War for the Oaks (36 page)

It was his turn to study Eddi. "You are known to me, of course," he said at last, distantly. "I think I am not known to you. I am Oberycum, Consort to the Lady."

Eddi realized now that she had seen him among the courtiers earlier, under the flowering tree. She had seen him, too, at the Falls, in full armor. The pleated silk of his shirt was patterned with his device, the three-disks-in-a-disk, in gold on green. She sank quickly to one knee, wondering if it was the right thing to do.

"You need not," she heard him say, though he sounded faintly pleased. "We set formality aside, once the dance has begun."

She rose, and he nodded to her. "I hope we may play together again, you and I," he said, tucking his fiddle under his arm.

"So do I."

He gave her a shallow bow, turned, and disappeared into the crowd.

"Well!" the phouka said over her shoulder a moment later, and she jumped.

"How long have you been here?"

"Long enough to witness your new conquest, sweet."

"Conquest!"

He grinned at her. "Now where's the pleasure in baiting you if you rise to the first cast? You do it on purpose, I think, to spoil my fun."

"I would have if I'd thought of it."

"Blast." The phouka shook his head. "I wonder—is it drink that makes me indiscreet?"

"Wish I had that excuse." Eddi sighed. "That little chat with Oberycum wasn't a landmark in diplomacy."

"You think you did so badly, then?" His look was full of contained smugness. "I'd say otherwise, myself."

"Yeah? Were you here when I came damn close to calling him a warmonger?"

The phouka tried not to smile. "You came nowhere near it. Surely a warmonger is one who sells war, as a fishmonger sells fish?"

"Get stuffed. You know what I mean. You heard that, then? And you still don't think he's pissed?"

The phouka nodded.

"Then either I'm luckier than I deserve, or you're dumber than you look."

He was delighted with that. "You're good for my self-esteem."

"The way aspirin's good for a headache?" Eddi said, and realized he was making her smile.

"Precisely. Do you want to dance, make music, or sample a new amusement?"

She could tell from his tone what he hoped. "What new amusement?"

"Oh, there's a competition just begun, 'round the other side of the hill, that you might enjoy watching."

"I love it when you use that full-of-yourself voice. Lead on, son."

Eddi expected to follow the route they'd taken to their audience with the Lady, around the base of the hill near the park's edge. Instead the phouka led her halfway up the slope. To do so, he took her hand and held it—lightly, as if he was afraid she'd object. She cast around for something casual to say. Nothing presented itself. She curled her fingers around his, and used what little attention she had left to keep her feet from tripping over each other.

They crossed the flank of the hill on a narrow gravel path. Young trees and brush were thick on both sides, and the night wind stagewhispered in their leaves. Eddi knew they were in the middle of the city, in the middle of the hosts of Faerie. But the music and voices were faint behind them; the trees shut out all lights but fragments of the dark sky.

"Careful here," the phouka said softly, and squeezed her hand. Ahead of him there was a bit of path washed out, part of a gulley that
ran off into the brush on both sides. The phouka stepped over it. Then he turned, clasped her waist with both hands, and lifted her across.

His movement, her instant off the ground, had been quick. It took her a moment to notice that her feet were on the gravel again, that his hands were still on her waist, that hers had fastened on his upper arms and hadn't let go. She could feel his palms and fingers outlined in a pleasant dry heat through the cloth of her blouse. Did her hands feel the same to him? Larger than they really were, their touch important out of all proportion?

Shifting moonlight drew contour lines on his face. She could see the fine texture of the skin around his eyes and over his cheekbones. One black curl shone like a metal shaving on his forehead. His eyes were wide and dark, full of amazement and something like alarm.

She slid her hands up and over his shoulders, the brocade of his coat silky-rough against her palms. When she got to his collar, she tucked her fingers like combs into the hair behind his ears, set her thumbs against the clean angle of his jaw. The sensation in her hands was so strong it was almost painful, as if she'd taken some drug that accentuated touch. She drew his face slowly toward hers. He closed his eyes, in submission or trust, in an excess of pleasure or fear, she didn't know. But she kissed him, a light and lingering contact.

