Page 25

“That was interesting,” I said, back at camp.

I was wrapped in the blanket, which was the only dry thing we had. Ray had found me sprawled on the rocks, soaking wet, which was how I knew that what I’d experienced had not been an illusion. Or if it had, something had wet me, the shore and our camp, leaving everything soaked except for the blanket I had thrown off earlier, which had landed just outside of the tideline.

My tunic had been laid flat to dry once more, although that would likely take a while as our fire was also out. Ray was attempting to get it going, with the little dry wood he’d been able to find, and I was talking some more. Not for any real reason; it almost seemed as if my brain was trying to make up for five hundred years of silence, or perhaps it simply needed to babble for a while to process what I’d seen.

Ray did not seem to mind, or even appear to be listening. He was cursing under his breath, although whether that was at the new kindling, which did not seem to want to light, or at fate, or at . . . I realized that I did not even know her name.

“Nimue,” he said, scowling.

I propped myself up on my elbows. “Do you really think so?”

He paused to look at me over his shoulder. “Really?”

I decided he had a point.

“So that is the Lady of the Lake,” I mused. It seemed that the Arthurian legends had failed to do her justice. Had completely failed.

“She looks different on Earth,” Ray said, and then paused to blow on a spark. It went out. He snarled at it.

“Oh?” I asked. “How?”

“More toned down. So people don’t get overwhelmed,” he added, shooting me a look.

I failed to blush. “She is overwhelming,” I agreed, and snuggled further into the blanket as a chill wind swept over us.

The material was scratchy against my skin, but I didn’t mind. I would not have minded a flail in order to have seen that. “She is very beautiful,” I said, only to have Ray pause again and glare at me over his shoulder.

“She’s a goddamned menace, that’s what she is, and possibly nuts! The fact that she knows we’re here is Not Good, okay? The idea was to stay under the radar!”

I did not point out that we had not been doing so well at that before, because he seemed tense.

“She did not appear hostile,” I said instead.

“Oh, she’s hostile.” It was grim. “The villagers avoid her like the plague ‘cause she keeps stealing their babies, always wanting more soldiers for her stupid wars—”

“What wars?”

He shrugged and started over with the fire, having assembled some more moss. “Take your pick; she fights with everybody. Aeslinn, ‘cause he keeps raiding and taking her lands. Caedmon, ‘cause they used to be married and there’s a lot of bad blood there. The dark fey, ‘cause she keeps trying to steal lands from them, every time Aeslinn does it to her, which means she’s basically fighting all the time. Or she was, anyway.”

“She was?”

He nodded. “She up and disappeared a decade or so ago, just noped right out of her job, her capitol, all her responsibilities. Left her armies in the field with no leadership, her nobles with no idea when or if she was coming back, and enemies all around. It caused chaos, but did she care? But that’s a demigod for you.”

“She is a demigod?”

That won me another look. “You sound surprised.”

“I am.” I thought back to the amazing creature I had been privileged to see. “I would have thought that she was the real thing.”

He gave a short bark of a laugh. “She’d like you. From everything I ever heard, she’s vane as hell. But no, she’s only half.”

I thought about that. It made me wonder how we mortals were supposed to fight beings sired by the gods. Even space vagabond gods. It did not seem fair.

But Ray would not have an answer to that any more than I did.

“Why did she leave her court?” I asked, instead.

“No clue.” His face was focused, as he was trying to light the moss without lighting himself. “Nobody has one. Least not the villagers, who started buying in bulk from people like me because, all of a sudden, the rules changed. And not the courtiers who—

“Ow, shit!”

A spark had hit his thumb, and despite the fact that it went out almost immediately, it left an inch-long wound. I frowned at it, even as it began to close up. “Let me,” I said, and took the flint and striker.

He made a be-my-guest gesture and I rolled onto my stomach and inched up to the little mound of moss. It was damp, which was why he was having so much trouble. I pushed it aside and substituted some small, dried twigs instead, one of which I crumbled almost into powder.

“What were you saying?” I asked.

“Just that her courtiers are fighting each other over the throne, ‘cause there’s no direct heir. Her loyal people are busy trying to keep the treasury from being plundered, and her armies are scattered. Some of the troops are with her, wherever she is; some are with her nobles—half of which went over to Aeslinn’s side after she left, although what they’re doing now is anyone’s guess; and some just fucked off and started raiding the common folk—”

“Hence the need to buy weapons from smugglers,” I said, concentrating.

Ray nodded. “The dark fey have started a surge, too, from what I hear, using the chance to get back some of their stolen lands. They’ve been raiding light fey villages, who have been raiding back, and the whole thing is devolving into a free for all. And what’s Nimue doing?”

“I have no idea,” I said, before blowing lightly on a promising spark.

