Chapter Seven: Strength
Soundtrack for Chapter 7:
"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out"—The Smiths
"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)"—David Bowie
"Tall Cool One"—Robert Plant
Bee thought back later that actually taking on the fae had been far easier than the aftermath, escorting a one hundred and eighty-some-odd pound six-foot tall horned man through the irritatingly public streets of New York. "Take a left down that alley," Finn said, still limping. His weight was lighter across Bee's shoulders now, but if Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix—sworn brother of the Red Branch, slayer of monsters and defender of the right—wanted to keep his arm around Bee's shoulders, Bee wasn't about to argue.
Bee had been afraid that the patrons of the fae woman's nightclub, the outer ring of her minions, would try to stop them from leaving. A few stopped and stared as he half-carried the weak and bleeding Finn out, like sleepers waking up, but that was all. It was just as well; Bee couldn't muster any strength to put up a glamour, and Finn had seemed almost totally spent.
"Is there anything following us?" Bee asked, once they were out in the street.
"Not yet," Finn said ominously, "But they'll know soon enough." He leaned against a wall and pressed his fingers in circles around his upper thigh and hip. Bee saw blood there.
"Wait here," Bee told him. "I'll get our stuff."
Finn had only nodded.
Bee had been certain that, given how much good luck they'd had to defeat the fae woman, that balancing bad luck would mean he'd find the cache raided or the sanitation truck come and gone with all their worldly goods. It hadn't, and he had been afraid during the jog back that he'd return to find Finn stolen by avenging pursuers. But when he returned, Finn was still there. He'd staunched his wounds with wads of newspaper, which hardly looked hygienic, and he crackled like a cat-toy as he took his red coat and swung it on with none of his customary flair.
"Is it very bad?" Bee asked. "You're pale."
"It's not the blood, it's the pain," Finn said, "Adrenaline's wearing off." He closed his mouth before he could reveal more.
It was snowing again, or raining—the heat coming off the city melted some of the snow into sullen and dirty water that tapped on Bee's head like a reminder of bad fortune. The icy-cold pinpricks of the snow and rain seemed to revive Finn a bit, kept him responsive. His face was a cheerful white mask as he limped alongside Bee. Everything seemed to be going fine until Finn gave a gasp of pain and slammed himself against the filthy wall of the alley to keep from falling down.
"Finn," Bee said, and tapped his cheek. "Finn!" He slapped him, hard, trying to get a response. "Don't you go weak-sister on me now!" There didn't seem to be any new blood seeping from the rough dressing. Bee felt his own balls ache in sympathetic pain as he remembered how Onoskelis had twisted Finn's genitals, but there was nothing to be done about that right now, either. Had she done other things to hurt Finn while Bee huddled like a baby under Finn's coat in the park? Things that couldn't be seen?
"I'm okay," Finn gasped quietly, and inchwormed his way upright. Bee decided privately that he would never, ever, ever go into any situation remotely like the fae's lair ever again without three good exit strategies and three mediocre ones.
"You're not okay!" Bee said. "Tell me how to help you."
"Kiss me," Finn murmured, taking Bee's hand and putting it over his heart.
"What, here?" Bee preferred more romantic settings when he imagined—often—kissing Finn.
"It'll help," Finn told him, flexing his fingers over Bee's. "I need some of your strength. I can pull it from you if you'll let me. Keep your eyes open."
Aggrieved and cautious, Bee tilted his head up and pressed his lips chastely to Finn's.
What happened next was strange. He felt Finn's body as a map transmitted through his heartbeat, not needing his eyes to see him entire. He could dimly feel the pain of Finn's injuries, as if for a moment they shared the same body. The kiss was closed, but it felt more intimate than any of the gymnastic fantasies he'd constructed in his own head.
Finn's eyes flashed sunshine brightness as the kiss ended, and Bee felt drained. The small muscles in his thighs jumped with new exhaustion. "What was that?" Bee asked, breathless. He felt… he couldn't describe to himself how he felt.
Finn, on the other hand, looked much better. "It was a little fairy magic. Mine's for healing, but she showed me…. how to heal myself by taking from others." He adjusted the straps of his pack and the balance of his swords, looking much improved. "I can walk now." He ducked his head, not looking Bee in the eyes. "It's not a thing… I don't think it's a good thing to do."
"As long as it helps, I don't care," Bee said, slinging his pack back on and snapping the catches. His knees felt a little wobbly. "But I'm all jellylegs now."
"There's a station ten blocks from here," Finn said. "If we can catch the train, we can ride practically all the way to Red Branch." He put his arm around Bee's shoulders carefully, as if he were afraid of having it violently thrown off.
