Lies and Prophecy (24 page)

“Why did they fail?”

“I can only guess.” Falcon inclined his head at Kim, who had come out from behind Julian's shoulder to stand at his side. “If they tried it on her, it would not work, because she is too human to be swayed. You, on the other hand … when you became a changeling, your spirit was pulled toward our world, but not to one faction or another. You are, quite simply, part sidhe—neither Seelie nor Unseelie. They cannot change that now, any more than they could subvert me.”

Julian had to believe him. If it had been possible for them to turn him Unseelie, they would have found a way. Gods knew they'd tried hard enough. It was a relief—but only a minor one. The Unseelie would find other tactics.

“What would that have done to him?” Kim asked, her voice quiet.

Falcon's gaze flicked to her again. “As it's never been done, I cannot say for certain. It would not, I think, have made him fully sidhe. His goals would simply have become theirs. He would have thought as they do, in every way.”

“So he would've wanted to help them control humanity.”

“Yes. This is why they tried it. If they could bring the changelings under their rule, they would be in an excellent position to extend their reach to everyone else.”

“And then what?”

Falcon shrugged carelessly. “You would be one more tool for them to use.”

“One more pawn in your chess game,” Kim said sharply.

The sidhe didn't answer that. Julian couldn't send her a calming touch, not without Falcon noticing. Instead he asked, “What now?”

“For my people?” Falcon shrugged. “We wait. There is little we can do at the moment.”

“Wait for what?” Kim asked.

“The solstice, or the next move of the Unseelie.” They all knew which would come first. “Their goal is to make humanity their tool, as I have said. When next they try, we shall oppose them, as before.”

Kim's raised eyebrow suggested that she didn't think much of the Seelie approach, if that was all they had in mind. “Do you have any idea what that will be, or when?”

“No. They do not tell us their plans.” Falcon's tone carried the faintest hint of condescension.

But Kim was more than equipped to stand up to condescension. “Really?” she said, the word dripping with insincere sweetness. “I thought you were their equals. Surely they haven't outsmarted you so thoroughly?”

Irritation flickered in the back of Falcon's eyes. Julian wondered if Kim recognized that for the victory it was. “It could be anything. They could destroy all of your people with psychic gifts, leaving your race vulnerable to such methods of control.”

Kim snorted. “Half the planet has gifts. That would take one hell of a war to pull off. Not that I don't believe they'd start a war, but I doubt even sidhe are terribly resistant to bullets—particularly if they've got iron in them.”

“Such considerations may or may not stop the Unseelie. They do not wish to be destroyed, but they are ruthless in accomplishing their goals.”

“Acceptable casualties?” Kim said, and Falcon nodded. It quieted her for the moment. She hadn't experienced that ruthlessness first-hand, not the way Julian had, but she had some idea what they were capable of.

“I assure you, I will let you know the moment my people decide anything,” Falcon said.

“Kind of you,” Julian replied, putting a bit of acid into his own voice.

The sidhe turned his attention back to Julian, dismissing Kim once more. “But what of you, changeling? You look improved. Their healing circle was beneficial?”

As if it was a surprise that humans could do useful magic. “It was,” Julian replied levelly. “It seems there are things we can do more effectively here.”

He hoped to annoy the sidhe, but failed. Falcon simply nodded. “Good. I have no doubt the interest of the Unseelie in you has not ended.”

“We'll find ways to defend ourselves.”

“Of course.” Falcon made a half-bow to them both. “Then I shall leave you, and return to my people with this news.”

Julian was almost glad to see him go. It was odd enough finding himself reacting to someone as ordinary people reacted to wilders, without the someone in question being a sidhe he personally disliked. But Kim said, “Not so fast.”

Falcon's back was stiff as he glanced over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“How can we contact you?”

