War for the Oaks (42 page)

"She's lamentably ignorant of my better qualities."

"You mean she hasn't seen you with your clothes off?" Eddi thought he blushed.

She wrapped her kimono around her and went quietly into the living room. At first, she thought Meg had already gone, or hadn't come yet. Then she saw a herd of dustballs roll out from under the couch in what, had they been alive, would have been panic. She waited until they'd clambered up the side of the wastebasket and thrown themselves in. Then she said cautiously, "Meg?"

The nose came out first around the back of the couch, followed by the scowling brown face. "Tha hair wants combin'."

"I'll get to it, I promise. Meg—"

She disappeared behind the couch again. "I'm worrrkin'," she said gruffly.

Eddi sat down in the armchair and propped her chin on her hand. She'd think this was just Faerie perversity—but Carla was like this
sometimes, when something needed discussing, and Carla was afraid to do it. "Okay," Eddi said. "You work. I'll talk. You've heard about Willy, I suppose?"

The rustling behind the couch went on, but Eddie didn't think she was being ignored.

"Well, the Lady has decided that she can't give up Como Park for him. I can understand that. Willy would probably even understand it. You can't throw away the good of the whole Court for one guy."

Behind the couch, there was a thump.

"After studying the situation, I've decided that this is a job for a third-party contractor. So I'm going to rescue Willy."

The reaction to that was silence. Finally Meg came out from behind the couch, wearing an expression eloquent of not-very-patient suffering. "Wha's that tae do wi' me?"

Eddi sighed. "I'd like you to help."

"Nay," Meg declared, lifting her chin. "I'll nae help."

Eddi had to bite her lip for a moment to keep her mouth closed. Then she said, "Why?"

"The young laird's nae charge o' mine. He's walked his road. If he canna thole what's at its end, worse luck tae him."

Eddi studied the little brown woman before her, standing so stiff and proud. The phouka had told her that the brownies were solitary, disinclined to bow to the wishes of the Sidhe. But she thought there was something uneasy about Meg's independence.

So she looked long at her, and said at last, "I wonder where you'd be now, if I'd thought like that at Minnehaha Falls?"

Meg's face screwed up with fury and anguish. "It's na' fair! Tha's got nae call tae fling what I owe in my face!"

"What do you owe, Meg?" she asked, knowing quite well.

"My life," Meg spat. "Tha may ask what tha will o' me, and I canna refuse aught."

Eddi laced her fingers together across her knees and stared at Meg until the brownie stared back. "I saved your life. The way I see it, your life is beyond price, right?"

Meg nodded shortly.

"Good. There are two ways to look at that. In one of them, you owe me a debt that you can't ever repay, and I pretty much own you." Eddi paused for dramatic effect, though she felt like a wretch for doing it. "But I told the phouka once that I
didn't
own you, and I still believe
that. Lives
are
beyond price, and to treat them as if they have some kind of barter value is obscene." Meg looked puzzled, and Eddi continued, "I saved your life because it was the right thing to do."

She unfolded her hands and stood up.

"Lass!"

Eddi felt something sweep over her skin, a rush of hot or cold. It must have come from the sudden jump of her heart. She turned back to Meg.

"Lass . . . The Dark Lady, she's the de'il himself. She'll hurt tha dreadful if she can."

"Are you afraid?"

"A' course I am! Tha should be, too."

"Well," Eddi said, leaning on the back of the chair, "I am. But I have to do this anyway. And I hope you'll help me—but not because you think you owe it to me. Do it because you want to do me a favor, or Willy a favor, or because it's right. Or don't do it. I can't blame you if you don't. All our necks will be on the line, and there won't be anybody to save 'em if it goes wrong."

"The Lady and her folk?" Meg asked.

"They don't know anything about it. And they won't, till it's over. We're going to play by mortal rules, and I don't think the Sidhe would like it if they knew."

Meg screwed her mouth up, and rubbed her nose vigorously. "If I said aye—what would I do?"

Eddi sat back down in the armchair and leaned forward. "How are you at gardening?"

The sensible thing to do, on the afternoon of the battle for Como Park, would have been to take a nap. She couldn't, of course. Instead she and the phouka made love. They gave each other comfort and strength and pleasure, and took the same things back. And each pretended to be certain that it would happen again.

