Chapter Twenty-Three

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

 

“Do you think you’re supposed to be bringing me?” Saori asked me, as we were getting close to the fae lord’s estate. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant for something to be an estate, but this definitely seemed to count. We were well outside the urban area by now, on some narrow access road in the forest. “He pretty specifically invited you.”

“Beats me,” I said cheerfully. “But you helped, and it’s not like I could drive out here myself. So I think it’s pretty reasonable.”

“On the list of adjectives I would generally apply to the Sidhe,” she said dryly, “I don’t think ‛reasonable’ even makes the top fifty. But hey, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Hope so. So, uh, I have to ask. What am I listening to this time?”

“German metal band.” She was grinning.

“With a hurdy-gurdy section.”

“Yup! This song is some weird fairy tale thing about tying a girl’s hair around a tree to make her stay with you. It seemed appropriate.”

I shook my head, vaguely impressed. “Where do you even find this shit?”

“Hey now, this group is only mildly obscure. They’re even on youtube. Just wait until you hear the carillon cover of Slipknot I have planned for the drive back.”

I had to laugh a little at that, and looked out the window at the trees going past us. There was an impressive variety represented among them. This region was basically a temperate rainforest, very much like the Pacific Northwest in that way, and outside of the city the forest was lush and verdant and full of life. I liked that about Pittsburgh. It was a different sort of vitality than the constant activity of Tokyo, the massive crowds and sprawling urban landscape, the neon fire of one of the most sleepless cities in the world. But it still felt very alive, and I liked that feeling.

It wasn’t much further. I had to admit I was somewhat impressed that Saori had apparently found her way here the first time as quickly as a werewolf in fur or a Sidhe doing whatever he did. I didn’t think I could find my way back to this place, and I’d just seen the route in the daytime.

But she found it, and pulled up out front of what seemed to be a relatively modest manor. Oh, it was big, enough so that the term “manor” was definitely apt. Three stories, and it sprawled a bit. But it wasn’t so extraordinary that even an ordinary human would find it astonishing, particularly out here where land was relatively cheap. There were plenty of moderately-rich people who went for more grandiose dwellings, nevermind someone who had access to serious supernatural power with all that implied. I’d somehow been expecting something more extravagant.

I still felt distinctly nervous, and Saori seemed to agree, a visible thread of tension in her spine. I glanced at my phone, largely just to delay, and saw that at some point Jack had texted me again. I opened it, vaguely wondering what strange tonal shift he’d produce this time, and found it read:

Locations narrowed to eight likely targets. Three in urban area, none show recent activity. Five outside, cross-reference w/ wwolves rules out two. Three which are known to wolves as significant but not clear why, each a relatively large area. Focusing search further. Status?

I read it and shook my head. I so deeply did not understand Jack Tar that it was kind of fascinating to observe him. Saori, reading over my shoulder because etiquette was something she only understood in the vaguest of terms, was laughing by the end.

“What the hell is his deal?” the kitsune asked. “Like, it’s kinda just…when even I’m saying someone’s erratic and weird, that’s impressive.”

“Agreed,” I said, and then typed out a quick response to him. Likely dvergar security; Audgrim likely made a mistake which created a vulnerability. Suspect they’re attempting theft tonight, uncertain what target. Meeting MC Sidhe now.

I wanted to put it off longer. But there was no way out but through, and I was out of reasonable causes to delay. I got out of the car, leaving most of the weapons behind; going into his house loaded down with iron seemed…impolite. And I really wasn’t worried about someone breaking into the car out here. I did carry two knives, though, mostly as a security blanket. I’d brought along a cheap plastic-fiberglass knife, and a much more expensive aluminum-alloy dagger with a titanium-carbide coating. Neither had any meaningful amount of iron in them at all.

It was funny, really, how much some things had stuck with me. It had been years since I was involved in this sort of thing on any but the most sporadic basis; the last time I remembered being in a fight of any kind was several years ago, when one of Derek’s barbecues turned into a very surreal brawl. Even back when I did get into fights routinely, they were usually pretty tame, rarely even involved weapons at all.

But I’d had a few things drilled into me pretty thoroughly by people who did have that more extensive experience and history. There had been a guy named Saito Ryosuke back in Tokyo who had been something of a mentor when I was younger. He was a better person than most of the people I was around back then (not that this was a terribly high bar), more in line with the traditional Yakuza attitudes about protecting his community. He also had some sort of military background that I’d never really heard much about. He’d had a lot to say about the importance of being prepared for things to go to hell, because if you waited until you knew things were going to get ugly, you wouldn’t have enough time to be ready to handle them. He was largely why I was so meticulous about keeping my little armory in working order.

