Ironside (22 page)

“It is done, whether you accept it or no,” said Ruddles.

“Let me finish the duel in your sister’s place,” said Talathain. “Fight me.”

“Coward,” Kaye said. “He’s already hurt.”

“Your Bright Lady broke her compact with us,” said Dulcamara. She turned to Roiben. “Let me kill this knight for you, my Lord.”

“Fight me!” Talathain demanded.

Roiben nodded. Reaching into the snow, he lifted his own sword. It was cloudy with cold. “Let’s give them the duel they came for.”

Talathain and Roiben circled each other slowly, their feet careful, their bodies swaying toward each other like snakes. Both their blades extended so that they nearly touched.

Talathain slammed his blade down. Roiben parried hard, shoving the other knight back. Talathain kept the distance. He stepped in, swung, then retreated quickly, staying just outside Roiben’s range as if he were waiting for him to tire. A single rivulet of blood ran like sweat down Roiben’s sword arm and onto his blade.

“You’re wounded,” Talathain reminded him. “How long do you really think you can last?”

“Long enough,” Roiben said, but Kaye saw the wetness of his armor and the jerkiness of his movements and wasn’t sure. It seemed to her that Roiben was fighting a mirror self, as though he were desperate to cut down what he might have become.

“Silarial was right about you, was she not?” said Talathain. “She said you wanted to die.”

“Come find out.” Roiben swept the sword in an arc so swiftly that the air sung. Talathain parried, their blades crashing together, edge to flat.

Talathain recovered fast and thrust at Roiben’s left side. Twisting away, Roiben grabbed the other knight’s pommel, forcing Talathain’s sword up and kicking against his foot.

Talathain fell in the snow.

Roiben stood over him, pointing the blade at the knight’s throat. Talathain went still. “Come and get the crown if you want it. Come and take it from me.”

Kaye wasn’t sure if she heard a threat or a plea in those words.

Talathain didn’t move.

A faery with skin like pinecones, rough and cracked, took Talathain’s golden sword from his hands. Another spat into the grimy snow.

“You’ll never hold both courts,” Talathain said, struggling to his knees.

Roiben teetered a little, and Kaye put her arm under his. He hesitated a moment before leaning his weight against her. She nearly staggered.

“We’ll hold the Bright Court just as your mistress would have held us,” Dulcamara purred, squatting down beside him, a shining knife touching his cheek, the point pressing against the skin. “Pinned down in the dirt. Now tell your new Lord what a fine little puppy his cleverness has bought him. Tell him you’ll bark at his command.”

Ethine stood stiff and still. She closed her eyes.

“I will not serve the Unseelie Court,” Talathain said to Roiben. “I will not become like you.”

“I envy you that choice,” said Roiben.

“I’ll make him bark,” Dulcamara said.

“No,” Roiben said. “Let him go.”

She looked up, surprised, but Talathain was already on his feet, pushing his way though the crowd as Ruddles called out, “Behold our undoubted Lord Roiben, King of both the Unseelie and the Seelie courts. Make your obeisances to him.”

Roiben swayed slightly, and Kaye tightened her grip. Somehow he remained standing, although his blood slicked her hand. “I’ll be better than she was,” she heard him say. His voice was all breath.

When Kaye and Corny walked into the small apartment, Kate was lying on an air mattress in the middle of the floor. She was drawing in a magazine. Kaye could see that the little girl had blacked out Angelina Jolie’s eyes and was in the process of drawing bat wings over Paris Hilton’s shoulder blades.

“Cute kid,” said Corny. “Reminds me of you.”

“We got lo mein and veggie dumplings.” Kaye shifted the bag in her arms. “Grab a plate; it’s leaking on my hand.”

Kate scrambled to her feet and pushed back a tangle of dirty blond hair. “I don’t want it.”

“Okay.” Kaye set the cartons on the kitchen counter. “What do you want?”

“When’s Ellen coming home?” Kate looked up, and Kaye could see her brown eyes were rimmed with red, as though she’d recently been crying.

“When her rehearsal’s over.” The first time Kaye had met Kate, the girl had hidden under the table. Kaye wasn’t sure if this was better. “She said she wouldn’t be that late, so don’t freak out.”

“We don’t bite,” Corny put in.

Kate picked up her magazine and climbed up on Ellen’s bed, skooching over to the far corner. She tore off tiny pieces and rolled them between her fingers.

Kaye sucked in a breath. The air in the apartment tasted like cigarettes and human girl, at once familiar and strange.

Kate scowled ferociously and threw the balled-up paper at Corny. He dodged.

Opening the refrigerator, Kaye took out a slightly withered orange. There was a block of cheddar with mold covering one end. Kaye chopped off the greenish fur and put the remaining lump on a piece of bread. “I’ll grill you some cheese. Eat the orange while you wait.”

“I don’t want it,” Kate said.

“Just give her bread and water like the little prisoner she is.” Corny leaned back on Ellen’s bed, cushioning his head with a pile of laundry. “Man, I hate babysitting.”

Kate picked up the orange and threw it against the wall. It bounced like a leather ball, hitting the floor with a dull thud.

