A History of Glitter and Blood (26 page)

So that's another theory. Who knows, really. This isn't a textbook.

Anyway. The fairies came back.

Shug agrees to bring Beckan back to the city. He also agrees to leave Tier and Rig his sheep.

Tier kisses Beckan's cheek and Rig hugs her tightly. Tier says, “Be careful on that foot, okay?”

“What about you guys?”

“We'll be fine.”

They will be. She knows that. She can picture them with a whole family of sheep, a field of flowers, sex, and stories they remember, and stories they make up. She knows that they would have kept her safe for a long time, but she also knows that those sheep are not ready for slaughter, so eventually they would have eaten her, and it is strange to know both of these things at once, but she is getting used to it.

And with each careful step behind Shug, she thinks less and less about them and more and more of the glint of glitter, the hiss of yellow smoke, the smell of her city.

This city that is hers to protect and hers to mold. She can do it. She and her pack can save everything.

It's their job. It's their burden.

They approach Ferrum from the North End, where the farms are still recovering from their long abandonment. And here they are, at what should be their usual stone walls.

But no, these walls are new; these walls are blocking their old walls. Smooth metal with dark, sharp wire, warnings of alarms, fairy guards (fairies, fairies) stationed on either side of a solid, locked gate.

A year of a sprawling war has made her forget how quickly things can happen.

“Shug,” the gnome boy tells one of the guards. “And this is Beckan Moloy.”

“She isn't in uniform.”

“She's been away.”

The guard puts a stamp of one color on Shug's hand and another on Beckan's. “Bring her straight to the hospital. Don't delay.”

“Won't. Thank you, sir.”

The fairies put keys in the locks and turn heavy wheels on the ground. Beckan leans into Shug and says, “Where did these walls come from?”

“They've put the gnomes to work,” he says. “Put everyone to work.”

“I can't go to the hospital,” she says. “I'm not sick, I don't need . . . I have to get to the courthouse.”

Shug says, “No, you can't go anywhere looking like that.”

“Like what?”

The gates open, so slowly, and Beckan steps through and sees her city. She sees glitter, pounds of it, clinging to hundreds of fairies.

Each fairy in a gray uniform. Each gnome in blue. Each tightroper in white.

And everyone is on the streets. The tunnels are still open at the tops, and guards man the sides to stop anyone from jumping in. The gnomes all look so uncomfortable above the ground, their bare feet on the cobblestone.

There are no tightropes, just long, lean boys and men and women and children in white uniforms slouching against the buildings, snapping to attention when the fairies walk by, sweeping. A whole race of messboys (and if Beckan hadn't recently been part of a three-member race, she's not sure she would even count these tightropers as their own. There are
so few left
. And so many gnomes who just look so not-starving. The math is not hard.)

There is no one she recognizes.

There are uniforms and streets she knows and buildings that have been rebuilt since she left, but rebuilt shinier and newer and brighter than they once were, and the sun shines on everything and hurts her eyes, and she recognizes no one.

A whole city of uniforms and clean slates and blank faces.

“You won't get anywhere unsorted,” Shug says.

This isn't her city.

How could this have happened so quickly?

How could she have let this happen?

Beckan makes Shug leave her
and walks to the hospital herself. She knows where it is. It's where she kissed Scrap and his fever all those years ago.

The last time she saw it was the day Josha was burned. They were going to pick up Cricket together and a bomb—from aboveground or below ground or somewhere, did it really matter?—went off at the next block and destroyed the hospital. Josha, like an idiot, like a boy who had stayed inside the whole war, ran toward it to see if anyone was hurt. No one was, besides him, and that was just a shrapnel burn on the side of his face, but it was enough to make him terrified and angry and desperate to join the fight, to end it, to get hurt for a reason.

She passes a gnome pushing a broom behind a fairy. “How's Tier?” he mumbles as she passes.

“Safe.”

He nods to himself and continues. She realizes that a part of her was afraid of him.

Everyone is watching her, the dirty little fairy girl without a uniform. Everyone is watching her except the ones she most wants to see her.

Where is her pack?

She realizes that, as far as she knows, Ferrum does not have a courthouse.

“Excuse me,” she asks a fairy woman. “Where's the courthouse?”

“Go to the hospital,” the woman says, without looking at her.

“I don't care about a fucking uniform!” she yells, but she's jostled as she walks and soon the hospital is right in front of her, and through the window she sees a boy on a bench with an ice pack over his eye. A boy getting prodded by a fairy in gray uniform.

A boy in a white uniform.

“Piccolo!”

Immediately, she's through the doors, and she hears a load of doctors or nurses or someones yelling at her to go to the front desk, to sign in, but Piccolo sees her and drops the ice pack and they hug like they haven't seen each other in years.

“No,” Piccolo says. “No, don't cry.”

“Are you okay?”

“Just hit in the eye. They wouldn't let me in the courtroom, I kind of freaked out.”

“Why not?”

“No tightropers 'cept the ones on the jury. I can't believe you . . . fuck, we thought you were dead.”

She shakes her head. “Josha . . . ?”

“Josha's fine. In the courtroom.”

