Strangeness and Charm: The Courts of the Feyre (32 page)

  "You need to be careful, saying things like that," said Garvin.

  "Because Kane's fey, or because he's a Lord of the Seven Courts?"

  "Both, and because he's liable to tear your heart out and eat it," said Garvin.

  "He's promised not to harm me."

  "Then it's his word that's standing between you and sudden death. How far do you want to test it?"

  "Point taken."

  Garvin folded his hands. "I'd rather you didn't test his level of patience."

  "My point is that it's not an appropriate question in either case. Sure, Kane is one of the Lords and Ladies, but why is it anyone's business whether Andy can be a successful father? That's between him and his partner, if he has one, surely?"

  "The courts have an interest in the fertility of the halfbreeds, you must understand that. It's why they exist."

  "No," I said. "It's how they came to be, but it's not why they exist. They exist for themselves, not because someone in power called them into existence, and not because they live to serve. They are themselves. We have to stop thinking of them as an experiment, and start thinking of them as people. Otherwise this will all fall apart. Don't you see?"

  "I live to serve," said Garvin, "and I don't see anything wrong with service."

  "Then that's your choice," I pointed out, standing, "but it's not their choice and you can't force it upon them."

  I left him with that thought, and as I left I thought I heard him make some comment behind me, but it was lost in the background noise. It seemed to me that Garvin was more difficult to deal with each day, but perhaps it was simply that I kept bringing him more and more unsolvable problems.

  I stretched my back and rotated my shoulders. It had been long day and I needed rest. I resolved to go and find Blackbird and try for an early night, though my son might have other ideas.

 
 

I was woken by a familiar sound. I lay in bed with Blackbird breathing softly beside me, listening to our son grizzling to himself in the next room. Miraculously we'd managed an early night and collapsed into bed with the zealous vigour that parents of young children have when given the chance to be in bed together – we were both rapidly asleep. Now we were paying the price. My son was awake and hungry, and shortly he would make himself heard whether we were asleep or not.

  I slipped from under the covers, tucking the quilt around Blackbird so the chill of the night air wouldn't wake her. If anything, she'd been more exhausted than I was, so I would take the opportunity to feed the baby without waking her, and let her sleep.

  Our son was mostly breastfed, but I could make a bottle up if needed and if he was hungry enough, he would take it. It wasn't quite as comforting as the warmth of his mother but at three in the morning he would have to take what he could get. I pulled on a T-shirt and some sweat pants, and went through to his room.

  There was a dim red light, placed in one of the electric sockets by the stewards, so I could see he wasn't exactly awake yet. That wouldn't last, though, as he was already restless and would toss and turn until he woke himself up and demanded food. I reached down and picked him up, resting him against my shoulder while I wrapped a blanket round him. He made small noises, but was momentarily appeased by another warm body.

  I padded back through our bedroom, grabbing the change bag on the way through, and slipped outside into the hall, closing the door softly behind me. Blackbird turned over, but didn't wake.

  Outside it was chillier, but it was too late to go back for something warmer to wear. The temperature in the old house dropped at night – the product of bad insulation and rooms with high ceilings. As a Warder, trained to steel myself against adverse conditions, I could put up with cold feet.

  I walked through the house in near silence, punctuated by the occasional hoot of an owl outside. There were no people, no stewards. The whole house was asleep.

  As we made our way downstairs, my son nuzzled against me and then started chewing his hand – a sure sign of impending hunger. I navigated through the halls and rooms in darkness to the back kitchen. The light in the fridge came on when I opened the door, and I found that Lesley, bless her, had left a feed made up, saving me the task of making one up and then waiting for it to cool. I ran some warm water into a pan to take the chill off the milk.

  My son woke up to the fact that food was imminent and started making a lot of noise. I walked up and down with him a few times, but it wasn't going to distract him. Hungry babies are not easily distracted. They are very focused people.

  Carrying my noisy bundle back through the house to one of the abandoned sitting rooms. I dropped the change bag on one side, placed some pillows to support my back and made myself comfortable. I tested the milk on the inside of my arm out of habit, finding it only just warm enough. Still, he would eat it cold if he was hungry enough.

  Even though I placed the teat of the bottle against his lips where he could feel it, the yelling continued for a few moments, then ceased, to be replaced by a rhythmic sucking. I breathed a sigh of relief, pushed back into the armchair, and got comfortable. I talked to him as he fed, telling him stories about bears and unicorns in the sort of stream-of-consciousness story that fathers make up at three in the morning, and gradually the slurping slowed as his hunger eased.

  Now we had the difficult bit. I smiled at all I'd learned from Alex. It was no good trying to feed a sleepy baby. They ate some, slept for half an hour and then woke you up again for more. You needed to get their attention, and cold nappy cream was the way to do it.

  I spread the change mat on the floor and laid my semi-comatose child on the mat. As soon as I started to undress him he woke up with a vengeance, screaming blue murder that I was not only changing his nappy, but using freezing cold nappy cream as well. I endured his protests and ineffectual attempts to fend me off, and in a few moments he was dry and clean, the dirty nappy set aside and his milk waiting for him. That didn't stop him yelling.

  By now, though, he was awake again, and placated with some more milk, so I could sit back and let him finish it off. He was comfort eating now that his initial hunger was sated, but I wanted him to last until morning.

  "You do that very well."

  "Amber! What are you doing here?" There was a shape across the room which I'd taken for a shrouded chair, but which now resolved itself into a sitting person. My son shifted at the alarm in my voice, and then went back to drinking as I relaxed again.

  "I didn't want to disturb you," she said.

  "Hmmph. If I'd dropped him we would have disturbed the whole house." The shape didn't move. Even though I knew she was there, she was still difficult to see in the dark. "How long have you been there?"

  "Since before you came in."

