Street Fair (21 page)

“I'm making suggestions in the hopes that you'll get out of here before the place closes, ask your mother if you can stay with Lani a few days—perfectly honest; I'm sure she's not going to leave your side when you go to Faerie—and get some rest before everything else gets started. I promise you, dearest, some of the least random people I know will be heavily involved. There'll be no stopping them.”

“Like the Queen?” Megan asked as they arrived at the stand. And her father ordered the tea. “Won't she be all twitchy because Balor scarred her face?”

“Orlaith's experience at Mag Tuired was a little more complicated than that, dearest. Vanity hardly drives the pain of the memory so much as the... perhaps the best word is helplessness... of being one of the, essentially, 'junior varsity' players in a battle for everything, and suddenly being faced with the biggest, in every sense, of the gods' opposite numbers.”

Megan listened and sipped her tea. “Did one look really burn off the general's arm?”

“And a very good wardenwood shield, as well,” came a ringing voice from behind her. “Lost a fine wood spirit that day, among all the other casualties.”

Megan nearly spilled her hot tea on herself. She was not entirely sure how long General Inwar had been standing there, looking down calmly, but clearly dressed to smite. Megan steadied her drink. “Um … Sorry your shieldghost died, General.”

“Thank you. She knew her duty; she knew the stakes, and she knew the girl she was saving, if only a little.”

“Oh. So... how'd you get the new arm?”

“Fortunately,” Riocard said, “One of the smith gods—a fine fellow with whom I had the treat of a drink once or twice—was around long enough to make him an excellent prosthetic.” He nodded to Inwar, who nodded in return.

“Pure silver, perfect articulation,” Inwar agreed. “Let it not be said your gods never showed any appreciation for assistance, even if only the assistance of distraction while Lugh readied his spear.”

Megan looked back and forth between them, eventually focusing on her father. “What was hanging out with a god like?”

“A good time. He was a minor god, more down-to-earth, sort of a very exalted working-class artist. But you should have seen his mother.”

“Riocard certainly did.” Inwar added.

"Tell me about her?" Megan asked.

The response surprised her, mostly in that her father didn't have a quick, casual answer. For a few moments, his eyes even looked unfocused, and his expression softened. "She looked at me, and then she was gone."

"Wait, you spent time with her son, but she hadn't looked at you before?" Megan said.

Riocard's eyes settled back on Megan. "To the Gods, at least the older set, the fae were often, well, how mortals see us. We helped them, certainly, and with a lot of ritual, or numbers, we can fulfill their roles now. Such as the dance now managing the turn of the more mystical side of the seasons. The Dagda, well, he used to handle that from his chair. Four notes on the harp, and worlds were in tune."

Inwar nodded, and for the first time, Megan saw some hint of similarity between her father and Inwar, at least in terms of their recollections of the gods. "A great deal changed when they left us to do their jobs."

Riocard smiled, but it didn't have the usual devil-may-care joy behind it, indeed, it was almost sad. "She left last of all of them, mourning and keening for her lost child. She walked across that bridge, and looked back once. I stood watch at the start of the bridge. She took one last look at the world, and then at me, and she smiled. And then she was gone."

"She didn't say anything, or..." Megan trailed off.

“She was in something of a hurry,” Inwar said. “Leaving for the safety of the world and all.”

Megan thought for a moment. “Wait, so if they'd already gotten all the remaining Fomoire frozen in a lake, why did they decide they had to leave?”

“Because we're talking about magic on a level of power where any barrier is permeable, when blood calls to blood,” Riocard said. “And the blood of the gods and their enemies was so wrapped up, the ice would have melted in the back-and-forth charge. For the seal to hold, the gods had to find somewhere else to be.”

Megan listened. “Is that why the ice is cracking? Because O'Neill is trying to do something with a kindasortanotreally god?”

Inwar raised an eyebrow. “We'll have to talk about that,” he said. “Preferably tomorrow, on the way to Falias.”

"We?" Megan asked. "So, you're not sending me home and getting me out of harm's way?" she asked, more than a little surprised.

Riocard shook his head. "You need to be there."

Justin finally spoke up. "You have far stronger forces, and she's been through a lot already."

Inwar and Riocard exchanged a glance, the General frowning, and Riocard looking more thoughtful. "Robin Goodfellow took time out of his busy schedule of knitting and arson," Riocard said. "I choose to believe that's not for nothing, and bring you along. But, of course, Sir Justin, she's going to need her knight."

"Then I'm coming too," Lani said.

"I had assumed as much, and will prepare suitable transport for all of you. But first, baths, and a night's rest. Ashling will fetch you in the morning."

Megan managed to convince her mother to let her stay at Lani's. Mrs. Kahale didn't care for the idea of the teens going along to the lost city but didn't argue with Riocard's judgment either. The family's good-nights were, Megan noted, much more lingering and extra-huggy than usual. That made sense. Just in case.

Justin laid out his chainmail for the morning, though he placed the hat with it. Despite the events of the day, as she settled in, thinking about going to war alongside the faeries, and storming a city of the undead, Megan was positive she'd never get to sleep. Five minutes later, exhaustion caught up with her.

Chapter 31: Mobilizing

Kerr had apparently been up all night. When Ashling brought Lani, Megan, and Justin to the castle, Cassia meeting them there, a spread was laid out of every breakfast food Megan could imagine and possibly a few she couldn't have.

“You'll want to make sure to have some of the cream-cheese-and-sea-salt eggs,” the brownie said, scampering around the room. “And I've checked that the fruit is all human-safe, but the honey with the corncakes is local, so don't have much if you're allergic to pixie dust.”

“Wait,” Megan said, looking at Ashling as they all sat down to eat. “Pixie dust is a real thing?”

