Tithe (3 page)

There was no one there.

She half turned toward the highway. She could still see the road from where she was standing. What was she doing? The sound must have carried over from the houses beyond the thin river that ran along the back of the woods. No one else would be dumb enough to go trooping through wet, dripping woods in the middle of the night.

Kaye walked back up to the road, picking her way through spots that looked somewhat drier than others. Burrs had collected along her stockings, and she bent down to pull them off.

“Stay where you are.” She jumped at the voice. The accent was rich and strange, though the words were pronounced precisely.

A man was sprawled in the mud only a few steps from her, clutching a curved sword in one hand. It shone like a sliver of moonlight in the hazy dark. Long pewter hair, plastered wetly to his neck, framed a face that was long and full of sharp angles. Rivulets of rain ran over the jointed black armor he wore. His other hand was at his heart, clutching a branch that jutted from his chest. The rain there was tinted pink with blood.

“Was it you, girl?” He was breathing raggedly.

Kaye wasn’t sure what he meant, but she shook her head. He didn’t look much older than she was. Certainly not old enough to call her “girl.”

“So you haven’t come to finish me off?”

She shook her head again. He was long-limbed—he would be tall if he were standing. Taller than most people, taller than any faerie she had ever seen—still, she had no doubt that was what he was, if for no other reason than the pointed tops of his ears knifing through his wet hair—and that he was beautiful in a way that made her breath catch.

He licked his lips. There was blood on them. “Pity,” he said quietly.

She took a step toward him, and he twisted into a defensive crouch. Wounded as he was, he still moved swiftly. Hair fell forward across his face, but his eyes, shining like mercury, studied her intently.

“You’re a faerie, aren’t you?” she said soothingly, holding her hands where he could see them. She had heard stories of the court fey—the Gentry—from Lutie-loo, but she had never seen one. Maybe that was what he was.

He stayed still, and she took another half step toward him, holding out one hand to coax him as if he were some fascinating, dangerous animal. “Let me help you.”

His body was trembling with concentration. His eyes never flickered from her face. He held the hilt of his sword in a white-knuckled grip.

She did not dare take another step. “You’re going to bleed to death.”

They stayed like that a few more minutes
before he slumped down to one knee in the mud. He bent forward, fingers clutching the leaves, and spat red. The wet lashes over his half-closed eyes were as silver as a safety pin.

She took two steps and knelt down next to him, bracing herself with shaking hands. This close, she could see that his armor was stiff leather sculpted to look like feathers.

“I cannot draw the arrow myself,” he said softly. “They are waiting for me to bleed a little more before they come against my blade.”

“Who is waiting?” It was hard to understand that someone had shot him with a tree branch, but that seemed to be what he was saying.

“If you would help me, draw this arrow.” His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “If not, then push it in as deep as you can and hope that it kills me.”

“It will bleed more,” Kaye said.

He laughed at that, a bitter sound. “Either way, no doubt.”

She could see the despair in his face. He obviously believed her to be part of some plan to kill him. Still, he slid his body back until he could lean against the trunk of an oak. He was braced, waiting to see what she would do.

She thought of the faeries she had known hen she was a child—impish, quick things—no mention of wars or magical arrows or enemies, certainly no lies, no deception. The man
bleeding in the dirt beside her told her how wrong her perceptions of
Faery
had been.

Her fingers flinched away from the wound in his chest. Her lungs turned to ice as she looked at the grisly wound. “I can’t do it.”

His voice stayed soft. “What do they call you?”

“Kaye,” she said. There was silence for a moment as she noticed the cold cloud of her breath rise up with the word.

“I’m Roiben.” Faeries didn’t give their names easily, even part of their names, although she had no idea why. He was trying to show her that he trusted her, maybe trying to make up for the assumptions he had made about her. “Give me your hand.”

She let him take her hand in his and guide it to the branch. His hand closed over hers, both of them chilled and wet, his fingers inhumanly long and rough with calluses. “Just close your hand on it and let me pull,” he said. “You don’t even have to look. As long as I’m not touching it, I might be able to draw it out.”

