Chains and Memory (30 page)

I could throw down a disruption spiral; that would probably release everyone in my immediate vicinity. I couldn't possibly affect the whole crowd, though. Better to free my captain and then let him spread it from there.

Incoming! Repeat, incoming! Movement toward the west, estimated three hundred people, intentions violent.

The message blasted into my mind like a bullhorn. It was from one of the other Corps captains, a woman who'd been stationed at the anti-sidhe march.

A portion of which was now headed our way.

I stopped thinking and just acted. Flinging a disruption spiral at my captain, I charged forward, dodging people where I could, body-checking them out of my way where I couldn't. We'd memorized the stations for the various captains, and I hit every one within reach on my way toward the stage. Behind me, a wave of noise swelled: people waking up, the enchantment unraveling, and approaching us fast, an animalistic roar.

Other people were better equipped to deal with that than I was. I had to get to the stage.

The Unseelie speaker had fallen silent. From her elevated position, she could see over the crowd to the incoming threat. She raised her hands, but I didn't wait to find out what she was doing; I hurled my next spiral at her, amping it hard to cross the intervening distance. A flood of telepathic commands whirled through my mind as the various captains sent out orders; a telekinetic shield meant to hold off the anti-sidhe marchers failed under a barrage of iron. Shouts and screams began to rise: the pro-sidhe crowd was awake now, and noticing the situation.

Another shield flared into existence over the stage. I didn't know who'd put it there, our side or the sidhe, but my spiral sparked uselessly off its surface. A powerful empathic surge washed over me, trying to urge calm, quiet—but it didn't stand a chance. Not against me, and not against the crowd. Bodies rushed toward the stage, the mass of humanity acting like a single organism, recoiling from the threat at its far edge.

There was no way I could get through that tightly-packed mass. I'd made good progress before the crowd awoke, but shoving now would only get somebody trampled. Maybe me.

The remaining rational fragment of my brain told me I didn't
have
to get to the stage. I wasn't a full Guardian. I should do what I could where I was, and let the people in charge deal with the Unseelie.

That thought lasted for approximately three-quarters of a second—until I saw the Unseelie retreating toward the Lincoln Memorial.

“Oh no you fucking
don't
,” I snarled, and hurled myself into the air.

Never in my life had I levitated myself. Six months ago I wouldn't have been strong enough, and even now the strain was enormous. I had to run, instead of floating; sometimes my foot touched down on someone's shoulder. But soon I was clear enough of the crowd that I could run on the ground instead, and then I put all my telekinetic force into propelling myself forward, pursuing the fleeing sidhe.

They were angling northwest, over the roads closed for this march, across the surface of the Potomac toward the quiet refuge of Roosevelt Island. A flash of movement drew my attention left, and my right hand came up, crackling with energy, ready to hurl it at any new threat. The sight of Julian put fresh life into my limbs, because it meant I wasn't alone.

He didn't slow when he got to the riverbank. I gritted my teeth and focused my energy downward.
Time to see if I can walk on water.

I could — though barely, stumbling to a wet-footed halt on the island's shore. I'd lost sight of the Unseelie among the trees. Julian touched down next to me, breathing hard. I cast a glance over my shoulder, but we were alone. “Isn't anyone else coming?”

He shook his head curtly. “There's a full-scale riot starting back there.”

I wanted to ask what the hell had happened, how the rioters slipped free of the other crew's control and made it all the way down the Mall to attack us. But there would be an inquiry into that later; right now, we faced our own problem. “Two of us, five of them. Do we go after them? Wait for backup?” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew I was being foolish. “They're probably already gone.”

Julian's gaze went past me, unblinking and still. I turned to look.

The woman who'd addressed the crowd had emerged from the trees. Golden-eyed, unnerving as all sidhe were, and then a second time over for being Unseelie. My gut twisted at the sight of her. She said, “Do not wait for backup. There is a glamour and a misdirection covering our retreat—though we should have expected that you two, of all those present, would see through both.” Her hands were empty and spread; she raised them in a theatrical gesture. “This is how you signal that you mean no harm, is it not?”

