Laura Anne Gilman (23 page)

Her legs. Her eyes. Her hands, fixing and typing, touching and holding, creating and destroying. Her mouth, to speak, to sing, to shout.

She remembered them in the shower together, him singing, teaching her the words, while his hands moved over her skin....

Her throat couldn’t form the words, but she remembered the song.

The snake’s form shuddered and then cracked open, like shards of iridescent crystal shattering, flying across the room. The surrounding preters ducked, almost instinctively, even as Jan thought, in passing, distracted, “I must have been beautiful like that.”

As though summoned by her own fleeting enjoyment, a blow hit her out of nowhere, this time nothing but rage, a heavy blow into her ribs, forcing her to double over. Nothing subtle, nothing transforming or delusional about this, only the very real pain, worse than before because there was no pretense, no distraction of a new form, only the searing, venomous rage.

And then another blow landed, this time from the backside, just above her hip. Jan fell to her knees again, not even aware of having stood up, tasting blood in her mouth. Had she bitten her tongue? Or was she starting to cough up blood?

Her throat closed up, her chest congested, all the warning signs of an asthma attack approaching. She could die here. She probably would die here. Tyler would be lost, Martin...what would happen to Martin?

AJ knew they had never had a chance.

You cannot win,
the rage told her, a searing whisper like an iron clamped to her ears.

I will not lose.

Foolish mortal. Always foolish. Always losing.

Toba had lost. He had died, standing against the tide of turncoats, giving her time to escape. Giving her the chance to be brave when her time came. Was that really losing?

Only if she screwed this up.

“You cannot resist us.”

Jan forced her eyes open, forced herself upright on her knees, unable to do more, and stared at the woman who had stolen her lover. “That’s not the way our stories tell it.” And that wasn’t how it had gone for their queen.

Stjerne’s lovely face twisted in a snarl, as though she had heard that unspoken thought. Maybe she had. Maybe Jan had actually spoken it, not just thought it. The preter raised her hand for another blow, her knuckles already stained with blood. Jan’s blood.

Jan was pretty sure that this blow would break something important, but couldn’t bring herself to brace for it.

“Let go,” the preter said, “and I will let you live.”

Jan shook her head, remembering the terms. If she agreed to something else, anything less, she could lose everything. “I came here for Tyler.”

The preter spat the words, the venom almost visible, the air trembling around her. “You don’t deserve him.”

Jan laughed at that, and blood dripped to the floor. “What makes you think love has anything to do with ‘deserving’? What makes you think love has any logic to it at all?”

The pain relented just a little, as though her defiance had pushed it back to—almost—bearable levels. Jan got to her feet, slowly, one hand on the floor to push her up. Things crackled and popped, and a line of fire ran from her calves to her neck, reminding her that magic or not, the damage had been real. She ignored the woman standing within arm’s reach, fought down the desire to wring that beautiful neck, and instead turned to the figures on the dais.

Her breath came as though squeezed though lungs flattened like a toothpaste tube, but it came, and that was enough. She had resisted. Magic had been worked on her...and she remained herself, unowned.

“I’m not perfect,” she said now, the words harsh out of a throat that felt as if she had been screaming for hours. “I’m maybe not even the right match for Tyler, even though I love him. I’m...angry at him. And scared. And...love is complicated.” She swallowed and tasted blood. “But I know two things. One, that you have no right to hold him against his will, not if you tricked him, made him believe things that weren’t true. And two, you have no right to be in my world.”

Stubborn, that’s what she was. That had been what AJ had seen in her, why he’d chosen her. Stubborn, not brave.

Jan thought that maybe, here and now, the two things were close enough to not matter.

Stjerne stepped forward, getting between Jan and the dais. “He is mine. I carved him out and created him anew. He is
mine.
” She said the words as if they hurt her. Jan rather hoped they did.

“You deny the results of the challenge?” The consort sounded...amused? Jan had the sudden thought that, when there were no humans to abuse, the preternatural Court probably were just as happy to turn on each other for entertainment value.

Without taking her eyes off the consort, Jan tried to figure out where Martin was, if they could make a run for it if needed. Then again, she could barely stand, so running was probably out of the question.