She pulled her head back a little and looked at him. His eyes opened, his chest rose and fell once, quickly, and he whispered, "You needn't stop, you know."

Every motion she made was slow, as if she'd never before put her arms around a man, and didn't know for certain where everything fit. When at last they were pressed close, she didn't think she'd know how to let go when the time came. They summarized the course of passion with kisses: a chaste, half-frightened brush of the lips metamorphosed into something fierce and fast-burning, which in its turn became a more patient, more intimate touch, full of inquiry and shared pleasure.

He held her against him and hid his face in her hair. She heard him whisper something that might have been her name, and she stroked his back. He was trembling a little—with nerves, she knew. She was doing it, too.

"We could have done this long ago," she said at last, her voice wobbling.

He shook his head and murmured, "Not like this, I think."

"No, you're right. Not like this. For a cute guy, you're pretty smart."

He laughed breathlessly and backed off a bit to look at her, smoothed the hair off her forehead with one hand. "All I know of love, I've learned from you, Eddi McCandry. And you've been at pains to teach me since first I saw you."

"I have? Hm. Didn't know that."

"Well, to be honest, neither did I, at the outset." She felt his chest move with silent laughter. "Proof of my ignorance on the subject, surely."

Reluctantly, she remembered her suspicion, that he was playing at being in love. She didn't believe it anymore, not really. But she heard herself asking the hateful question anyway. "How do you know it's love? Maybe you haven't learned anything after all."

She expected a joke, an impassioned protest, an airy denial. Instead he looked gravely into her face and replied, "I've no surety that it is. I know only the parts of what I feel; I may be misnaming the whole. You dwell in my mind like a household spirit. All that I think is followed with, 'I shall tell that thought to Eddi.' Whatever I see or hear is colored by what I imagine you will say of it. What is amusing is twice so, if you have laughed at it. There is a way you have of turning your head, quickly and with a little tilt, that seems more wonderful to me than the practiced movements of dancers. All this, taken together, I've come to think of as love, but it may not be.

"It is not a comfortable feeling. But I find that, even so, I would wish the same feeling on you. The possibility that I suffer it alone—that frightens me more than all the host of the Unseelie Court."

She was shaken by his eloquence, and humbled. Whatever she'd expected of the phouka, it wasn't this faithful, fearless cataloging of his emotions. Though, now that she thought of it, it was just like him. Serious and literal-minded when it seemed least likely, when it proved most appropriate. It was like him, too, to love her and admit to it before he knew if she loved him. Maybe only mortals expected to barter their hearts.

Her silence must have been longer than she thought; the phouka touched a finger lightly to her cheek and looked uncertain. "But it's true that I have faced the Dark Court and lived. I suppose I could survive this peril as well, if need be."

"What? Oh—no. I mean . . ." Eddi faltered and shook her head. "I'm not good at saying this kind of thing. I always sound stupid or too casual or . . ."

"My poet, betrayed by words?" He smiled crookedly.

"I never said I was a poet. Besides, it's not the same thing. This is public speaking." She smiled weakly and looked at his ruffles. He set his hands on her shoulders, but they were motionless and weightless.

"You've kept me alive for the last three months," Eddi began, groping furiously for the words. "You've made me coffee. You've carried my amplifier." A nervous chuckle escaped her. "And you've been good company. Even when you were being a jerk, you were pretty good company, now that I look back on it."

"But," he said, without inflection.

Eddi looked up at him, alarmed. "But? Oh, hell, I told you I was bad at this! No, no buts. You're a wonderful person. Even if you are a supernatural being. Dammit, Phouka, how am I going to tell my mother that I'm in love with a guy who turns into a dog?" She blushed; she could feel it.

A silence of unreasonable proportions followed; the phouka's only response was a quick spasm of his fingers on her shoulders. "Are you in love with him, then?"

"I said so, didn't I?"

"Not quite." There was a smile twitching in the corner of his mouth.

"All right, all right." Eddi took a long breath. "I love you."

"There. Now why should that be so hard to say?"

"Because it sounds like something out of a soap opera," Eddi grumbled.

"Does it? Not to me. The best line from a favorite song, perhaps." His smile softened his whole face in a way she hadn't seen before.

