Blood & Flowers (20 page)

The royal family turned their backs as if they'd rehearsed it. As a brush-off it was very effective. Even in the deepening twilight, even without extra firefly light, I could see that there was some kind of discussion going on. Major raised his arm, pointed back at all of us, and laughed. His teeth flashed white in the gloom. Next to him Feron looked thick, relaxed, and substantial.

Then Fred said, “You finally have a chance to do something right,” and his voice was childlike, gentle. He paused. No one moved. “I know you have it in you,” he added after what felt like a decade-long wait.

Major huffed out a smiling breath that I could almost feel. Reginald had reappeared, and I thought that he must have done so by magic. Maybe he was better at that stuff than Fred and Bron thought. He moved to stand between Feron and Major.

Then slowly, like he was one of our puppets being dragged by his strings, Fred and Floss's father turned and began to walk back to us, back to the crowd. His wife grabbed at him, but he shook his head. Major, no longer smiling, caught at his sleeve, but the duke jerked away. Feron stepped in front of his father and the man sidestepped him with the precision of a football player taking the ball to the end zone.

He walked between me and Nicholas as if we weren't taking up ground. He walked through the crowd as if they weren't there. Major followed at a fast clip, and watching him was like watching a little dog chasing after a big dog. Even with the puppet-walk of
the duke, it looked like Major was marching in double time. I looked toward Feron and saw his hands twisting into fists.

Everything that had happened since we'd left home came together and made me want to choke out a nervous laugh. Or maybe that was the tension. I caught my tongue gently between my teeth and didn't make a sound. The night had grown so dense and stretched that it felt like the air itself was screaming.

When Fred and Floss's father reached the steps of Elbe's porch he looked up at his son and daughter for what felt like a very long time. Now the night wasn't screaming. It was holding its breath, waiting for something to be put right, something that had been running wrong for a very long time.

“I believe you have a rating method of some type set up for this…” He paused, cocked his head, and said, “…performance?”

Floss looked long and hard at her father. Then she nodded. “I believe we do. Turn around and see what the audience thinks.” She repeated the line Nicholas had said to Major, but this time someone did what
they were supposed to do.

Fred and Floss's father looked at his children standing on Elbe's porch and then, still using those measured puppet moves, turned his back to the Emporium. Elbe, who was tucked half out of sight in his doorway, did something complicated with his hands that ended in a finger snap. Fireflies swarmed over the crowd. They illuminated the papers, papers held stiff between hands of all shapes, sizes, and colors. The air smelled strongly of the markers I'd handed out—apricot and pomegranate.

Major stood next to the duke, facing the Emporium instead of the crowd. I could tell that his eyes were boring straight into Tonio just by the set of his head and shoulders. Behind me, I could feel Feron's eyes locked tightly on our group of Outlaws, and it took all my self-control to keep looking straight ahead, to pretend that he wasn't there. I was close enough to the scene being played out on Elbe's porch that I heard Fred and Floss's father say, in a strangled voice, “Has it been that bad, then?” I saw Major's shoulders slump.

Then Major came back to life and grabbed again for the duke. “Wait! Listen to me,” he said through clenched teeth. Without looking at Major, the duke knocked his hand away with a slap of flesh against flesh that must have been heard in the back of the crowd.

At the same time Fred, still using his gentle voice, said, “They're rating a play. Not your rule, a play.” He waited the length of a heartbeat then added, “I do believe, though, that the things said in the play and what's been happening in your rule are very closely aligned. Perhaps they're rating truth.”

“I hadn't thought,” the duke began in a strangled voice. “I've been so busy…”

Floss interrupted to say, “And that's the whole problem right there, isn't it? You didn't think. You don't think. You're never here.”

She drew in breath to say more, but Fred dropped a hand on Floss's arm and she blew the breath out in a long, long sigh. Behind me, I heard the rustle of rich fabric against silks and laces.

“Enough,” said Fred and Floss's mother. “Leave. We have made our decision. We control this ground
and your little parody of a play has done nothing to dissuade me of the worthlessness of your ridiculous way of life. Or of the worth of you remaining in Faerie.”

“Ah,” said Floss, and it was a flat, one-note word. “But did it make you take a look at the way things are in this particular corner of Faerie?”

“Don't be absurd,” their mother snapped. “It's certainly done nothing to make me rethink my rule.”

“How strange,” Floss said in an even voice. “I never said one word about your rule.”

“Your brother did. Voices carry,” the duchess said.

Floss shrugged elegantly. The duchess had reached Elbe's steps by then and had reached her husband. “Floss, you never had it in you to make something of yourself. And as for you,” she said to Fred, “aligning yourself with your sister may be your tragic flaw. You'd do well to reconsider. Or would you like exile along with this gaggle of misfits?”

“The way things have been going it would be preferable to staying here,” Fred said softly.

“Ridiculous. But I should have known. Two worth
less, ungrateful children instead of just the one. Thank Mab I have Feron.”

Major's head snapped up, like he was imitating Fred's yo-yo. I could hear his choke of laughter. It sounded like a cry of victory.

Floss said, “You raised us, Mother.”

“She raised me, too. It's obvious who turned out better,” Feron said, pleasure in his voice.

As before, the air around me reacted to something that was on its way. Even before the duke said, “Feron—enough. Martene, control yourself,” with a knife edge in his voice, I sensed the night breathing cattails, water lilies, and marigolds. I saw the fireflies shuffle in the breezes.

The duchess whirled on her husband, her hand raised to slap, but he caught her wrist and said in a sharp voice that carried like the buzz of angry bees, “We are a shared rule. Do not force me to change policy and make this a place ruled by only one.”

