Keys and Curses (Shadow Book 2) (2 page)

She looked over her shoulder at Flower. “What’s wrong with your husband?”

Flower’s voice took on the familiar thread of steel. “Do I look like the kind of fool who’d marry a vibe addict?”

“I don’t know what you muses get up to in private. Vibe addict, you say?”

Flower’s sigh was palpable. The contempt in it cut him like a dagger. “Correct.”

Silence. The Freakin Fairy turned his face this way and that, studying him. “Hmph. For how long?”

“Twenty or thirty years now, on and off. He’s tried to get off, but-”

“But he didn’t, blah, blah, blah, spare me, Muse. Thirty years on the vibe, why isn’t he dead?”

“I don’t know. I brought him to seek your help.”

“I know. We’ve been watching you blunder around our forest for days.”

Flower’s voice rose, laid bare the anxiety he knew she’d hidden under layers of hard, stubborn determination all these weeks. “Why didn’t you make yourself known sooner?”

“It was too much fun watching.” The Freakin Fairy tugged on Nikifor’s ear. “Don’t have long, do you sonny? You’ll be dead in two days.”

“Dead?” Nikifor tried to focus on the fairy, but all he could see was the shadow of the Tormentor. The creature who haunted him would never release him that easily. Death was very, very far away.

The Freakin Fairy snorted. “Pathetic.”

“Will you help us?” Flower didn’t plead, and she didn’t demand. Her words fell on Nikifor’s brain like flat, exhausted silver doves dropping out of the air after a long, long flight.

“Why should we?”

Flower dug into the rucksack she carried, pulled out a wooden box and opened it. “I brought payment.”

The Freakin Fairy went over to look in the box.

Nikifor couldn’t see the box, but he knew what was in it. He’d traded his last spare shirt and his dead father’s gold ring for the tumbled pile of springs, screws, watch hands, pendulums, shiny beads and nails. He turned his head away. The fairy peered into the box, her eyes wide. Her fingers trembled over it, but she snatched her hand back. “You offer this rubbish? In return for fixing up that great lump?”

Flower closed the box. “If you don’t want them-”

The Freakin Fairy snatched the box from her. “They’ll do for now. But he has to do something for us when he’s cured as well.”

“That is acceptable.”

Nikifor breathed out. An almost indescribable relief filled him, until he looked up and found the shadow bending over him.

“Weakness is disloyalty.” The Tormentor raised the glowing brand.

The flesh on his wrist smoked. Anger flared. He clawed at the scar, determined to dig it out and defy the monster once and for all.

“You!” The Freakin Fairy shook a fist at him. “Stop that!”

He took to the scar with his teeth.

“Is that really necessary?” Flower’s voice asked from far away.

“You want him fixed or what?”

A rush of air and a blow to the back of the head.

Darkness.

When Nikifor next opened his eyes, five Freakin Fairies dragged him along a forest floor. Flower followed behind; beside her walked the shadow of the Tormentor.

He closed his eyes again.

CHAPTER TWO

Flower had no idea just how exhausted she was until the Freakin Fairies dragged Nikifor out of her sight. She made to follow, only to meet with a terse “stay there, Muse.”

She obeyed. Freakin Fairies might be short, but they were hot-headed and handy with their blades and she had no intention of ending up a skeleton holding up a `beware of the fairies’ sign in a backwoods like Quicksilver Forest.

She sank onto one of the tree stumps crowded around the deserted fire pit and put her head in her hands. What she wouldn’t have given a couple of decades ago for a chance to study a Freakin Fairy tribe up close. Not now. Now all she wanted to do was curl up under a blanket in an actual bed and sleep. Warmth from the smouldering fire barely reached her. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering.

This was madness. She’d got Nikifor this far, but the Freakin Fairies could still take it into their heads to kill him. The one muse who could have helped him had been missing for months, maybe years, who knew? King Pierus had always preferred solitude. Anything might have happened to him.

She let out a long sigh. Her breath warmed her palms. Nikifor had been half-dead and out of his mind when she found him three weeks ago. Getting him off her hands was both a blessing and a curse, because now she had to think about what to do next.

“Muse.”

Flower lowered her hands. A very old Freakin Fairy watched her from across the fire. He had a full head of dreadlocks, every one of them quite white. A map of lines ran across skin stretched taut over prominent cheekbones and a hooked nose. A thick grey rabbit pelt covered his shoulders and he carried a staff topped with a goat’s skull that had been coated in hardened quicksilver.

Flower put her hand to her forehead to show respect. “Elder.”

The wrinkles around the old fairy’s eyes deepened. “Who are you calling old?”

Flower inwardly cursed the mistake. Anyone would think she was an amateur, not a seasoned diplomat. “I’m sorry, I-”

“You’re sorry? That’s what your friend kept saying. What have you both done?”

Exasperation set in. “We did nothing!”

“I doubt that.” He leaned forward and grinned, revealing incisors as silver as his goat skull. “Muses are rarely innocent.”

Flower kept silent rather than get herself in any deeper trouble.

After a moment or two of waiting for her reply, the elder gave a deep chuckle. “What’s your name?”

“Flower.”

He raised an eyebrow.

Her cheeks reddened with embarrassment and for the seven millionth time she cursed her mother’s obsession with places. Other muses had good, decent names that described the kinds of things they inspired. She didn’t. “Flower of the Great North Island Beyond the Night Flickered Sea.”

“I can see why you’re sorry,” the Freakin Fairy said. “I would be too with a name like that.” He gave her a long, hard stare.