Kaye had no idea what to do. She felt paralyzed by guilt. The girl had every reason to hate her.

Corny switched on the tiny television set. The channels were fuzzy, but he finally found one that was clear enough to show Buffy staking three vampires as Giles clocked her with a stopwatch.

“Rerun,” Corny said. “Perfect. Kate, this should teach you everything you need to know about being a normal American teenager.” He looked up at Kaye. “There’s even the sudden addition of a sister in it.”

“She’s not my sister,” the girl said. “She just stole my name.”

Kaye stopped, the words like a kick to the gut. “I don’t have a name of my own,” she said slowly. “Yours is the only one I’ve got.”

Kate nodded, her eyes still on the screen.

“So what was it like?” Corny asked. “Faerieland?”

Kate tore off a larger chunk of the magazine, crushing it in her fist. “There was a pretty lady who braided my hair and fed me apples and sang to me. And there were others—the goat-man and the blackberry boy. Sometimes they would tease me.” She frowned. “And sometimes they would forget me.”

“Do you miss them?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I slept a lot. Sometimes I would wake up and the leaves would have changed without me seeing them.”

Kaye felt cold all over. She wondered if she’d ever get used to the casual cruelty of faeries, and hoped she wouldn’t. At least here, among humans, Kate would wake up each day until there was no more waking.

Kaye fidgeted with the sleeves of her sweater, worming her thumbs through the weave. “Do you want to be Kaye and I’ll be Kate?”

“You’re stupid and you don’t even act like a faery.”

“How about I make you a deal,” Kaye said. “I’ll teach you about being human and you teach me about being a faery.” She winced at how lame that sounded, even to her.

The frown hadn’t faded from Kate’s face, but she looked like she was thinking things through.

“I’ll even help,” Corny said. “We can start by teaching you human curse words. Maybe we could skip the faerie curses, though.” Corny took a deck of cards out of his backpack. Printed on the back of each was a different cinema robot. “Or we could try poker.”

“You shouldn’t bargain with me,” the girl said, as though by rote. She looked smug. “Mortal promises aren’t worth the hair on a rat’s tail. That’s your first lesson.”

“Noted,” Kaye said. “And, hey, we could also teach you the joys of human food.”

Kate shook her head. “I want to play the cards.”

By the time Ellen walked in, Corny had beaten them both out of all the spare change they’d found in their pockets or under Ellen’s bed.
Law & Order
was playing on the television, and Kate had agreed to eat a single fortune cookie. Her fortune had read:
Someone will invite you to a karaoke party.

“Hey, one of the guys on the street was selling bootleg movies for two bucks,” Ellen said, throwing her coat onto a chair and dumping the rest of her stuff onto the floor. “I got a couple for you kids.”

“Bet the back of someone’s head blocks the screen,” Kaye warned.

Ellen picked at the noodles on the counter. “Anyone eating these?”

Kaye walked over. “Kate didn’t want them.”

Ellen lowered her voice. “I can’t tell if she’s just a picky eater or if it’s some
thing
—doesn’t like sauces, barely can stand cooked food at all. Not like you. You used to eat like you had a tapeworm.”

Kaye busied herself packing up what was left of the food. She wondered if every memory would snag, like wool on a thorn, making her wonder if it was a symptom of her strangeness.

“Everything okay?” Ellen asked her.

“I guess I’m not used to sharing you,” Kaye said softly.

Ellen smoothed Kaye’s green hair back from her head. “You’ll always be my baby, Baby.” She looked into Kaye’s eyes a long moment, then turned and lit a cigarette off the stove. “But your kid-sitting days are just beginning.”

Luis didn’t want enchantments or glamours to pay for his brother’s funeral, and so he got what he could afford—a box of ashes and no service. Corny drove him to pick them up from an ancient funeral director who handed over what looked like a cookie tin.

Although the sky was overcast, the snow on the ground had turned to slush. Luis had been in New York since the duel, dealing with clients and trying to hunt up enough paperwork to prove that Dave really was his brother.

“What are you going to do with the ashes?” Corny asked, climbing back into the car.

“I guess I should scatter them,” said Luis. He leaned against the cracked plastic seat. Someone had tightened up his herringbone braids, and they shone like ropes of dark silk when he tilted his head. “But it freaks me out. I keep thinking of the ashes like powdered milk. You know, if I just add water, they’ll reconstitute into my brother.”

Corny rested his hands against the steering wheel. “You could keep them. Get an urn. Get a mantel to put it on.”

“No.” Luis smiled. “I’m going to take his ashes to Hart Island. He was good at finding things, places. He would have loved an entirely abandoned island. And then he’ll be resting near my parents.”

“That’s nice. Nicer than some funeral home with a bunch of relatives who don’t know what to say.”

“It could be on New Year’s. Like a wake.”

Corny nodded, but when he moved to put the key in the ignition, Luis’s hand stopped him. When he turned, their mouths met.

“I’m sorry…that I’ve been,” Luis said, between kisses, “distracted…by everything. Is it morbid…that I’m talking…?”