Finn, no matter what he'd taken from Bee, was still limping and easily winded. Bee himself was not feeling so hot. They were both too tired to even keep up a pretense of camouflage. The people they passed drew in their shoulders and kept their eyes fixed on the middle distance, but Bee knew they'd been noticed. He kept his teeth bared in a vicious smile, hoping they'd mind their own business and not call the cops. Nothing to do about that. The ridiculousness of it, the difficulty of it, the small details of maneuvering themselves through the city were maddeningly and mundanely terrifying.
"When we get to Red Branch," was Finn's only conversation, "Don't tell them you're Sarah's brother. I'm going to have to explain about the Gentrywoman, but if Miss Zoe comes up, just say that the Queen of the Labyrinth wanted her for a servant."
"You act like we can't trust your own people, Finn," Toby said. "Are there enemies there?"
"We can trust most of them, Bee. I don't want them to know about your niece-or-nephew. It could be dangerous for your sister, or His Majesty. And you stay with me, whatever happens. Please."
"I said I would," Bee returned. "I will."
The subway let them out in a crappy station that exited onto a crappy street. Bee realized with irritated disgust that the two of them still had some walking to do. He muttered a steady stream of curses as they made slow progress, the blind leading the lame to the pit they were destined for. They slipped under a chain link fence decorated with blown debris, and into a concrete playground.
A school? Bee wondered, looking up at the derelict cinderblock building, with its reinforced wire-glass windows and faded institutional doors. Entrances and exits were boarded up, and no lights came from the inside. But the building didn't have the casual marks of squatters—tagging or graffiti or splintered-away plywood that would indicate casual occupation. None of the windows were broken out. Only the yellow poking of high grass around the perimeter of the fence indicated any sense of time or change. This place might have been disused five days or fifty years, lifted out of notice or concern, unseen by anyone who wasn't meant to see it.
"Through the red door," Finn said, pointing at a door attached to an outcrop of the big squat building that, by its lack of windows, was probably the gymnasium.
It was unlocked. Doors to trouble are always unlocked, Bee thought grimly to himself. It's the doors out of trouble that are locked.
"I won't let them hurt you," Finn said as they went in.
Bee didn't find this reassuring, considering Finn wasn't in good enough shape to defend him against bunny rabbits. He was even less reassured when the pitch-black darkness in front of them smacked him in the face. Cinderblock wall, unpainted. He felt out with one hand and traced the edge of the square-twisting narrow passage. Choke point, he thought, Rat's maze. And then, hair on the back of his neck sticking up, Labyrinth. His hair felt bottle-brushy, like a cat's tail. It was like the Gentrywoman's lair, a pocket of reality somehow just below the surface of reality, echoing the real but not part of it.
On the inside, the gymnasium it was a vast hall, with broad carved wooden pillars creating crossbeams that arched impossibly high over the open space. Bee could see the kindly light of a fire, and hear the gentle plucked strings of a harp, and wanted nothing more than to go to that hearth and lay his head down in exhaustion and cold. Instead they were stopped by the singing sound of metal drawn from sheath, and a horned shadow blocked their path.
"A stranger here," growled a voice closer to an animal's than a man's.
"I'm no stranger," Finn answered just as fiercely. "I'm Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix of Red Branch. You know me, Beetleham."
"Yes, it's Finnvah. Put away your blade," said another shadow. Silhouetted in the firelight, Bee could see that this second man was taller than the first, handsome in a human way, with pointed ears and incisors. "Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. Well-met. Who's your little friend?" His glinting eyes looked him up and down with interest, and Bee retreated more snugly into the shelter of Finnvah's protective arms.
"I'm Bee."
"Well-met, Bee. I'm Lumarchin of Red Branch, and this gruff one is Beetleham." He gave Bee another evaluating look, one he didn't like, then addressed Finn. "Where'd you pick him up? He's a likely little one."
They were spared trying to lie by a voice calling from near the fire. "Is that Finnvarrah?" The sweet notes of the harp paused, then resumed.
"Father," Finn said, limping forward. Bee followed close beside him, and Lumarchin and Beetleham and other powerful-looking men made way for them. Some were horned and some were strangely jointed, but a remarkable number of them seemed to be human. All of them were wearing the same kind of long red coat that Finn wore, embellished here and there with embroidery or brooches. All of them carried swords or long wicked-looking knives at their belts, even the elderly who looked so old it seemed impossible they might be able to wield their weapons effectively. The ones whose chests or forearms were naked sported tattoos very much like Finn's, blue-black against all kinds of skin colors. They were proud and upright in their tatterdemalion regalia, like knights from some old story, like a homeless Round Table without a King Arthur. Bee saw no women among them.