When Eddi left the bedroom to start a pot of coffee, she found her armor lying on the kitchen table. Black motorcycle leathers: zippered jacket, pants, knee-high boots. On top of the pile was a black Bell fullcoverage helmet. On the side of it, she saw the design of the pin the phouka had given her, the five-petaled flower in the square, inlaid in gold and silver.

"Phouka?" she called, a little unsteady.

He was at the bedroom door almost instantly. "Ah," he said when he saw what she was looking at.

"Where did all this come from?"

"I think whence your breakfast comes, love."

"This is Meg's work?" Her eyes burned, and she squeezed them shut firmly. "Maybe she doesn't want to have to mend my jacket again."

The phouka came and put his arms around her. "If you want to cry, you may, you know."

She turned and put her head on his shoulder. "No. If I do, I won't stop. I'm wound up too tight." She looked up at him and smiled a little. "This is worse than Minnehaha Falls. This time I
know
how much trouble I'm in."

"That, sometimes, is a kind of protection." He stroked her face, and she kissed his palms.

"What's with the little flower?" she asked, in a blatant change of subject.

The phouka nodded at the helmet with its insignia. "Every noble house has its colors and its device."

"Since when have I become a noble house?"

"Since first you came among us." His voice was barely more than a whisper, but it was full of that langorous power she'd heard there only rarely. "That we were all slow to recognize it makes it no less true."

He kissed her, as if in ritual, on the lips, and walked into the bedroom. She stared after him for a moment. Then she gathered up her armor and went to put it on.

The weather had broken, finally; there was a wind blowing. It was full of the chill of impending rain, and Eddi was glad of the leathers. The moon rode high, barely more than a quarter, and clouds boiled across it. She could see better than could be accounted for by that dim light, or the street lamps, or the Triumph's headlight. But she was getting used to that. When all this was over would she keep the Faerie magic she'd acquired? If she lived long enough to see it end?

They met on Como Avenue, at the edge of the park. Carla's wagon was pulled up to the curb, and Hedge was leaning against the fender, in a tight T-shirt and torn jeans, his hair in his eyes. Eddi drew up next to him and took the helmet off. His eyes widened when he realized
who it was, and she grinned. "You're the very picture of juvenile delinquency," she told him.

"And
you
look like an ad for a movie," Carla said, leaning out the driver's side window.

"A good movie," the phouka said.

"Got a call just before we left my place," Carla told Eddi. "I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, under the circumstances."

"What?"

"We're gonna play First Avenue for the Fourth of July."

Eddi gaped. "We are?"

"Yep. Three-band bill, the third band canceled out. We're replacing 'em."

"Ye gods. In the mainroom?"

"With all the flashing lights. Now we
really
have to get our guitar player back."

Eddi raked a hand through her hair. She understood what Carla meant about laughing or crying. "You've got all the stuff?"

"Down to the last patch cord. Now relax. We're gonna knock 'em dead."

"Carla, are you
enjoying
this?"

" 'Course she is," Dan sighed from the other side of the car. "Girl thinks she's in the middle of
Mission: Impossible"

"Well, you're not, dammit," Eddi said fiercely. "This is real, and if anything screws up, you'll be dead."

Carla glanced down for a moment; when she looked up at Eddi again her expression was very different. "I know. But I may as well play this for all it's worth—just in case."

Neither of them wanted to talk about in-case-of-what, so Eddi put her helmet back on. "You know the drill. Follow in fifteen minutes, set up, and wait till you see us." She wished she could think of something cleverer to say than "Break a leg," but she couldn't. Instead she revved the bike and headed into the park.

The Conservatory was dark. Eddi parked in the curving drive in front, pulled off her helmet, and tucked it under her arm. She and the phouka walked warily up the steps. The outer doors stood open.

They stood in the palm house feeling naked beneath the pale glass arch of the roof. The shadows were deep under the leaves, and full of rustlings. Eddi hoped it was just a ventilator blowing.

There was a glow to her left, very soft. She turned and saw the
frame of the double doors into the sunken garden faintly luminous, and felt a rush of relief. If they had been wrong, if the Dark Queen had chosen the north wing after all . . . She tugged the phouka's shirt sleeve. He nodded and followed her.

