War for the Oaks (34 page)

He moved his head abruptly, and light flashed off silver in one earlobe. For a moment he seemed some haughty stranger. Then she recognized the nervousness in him, and he was once again her phouka.

"Gorgeous," she said softly, as if he were an animal she didn't want to startle. "If you'd worn that on the way over, we'd have a trail of broken hearts behind us."

He laughed, and ducked his head. "Is that a very long way of saying I'm conspicuous? That's why I waited, you know."

"Since when have you cared about being conspicuous?"

"Well, I don't, then. I'd rather be gorgeous." He offered her his arm. They went up the hill together, through groves of young trees with leaves that rang like windchimes.

The path divided, and they took the lower, right-hand one that circled the hill. Eddie heard voices, laughter, music from around the grassy shoulder, and all her earlier doubts and suspicions returned. She stopped beside a retaining wall of railroad ties. "Phouka."

She wasn't sure what he'd heard in her voice, but he turned to her immediately and lifted an eyebrow.

"What am I going to find when I get around that corner?"

"There are no nasty surprises lying in wait for you, sweet. We are under a truce."

"I don't mean
those
kind of surprises. Why should I be invited to this party? How are they"—she nodded up the hill—"going to treat me?"

The phouka sat on the retaining wall. "Are you afraid of them?" he asked her, not as if he believed it.

"No. But if I were one of the Seelie Court, I'd spit in my face. Come on, Phouka," Eddi said, when he continued puzzled, "I'm
the girl who makes it possible for them all to die in battle."

"Yes, you are. We sought you out and made you part of Faerie that you might do so." He ran a hand through his hair and smiled at her. "You've set me a devilish task, my primrose. We are never easily explained. We do not live in the past, yet we can hold a grudge for an unimaginably long time. We despise mortals, and we revere them. Is it enough for you if I tell you that it is no more than your right to be here, that no one will think it odd, that you will have a very good time, and that those around you will do likewise?"

She studied his face. He was happy, she decided, happiness unalloyed with worry or mischief or bitterness. Given the circumstances, she hadn't seen that mood on him lately. "Will you?"

He blinked. "Will I what?"

"Have a good time, dummy. Are you here as a bodyguard, or a guest?"

"Oh, a guest, certainly," he grinned. Then he looked quickly down. "Of course, if you would prefer that I remain near you, I would not object—merely as a courtesy, you understand."

She watched as he nudged a pebble with the toe of one glossy black boot. "Good idea," she said finally. "I don't know a lot of people here."

He raised his head and gave her a brilliant look, and Eddi decided that neither one of them was fooling the other.

They rounded the shoulder of the hill. The sloping land before them was full of color and soft lights. Eddie saw pinpoints of brightness like candles in the branches of shrubs and trees. There were the tinted mists she'd seen from the street, too; they were spangled as if with fireflies, and drifted lazily between the tree trunks or tangled in the leaves. The trees themselves shone faintly. There was a bonfire laid and ready to light in the middle of the open area. Around it, and under the trees, the revelers had gathered.

Eddi had forgotten the wild variety of the hosts of Faerie. She saw a tall, spindly figure that might have been a close relative of birch trees; its swallowtail coat was too short for it, and its broad-brimmed hat too large. There was a little creature dressed in a musk ox pelt, or perhaps its own hair. There was a slender naked woman with blue-black skin and white hair to her shoulders, shining whiteless eyes, and long ears like a fox.

"Someday," Eddi murmured, "you should meet
my
family."

At the corner of her vision she saw a familiar silver-gray, and turned
quickly to look. One of the long-snouted, many-toothed creatures, a gray-skinned Unseelie fey of the sort she most feared stalked through the throng. No one challenged it; no one spoke to it at all. It continued on toward the other side of the park.

"They're here, too?" Eddi found enough voice to say.

"It is a truce, my primrose. And they are as much of Faerie as I am." But Eddi thought it made him nervous, too.

Then Carla loped toward them out of the crowd, with Dan following behind. " 'Bout time!" Carla crowed and hugged her. "You look swell!"

"So do you," Eddi said. Carla wore a red strapless dress that looked splendid with her dark hair and eyes. Dan had found a black tuxedo somewhere, and a formal white bow tie. He wore them with a Hawaiian shirt. "Funky," Eddi assured him.