At the time, I’d been pretty sure that Saito was vanilla human. In hindsight, I was a little less sure. I hadn’t had nearly the experience back then that I did now, and it was very possible I’d overlooked some nuance in his signature. If nothing else, he was definitely informed, because when I needed to leave and take some time to think about my life, he was the one who recommended the town of Ashland in rural New York as a good place to find some quiet, some tranquility. And he wasn’t wrong, but given that the town was pretty much entirely run by a werewolf, it was a hell of a coincidence if that were an accident. Jacob Snow had lived in Ashland for over two hundred years now, and even the humans knew who was in charge there. Jacob’s comments about knowing the enemy and their vulnerable points were why that armory included things like charged silver, or knives with no metal in them.

The feeling of nervous tension didn’t get any lighter as we walked up to the manor’s front door. Andrew had said this place was a fortress, and at first I didn’t see why. The walls were ordinary wood; there were expansive windows. But as I got closer, I could feel magic humming in the back of my throat, see rippling power laid over those walls. This place was warded, and heavily warded at that. As with the Blackbird’s wards, I wasn’t sure what they would do to someone who tried to break in; analyzing the actual function of magic wasn’t something I was very skilled at, only identifying what kinds of power had gone towards making it.

But I was pretty sure that if you triggered those protective spells, they were more than strong enough to respond with lethal force. I swallowed hard, and it was hard to convince myself to reach for the silver door knocker. There was no doorbell; I was quite sure that this house didn’t even have electricity. There was none at all out here, and the lack of that background hum of the storm in the wires was slightly uncomfortable to me.

I rapped on the door. Less than ten seconds later it opened, revealing what looked like a petite human girl wearing a black satin ribbon around her neck, a friendly smile, and not a whole lot else. I wasn’t sure whether she was actually human. I couldn’t feel her magic, not terribly surprising when it had the energy of the wards drowning it out.

Saori was leering, which the girl didn’t seem to care about. I swallowed again. “Um. Hi. We’re, uh, here to talk to the boss?”

Her smile widened slightly. She dipped her head in a polite nod, and while she said nothing, she stepped away to let us through the door. The wards didn’t try to stop us, though stepping across the threshold still felt intense, a sort of cold, prickling sensation across my entire body. Not unpleasant, but…intense. The girl closed the door behind us, and then started into the house. She still hadn’t said a word.

I was feeling more than a little freaked by this point. I followed her, but I was very much out of my depth. The house was very nice, though tastefully so, understated artistry rather than ostentatious display. I tried to focus on that rather than the fact that I was following a naked girl into the lair of a terrifying, inhuman creature.

“That tattoo is nice,” Saori said, not trying to keep her voice down. “Very tribal. Must have hurt like hell though, right on the tailbone like that.”

I really wasn’t sure what was worse, that everyone I knew was insane, or that I was pretty sure our silent escort put a little more sway into her step at that, as though to flaunt the ink that Saori was ogling.

She led us to a staircase, and then up to the third floor, all in silence. I didn’t look too hard at the house around us, outside our immediate vicinity. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see this place too clearly. The wards were strongest on the exterior walls, but the whole building hummed with power, and it wasn’t just the color of the wood or the dim lighting that made this place feel shadowy. Much like its master, the resonance of this place was…not evil, but dark, dangerous, and old.

On the third floor our guide opened a door without knocking, and gestured for us to go in. I tried not to shiver at the way she was smiling.

The room we had been shown to was surprisingly ordinary. It seemed like a small, simple study, with desk, chairs, and shelves all of a dark wood that I thought probably only looked like mahogany. There were books on the shelves, all of them old; I was guessing most of those books had never been produced with a printing press, let alone modern technology. The Sidhe lord from before was standing at the window, looking out at the trees. He was dressed a little less formally today, but then, that wasn’t saying much.

“Lady Kyoko of the Mountain of Cedars,” he said, turning to face us and bowing slightly. “An honor to meet you. I am called Cerdinen, of the Unseelie Court. Please, come in.”

Wow. I’d been called a lot of things, but that was a new one. Granted Sugiyama meant cedar mountain, but still, just…wow. I bowed in return, a little more deeply than he had, and stepped into the room, and sat in one of the chairs. It was more comfortable than it looked. “The honor is mine,” I said.

He looked past me to Saori; the bow was very slightly more shallow this time. “And Mistress Saori, of the Shadowed Flame. You, too, are welcome in my home.”