“Nobody has any idea, that’s the problem.”

“Have you told the senate about this?” I asked, looking at him over my shoulder, because he had backed up, out of the spark zone.

Ray barked out a laugh. “The senate don’t seem real interested in my opinion.”

“But . . . it’s important information, isn’t it? They’re always saying that the war is hampered by the fact that they know so little about Faerie, yet you seem well informed—”

“About the common folk,” he said sardonically. “They don’t care about the common folk. Some villagers’ problems don’t mean a damn to the high and mighty senate.”

“But Dory—”

“I told Dory. And she tried to inform them, but nobody cares. If it’s not about the nobles or the court, they’re not interested.” His mouth twisted. “It’s another thing our worlds got in common.”

I thought about that. It seemed shortsighted on the part of the senate, but maybe it was simply that they found Faerie overwhelming, too. There was so much we didn’t know, and what we did seemed so fantastic . . . perhaps it was easier, focusing on the actions of a few people at court, rather than the masses beyond.

“Simpler ain’t smarter,” Ray said, and then he paused and pointed. “Ha! Ha, ha, ha!”

I looked back at the would-be fire to find a small flame flickering in the middle of the kindling. I held my breath, waiting to see if it would last, and another gust of wind threatened it. But I hunched my hands around it and the small fire held. Ray came over and slowly added larger and larger sticks, until he had a teepee of them, burning merrily.

Then he sat back and sighed in relief. “I hate camping.”

I thought it was rather fascinating, so far.

He just shook his head. “You ain’t done it enough. You might feel differently by the time we get out of here.”

I thought that entirely possible. Although I also thought that he might feel differently, too, had he seen her. But he had seen only the fluttering of images in his mind.

They had apparently been much clearer and more vivid than those I had experienced, perhaps because they had been aimed at him. They had blocked him from interfering in my and Nimue’s conversation, and essentially stunned him. Of course, we had traded memories since, but I was too tired to do a proper job of it. Yet what he’d shown me had been wonderful, just wonderful!

He had seen deep, underwater caves filled with almost no light, except for massive, bioluminescent fish. He had seen waves crashing onto distant shores above shallow lagoons, where the spears of sunlight from above made the coral reefs almost as bright as day. He had seen enormous flooded castles filled with treasures beyond imagining, guarded by people with the same fish tails that she had offered to me.

He had also seen other things that had made no sense, and which he’d only glimpsed: shipwrecks and storms and a mass of people with air bubbles magically affixed over their heads, holding those same energy spears we knew so well. They had been swimming downward, and swimming hard. But a kelp forest, as vast and dark as anything on land, had suddenly engulfed the scene, hiding them from view.

“Do you think Nimue was attacked?” I asked. “That perhaps that is why she left?”

But Ray only laughed.

“In water? Not unless somebody’s got a death wish!”

“Or help,” I pointed out. “You said her courtiers are fighting over her throne—”

“Yeah, because she’s AWOL. They toed the line as long as she was there, believe me.”

“But perhaps they resented it?”

He rolled his eyes. “You want this to be some epic story, like the ones the fey tell, but the truth is usually simpler and grubbier.”

“Such as?”

“Such as an already unstable queen goes nuts and fucks off to play with seashells.” He had laid down, and now he moved around, as if trying to get comfortable on the bare rocks. It did not seem to be working.

“Instead of a fishtail, she coulda offered you a damned tent!” he said.

“We have shelter,” I pointed out, looking up at the fingers, which were starting to glow once more. But he shook his head.

“I didn’t mean a regular tent. Fey nobles, when they travel, use a special kind.”

“How special?”

“Very. It seems tiny, just a regular old thing on the outside, but when you go in . . .”

“Yes?”

He grinned, probably because he knew he had me. I was quickly becoming fascinated with Faerie. I wanted to know about everything, even their tents.

“It’s like back at Dory’s house. You ever been in one of those little two-man things the fey parked in the garden? The ones they act like such martyrs over—oh, no, how could anybody be so cruel as to make us sleep outside?”

I shook my head. I assumed he was talking about Claire’s fey bodyguards, who had indeed been banished to the garden, because the house did not have room for them and they were messy. They had pitched small tents back there, bivouacking in in the backyard.

“Well, I have,” Ray said. “Not that I needed to; I recognized the type. I knew this orc chieftain once, and he’d taken one off some Green Fey idiot who’d ventured into his lands. The boy had a bet with some friends that he’d bring back an ogre’s tusks. Instead, he didn’t come back at all and the ogre ended up with his tent. I was there to trade and I guess the chief wanted to impress me, so I got the grand tour.”

“What was it like?” I asked eagerly.

“It was freaking awesome,” Ray said, his eyes shining in the firelight. “First, ‘cause they’re not really tents at all. They’re the entrances to portals—”

“That go where?”

