Summer (14 page)

“Neither do I,” Summer retorted. “And don’t you dare try. I see one single spark and I’ll smite you into dust.”

It was a bluff, of course. Summer expected to be laughed at, but Hannah sighed and shivered and licked her lips again. Brother Dan switched off Lolo’s light and returned it to the boy with a shake of his head.

“I’m out of ideas,” the friar admitted. “It’s gone late afternoon above. Back to the house, I think. God willing
,
Ms. Francis will have our answer.” His tooth flashed brilliant in amber light. “Maybe she’s got her caves mixed up.”

They were almost ten steps back up the spiral path, Lolo jogging ahead while Dan shuffled Hannah along behind
,
when Summer, bringing up the rear, realized maybe Willa Francis hadn’t got her caves confused at all.

“Wait!” she gasped, tangling one hand in the back of Dan’s hoodie. “Wait, stop!”

The friar paused, tugging Hannah to a halt at his side. Even Lolo slowed and turned, scooting back along the narrow trail.

“What is it?”

“The walls.” Summer couldn’t quite make herself speak above a whisper. Small hairs rose along her forearms as she peered overhead. “Look. Look at the walls.”

A person with less aesthetic inclinations might have missed the change in the sandstone, but Summer always noticed the beautiful things in her world, and once seen the patterns in the walls were hard to miss.

“The amber rocks.” Lolo caught on quickly. “It’s different. They’ve changed.” He stood on his toes so his sharp nose almost brushed the lacy spread of shining yellow stone. “It’s art. Is it art? Like tree branches or vines or snakes or some shit.”

Dan did touch the closest wave of the amber mosaic. Summer didn’t really expect the human to melt or burst into ash but she was relieved when nothing happened.

“Warm,” the friar reported thoughtfully. “Brighter.”

“Whole,” Hannah corrected. “Smashed or scattered before, weren’t they? It’s obvious, use your brain. Easy as that after all. ‘Crawl down, turn around, clap your hands thrice.’” The changeling laughed, delighted. “‘Scurry up, hasten up, comes quick the blood-red nights.’”

“Creeptastic,” Lolo sounded impressed. “Is it a song?”

“A nursery rhyme,” Summer agreed, heart pounding behind her ribs. “And a game. Papa used to play it with me. Like tag only—” She paused when Hannah’s mouth curled in a secret smile. “Different. The way out’s different. Did we pass through the Gate without even knowing?”

“Only one way to find out.” Brother Dan pointed his chin back up the nautilus path. He sounded eager as a boy. “Forward and upward.”

The nautilus path seemed endless. Summer knew it was her nerves making time seem to pass slow as syrup, and maybe she was dragging her heels a little bit too. She couldn’t quite make the fingers of her right hand release the charm that was
Buairt
. The edges of the filigree cross dug into the palm of her hand. She wondered if maybe she should magic the necklace back into sword form, wondered if they’d need a weapon the second they stepped into fairyland.

But the rapier was longer than the curving path was wide and she thought such a large weapon in a small space would probably cause more damage than not. She imagined the great gleaming blade stuck in sandstone like Excalibur and King Arthur, only unlike Arthur she wouldn’t be strong enough or wise enough to pull it free, and their quest would be over even before it started.

Lolo glanced Summer’s way. He didn’t have Winter’s talent for reading minds but he was pretty good at guessing faces, especially Summer’s.

“Chill,” he said and he sounded almost like a grownup, calm even as his eyes gleamed in the amber light and his fingers twitched restlessly. “I’m packing, remember? It’s fine.”

“An
empty
gun,” Summer hissed and pretended not to see the hitch in Dan’s step.  “Is not
packing
. Besides,
Barker
has your gun.”

Lolo only clicked his tongue. “Whatever you say. You didn’t think I’d let him keep it? It belongs to Win.
Besides
. It’s just bumblebees and flowers on the other side, right?”

Hannah snorted. “And my mother the Fay Queen,” she said, scratching nails along sandstone. “And her noble Court of warriors and sorcerers, more powerful than anything you’ve yet imagined, human child. Your gun and your sword are useless against Gloriana’s might. She’ll crush you with a word.”

Lolo muttered under his breath. Summer bit her lower lip and shoved past him, scraping her shoulders on the rough walls. One more turn around the nautilus and she was out, the first returned to the surface. She was panting a little from nerves when she stepped back into the cave and couldn’t help but squeak a little in surprise.

“It’s night.” Lolo squirmed free of the nautilus and stood blinking thoughtfully at Summer’s side. “Is it night?
Madre de dios
, that’s wrong.”

