Sixty-One Nails: Courts of the Feyre (19 page)

    "I think one of them found her. While we were upstairs in the flat, two of the policemen went around to the back garden. She was hiding in the hedge. "
    "She must have wanted them to find her. They would never have seen her if she didn't want them to. "
    "I think she used the mould on him. That, what did you call it, darkspore?"

    "Darkspore spreads by touch. It will run over any surface until it reaches flesh."
    "And then what?"
    "It consumes wherever it touches."

    Her words were cold and quiet and I thought about how close I had come to reaching out and testing that black stain with my fingertip. I shivered involuntarily, remembering the sound of strange manic laughter drifting up though my window over the screams of the policeman. I thought about the other officers and the firemen that had been called to the flat.

    "There was a fire engine," I told her. "I think it was sent to my flat to deal with the darkspore. Will they be able to contain it?"

    "The darkspore will revert to mould once she withdraws her power," she said, "and she wouldn't have stayed long. The news would be too important to delay for the sake of a little fun."

    She had a strange idea of what constituted fun. I thought about my ruined door and my mould-stained walls. I wondered whether I would ever be able to return there now it was filled with the memories of spreading blackness and the sounds from the garden. "When the screaming started, that's when I ran. I kept running until I couldn't run anymore."

    "If she had really wanted you, she would have had you. Maybe she changed her mind about you once she saw the gallowfyre?" The question was more to herself than to me.

    "You said that before. What's gallowfyre? Is that what my glow is called?"
    "Will you show it to me?"
    "What, now?"

    "Call it forth, but stay down there where I can see you."

    I closed my eyes and concentrated on reaching inwards. The darkness answered and the room chilled suddenly, a fickle breeze shifted in the room, drawn up the stairs from below. I heard Blackbird's sharply indrawn breath. When I opened my eyes the room was dim with the speckled light shifting in milky waves on the wall in front of me. My hands were black against the wall.

    Blackbird's voice was soft behind me. "Dismiss it. Get rid of it, please." She sounded over-keen for me to stop when I had only just called it, but something in her tone told me it would be wise to indulge her. I released it and it died, the light in the room returning to normal. "Do you remember I told you that the creature pursuing you was one of the Untainted?"

    "Was that what came after me last night?"

    "The Seventh Court of the Feyre are the Untainted. They are the one court that has never mingled its bloodlines with humans. They regard all the other courts as being tainted by the stain of humanity, a refuge for mongrels and half-breeds like you, and like me. We are the reason for their exile from this world. "
    "We are?"

    "The Feyre were a dying race. They lost the ability to reproduce and their numbers were dwindling."
    "What happened to them?"
    "They were the victim of politics."
    "What?"

    "Politics led the Feyre into a selective breeding programme that spanned millennia, a side effect of which is that they have become infertile. Children among the Feyre are rare indeed. Their numbers plummeted until there were barely enough to survive extinction. Then they discovered that the union with humanity was fertile. It gave them new hope."

    "So that's how I came to have a Fey ancestor?"

    "In all likelihood, yes. The Seventh Court rebelled, though. They said that humanity would dilute Fey blood until all that remained were petty conjurers and snakeoil merchants. It caused a schism. In a desperate move, they tried to eliminate the half-breeds, all in one night. Fortunately the alarm was raised before they could complete their task. There was a bloody and brutal skirmish which the Untainted lost. They escaped to a world apart, exiled from their own kin. Now they return to complete the job they started, one mongrel at a time. "
    "What has this got to do with me?"

    "As darkspore is a gift of the shades, Rabbit, gallowfyre is a gift of the wraiths. Only male wraithkin can summon it."

    "I don't get it. If the only ones who can call gallowfyre are the wraithkin, and the wraithkin are the Untainted, then how did I inherit the ability to call it?"

    "You shouldn't be able to, but we've seen you do it. One of your ancestors must have been wraithkin. "
    "I thought you said they don't breed with humans? "
    "Until this day I would have said that with my hand over my heart."