“With Scrap.”

He nods.

Then, behind her, a skinny throat gives a thick
ahem
, and she turns around to see a tall fairy with her hair put up on top of her head, her red glitter somehow perfect, her gray uniform sharp and clean.

It's the woman from the meeting before the war. Jenemah. The one who told Scrap that no city was worth losing a limb.

So what is it worth losing, is the thing.

“Name?” she says.

“Beckan Moloy?”

“Come with me.”

Beckan looks at Piccolo.

“I'll wait for you,” he says. “I'll be able to get in once you're with me.”

“What?”

“You're a fairy.”

She forgot that ever meant anything.

Fairies could go anywhere, could do anything, ruled their little world.

That's what the history books said. (That was history.)

Jenemah leads her through the hall to a bed surrounded by curtains, where she rolls up Beckan's sleeve and takes a vial of blood. While it fills, she swabs off glitter from Beckan's cheek and wipes it onto a small piece of glass.

She flips through pages on her clipboard. “You're not on my list. Were you in Calman's traveling party?”

“I wasn't in anyone's traveling party. I took a walk for a few weeks. Before that I was in this city. Every day. For my entire life.”

She chuckles and tucks her hair behind her one remaining ear. “Right. Your name has come up in the trial, I believe.” She runs Beckan's blood through a machine. “Good. Fairy.”

“What else would I be?”

Jenemah gives her a look. “You never know who might be pretending these days. You could be a gnome covered in glitter. The first step toward reorganizing this city is to have each creature in its proper place. We cannot make any progress in chaos.”

“Why did you come back?”

“We will always come back when we are needed.”

“Bullshit.”

“Scrap's predicament is delicate. The outcome of his trial will determine a great deal for the city and for our race relations as a whole. Scrap involved himself in a conflict between all three races.”

She says, “It doesn't matter anyway. Scrap's a fairy. He'll get off.”

“We'll see.”

Beckan is cold. “Where is the courthouse?”

The fairy woman throws an armful of cloth at her. “Put on your uniform.”

She does, shaking. “You said my name came up. As a witness? I'll be a witness. Everything that Scrap did was self-defense. Piccolo was a witness too. The tightroper. That boy out there.”

“Miss Moloy,” Jenemah says, “might I be frank?”

“Scrap never did anything he didn't have to do, and he's the only one in the whole war who can say that.”

“At this point,” she says. “Our main focus is on fostering suitable species-to-species relationships. The necessary opinions in the matter are those of a carefully selected council consisting of two gnomes, two tightropers, and two fairies.”

“And a fairy judge,” Beckan guesses.

“Naturally.”

“None of whom were here when it happened.”

“Oh, the gnomes were,” she says. “Rest assured, the gnomes remember quite well. And bringing a fairy to justice might be all they need to stay content underground for a long, long time.”

They have plenty of time
, Beckan thinks.

What she says is, “This is bullshit. Tell me where the courthouse is.”

Court Transcript
The Trial of Scrap Oregna
7/31/546

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: Mr. Oregna, you stand trial today for the murder of the late gnome king Crate. How do you plead?

SCRAP OREGNA: I don't know.

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: Do you understand the charges brought against you?

Whereupon the door opens and two latecomers slip through the cracks. The defendant does not turn around
.

SCRAP OREGNA: Yes.

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: And how do you plead?

SCRAP OREGNA: I don't know.

FAIRY COUNCILMAN CALMAN CREED: He's stalling, Your Honor.

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: Mr. Oregna. You've had nearly three weeks in confinement to contemplate your trial. What more could you possibly ask for to help you make the decision of whether you are guilty or not guilty?

SCRAP OREGNA: A lawyer.

Whereupon there is a disturbance near the back of the courtroom as one of the aforementioned newcomers rises and charges toward the front of the courtroom
.

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: Young lady, if you please!

RUDE NEWCOMER: Scrap requested a lawyer. I've decided that I'm up for the job.

Whereupon Scrap Oregna stares at the rude newcomer as if he has just seen a ghost
.

Rude newcomer, in accordance with her title, does not look at him
.

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: You decided, in the two and half seconds between Mr. Oregna's request for a lawyer and your own charge toward the bench, that you are adequate to stand as a lawyer in this trial?

RUDE NEWCOMER: Yes.

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: And your name?

RUDE NEWCOMER: Beckan Moloy.

A FAIRY BOY, HIGH IN THE STANDS: Fuck yeah, Beckan!

Beckan knows now why she didn't know there was a courthouse. This isn't what used to be here.

This building used to be a library.

These spectator seats used to be shelves.

The judge's bench is stuck in the middle of the children's section.

She came here a few times for her lessons with Scrap, but largely her memories of the place are from her childhood, with her father, with Josha, snuggled into a chair in the corner with a picture book, trying to read.

GNOME COUNCILMAN PLUG: Your honor, I must object to this. The fairy girl has not been sworn in and she hasn't shown us any credentials.

Whereupon everyone ignores this objection and Beckan Moloy whispers back and forth with her new client
.

JUDGE PEONY LACHTURN: Well, Miss Moloy? How does your client plead?