After the War: A Novella of the Golden City (13 page)

“Is it in there?” Alejandro managed. “The portal?”

“Yes,” Gaspar said. “I can feel it now. I don’t know why this Phillips isn’t making demands, though. He has the upper hand.”

Alejandro didn’t need to be reminded of that. Joaquim and Miguel had finally reached them. Markovich wore a worried look on his pale face. Roberto folded his arms over his chest, grim.

“Watch every word you say,” Gaspar told them all. “Fairies are notoriously strict followers of their word, but they can also twist it around and use it against you.”

“I remember,” Joaquim said, mouth in a firm line.

“Unless this Phillips is a servant of the fairy who opened the portal, the fairy will treat him with the same fickleness it would use on us. Keep that in mind. They have their own loyalties and sometimes those loyalties don’t make sense to humans. So be cautious.”

Alejandro nodded. “Let’s go.”

Gaspar led the way. No matter how much Alejandro wanted to be in there first, he grasped the logic of letting Gaspar go ahead. If Phillips unleashed something, it wouldn’t affect Gaspar. Alejandro limped along behind him, suddenly aware that his left leg had been hit by a hoof as well. Likely just a bruise, but it hurt fiercely. Roberto came and wrapped an arm around Alejandro’s shoulders, steadying him as they walked into the stable.

Alejandro’s skin crawled. At the far end of the stable in the middle of the aisle, he could see what had frightened the horses. A large hole glowed in the air, showing sunlight amidst of ring of strangely shifting flame. On the other side, a wheat field trembled in a summer breeze. Alejandro could feel, even twenty feet away, that it was
unnatural.
His teeth ached just looking at it. That was why the horses had scattered.

Serafina stood before it, facing a man Alejandro didn’t recognize.

He could only see the man in profile, but nothing about him seemed special, nothing striking. The man was of average height and unremarkable coloring. His clothes looked like a countryman’s garb. He held one hand outstretched. If he stepped one foot closer, it would be locked about Serafina’s throat. Alejandro swallowed, his breath held.

She was singing. Very softly, so quietly that he couldn’t hear the words. But they weren’t meant for him anyway. She was using her
call
to hold Phillips in check.

How many hours has she held him there?

Alejandro swallowed again. For a sereia to use her powers continuously was exhausting. It required mental focus, and the sereia had to mine her own feelings to evoke a response in her target. Phillips, with his purported fairy blood, might be even more difficult to enspell than a human, yet he didn’t even seem aware that they’d entered the stable.

This was what Joaquim meant when he’d said Serafina had to save herself.

She continued to sing, her lips moving and her gills flaring. If Phillips got a hand around her neck, he could stop her
call
by crushing her gills. She would never fully recover from that. Her voice would be ruined.

Alejandro’s stomach felt like lead. “Don’t distract her,” he whispered.

No one moved.

“That isn’t a fairy,” Gaspar said softly. “He’s not a witch of any kind.”

“What do you mean, Uncle?”

Gaspar took a deep breath, his eyes narrowed. “There’s a small vial on a chain around his neck. Do you see it? That’s a fairy trap. He’s using that to create the portal. We break the vial, the fairy will escape and the portal will close. If the fairy
wants
to escape. May not want to. It may be there voluntarily. Rafael?”

Rafael closed his eyes. “The vial will be broken,” he said, “but the fairy can’t aid us.”

“Why not?” Roberto hissed.

“She will be too weak,” Miguel answered, eyes turning to meet Roberto’s. “In the story, that’s why you bought the bread, Roberto. To feed the fairy so she’ll survive.”

Roberto mouth set in a grim line. “I understand.”

Miguel’s shoulders slumped a bit, as if that pronouncement had defeated him somehow. “Alejandro, it has to be him, not you. Fairies respond best to offerings from humans.”

And I’m not entirely human
. Alejandro gazed down at the trampled bag in his hand and handed it over to Roberto. “We have to do something. Soon.”

“We plan,” Gaspar said. “Serafina’s buying us time, so let’s use that time wisely.”



