Wasteland King (5 page)

G
o play
, Jenny Markham's momma said, waving a skinny, languid hand. Both of her friends giggled, the slow slurring sounds that meant they were on their special medicine already, and Jenny's mother would be soon. Lanky, nervous Topper, who had brought the medicine in the first place, stared at Jenny. Sometimes Jenny's momma would let her stay inside while they took their medicine, but never while he was there, since Topper had once followed Jenny's momma from room to room, saying
How much, how much
, and pointing at Jenny in the corner with her only Barbie while a spring storm made the ceiling drip as if the house itself was crying.

So Jenny left the close, stinking living room, dodging piles of refuse out of habit, and didn't bother checking the kitchen for anything to eat. Hunger was a coal in her belly, but there was no school for spring break, which meant no lunch and no Mrs. Anderson, who let Jenny stay in her classroom during playground time, drawing on scrap paper and pretending her teacher was her mommy instead of the wan big-eyed woman with the marks on her arms.

Outside, golden sunshine bounced off the trailer roofs and the cracked concrete, weeds now green-juicy from spring storms climbing in every crevice. Their own trailer was at the end of the road, huddled in front of a vacant lot starred with broken glass and windblown trash. Small paths ran through a tangle of blackberry bushes, their vines aggressively greening now that they'd received a good soaking or two. Jenny plunged into their embrace, small and quick enough to avoid being caught by thorns, and wandered, wishing there were berries on the branches.

Maybe she could eat the leaves. Or there was an old lady near the front of the trailer park who threw out a half box of doughnuts every Saturday night, for some reason. You could find all sorts of things in trash cans, if you had to.

The gnawing in her middle retreated a little, came back, vanished as she worked deeper into the tangle. She began to hum, an anemic half-forgotten pop song matching her lank dishwater hair and her dirty fingernails, her tattered blue jumper and shoes held together with reflective tape.

At first, breaking into the clearing, she thought she was lost, or had wandered too far. Then something zoomed at her face and Jenny ducked, a miserable little cry breaking in the suddenly golden-liquid air. She went down hard, knees and hands jolting on stony ground, almost biting her tongue in half. Tasting blood, she craned her neck to see what it was, but the thing zoomed away. It was an angry flushed red, like a landlord's face, and much too big for an insect, even a dragonfly. It wasn't a bird either, even though it flew.

Jenny rubbed her dry, aching eyes. She didn't remember this clearing. She
especially
didn't remember the tree in the middle, its reddish column growing out of lush grass much greener than even a golf course's clipped mane. The tree looked funny in more ways than one, but maybe it was just Jenny's rumbling stomach that made it seem that way.

There was something like a golden-copper horse lying at the bottom of the tree, and against its side was a sleeping woman in a black robe, like she was in a movie or something. Her short, artfully mussed hair was the color of the horse's coat, and her skin was flawless-pale.

The angry little red thing zipped back, along with others like it. They circled her, and the little girl cowered, covering her eyes. They buzzed around her, but they didn't dart at her face again, and when Jenny crept forward on hands and knees, miserably impelled, they merely hovered over her like a furious cloud. They were, as any idiot could see, little winged people, and Jenny knew what those were called.

What child doesn't?

Perhaps they didn't swarm her because she
was
a child, and her slinking approach was full of wonder instead of ill intent. It seemed to take forever to reach the grass, which smelled like crushed mint under her sweating palms. The woman kept sleeping, like she'd had some of Momma's special medicine in her arm.

The horse-thing's head curved down, resting over the woman's protectively. It was
big
, and it probably had some wicked teeth. Jenny crawled closer, suddenly very sure the horse-thing wasn't asleep but it was listening, eyes shut, very carefully.

She had to be a princess, this beautiful, beautiful woman. Sleeping under a tree with a beautiful animal, with bright-winged creatures all around. It was right out of a storybook, or a dream from Momma's medicine. Jenny crept close enough to look at the woman's shoes—black heels, shiny and perfect just like the rest of her. Even the draggled hem of the velvet coat was beautiful, each hole and fraying arranged just so.

Jenny stretched out in the cool shade, nervously glancing at the flitting lights overhead. They shaded into purple, then deep blue after a while, moving in patterns that weren't quite random. Hunger and thirst both forgotten, the child barely felt one of the tree's roots under her thin ribs shift slightly, and after a long while of staring at the princess who had suddenly appeared in a vacant lot, Jenny fell asleep too.

