With Fate Conspire (33 page)

“I sends you out,” Nadrett said in a dangerously soft voice, “for my own purposes. Not yours. When you don’t return on time, you know what that says to me? It says you’ve taken the good bread I’ve given you, and decided to use it for your
own
purposes. Which sounds an awful lot like stealing from me, don’t it?”

Shallow breaths rasped into Dead Rick’s throat. Nadrett had been busy when he returned from the Academy—off fucking some former court lady, according to Gresh, which always put the master in a better mood—so he’d dared to think he might get away with his disobedience.

He didn’t have that kind of luck. He never had.

“What,
dog,
was so very important that you decided it was worth stealing from me?”

Dead Rick couldn’t answer. The best he could manage was a hoarse noise, some movement of his lips. Nadrett let him suffer like that for a moment longer, then lifted the boot. “Yes?”

The skriker coughed, then hurried to speak before his master lost patience. “Bread.”

“I know what you stole from me, dog.”

“No. Bread. Debts. Tried to get more, to pay a few coves off.”

Nadrett made a disgusted sound. “’Ow’d you end up with debts? You don’t need no bleeding bread; you never go outside. And don’t I give you everything else you need? Anybody comes to break my dog’s fingers, they’ve got to ask me for permission first, don’t they?” The toe of his boot thudded into Dead Rick’s ribs, and the skriker curled up in pain.

By the time it faded, Nadrett had stepped away, going to an old cabinet in the corner of the room. Dead Rick looked up, cautiously, afraid he would be punished for doing so. But his master’s attention was elsewhere; he unlocked the doors with a small key from around his neck, then opened them to reveal an assortment of shelves and tiny drawers. This was where he kept minor valuables: bread for his underlings, mortal trinkets, other items for his business.

A flat piece of glass, rippling with indistinct shapes.

Black horror rose like bile in his throat.
No.
He tried to swallow his instinctive whimper—it would buy him no pity—but the sound escaped him nonetheless, thin and weak. Nadrett heard and smiled.

“Been a while, ’asn’t it? Ain’t brought out one of these in ages. This seemed like a good time; after all, I don’t want you forgetting about them, do I?”

Dead Rick licked his lips. There was no dignity, no pride; any self-respect he might have gained by talking to Irrith was gone as if it had never been. He cowered on the floor, showing throat to his master, and said the words he knew Nadrett wanted to hear. “Please. Don’t.”

“You stole from me. You ’as to pay for that.”

“I won’t do it again, I swear.”

“But you’ve already
done
it, dog. That’s all fine and well for the future, but what about what I already lost?”

He was whimpering again, desperately keening, knowing it would do no good. “Please…”

Nadrett laughed, a soft, cruel sound. “You’re pathetic.”

A pause. Just long enough for him to start hoping—

The glass shattered.

Razor shards rebounded off the stone, scoring Dead Rick’s skin. Physical pain was lost in the anguish that wrenched his heart. Light shone across his eyes for just an instant, like a will-o’-the-wisp; his hand shot out to try and grab it, but the glow slipped through his fingers and was gone, leaving only blood where the glass had cut him.

Another piece of his past, destroyed. Another piece of himself.

Gone forever.

He couldn’t even take strength in rage, for fear Nadrett had more in the cabinet, just waiting to be broken. He just curled around himself, around the pain in his gut, until his master spat, “Get out.”

Dead Rick went. He crawled, belly low, sick and on the verge of tears. Out the door, then into enough of a crouch to flee the bastards in the outer room, hearing their laughter and mockery fading behind him. Into the warren of the Goblin Market, not caring where he went, so long as it was away; surely there must be
some
place here that would hide him from everyone’s eyes.

Rushing headlong as he was, Dead Rick didn’t notice the woman until he slammed into her. He staggered sideways into the wall, regained his balance, lurched onward—and was pulled up short by her words. “Dead Rick!”

The skriker spun, lips peeling back in a snarl.
What in Mab’s name
—It was some mortal woman. Obscenely out of place in the Goblin Market, with her silk gown and jewel-pinned hat and unstained gloves; he was surprised she’d made it this far, though if the bruises on her face were any sign, it hadn’t been without trouble. How did she know him? He’d never seen her before.

No, that wasn’t true. His memory was raw, an open wound, left bleeding by the shattered glass; he remembered her face. Laughing, slack in the grip of opium. She’d been there with Cyma.