The sunken garden was dim, the colors extinguished by the faint moonlight. What light there was bounced off the water of the pond between the lily pads, like puddles on a wet road. Eddi stepped to the edge of the terrace and clutched the iron railing.

Light leaped up—both electric and eldritch. The star-shaped hanging lamps glittered. The flagstones of the path shone softly at all their edges. The struts in the arched roof were streaks of pale light. It was more than enough to show the Queen of Air and Darkness, in a gray jumpsuit and a long gray coat, on the far terrace before the alcove. Her guards were ranked among the trimmed boxwood. Then a wet, darkgreen creature shambled out from under the bay tree toward them. The phouka stepped quickly between it and Eddi.

The queen's lovely, throaty voice carried the length of the room. "I'm afraid you'll have to submit to a search." She sounded amused.

The thing, which seemed to be animate pond scum, had quick, cold fingers. Eddi stood very still and tried not to shudder. There was nothing to find on either of them, and the creature seemed irritable about it.

"Very well," said the queen. "Come in and make yourselves at home."

They walked down the glowing path side by side, though there was barely room for it. A little snarling mud-colored creature thrust a spidery hand from beneath a coleus and grabbed Eddi's ankle, and she stopped.

"Control yourself," the queen said coldly, and the creature drew back.

They stood at last at the foot of the steps that led to the queen's terrace. "So," she said cheerfully, "what can I do for you?"

Eddi felt terribly cold; it even made her lips stiff. She swallowed and said, "We've come to ransom your hostage."

"Ah, of course." Her long dark eyes narrowed with catlike pleasure. "It is a very good joke, you know, that the pale bitch sent you as her envoy. She must hate you dreadfully."

Eddi felt hope like a spike of flame in her. Hedge's rumors had reached their destination, and the Dark Queen was not suspicious.

The queen looked over her shoulder and snapped her fingers. Two of the gray, milky-eyed monsters that Eddi so feared stepped from behind a cypress. They supported a figure between them, a figure in black jeans and a torn, bloodstained white T-shirt. His arms were bound tightly behind him. There was a hood over his head, but it was unmistakably Willy.

They forced him to his knees beside the queen and pulled off the hood. At first he refused to look up. Then the queen twined her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back. He saw Eddi and the phouka, and his eyes went round with surprise. He closed them quickly.

Eddi was torn between anger and relief. There was dried blood at the corner of his mouth, and blood still stained the white streak in his hair. But he could walk, and think. They wouldn't have to carry him out.

"Do you know, I shall miss you," the queen said to Willy's upturned face.

"I'm afraid," Willy said, baring his teeth, "that I can't say the same about you." There was a dreadful cold fire in his green eyes. With a yank, he pulled his hair out of her grip.

"Now!" Eddi snapped. And out of the infinite closet from which he conjured all his clothes, the phouka summoned his coat.

Eddi plunged her hand into the pocket of it as it appeared around him. She pulled out a handful of what they had put there, and threw it at the Dark Lady. Rowan berries.

The queen stumbled back, her face twisted with fury and disgust. Her magic unraveled for just a moment—but she was the only one in the room with the power to hold Willy, and in that moment, her hold broke. With a great wrench, he snapped the cord that held his arms. His right hand blazed with white fire. He flung that light and heat at the ceiling, at the bracket that held one of the star-shaped lamps, and it plunged, still lit, into the pond. Sparks plumed in all directions. Then he leaped off the terrace, as the phouka swatted down one of the gray things that had lunged to stop him.

The room was a scene out of hell. The tubes of the watering system had all reared out of their pots and begun to spray an extract of St. John's Wort at random.
Nice work, Meg
, Eddi thought. In the pool, where the lamp was shorting out, something green thrashed, showing dreadful glimpses of limbs or tail or snake-jawed head. Creatures of all
sizes and aspects dashed from the now-toxic flowerbeds toward the walls and began to climb the roof trusses.

They plunged through the chaos toward the double doors. One of the gray long-snouted horrors dropped down at them from the ceiling. Willy raised his burning hand and blasted it as it fell; it rained on them in foul-smelling cinders.