If I'd had iron nails, I would have hurled them in her face. She wasn't anybody I knew; her face was nowhere in the memories I tried not to think about. But the golden eyes were enough. Only Julian's hand, catching my wrist, made me realize I'd been about to step forward—to do what, I didn't even know. Hit her, maybe.

But we'd been given orders.
All
sidhe were to be protected, regardless of Court. Until we had instructions to the contrary, I had to obey. So I checked my shields and said, “Why'd you run? Afraid of a few rioters?”

“Wary of what else the Seelie might have sent against us,” she replied.

Julian released my wrist. I cast a quick glance his way, but his attention didn't leave the Unseelie woman. “You claim they're behind that attack?”

She smiled, without humor. “You think they would not use such tactics. I assure you, they would and have. You mortals mean no more to them than you do to us.”

“They've done nothing to hurt us,” I snapped. “Can you say the same?”

“Nothing to hurt you?” Even that excuse for a smile faded away, leaving her as grim and sharp as a golden knife. “They made certain you would be bound, changeling. I know you have accused us, but you miss your mark. It was the Seelie Court, not any of ours, who attacked you—the Seelie Court who haunted your steps, keeping you always out of balance, until at last they pushed you over the edge.”

I laughed at her. It wasn't even forced, though it wasn't friendly, either. “Right. We know you can lie; you might at least try something plausible.”

“It is true,” she said evenly. “I will say it again, if you like, and go on repeating it until I should fall at your feet, as senseless as a stone, if any word I speak is untrue.”

Something about the way she said that stopped me. She was speaking English, not using their telepathic trick, but it still felt like I was picking up some kind of overtone, a hidden significance I couldn't quite put my finger on.

I couldn't—but Julian could. He breathed, “Lying
hurts
you.”

Her nod was almost a bow. “Consider that knowledge a gift, in token of my goodwill.”

Goodwill, hah.
She might be lying again. I had no way of knowing for sure, unless I convinced her to repeat something I knew to be false until it actually
did
hurt her—or failed to do so. But Julian tensed at my side. His question was a single word, a name: “Shard?”

“Has lied on behalf of her Court until she is the merest shadow of her former self,” the Unseelie woman said. “If you do not believe me, insist to them that you see her. They will not let you. She is an embarrassment to them now—scarcely more able than the weakest of your people.”

If she was telling the truth . . .

She couldn't be. “Why the hell would the Seelie do that to me?” I snapped. “What would they gain?”

“A chain around your neck?” she suggested, her tone acerbic. “I cannot
imagine
how they might use that.” Then her gaze softened, became speculative, drifting between me and Julian. “We made you an offer once before. It still stands.”

My heart began beating double-time. As much as I wished I didn't, I knew exactly what she meant.

It was after the Unseelie turned me, after I woke up from the drug and began helping them plan. They were fixated on the notion of wilders as a useful lever in our world, and asked me what could sway them to the Unseelie cause—since their attempts to force it had failed. I told them that even if the wilders joined them, it wouldn't do much good, because the various governments could stop them cold with the deep shield.

And then I said that if they could remove the shield, they might just have Julian for the asking.

Thank all the gods, I'd been wrong. I'd made the offer, but Julian had shrugged it off, by what force of will I didn't know. Probably the same force of will that let him face the Unseelie like a stone, his voice and expression giving nothing away. “Oh?” he said. “How would you go about removing it?”

“Our people studied you, when you were in our keeping,” she said—for all the world as if the “studying” had involved magnifying glasses, instead of torture. “At the time, we did not know what that thing in your soul was, lying dormant. But we easily recognized the foundation it was built on. We would free you, changeling, by removing the
geas
.”