“The creature was in the room,” Stjerne said. “She took strength from it. Kill it, and try again.”

“What?” Jan’s eyes widened, and pain or not, she swung around with every intention of taking the bitch out herself.

The consort looked to his side, to the preter who had commented before.

“That is also...a fair point,” the preter—some kind of judge?—said.

“The hell it is!” Jan shouted. “Martin didn’t do anything, he just—”

“It’s all right.” Martin’s voice, just behind and to her right, and she turned to face him, still spitting mad.

“Screw you and the pony you... Oh, hell, you know what I mean.” The slip made a faint smile appear on Martin’s face, and Jan almost lost it at that, a surge of affection—stupid but unstoppable—filled her. She turned back to the dais and forced herself to move up the steps, ignoring the pain. Stubborn. Oh, yes, she could be stubborn. All
three
of them were going home.

She had to pause at the top of the dais and take a hit off her inhaler, and to hell with showing weakness. Not being able to breathe would be worse. The preters looked at her curiously but didn’t interfere.

“I accepted the challenge, and I won. Adding additional terms and conditions after the fact is bullshit. More, it invalidates any existing agreement that might predate your sudden change in policy.”

She was grabbing the memory of any disclaimers she’d ever put together for client websites, plus a smattering of the few warranties she’d ever actually read, tossing it together and hoping it sounded reasonable. If Martin was right and the preters had no creativity, if they were bound by rules, they might be taken in by linear double-talk that sounded plausible.

“And so you owe me not only my prize, but our freedom. To leave here, and to be unmolested.” Tricky elves. Tricky. Not to be trusted. Get everything nailed down. The thoughts tossed through her head even as she was speaking, hoping to hell that she was doing the right thing.

“Stjerne.” The consort looked over Jan’s head, down at the preter still waiting on the main floor. “Your request is denied. The human resisted you, and stayed true. More... She amuses us.”

He looked at her then, and only then did she realize that his eyes had the same golden rim as Toba’s, although his face was fully, smoothly humanlike. Still, the way his hair moved in the nonexistent breeze, almost like feathers...she felt the urge to reach out and touch it.

Mind games, something whispered in her head. Seduction. It’s what they do.

She stepped back, and the consort smiled again. “Yes. She amuses us, and so little has, in so many days. More: never let it be said we do not abide by our word, within the boundaries of this Court.

“You may go, human, and take your beast with you. Safe across our borders, and safe for...” He pretended to contemplate, but she knew he had planned what he would say before he opened his mouth. “Ten weeks and ten days and ten hours, you may have, for your audacity, and your honor.”

Jan frowned. Something wasn’t right. “Ten weeks and ten days...and ten hours,” she repeated slowly. Here, or there? If time was twisty here...

“You wish it shorter, human?”

She had thought—she didn’t know much, but everything she had read told her that seven was the magical number. As odd as that seemed, as worried as she was about the time distortion, that wasn’t the real problem.

They said she could go and take her beast. That meant Martin. But...

“And Tyler,” she said. “I fought to bring Tyler home. Those were our terms.”

The consort’s eyes glittered, and Jan had the uncomfortable feeling that there was something with sharp teeth and sharper claws standing just behind her, awaiting only a twitch to sink itself into her flesh. The sense of unreality that filled this land pressed at her, made her doubt herself and her right to demand anything.

Jan.
A whisper of a touch, the soft gurgle of water over rocks, the singing deafness of deep water overhead, and then she could feel the slickness of her keyboard beneath her fingertips, taste the sweet, acrid sting of coffee, smell exhaust and rain on the pavement, and hear the slow, steady thud of a heart at rest under her as she curled in bed, rain outside and coffee beside her, and Tyler, safe and asleep and where he belonged.

“And Tyler,” she said again, firmly. “You may not deny me that which is mine.”

“If he in truth is yours, then you shall take him, and be gone.” The consort smiled again, and Jan distrusted that smile that seemed to take immense pleasure in pain.

“Unleash your pet, Stjerne. Let us see where he goes.”