He fluttered one hand in dismissal. “
I
will contact
you.
”

“Like hell you will,” she shot back. Julian felt her body tense with determination, and her voice echoed it. “You don't get to play the puppeteer, Falcon. We won't be led around by the nose, not any more.
Tell me how to reach you.
”

The sidhe went very still then. He turned slowly to face her, and when he spoke, for the first time, Julian thought he heard a faint echo of something that might be respect. No—that was too strong a word for it—but he no longer dismissed her as inconsequential. One wrist flicked, and she caught what he threw to her. “That shall be your link. You have the skill to reach me.”

Then he vanished, and even Julian couldn't follow where he'd gone.

~

They walked to Kinfield in silence. The object Falcon had tossed to Kim proved to be a small carving of a bird, fashioned from some stone neither of them recognized. Kim tucked it away in her pocket. They could figure out what to do with it after lunch.

If she even wanted lunch. Julian wasn't sure he did, though he knew he needed to eat. Projecting his gifts like that, the inhumanity of his sidhe blood—it might help him hold his own against Falcon, but what had it done to Kim?

He had to test it. The habit of avoiding touch with non-wilders was deeply ingrained, but Julian reached out and took Kim's ungloved hand, giving her every opportunity to pull back.

She didn't, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw her blush.

A surprising desire to laugh welled up in him. The possible end of the world, and he was conducting experiments in interpersonal contact. Hardly a good use of his time—and yet the warmth it brought gave him strength.

At the door of Kinfield, he heard someone call his name. Turning, he saw Grayson approaching through the snow. She made a tall, sinister figure in her dark coat, and her expression when she came closer wasn't very encouraging.

“We need to talk,” she said to Julian as she came within range.

The conversation he'd promised her had only begun to satisfy Grayson's curiosity. She could open his skull and scoop his brain out, and it still wouldn't be enough.

Kim startled him by stepping forward. “We're on our way to lunch. Can't it wait?”

Grayson didn't answer her question. “When I released you from the hospital, Julian, I seem to recall suggesting that it should be temporary.”

He shrugged. “You did.”

“You have yourself well under control, I'm sure, but I'm concerned about problems of security.”

She meant another attack by the Unseelie, of course. “You've made my instructions clear. If they show themselves, you'll know.”

“And what then? Do you think you can take them on alone?”

“No. But I don't intend to try. I've learned that lesson.” Painfully. “They won't try anything for a while. This last attempt exhausted them; that's why the Seelie were able to free me. And it failed anyway. The Unseelie will have to come up with a new plan.”

“How do you know they don't have one already?”

He closed his eyes, not trusting himself to keep them clear. “I picked it up.” And if she asked how, she was going to regret it.

But Grayson had the decency not to press. “Very well. But that wasn't all I wanted to ask you. I have instructions for when this Falcon returns to contact you.”

“Too late,” Kim said. “He's been and gone.”

The professor's head whipped around, and for the first time, Julian heard her swear.

“I got contact information out of him, though,” Kim added, her tone casual, as if they'd already figured out how to make it work. “So he's not completely running the show any more. What do you want us to do?”

“How are you keeping in touch with him?”

“He won't talk to you, not yet,” Julian said before Kim could answer that. “He doesn't know you. Leave it to us for now.” Grayson and Falcon would be a disaster. He wasn't about to let that meeting happen out of his sight.

Grayson scowled at him. He met her eyes without blinking. Their relationship had always been strange—half professor and student, half ex-Guardian and wilder. It meant she pushed him harder than she did other students in her classes. It also meant he wouldn't let her pull rank in situations when she didn't have it. The Guardian who first encountered a problem had precedence, unless someone else with relevant experience came in. And no one had experience with this.

“Fine,” Grayson said at last, biting the word off. “Ask him what the Unseelie were trying to do, and what they've tried in the past. Ask him what the Seelie and our own kind have done to oppose that. And try to find out how far we can rely upon them as allies.”