Then he took a better look, and his jaw fell open.

Her gloved hand came up in a rush, before he could say a word. “Don’t! Think, Dead Rick. You know there are things I can’t say, and it will become very awkward if I have to ignore you saying them for me. But yes—you know me.”

Cyma.
Wearing the face and name of her mortal toy. A changeling.

With a furious growl, he whirled and began to run again. But she ran after him, calling his name. “Please! I promised I would come back—Dead Rick, wait—what happened? Let me help you!”

Help him. So bloody generous of her, after running off like that.
I’m going away,
she’d said. He remembered her coy smile, her refusal to say where she was going.
Iron rot your soul, Cyma.
But she wasn’t Cyma any longer, was she?

He wasn’t looking where he was going; Dead Rick found himself facing a rockfall, the corridor ahead completely blocked. And that woman was behind him, gasping for breath, one hand pressed to her tightly laced side.
That’s what you get for living as a human.
Dead Rick spat a curse at her. “Out of my way, bitch.”

“My name,” the changeling said, in between gasps, “is Louisa. Now. And I promised I would try to help you, Dead Rick.”

“You can’t fucking ’elp me.”

He flung the words at her like knives, and she flinched. “I can find a man—”

“Why—so I can be a changeling? Like that would do me any bloody good!”

“Bread, then.”

Another curse. “You’ve got no idea what I need.”

“Then tell me!” The changeling—Louisa—finally managed to straighten up. “I can’t be much use to you if you don’t tell me anything, Dead Rick.”

The pain still pulsed inside him, the gaping awareness of void where his self used to be. Before Nadrett stole it and started breaking it, piece by piece. He didn’t care if she was any use to him or not; he didn’t care about anything at all.
Nadrett’s blood. Give me that, and I’ll rest easy.
But she couldn’t, and so he just wanted her gone.

Dead Rick spat that last part out, half-incoherent, but she understood. She held out her hands, though, stopping him when he moved to leave. “Please, one thing. It’s small, I promise. Have you seen a mortal who looks like the boy in this photo?”

He’d been stuck in the dogfighting pit on more than one occasion, not just that fight with Rewdan. Simple boxing matches. One time a yarthkin had caught him a solid blow, right where a drunken goblin had knifed him a few days before.

This felt much the same.

The face stared out at him from the tattered paper, stiffly solemn, but alert, self-aware,
complete
in a way the half-daft boy in the library had lost. That was the face Dead Rick remembered, from those moments before the poor bastard vanished into Nadrett’s control.

“You do know,” the changeling said, staring into his eyes. “Can you tell me where he is? There’s a maid in my household—well, not anymore; she’s been arrested and sent to prison—she’s searching for him. An Irish girl, Hannah someone.”

So that was her name. Two syllables, empty sounds: they meant nothing to him. It might have been anyone’s name.

She had once been his friend.

Both of them had. If the voice told the truth.

“The Academy,” Dead Rick said. It wasn’t Nadrett’s blood on his jaws, but it was a tiny piece of revenge, putting right what his master had sent wrong. “Feidelm’s got ’im. But ’e’s broken.”

“Broken how?”

The skriker shivered. “Like ’e lost half of ’imself. They think somebody tried to do ’im as a changeling, but it went wrong. ’E don’t speak no more, and ’e’s gone soft in the ’ead.”

Cyma—Louisa—frowned. “I’ve never heard of that happening to anyone before. Normally they just lose their names, their identities. Could it be someone tried to force him into it unwilling? I don’t know how they
could,
but—”

He cut her off with a swipe of his hand. “I told you all I know. We’re done.”

Her animated expression faltered, fell into sad acceptance. “I see. Thank you, Dead Rick. If there’s anything I can do for you—”

“Don’t bother making promises,” Dead Rick snarled, shoving past her. “They ain’t worth the air they’re spoken on.”

The Prince’s Court, Onyx Hall: June 9, 1884

“Now you just drink that down,” Rosamund Goodemeade said, “and you’ll feel good as new.”

She said it every time she gave Hodge a cup of mead to drink, and every time it was a little less true. He didn’t begrudge her the words, though. In his private thoughts, he’d long since decided the mead was the only thing keeping him alive. It gave a man strength, and he needed as much as he could possibly get.