Flower squirmed. She was tired, hungry, fed up and not in the mood to kowtow to fairies right now.

“I am Coalfire Quicksilver,” he finally said. “Head of the Quicksilver clan. Not elder. We’re not Bloody Fairies, we don’t go in for all that council of elders rubbish. I’m the boss and that’s the end of it.”

Flower’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. She hadn’t dealt with Bloody Fairies since the Vampire War ended twenty-five years ago. “I apologise,” she said. “We have travelled far and I must plead exhaustion.”

Coalfire raised a finger. “You’re not finished yet.”

Flower shook her head. “No, I’m not finished. If you will agree to care for my friend, I must travel on.”

“Why?”

“To find my king.”

The ghost of a grimace crossed his face. “Why?”

“Because-” she looked about, even though there was nobody but Freakin Fairies about to hear the conversation. Looking over her shoulder had become second nature lately. “-I think he is in terrible danger.”

“Why?”

She shifted on her seat and chose her words carefully. “Things have changed in Shadow City.”

Coalfire leaned toward her. His eyes were so heavily flecked with silver there was almost no black left. “Why?”

Flower was about a hairs breadth away from losing her temper and storming away. Everyone knew it was pointless discussing politics with fairies. She glared. “Look, I really don’t have time for this, I need to go find the king!”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know why the Guild locked me out of my office!” She stopped, took a deep breath, pushed her long hair behind her shoulders and rearranged the folds of her skirt. “I apologise for yelling, it was very impolite of me.”

“I’d be apologetic too if I was a muse,” Coalfire said. “Got a lot to answer for, you lot.”

She sighed. There he went, just like every other fairy in Shadow. “Surely you realise the actions of a few muses do not reflect–”

“Don’t care. Why were you locked out of your office?”

“I don’t know.” She obviously wasn’t going to get anywhere until she told him the whole story. Or at least, as much as you could tell to a fairy. She blundered into it with what little dignity she could muster. “Ever since the Vampire Wars ended, I have had the privilege of being my king’s Chief Representative Diplomat in Shadow City. I have been responsible for ensuring all the tribes were respected and all of Shadow’s cultures were equally represented to the Guild, in addition to overseeing the welfare of all the fairy tribes.”

Coalfire spat into the fire at the mention of the Guild and sneered. “I’m sure that was a thankless job.”

It had often felt that way, but Flower chose not to comment. “A year ago I started an investigation into reports of disappearances among the Bloody Fairies and the Bloomin Fairies.”

Coalfire’s face hardened. Now she had his full attention. “What did you find out?”

“Nothing.” Flower bit out the word. “The Guild blocked me at every turn. The Moon Troopers won’t talk to me. And when I tried to use my wider contact network, I discovered there were muses missing too. I threatened to go to the Shadow City Chronicle with the story if the Guild did not conduct a full investigation.”

Coalfire shook his head. “And now you wander about asking why you got locked out of your office? I thought muses were meant to be intelligent.”

Flower ignored the insult. “That was when I realised no order has come direct from the king in months, perhaps years. I believe he is in grave danger. I must find him and help, because he is the only one who can stop whatever it is that is happening.”

“And what is happening?” Coalfire poked at the fire with his goat’s head, sending up a shower of sparks.

“I don’t know.” Flower stood up and brushed off her skirts. “And that’s all I can tell you. Now with all due respect, I must take my leave.”

“Sit.”

She sat back down. One didn’t argue with Freakin Fairy chiefs when they gave an order in that tone of voice.

“You will not leave,” Coalfire said.

Flower opened her mouth to argue.

He held up a hand for silence. “You will stay for as long as your friend does. We are not so backwater here as to have not heard of the Muse Champion Nikifor and what he is capable of. If the treatment fails and he decides we are the enemy, you will be needed to control him.”

“Control him? I barely got him here!”

“Not my problem.” Coalfire gave her another gleaming grin. “Don’t worry about your king. That long tall streak of nastiness can look after himself for a few more weeks.” He pointed at a small, silver-daubed hut across the village. “That house is for guests. Go get some sleep, you look like you’ve been dragged sideways through a cyclone.”

Flower had to stoop to get through the door. Inside, she hit her head on the roof anytime she straightened her back, but she was tired enough to not really care. She’d argue with Coalfire Quicksilver until she was blue in the face, but she’d do it later. 

There was an oil lamp inside the door; she lifted it to look around the dark interior of the hut. The light reflected off random splashes of silver on the walls, an empty table, a basin next to it and in the far corner, a bed.

Flower kicked off her boots, which had holes in them, then peeled off her wet socks. Feeling guilty because she was sure Nikifor was not being afforded this luxury, she left the lantern on the table and laid down on the bed. Her feet hung over the end. The blanket was rough and smelled like smoke, but she didn’t care. She pulled it up and closed her eyes.

For a while she drifted in a pleasant, warm daze. She hadn’t slept in a bed in weeks. Even when she had slept it had been with one eye open in case of Moon Troopers, but there had been none. She sighed and turned over.

The key around her neck throbbed in time with her heart. Right on the edge of sleep was the time she could best visit the five thousand and forty six artists she was responsible for inspiring. She clasped her right hand around the key and let herself drift through the lives of each and every one of them. Ali the stonemason was happy. He carved almost every day. Sculptures grew under his hands like living creatures. Wendy was locked in her bedroom writing secret poetry under the light of a full moon again. Shakti–her real name was Edna, but Flower had helped her choose a new one–was studying classical Indian dance.