    "I still don't see how it could be, though. I mean, they must have, mustn't they? One of the Untainted must have… you know?"

    "All I know, Rabbit, is you shouldn't be able to do
    that. You can rise now, if you wish."
    "You're not going to kill me?"

    "You summoned gallowfyre, Rabbit. When the Seventh Court rebelled, gallowfyre was used by the Untainted to drive a wedge into the armed ranks of the other courts. Those that didn't flee in terror had the life sucked out of them until their dried husks fell from the air. I took a grave risk letting you call it, but if you wanted to kill me, you could have done it then. You are who you say. Get up."

    She didn't sound very pleased about it, but I settled for being able to stand up. I leant against the wall and stumbled to my feet. Cold from kneeling on the hard floor had seeped into my joints and I tried to rub some warmth back into them.

    "The path I took you on yesterday was deliberately long," she continued. "After I left you at Leicester Square last night I retraced our steps and set wards along the path so I would know if you followed it again."

    I suddenly realised why we had taken such a circuitous route the day before.
    "You set me up."

    "I set the Untainted up. If it retained some of your knowledge then it was possible it would try to follow the route back to Kareesh, seeking to kill her. She is one of the oldest and the opportunity to eliminate her would be a hard temptation to resist. "
    "You used me as bait."

    "No one survives the Untainted, Rabbit, least of all someone as naive and inexperienced as you. I set the wards on the path to give myself time to be waiting for your body, should it return along the path. "
    "You were going to use me to lead it underground where you could kill it."

    "Not you. I hadn't expected you to survive the night. "
    "You might have given me the benefit of the doubt. "
    "I did. When I saw you speak with Megan it set me wondering if perhaps by some chance you might have survived."

    "You watched me talk to her? But if I had been taken by the Untainted then she was in terrible danger. "
    "Megan is small fry compared to Kareesh. I couldn't see the Untainted risking exposure just for her sake. "
    "And what about Fenlock? Did you set him up too? "
    "He was an unexpected complication. Once he had you, though, there was little I could do to intervene. I knew what would happen once he got you into the alley. "
    "He damn near killed me."

    "He confirmed what I'd already deduced. You used gallowfyre on Fenlock. He was so convinced you weren't a threat that he didn't understand what was happening until it was too late."

    "I didn't mean to. It just happened. I was trying to get his hand from around my throat and I started blacking out. When I opened my eyes my glow was everywhere. "
    "Panic reaction. Your instinct brought it on, but you would still need to have intended to use it. "
    "I was trying to push him away with magic. I tried to get him to forget me."

    "He was already using his magic on you, filling you with fear and panic."

    "When I couldn't get free, I let it loose. It was the only other thing I could do." The memory of my hands clawed into his wrists returned to me. I felt vaguely nauseous.

    "It's ironic really, he probably saved you. Your panic reaction sucked the life essence out of him, consuming the very thing that makes him exist. It's obscene." I was shocked by the cold tone in her voice. "He was trying to kill me."

    "Sure, and he would have, but your essence, your lifeblood and your magic would have spilled out, consuming your flesh and returning it to the earth,

    completing the cycle and at the same time, beginning it again."
    "You believe in reincarnation?"

    "Not in the sense of a soul reborn, but in the cycle of nature and magic, yes. All magic is given by the earth as life is given. It is eventually returned to the earth to become again. It is not a belief so much as an expression of the Feyre's existence. We live, we die and others will come after us, it is our nature. "
    "I was only defending myself."

    She continued as if I hadn't spoken. "But that way, nothing comes after. The cycle is broken. It's what was originally thought to be the cause of Fey infertility. The wraithkin were slowly consuming us, one by one, until there was nothing left to come back. They were preventing us from beginning the cycle again."

    "But you said it was selective breeding. Politics, you said."

    "I still believe that, but I am one of the Gifted, a halfbreed, and partly human. There are many of the Feyre who still believe the wraithkin are sucking us dry and that is the reason we cannot breed. They believe that by consuming life in its essence, the wraithkin are eating our future. "
    "Can't you explain it to them? Make them understand?"