Two dark shapes waited before the fire. One, tall, with horns that arched back over sheep-curly hair and wide ears, like an effigy to Baphomet. It was this one who thrummed gently at the lyre against his chest. But Finn went to the other one, a frailish-looking white man, broad shoulders of an athlete gone to seed, white feathers in his thin white hair. Finn knelt down beside him, stumbling over his own swords, and laid his head in the old man's lap.
"Sweet boy, you've been hurt." His pale hand palmed Finn's head, protecting him. "What has happened?"
"Father, I think I've started a war," Finn's voice cracked on the last word. "I've killed one of the fae." And then the tension and the pain he'd been holding in broke, and he sobbed against his father's knee. Bee went to him and put his hand on Finn's shoulder, and dared the old man with a glance to try to send him away. But Finn took Bee's hand, even through his tears, and held him close.
"Explain?" asked the taller horned man, when Finn's cries had slowed.
Holy cow, where to begin? Bee wondered.
Finn listened to Bee deliver the narrative, prompting him to begin with the bargain they'd made with Miss Zoe. Bee was clever, Bee was quick, and Bee understood just what Finn wanted him to do. He spoke of the confrontation itself and left the details of its motivations—particularly those that touched on Sarah, and Miss Zoe's profession—carefully vague. It wouldn't fool Father Eleutherios, nor his own-father, but it would keep potentially incendiary side-tracks unexplored among the more ignorant.
It was hard to think clearly. He hurt, he hurt all over. He was so frightened, still. It took all his strength to surrender to the comforts of home. His fathers commanded one red-coated man after another quietly to bring this, fetch that, send so-and-so a message, spell such-and-such with the children so that another-one might be here as they tended him. The brothers gathered nearest unbuckled his sword-belt and peeled him out of his coat. Scores of sword-callused hands removed his clothing bit by bit and eased him down on an unrolled blanket. They probed at his injuries with strong and gentle hands, hissing in sympathy as they drew away the blood-caked newspaper from his hip and thigh. He had to remember that these were the hands of people who loved him, and it helped, it helped a bit to submit to their kindness. He let them relearn him by sympathetic touch. Bee, on the other hand, wasn't willing to receive any familiar handling. He rather aggressively shrugged off the hands that tried to take his pack, or his shoes, or his coat, slapping an arm away with a too-emphatic "No, thank you," when they didn't get the message.
Ah, Bee tickled him. He grinned at the blond boy, then ground his teeth when his own-father Elcuin disinfected his wounds. It stung like fury, and he remembered again how much pain he was in.
"Took my tattoos," Finn interjected, as his father spread ointment over the broken skin and bound him up in strips of clean linen.
"She didn't dig that deep," his frail father had said, stroking Finn's face. "You've lost skin and some pride, that's all." Finn leaned his cheek into Elcuin's hand, feeling like he'd finally found a place of refuge. Strong draughts of beef-broth and whiskey were put into their hands. Bee sniffed his nervously, but Finn drank his down, feeling it put fire in his belly.
"Well, you've done it at last, Finnvah," drawled Blondel squatting near the fire, his ginger beard captured in two wire-bound forks. "We always said one day you'd fuck Red Branch entire. Now you have." There was laughter at this from the two-dozen-odd brothers gathered around them, not all of it kindly meant. Somewhere in the dark, a child had woken from a nightmare, and was being soothed back to sleep by gentle masculine voice. Finn wanted to follow the lullaby into sleep himself, but he couldn't leave things as they stood.
"Did you really kill one of the Gentry?" one of the youths asked. Knobnail, Finn thought, who he remembered best as a ten-year-old child, all knees and cowlick. He must have passed his trials some time in the past seven years, for he was a full brother now, wearing a brother's red coat.
"I did," Finn said, without boasting or lie. "You need their true name and a whole coat stuffed with luck, but it can be done. It was a near thing."
"And temporary," muttered one of the brethren. "They don't stay dead forever. They come back. They always come back, sooner or later."
Finn stood up with a grunt, and placed the speaker. It was Luc. Luc had always disliked him, but Luc was also shit at anything other than talk. "What were you thinking?" Luc demanded, gearing up for what Finn was sure would be a miserable speech. His serpent's scales glittered against his temples and arms. "No one's done anything like this in centuries. Why did you come back here? Your message about the King of Winter's release isn't even a week cold . We've taken in refugees from the Goblin King's domain, and we've recalled the initiates from their trials. We're all gathered in, and the King of Winter will surely be coming for your head when he finds out. What on Earth or Under possessed you to share this misery with your brothers, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix?"