Ashling sighed. “Tinker Freaking Bell. Yes, pixie dust is a thing, but it'll only make you fly in the Timothy Leary sense.”

Megan decided to have her corncakes without honey.

Everyone ate enthusiastically while Kerr continued scampering around grabbing packages. “Lani, your dad and the rest of the Corps of Engineers have taken all of my chocolate coffee shards, but there's powdered drinking chocolate if you want it. Oh! And oatmeal walnut raisin cookies for the road.” The packages went into Lani's bag.

Walking out the doors and going from the brownie's kitchen to the mustering grounds for the armies was a shock. Megan stepped out into a swarm of color and the susurration of wings. The wall of rainbow colors banked and turned, then exploded into countless pixies out over the ranks of the Seelie army.

The next thing Megan's eyes settled on were the unicorns—four in all, moving at a run. It took several seconds of staring at the quartet, moving in unison, to realize that they were pulling a massive chariot, constructed of nearly perfectly white wood and trimmed with platinum. Orlaith stood tall in the front of the chariot, calling to her soldiers, while Inwar, two of the sidhe knights, and a sidhe female bearing a large tome watched over her.

The chariot circled around a section of flat ground, where troops were organizing into ranks. While some of the Seelie knights had horses, others rode giant stags or great cats, and a small group even sat astride pegasi. Ranks of fae armed with similar weapons, whether spears, swords, or bows, grouped into organized ranks, while each of the sorcerers was given two guards.

Then there was the battalion of tree-people. Megan had once made the mistakes of calling them 'dryads,' before being informed—more snootily than one tended to get even from the sidhe—that they weren't
Greek
, if Her Highness would be so kind. She'd spent months trying to pronounce Ghillie Dhu and still wasn't quite sure if it was closer to 'gillydoo' or 'gillyoo.' Green-haired people were signaling each other with birdcalls among the giant branches of the mobile birch-tree squad.

The knockers—Megan had been told they were mine-dwelling brownie-kin, and they looked it—were normally a lot friendlier, as much as the Seelie-Unseelie divide, which seemed to capture the feelings of about 80% of each court, would allow. Right now, though, they were busy working at artillery pieces. A dozen massive catapults were the most obvious weapons in the arsenal. Slightly smaller trebuchets and ballistae were being checked, and lined up for deployment. Megan couldn't help but notice that, as they worked, the knockers said not a word. Instead, now and then, they'd rap their hammers in quick rhythms against the metal pieces of the heavy weapons, and others would take note and occasionally shift what they were doing in response to the odd 'language.'

Kerr headed behind the artillery, where Mr. Kahale, who had apparently been repairing weapons the previous night, waved to them, with frantic reciprocation from Lani.

Interspersed among the ranks were gnome musicians and brownie bannermen, their instruments and flags attentively at their side as Orlaith and her General surveyed their troops.

Megan had seen, from the Halloween charge of the year before, how quickly the Unseelie could be mustered if something was made interesting enough. That seemed to be the case here, as more and more Unseelie were gathering around where her father, clad in his briarmail armor except for the masked helmet, stood atop a pedestal of ice. Next to him, a great bar had been hastily erected, manned by a number of leprechauns and the ones that looked like leprechauns—clurichauns, that was it—who were handing out mugs of something or other as quickly as fae gathered. The Unseelie King himself reached for one, the briars winding back to bare his hand. Despite their usual nature, no one was drinking, not even Cassia, who was standing between Riocard's podium and Finn the troll. Every four or five sprites, in their murmurs of white, brown, gray, and occasionally blue, were working together to hold a single mug aloft.

Finally, Megan saw her father raise his own mug, calling out to his troops in a vigorous toast.

"Drink up, my friends. Drink deep.

I'm a close friend of gluttony in its place.

We've much to be proud of, so why not?

Envy... greed... well, there's only so much to go around.

Lust? Well, lust goes without saying.

Today there is only one unpardonable sin,

And that's cowardice.

Shed blood, break bone, drive our enemies before us.

And if you die today,

I'll toast your deeds myself, over drinks...

And if you shed blood with me today, and live...

If you fight at my side, why then, my friends...

You may loot the bodies of the fallen,

And drink on their coin,

So we can toast their memories properly."

A rousing shout went up, and the horde drank as one, then smashed their mugs upon the ground. Riocard put two fingers to his lips and blew.

Where Megan expected a piercing whistle, there was no sound that she could hear—but moments later, howls answered from the nearest trees, before a pack of giant black wolves came racing towards him. Riocard leapt from the top of his pedestal, which crumbled as soon as his feet left it. He landed astride one of the wolves moments after two of the bunny-people had managed to get a saddle on it. Four others, two sidhe, two redcaps, pulled themselves onto wolves as well. Another cheer went up through the massed forces, and the mob started to move.

"Your ride is coming." Megan heard her father's voice call on the wind. Another gust of wind carried a lavish carpet to them, with Ashling and the Count riding on the front. The pixie waved to them frantically. Megan looked at the hovering carpet dubiously. "A flying carpet, seriously? Will this thing even hold us?"

Ashling smiled. "Your father traded for it back in his Steppenwolf phase. It will hold you."

"How do we control it?" asked Lani, walking around the carpet as if looking for instructions.

"Leave that to the Count." Ashling said.

"Wait, he's flying it?" Megan asked.

"Well duh, are you going to tell me you know more about flying than he does?"

Megan, Lani, and finally Justin climbed aboard, and the carpet rose steadily, then took off, keeping pace with the marching armies. From above, Megan could see the two sets of forces stretching far ahead and behind them, with the personal vanguards of Riocard and Orlaith leading the way, and the troops guarding all manner of siege machinery trailing.

"How long is this going to take?" Megan shouted to the pixie, to be heard over the din of battle songs being played below as the troops marched.