"Not as funky as Rover here," Carla said, eyeing the phouka's face with a little grin.

"Well, I like it," Eddi told her.

"Thank you," the phouka said gravely.

"Hedge is here," Carla said. "And my God, so is everything else." She turned to Eddi. "Some of these people are . . . oh, never mind. I guess you already know. But my God, Eddi—!"

Dan gave Carla's shoulders a squeeze. "She means this is some great shit. Weird, though. It's like there's something in the air—like you could get bombed just from breathing."

He was right, Eddie realized. It was as if the altitude had changed, as if the air were thinner, purer, intoxicating.

"Have you been here long?" the phouka asked Dan.

"Nah. Long enough to dump the equipment." He pointed at a heap of things under a bush—a remarkably small heap, for Dan. "It won't get ripped off, will it?"

The phouka glanced at Eddi, an almost penitent look. "No. Whatever our temptations, we don't steal from our guests. We also do not steal from each other, so if no one objects, I'll leave the guitar there as well. Then I'll present you to the Lady."

The Queen of Faerie. Eddi remembered her, in all her icy rage, at Minnehaha Falls. The memory sent her hurrying after the phouka. "Do you have to?" she said, softly enough that Carla and Dan wouldn't hear her.

The phouka said gently, "She won't eat you, dear one, truly."

"Says you. The last time I saw her, she was thinking seriously about it."

"Oh, then." He waved the suggestion away. "I've told you, we've no taste for living in the past."

"And you hold a grudge forever."

"Havers, as Meg would say. What if she is still nursing a sense of ill-usage? She'll not do anything about it tonight, sweet. Besides—" He set her guitar case down, turned to her, and put a fingertip under her chin. "You may attack royalty, or deny its will, but you must never, never ignore it."

"Makes her mad, huh?"

The phouka laughed. "On that heartening note . . ." He turned to Carla and Dan. "We go to meet the Queen of Faerie. Be polite, circumspect, and above all, follow my lead."

Carla and Dan raised their eyebrows at each other. "Lead on, boss," Carla said at last.

They threaded their way through the revelers and around the bottom of the hill. They emerged on the side of the park that faced University Avenue. Here the land was flat and open, the grass still lush even after weeks of summer heat. There was a game of something in progress; two teams of the Folk were engaged in what seemed a cross between horseshoes and field hockey, played with enormous stones. Yelling was apparently part of the game.

Before them, a crabapple tree stood in a smokelike, fragrant cloud of blossom. A bank of spirea bloomed ghostly white beyond it. "Wait a minute," Carla muttered, "those quit flowering a month ago."

"Sshhh," Eddi warned. The Lady stood beneath the crabapple, flanked by her glittering court. They were watching the game. After one particularly long throw, the queen smiled and made some comment. Clear, breaking-crystal laughter rang out from the group around her. She wore a close-fitting, one-shouldered satin gown, barely tinted the color of new willow leaves. Her bloodred hair was loose, and it fell to her knees. Against that backdrop her shoulders and bare arms were white as new-cut marble. And her face, so inhumanly beautiful in all its curves and angles . . . Willy's was a copy of it, but a copy several generations removed. A little humanity had slipped into his face, if only in his expressions.

They were perhaps ten feet from the gathered court when the phouka dropped to one knee and bowed his head. Eddi followed him,
her dark skirts spreading out around her like water. Carla and Dan, after a moment's surprise, also knelt. Eddi heard the hiss of moving satin. The hem of the queen's gown and the tips of her embroidered shoes appeared at the top of Eddi's vision, but she waited for the lovely, cold voice before she raised her head.

"Eddi McCandry. You are welcome among us."

You couldn't tell it from listening to you
, Eddi thought wryly, but only said, "That pleases me, Lady."

Did that white face thaw a bit? "Introduce your companions to us."

Eddie was sure she knew their names already. "Carla DiAmato, Lady, an old friend and my favorite drummer. And Dan Rochelle, keyboard player for Eddi and the Fey."

The queen's lips thinned a little at that. "Presumptuous, certainly, to name yourselves so."