The gasp from the crowd was so hushed that it was almost lost in the fabric rustles as the duchess yanked her hand away and whirled on her heel. Major turned
to follow her and was stopped by Feron's hand, heavy on his shoulder. When Feron said, “Your services are no longer required,” with crisp precision, it was obvious that Major had suddenly become a hindrance rather than a help.

Major stopped, hard, as if he'd run into a wall, and looked at Feron as if he wasn't sure where to go or what to do. Ignoring the drama behind her, the duchess skirted the crowd as if they were a pond of alligators and disappeared into the edges of darkness.

“Father,” Feron began, but the duke said, “Later.” Just that one word, but it whipped like a flag in a strong north wind. Feron twisted around and followed his mother.

Major turned in a slow circle. His eyes looked like they were searching for friends. Apparently none were forthcoming. He skittered away following the path Feron and the duchess had taken, and was swallowed by the soft silk of the night.

Three breaths of nothing. Then, stunned, I grabbed at Nicholas. “Did that all mean what I think it meant?”

“I think so,” he said, and he grinned like sunshine on a spring day.

“Wow.” It seemed inadequate, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.

Nicholas could, though. “Don't you want to see the scores?” He laughed a little, sounding free, and pulled me onto Elbe's porch. We turned and, in firefly light we read the papers that were still visible.

“I thought I saw a couple of tens,” Nicholas said, wonder in his voice.

“You did,” Tonio agreed. “Faerie inhabitants must be very generous.”

“Really,” Nicholas agreed. “Because we were not tens. We were barely fives.”

Tonio stifled a laugh and said, “Always trust your audience.”

Bron stood next to Floss, one arm around her in what looked like both protection and support. “I thought it was quite good, myself.”

“Not a ten,” Floss said to him, and she was fierce. “Wait until you see us really do something.”

“You'll stay then?” the duke asked.

Floss tensed again, and Bron called out to the crowd, “Free drinks at Dau Hermanos,” which meant rapid dispersal and left only our small group standing on Elbe's porch.

“Thank you,” Floss said to him in a tired voice.

Tonio answered for Floss. “We're a family. We'll need to talk things through.”

“Part of the family isn't here, though,” Max said, a serious edge in his voice, and at the same time I said, “Lucia's still not here. We can't do anything without Lucia.”

Why Reginald hadn't left with Major, why he hadn't disappeared again in the slick, stealthy way he'd used when Lucia was taken, I didn't know. Since it was obvious now that it had been Feron, Major, and the duchess all along, tight as Bondo, maybe he'd been excluded from their plans. And there was also the fact that Reginald had proved all along that he clearly wasn't very bright.

Maybe he simply couldn't pick up undercurrents, or, for that matter, overcurrents. Getting Lucia had been his goal. Possibly he'd never even made a plan
for what came next. Whatever it was, when every firefly in the area surrounded him Reginald was still there, half turned to stone. As a disappearing trick, it wasn't at all effective. Half stone or not he was still only Reginald.

Fred and El Jeffery got to him first, Fred because of adrenaline anger, I think, and El Jeffery because of his wings. Reginald didn't stand a chance, and he knew it. The fear smell of old blood was strong on him, and as Fred and El Jeffery came close to him, the stone spell dropped away like a boulder crashing into a lake. Reginald stood there alone. He looked naked. From his place near Floss on the porch, Bron said, “He never could get that stone thing. I'm amazed he even tried.”

“Desperate times,” Tonio murmured.

When Fred told Reginald, “We'll just walk you home,” there were glass edges in the sentence that made Max's worst threats sound like a little boy playing grown-up.

After the three of them left, Floss and the duke watched each other, and both looked wary. He must
have seen something I didn't catch because he said, “I think I have some things to talk about with your mother,” and he faded into the night following his wife's path. He didn't look like a puppet now. He was a man moving with purpose.

Floss collapsed, hard, on Elbe's porch. Bron dropped down next to her and wrapped her in his arms. I heard Floss say, into his shoulder, “Oh, my.” It was one of the most un-Floss-like statements ever, but I think it mirrored all our thoughts so well that the rest of us didn't need to say a thing.

 

Lucia came home, accompanied by a victorious Fred and El Jeffery. “I never even got to draw blood,” Fred said, and he sounded vaguely disappointed. Lucia looked stretched around the eyes. A lingering scent of that river water and old blood smell of Reginald clung to her, but she looked strong, alive, aware. I attributed that to Fred, whose chair was so close to Lucia's that they were almost sharing the same seat.

We were in the private room in Dau Hermanos, where we almost couldn't hear the free drinks party at
the bar. Tonio and Max were sharing something that was a cross between blackberry wine and cassis. Nicholas and I had a mix of lemonade and beer. Floss, Fred, and Lucia were drinking a straw-colored wine that smelled like windfall apples. El Jeffery was drinking wine too, but his was the color of rubies at midnight. Floss kept grinning at him and squeezing his paws, and even though Lucia was the quietest, all of them, including Fred, were playing some kind of word game that ended each sentence with the line “in a troll's lair.” And then Bron brought in a bottle of fizzy, golden hard cider. He was followed by Rohan, who held tiny goblets like flowers between all his fingers.

Once it was poured, Floss picked up a glass of the bright, light-infused wine and said, “We should make a toast.”

“We could toast a production that's going to grow in leaps and bounds,” Tonio said.

“Mab, let's hope so,” said Max, and everyone laughed because he was so very right.

But I had a better idea. “I think we should toast us. We toast the Outlaws. Because that's what we are.”

“And always will be,” Tonio said, fierce as Floss. “When puppets are outlawed, only outlaws will have puppets!”

“And you've certainly got those,” Bron said.

Nicholas laughed and pulled me against him in an embrace so tight I almost spilled my wine. Then there was a crystal-on-crystal clink of glasses, the lights dimmed, and fireflies filled the room.