Sea glass still glinted in the walls and ceiling. Instead of blue and green the shards flashed red and yellow, reflecting torch light. Not the sort of electric torchlight Summer was used to, but real flame in small bronze bowls hooked somehow into the cave walls. Summer counted ten of the bowls, set at eye level around the small cave. They smoked and spat in and Summer’s eyes immediately began to sting.

“Three hours, twelve minutes, fifteen seconds,” Lolo complained, stepping aside to let Hannah and Dan into the cave. “That’s how long we were below. Shouldn’t even be lunchtime yet. And I’m never wrong.”

“Reset the clock in your head,” Dan suggested. He turned in a half circle, hunching his shoulders and drawing his neck in to avoid the torches. “Might be midmorning in Yorktown, but not here. I can see the moon through the mouth of the cave.”

Lolo whooped in triumph. “You’re shitting me. It worked. We did it.” His grin flashed in the light of the flickering flames, wide and silly. “Told you, Summer. No
problema
.”

Summer might have hugged him in gratitude and relief if Hannah hadn’t chosen that moment to make a break for it. The changeling elbowed Summer in the ribs, knocking her sideways, and whirled to claw at Brother Dan, raking the friar across his face with her fingernails. Dan grunted and grabbed at his cheek. Summer staggered and caught her balance against the cave wall between two burning bowls. Hannah was already halfway to the cave opening, hissing like one of The Plaza’s old steam radiators, when Lolo tackled her around the legs.  The changeling went down in a twist of denim and long dark hair, her baseball cap tumbling into the sand. Lolo sat on her spine, knees pressing against her ribs, but Hannah was inhumanly strong and they’d all made the mistake of forgetting her magic.

The changeling bucked Lolo free with a shift of her hips. Streamers of flame came off the wall at her whispered Cant and Gathered on her palm.

“Stupid, hateful
runt
.
”
Ribbons of red and yellow heat wreathed her fingers. The amber bracelet dangled on her wrist, useless without Barker’s twin manacle. She smiled, showing pointed teeth. “I’ll make you scream, mortal boy.”

“No,” Summer said.
Buairt
was in her hands, blade shining. She didn’t remember saying the words that turned the sword back into a weapon. She wasn’t a warrior like her father or a queen like her mother. Still, the rapier felt light and easy in her grasp.

“Stop. Now.” She took one threatening step forward, hoping no one would notice the trembling in her legs. “Or I’ll make you stop, I will.
Buairt
will. This sword, it eats
sidhe
like you for supper.”

For a while Richard pretended he was getting better.

Aine was visibly improving, made stronger by the odd potions William mixed over his fire and Water-Bearer forced down her throat. The changeling slept deeply while Richard couldn’t. When she woke again she was lucid if subdued, able to sit up on her own and clean the gray mixture of ashes from her skin with one of the smith’s many rags.

She was quiet but calm. When William the wright provided them both with bowls of journey-root stew she ate heartily, picking chunks of boiled root from the salty broth. Richard ate with less enthusiasm. The wright had freed him of his shackles, using hammer and chisel and carefully applied flame to break through the bronze, but the fire in Richard’s hand hadn’t eased at all. In fact, it seemed to have spread through his entire left side, making his stomach roll with nausea. Besides, the broth in the stew was certainly animal, not vegetable
.
Richard hadn’t seen any evidence of life other than
sluagh
and vegetation since he’d thrown himself through Winter’s Gate.

Water-Bearer, as usual, seemed to pick Richard’s unease straight from his skull.

“We once rode a variety of beasts, large and small,” it said, green eye shining in the light off William’s small forge. “They were changed in exile as we were. Some of them still inhabit the mountain, living and breeding as best they can.”

Richard looked into the bowl. “Horses?” he asked with vague ideas of fiery manes and tails. He swallowed and set the stew aside.

William laughed. The wright stood over a small table set just out of the forge’s heat. His hands, both the normal one and the ghoulish clockwork imitation, were busy with a mortar and pestle, grinding something that crunched as it broke.

“A long time ago, maybe,” he said. The bits of his hair that weren’t bound in rags fell into his eyes. He had a blunt nose and a wide mouth and he watched Richard with obvious amusement. “They’ve devolved since, those beasties, gone small and lost their hooves and fangs. I call them marmots now, when I snare them with my traps.”

“Who
are you?” Aine demanded with more strength than Richard could muster. “I thought I knew all the wrights, aye. Those that built the Progress and those still alive to see it fed. But you’re none of those.”

“Once I was,” William replied. His clockwork hand was holding the pestle and Richard could see the joints in those gruesome fingers shift back and forth. Richard thought he could hear a faint click of metal against metal as the wright twisted his wrist. “No longer.”

Aine scowled. Richard’s head was beginning to ache and it took him longer than he liked to voice the realization: “But—you’re
human
.”