The oak's branches hummed sweetly, the bark resounding with a subliminal purr like a plucked string vibrating too low for mortal ears, a pressure felt in heart and throat and wrists. Outside the bubble of shade, the mortal world blurred. Slowly, so slowly, finger-roots of red bark, clotted with rich brown earth, rose to caress the bedraggled mortal child's form.

H
unger or temperature didn't affect a Half much, not once they'd pierced the Veil over the more-than-real the first time. The first few heady gulps of different air, whether in the borderlands of the free sidhe, Summer, or Unwinter's ashen country with its splashes of crimson, perhaps changed something in those with sidhe blood. Activated something, like flipping a switch, turning on an electric glow in the guts.

When hunger did come for a Half, it was different than purely mortal emptiness. Maybe it was that Jeremiah wasn't dead after all, despite everything. Maybe it was Unwinter's poison, leached out of the long livid scar on his side and leaving weakness in its wake. There was a blowtorch in his belly, and his head was a lot lighter than he was used to.

Gallow followed Unwinter's straight, black-clad back through halls of black stone, their ceilings point-arched and Gothic-high. Cobweb curtains hung over some doors, sheer uninterrupted gray sheets, thick with whatever ancient dust fell in Unwinter's Keep. It wasn't the first time Gallow had seen these halls.

It was, however, the first time he'd openly followed an unarmed and unarmored Unseelie through them, the marks on his arms itching unbearably. He could strike, couldn't he? There was Unwinter's unprotected back. What was stopping him?

Not weakness, even though keeping the lance solid would require more effort than usual. And certainly not chivalry. Self-interest, maybe. The poison might simply be abated, not removed. Once Unwinter's venom worked its way into a wound, it was over. The only surprise was that Gallow lasted as long as he had.

There was another reason not to strike, one he tried not to think about. He needed all his wits about him right now.

Well, whatever of them he had left. Gallow scrubbed at his face, stubble scratching against his palms. A flicker of chantment would erase the rasp, but he preferred actual shaving. The scrape of a razor, a trace of cold iron chill-hot, was a mortal ritual.

Daisy had liked him clean-shaven.

Stairs rose before Unwinter, who glided upward at the same even pace. Maybe Gallow was dreaming, one last paroxysm before the poison killed him completely.

Or maybe this was Hell. Would so mortal an idea as the afterlife accept a being with a half share of sidhe blood? If sidhe had no souls, as the Pale God's wise men had thundered, did that mean Half only had, well, half souls?

Whatever you have, you know who it belongs to now. Keep moving.

Up, and up. From Unwinter's dungeons they climbed, Gallow's legs aching even as the chilly, dust-laden air moved past him in little feral licks, caressing his face and hands. Small crackles of dried blood, mortal dirt, and remaining traces of sickness dropped away, melting before they hit the grit-dusted stone floor.

Just like a mortal, stinking up the place. There was no banister, so Gallow leaned against the stone wall as his legs pumped, carrying him after the mop of thistledown hair and the glinting silver fillet. Leather scraped, almost cringing from the inimical chill of the wall. Funny, this was just like following a Father through the halls of the orphanage so long ago, dread weighing his limbs and the adult not even condescending to look back.
Of course you'll follow
, the rigid black-clad back said, and of course, Gallow did.

Another long hall, its left side opening up through a frieze of pierced stone—a gallery, looking over an immense space below. There was no sign of drow or barrow-wight, any of the fullblood highborn sidhe who waited upon Unwinter, or even a guard. You could maybe think the whole Keep was deserted, except for the thrumming in distant halls, the air full of whispers and mutters, silent currents mouthing every exposed edge. A quiet, deadly fermentation.

Unwinter paused at a junction, took the left-hand path, and did not glance back at Gallow, who hurried to keep up. His stomach trembled on the edge of a growl, an embarrassing mortal noise.

Longing thoughts of charred meat dripping with spicy, smoky barbecue danced through Gallow's head. Beer so cold it made the teeth ache, or pungent yellow cheese—which led him to that best of things, full-cream milk, a balm and fullness all at once. Sticks of butter, not the pale clots of fat sold in supermarkets but warm yellow solidified sunlight, still smelling faintly of the hay and the glossy sides of the healthy animal who made it.

When the sidhe before him finally halted, Gallow did too, swaying slightly, his shoulder hitting the wall again. A chill grated down his side, spreading from the stone.

Weak. I'm weak.

Unwinter turned, very slowly, and a cool bath of dread slid down Gallow's back. Not so long ago another sidhe had led him over hill and dale, to the roof of a mortal building, and Puck Goodfellow's intent had been murderous.

