Valiant (19 page)

“As you say.” Roiben nodded to him and the faerie man stepped back.

“I can address this mystery,” a familiar voice said.

Val rolled onto her back, banging up against Luis’s body, and twisting her head toward the speaker. Luis grunted. Mabry stepped over them, the hem of her ruddy gown brushing Val’s cheek. She held out a sculpted silver box and sank into a shallow curtsy. “I have what they seek.”

Roiben raised a single white brow. “My Court is not pleased to have sunlight make merry and dance in our halls, even if it is only for a moment’s admission of prisoners.”

Luis rolled on his side and Val could see that he was chained like she was, but that his face was bloody. Each of his steel piercings had been cut from his flesh.

Mabry cast her eyes down, but she didn’t look very abashed. “Allow me to settle both the light and its bringers.”

“You fucking bitch—,” Val started, but was interrupted by a cuff on the shoulder.

“He asks you nothing,” the golden-haired faerie spat. “Say nothing.”

“No,” said the Lord of the Dark Court. “Let them speak. It is so rare that we guest mortals. I can think of the last time, but then, it was nothing if not memorable.” Some of the assembled throng tittered at that, although Val wasn’t sure why. “The boy has true Sight, if I’m not mistaken. One of us put out your eye, yes?”

Luis looked around the room, fear etched in his face. He licked blood from his lip and nodded.

“I wonder what you see when you look at me,” Roiben said. “But come, tell us what it is you came for. Is it truly in Mabry’s possession?”

“She cut out the heart of my—,” Val said. “Out of one of the Folk—a troll. I’ve come to get it back.”

Mabry laughed at that, a deep, sensual laugh. Some of the throng laughed, too. “Ravus is long dead by now, rotting in his chambers. Surely you know that. What good is his heart to you?”

“Dead or not,” Val said. “I have come for his heart and I will have it.”

A wry smile touched Roiben’s mouth and Val felt dread creep over her. He looked at Val and Luis with pale eyes. “What you ask is not mine to give, but perhaps my servant will be generous.”

“I think not,” said Mabry. “If you consume the heart of the thing, you consume some of its power. I will relish Ravus’s heart.” She looked down at first Luis and then Val. “And I will savor it all the more knowing you wanted it.”

Val shifted up onto her knees and then stood, wrists still bound behind her back. Blood beat in her ears, so loud it nearly drowned out any other sound. “Fight me for it. I’ll wager his heart against mine.”

“Mortal hearts are weak. What need have I for such a heart?”

Val took a step toward her. “If I’m so weak, then you must be a real fucking coward not to fight me.” She turned to the faeries, to the cat-eyed, those with skin of green and gold, those with bodies stretched too long or too squat or all manner of unnatural proportions. “I’m just a human, aren’t I? I’m nothing. Gone in one sigh from one of your mouths, that’s what Ravus said. So if you are afraid of me, then you are less than that.”

Mabry’s eyes glittered dangerously, but her face remained placid. “You have great daring to speak so, here, in my own court, at the steps of my new Lord.”

“I dare,” Val said. “As much as you dare to act all high and mighty when you’re just here to murder him like you murdered Ravus.”

Mabry laughed, short and sharp, but there was muttering from some of the assembled Folk.

“Let me guess,” Roiben said lazily. “I shouldn’t listen to the mortal for one more moment.”

Mabry opened her mouth and then closed it again.

“Accept her challenge,” said Roiben. “I will not have it said that one of my Court could not best a human child. Nor shall I have it said my murderer was a coward.”

“As you wish,” said Mabry, turning to Val abruptly. “After I’m done with you, I will put out Luis’s other eye and make a new harp from both your bones.”

“String me in your harp,” Val hissed. “And I’ll curse you every time you pluck it.”

Roiben stood. “Do you agree to the terms of her challenge?” he queried, and Val suspected that he was giving her a chance to do something, but she didn’t know what.

“No,” Val said. “I can’t bargain for Luis. He’s got nothing to do with my challenge.”

