Unbinding (40 page)

“Dead. The body vanished.”

She looked at Nathan.

“No,” he said. “Not me. He killed himself when his god died. He didn’t want to face the Queen’s justice.”

“No,” she said, “that was grief.” Malek had been a small, slimy man, and when he’d found something larger than himself to serve, he’d chosen badly. But his devotion had been real.

Not so for the others gathered around them. Some of those who’d been kept by the god were weeping. Some looked dazed as they woke from the beguilement that had vanished with the god . . . who was not here to hold things together.

Or to send any of them back.

Kai wanted to weep, too, from sheer frustration. To have come so close, done so much . . .

“Wait,” Benedict whispered. He cocked his head. Some emotion broke over his face, deep and painful, cracking the grimness, revealing the man inside the warrior. Hope. “Do you hear that?”

A moment later, she did.

Drumming. Coming from—“Thataway,” she said, drunk with exhaustion and a burgeoning joy. She’d survived. As had Nathan and Dell and all who’d made it to this last, terrible day. They’d all survived, and someone—or Someone, or more than one?—had come to help them get home. She couldn’t see Them, but as she listened to the drums, the breath of those Presences stirred her hair and her soul.

Kai lifted one limp arm, pointing in the direction of the drums. Down. The drums were beneath the cracking not-ground. Many drums, she realized, beating in unison. Many, many drums. “We go that way. Down, toward the drums.”

“What drums?” Nathan asked.

He couldn’t hear them? Well, he wasn’t Diné. She grinned like an idiot. “The drums of thousands of the People. Grandfather’s drums.”

N
O
two people reported exactly the same experience of that strange return. They all saw the not-ground lose its glow. As it did, one of the cracks widened, becoming a wide hole spilling light into the dark, crumbling godhead.

Kai had gone down a steep slope where tough grass mingled with rock. Cullen and three others had seen slopes, too, but their descriptions didn’t match hers. Nathan had seen only light, but that light formed itself into a ramp leading down. He remembered carrying Kai down that long ramp, while Kai remembered him carrying her down that short, rocky slope. One of the women swore she’d ridden down an escalator. Stairs were the most popular version. A couple people reported walking endlessly through mist or fog, and Dell had the simplest descent. She’d leaped down the hole and landed directly in the Ordinary World.

Benedict wouldn’t say what he’d experienced. When asked, he only smiled and shook his head, though something in his eyes made Kai wonder if he’d actually seen the Presences she’d only sensed.

She didn’t ask. Such experiences were too personal.

They’d all descended in whatever manner to emerge on a real slope, that of Little Sister. At the base of that small, unprepossessing mountain, gathered around it in the thousands—sixteen thousand and ninety-five, she later learned—were those of the People who’d answered Joseph Tallman’s summons. They’d been drumming for eighteen hours straight.

It had taken several days for all of those thousands to arrive at Clanhome. They’d had time, though. On Earth, ten days had passed since Eharin opened a hole in one grassy wall of the hobbit house so she could bludgeon Kai with a cosh she’d purchased online.

Three days after Eharin knocked Kai out, Karin Stockman had taken down the ward at the hobbit house. She’d had to call in a Midwestern coven to help. Turned out the ward had been a keepaway, just as Kai suspected. Once it was gone, Ackleford and his crew had found bodies—Eharin’s, and those of his four witnesses. They’d also found all sorts of evidence cops love, like that cosh.

Cullen hadn’t come up with a way to destroy the chaos motes. He had, however, come up with an alternative. At the last minute, as they were leaving the godhead, he’d stuffed his pockets with handfuls of the sandy ground. The motes were strongly attracted to the godhead-stuff, and he was using that attraction to gather them. Kai and Nathan would ask the Queen to send an adept to retrieve the motes. Nathan agreed with Cullen: a number of adepts would be eager to get their hands on such concentrated power, however hazardous. The problem would be deciding who could be trusted with it.

All of those who’d returned with Kai had lived. Most were physically recovered. The two who’d been the most ill from magic sickness—Penny from the beach and a young man named Frank, whom Dyffaya had called Liu—were still pretty weak, but they would get back to full strength eventually. Emotionally, none of those he’d beguiled were back to full strength. Kai had treated some of them. Others had refused her help. They didn’t want anyone messing with their minds ever again. She understood that.

“It’s weird how little it’s changed, isn’t it?” Arjenie said.