"Peace, Luc," Elcuin said. "Where else should he come but home?"
"Clothes, please?" Finn asked. He was handed fresh drawers from his pack, and he gingerly drew them up over the bandages. Soft calfskin leggings and a loose shirt followed, lent freely and gladly from various brothers, but he didn't feel truly clothed until he buckled his sword-belt back over his hips, where it chafed against his wounds in spite of the dressing. "You're right, Luc, it doesn't look like good planning on my part. But you got my message about the King of Winter. Good to know Jollymaker didn't sit on it, because what I'm about to tell you affects all the Free People." Finn took a breath. "I was asked to kill that Gentrywoman by the last surviving member of House Crocus."
There was silence for a second, and the fire popped and crackled. Then there was a murmur of disbelief and, following on that, the stirrings of voice and bodies that signaled incipient laughter and derision. He didn't blame them; he'd been away for seven years and it would be easier for them to dismiss him as overwrought or insane than to believe him. "Listen!" Finn said, pouring all the force of his personality into the words. "You know the name of Shiprah. I can say it now because she's gone to take shelter in the Labyrinth. She's been using the name Zoe, plying her trade, gathering intel, hoping to make her move. But House Crocus are healers, not fighters. When she asked for my help, I gave it."
Finn stared around the circle. "I didn't come home because I needed refuge. I came here to warn you. I came to warn you that the King of Winter is minded to destroy the houses of the Free People. He's sent servants like that fae to find others like me, bleed the magic out of us, and turn the empty husks into his servants. More, he's murdered Elders of the Free People who stand in his way. And he doesn't scruple to kill humans, either." Bee looked up at him in fearful wonder, and Finn longed to hold him. "The Gentrywoman was happy to admit what she did to House Crocus. More, she boasted that the King of Winter had given her license to do it! House Crocus was first on their list, and I'm sure they intend the same for Red Branch. Ruin and disaster, unless we retreat now. Today."
There was another murmur among the brotherhood, but this time with the sounds of belief and concern. Finn felt a wave of dizziness overtake him, and would have stumbled, except Bee was there by his side. He leaned on him gratefully.
It was Elcuin who took up the thread of the conversation, giving it purpose now that Finn had done his job in giving it direction. "Out of the four children we've sent into the world for their initiation in the past ten years, only one has returned. Traces would have been found if they had met with ordinary deaths. What Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix says provides a definite answer for their disappearances. Winter has taken them."
"Old Moneybags couldn't have taken any of ours without help," someone, probably Sigurd, added.
"They're coming to kill us?"
"How can we fight the King of Winter?"
"Listen, my sons," Father Eleutherios said, in those dark and rumbling tones that beckoned ears to listen. "The King of Winter is the King Over the World." His eyes in the firelight were deep reflective black. This liquid-black gaze flowed through the group, and Finn felt the tension in the room ease. "Yet nowhere is it written that the ram must yield to the hungry wolf when it sets upon him. It was decided, when Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix was brought to us as a child, that we would protect him and his kind, the way the flock protects the lambs, with sharp horns and hard hooves and the strength of our numbers. He has not started this war. He has brought us timely word about our danger, and there is no lie in him. This is what I say."
The room was silent, but for the crackling of the fire in the hearth.
"We'll speak more of this," Elcuin said, rising, and grasping Finn around the shoulders. "But for right now, our Finnvarrah and his companion are worn out from a hard victory, and they need rest." Finn tried to protest, but Elcuin was stubborn, leading him away from the fire with Bee flanking his other side. The brethren patted him in sympathy as they passed by, but Finn dragged his feet. He wanted to help, but he was so tired, and his father so coaxing. "Your old bed is empty and waiting for you. Wouldn't you rather be there? Come now, my beamish boy." He gave Bee a significant look, and Finn allowed himself to be chivvied along to one of a series of curtained alcoves that nestled under the balcony that ran the perimeter of the hall.
"Father?" Finn said, "I'm sorry. I only ever bring you bad news." Tears threatened him again, and he let them flow.
"You're my good news," his father said wryly, wiping his face. He kissed his forehead, and Finn felt better. Elcuin and Bee shared the job of preparing him for bed. His clothing and weapons were folded and stacked neatly on a footlocker at the end of the narrow bed, next to a tiny camp lantern. His father flicked it on as Bee shucked off his own clothes and crawled in beside him. "The potential for war has been brewing for years. Someone had to set the spark. Why not you? Your cause was just." He pulled the dark curtains close, only his white head peeping through like Marley's ghost. "We'll talk and decide what to do. But for me, you are my son, and I am proud of you. Now go to sleep. Things will be better in the morning."
