The Winter Long
Page 55

No shortage of those in the modern world, where anyone could rent a walk-in freezer for less than a thousand dollars a year. “Okay. One last question. What does ‘Eira Rosynhwyr’ mean?”
“Uh. It’s Welsh, it means . . .” There was a pause, and the rustle of pages. I didn’t bother wondering too hard how it was that she had a book of names close at hand. She was the Librarian, and she was in the Library. She could have anything she wanted close at hand. “‘Eira’ is a Welsh female name meaning ‘snow.’ ‘Rosynhwyr’ is a compound word. It doesn’t have a direct translation—the closest I can get is something ‘rose that has been frozen.’ Why do you ask?”
“Because we’re all too stupid to live, and that’s why we’re all going to die soon,” I said slowly. “Mags, I need you to do me a favor now, if you possibly can. I need you to close the Library.”
“What? October, I don’t think you understand what you’re asking me to—”
“I need you to close the Library,” I repeated, cutting her off before she could fully launch into her explanation. “I have every reason to believe that Eira Rosynhwyr is not only alive, but in San Francisco right now, and she’s not playing nicely with the other children. You need to defend yourself. Close the Library.”
“I . . . what?” Mags sounded frightened now. Good. Fear might be the only thing capable of keeping her alive if Evening came to the Library on whatever strange errands were driving her. “I’ll try. I’ve never closed the doors without changing locations before, and I can’t change locations intentionally unless someone is actually trying to burn the place to the ground.”
“If the doors won’t close, call me,” I said. “I’ll show up with matches.”
Maybe that was what finally convinced her that I meant business. “All right,” she said. “Is there anything else?”
“Yeah. If you see a woman with skin as white as snow and hair as black as coal . . . run.” I hung up the phone without saying good-bye, stuffing it back into my pocket as I turned to face the others. They looked at me with varying degrees of understanding—Tybalt, who knew best out of all of us how Faerie worked, looked resigned; Quentin looked faintly horrified; Raj, who had never known Evening, just looked bemused.
“Evening Winterrose is alive, and her real name is ‘Eira Rosynhwyr,’ and she’s the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn,” I said without preamble. “I don’t know why she faked her own death, and I don’t know why she bound Simon and the Luidaeg to silence, but I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?” asked Raj.
“We are so screwed.”
FIFTEEN
A STUNNED SILENCE fell over the room. It lasted almost a full minute before Quentin said, “She’s my First? How can you . . . I mean, wouldn’t we know?”
“The Firstborn have proven remarkably skilled at disappearing from the lives of their children,” said Tybalt, in a careful tone. “Most of us are not even certain whether those who founded our lines are alive or dead. Why should the Daoine Sidhe be any different?”
“The Luidaeg said the Firstborn all stopped using their proper names with their descendant races, going to honorifics instead,” I said. “She never used Evening’s name when we were talking about her. It was always ‘the Winterrose.’ ‘Eira’ means ‘snow,’ and ‘Rosynhwyr’ means ‘the frozen rose.’” I was stretching the translation a bit there, but I didn’t think Mags would mind.
“That’s not proof,” said Quentin. He was starting to look distressed. I guess finding out that your First is the kind of person who just might be your worst nightmare come to life isn’t exactly easy.
“No, but it fits,” I said. “It makes a lot of other things fit, too. Like the fact that everyone else who’s died since I came back from the pond has shown up among the night-haunts, but Evening was never there.”
“The people who died at ALH never joined the night-haunts,” said Quentin stubbornly.
“Because their souls were digitized and uploaded to a locked server,” I countered. “Evening should have been there. She wasn’t. So why not? It can’t be because she didn’t want to see us. Devin and Dare joined the night-haunts, and they didn’t want to see us either. Joining the night-haunts isn’t a choice, unless you’re not as dead as you want everyone to think you are.”
“How was Evening killed?” asked Tybalt.
“They used iron,” I said. “That’s another thing: you need iron and silver if you want to kill one of the First.” I hadn’t known that when Evening “died,” but I’d learned it all too well from Blind Michael. If I hadn’t used both iron and silver when I killed him, he would have just gotten back up and kept coming after the people that I loved, no matter how badly I’d hurt him.
Evening had been shot with iron bullets. Her throat had been slit with an iron knife by Devin, the man who’d taught me how to survive in the tangled border country occupied by the local changeling population. I’d tasted the damage, ridden it far enough to be afraid I was about to share her death—but I hadn’t seen her die, had I? Her heart had still been beating when I’d pulled myself out of the blood magic that had been letting me follow what I’d believed to be her final moments. Even her injunction to “find the ones who did this” had never mentioned finding her killers.
She had known there weren’t going to be any.
“We’re so screwed,” I said again, softer this time. Tybalt looked at me with concern. I shook my head. “Evening was there when I was knighted. She knows too much about me and the way I react to things. We can’t surprise her.”
“Yes, we can,” said Raj. “She won’t have expected you to come here. No one expects anyone who isn’t Cait Sidhe to come here, because our doors are generally sealed against all others. I don’t care whether she’s the Firstborn of the Daoine Sidhe or the Queen of France; she’s not going to be able to follow us. You’re safe as long as you stay here.”
“The Cait Sidhe had three Firstborn where most races had only one,” agreed Tybalt. “Our First worked together with Oberon himself to make this place a sanctuary for our kind. This Eira, no matter how powerful she may be, will not have the power to overcome a spell woven by three of her equals and one of her superiors.”