Song of the Fairy Queen (53 page)

The truth of it was in her eyes but she still went. He remembered the bounty on her and her people… She had a right to be afraid.

Passing through the gates, Kyri prayed that an errant gust of wind wouldn’t reveal her betraying ears. Only Fairy had pointed ears. She dared not use magic to ensure it, not in this city of wizards.

No breeze blew.

By now they must know Morgan had escaped, but they wouldn’t expect him to come here, of all places. Not to Haerold’s own seat. It was likely they scoured the countryside for him.

But they wouldn’t look here, only a madman would come here.

They walked into Haerold’s city unchallenged.

If Haerold scried for Gawain, it seemed her screening was working or there would have been watchers at the gate.

Hopefully they thought he was still out in the country.

The city didn’t impress Kyri any more on this visit than it had on her previous ones. It was a place of shadows, dark and dingy, full of smoke from the myriad wood-burning fireplaces and coal burners these folk used to heat and cook. Men used the streets carelessly for urinals, people tossed their slop buckets into the gutters while feral cats and half-starved dogs ran through the alleys searching for food.

Here, too, people walked the streets in unremarkable clothes and hooded cloaks, their heads down, their eyes lowered.

“There’s an inn down in the lower part of the city,” Morgan said, anticipation filling him. After all this time he would finally face the man who’d betrayed him. “People from the resistance and some of my undercover people used to use it. I’ll check it out, make sure it’s safe, first. Then you’re on your own. Ask questions carefully, keep your eyes open and you may find someone who can help you. I’ve got my own business to attend to.”

Kyri nodded, refusing to admit to her own disappointment and the grief beneath it, waiting with the others in the shadows of an alley until he checked the inn out.

Some things, Morgan discovered, hadn’t changed in two years.

While he hadn’t seen anyone he knew – for which he was grateful – the proprietor was the same. There were no signs of Haerold’s soldiers or Hunters. It appeared to be safe enough.

“Got any coin?” he asked, as he strode out of the door.

Kyri had come prepared. She nodded.

Her breath caught as he walked away, knowing in her heart it was likely to be the last time she would see him.

Still, what about him?

On the road they’d relied on her bow and gleaning the fields for their meals.

He still wore Gordon’s spare clothes.

Kyri called after him. “Morgan!”

Morgan turned to look at her, wanting to be irritated.

Those sea-green, sea-blue eyes looked at him steadily. Her eyes were truly lovely, the prettiest things in a beautiful face. There was both strength and courage there and a steady determination. So why did she seem so alone? And why did he feel so guilty? For the shadows there? For the sorrow?

“I don’t know if luck will help you,” she called, “but good luck.”

Morgan nodded, something inside him twisting. He didn’t need luck for what he wanted to do. “The same to you.”

“Catch,” she said and flipped him a coin.

He caught it neatly. A gold piece. His eyebrows rose. That would buy him a lot. He looked at her. Those aquamarine eyes of hers didn’t waver. They asked nothing, expected nothing.

“See you, Princess.”

Sadly, Kyri watched him go, his familiar fair head and broad shoulders disappearing down the street. And held the memory of his strong face, his broad shoulders, in her heart.

“Let’s go see what this inn offers, Lady,” Gordon said, his voice as kind as he could make it.

He didn’t know how the two of them knew each other, but he knew what he saw in her eyes. If he’d been disappointed in the great Morgan, how was it for her, who’d known him different?

With a nod, she said. “Let’s. And call me Kyri.”

The darker, more despoiled parts of the city seemed to have only gotten only more so in the time Morgan had been gone. The alleys stank more, the whores looked more raddled and the men who used them more desperate. There were gamblers and pickpockets, petty thieves and grifters down here, men who would gut you for your shoes. The lanterns were grimy and there were men here who would cut you as soon as look at you.

Morgan was smart enough not to go flashing a gold piece around, first buying himself some better fitting clothes. And a hat. He tugged the brim down with satisfaction.

The copper and silver coins remaining would be enough for what he needed and a lot less noticeable.

The coins, small as they were, were still good, it seemed.

From one dirty hole to the next, he descended into greater and greater squalor in search of his prey.

This was worse than bad. Times had clearly changed.

As a tavern, this one gave a new definition to the title of den of iniquity. It was little more than a hole in the wall, steps leading down into what had once been a basement. Morgan stepped down into the dim smoky room, his hand on his belt knife, moving quickly into the shadows beside the door. That knife would be more useful in the close quarters here and his hand on it would stand as a warning to anyone who wanted to trouble him.

There were the requisite half-dressed girls, their hips swiveling automatically, their eyes blank and hazed, but these were stick thin, their arms little more than bones.

Keeping in the shadows by the door Morgan scanned the crowd, looking at the men hunched over their mugs of cheap whiskey, while other things changed hands. A few played cards or dice desultorily. The smell of the smoke was wrong.