"That's because you're a damned romantic."

He reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear on one side. "Then you're a doubly damned romantic, my heart, since you won't even admit it. But perhaps with my excellent example before you . . ."

Eddi caught at his disconcerting fingers, which were now tracing the edge of her ear, and kissed his knuckles. "You're a jerk," she said fondly. "Where were we going, when we got distracted?"

"Earth and Air, I'd forgotten! It's your fault, you know. The color of your hair in the moonlight, the curve of your waist, the—"

"You're going to forget again."

"You're quite right. But I'll try not to do so for at least a few minutes. You
will
enjoy this, I think." He flashed her a grin and folded his fingers around hers. "Come along, then."

When the path widened and the trees thinned into open lawn, he put his arm around her shoulders. In his heeled boots, he was a little taller than she was, and she fit neatly against him when she put her arm around his waist.

They joined a semicircle of perhaps two dozen fey folk seated on the grass. She felt the phouka beside her like a source of heat, the rise and fall of his ribcage against her arm as he breathed.

A slight, pale-haired man stood before the gathered audience, facing outward toward University Avenue. He wore a baggy leather jacket dyed and painted with many colors, and tight white pants. His ears were not the large, foxy ones Eddi had seen on some creatures of Faerie, but they came to a pronounced point.

The watchers were quiet, and the pale-haired man stood, silent and still, as if he were alone. Then he flung his head back and slowly lifted his hands.

University Avenue disappeared. It wasn't covered up; it was gone, like a chalk drawing washed away. What was left was a featureless gray fuzz that seemed to billow a little at the edges.

The grayness began to glitter, and light and dark formed slowly in it. Color appeared, the suggestion of pink and yellow and green. Then Eddi saw the outline, and realized what was quickly taking shape before her.

It was a castle. Not the utilitarian fortresses of the mortal past, not the marzipan-and-plaster illusions of Disneyland; this was a towered, turretted marvel, graceful with flying buttresses, real and rich and impossible. It leaped and twisted into the sky perhaps thirty stories, all of them polished golden stone. Banners hung from its balconies. Clouds snagged on its spires and broke away in tatters into the night sky. A shadowed garden of topiary surrounded its base and marched down to join the edge of the park.

The gathered watchers made noise at last—they applauded the pale man's efforts in whatever ways best suited their forms. He turned and bowed low, and his creation dissipated in a cloud of sparkling light, like fireworks burning out.

"Good God!" Eddi said in the phouka's ear. "That was all illusion?
Of course it was. But there was . . . so
much
of it!"

"Mmm." The phouka raised his eyebrows as another figure separated from the crowd. "Ah hah. I thought so. See what you think of this, my sweet."

A woman stood before the semicircle of audience, much closer than the pale man had. She was tall and thin and steely-looking, with a hollow-cheeked, pleasant face. Her brown hair fell loose to her waist, and she wore what looked like mechanic's coveralls with the sleeves cut out. She did nothing to awe the watchers; she had no haughty manners, no artistic airs. No showmanship at all, Eddi thought at first—then recognized the consummate showmanship in that.

The woman gazed vaguely off into the middle distances, not so much entranced as absentminded. Then she smiled slowly, as if at some happy memory. She turned her right hand palm upward and studied it.

There was an apple there, suddenly. It was a neighbor's-apple-tree sort of fruit, small and rosy red with a little reverse blush of green on one side, its surface misted over with the unpolished bloom that never survived the trip to the supermarket.

With a nod, the woman tossed the apple into the air. Eddi watched it spin through its arc, heard the thunk when it landed in the woman's hand again. Then she bit into it. The sound carried faintly to Eddi, the snap of teeth through the skin, the crunch of the crisp flesh tearing away. It made her hungry. Juice sparkled on the woman's lips, and a drop ran down the skin of the apple and fell on the front of her coverall, leaving a little dark spot. Slowly, with something like regret, the woman held the apple at arm's length. The white flesh shone wetly in the moon and lamplight. She blew on the apple as if blowing out a candle, and it puffed from her hand onto the night wind in a plume of red-and-white dust.