Today more than most. Hodge gulped the sweet liquid down without pausing for breath, then handed her the empty cup. “Thank you,” he said; once, early in his reign, he’d forgotten to be courteous, and Gertrude had smacked him, Prince or no. “Now if you’ll pardon me—it’s probably better if you ain’t ’ere for this.”

The brownie’s expression soured. She didn’t like his plan; even her usually invincible talent for seeing the good in people faltered at times. But he
was
the Prince, and so long as he remembered to say please and thank you, she wouldn’t defy him once his decision was made. “We’ll be nearby if you need us,” Rosamund said, and hastened out of the room.

Leaving him with his guard of two elf-knights. Peregrin had tried to convince Hodge to put on fine clothes; he insisted the Prince’s dignity demanded it, especially when holding something like a formal audience. Hodge—who hadn’t held anything one could plausibly call a formal audience in his entire reign—flatly refused. He was the son of a bricklayer; he’d never once worn a top hat, and he had no intention of starting now.
I’d look a proper fool, I would. And if I can’t take me seriously, who will?

Even Peregrin and Cerenel were there less for dignity and more for protection. None of them expected physical danger—but given that Hodge’s death might very well mean the end of the Onyx Hall, nobody wanted to take any chances.

He took a deep breath, then nodded at Cerenel. The knight murmured to the moth perching on his finger, which fluttered out through a crack in the door.

A moment later, the door opened, and Dame Segraine escorted Valentin Aspell into the room.

Hodge’s fingers curled tight around the arms of his chair. He loathed the fae of the Goblin Market; they indulged in all the worst vices of their kind, at the expense of humans, and flaunted it in his face. Their influence had grown through Lune’s long decline, as she became less and less capable of calling them to heel, but since her seclusion they’d flourished like rats. Hodge’s best attempts to check them on his own were laughably inadequate.

On the surface of it, Aspell wasn’t the worst of the lot: that honor belonged to Nadrett. But he had a distinction the other Market boss didn’t, which was that he was a confirmed traitor, sentenced and punished by the Queen herself. Hodge didn’t trust the bastard an inch.

A spark of anger—the first of many, he was sure—lit in his stomach when Aspell made him an old-fashioned bow. Polite though it looked, he was sure the faerie meant it as mockery. His suspicion strengthened when Aspell said, “Thank you for seeing me, Lord Benjamin.”

The formal courtesy twisted Hodge’s mouth. He said roughly, “Don’t waste my time on fancy talk. Why do you want to see Lune?”

Aspell’s thin eyebrows rose, an elegant display of surprise.
But ’e ain’t surprised at all.
“That,” the faerie said, “is between me and the Queen.”

“What’s between you and the Queen is
me
. You don’t answer my question, this meeting’s done.”

By the way things should have worked, Hodge had no right to say that; his authority had to do with the dealings between mortals and fae. Not two faeries. He half-expected Apsell to point that out. But the other merely drew in a vexed breath and said, “If you throw me out, you’ll never hear what I have to say about Galen St. Clair.”

“What’s to ’ear?” Hodge grinned. “We already know Nadrett stuck ’im in a photograph. Oh, I’m sorry—was that what you was going to sell us?”

He could almost hear Aspell’s teeth grinding.
You came in ’ere with your notions of ’ow this would go—but I ain’t playing your game. I may be the last Prince this place ever sees; well, I’m going to be the best fucking Prince I can. And that means not letting you dance me like a puppet.

When Aspell recovered his composure, the faerie said, “Do you know where the photograph is?”

“Do you?”

That was the one piece of information Hodge was willing to bargain for. But Aspell’s fleeting hesitation told him he was out of luck. “I can find out,” the faerie said.

Hodge snorted. “So can we. Try again some other time, guv. When you’ve got something of value to sell.”

What looked like real frustration twisted Aspell’s face. The Goodemeades had given Hodge a thorough warning about him; they said he was very good at hiding what he thought. Either this was a pose, or he wasn’t bothering to conceal his feelings. Whichever it was, it boiled down to manipulation. “I am not a fool,
my lord.
I know the Queen has not been seen in years. Unlike many of her ignorant subjects, I know better than to think her dead—we would have felt it; likely we would not be here—but she cannot be far from her end. Is she even conscious? Is that why you refuse to let me see her, because she has fallen into a coma and can no longer speak?”