Jan turned, not wanting to look away from the consort, but needing to see what was happening, too. She saw Martin out of the corner of her eye; he had moved to stand near the doorway, his long face worried and drawn. But when he saw her looking at him, he lowered his chin slowly, his shoulders easing, and she smiled. Whatever happened, he was ready to take her home.

Only then did she let herself look across the chamber, to where Stjerne had replaced her cloak, standing next to Tyler, a possessive hand on his arm.

Jan forced herself to look at him the way a stranger might. It was easier somehow, now; he was Tyler and yet, here, he wasn’t. A slender, almost scrawny figure, his skin so much darker than her own, a color he said wasn’t “true dark” but low brown, his close-cropped head covered in glossy black brush not yet long enough to curl. And his nose and chin as stubborn as her own, softened now with a sort of slackness that was unlike him—Tyler, who was always wound up, always going, even when she wanted to curl up and be lazy...

“Tyler. Ty, come with me,” she whispered. She knew her voice wouldn’t cross the space, not with such a high ceiling and the other preters muttering and shifting, but somehow he did hear her, his head rising and turning, his body straightening until he looked straight at her, and his eyes were awake, if not entirely clear. She could tell, even from where she stood, that Stjerne’s spell was slipping.

He knew her. She could see it on his face. But he wasn’t coming toward her, wasn’t smiling in that sweet welcome, wasn’t shrugging Stjerne’s hand off his arm in disgust or shame.

Once before she’d tried to hold him, and failed. If she failed now...he would be lost forever. Like the figures roaming outside, or...worse.

“Tyler. It’s time to come home now.”

“No. Stay. Here is pleasure and pain entwined, my pet. No cares, no worries, but only the simple act of being.” The preter’s voice curled around them like the swirl of oil in water, iridescently pretty but toxic if swallowed. Jan bit her lip and clenched her fist so tightly her blunt-cut nails dug into her palm, as she watched Tyler’s eyes start to fade over again.

“Coffee,” she whispered. “Listening to the blues. Dancing slow on the balcony, watching it rain. Pizza and the click of the keyboard, the hiss of the radiator.” She was almost chanting now, pulling all the sensation she could remember, the ones she thought might pull him back. Real things. Solid things. Human things. Things she missed with a sudden lurch of yearning.

“Four-way online Scrabble,” she said. “Yelling at the game on TV. Waffles with real maple syrup and cinnamon. Crossing against traffic and just barely making it, the way the number seven bus drivers yell when you bring your bike on, but you know they’re not really mad.”

His lips moved; it was almost a smile.

“Come home, Ty. It’s time to come home now. To the real things. To me, Tyler Wash. Come home to me.” Her cracked, hoarse voice broke, and all the pain she felt, all the frustration and the loss—the things she had gone through to get here, all dripped into her words, coating them with as much vinegar as honey.

And he stepped forward.

And then again. And he lifted a hand to his chest, curled his fingers around something, a chain of silver hidden under his shirt, pulling it over his head and dropping the chain on the stone floor.

“No!” the preter cried, and rage filled the room, but it could not touch Jan, not now. Her fists clenched to her chest, barely daring to breathe, Jan watched as Tyler took another step, then one more, and was almost halfway across the room, halfway to her.

There was a stirring in the crowd, as though someone might stop him, but it stilled, as though reminded that they dare not. The consort had said it: it was up to Tyler to decide.

Another step, and he looked up at her. His gaze was still clouded, his face scrunched as though he worried over each step. She wanted so badly to step forward, to reach out and bring him to her, but she was held by the same knowledge that restrained the preter: this was not her choice.

And then he took another step, and his hands reached up and she took them, feeling the chilled, trembling flesh under her own. Her chest clenched, but she turned to the consort, her back to the room, and said “mine.”

The consort leaned back in his chair, his expression one of distant boredom. “Yes, yes. Go.”

“Now.” And Martin was beside them, although it should have been impossible for him to move that quickly. “Before something happens, or they set up another challenge, we have to go.”

“Who?” Tyler still looked dazed, but his skin was starting to warm again, the chalky gray color easing to a healthier brown.