Street Fair (16 page)

When the song ended, the band took another short break, with Nell talking to the audience and the band collecting some water, the drummer, Erin, and Cassia drinking, both violinists going directly to just pouring it over themselves as soon as the instruments were securely put aside.

Meanwhile, on the dais, another messenger arrived. This sprite, moth wings flapping frantically, careened towards General Inwar, almost crashing to a stop. Ashling and the sprite exchanged a glare, while Megan got a better look at the messenger, dressed in an odd hodgepodge of tiny furs and scraps of denim. She knew this one: Gilroy was one of Peadar's gang. Gilroy and Ashling had, for lack of a better term, bad blood. He perhaps meant to whisper the message, but in his state, Megan, and others nearby, couldn't help but overhear.

"There's a crack in the ice."

That was when the trouble started.

Chapter 22: The Crowd Goes Wild

The first reactions were from the others on the dais. The Queen's guards, both those already on watch, and those who'd come in flanking Inwar, moved immediately to guard positions. Riocard's men, more than Megan had realized had been hanging about, drew their weapons. Justin looked as if he might follow suit, but instead simply shifted position, hand on the hilt of the sword.

Word rippled rapidly down through the crowd, and the muttering grew to shouting—and shoving, and growling. Some people pressed towards the stage to make demands, but the guardsman were already in position to still any nascent rioting.

Megan looked to the stage, where Cassia appeared ready to play one-girl army if anyone from the agitated crowd tried to climb up.

“Good night, Everybody!” Nell announced as she quickly ushered the band off the stage with most of their equipment.

Even the queen looked startled, her dawn-colored eyes widening and her inhumanly delicate long fingers gripping the arms of her chair tightly as she looked towards Inwar.

Indeed, there were only two signs of absolute calm amidst the chaos. General Inwar was one of them, directing the guards, calling out commands in a voice that rang over the noise, rallying Sidhe knights and others to form up near the dais at his call for order. Once the first lines were formed, others under his command started to seed themselves throughout the room, to be in position for whatever might come.

The other was Riocard, who lounged in his chair, regarding the riot like it might be a planned part of the entertainment. He called for no one and directed nothing, only bothering to briefly make sure that his daughter stayed properly within the secured area for now.

Despite the chaos that had begun, those Unseelie nearest Riocard looked to him, initially unsure, and many calmed, making their way in the crowd. A few knotted together into gangs, while others sauntered towards the doors in an I-do-as-I-will fashion. Others among the Unseelie, of course, continued to push and shove, or make demands, as did a smaller, but still notable portion of the Seelie, ignoring calls for order. Being faeries, Megan noted, some few of the audience who had been mostly in order only started shoving and shouting when doing so specifically defied attempts to restore order as well, but, for the moment, that was a minority.

Gilroy looked oddly exhausted for a faerie, while also looking reasonably pleased with the ruckus, making Megan wonder just how accidental his stage whispering had been.

“Does this have something to do with Balor's officers and stuff?” Megan asked her father.

“Balor?” As she echoed the name questioningly, the Seelie Queen no longer looked merely startled. She attempted to look at Riocard with her usual intense expression, but her head tilted at a strange, nervous angle.

“Ah. Do excuse me, Majesty,” Riocard said sedately. “I must not have sent you the memo.”

“What does …
he
... have to do with a problem at the sealed lake?” Orlaith asked.

“I have no idea, or even if he does. There's just been some minor trouble about some of his hangers-on and souvenirs recently.”

Megan tried not be too blatant about her annoyance at hearing it called 'minor trouble.' She knew Lani was doing the same. Justin never seemed to struggle, his face professionally blank. She often wondered just how bad 14th-Century politics were, that he could get that good a poker face at his age.

Inwar was giving orders in a language Megan didn't understand, but his lieutenants clearly did, leaving one by one to relay the messages to their own troops. Inwar moved a hand to the Queen's shoulder, and her expression calmed somewhat as he continued to focus on sending his people out to handle things for him beyond the concert hall. As soon as he'd sent out everyone he dared risk while the concert hall was still on the verge of chaos, he leaned in, speaking quietly to the Queen, while she answered in the same hushed tones.

Finally, another messenger sprite flew over the not-quite-panicked crowd. This one reported to Riocard. “Some people to see you, Majesty. The dullahan and some others.”

The Unseelie King nodded and stood up on the dais, gesturing for Megan to do the same. He indicated the sprite could go back about his business, then turned to Ashling. "Can you go guide the dullahan and his crew to the little blue tent across the way? I think we'll meet them for tea.” Ashling nodded her understanding, then climbed on the crow's back. They took off to bear the information and directions, while Riocard simply stepped down the stairs of the dais. “Megan, Miss Kahale, Sir Justin, you're with me.”

The Seelie crowd control and partial evacuation was continuing. Riocard spared no glance for them. Some of the Unseelie were still agitating. They nevertheless stepped aside as Riocard walked calmly into the crowd, the way simply parting before him. Megan and Lani followed much less casually, hurrying to stay close. The girls looked back to see Justin following closely behind them, his hand still on the hilt of the sword. Behind him on the dais, Orlaith was staring, quite possibly at the back of Megan's father's head, as he didn't turn to look at all.

Riocard led Megan and her friends to the quiet little blue tent, which somehow seemed to contain an entire Japanese tea-house on the inside, wooden structures, carvings, and all, despite the humble appearance outside the flap of the tent.

As soon as they'd been seated, kneeling around a low table with tea, with the chaos sounding very far away, Megan finally confronted her father, now that she was certain they were away from the Queen and her entourage, and the other Unseelie hadn't arrived yet. "Aren't you going to, you know, do something?" She managed to avoid yelling, but only barely. Even when it wasn't his season, her father had to finally realize something was serious, right?