I was right. Unless the Unseelie had heard the message I sent to Julian . . . but even if I was wrong, and they were using my error to lure us in, it wasn't a very good lure. I said, “We don't need your help for that. We'll get the Seelie to do it for us.”

“Ask them.” The words cracked in the air like a whip. “I need not look to the future to tell you what they will say. The Seelie Court will never remove that compulsion from you—do you know why? Because it does more than they have admitted.

“It is true, so far as it goes, that the
geas
compels you to remember magic, to keep the memory of our Courts alive, to protect those around you and prepare for our return. But it also does this: it persuades you that sidhe of the Unseelie Court are and must be your enemies, and sidhe of the Seelie are your friends. It tells you that you can
trust
them. The
geas
lies to you, and if it were gone you would see those lies for what they are.”

I stared her. Julian might not have even been breathing, he was so still. I could faintly hear the noise from across the river, people shouting, a crack that might have been a small explosion.

Was it possible?

My gut instinct said,
no
. Not a chance. Then again, if she was telling the truth, my gut instinct was reading off a script handed to it by the
geas
. It was a recipe for madness: I could second-guess myself from now until doomsday.

Which was no doubt exactly what she wanted.

In the end, I had to go with what I
knew
. I knew this woman came from the people who tortured Julian, the people who used me as their guinea pig. The Seelie, on the other hand, hadn't done anything against me or mine—nothing I had any proof of.

If it turned out she was right, and they'd been behind the incidents that got me shielded . . . I didn't know what I would do then. But I wasn't going to start doubting them on the word of a woman I had absolutely no reason to trust.

“It's a nice story,” I said. “But you're preaching to the wrong crowd.”

“No doubt,” she said dryly. “Unfortunately, I was interrupted before I could preach for long to the right one. We will simply have to try again.” Then her head came up. “But not at this moment. My companions have made ready the way; I will quit the field for now.”

Meaning that they'd opened a passage back to the Otherworld. I wanted to stop her, but there were five of them, and only two of us: it would be suicidal.

She offered a parting shot after she vanished into the trees.
If you change your minds, you have but to ask.

Julian didn't get halfway through his report to his captain before the man shifted him up the chain of authority to the field commander for the event, Daniel Nantakarn. It meant he and Kim ended up in together in the lobby of Mellon Auditorium, where a temporary command center had been set up. The lobby echoed with footsteps and urgent voices, Guardians and SIF agents hurrying in and out, dealing with the aftermath of the riot.

They didn't have to wait long. His captain and Kim's told them to stay by the wall and pushed through to the auditorium, where Nantakarn and his assistants were issuing their orders. Most of the delay was spent trying to get his attention. But once Nantakarn heard they'd followed the Unseelie, they were brought into the auditorium immediately, and a cone of silence dropped over them all.

Kim had begun learning the protocols. She stood at ease next to Julian, hands clasped behind her back, while he related what had happened. Nantakarn requested a summary first, then backtracked for details. “How did you see through the misdirection?” he asked.

“Falcon helped me,” Julian said. “At the time, I didn't know he had only broken the effect for me. I saw Kim following the Unseelie; by the time I knew we were the only ones in pursuit, it was too late to alert anyone and wait for support.”

Nantakarn looked at Kim. She said, “I didn't realize I
had
broken anything. I just saw them leaving.”

“Empathic countermeasures?”

“I assume so, sir.” She managed a tight smile. “I'm not sure anyone on the planet hates them as much as I do. Except maybe Julian.”

It hadn't been enough to let him see through the misdirection. Or maybe he'd just been too distracted by his argument with Falcon, the realization that the sidhe had laid the foundations for the deep shield themselves, thousands of years before.

Not that they were going to tell Nantakarn that.

They'd agreed on it before they left Roosevelt Island—by the footbridge, since neither of them was quite up to another dash across the surface of the Potomac. “It's easy enough to change our minds and tell people later, once we've thought about it,” Kim had said. “But short of wiping people's memories, it's a bit hard to take that knowledge back.”