The Winter Long
Page 46
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The door was locked, sealed with clever charms as well as a more mundane padlock. I produced a set of lock picks from inside my jacket, flicking through them until I found the pick and wrench I wanted. Holding the pick between the first two fingers of my right hand, I pressed that palm against the cool tin door.
“You remember me,” I said quietly. “I never forced you to go against your nature, or tried to wrest you away from the owners you’d chosen, and when I couldn’t be the Countess you needed, I found you someone who could play the part. I’ve tried to be a friend, when I could, and I’ve tried to do no harm when friendship wasn’t possible. Now I’m here because I need a favor. I am begging you. If you have any power over the spells that hold your wards in place, let me in. I need to know what’s going on. I need to know why the doors are locked. Please.”
The smell of my magic rose unsummoned in the air around me, and brought with it a stinging, subtle undertone that wasn’t a smell or a sound or any of the other impressions I would normally associate with magic: it was just magic, pure and simple and older than anything I encountered in my daily life. It was even older than the Luidaeg in its way, or maybe just more primal. It was the knowe.
I pulled my hand away from the door, steadying myself as I knelt and started working at the lock. There was some resistance at first, and still that soft, stinging sensation filled the air around me, now laced with the distant sensation of a heart beating. I took a deep breath, trying to focus despite what I could only assume was the close attention of the knowe. I had been insisting for years that the knowes were alive; I had even received proof of various kinds, some more blatant than others. But this was the first time it had really felt like a knowe was looking at me—more than that, seeing me, and knowing me for something distinct and apart from the rest of Faerie. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation.
The padlock clicked and came open in my hand. The sensation of being watched faded in the same instant, and the shed door swung open without my needing to touch it. I straightened, tucking the lock picks back into the waterlogged inner pocket of my jacket. “Thank you,” I murmured, and stepped through.
The transition between the mortal and fae worlds has always been marked, for me, by a moment of disorientation. In those instants, up is down, hot is cold, and everything hurts and heals at the same time. Transitions like that used to be painful, back in the days when I was more human and further from Faerie. Since Mom spun the balance of my blood closer to Dóchas Sidhe, the pain had faded, although the disorientation remained.
As I stepped through the door into Goldengreen, I felt as if I were suddenly human again. The disorientation was worse than it had ever been, spinning the world around me like a top and yanking away my personal gravity at the same time, leaving me in a state of vertiginous free fall that barely managed to distract from the pain freezing every nerve and burning every inch of my skin. My blood boiled and iced over at the same time, trapping me in a limbo of agony that felt like it would never end. I was going to die here, alone in the spinning, painful dark.
It was the pain that allowed me to fight through the rest of what was going on around me. I’ve become very acquainted with pain over the course of the last few years, especially where my own body is concerned. This was external pain, being forced on me by someone else, and I refused to let that be what took me down. I fought against it, trying to feel my way through the waves of agony until I struck the cool bedrock of my own self.
My hands hit the floor of Goldengreen’s entry hall a split-second later as I landed in an unsteady crouch. The vertigo popped like a soap bubble, leaving me winded and feeling like my skin had been scrubbed from the inside, but intact. Under the circumstances, I’d take it.
Slowly, I raised my aching head and considered the dim, empty hall. No pixies clung to the rafters, and no many-legged shadows scuttled in the corners; the bogies were gone. There was no way that could be a good sign. None of Goldengreen’s usual inhabitants were coming to greet me. I straightened, one hand going to the knife belted at my waist, and listened.
Every place is silent in its own way. I had been in Goldengreen when it was completely deserted, and I knew what its silence sounded like. This was quiet, but it wasn’t silent; not quite. Voices were coming from somewhere, so thinned out and diffused by distance that they might as well have been the whispers of the “ghosts” that haunted the entry shed.
I took a careful step forward, still listening. The courtyard was the center of Goldengreen’s social whirl, and normally, if someone was talking but out of sight, I would find them there. The voices didn’t seem to be coming from the courtyard this time. I allowed that to embolden my steps, and sped up as I walked down the short span of hall between me and the courtyard doorway. When I got there I stopped, trying to let my eyes adjust, hoping that what I saw wasn’t really true.
Shortly after I had become Countess of Goldengreen, my friend Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, had been murdered by Oleander de Merelands. I had inherited Lily’s subjects, a motley assortment of changelings and purebloods with nowhere else to go. They’d promptly set about making the knowe a home, transplanting trees and flowers from Lily’s holdings to the indoor garden that had been established in the courtyard. They’d stayed with Goldengreen when I’d passed it on to Dean, partially because I’d vouched for him, but mostly, I knew, because they hadn’t wanted to move the trees.
They weren’t going to have to worry about that anymore. The courtyard looked like it had been hit by a localized but powerful tornado. Trees were on their sides, roots sticking up in the air like accusing fingers. Flowers had been crushed, rosebushes uprooted and flung against the walls. I was still trying to take in the damage when I realized that the pale branches extending from beneath one of the fallen trees weren’t branches at all. They were fingers.
“Oh, oak and ash,” I breathed, and bolted up the courtyard stairs until I reached the level where the fallen tree was splayed. It was one of Lily’s willows, old and grizzled with years of survival. As I drew closer, I could see the scales on the pale fingers, and on the soft skin of the hand that they were attached to. One of Lily’s former handmaids, a woman whose name I had learned and then forgotten, because we’d had nothing in common except for our love of an Undine who would never walk with either of us again. I tried to brace against the dirt and shift the tree off of her body, but it was no use; I didn’t have super strength, and all I could do was force her deeper into the soil.