Kai looked around. The vines covering the walls of Fagioli’s patio had lost their blooms, but they were making new buds. Otherwise the place looked just as it had when all this started. In Earth time, that was less than four weeks ago. She’d spent the first week of her return with her grandfather. The second week, she and Nathan came back to San Diego so she could help those who wanted it. “It is. They still serve the best mocha coffee in the universe, too.”

Arjenie grinned. “Spreading that net pretty wide, aren’t you? I heard you arguing about mochas with Rule last night.”

“I’m pretty sure I won that one.” Mostly because Rule Turner didn’t sully his coffee with chocolate, but still. She’d won.

Rule Turner and Lily Yu had long since returned, and last night the lupi had thrown a party. A big party, intended to combine “welcome home” with “yay, we won!” and a send-off bash for her and Nathan. There’d been music, dancing, and food. Lots and lots of food.

José had been there. He’d danced with her. Doug had attended the party, too, but it would be a while before he danced again. And Ackleford had been invited. To Kai’s surprise, he’d come—and he’d brought Karin Stockman. At one point Kai had been mostly alone with the special agent. Surrounded by people, yes, but none of them had been talking to her at the moment. She’d taken advantage of it. “You like Karin,” she’d said.

He’d scowled. “Won’t anything come of it. She’s based on the other side of the goddamn country.”

“Yes, but you like her. A lot.”

He’d shrugged. “She’s smart, she’s mean, and she’s solid. What’s not to like?”

Kai had laughed at Ackleford’s romantic criteria and assured him that Karin liked him, too.

“So.” Arjenie set her mocha drink down and leaned forward. “We’ve talked about Ackleford’s possible love life, and mine—which is entirely satisfactory—and all sorts of other things, but we haven’t talked about your decision. You said you were pretty sure what you were going to do, but you didn’t want to tell me until you were a hundred percent. How about it? Have you made up your mind?”

Kai smiled. “I’m going to get my eyes fixed.”

“At the surgical center?”

“Nope. I’m going for the surgery-free option.”

Arjenie’s eyebrows went up. “You’re going to take service with the Queen of Winter. Wow. That’s good. I think that’s good.” She frowned. “I’m not sure. But you are?”

She nodded. “Nathan was right. I couldn’t make up my mind before because I didn’t know what I wanted. But that wasn’t all there was to it. There were two things I had to learn, and I couldn’t make up my mind until I did.”

“You okay telling me what those things were?”

“I’ve been wanting to. The first thing . . . until all this happened, I kept seeing myself as lesser. Less than the elves, and worse, less than Nathan. He was the power. I was just this nice girl with an unusual Gift that he’d fallen for. He didn’t see me that way, but I did.”

“You don’t now?”

Kai shook her head slowly. “I hadn’t realized how much my attitude about elves was really about me, not them. I wanted them to be more human, which is silly, but I was afraid I’d lose myself in their—their magnificence. I hadn’t realized how much Eharin had poisoned my attitude, either. Oh, everything I disliked in her is common in other elves, too, but those things were so exaggerated in her, almost cartoonish. It’s like Europeans saying they don’t like Americans because we’re so loud and brash. Sure, some Americans are loud, and culturally we’re more about the brash than the meek. But plenty of Americans are neither of those things. Reducing an entire people to a stereotype is always dumb.”

Arjenie grinned. “You like elves now?”

Kai chuckled. “Some of them, no. But others . . . I liked some of them all along. I just insisted they were the exceptions.” She was silent a moment, thinking of what she’d learned in that final, intensely private time with one who had been a god. Most of it she couldn’t speak of, but how it had affected her—that was okay to talk about. “Elves are so beautiful and powerful and graceful that all I could see was how much better than us they were. But they aren’t. Better at some things, yes, but . . . Arjenie, I think many of them are lonely.”

Arjenie’s eyebrows shot up again. “Poor, lonely superstars?”

Kai laughed. “Something like that. They’re so good at all the surface things that I thought that was all they valued. I was wrong.” She thought of a trapped, desperately lonely mind . . . but he’d been lonely before he became trapped. That’s part of what went so badly wrong. Being visible to lots and lots of people is not the same as connecting with others, but the man who became a god hadn’t known any other way. And in that, he was typical of his people. “Then there’s those status games they play. I was pretty contemptuous about that, but now I suspect that’s how they connect with others. Through their games. They need connections as much as we do, but I don’t think most of them know how to make a friend over a cup of coffee. And that’s kind of sad, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.” Arjenie fell silent, contemplating an inability Kai suspected she didn’t really understand. Kai hadn’t, either. “What was the other thing? You said there were two things you’d learned.”

