Twelve Days of Faery (13 page)

Markon began to laugh. “And you simply told them the truth!”

“Yes,” said Althea, catching a little of his mirth. “Honestly, I was half-afraid I wouldn’t get away with it. It was a bit of a nasty moment.”

They sat without speaking for a few moments, Markon’s silence appreciative, Althea’s thoughtful. Then she said: “I may have an idea of how we can get out of here.”

              “They won’t come for us for a while yet,” said Althea. “They’ll unlock us tomorrow, but they’ll send us a meal first. They like their ceremony, and it’ll give them time to gather a crowd. The important thing is that they’ll only send one fae with breakfast– or two at the most.”

“That sounds reasonable,” said Markon, beginning to understand. “They’ll know I’m asleep, after all.”

“And
I
can’t use my magic in here,” said Althea. “That’ll put them off their guard enough to bring the meal right into the Hold. How are you at hand-to-hand fighting?”

“I make do,” said Markon, who was still an enthusiastic and well-practised part of the Montalieran Weaponless Unit. Something about the quality of his smile as he said it must have satisfied her, because she nodded decisively.

“You’ll have to be on the floor when they come in,” she said. “Somewhere near the door, I think. They won’t come in if they don’t think you’re under the influence of the spell.”

“Wouldn’t the iron from the cage stop the sleeping spell anyway?”

“No. If I’d put the dispelling bands on you after the fae put you to sleep it wouldn’t stop the spell, either: the iron only prevents any new magic from sparking. They’ll be convinced that you’re asleep. Use that advantage, because it won’t buy you much time once you get up.”

“What then?”

“Up the stairs and out of the dome,” said Althea. “They’ll have the keys to get out. We’ll only have half an hour, maybe less, and if they have to chase us they won’t try to capture us again. They’ll just kill us.”

Markon hadn’t expected anything else. He said, lightly: “That sounds fair. What now?”

“Now we wait until tomorrow.”

“I thought they didn’t have day and night here.”

“They don’t. Not exactly,” Althea said. “They decided by consensus how long a day ought to be and then made it law. It may be the only law that both Unseelie and Seelie abide by. Unseelie put out their lanterns for night and Seelie like to sleep under the sun in their disgustingly picturesque bowers anyway, but neither of them need more than four or five hours of sleep. When they say tomorrow, it means after their sleep cycle. We’ve got quite a few hours to wait yet. You should try to sleep.”

“Only if you do,” said Markon.

              He did intend to sleep. There were a few somewhat smelly but really very comfortable seal-skins in the iron cage, and it was surprisingly pleasant to stretch out below the glow-worms with his arm supporting Althea’s head. Much to his relief, she went off to sleep straight away, and though it didn’t quite take the tension from her face it did ease the crease in her forehead. Markon, settling himself to sleep, found that his mind was moving too fast and with too many thoughts to be able to relax.

Foremost of these thoughts, was the rapidly growing and excessively inconvenient one that it was impossible that Althea should marry Parrin. If it was only the dismaying, delightful fact that he’d fallen in love with her, he would have made more of an effort to fight the feeling, but it had occurred to him at some stage in the last few days that perhaps Althea wasn’t completely indifferent to him. For a moment or two it had even seemed as though she might– but what was the use of that? thought Markon wearily. There was the contract they’d signed. It seemed to hang before him when he closed his eyes, Althea’s neat, precise writing spelling out the terms of their agreement, their signatures side by side. He’d looked at it often enough. Althea, in recompense for having broken the curse, was to be wed to–

Markon’s eyes flicked open and he grinned joyously up at the glow-worms. There was no curse. There never had been a curse. It would be enough to break the contract, at any rate. And later there would be time to persuade Althea that marriage to him was, after all, more appealing than marriage to Parrin.

Markon closed his eyes and waited for the fae who would bring their meal, his lips curving in the darkness.

              There were two of them. Markon heard their footsteps on the stairs and quietly woke Althea, then took his position by the door. Althea stood straight and poised at the other side of the cage, her eyes glittering in the shadows, and Markon closed his eyes as the fae manipulated the door open once again.

He couldn’t see them, but he felt draft of the first fae as it stepped over him.

“You might as well both come in,” said Althea dryly. “I’m not likely to overpower you without my magic, now am I? Nor am I likely to eat all of this, so help yourselves.”

Another draft swept overhead. Markon’s eyes snapped open and he rolled silently to his feet behind the fae who had just entered, hoping with all his heart that fae had much the same physical weaknesses as humans.

He punched the first fae by his temple. The fae dropped to his knees with a surprised grunt that made the second fae turn, dropping the tray of food to draw his dagger. Markon kicked the first fae out of the way and stepped lightly forward to meet the second just as Althea smashed the tray over his head. If the tray had been heavier it might have worked: as it was, it merely seemed to anger the fae, who said through his teeth: “I’ll deal with you next, changeling human!”

Markon sidestepped a lightning fast sweep of the dagger and closed with the fae quickly, gripping his wrist and twisting it as he spun away again. The fae broke free with a punch to Markon’s stomach, but the dagger clattered to the rocky floor and was immediately pounced on by Althea. To Markon’s relief she didn’t try to interfere again: she stood by in perfectly composed silence as the fae faced up to him and said: “You’ll live to regret that, human. Not for long, but you will.”

“We don’t have much time,” said Markon, smiling grimly at him. “So if you wouldn’t mind fighting instead of talking, I’d appreciate it.”

