A Local Habitation
Page 64

“Why not?”
“If you want to know that, you must know us first. Do you want the burden?” He cocked his head. “Most wouldn’t. Pay the sacrifice, and we’ll go. We’ll let you live. I can’t make that promise if we remain.”
Great: double or nothing. Let them leave without telling me anything, or risk everything to make them stay and tell me too much. For a moment, I wanted to let them go. I could pretend the ritual failed; Jan and the others would believe me, and there would be other ways to find the information I needed. It might work . . . and it might not. I’d paid for the right to question the night-haunts and be answered; the Luidaeg wasn’t going to forgive my questioning her if I panicked at the last minute. Faerie has little compassion for cowards.
But even that wasn’t what settled the question. Dare did that. I looked at the night- haunt wearing her face, and I imagined Quentin and Connor hovering beside her because I hadn’t been willing to listen to what they had to tell me. That was the one risk I couldn’t take. Never again.
“I can’t do that,” I said. “I need to know why you haven’t taken this fiefdom’s dead.”
He smiled. “Then we’ll tell you.”
The night-haunt that was almost Dare—almost, but not quite—folded her wings and landed outside my protective circle, closing her eyes as she breathed in the smoke. There was no small amount of amusement in her expression when she opened them again. “You’ve prepared well. Someone told you, I think, how to ready yourself for us.”
“The Luidaeg.”
“Maeve’s whelp? That explains much. Our mother was a sister of her blood; she watched us in our cradles and changed our swaddling cloths before they knew what we would be—before even we knew what we would be, although we suckled on blood from the first. And then we learned our purpose and devoured our mother, and fled the marsh and fen for darker havens.”
The figure with Ross’ face landed next to her, folding his wings. “We fled to the crevices of the world, and they did not pursue, for they’d been waiting for us. How we came, and when, those were unexpected—but they knew why we existed, and why we must be spared.”
I thought of the corpses in the basement. “Faerie flesh doesn’t rot.”
“Of course not!” The haunt laughed. “It doesn’t need to. The fae never die, after all.”
“But in this world, they do,” said the almost Dare. “They founder and fall. Someone had to take the bodies, lest they bury the world. The pyres blackened the sky before we came; only fire cleanses the bodies of the dead as well as we do.” An amused buzz ran through the flock. “For all that they were never meant to die, they did, and do, with such surprising grace.”
“So you exist to eat the dead.”
“Yes. But there had to be an incentive—you should know that. Your blood runs close to ours; we take the bodies, but you take the blood. Would you drink the lives of your kin if they brought you no revelations?”
“No.”
“Neither would we. We were made to eat Faerie’s dead; that doesn’t make it pleasant. There are . . . other ways.” She motioned for one of the night-haunts from the back of the flock to come forward. It came reluctantly, a translucent, half-drawn shape of mist and shadows, wings visible only when they moved. I could feel it watching me, even though I couldn’t see its eyes; it was hungry. “Ways to force our actions, you might say.”
“Oh, oak and ash . . .” I breathed.
“If we do not eat, we fade,” she continued, ignoring my discomfort. “We learned quickly, and made a bargain with Oberon our father. We no longer touch the living, but the dead are ours. We eat their flesh, drink the memories in their blood, and use their shapes in lieu of our own. That is how it is. That is how it shall be. Do you understand?”
Did I understand that I was surrounded by cannibals who thought they had a divine right to eat my flesh? Oh, yeah. “I think so.”
“Good. Then you understand why we do not eat the dead of this place.”
Huh? “No.”
“The blood remembers, and the memory is what keeps us alive—not just the flesh, but the life that wore it. We drink the memories and they give us shape, for a time. There are always more dead waiting when the memories fade.”
The Ross-haunt nodded, snapping his wings open. They made a sound like ripping silk. “We drink their lives and live their hours, and we remember them. It’s a small thing, and it ends, but we remember.”
“We always remember,” said the one with Dare’s face.
Understanding hit. That was why their leader wore Dare’s face, and why I recognized other members of their flock; they pretended to be the dead because they had no choice. No; that wasn’t right. They were the dead. “You don’t have shapes of your own.”
“That’s right. And something’s beaten us to the bodies of this place. There’s nothing here that can sustain us.” She shrugged. “We don’t work for free.”
“Do you know what drained the . . . the memory of the blood?”
“No. This has never happened before.” For a moment, she looked almost gentle. “If we knew why, we’d stop it ourselves. There aren’t so many deaths in Faerie that we can afford to see them wasted.”
“I understand,” I said, trying to justify this with what I already knew. The blood was dead; this confirmed that it wasn’t supposed to be. The night-haunts are a natural part of the faerie life cycle. If this had happened before, they’d have known.
“Do you understand why no one must know the why and how of what we are?” She looked at me sharply, waiting.
I nodded. “If all of Faerie knew, some people would burn the bodies to keep you from taking them.”
“That is so. We would fade to nothing but the sound of leaves on the wind.” She fanned her wings, closing them with a click. “Will you keep your silence, daughter of Amandine?”
“I will,” I said. I meant it. Faerie has reasons to be the way it is, even if I don’t always understand them. The night-haunts have as much right to be what Faerie made them as the rest of us do; if ignorance preserved them, I’d keep their secrets.
“You’re wiser than most who deal with us. Is there anything else you would know?”