Riocard paused, glancing at his daughter with a smile. "I already have. Inwar and the Queen have order. Their people need commands. They need regimentation. They'll listen, as long as someone appears to take charge. I have monsters. They don't like orders. They don't like to feel constraints. They don't want to hear about what's necessary.”

“But it is necessary.”

“It's all about the phrasing, dearest.”

An odd-looking crew entered the house, including a few sprites that Megan didn't recognize, the figure with the rabbit ears, two leprechauns, three redcaps, a snaggle-toothed troll, and then the man in black with the removable head. The sprites took places atop the table. The others, after a brief pause, knelt at places around the table, some looking very much out of place in the quiet surroundings, and some looking uncomfortable doing so, but none argued with the choice of venue or Riocard's example of following the establishment's customs.

The headless man, dressed in colonial-style black clothing, complete with a cravat that met empty air at the neck—the dullahan, Megan supposed—took the most prominent position among the newcomers, directly across from Riocard

“So when the note got passed around yesterday,” a voice began, from under the man’s arm, where the head was tucked with a grin that would fit in with the redcaps. “We got to thinking about those officers.”

Then the dullahan whipped off his 'cape', folding over his arm what Megan now recognized as another shroud. Then he removed a bag from his waist, opening it, and removing a severed head from the bag—a head, Megan realized, with the same nearly skeletal thinness and empty eyes of the wights they'd fought, once they were rendered dead a second time.

“My grandad fought against one, used to take us on family picnics 'round this time of year to the tomb.”

“You'd have family picnics at the booby-trapped grave of someone who'd tried to kill him?” Megan asked, before covering her mouth, looking to her father to see if she'd spoken out of turn.

The dullahan shifted his own head into his hand enough to show her that his eyebrow was raised. “Yeah. How does your family do festive? Anyway, the wight was a bit holed up in the place—behind barricades, working on fixing his siege engines—but you know how my horse and I are about making our way past gates.”

The dullahan briefly juggled the two heads and the shroud with a performer's flourish. “So if there's some kind of wight scavenger hunt,” he said as the cloth and the wight’s head landed right in front of Riocard. “We're in.”

Megan couldn't help staring. “Whoa,” she said.

“Indeed,” her father's rich, dark voice concurred. “Two asymmetric spheres and a cloth are always harder to juggle than three objects of a kind. Well done, sir.”

When the Unseelie crew left, Riocard smiled at Megan again. “We don't want to hear about necessary. But if we hear we're being hedged out, or out-monstered, we certainly won't stand for it.”

Megan considered that, as her father re-wrapped the head, keeping it, before folding the shroud and offering it to Megan. "So, you just put word out, act like it's no big deal, and someone goes wight hunting. Nice,” she said. “So, what now?"

"Now, someone said the B-word around Orlaith. She'll have more questions for me, and as it's her season, I'll answer them. It would be best if you were in Seattle when that happened."

"Balor?" Megan tried.

"Orlaith remembers Balor every time she forgoes looking in the mirror."

Chapter 23: At Home

"Do you think they'll get the rest of the wights?" Megan asked as they drove away from Fremont.

"I doubt it,” Justin answered. He was staring out the window with the sheathed sword in his lap, not willing to stop being on watch yet. “They won't all spend time getting their siege weapons together. The last two are likely out of their tombs by now.”

“At this point,” Lani said, “I think they're the least of our worries."

Megan raised an eyebrow. “Because ancient undead officers aren't a big deal?"

"Not what I mean. Sure, they're bad, but they're just one part of something."

"Okay, so we need to find the Butterfly Collector. I mean, if Dad's people don't find him first. They'll probably bring his head in next, right?"

“Won't that be nice, eh?” Ashling interjected with a smile that Megan knew should be disturbing her more. That it didn't was enough to make Megan worry about herself.

Lani sighed. "I don't think so. I think Ashling seeing him in the market is about as close as the fae are going to get on their own."

"What makes you say that? I mean, they've done okay for themselves a lot longer than we've been around, right? They have to have dealt with stuff like this before. Cassia even talks about the undead rising and stuff."

"Yeah, she does. And they probably have. But the Butterfly Collector has help on the inside."

"Robin Goodfellow, you mean?"

"Yeah, think about it,” Lani said. “He's an expert in chaos, right?”

“Original Prankster,” Ashling said. “Except without the part where 'pranks' imply harmless.”

Lani nodded. “So the guy probably got some help and information. But that's not what's really bothering me."

"Let me guess, that would be your trigonometry homework for next year?"

Lani sighed. "Smartass. Okay, first, I already took trigonometry last year."

"Of course you did."

"I'm really looking forward to differential calculus."

"Of course you are."

"Second, and more importantly, it's not just that Robin Goodfellow is involved. Sure, that's bad. In fact, if a mortal has something that will get that kind of help, it's probably really big, but let's think smaller. If you have one of the world's most famous and apparently most powerful faeries on your side, and you have big plans to cause chaos, what do you do?"

"I hadn't really thought about it, why?"

"Because he has. He's thought this through, every step. If what he was doing was easy, the standard wouldn't have stayed there for so many centuries, and the wights would have gotten up before now. Yes, they've had undead incursions, but not these particular undead. It takes research and planning. I mean, how do you even get a hold of Robin Goodfellow, anyway? I've lived around this my whole life, and I certainly wouldn't know."

"Okay, so he's like you would be if you were a mad scientist or something."

"Mad engineer," Lani said.

"I'm sorry, what?"