I didn’t know what the hell that title was supposed to mean, but it was obvious that Saori did; her nod was very tight, this time, and she seemed suddenly a great deal more tense as she took one of the other chairs. “You are too kind,” she said stiffly.

There was a lot of subtext in that interaction that I was sure I wasn’t following. I wasn’t even sure what the tone was; Saori seemed less than thrilled, but beyond that, I couldn’t read it at all.

When she then proceeded to say, “You have excellent taste in servants,” and smirk, on the other hand, it wasn’t hard to figure out the implications at all.

Cerdinen looked very much like he was only with difficulty restraining a smile. “You’ll have to forgive Miss Anemone; I’m afraid she’s a bit of a traditionalist.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining,” Saori said, with a wide, shameless grin. “I tend to think I should be greeted at the door by tattooed nudists more often.”

I had to work not to actually facepalm. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering how she wasn’t actually dead yet.

“I’ll be sure to pass along your compliment. So, Lady Kyoko, you have done me a significant service,” Cerdinen said, sitting down across the desk from us. The desk itself was empty and polished to a degree that suggested clinical OCD, or would in a human, at least. It might be totally normal for the Sidhe for all I knew. “I am glad to have the opportunity to thank you in person.”

I tried not to stare at him. Cerdinen had basically just outright admitted that he owed me, completely without prompting. That…was a pretty damn significant gesture from what I knew of the fae. They placed immense importance on debts, held them almost sacred. “I…am glad that I was able to be of assistance,” I said after a moment. “Though I don’t entirely know what I was assisting with. I’ve got a general idea, but I’m missing a lot of details, and a lot of the ones I do have are still just supposition.”

Cerdinen did smile now, just a little. “I suppose, then, that it is in all our best interests that you know a little more clearly. Are you familiar with Gram?”

“Um. I mean, as a unit of measurement, yes,” I said. “But as a proper noun, no, not that I recall.”

He nodded as though this did not surprise him. “It is not a famous blade in this era. Not Excalibur, or Tyrfingr; even Naegling might be more widely known among mortals. Gram is not so clearly remembered as those swords.”

“But it was a peer to them?” I guessed.

“Yes.” Cerdinen’s voice was quiet now, almost hushed. “In the sagas of Völsung, the bloody conflict between his family and the king Siggeir began when the All-Father came unannounced to the wedding of Siggeir and Völsung’s daughter Signý. He thrust a blade into the guardian tree of Völsung’s hall, saying that it was a gift for whoever could remove it. Only in Sigmund’s hand did it come free, and it was greed for the sword that drove Siggeir to war. When Sigmund eventually killed Siggeir, it was with Gram in his hand. The blade shattered with his death, but was reforged by the dvergr Regin, and it was with Gram that Sigmund’s son Sigurd killed the dragon Fáfnir.”

I was starting to get a bad feeling about this story. “Reforged by one of the dvergar,” I repeated slowly. “And now someone seems to be planning to steal from the dvergar here. Are they planning to steal this sword?”

Cerdinen was smiling again, just a tiny bit, though it didn’t look very happy. “Not exactly. But as is so often the case, mortal historians had…pieces of the truth that they were trying to make sense of, and the result may not be false, but it’s not a full understanding of events. Gram, itself, is not the object of this hunt. But much as Siggeir so deeply wanted that sword, there will always be mortals who hunger for weapons not meant for their hands.”

Saori was actually the one who caught on first. “Oh, shit,” the kitsune said. “There’s another one, isn’t there? Another guardian tree.”

Cerdinen smiled and said nothing. I was also silent, but I sure as hell wasn’t smiling. I was looking at a lord of the Midnight Court who smelled like leaves and growing things. I was thinking about a ritual diagram laid out around a tree spirit, one strong enough to bind a lesser dragon if it were aligned correctly. I was thinking about a sword strong enough to spark a war, one in the same weight class as freaking Excalibur.

“What,” I said, after a long, aching pause, “was stolen from your home, when these mages attacked? If I may ask.”

“You may,” he said, and now Cerdinen wasn’t smiling either, and there was a cold, frightening sort of anger under the surface of his voice. “They took a tool, a sickle, also not meant for such hands as theirs. Used properly, it guides the forest. It is the wildfire that prunes the weak and leaves the strong stronger. Twisted against its purpose, as seems more likely their intention, it is an instrument of coercion.”

I really hate it when I’m right about things.

“I see,” I said slowly. “And such an instrument might well be able to, for example, convince a guardian tree to release a weapon even when it really shouldn’t.”