    "You're asking me to overturn a hundred millennia of belief with five minutes of science." Her expression said this was unlikely to work.

    "So that leaves me as some kind of ghoulish parasite. "
    "It's not like that. The Feyre believe the world is in balance, that where there is true beauty there must be ugliness, where there is life, there must be death. The wraiths and the shades are our darkness, Rabbit, but they're not parasites, they're Fey."

    "Either way, it doesn't leave me in a very good position, does it? The Untainted are already hunting me and as soon as the rest of them realise what I am, they will be too."

    She laughed bitterly. "They're not going to hunt you. They will avoid you. The wraithkin are what the Feyre frighten their children with. And as for the Untainted, I have no idea what they'll do. As far as they are concerned, you can't exist. That must have been what saved you. She must have been as surprised as I was to find you could summon gallowfyre. I only wish I could have seen the expression on her face. "
    "Would you want to get that close?"

    She was silent. I looked up and for a fleeting second there was something cold behind those grey eyes. She turned away, walking towards the street window, looking down onto the traffic and concealing her expression. I worked my knees then gingerly walked forward towards the brightness of the windows, using the wall to steady me as my joints regained their mobility and joined her at the window, though not too close. At the windows I stopped. "Blackbird, that's it! "
    "What is?"

    "That building, the one with the roof covered in verdigris across the street, that's the building from the vision, the one Kareesh showed me."

    "Why would she show you a vision of Australia House?"

    I looked out at the distinctive green-stained roof of the building opposite.
    "I honestly have no idea."

Ten    

    The building across the road was the one from my vision. It was suddenly sharp and clear in my mind. No wonder I had thought I recognised it. I must have been past it hundreds of times.

    Blackbird stood at the window, looking across the street, but she wasn't focusing on the building. She was lost in thought. Whatever it was she was thinking about, it didn't lighten her mood.

    "Are the visions always like this, so fragmented and disjointed?"

    There was a pause while she returned to herself and then she spoke, looking out over the street rather than at me.

    "The way Kareesh once explained it to me, the future is a warren of paths and junctions. She has shown you the main junctions you might pass through from your present. Which path you take, though, and where you end up is for you to choose."

    I tried to imagine time as passages and tunnels crisscrossing into the future. It didn't help. I glanced at Blackbird, staring stiffly out of the window. "What's wrong?" I asked her.

    "It's nothing." She dismissed my question and continued to watch the traffic, but I could hear the lie in that statement.

    "Does finding out that my Fey ancestor was wraithkin make that much of a difference?"
    She didn't answer my question.
    "Look, I can't help who my ancestors were. If it makes
    you feel better, I just won't summon it again, OK?"
    My words fell into her silence.
    "If there's anything I can do…"
    "You can't."

    It was said in a flat quiet voice, without emotion or warmth. It wasn't a reprimand as much as a statement of cold fact. I turned and looked at the building again, unsure of what to say. I understood that there was a part of her that hurt, the part that showed in her eyes at odd times, like last night and now. I wanted to offer her simple comfort against that hurt but I knew if I faced her now, it would be raw in her eyes and she would turn away. "I'm sorry," I offered. "What for?"

    "I don't know, but if it makes any difference, I am."
    "You're sorry." She laughed without humour.
    "Yes."
    "It's not you that should be sorry."
    "Why?"
    "Because…" She stopped and then sighed. "Because I was going to kill you."
    "You didn't know it was really me."
    "I didn't know at first, but then I realised it was you and I was going to do it anyway."
    I took a deep breath. "Can I ask why?"
    "It's complicated."
    "I don't understand."

    "No, you don't. But a big part of me, a strong part of me, wanted to shove that knife in as far as it would go. I wanted to see your blood pool on the floor and watch you die." Her voice was brittle and she was more of a stranger to me in that moment than at any time since we had met.