There was no shortage of murder flying around lately.

Unwinter's hands, each bearing an extra finger and each finger bearing extra joints, hung loose at his sides. Each finger and both thumbs were armored with rings, jewels colorless and otherwise throbbing with nasty sharp gleams. “
Were you thinking to slay me, Gallow?
” Thin, cruel, attractive lips—even though he was Unwinter, he was still sidhe, and that meant beauty. A high gloss of cold loveliness, a razor against numb skin. The crimson light living in the cold red orbs of the Unseelie lord's eyeballs sharpened, the hair-thin black capillaries in his bloody sclera moving ever so slightly.

It really was very much like Summer's ageless black gaze.
Her
eyes held dusty lights, stars and constellations no astronomer would ever decipher; Unwinter's held the last gleams of a dying sun. Sometimes those among his favored companions bore the bloodspark for a moment or two, in moments of high emotion or extremis… but Unwinter was the only sidhe who permanently bore the bloody gaze.

“I was.” No point in lying now, Gallow told himself.

“
And yet you refrained
.”

“It seemed impolite.” He didn't have to work to sound exhausted, or sarcastic, either. Really, when you got to the point of not giving a fuck, why bother?

The cold grinding noise of Unwinter's amusement rumbled just under the audible. He spread his flour-pale, fluidly articulated hand against the door, a slight caressing motion that might have sparked nausea if Gallow hadn't been so used to the way sidhe joints moved. The rings twinkled, the glitter of lights in a drowning mortal's gaze.

Gallow blinked.

A shadow crawled over the back of Unwinter's hand, there and gone in a moment. He forced his aching eyes to look
underneath
.

Hard, evil-looking black pinpricks marched across Unwinter's skin, each radiating hair-thin cracks. The center of each prickle was a raised bump, a needle-tip of leprous green. “You're plagued,” he said, flatly.

“
Yes.
” The single word made the hallway shudder and flex slightly. “
There is only so much will can keep at bay, Gallow
.
Even a will such as mine.
”

They said it was will alone that kept his ash-and-flaxen lands from sliding deeper into the Veil, just as the flint knife plunging into changeling chests kept Summer green and bountiful. Gallow's throat had gone dry, or perhaps he just now noticed it. He searched for something to say that wouldn't remind Unwinter he had a good reason to kill one small, irritating Jeremiah Gallow, and failed to find it.

The Unseelie lord saved him the trouble. “
You took what is mine, and slew one dear to me.
”

Well, he couldn't argue with that. Killing Unwinter's parlay might not have been the best move in that particular situation, but it was the only one he could have made.

Story of my life
. “Yes.”

“
Walk with me, just a few steps further
.” Unwinter pushed the door, which quivered and scraped its way open, deathly silent.

Outside, fine smears of ash fell from a slumbrous, umbrous sky. Unwinter's light was either the sere cold shine of a white winter sun, no warmth to be found in its glow, or the bruise-dusk of a blizzard with ice on its back. Black, lace-starred mountains, their sides splashed with fuming, smoking crimson hellholes of dwarven furnace vents or the mouths of greatwyrm dens, reared in serried edges on the horizon. A narrow obsidian walkway led away from the door, the ash soaking into its surface with tiny puffs of clawed steam. A mutter in the distance was the Dreaming Sea, touching even this cold shore. Above, pennants snapped and fluttered on the wind—black cloth, its edges gracefully fringed by moth-chewing.

Wait. He's not flying the red flags. What's this?
Gallow followed as Unwinter strode onto the walkway, each step accompanied by that crackling scream of frozen, compressed air. Finally, Unwinter halted, and rounded on him.

Jeremiah tensed. Now they were getting somewhere.

“
I will die,
” Unwinter said, as calmly as if he were ordering an execution or a breakfast. “
But not before I have had my vengeance, Half. Do you understand?
”

Not really
. “Here I am.” He almost added,
Do your worst
, but that was just a step too far, even for a man who didn't give a fuck if he lived or died.

Except if he died, who would play this insane ten-sided game to keep Robin safe?

Unwinter's lips peeled back from his white, white teeth. The crevices and grooves between them were threaded with crimson, the wide bloody smile of true amusement indistinguishable from a pained grimace. “
Indeed. Look upon my realm, Jeremiah Gallow. Look.
”

He did.

After a long moment, Unwinter spoke again. He told Gallow, softly and calmly, what he wished the Half to do.

Gallow couldn't help himself.

He began to laugh.