“I can bargain for myself,” Luis said. “I agree to Mabry’s terms provided she put up something for them. She can have me, but if Val wins, then we go free. We get to walk out of here.”

Val glanced at Luis, grateful for his perception and amazed by her own stupidity.

Roiben nodded. “Very well. If the mortal wins, I will give her and her companion safe passage through my lands. And since you have not decided the terms of your combat, I will choose them—you will fight until first blood.” He sighed. “Do not think there is any pity in that. Living, should Mabry win your hearts and bones, does not seem so preferable to being safely dead. I, however, have some questions for Mabry that I need her alive to answer. Now, Thistledown, unclasp the mortals and give the girl her arms.”

The golden-haired man slid a jagged-toothed key in the locks and the manacles sprang open, dropping to the ground with a hollow sound that echoed through the dome.

Luis stood a moment later, rubbing his wrists.

A woman with chin hair so long that it was woven into tiny braids brought the glass sword to Val and went halfway down on one knee, raising the blade in her palms. Tamson’s sword. Val glanced at Mabry, but if she had any reaction to the sight of it, if she even remembered to whom it had once belonged, she gave no sign.

“You can do it,” Luis said. “What does she know about fighting? She’s no knight. Just don’t let her distract you with glamour.”

Glamour. Val looked at her backpack, the strap still draped over Luis’s shoulder. There was nearly a bottle full of Never there. If glamour was Mabry’s weapon, then Val could fight her on those terms. “Give me the bag,” Val said.

Luis slid it down his arm and handed it to her.

Val reached in and touched the bottle. Digging down past it, her hand closed on a lighter. It would just take a moment and then Val would be flooded with power.

As she turned, she saw her face reflected in the glass of the blade, saw her own bloodshot eyes and grime-streaked skin before the roving lights under the hill shot the sword through with sudden radiance. Val thought of the girl, Nancy, hit by a train because she was so full of Never that she hadn’t seen the gleaming of headlights or heard the scream of brakes. What might Val miss while she was weaving her own illusions? She felt the weight of the knowledge hit her gut like a swallowed stone; she had to do this without any Never singing under her skin.

Val had to fight Mabry with what she knew—years of lacrosse and weeks of the sword, fistfights with neighbor kids, who never said she hit like a girl, the ache of pushing her body past what she thought she could endure. Val couldn’t fight fire with fire, but she could fight it with ice.

She dropped the lighter and lifted the glass sword from the girl’s hands.

I can’t fall,
she reminded herself, thinking of Ravus and Dave and dominoes all together in neat little rows.
I can’t fall and I can’t fail.

The court gentry had cleared away a square path in the middle of the court and Val stepped into it, shrugging off her coat. It puddled on the floor, the cool air prickled the hairs on her arms. She took a deep breath and smelled her own sweat.

Mabry stepped out of the crowd, clad in mist that congealed into the shape of armor. In her hand she held a whip of smoke. The tip dragged tendrils behind it that reminded Val of the way that sparklers burned.

Val took a step forward, parting her legs slightly and keeping them loose at the knees. She thought of the lacrosse field, of the tight-but-loose way to hold the stick. She thought of Ravus’s hands, pushing her body into the right formation. Val longed for Never, scorching her from the inside, filling her with fire, but she gritted her teeth and prepared to begin.

Mabry stalked toward the center of the square. Val wanted to ask if they should start now, but Mabry sent her whip whirling and there was no more time for questions. Val parried, trying to slice the whip in half, but it became insubstantial as fog and the blade passed right through.

Mabry shot the whip out again. Val blocked, feigned and thrust, but her reach was too short. She barely staggered out of the way of another blow.

Mabry twirled the whip above her head as if it were a lasso. She smiled at the crowd and the throng of faeries howled. Val wasn’t sure if they were showing favor or just crying for blood.

The whip flew out, snaking toward Val. She ducked and rushed in under Mabry’s guard, trying one of those fancy moves that looked great if you could manage them. She missed entirely.