“Nowhere. That’s the point. They fold back on themselves, creating a stable little pocket in non-space. The same kind that supernatural Hong Kong exists in, you know? They phased that thing so they could park it in the same space as regular old Hong Kong. But the two never touch—well, almost never—cause one is in real space and one in non-space, like the ley lines.”

“Or Louis-Cesare’s Veil.”

“Yeah. Or a fey tent.”

“So, what do they put in there?” I asked curiously, lying down beside him.

“Anything they want. Most of the time, its just to give ‘em more space, like a lot more. But some really slut ‘em up. The ogre had lucked out and ended up with a mansion with a couple dozen rooms, all of them filled with gorgeous fabrics, finely made furniture, crystal stemware, and opulent dishes . . . you name it. He even got the kid’s wardrobe. Of course, none of it fit . . .”

I laughed.

“But he paraded around in it anyway, until the predictable happened.”

“His trousers split?” I asked.

Ray turned his head to blink at me. For a moment, his expression reminded me of Nimue. “No.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I mean, they probably did, but that’s not the point. A portal is like any other spell: it needs magic to keep running. I guess it had some kind of talisman powering it, but those are just long-term batteries. They can soak up magic from the natural world, to extend their lives, but sooner or later, you gotta replace ‘em or they stop working.”

“What happens if they stop working?”

“Nobody knows, ‘cause nobody that it happened to ever came back to tell anyone. But most think that it’s one of two things: either the whole thing collapses and you’re compacted into a tiny, tiny speck of dust, or . . .”

“Or?”

“Or the portal closes up, but the room inside remains in a bubble of non-space, only with no way out. Leaving whoever is in there trapped and floating around forever. Or, you know, until the air runs out.”

I thought about it. “I think I would like a fey tent.”

“And take the risk?”

“I would remember to change the battery.”

Ray laughed. And then his expression faded to something more serious. “I thought you didn’t want things.”

I looked up at the fingers. They were glowing gold again, giving our tiny encampment a cozy feel. The fire seemed to banish the winds, enveloping us in warmth. It made me sleepy, something I could hear in my voice when I replied.

“I did once, when I was young.”

“Young as in, before the split, or . . .”

“Both. Before the split I mostly wanted food. Venice had all sorts of wonderful food, but we couldn’t always afford the better cuts of meat, or all the candy I would have liked. Which was just as well, or I’d have no teeth left.”

“And after?”

“Freedom. Being able to go where I chose, when I chose. I wanted to see so many things, but I could only go where Dory did.”

“But you were in control sometimes, too, right?”

“Yes, but never for long. Only when she was in serious danger, and her grip over her mind and emotions weakened. Panic was a conduit for me, and fear. But that meant that there was always a fight waiting when I emerged.” I rolled my head over to look at him. “I do not mind fights, but there were times . . .”

“Yeah?”

It was embarrassing. But he had been honest with me. “There were times when I wanted . . . to go shopping.”

Ray blinked at me. “What?”

I nodded. “Or to a café. We were in Paris once, long ago, and I saw this café. It was so beautiful, with a wisteria vine growing all over it. It was as big as a tree, as if it had been there for centuries. I remember wanting to sit at one of the tables and drink coffee and watch the people go by.”

“Why couldn’t you? Didn’t Dory ever do that?”

“Perhaps, but I was asleep then. I’d woken up that night because she was fighting a group of mages who had been stealing magic and making the deaths look like revenant attacks. They thought no one would notice that their victims had died from being drained of all their magic, if their corpses were also savaged. If you are missing much of your torso, people do not look far for another cause of death.”

“Yeah, I guess not.”

“Dory, who specialized in revenants, had been brought in by the French authorities to investigate and find the killer,” I added. “She had done so, and the mages did not like that. They ganged up on us and we were surrounded. I woke up in time to fight them off, but it’s strange. I don’t remember much of the fight at all. I was killing mages, but I was looking at that little café. It was closed, it being the middle of the night, but I was imagining myself in a pretty dress, sitting in the sunlight, drinking coffee . . .”

I trailed off. Ray didn’t say anything for a long time. That was all right. I found that I enjoyed his company even without speech. I did not entirely understand it, since he screamed and cursed a great deal, yet I found his presence soothing.

“And now?” he finally said. “Now that all this has happened. The fey and Faerie and—” he waved a hand around. “This. What do you want now?”

I stared at the flames for a minute. It did not help. “That is difficult to answer. I have not thought about it in so long, that it doesn’t even feel like the right question anymore.”

“What is the right question?”

I remembered what Mircea had asked, all those years ago, what I had once wondered and what Nimue had demanded tonight. Perhaps that was the question I should have been asking all along. Only I didn’t know the answer to that one, either.

“What am I?”