His frown deepened as he watched.

In a back corner, closest to the dancers was the man he wanted, one elbow propped on the table, the other hand wrapped around a mug, watching the girl standing on the platform, her thin shabby dress falling about mid-thigh. Something about that made Morgan angry and touched him with a faint trace of despair and loss.

As did looking at the man sitting in front of the girl, looking up her threadbare dress.

He’d been a trusted friend once.

A man dropped into the chair in front of Jacob, startling him. A fair-haired, broad-chested, tall man. Jacob couldn’t see his eyes at first for the shadows cast by his hat. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t be the man he thought he was. That man was dead.

Jacob looked up as the man tipped his hat back.

At first Jacob thought he was seeing a ghost and then he hoped he was, for he looked into a pair of crystal blue eyes he knew far too well, but those eyes were so flat, so cold and so empty they couldn’t belong to the same man. But it couldn’t be anyway, and he knew that. He knew where that man was and he wasn’t here.

So he blinked and looked again, a mix of grief, shame and anger boiling inside him. It couldn’t be that one because he was supposed to be dead, or in Haerold’s secret prison, wherever the hell that was…

The vision didn’t go away.

“Hello, Jacob,” Morgan said.

His anger, his fury, were nearly blinding as he looked into the face of the man who had betrayed him.

It was Morgan’s voice, but flatter, more bitter, colder than Jacob had ever known it. But he supposed that was normal for a dead man.

“Morgan,” Jacob said, blinking groggily. “They let people out of there?”

Blearily, Jacob remembered that another man had been here, asking questions about his old friend Morgan. That was funny.

“They killed Joanna,” Morgan said, the memory of her, of watching her die and him helpless to stop it, rising up.

Jacob took a long deep breath and let it out.

“Yeah, I know,” he said blearily, his voice thick with sadness and shame, all of it penetrating through the surge of Bliss. “I didn’t know they were going to do that. I didn’t really know any of it. It wasn’t part of the deal, Morgan. It wasn’t. It was only supposed to be you. Just you.”

He sounded sick and miserable, staring down into his whiskey.

It sickened Morgan.

Fury burned, his vision hazed. It shocked him that Jacob didn’t even try to hide it.

“Why, Jacob?” he demanded, “Why did you do it? We were friends.”

More than anything else, he wanted to know that. Why?

With a sick half laugh Jacob spread his hands over the table, gesturing. “Why? This is why.”

A part of Jacob wanted to cry with shame. Another part wanted that next glorious rush, desperately, wanted to float in the numbness.

Morgan looked down at the table.

There was a thin paper packet of something dark and powdery.

He looked up again at the man he’d once called friend and saw the red-rimmed eyes for the first time, the gray not just in his hair, but in Jacob’s skin, the hollows of his cheeks. Jacob’s arms were thinner, ropier, wasted.

Jacob laughed without humor. “Her name was Glory and what I didn’t know was that she worked for Haerold. She was trolling, looking for someone to use and she lucked onto me. I didn’t want to get involved, you see, just wanted something easy and fun. No commitment. A little slap and tickle. She was certainly easy. Me, I was using a little Hop now and then to fit in so no one would look at me too hard. Somehow she found out. When I wasn’t looking, she started adding a little Bliss, then a little more, to my Hop. Gave it a little extra juice. I didn’t notice at first. Then she didn’t…and I did.”

He stared down into his whiskey.

“That was bad,” he said. “It’s like you want to die, it’s like your lungs can’t breathe, like things are crawling beneath your skin. A man came to my rooms, sat beside me. One of Haerold’s wizards, but I didn’t know it then. It got worse, being sick, it got worse fast, until I thought I was going to die, like my life was being sucked out of me. He started asking questions…”

Jacob looked down at the little packet of Bliss, wanting it badly, craving it. Especially in the face of his memories. And the man before him. He ground his teeth and shook his head.

There was no self-pity in Jacob’s words, Morgan noted, just a low helplessness and despair. He wasn’t offering excuses.

“The day they did it I had so much Bliss in me I barely knew what day it was…”

Somehow, every trace of Morgan’s anger drained away.

He even tried calling up Joanna’s image to stoke his rage, remembering how she’d died and he still couldn’t do it.

“I came here to kill you, Jacob,” Morgan said, flatly.

For a moment Jacob stared at him.

The words shocked him to his core.

Some last piece of something, hope, faith, broke, shattered… some part of him that still held on…to something….

“So, Haerold finally broke you, too, huh, Morgan?” Jacob said.

The sadness in his voice was depthless, lost and hopeless.

Those simple words rocked Morgan to his core.

“Damn, Morgan,” Jacob said in despair, nearly in tears, something Morgan had never thought he’d see, “I thought that if there was one man they couldn’t break that man was you.”