By the time Gaspar had a plan, Alejandro was ready to scream with frustration. It seemed like hours had passed. Every time he glanced that direction, Phillips’ hand was closer to Serafina’s neck. And he was next to useless in Gaspar’s plan. He wanted to break Phillips’ hands or punch the man’s face. Instead he was supposed to wait to one side while Gaspar and Markovich did all the work. Even Roberto had more of a part in the plan than he did.

Gaspar walked toward the open portal. Alejandro followed, Roberto on one side, Rafael beyond him. Joaquim and Miguel were left behind to guard the stable doors, in case something went wrong . . . or in case one of Phillips’ henchmen should turn up. Markovich was there as the last line of defense.

Phillips’ hand was only an inch from Serafina’s throat.

As they got closer, Serafina’s song made it hard to move. Hard to do anything. But Gaspar
—
immune to her
call
—
walked right up to the frozen duo and shoved Phillips away from Serafina.

Serafina’s song stopped, and she stumbled backward. Alejandro managed to get his arms around her before she fainted, even though taking her weight made his ribs scream in pain. He broke out in a cold sweat.

Gaspar’s weight carried Phillips to the straw-coated floor of the stable. Roberto jumped on the man as well, using his knife to saw at the leather strip around the man’s neck. Panicked, Phillips grabbed at him, but Roberto cut the vial free, rolled away, and rose.

Rafael planted his foot atop Phillips’ chest and then leaned over him. “Don’t move.”

Alejandro ended up sitting on the floor, cradling Serafina and wishing fervently that they were farther from the portal. His skin crawled with the wrongness of it. And it continued to blaze unnatural light into the stable, as if it was noon on the other side.

“Don’t be a fool!” Phillips protested.

Rafael leaned, putting more of his weight on the Irishman’s chest. “Don’t talk, either.”

Roberto peered at the vial in his hand, some decision warring in his mind.

Miguel had abandoned his spot by the doors, and now stood near Roberto. “Open it, Roberto.”

Roberto carefully pried out the metal stopper and reverently laid the vial on the stable floor. A pale light flowed over the ground, moving toward where Alejandro and Serafina sat.

Alejandro began dragging Serafina away. She woke and struggled for a second, and then she was halfway dragging
him
. “What is that?” she asked in a rasping voice.

Once they were a dozen feet away, Alejandro turned back to see Roberto tearing off bits of bread, saying something over them
—
a blessing, he thought
—
and dropping them into the cloud where they faded from sight. Slowly, the cloud spread, becoming larger and more opaque until it took the form of a young woman in tattered garb, bedraggled and scarred. She covered her face with thin fingers and keened softly.

Alejandro had always thought fairies were supposed to be beautiful. What had scarred her? And why did this strike some chord of memory in him? Had he read a story
—
written a story
—
like this before?

“Can she close that portal?” Gaspar asked, a note of concern in his usually calm voice. “Before it eats us?”

Alejandro realized that the portal had grown larger, as if freeing her from that vial had removed all constraints on it. What would happen if it continued to grow?

Roberto knelt down, trying to see her face. He ignored the portal. “I don’t think she can.”

“Machado, that girl isn’t human,” Gaspar said, not taking his eyes from Phillips. “Be careful.”

Roberto touched the girl’s hands, gently pulled them away from her face. Her skin was crossed over and over with scars. “Can you help us?” Roberto asked. “We need to close the portal, but none of us can do that. Only you can.”

She shuddered, and reality shuddered with her. “I don’t have the strength,” she whispered. “Not after so long in that iron prison.”

Now that Alejandro looked, he could see that the glass vial encased a tracery of metal wires. Fairies hated iron, so that must have been torture.

“What would it take, lady?” Roberto asked her, the flickering edge of the portal almost lapping at his heels now.

“A sacrifice,” she whispered, eyes lifting to meet his.

“Then take me.”

“Machado, no!” Gaspar jumped toward Roberto, but not fast enough to forestall his offer.

Serafina grabbed at Alejandro’s hand, her face alarmed. “What. . . ?”