“Oh, that. Well. The thing is, I’ve become a power.” It sounded silly. Pretentious. And yet . . . “That’s very sidhe of me, putting it that way, but the point is that I
have
power. Lots of it, especially now that Dell’s taken a pair of mates. Before, I was hiding from that, scared of the responsibility that goes with it. I wanted to go on being lesser so I didn’t have to face up to that responsibility—which means, among other things, that I’d damned well better get the best training I possibly can. To do anything else is irresponsible.”

“And you can get that if you take service with the Queen. I understand. But you have to vow to her for life, right?”

“Yes. But I feel okay about that, because I know what I want. That might change, so I’m going to ask that some of the clauses be open for renegotiation after some fixed time. Maybe ten years. Otherwise, I’ll negotiate the best deal I can—”

“You will, not Nathan?”

“I’ll certainly want Nathan’s advice. He’s the expert at negotiating with one of the sidhe. But it’s my life. I have to handle that particular deal myself.”

Arjenie grinned and lifted her nearly empty plastic glass. “That calls for a toast. To negotiating our own deals!”

Kai grinned back, tapped her plastic glass against Arjenie’s, and drank the last of a truly delicious mocha.

“You want to tell me what kind of clauses you’re talking about?”

“Splitting my time between Earth and Faerie, for one. I’ve realized that I enjoy wandering, but I need a home base, too.” She wanted more time with Grandfather. She wanted to get her things out of storage, and have a place to put them. “Nathan’s okay with that. He likes a lot of things about Earth.”

Arjenie perked up. “Here? I mean, not just here on Earth, but maybe you could make your home base in San Diego, or nearby?”

Kai smiled slowly. “Nathan really likes hanging out with lupi, and San Diego isn’t that far from Grandfather.”

Arjenie shrieked and did the happy dance sitting down.

Kai laughed, and of course had to hug her friend, and then they talked about possibilities. Kai had figured out a lot, but she didn’t yet know what she wanted for a home. A house in the mountains, or one in the desert? Something near Clanhome, or halfway between it and Grandfather’s beloved mountain? Maybe even a place on the beach . . . when Arjenie pointed out how much even a tiny beachfront condo would cost, Kai admitted sheepishly that price wasn’t much of an issue. The Queen had supplied them with gems to finance their stay here. Rather a lot of them, including three of a type that weren’t found on Earth.
Tétel an bo,
the sidhe called those stones, meaning eye-of-the-sky. They were lovely, rather like a star sapphire but a brilliant turquoise color. It turned out that collectors really, really wanted one of the new gems. A single one would pay for almost any house, even in high-priced San Diego; two would buy a mansion.

But Kai was sure of that much: she did not want a mansion. Something small and homey, with a comfortable guest room in case Grandfather agreed to leave his mountain for a short visit. And who knew? They might have a guest from Faerie from time to time, too. Something outside the city, too, because Dell didn’t do well in cities. Neither did Dell’s mates.

When Nathan appeared in the wide doorway to the patio, she realized guiltily that she’d lost track of time. She was supposed to have been out front thirty minutes ago so he could pick her up. He paused, looked around—and a smile broke over his face when he saw her. One of
those
smiles, the ones he invented on the spot to say that he’d found her again.

There was a flurry of hugs and goodbyes, promises between Kai and Arjenie to see each other again. Then Kai was outside Fagioli, looking around. “Where’s the car?” They were supposed to head back to Clanhome one more time. Nathan could cross realms from anywhere, but it was much easier for him near a node, so Dell waited for them at the one on Little Sister.

“Eh.” He rubbed his nose. “I thought we’d walk a bit first. Do you mind?”

She cast him a puzzled smile. “No. Something bothering you?”

He took her hand. “Let’s walk.”

He didn’t say another word for the next three blocks. Finally she did. “Are you still upset about getting things backward?” That’s how he’d put it. He’d been “backward” about who Dyffaya wanted, but worse, he’d been “backward” about who was needed to deal with a mad god. He’d started out all right, he said, following his instincts, which told him to keep Kai close. Then he’d gotten all sidetracked, thinking he could go fix things himself, without her. Without even consulting her.

He’d been shaken when she told him what would have happened if he’d stuck Claw into Dyffaya and she hadn’t been there—because Dyffaya couldn’t die, but his mind could. Over and over and over. The god would have lost any trace of rationality, even his sense of self, yet he would still have had the power of chaos—chaos unleashed, driven by the impossible imperative to live and a terrible craving for company. Neither of them knew for certain what that would have meant for those trapped in the godhead, but “hell” was a fair guess. And that hell might have lasted a very long time.