Corny murmured something that he hoped sounded like agreement as Luis’s fingers dug into his hips, pushing him up so they could crush their bodies closer together.

Three days later they brought another package of meat to the mermaids for a ride to Hart Island. Corny had found a vintage blue tuxedo jacket to put on over a pair of jeans, while Luis slouched in his baggy hoodie and engineer boots. Kaye had borrowed one of her grandmother’s black dresses and had pinned her green hair up with tiny rhinestone butterflies. The mermaids insisted on taking three of the hairpins along with the steak.

Corny looked back at the city behind them, shining so brightly that the sky over it looked almost like day. Even here, it was too light for stars.

“Do you think the coast guard is going to spot us?” Corny asked.

Luis shook his head. “Roiben said not.”

Kaye looked up. “When did you talk to him?”

Touching the scar beside his lip ring, Luis shrugged. “He came to see me. He said that he formally extended his protection. I can go wherever I want and see whatever I see in his lands and no one can put out my eyes. I got to tell you, it’s more of a relief than I thought it would be.”

Kaye looked down at her hands. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him tonight.”

“You’re a consort. Shouldn’t you be consorting?” Lutie asked. “Or maybe you can send him on a quest of his own. Make him build you a palace of paper plates.”

Kaye’s mouth quirked at the corner.

“You should definitely ask for a better palace than that. Reinforced cardboard at least.” Corny poked her in the side. “How did you solve his quest, anyway?”

She turned and opened her mouth. Someone shouted from the shore.

A girl with a head full of gingery stubble was calling to them as she dragged her canoe up onto the island. Beside her, a golden-eyed troll unpacked bottles of pink champagne and a package of snap-together plastic glasses. Another human girl danced on the sand, her paint-stained trench coat whirling around her like a skirt. She turned to wave when she spotted them.

Even Roiben was already there, leaning against a tree, his long woolen coat wet at the hem.

Kaye jumped out, grabbing the rope and splashing through the shallow water. She held the raft still enough for Luis and Corny to follow her.

“That’s Ravus,” Luis said, nodding in the direction of the troll. “And Val and Ruth.”

“Hey!” The stubble-headed girl—Val—called.

Luis squeezed Corny’s hand. “Be right back.”

Luis walked over to them just as the stubble-haired girl popped a bottle of champagne. The cork shot out into the waves and she laughed. Corny wanted to trail after Luis, but he wasn’t sure he was welcome.

Kaye tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked out at the waves. “You can see the whole city from here. Too bad we can’t see the ball drop.”

“This reminds me of something in a fantasy novel,” Corny told her. “You know, mysterious island. Me, with my trusted elven sidekick.”

“I’m your trusted elven sidekick?” Kaye snorted.

“Maybe not trusted,” Corny said with a grin. Then he shook his head. “It’s dumb, though. The part of me that loves this. That’s the part that’s going to get me killed. Like Dave. Like Janet.”

“Do you still wish you weren’t human?”

Corny frowned, glanced toward Luis and his friends. “I thought those were our
secret
wishes.”

“You showed me it!”

Corny snorted. “Even so.” He sighed. “I don’t know. Right now, being human is actually working out for me. It’s kind of a first. What about you?”

“I just realized that I don’t have to do normal things, being a faery,” Kaye said. “No need to get a job, right? I can turn leaves into money if I need it. No need to go to college—what would be the point? See above, no need for a job.”

“I guess education isn’t its own reward?”

“You ever think about the future? I mean, you remember what you and Luis were talking about in the car?”

“I guess.” He remembered that Luis had hoped Dave would go to school with him.

“I was thinking about opening a coffee shop. I thought that maybe we could have it be a front, and in the back there’d be a library—with real information on faeries—and maybe an office for Luis to break curses out of. You could work on the computers, keep the Internet running, make some searchable databases.”

“Yeah?” Corny could picture green walls and dark wood trim and copper cappuccino machines hissing in the background.

She shook her head. “You think it’s crazy, right? And Luis would never go for it, and I’m probably too irresponsible anyway.”

He grinned hugely. “I think it’s genius. But what about Roiben? Don’t you want to go be the Faerie Queen or whatever?”

Across the field, Corny saw the troll rest a massive, monstrous hand on Luis’s shoulder. Luis relaxed against the creature’s bulk. The girl with the dark hair—Ruth—said something and Val laughed. Roiben stepped away from the trees and started toward them. Lutie sprung off Kaye’s shoulder, launching herself into the air.

“I thought Luis hated faeries,” Kaye said.

Corny shrugged. “You know us humans. We talk an enormous amount of shit.”

The funeral was simple. They all stood in a semicircle around Luis as he held up the metal tin of ashes. They’d dug a shallow pit near the edge of the numbered grave markers and passed out champagne.

“If you knew my brother,” Luis said, his hand visibly shaking, “you probably already have your own opinions about him. And I guess they’re all true, but there doesn’t have to be only one truth. I’m going to choose to remember David as the kid who found the two of us a place to sleep when I didn’t know where to go, and as the brother that I loved.”