The portal closed, dropping the stable into darkness. There were no lanterns still lit, and the twilight was too deep now to provide much light. But Roberto and the girl were gone.

“What just happened?” Alejandro asked in the sudden silence.

“That pork-and-beans stole my frigging fairy,” Phillips snarled. He grabbed at Rafael’s foot and shoved hard. Off balance, Rafael fell to the floor with an
oof.
Phillips rolled to his feet, shoved Miguel out of his way, and ran, heading for the stable door and the twilight outside.

Markovich blocked the doorway. “I don’t think so, Irish.”

Phillips stopped halfway, breathing hard. “Where are my diamonds, you damned Tan?”

Alejandro disentangled himself from Serafina’s arms and rose stiffly to his feet. “He doesn’t have them.”

In the dim light of the stable, Phillips turned to Alejandro. “And you do?”

“No.” Alejandro set one hand to his aching ribs. “I gave them to a girl in Armentières.”

Phillips’ hands balled into fists. He stepped closer. “You did what?”

“I gave them to a girl,” Alejandro repeated. “In Armentières.”

Phillips’ lip curled in a sneer. “You never intended to split them with us, did you?”

“No,” Alejandro said. “I never did. I’m not a thief.”

Phillips took a step toward Alejandro. “But you were willing to give them to some whore?”

“Whore?” Alejandro repeated with a short laugh. “No. I gave them to the mail girl. She posted them to the Holy Sisters in Poperinge, for the orphanage that was bombed there.”

“You what?” Phillips lunged toward Alejandro.

While Alejandro was talking, Markovich had come up behind Phillips and now grasped the back of the man’s jacket in one first. He held out the other hand as if to strike Phillips.

This was
not
the plan.

“Stop!” Rafael yelled. “We need to arrest him, English. Not turn him inside out.”

Phillips eyes went hostile, teeth exposed in a snarl. He tried to tug away from Markovich. “You won’t get me inside an English prison.”

“No we won’t.” Miguel still sat on his rump where Phillips had knocked him down. “But you
will
face justice. The punishment you deserve.”

Alejandro shot a confused glance at Miguel.

“Wait,” Miguel said, gesturing for him to remain still.

Blinding light spread across the stable, the portal opening once more. Phillips stumbled backward into Markovich, who roughly shoved him toward the portal.

In a blaze of white, a man waited on the other side. The man had a streak of gray in his dark hair, starting where a scar crossed his face. Alejandro gasped.

Time must pass differently in the fairy realm. He was looking at Roberto Machado . . . only years older. It still seemed to be full day there, but Roberto stood in a forest now, pines and larches growing tall behind him. And at a distance, a woman waited. Wind tugged at her gown and hair, but she still covered her face with her hands.

“She wants him,” Roberto said, lifting his chin. “Bring him to me.”

Alejandro wasn’t sure to whom Roberto was speaking, but Markovich took advantage of everyone’s shock to shove Phillips that direction again. Phillips turned and hissed at him, raising one hand.

“Without your fairy, you’re nothing more than a petty thief,” Markovich said. “I’m not scared of you.”

Phillips lunged at the Englishman, mouth twisted in fear. Markovich stepped neatly out of the man’s way, one hand touching Phillip’s back as he passed. Phillips stopped midlunge, as if held in place by unseen ropes. “What have you done?” he screamed.

Markovich stepped back. “I cursed you. Whatever did you expect, you toe rag?”

Phillips’ dark eyes were wide as he hung there. “What?”

“You will face the thing you fear the most,” Markovich said in a nasty voice. “Apparently fairies are real, and now I know that’s true, I have to wonder if they’re as vengeful as people say. Always some truth in myth, I’ve heard.”

The unseen ropes tugged on Phillips’ frozen form, drawing him closer to the portal. “No!”

Markovich stepped up and pushed the Irishman hard. Phillips spun back toward the portal, control lost. He spun as if caught in a whirlwind, and grew smaller and smaller until he flew through the portal. On the other side, Roberto held up one hand, a vial in it, and as they watched, Phillips was sucked inside, silenced.