That shamed her. She had told him that she wanted to help him, he was in a whole lot of pain, and it was no time for her to be squeamish. “I’ll do it,” she said.

Roiben let go of her hand, and she gave a sharp tug. Although his face constricted with pain, the branch only pulled out a short way.

Were there really other faerie folk in the
trees, waiting for him to be weak enough to defeat? Kaye thought that if so, now was a great time for them to come down and have a go at it.

“Again, Kaye.”

She took note of the angle of the armor this time, changing her position so that the branch couldn’t catch on one of the plates. She raised herself to one knee, braced, and then stood, pulling upward as hard as she could.

Roiben gave a harsh cry as the branch slid free of his chest, its iron tip black with blood. His fingers touched the wound and he raised them, slick with blood, as if suddenly disbelieving that he had been shot.

“Very brave,” he said, touching his wet fingers to her leg.

Kaye tossed the stick away from her. She was shuddering, and she could taste the ghost of blood in her mouth. “We have to stop the bleeding. How does your armor come off?”

He seemed not to understand her at first. He just looked at her with a kind of incredulity. Then he leaned forward with a groan. “Straps,” he managed.

She came and sat behind him, feeling over the smooth armor for buckles.

A sudden wind shook the branches above, raining an extra shower of heavy droplets down on them, and Kaye wondered again about faeries in the trees. Her fingers fumbled
in her haste. If those faeries were still afraid of Roiben, they didn’t have to worry for much longer—she was betting that it would be only a few more minutes before he passed out entirely.

To get off his breastplate, she not only had to detach it from the backplate at his shoulders and sides—there were also straps that connected it to the shoulderplates and to his legplates. Finally, she managed to peel it off his chest. Underneath, the bare skin was mottled with blood.

He tipped back his head and closed his eyes. “Let the rain clean it.”

She pulled off her coat and hung it on one of the branches of the tree. Her shirt was ripped already, she reminded herself as she took it off. She tore it into long strips and began winding them around Roiben’s chest and arms. He opened his eyes when she touched him. His eyes narrowed, then widened. Their color was mesmerizing.

He straightened up, horrified. “I didn’t even hear you rip the cloth.”

“You have to try to stay awake.” Kaye’s cheeks felt so warm that the cold rain actually felt good against them. “Is there somewhere you can go?”

He shook his head. Fumbling near him, he picked up a leaf and wiped it against the underside of the leather breastplate. It came away shining red. “Drop this in the stream. I—there
is a kelpie there—it is no sure thing that I will be able to control her in this weather, but it is something.”

Kaye nodded quickly, although she had no idea what a kelpie was, and made to take the leaf.

He did not let it go immediately. “I am in your debt. I mislike not knowing how I must repay it.”

“I have questions …”

He let her take the leaf. “I will answer three, as full and well as is within my power.”

She nodded. Like a faerie tale. Fine; it wasn’t as if she had wanted anything from him anyway.

“When you drop the leaf in the water, say Roiben of the Unseelie Court asks for your aid.”

“Say to what?”

“Just say it aloud.”

She nodded again and ran in the direction of the water. The steep bank of the stream was choked with vegetation and broken glass. Roots, swept bare of the mud that should have surrounded them, sat above the bank like overturned baskets or ran along the ground like the pale arms of half-buried corpses. She forbade herself to think of that again.

She squatted down and set the leaf, blood side down, into the water. It floated there, spinning a little. She wondered if it was too close to the bank, and tried to blow it farther out.

“Roiben of the Unseelie Court asks for your help,” she said, hoping that she had gotten it right. Nothing happened. She said it again, louder, feeling foolish and frightened at the same time. “Roiben of the Unseelie Court needs your help.”

A frog surfaced and began to swim in her direction. Would that have something to do with a kelpie? What kind of help were they supposed to get from a shallow, polluted stream?