Water-Bearer made a sound of dark amusement. William smiled as he released the pestle, then carefully tipped several teaspoons of ground brown powder from the mortar into a small bronze pan. He walked the pan to the edge of his forge, setting it close to the coals to warm. He dusted his hands on his tattered trousers and crossed the cave to Richard’s side.

“The
sidhe
can’t work their own machines.” He plucked the bowl of stew from Richard’s lap without asking, then held out his left hand, his normal hand. “Nor build them. Fay magic and industrialization are uneasy mates—”

“As our apostate well knows,” Water-Bearer said with false cheer.

“—and the Fairy Court relies heavily on smithy-men stolen from the mortal kingdom to keep their machines running. And an endless task that is, eh, Miach? Things tend to regularly fall apart; it’s the unnatural strain, I suppose. Here, lad, show me your wound.”

“Mechanics,” Richard realized. The idea was terrible and beautiful all at once, and a wonderful distraction from pain. “You mean mechanics. You’re a mechanic?”

William shrugged and smiled and wiggled his fingers. “Hand, lad.”

Richard sighed and complied. He’d taken to not looking at the damage. He could smell it, after all, and it was somehow easier to pretend it wasn’t his own flesh rotting away if he didn’t look.

“Gangrene,”
Bobby deduced with some satisfaction.
“Blood poisoning, sepsis. You’re up the creek this time, Rick.”

“Shut up,” Richard hissed back, forgetting in his fever not to speak aloud. Aine turned her head in his direction but didn’t speak. Water-Bearer blinked its one eye. William bent over Richard’s hand in his own, making thoughtfully noises.

“It’s well splinted,” the wright said. Then he shook his head. “If you’d been able to clean it out, possibly. Or if you’d got here sooner. It’s not the broken bones that’s the worst. It’s the sand in the torn flesh, the
doiteain
domhain
, gone too deep.”

“Will he die?” Water-Bearer sounded bored but the
sluagh
drifted close, feathers rustling as it leaned across William for a better look. “Look, there.” It traced a long claw along the inside of Richard’s wrist. Richard, still looking steadfastly away, felt the brush and bit back a groan. “The poison stops there, just below the elbow. If you remove the limb there, will he survive?”

Richard groaned again and swallowed hard. Aine managed to get her stew bowl in place a second before he puked up what little nourishment he’d managed to get down. She held the bowl as he coughed and gagged, then set it aside and went in search of a rag.

“No,” Richard managed past the sour taste on his tongue. He wasn’t sure if it was bile or horror. He tried to pull his hand back but the wright held it firm and struggling only made Richard’s head swim. “No, let it be, leave me alone. I’d rather die.”

“Not your choice, I think.” Water-Bearer bent too close, his wings blocking light and heat. The
sluagh
stank almost as badly as Richard’s hand. Richard shivered, teeth grinding helplessly. “I wish to keep you alive. We’ll cut it off.”

“No,” Richard repeated as Aine reappeared and tried to daub at his face with dampened flannel. “You
need
me.” He wasn’t sure why or how, but he was beginning to realize it was true. “Cut it off and and I won’t—whatever you want—you can’t make me, no one ever can, not for years. No one can ever make me again.” He forced himself to smile, breathing past pain and nausea, matching Water-Bearer’s toothy grimace with his own.

“Find another way,” Richard said.

For a time he dozed, waking and falling again in fits and starts, more unconscious than asleep. Aine brought him cold, clean water and helped him drink from a cup that tasted of bronze. She washed his face and cooled his fever and spoke to him in odd strings of encouragement.

“You’re strong, Richard, and clever,” she told him as she lay another dripping cloth across his burning brow. “And aye, very brave, if a bit stubborn. You will not succumb to a few broken bones. I will not let you.”

He found her words comforting, even as he knew they were nonsense. The fire in his left side had spread to consume his entire body and he thought only the sips of water and cold, wet cloths kept his poisoned blood from boiling.

He stirred when William cut away the binding and splint, crying out as the shock of it made his muscles clench and shudder. While Richard lay on his side and quivered, face turned away toward the light of the forge, the wright grasped his hand and dipped it into a bowl of warm, thick brown sludge.

“To draw out the Cold Fire,” William said, but he didn’t sound hopeful. The mush numbed Richard’s hand and for several heartbeats he could breathe normally. William paused, took the dampened cloth from Richard’s face, and held it up against the firelight.

“What’s this?” the smith demanded. “Yellow tears?”

“It’s only the amber,” Richard explained, distantly aware he probably wasn’t making any sense. “The Wards shattered and got on my hands and in my eyes. You remember, Aine? It’s only the amber.” For some reason it seemed very important he make the wright and the
sluagh
understand. Maybe so they wouldn’t take his eyes along with his hand. “It’s nothing.”