"We didn't intend any disrespect, Lady," Eddi said. In the face of the queen's opposition, she was suddenly delighted with the band's name. "And even Willy didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with it."

"Willy Silver," the queen said gently, looking down her perfect nose, "has not always conducted himself as we would like."

The phouka moved a little at Eddi's side; she couldn't tell if it was impatience or nerves. "Lady," Eddi began, "if you mean losing the horse, he—"

"This is too solemn a topic for a festive night. We shall have dancing soon—may we ask that you and your friends lead off the music, Eddi McCandry?"

"We'd be pleased to," Eddi said, since there was no real reason to refuse.

"Very well." The queen turned one white hand up, managing to indicate the entire park with the gesture. "Partake freely of all that pleases you here, and let your friends do likewise."

Eddi swallowed a "thank you," and said simply, "We will."

The phouka rose, and offered a hand to help her up. "Back up three paces and bow," he whispered in her ear. She shot a quick warning look at Dan and Carla, and stepped backward. It might not have mattered; the queen had turned away. But her attendants still watched, if surreptitiously.

Whatever they did, it must have been good enough. After the three
paces, they might not have existed, for all the attention the queen's court paid them. They headed back the way they came.

"Holy shit," Carla whispered. "That really was the Queen of Faerie. Wasn't it?"

The phouka shushed her. His face was full of wicked delight.

"What are you so pleased about?" Eddi grumbled under her breath.

"Later, my sweet. No, don't look daggers at me, I promise to tell you, but later. For now, I'd like a bit of refreshment. Courtliness is dry work."

In a grove of honeysuckle they found the beer, dark and creamyheaded as stout, in a tapped wooden keg. There was red wine, too, with a sharp, smoky fragrance; mead the color of amber; and other things that Eddi resolved to ask the phouka about later. He produced four silver cups from, apparently, nowhere, and Eddi filled hers with the beer.

"Common folk's refreshment," he teased her.

"Well, when all's said and done I'm pretty common."

"You don't look it. And I didn't mean to raise your hackles. I don't, in fact, mean to raise them at all tonight, though I may have set myself a hopeless task."

She swallowed some beer. It was bittersweet, rich enough to make a meal of, and dark in the bottom of the silver cup. Dark as the phouka's eyes. The notion startled her and she looked up, to find those eyes on her.

"Mortals were warned against this, once upon a time," he said softly. "Take no food or drink from Faerie hands. If you do, no other food will please you, and you will pine away for it and perish."

"Is it true?"

"You trust me for the truth, don't you?" He wore a curious twist of a smile. "Strange. And not entirely pleasant. To answer your question then, no, not literally, but there may be some poetic truth in it. What will you do, assuming you live through all of this, when our war is done and we withdraw from your life?"

Eddi took a deep breath and couldn't, for a moment, let it out. "I . . . hadn't thought about it."

"How odd. When first you made my acquaintance, you could think of nothing else."

He turned his cup in both hands, but didn't seem to be looking at it. The eldritch light of magic and the moon polished his hair and face, and brought the garden in his brocade coat to life.

"That was a while ago," Eddi said, feeling strangled.

He raised his eyes, and the mischief was back in them. "Time flies when you're having fun."

"Jerk." She swallowed some beer, and it helped break up the last of the lump in her throat. "Now what were you so pleased about, earlier?"

"After your audience with the Lady?"

Eddi nodded.

"Well, my sweet. Remember what passed, and tell me whom she chose to talk to." He let her think that over for a moment before he said, "Once she would have spoken almost solely to me. Low though my rank may be, I'm at least fey. Tonight she spoke to you, as she might to the emissary of another ruler, and I do not think she knew it herself. But those around her marked it, you may be sure."

Eddi frowned at him. "Which means what?"

"That the Queen of Faerie recognizes you as a power, and has spoken to you with respect. Others will follow her lead."

"Huh. That and a quarter will buy me a gumball." But she was impressed. She turned to look for Carla and Dan, and didn't find them.

"They've gone, I think, to unpack instruments," he said in response to her look. "There's a dancing mood growing on us all, and they may have felt it."

"And do you feel like dancing, too?"

"Oh," he said, raising an eyebrow, "I might."

The phouka offered her his arm, and they headed down the slope toward the unlit bonfire.