But then she saw that she had been mistaken. What she had taken for the eyes of a frog were actually hollow pits that quavered as
something
swam through the water toward her. She wanted to run, but fascination combined with obligation rooted her to the spot. Hollow pits formed into flaring nostrils on the snout of a black horse that rose up from the black water as if created from it. Moss and mud slid from its dripping flanks as the thing turned its head to regard Kaye with luminous white eyes.

She could not move. How many minutes passed as she stared at those mottled gray flanks, smooth as sealskin, and stared into the impossible glow of those eyes? The creature inclined its neck.

Kaye took a half step backward and tried to speak. No words came.

The horse-thing snuffled closer to her, its hooves sinking in the mud, snapping twigs. It
smelled of brackish water. She took another careful step backward and stumbled.

She had to say something. “This way,” she managed finally, pointing through the trees. “He’s this way.”

The horse moved in the direction she pointed, speeding up to a trot, and she was left to follow it, nearly shaking with relief. When she got to the clearing, Roiben was already straddling the creature’s back. His breastplate had been haphazardly strapped on. She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding.

He saw her emerge from under the canopy of branches and smiled. His eyes seemed darker in the moonlight. “Were I you, I would stay clear of the Folk in the future. We are a capricious people, with little regard for mortals.”

She looked at him again. There were scratches on his armor that she didn’t remember. Could he have been attacked? He could barely lift his head before—it was impossible to believe that he could have fought with someone. “Did something happen?”

His smile deepened, wiping the weariness from his face. His eyes glittered. “Don’t waste your questions.” Then the horse rode, moving like no living thing, darting between trees with unearthly speed and grace. Leaves flurried from kicks of its hooves. Moonlight glowed along its flanks.

Before she could think, she was alone in
the wood. Alone and shivering and proud of herself. She moved to retrieve her coat, and a glimmer of light caught her eye. The arrow.

She knelt and picked up the branch with its iron tip. Her finger ran up the rough bark and touched the too-warm metal. A shudder went through her, and she dropped it back in the mud. The woods were suddenly menacing, and she walked as quickly as she could back toward the road. If she started running, she didn’t think she’d be able to stop.

Kaye dug her feet into the muddy slope that marked the edge of her grandmother’s lawn and heaved herself up. She slid past the overflowing trash can, the broken-down Pinto, the rusted coffee cans wired together as a fence for a wilted herb garden.

All the lights in the house seemed to be on, highlighting the grubby curtains. Blue lights flickered in the living room where the TV was.

She opened the backdoor and walked into the kitchen. Pots and pans, crusted with food, were piled in the sink. She was supposed to have washed them. Instead, she went to the cupboard and took out a bowl, filled it with milk, then put a piece of stale white bread on top of it. It would have to do, she thought as she carefully opened the door and set it on the step—after all, the only things likely to come for it anymore were neighborhood cats.

Kaye crept into the living room.

On the other side of the staircase, Ellen was sitting in front of the television, eating one of the miniature Snickers Grandma had bought for the trick-or-treaters. “Leave me the fuck alone,” she muttered to the drink in front of her.

“You think I don’t know anything. Okay, you’re the smart one, right?” Kaye’s grandmother said in that too-sweet voice that pissed off Kaye so much. “If you’re so smart, then how come you’re all alone? How come all these men just use you and leave you? How come the only one to take you in is your old, stupid mother?”

“I heard you the first million fucking times you said it.”

“Well, you’re going to hear it again,” Kaye’s grandmother said. “Where is your daughter tonight? It’s almost one in the morning! Do you even care that she’s out gallivanting around who knows where, trying her damnedest to turn out just like—”

“Don’t you start in on my daughter!” Kaye’s mother said with surprising vehemence. “She’s just fine. You leave her out of your bitching.”

Kaye bent her head down and tried to walk up the stairs as quickly and quietly as she could.

She caught her own reflection in the hallway mirror, mascara and glitter eyeshadow
smeared across her cheeks and under her eyes, running in crusted and glittering streaks that looked like they were made by tears. Her lipstick was smudged and dull, arching across her left cheek where she must have wiped it.