  "How did you know I was coming in here?" I asked.

  "It's where you came before."

  "You've watched me do this before? Without saying anything?"

  "Only once. I didn't disturb you then. You seemed content." She sat up and moved to another chair where I could see her better.

  "Well don't creep up on me like that again, It's… creepy." At three in the morning it was hard to come up with a better description. "What are you doing up, anyway?"

  "Patrolling – renewing the wards."

  "Aren't you supposed to be scouting the grounds?"

  "You're the only person awake for miles – you and your son."

  "Ah, well. Glad we could entertain you." My sarcasm was ignored.

  "It brings back memories," she said.

  "Of what?" I asked.

  "My daughter."

  I was momentarily taken aback. Amber had never mentioned a daughter. As far as I could tell, none of the Warders had children. I had assumed it was part of the job description and yet another reason I wasn't very good at it.

  "No one said you had a daughter," I said.

  "I don't talk about it. It was a long time ago."

  "Where is she now?" I asked.

  "She died."

  Now I felt really bad. "Amber, I'm so sorry. Here I am, being so insensitive. I'm really… I don't know what to say."

  "It's OK. She was old. She had a good life."

  "Old?" The question was out before I realised what I'd said.

  "She was human, like her father. Completely and utterly as human as could be. She lived into her eighties – not a bad age. At the end… I'd like to think she knew me, but it was hard to tell. The drugs they gave her in the hospital made her memory bad." She thought for a moment. "I think she knew me."

  "But you must have been… you didn't age."

  "I know. It's strange. She started out as my daughter, and by the end I had to play her granddaughter – too young even to be her daughter then. She would touch my face and tell me I had such good skin."

  "Didn't she tell anyone? I mean, it must have been strange. Did she know you were her mother?"

  "Yes. It was our secret. She used to laugh at how I never aged a day while she grew older every year – until it wasn't funny any more."

  She paused, thoughtful for a while.

  "We tried," she laughed, but there wasn't much humour in it. "We tried to bring it out, to activate the magic within her. It didn't work. Nothing did. In the end it just hurt her."

  "That's… terrible."

  "Is it? Yes, I think it might be. You're either fey, or you're not. You don't get to choose."

  "Amber, I'm so sorry. You must miss her very much."

  "I wouldn't change it. If I could swap a year of my life for a year of hers, it would be different, but that's not the way it works. Instead you are given the years that are yours. Her years were wonderful. She was a beautiful girl."

  "I don't know what to say."

  "As I say, it was a long time ago."

  "It's strange, Amber. You've never mentioned her before. I never even knew you had a daughter. Why are you telling me this now?"

  "It brings back memories – mostly good ones." I caught a glimpse of her sad smile in the half-light. "You're very lucky."

  I looked down at the child in my arms. "I like to think so."

  "You already have one child who's come into her power. She will outlive you, perhaps, but you won't see her age and die."

  "I hadn't thought of it like that."

  "Your son – well you won't know until it happens. With fey power on both sides, he stands a better chance, but there are no guarantees."

  I looked down at him. He'd stopped drinking, his eyes were closed and his limbs had gone floppy. I withdrew the teat and he made a half-hearted attempt to get it back, but quickly turned his head into my chest and went back to sleep.

  "At one time," I told her, "all I wanted for my daughter was that she would grow up as a normal girl with a normal life."

  "Be careful what you wish for," said Amber. "It's not easy watching your children die, even if they have a good life. It's not something you ever get over."

  "No. I don't suppose it is," I agreed.

  "Treasure every moment, Dogstar. You have no way of telling how long you have." She stood, sliding across the room with lithe grace. "Good night, sleep well."

  She vanished into the dark and I sat quietly with a lightly snoring baby for some time before I made my way back upstairs. Settling him back into his cot, I wondered what would become of him. I went back to bed, listening to Blackbird breathe in the dark, and by the time I went back to sleep, the first signs of dawn were showing behind the curtains.

 

The next morning I woke up late and was immediately summoned to see Garvin.

  "I have a list of items for you. I hope you know what you're looking for."

  He placed a folder in front of me. I opened it to reveal several sheets of paper with typed lists of items on them. "What's all this?"

  "It's what you asked for, a list of all the unusual items stolen since the release of the prisoners from Porton Down."

  "Can't they narrow it down a bit?" I turned over the first sheet to find the list continued on the next, and the next.

  "They could if they knew what they were looking for."

  "A seventeenth century chalice stolen from a church near Toxteth, ceremonial robes from another church near Barnstable, a replica sword stolen from a museum in Burgess Hill. How are we supposed to narrow it down."

  "That," said Garvin, "is your problem. You have the list. Now you need to tell me what they're doing with it all."

  "But these weren't necessarily stolen by any of the escapees. They could have been nicked by anyone."

  "Then you need to identify which of it is important, don't you?"

  I went down the list. "Well, I guess we can eliminate anything that's a replica, can't we?"

  "I don't know," said Garvin, "can we?"

  I slid the papers back into the folder. "Let me work on it, see what I can figure out. There must be a pattern to this somewhere."

  "Fine," said Garvin, "but in the meantime these people are still running around loose. I want them caught and dealt with, and whatever it is they doing stopped. If you find them, you can ask them what all this is for yourself, can't you?"

  "If we find them," I pointed out.

  "You're not going to find them in there," said Garvin, nodding towards the folder.

  "Perhaps," I said, "but we're not having much success finding them anywhere else, are we?"

  "We'll see," said Garvin.

 

"When are we going to do something?" Alex was pacing up and down the office floor between the empty desks. "We never do anything."

  "We are doing something," said Eve. "I'm reading, or I was until you interrupted me. Chipper is doing whatever Chipper does when he's plugged into that machine, and Sparky is… What are you doing, Sparky?"