“It is possible. Yes.”

I frowned, thinking. A tree powerful enough to turn a sword into something you write sagas about would have protections. I was guessing it would also be associated with a much scarier tree spirit than some random tree growing near my house. Had that ritual been, at least in part, a practice run to confirm that they could get it to work? It seemed likely. Probably not the only goal, but it sure didn’t seem like an accident.

“Okay,” I said at last. “So, uh. No offense, but this is seeming like it might be a little bit outside my weight class. Don’t suppose there’s any chance you could do something now that you know they’re trying to pull this stunt?”

Cerdinen’s expression didn’t change a bit, but that feeling of icy, distant anger sharpened. “No. I cannot directly act on the tree or in matters associated with it. Interfering with these things is forbidden to all who are of the Courts. The thieves will not be so foolish as to overstep in a way that would permit my action.”

I nodded, somewhat glum but not surprised. I got the impression that if Cerdinen were able to actually do anything to them, I’d have been hearing about their plans posthumously. And the Sidhe were rather infamous for being constrained by various oaths. He’d been able to obliterate one when he caught them breaking into his house, sure, but that wasn’t the same as going on the offensive.

“Well then,” I said. “Think that clears up a lot of the details I was missing. Again, glad I was able to…prevent some misunderstandings.”

“Yes,” Cerdinen said, very quietly. “You were.” His eyes were distant now, and there was a complex blend of emotions in them that I was not equipped to parse out, that perhaps only someone as old as he was could truly understand. “I will not forget that.”

Saori and I were quiet as we left. There seemed nothing else to say, and I did not want to risk losing the goodwill I’d earned with him by pushing for more when he was clearly not in the mood for further conversation. We did not see Anemone on the way out, nor anyone else, and the manor was cold, and dark, and silent. The door locked itself behind us.

---

Outside, we just sat in Saori’s car for a few minutes. I was feeling a little dazed, overwhelmed by just how far over my head I had gotten in just a few days.

“Well then,” I said eventually. “That explains some things.”

“Yeah, seriously. Ugh. This is so ridiculous.”

I sighed. “Kind of is, isn’t it? I get that it’s important, and I sure as hell don’t love the idea of giving some ultrapowerful sword to these assholes, but just. Ugh.”

Saori laughed. “Yeah. I have to admit, though, it’s kind of funny at the same time. All this over some, like, magic tree or something. Hard to believe it’s all to get at a freaking plant.”

I laughed too, but the sound was strained. There was something bugging me about that, about what she’d just said, something that felt wrong.

And then I realized what it was, and the laughter died away in a heartbeat. I was vaguely surprised at how steady my hands were as I grabbed my phone and dredged up the number I was looking for. Saori was looking at me curiously now, but she was quiet, perhaps recognizing the sudden urgency in my movements.

Maddie took a while to answer, and when she did she didn’t sound happy. “Kyoko? The hell are you calling me this early for?”

I didn’t point out that it was past noon, partly because it would be hypocritical and mostly to avoid pissing her off. “Hey, sorry, kind of important, had a question for you. Do you remember how you were asking me about using magic to grow plants a while ago?”

“Sure.”

“You said a friend had been asking you about it,” I said. “Do you happen to remember who that was?”

“Yeah. Some guy with the Tribe named Martin, hasn’t been in town long I don’t think. Why?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, feeling a cold, quiet sort of anger building somewhere deep inside of me. “Thanks, Maddie. This is really helpful.”

“Uh. Sure, no problem.” She hung up without saying goodbye, which was fine with me; I wasn’t in a mood for social niceties.

Jack answered much more quickly. “What’s up?” The druid sounded like he was in a hurry.

“I have bad news and good news,” I said. My tone was calm, almost cheerful; I could hear myself almost like the words were happening independently of me, like I was an observer in my own body. That kind of dissociation never presaged good things with me. “The bad news is that Audgrim was right about there being a leak. One of the Tribe is actually a traitor who has been helping to kill people, participating in torture and lycanthropic sacrifice, manipulating events to try and turn us against each other, and generally being kind of a dick. The good news is that I can tell you exactly who it is.”

I was grinning again. It was wide, and feral, and a little bit insane. Saori had started driving again by the time I finished explaining things to Jack, and it turned out she actually hadn’t been kidding about that carillon cover of Slipknot. I usually wasn’t a fan of their work, but I had to admit that listening to someone screaming “Wait and Bleed” over a cacophony of bells was the right mood for the moment, and I was singing along almost as enthusiastically and badly as Saori.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter