Roadside Magic (13 page)

T
he best thing she found was a long black velvet cape-coat in what must have been a fortune-teller’s tent, dusty and motheaten but large enough to blur her outline. With the hood up and a thin black dust-stiffened scarf, embroidered with itchy tarnished spangles, wrapped around the lower half of her face, she could be safely anonymous—obviously sidhe, but perhaps a nymph of any drier sort, since a naiad would drip-damp through the alleyways.

It didn’t matter, because as soon as she approached the slice of the Markets holding the edge of this place moored to both sideways realms and mortal, she heard a pattering of raindrops.

She took her time, examining the border from the shadows in the lee of a deserted cotton-candy stand. Wherever the rain touched, puffs of dust splattered up, ghost-outlines of open mouths before an uneasy breeze whisked them away. When the border shifted they dried quickly, leaving strange ringed ripples in the dirt. A long time ago, maybe mortals would see those dapples in a forgotten corner of the world and know the Folk had been about.

No more, though.

The sleeves were long, so she could cover her hands once she stepped over—gloves would be necessary, and a kerchief for her hair, and perhaps a pretty bauble to anchor a glamour to, since her locket was gone.
That
would be the most expensive article, since all the rest could be stolen if need be, and she would have to trade something significant for anything shiny and sidhe-wrought. The ring in her pocket would do, perhaps. It was bright and tawdry and had a memory attached.

Could she attach a glamour to a bright piece of mortal plastic? Not a very good one, and the hour or so required to do so suddenly didn’t feel like one she had the luxury of spending. A nameless tension bloomed under her ribs, her heart beating fast and thin in her ears.

Pepperbuckle squeezed against her side, his warm, solid shoulder against her hip. She found her hand lying on his ruff, caressing absently as he leaned into the touch. What did this beast eat? Could she afford to feed him?

“Are you hungry?” she whispered. “What on earth do you eat, little one?”
Little one
, as if he wasn’t a beast large enough to be ridden.

His tail wagged once, but his ear-perked attention didn’t waver. He regarded the Markets with cocked head and tense hindquarters.

Robin took a deep breath, glided out of the comforting shadows. The hound moved with her, pacing regally, but slowed as they drew near the shifting, dancing border. He whined, and perhaps she simply imagined it, but there were words buried in that low, worried sound.

“I know,” she soothed. “You don’t have to come with me.”
It’s probably best if you don’t
.

That earned her a single reproachful look, his head barely turning. Then he focused on the border, slowing still more.

Robin halted just at the very edge of the curtain of dapples, one of her heels striking a pebble loose in the dirt and sliding sideways a fraction before steadying. Her head tilted, and for a moment she and Pepperbuckle stood in exactly the same attitude of
listening
, her pale hand lost in the slowly rising hair between his shoulderblades. A shudder rippled through her, crown-to-toes, and its twin worked down through Pepperbuckle. His nails lengthened slightly, digging into bleached-bone dust.

What is that?

Commotion strained through the shifting border, faraway shouting. The Markets were a cacophony at the best of times, but this sounded . . . wrong.

If she hadn’t hesitated, the Markets might not have moved, fluidly sliding past. The alleyway that held some small bit of them tethered to this lonely place was off to her left, tucked on the other side of a long row of joined-together, mobile tin shacks that used to dispense greasy mortal food. Echoes of past crowds shuffled around Robin, the ghosts of hungry mortals and footsore children gawping, given a simulacrum of heat and motion by the disturbance. Something was
definitely
afoot, and she was just about to turn and seek another exit when a familiar shadow darted in front of her, running with his head up and a second shadow pacing him.

Black hair cut aggressively short, the broad shoulders and deceptively light footsteps, a flash of green eyes. He was in the same dun coat, a heavy thing with leather elbow-patches, raspy corduroy her fingers still remembered threading needle-chantment through. It was sadly tattered now, and he looked like he’d been rolled through a flood and a few muddy creeks as well. A hurtful pang went through her—what was he
doing
? Of course, Unwinter would be after him, too. She had thought
him far cannier than
this
, to be caught running at night through the Gobelin.

I am not my sister
. She could never be blithe, laughing, fully mortal Daisy.

And yet.

Her skin twitched all over. An invisible string tugged sharply, some item of hers, maybe with a simple location-chantment on it, carried by the running man. Through the borderline interference came the silvery, ultrasonic thrills even mortals would be able to sense.

All the breath left her. Pepperbuckle growled, and her hand slipped free of his ruff. She could not ask the changeling-hound, whatever affection he bore her, to run toward death.

Robin filled her lungs again and lunged forward, her heels clattering as she bounded onto the cobblestones, after Jeremiah Gallow.

I
diot!”

It was amazing Crenn had the breath to keep hurling his opinion of Jeremiah’s intelligence hither and yon. Gallow landed
hard
, breath driven from him by the impact, and whirled. The lance burst into being, blossoming between his palms, and he set its butt against the ground as the rider behind them blew the huntwhistle again, a cold thrill yanking on every nerve Gallow possessed.

“
Moron!
” Crenn yelled, and the swordblades blurred, solid arcs of silver, driving back the two drow who sought to pull him down. One fell clutching at the spurting stump of a severed arm, the other gutsplit and throat-cut at almost the same moment, and Crenn darted forward as the Unseelie knight on his nightmare destrier, its foam-splattering mouth champing, hit the lance. “
Halfwit!
”

More precisely, the destrier hit, shock grating through Jeremiah and away, his boots scraping the cobbled floor of this part of the markets. The lance groaned, its hungry blade finding a quivering clot, the point around which the elfmount coalesced. The shape of the battle changed inside Gallow’s head, so he
yanked the lance aside,
hard
, tearing the small, hidden ball-heart free of its moorings. The destrier exploded into smoke, and it wasn’t just the furious pace of combat—the Markets themselves were writhing. Goblins howled, wooden and metal shutters slamming closed, ghilliedhu girls ran shrieking, long hair flying and white flesh flashing.

He’d asked Robin if she was ghilliedhu, once.

“You goddamn brainless pig!”

If Crenn was yelling, he obviously didn’t consider the situation overly dire. Or Jeremiah had managed to irritate the man past bearing. Either was equally likely.

The shops and stalls were closing themselves, the more fortunate barring their doors and windows against the appearance of Unseelie, the poorer stall-folk buttoning themselves up, the stalls retreating like frightened anemones, vanishing into cracks, alley-mouths snapping shut.

Thrashing almost-real tentacles cracked cobblestones before their spent force released itself in puffs of vapor, Crenn facing another clot of drow, low, slinking shapes with coin-bright eyes flooding behind the knight, who rose from the ruin of his mount with slow, terrible grace. The rain showed no sign of slackening, and as much as Gallow would have liked to shed his wet, clinging coat, he knew he needed the faint armor it provided—and if he managed by some miracle to shake pursuit, he would be glad of its cover. Half didn’t feel the weather much, but this damp could get a man down.

“
Scumsucking cretin!
” Crenn continued, at top volume.

A high-crowned helm, a mailed fist covered in exquisite dwarven metalwork clasping a heavy hilt. Broadsword instead of curved new-moon blade, and the lance hummed as sick heat poured up Gallow’s arms, beating back his exhaustion. The
marks stung with sweet pain, the destrier’s hold on the physical disrupted and the resultant energy sucked into the blade’s ever-hungry heart.

“
Gallow
,” the knight breathed, and behind him the lamp-eyes brightened, low, slinking forms sliding out of shadow and confusion. The hounds, with their needle-teeth and their tough hides. So many of them, and—

“Robin,” he whispered, and
moved
.

Crunching. Squealing, a vicious burst of toothed sound, a golden blur. It distracted him, broadsword grinding against lancehaft, the armored weight telling against a lighter foe, and the ground beneath him heaved. A rolling, creaking, snapping thunder, growing steadily closer, was a goblin doge’s fury. Something had descended on the hounds, a blur of coppergold, and—

His side unseamed itself, a lick of fire, and Gallow cried out. The lance shrieked, the haft bending as it sought to recover, but he was falling. It wasn’t the ground, it was his side, a hot spear of agony in his vitals, his head bounced against cobblestone and there was
another
sound.

A deep, beautiful wall of pure golden music, loud enough to shake a man’s bones to jelly, hit the knight from the side. The Unseelie, knocked off his feet, vanished in the flood of light, and there was only one thing that could make such a noise and such a marvelous glow. He’d seen it before.

Or maybe it was death, and heaven opening up for whatever part of him was mortal.

It went on and on, then stopped as suddenly as it had started. Light, clicking footsteps—a woman in heels, running. So familiar, everything in him rising to meet that sound, but the blade in his side twisted again and he bit back a scream. The
lance had vanished, he was weak as a kitten, spilled here on the ground with the rain pounding along the length of his body and a furnace lit in his belly.

Oh, shit
. The clarity of the thought took him by surprise.

Guess she didn’t get all the poison out after all.

A
sidhe in sodden black velvet fell to her knees next to Gallow. Had the bastard managed to get himself killed by an Unseelie after all? It beggared belief. One moment the idiot had been fine while Crenn dealt with the massed drow, the next he was on the ground and a gigantic golden noise blasted by, picking up and shaking everything in front of it, flinging the knight—a highborn fullblood, but too big and ponderous to give Gallow any trouble, or so Crenn had thought—
through
the knot of drow, flash-frying an Unseelie hound or two in the process.

“Jeremiah?
Gallow?
Open your eyes, you idiot!” A woman’s voice. Husky contralto.

Crenn’s blades whirled, shedding water and brackish, red-tinted drow-blood. A sidhe dog the size of a pony—perhaps a gebriel, but without a human head—crouched before the remaining Unwinter dogs, its redgold fur standing up in a stripe along its back. It was a handsome beast, and the snap of its teeth said it meant business. The Unseelie dogs obviously thought so as well, and vanished back through the Veil, one or
two making a halfhearted dart toward the new arrival before backing away, shredding into nothingness.

The eyes were always the last to go.

The big beast cocked his head and stopped growling once they were gone. He shook himself—
definitely
a he—and turned, looking at the woman in black.

Who had her hands at Gallow’s shoulders, ineffectually trying to heave him up. A thread of her scent washed through the rain: dust, the good healthy oil-heat-haze of a dog, and a familiar thread of spice and fruit, as if she were a nymph.

Well, now.

“Oh, you . . . ugh. Oh, no.” She sounded frantic. Glanced up, and a slice of her pale face became visible. She pushed the hood back, just a little, water fringing off its edges, and spied him. There was a scarf over her mouth, but it was steam-smoking, something had punched a hole clear through it. “You! Are you here to kill him?”

How can I answer that?
Crenn opened his mouth, shut it.

She pushed the scarf’s ruins down, irritably. Blue eyes. Deep summerblue, thickly fringed with dark lashes. A sweet mouth, pulled tight as if with fear or pain, high pretty cheekbones. A water-darkened curl stuck to her damp cheek, and something inside Alastair Crenn turned over,
hard
.

“Are you?” she persisted, and almost overbalanced, trying to haul a Half male several pounds heavier than her upright. “You fought with him. Are you granting him aid?”

What can I
 . . . “Oh,
fuck
.” He didn’t have to work very hard to sound disgusted. The blades sheathed themselves, habitual movements, and Crenn shook his head, his hair sodden and curtaining his ugliness most effectively. The moss was coming back, too. Reminding him, as if he needed it. “Of all the . . . fine.
Fine
.”

Between the two of them, they got Gallow upright. The man hung like wet laundry, and hissed in short, sharp breaths.

“We need an exit,” she said, peering past him into the rain. The hound, its fur slicking down, loped toward her, its every line expressing self-satisfaction. “Oh, good boy.
Good
boy, Pepperbuckle. Best boy.”

Pepperbuckle?
Not a bad name. “I am Alastair.”

“Fair greetings, sir.” She began trying to haul Gallow after the dog, who looked over his shoulder expectantly. “I’m Rob.”

I know who you are
. By all rights, he should dump the Armormaster here and take her. It was the perfect opportunity. He could return her to Summer, go back to his swamp, and . . .

I will make you beautiful again.

As beautiful as this Half girl? It didn’t seem possible.

Her fingers slipped in Gallow’s belt; Crenn took a firmer hold. Got the man’s arm over his shoulders, and things became much easier. “Do you know him, then?”

“No,” she replied, shortly. “Not well, anyway. But he saved my life.” She tugged him forward, her slight strength not helping very much.

Gallow groaned, and some sense came back into his half-closed, glittering eyes. The pounding of the rain eased a little. “Augh.
Damn
it.”

“He speaks.” Crenn snorted, heaved him over a puddle. Behind them, the thunder of the Markets expelling intruders intensified. The doges would remember a dent put in their profits from this night’s madness. “Are you blooded, Gallowglass?”

“No.” Jeremiah coughed and started weakly trying to help. Which made things
much
easier, and the girl slipped away from under his arm and walked after the hound, skipping back
nervously every few steps as if she wished to hurry them along. “What . . . are you . . . doing here?”

“I could ask you the same.” Sharply, and her footsteps clicked. Did she have hooves? No rumor had ever spoken of her as a beastmaster. Where had she found the sidhe dog? “You’re a fool, Gallow.”

“That’s what . . . he says.” Another cough, and Gallow spat a gobbet of something that steamed as it hit. “Ugh. Not fun. Not fun at all.”

“Oh, good boy!” she cried, and Crenn’s boots slipped. “There’s a door here. The Markets are angry, it’s getting closer, but I hear no more of
them
.”

“Best to be safe.” Crenn’s voice sounded unnatural, even to himself. Guttural, harsh after hers. “You are the
luckiest
bastard, Glass-gallow.”

The Armormaster steadied, and the exit—an alley much darker than its surroundings, with pinpricks of red and white light smearing as the mortal realm outside it struggled to hold on to the slippery sideways more-than-real—swallowed them. The tiptapping of her footsteps suddenly made sense.

Heels. She’s wearing heels.
Black ones, shining sidhe-glossed, turning her walk into a graceful sway.

They dropped into the mortal realm with a thud, the rain cutting off cleanly, and Jeremiah shook himself free of Crenn’s grasp. The girl turned, her hood slipping and falling free, her damp hair a glory of tangled golden curls with a red tint, even in this dim cold light. A wet shushing sound came from the lights at the end of the alley—
cars
, he told himself.
Cars
.

She studied him warily, the dog at her hip now regarding him with the same bright interest, its coat a rougher copy of her coloring. One pale hand knotted in the beast’s fur, as if to steady herself, and her summerdusk eyes narrowed. “I know
of you.” The contralto made the words a song, and a pleasant shiver went down Crenn’s back, along with rainwater. “The Hunter of Marrowdowne himself.”

“Yes,” he heard himself say. “And you’re the Ragged. A beautiful song, and a face to match.”

Now
what was he going to do?