“I can already answer most of that,” Julian said, then cut off her attempted question. “But I'll tell you later. Neither Kim nor I have eaten yet today, and I seem to remember you also suggesting that keeping myself fed might be wise.” Then, without letting her respond to that, either, he nodded politely and opened the door. “Good-bye.”

Then he led Kim inside, and shut the door on Grayson without another word.

~

I kept my mouth shut while we were in the serving lines, since even the buffer zone that tended to exist around Julian wasn't the same as real privacy. But once we got back up to his room with our food, I let out the words I'd been swallowing. “I can't believe you spoke to her like that.”

Julian grimaced as he set his tray down on the floor. “I was taking some of my irritation at Falcon out on her. But I can't blame it all on that. I'm just sick of this, I guess. Sick of being questioned—like a lab rat that can talk.”

I could sympathize with that. “She's on our side, though.”

“I know.” Julian scraped his fingers through his hair. “I didn't exactly intend that.”

You have yourself well under control.
Grayson had seemed to think Julian was all right. But looking at him, I could see that he was still frayed, still not quite himself again. The Julian I'd known these past two years wouldn't have let his emotions slip like that.

The Julian I'd known also wouldn't have admitted these mistakes to me. But that was one change I was happy to see.

Grayson wasn't the only one he'd reacted to, though. Julian had admitted as much a moment ago. “What is it between you and Falcon? If you'd been cats, your fur would have been standing on end.”

Julian gave the apple he was cutting a sour look. “He blames me for the failure of the changelings.”

Hearing him use the word shocked me all out of measure. It wasn't the worst slur out there, but it was bad enough that I almost stuttered in asking my next question. “What failure?”

“It's a long story.” Julian eyed me and wisely chose to continue anyway. “When our worlds were about to separate, the Unseelie imprisoned all the human-sidhe crossbreeds in the Otherworld—there weren't that many of them—and wiped the memory of their existence from the rest of humanity. They were trying to make sure that when they returned, we'd be completely ignorant of magic, and therefore vulnerable. I think they might even be responsible for why we remember so little of the truth. They may have worked some kind of block, that would send our theories askew.”

I hoped that was the case; it would help us save face. Even allowing for the thousands of years that had passed since that prehistoric event, we'd forgotten a hell of a lot. “The crossbreeds must have gotten back, though, or none of us would be blooded.”

Julian nodded. “The Seelie managed to free them, right before the split happened. They sent all the crossbreeds back into our world, to keep the truth alive and re-teach humanity what it had lost.”

My intuition made a sudden leap. “They dumped them in the British Isles, didn't they.”

Pleasure warmed Julian's expression. “There's no way to prove it, since the sidhe have no concept of human geography, but that's what I think, too. It would explain why the Celtic legends retained more of the truth than others did.”

“We're still missing a lot of information, though. Falcon blames you for that?”

“More or less.”

“But that's
stupid,
” I said, putting my fork down in annoyance. “You're not at fault for what happened however long ago—it had to have been thousands of years, at least. You can only work with what you have, and you weren't given much.”

Julian shrugged wearily. “I know that. You know that. And even Falcon knows it. But the ones who failed in their duty are out of his reach, and I'm the most accessible target he has.”

“Even though the crossbreeds were set an impossible task.” I wished the sidhe were there right then, so I could vent my fury on him.

“Yes. The Seelie laid a magical injunction on them, a
geis.
There are no excuses for failing a
geis.
None.”

I opened my mouth for an angry response to that, and then stopped. A
geis.
On the crossbreeds. “Is that what makes wilders behave the way they do?”

Julian went very still, and for a long moment he did not respond. I bit my lip, less certain than when I'd said it. At last he nodded, very slowly. “It might be.” He shook his head in amazement. “They were instructed to keep alive the true history, and to ensure magic remained controlled, so long as it continued to function. Gods.” One hand raked through his hair again. It seemed to be a nervous gesture of his. Was he doing it more lately because of the situation, or because he was willing to show me he was stressed? “It makes a great deal of sense.”