“You remember me,” I said quietly. “I never forced you to go against your nature, or tried to wrest you away from the owners you’d chosen, and when I couldn’t be the Countess you needed, I found you someone who could play the part. I’ve tried to be a friend, when I could, and I’ve tried to do no harm when friendship wasn’t possible. Now I’m here because I need a favor. I am begging you. If you have any power over the spells that hold your wards in place, let me in. I need to know what’s going on. I need to know why the doors are locked. Please.”
The smell of my magic rose unsummoned in the air around me, and brought with it a stinging, subtle undertone that wasn’t a smell or a sound or any of the other impressions I would normally associate with magic: it was just magic, pure and simple and older than anything I encountered in my daily life. It was even older than the Luidaeg in its way, or maybe just more primal. It was the knowe.
I pulled my hand away from the door, steadying myself as I knelt and started working at the lock. There was some resistance at first, and still that soft, stinging sensation filled the air around me, now laced with the distant sensation of a heart beating. I took a deep breath, trying to focus despite what I could only assume was the close attention of the knowe. I had been insisting for years that the knowes were alive; I had even received proof of various kinds, some more blatant than others. But this was the first time it had really felt like a knowe was looking at me—more than that, seeing me, and knowing me for something distinct and apart from the rest of Faerie. It wasn’t a comfortable sensation.
The padlock clicked and came open in my hand. The sensation of being watched faded in the same instant, and the shed door swung open without my needing to touch it. I straightened, tucking the lock picks back into the waterlogged inner pocket of my jacket. “Thank you,” I murmured, and stepped through.
The transition between the mortal and fae worlds has always been marked, for me, by a moment of disorientation. In those instants, up is down, hot is cold, and everything hurts and heals at the same time. Transitions like that used to be painful, back in the days when I was more human and further from Faerie. Since Mom spun the balance of my blood closer to Dóchas Sidhe, the pain had faded, although the disorientation remained.
As I stepped through the door into Goldengreen, I felt as if I were suddenly human again. The disorientation was worse than it had ever been, spinning the world around me like a top and yanking away my personal gravity at the same time, leaving me in a state of vertiginous free fall that barely managed to distract from the pain freezing every nerve and burning every inch of my skin. My blood boiled and iced over at the same time, trapping me in a limbo of agony that felt like it would never end. I was going to die here, alone in the spinning, painful dark.
It was the pain that allowed me to fight through the rest of what was going on around me. I’ve become very acquainted with pain over the course of the last few years, especially where my own body is concerned. This was external pain, being forced on me by someone else, and I refused to let that be what took me down. I fought against it, trying to feel my way through the waves of agony until I struck the cool bedrock of my own self.
My hands hit the floor of Goldengreen’s entry hall a split-second later as I landed in an unsteady crouch. The vertigo popped like a soap bubble, leaving me winded and feeling like my skin had been scrubbed from the inside, but intact. Under the circumstances, I’d take it.
Slowly, I raised my aching head and considered the dim, empty hall. No pixies clung to the rafters, and no many-legged shadows scuttled in the corners; the bogies were gone. There was no way that could be a good sign. None of Goldengreen’s usual inhabitants were coming to greet me. I straightened, one hand going to the knife belted at my waist, and listened.
Every place is silent in its own way. I had been in Goldengreen when it was completely deserted, and I knew what its silence sounded like. This was quiet, but it wasn’t silent; not quite. Voices were coming from somewhere, so thinned out and diffused by distance that they might as well have been the whispers of the “ghosts” that haunted the entry shed.
I took a careful step forward, still listening. The courtyard was the center of Goldengreen’s social whirl, and normally, if someone was talking but out of sight, I would find them there. The voices didn’t seem to be coming from the courtyard this time. I allowed that to embolden my steps, and sped up as I walked down the short span of hall between me and the courtyard doorway. When I got there I stopped, trying to let my eyes adjust, hoping that what I saw wasn’t really true.
Shortly after I had become Countess of Goldengreen, my friend Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, had been murdered by Oleander de Merelands. I had inherited Lily’s subjects, a motley assortment of changelings and purebloods with nowhere else to go. They’d promptly set about making the knowe a home, transplanting trees and flowers from Lily’s holdings to the indoor garden that had been established in the courtyard. They’d stayed with Goldengreen when I’d passed it on to Dean, partially because I’d vouched for him, but mostly, I knew, because they hadn’t wanted to move the trees.
They weren’t going to have to worry about that anymore. The courtyard looked like it had been hit by a localized but powerful tornado. Trees were on their sides, roots sticking up in the air like accusing fingers. Flowers had been crushed, rosebushes uprooted and flung against the walls. I was still trying to take in the damage when I realized that the pale branches extending from beneath one of the fallen trees weren’t branches at all. They were fingers.
“Oh, oak and ash,” I breathed, and bolted up the courtyard stairs until I reached the level where the fallen tree was splayed. It was one of Lily’s willows, old and grizzled with years of survival. As I drew closer, I could see the scales on the pale fingers, and on the soft skin of the hand that they were attached to. One of Lily’s former handmaids, a woman whose name I had learned and then forgotten, because we’d had nothing in common except for our love of an Undine who would never walk with either of us again. I tried to brace against the dirt and shift the tree off of her body, but it was no use; I didn’t have super strength, and all I could do was force her deeper into the soil.