Aine hushed him, replacing the old flannel with a new. She pressed him gently to the floor when he tried to sit up.

“Let him be,” she scolded. “He’s right. It’s nothing.”

William hummed but turned back to Richard’s soaking hand without further comment.

Richard drifted away again. He dreamed of the homeless man the
sluagh
had murdered in the tunnel pit, only this time it was Winter begging for mercy and Water-Bearer doing the killing. Winter gurgled as he died, head lolling on a broken neck.

Richard woke with a gasp. Aine was patting gently at his shoulder, whispering.

“I won’t be gone long, Richard. We’re just going down the tunnel, aye? To check for signs. William says they won’t have found us yet, but very soon. Miach wants to make sure and take a look for himself.”

Richard managed to struggle onto his hip. “Aine, no! Don’t be stupid. You can’t possibly trust the old ghoul. It’s like as not to eat you as anything.”

“I said I’m not hungry,” Water-Bearer retorted from somewhere deeper in the cave. “And, forgive me, but you’re in no position to argue, I think. Best learn how to make her own decisions, hadn’t she, if you’ve decided to die?”

“It’s fine.” Aine patted the top of Richard’s head. “William says it’s fine.  Don’t fret yourself. I’m feeling much better. Besides, I still have my knife.”

Richard groaned and fell back onto the earth. He knew he should be panicking, shouting, angry. He was failing Winter and Aine both. But a feverish lassitude made him feel as numb as his soaking hand.

He kept his eyes squeezed shut when Aine and the
sluagh
left the cave in a rustle of feathers.  He kept them closed when the wright sat at his side and carefully lifted Richard’s hand from the bowl of cooling mush.

“I’ll wrap it,” William suggested quietly. “Keep the poultice secure. I’m afraid it will do you no good. You’re far beyond hedge magic. The stain is creeping up your arm, lad. Much further and we’ll have to take the entire limb if we’re to save you. Once it reaches your heart you’re naught but a meal for the Progress, if you catch my drift.”

“I don’t. And you can’t.”

“Take the arm? Sorry, lad. If I were my own man I’d not argue, but I’m not, am I? Miach says keep you alive; I’ll try my best to do as he says.”

“Because you’re its slave.”

William snorted, but Richard thought it was a sad sound.

“Nay. Because I’m his friend.”

When Aine and Water-Bearer returned Richard was propped up against the cave wall in an anxious fugue of fever and imagined disasters. William had retired to the hearth and was busy with quiet packing. If Richard hadn’t already guessed they’d be moving on again fairly quickly, the wright’s deliberate shuffling of rations into a canvas bag would have convinced him before Aine and the
sluagh
returned.

“By sundown, no later,” Water-Bearer told William without preamble. “They’re working top to bottom and soon our prince will recall he’s left you too long without supervision.”

William smiled grimly and tossed the
sluagh
a small loaf of hard bread. He sent another spinning in Aine’s direction. Aine caught the bread absently, her attention focused on Richard.

“I assume you’ve a plan?” William rose and began sifting through the instruments nearest his anvil. He rolled a few small irons into a rag and used another to wrap a cleaver. The bundle went into his bag.

“They’re working their way deep, we’ll climb the spire.” Water-Bearer’s wormy tongue lapped at the air. “There are ways and means through this mountain forgotten. We’ll make use of them while we can.”

“Richard can’t walk,” said Aine.

“Richard is no longer of any worth,” Water-Bearer retorted, unconcerned. “We leave him behind.” The
sluagh’s
wings rose and fell with the rasp in his lungs.  He used the left pinion to draw Aine close against his side. “You, on the other hand, are still valuable. Come. Will, bring your light.”

Aine sputtered a protest, shoving against black feathers with both fists, but Richard spoke over her.

“You won’t leave me behind.” He’d never been more certain of anything in his life, even with fever shaking his bones and poison spreading toward his heart. “Aine might be valuable, but I’m still a mystery you want to solve. That hasn’t changed. A mortal with magic tricks up his sleeve in a world where magic’s stopped working. Am I right?” Richard was panting with pain and distress and trying not to show it. Aine scowled around Water-Bearer’s wing. The wright was edging carefully closer. Richard finished in a rush before the pity on their faces stopped his tongue. “You can’t even make Gathered starlight work properly if I’m not there to hold it. Or have you forgotten?”

Aine squirmed and kicked at the
sluagh’s
malformed feet. Water-Bearer ignored her. It looked past Richard at William, single eye narrowed. Whatever it saw on the wright’s face made it mutter and deflate, the arch of its wings drooping until Aine managed to break free. She darted forward and stood over Richard protectively, knife clenched in one fist.