Two more parries and Val was tiring fast. She’d been awake for two days and her last meal was a pale faerie apple. Mabry beat her back, so that the Court had to part for Val’s stumbling retreat.

“Did you think you were a hero?” Mabry asked, her voice full of mock pity, pitched loud enough for the crowd.

“No,” Val said. “I think you’re a villain.”

Val bit her lip and concentrated. Mabry’s shoulders and wrists weren’t moving with the refined control it would take to make the strikes that lanced out at Val. It was her mind that was doing the work. The whip was an illusion. How could Val win, when Mabry could think the whip into changing direction or snaking farther than its length?

Val swung up her sword to block another strike and the misty cord wrapped around the length of the blade. A hard tug jerked it out of Val’s hands. The sword flew across the hall, forcing several courtiers to shriek and fall back. As the blade hit the hard-packed earthen floor, it cracked into three pieces.

The whip reached for Val again, flicking out to strike her face. Val ducked and ran toward the remains of the sword, whip whirring just behind her.

“Don’t let it bother you that you’re about to die,” Mabry said with a laugh that invited the other faeries to laugh with her. “Your life was always destined to be so short as to make no difference.”

“Shut up!” Val had to concentrate, but she was disoriented, panicked. She was fighting all wrong; she was fighting as if she wanted to kill Mabry, but all she had to do to win was hit her once and all she had to do to lose was to get hit.

Mabry was vain; that much was obvious. She looked cool and she fought cool. Even though she was leaning heavily on her glamour, she was doing it in such a way that made her seem like the better combatant. If she could make the whip grab the blade of the sword, couldn’t she just have made it strike Val’s hand? Couldn’t she conjure knives at Val’s neck?

She must want a dramatic triumph. A small scar on Val’s cheek. A long laceration across her back. The cord wrapping around Val’s neck. It was a performance, after all. The performance of a master performer before a court about to pass judgment on her.

Val stopped, standing just a foot from the hilt of the glass sword, the tang unmarred and part of the blade still attached. She turned.

Mabry was striding toward her, lips curling back into a smile.

Val had to do something unexpected, so she did. She continued just to stand there.

Mabry hesitated only a moment before she sent the smoke whip slashing toward Val. Val dropped to the ground, rolled and grabbed the hilt of what was left of the glass sword, thrusting it up, inelegantly, gracelessly, and completely uncoolly into Mabry’s knee.

“Hold,” cried the golden-haired faerie.

Val dropped the hilt, smeared with just a little blood. It was enough. Her hands started to shake.

Mabry’s smoke armor and arms faded away and she was in her gown again. “It matters little,” she said. “Your gory memento will rot as your love rots. You will find a corpse no fit companion.”

Val couldn’t help the smile that spread on her face, a smile so wide it hurt. “Ravus isn’t dead,” she said, enjoying the blank look that came over Mabry’s features. “I pulled down all the curtains and turned him to stone. He’s going to be
fine.
”

“You couldn’t—” Mabry reached out her hand and smoke coalesced into a scimitar. She swept it jaggedly forward. Val stumbled back, turning her head away from the strike. The blade grazed her cheek, tracing a burning line across the skin.

“I said hold,” the golden-haired faerie shouted, lifting up the silver box.

“Stop,” said the King of the Unseelie Court. “Thrice you have displeased me, Mabry, spy or not. Because of your carelessness, mortals have let daylight into the Night Court. Because of your lack of valor, a mortal won a boon from us. And because of your pettiness, my promise that the mortals would not be harmed in my lands is dishonored. Henceforth, you are banished.”

Mabry shrieked, an inhuman noise that sounded like rushing wind. “You dare banish me? I, Lady Nicnevin’s trusted spy in the Seelie Court? I, who am a true servant of the Unseelie Court and not a pretender to its throne?” Her fingers became knives and her face pulled unnaturally long and monstrous. She lunged at Roiben.

Val’s body moved automatically, the moves she had practiced a hundred, hundred times in the dusty bridge as unconscious as a smile. She knocked aside Mabry’s strike and stabbed her in the neck.