re yours by right of conquest,” she said slowly, sounding exasperated. “It doesn’t say you have to keep them. And that’s a fuck of a lot of gold.”

“Oh.” I blinked again, but now it was for an entirely different reason. That was…a lot of gold. “Wow,” I said, and then looked at the spectacular mess on the floor which was now an enormous headache for the person who had inherited it.

As instant karmic comeuppance went, it was pretty tame. And that, finally, was the last absurdity I could stand, literally. I broke out in hysterical laughter, so hard that I had to sit down on that floor and look at the disaster we’d made of the place in the assault and laugh until I cried.

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