He went in for the punch while he was still talking: a quick, twisting uppercut that would have landed beautifully if the fae hadn’t also twisted at the last moment. It knocked him sideways despite that, and Markon closed again swiftly, following it with two quick punches to the fae’s stomach. He didn’t duck quite quickly enough, and took a hit to the temple that made his ears ring and his knees buckle slightly. The fae, sensing weakness, took two swift steps forward and was met by a double-fisted uppercut from Markon. This time it connected with a force that snapped the fae’s head back and sent him straight to the ground with a sickening crack of head meeting rock.

“It’s a good thing I hit him on the head first,” said Althea into the silence. Her eyes were the lightest Markon had seen them since entering the waterfae’s dome.

Markon burst out laughing and grabbed her hand. “I can’t thank you enough! I couldn’t have managed without you! Shall we leave?”

“As quickly as possible,” said Althea, and threw the fae dagger down beside its owner.

              They took the Hold keys and left the fae locked together in the cage. Markon was reasonably certain that at least the bigger fae was dead, but he didn’t want to take any chances; and as Althea said, any time bought for them while the fae unlocked the door to the cage was time gained.

At the top of the rocky stairs they had to wait while a laughing, merry group of fae swept down the street, their eyes bright.

“They’re going to the execution,” said Althea in Markon’s ear. “They’re already pretty high and happy, so it won’t be long before the other guards come after us. The Queen likes to make sure the crowd’s at fever pitch before she starts an execution.”

“How civilised,” said Markon, and cautiously cracked the door open again. Althea slipped through first and he followed close behind, trusting to her sense of direction when it came to the dome. Behind them the noisy group of fae danced its way up the streets and merged with another, larger group that was also sweeping through the houses.

“This way,” said Althea, and hurried down a narrow walkway that opened into the next street. When they stepped into the street he thought it was familiar, but it wasn’t until Markon followed the direction of Althea’s eyes that he recognised where they were.

They had come back to the house in which they’d met the Queen.

“Wait here,” said Althea. She was pale but determined. “There’s something I have to get first.”

“Althea–”

“I know,” she said, and ran for the great double-doors.

Markon followed her at a carefully casual walk, his eyes darting up and down the street, but it was empty. Even the faint sound of the distant mob of fae ceased when he stepped into the foyer and hurried up the stairs after Althea. She met him at the top of the stairs in a flutter of white cotton, something small and metallic clasped in her left hand, and dragged him back down the stairs.

“Back the way we came!” she gasped, leaping the last few steps to the first floor.

They tumbled out onto the street at a run, Althea leading the way, and when it blurred around them Markon was for once not at all uneasy about travelling under speed of magic. He’d heard the ominous babble of fae voices rising again, and even as they moved along the streets at impossible speed, the back of his neck crawled with the awareness of the fae weaponry behind them. Then there were shouts and the drumming of feet, and he was too busy running to have any attention to spare for the shivery feeling that tried to tell him he was about to die very quickly.

              They hit the edge of the dome before Markon was ready for it, plunging into the icy, pressing embrace of the sea while he was still gasping for breath. Salt water flooded his nose, but Althea was already forcing air into his mouth just as the fae had done earlier, albeit more pleasantly and with less of a fishy aftertaste. While he was still coughing on the seawater that had seeped in through his nose, she gripped him under the arms and bore him upward through the tugging current in a swift and disorienting spiral. Markon wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or if there really was a spreading cloud of waterfae polluting the water below them, just too far out of sight to be discernible as such.

He was sick with relief when he saw the ripple of light playing across the surface above them, and when they burst from the surf and into blessed, dizzyingly light freedom he hauled Althea from the waves without taking a moment to enjoy the delight of it. She was shivering in the warm air but Markon didn’t mention it because he had discovered that he was shaking too, and that it had nothing to do with the temperature.

Althea’s dress was still on the sand, a puddled mass of blue brocade that scattered sand and several tiny crabs when she picked it up and shook it out. Markon expected her to pull it back on but she hung it over her arm instead and said through her shivers: “We’d better get back through the Door before they find us again.”

“You can’t walk around the castle in your shift,” he protested, ridiculously shocked.

“Rather that than be caught again,” said Althea, with perfect good sense, and led the way back into the human world. She struggled rather damply into her dress again once they were back in the castle. Fortunately, despite what a dismayed Markon realised to be the noon sunlight outside, the hallway wasn’t busy in the slightest, and she was able to do so unmolested.

Watching her pull her laces tight one-handed, Markon said: “That’d be easier if you passed me the shard.”

Althea laughed and tossed it to him: blunt, broken and not particularly shiny. She wasn’t shaking now that she was back in the human world, and Markon was glad to find that he wasn’t, either.

“Is it part of the same sword as the other piece? And how did you know it was there?”

“I saw it when we were dragged in front of the Queen,” said Althea. “Even if I hadn’t seen it, I would have
felt
it. I’d rather give both shards to Carmine than let something like that stay with her.”

“Your next puzzle,” Markon said lightly; and when Althea was finished dressing he gave it back to her.

              His guards, excellent fellows that they were, didn’t so much as turn their heads when Markon strolled past them, trailing sand and dripping seawater, and vanished into his suite. Parrin must have given orders, however: Markon was in the process of stripping his wet clothes and towelling himself dry when his son entered his suite at a decidedly quick walk.

“I told Sal you’d be back before nightfall,” he said. Despite the lightness of his voice there was a touch of relief to his smile.

Markon left his changing to hug Parrin briefly and roughly. “I couldn’t leave word. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. Sal told me you were with Althea, so I knew you’d come back safely. I hope you don’t mind: I told everyone that you were sick and took all your audiences today.”

“Good lad!” said Markon, smiling at him. Parrin had been trained to run the court by himself, but he’d never been thrown into it without notice before.

Parrin flushed slightly and tried not to look too pleased. “You’ve got bruises on your stomach,” he said. “And one next to your eye. What were you up to?”