Finn didn't want to sleep. He was determined not to sleep. There was so much to do and say. But Bee turned in the blankets so they were enclosed face-to face, the warmth of their breath and bodies making a cocoon. "Sleep," Bee said, and kissed his lips. "I'll watch over you."
"I love you, Bee," Finn murmured, wishing it wasn't an apology. "I.." and between the space of one breath and another, he passed out.
Bee woke with a start and checked his watch. He hadn't meant to sleep at all, but he groggily saw that he'd been out for six hours. His bladder was screaming. He pulled on his pants and a t-shirt and slipped through the alcove curtains, finding the bathrooms off the gymnasium-hall by elementary-school instinct. When he emerged, he stared around at the dimness of Red Branch, and realized he was starving.
The old man with feathers in his long white hair was sitting crosslegged at the hearth as he approached it, stirring a cauldron-sized pot of something that smelled delicious. He handed a crude wooden bowl to Toby and ladled up a portion of chewy-looking oatmeal with fruit and meat in it.
"There was honey earlier, but it's gone now," the old man said by way of apology. Bee nodded and ate. He'd gone to sleep with the sounds of Red Branch in his ears—the monkey-house squeals of young children playing, the clash of swords, the sound of… animals? Now things were silent and still. There was no sign that there was anyone else in this vast hall somehow tucked or folded into an abandoned public school gym.
"What's been decided?" Bee asked, handing the bowl back for seconds. "Finn told you there was danger. Why are you still here?"
"Me myself? What did you expect? I wasn't about to abandon my son, Toby Williams, any more than your own father would abandon you to a house fire to save his own skin." Toby blanched at the sound of his own name, angry and ashamed and ready to fight. However, his mouth was full, and so were his hands.
"How do you know who I am?" he asked, swallowing. He cast a glance back between the rough choke-point.
"Finnvah told me," the old man said… what was his name? Anduin? Elcuin. "A few months ago, he suggested the idea of taking a squire into the streets. There were plenty of young brothers qualified and deserving, but Finnvah had someone else already in mind. You. He gave me your name then. The brother-in-law of the Goblin King. Well and so, I owe the Goblin King a favor I can never repay, and you brought my son home safe, so I suppose he didn't choose so badly. Care for some coffee? I can make a pot."
"I'd love some," Toby said. "And… I'm sorry I was rude." Elcuin acknowledged his apology with a nod. "Who else knows who I am? Finn said it would be dangerous to say too much," he explained, while the old man dithered with a camping percolator.
"Yes, it would have been dangerous, and you were smart not to declare yourself. But that was last night and this is the morning. Almost all the brethren have left for the new home. Other than me, only perhaps old Eleutherios knows who you really are—the goaty one. He's the son of the Autumn Oracle, so he sometimes sees things others don't. But he won't tattle. Now, I have some questions about what you've been up to, and about the goings-on in the Labyrinth with the King of Winter."
"Ask away," Bee said, gratefully taking a mug of hot dirty coffee from his hands, chewing on the grounds between sips. "But I have questions, too. Like, why are you Finn's father? What's your relationship to the Goblin King? What's the Autumn Oracle, and what does it have to do with Red Branch?"
"You surely flit from thing to thing, little Bee," Elcuin said, in saucy tones so precisely like Finn's that it was like hearing the echo of his voice. "It's a longish story, and I haven't told it in a while, but since you saved my son's life, I suppose I'll answer your questions." He took the dirk from his belt and began to sharpen it in slow singing strokes that cast sparks on the stone hearth.
"I was in the last of my twenties when I met the Goblin King, but of course, that wasn't the name he used. I was the drummer in a band that played the New York circuit, and we were playing a boy bar out in the sticks. He was crying in an alley where I'd gone to poke a smoke. Just crouched down over the pavement like it was a trapdoor that could be peeled up, only he didn't have the strength. Tears like diamonds on his face, fingers like stick-pins. Pretty as a girl he was, all eyes and teeth, and I figured him right away for not human." Elcuin closed his eyes and mused. "So I invited him in for a drink and maybe some food if the tips were good. The other boys didn't mind. We were all allowed to keep pets as long as they pulled their weight. Him, he… I don't know. He pulled his weight. Within a night he wasn't a pet, he was our leader. It was like a spell he cast over us, even though it lasted only a few weeks. He could sing."
The dagger sang her skirling metal glissandi and gave off sparks bright as fireworks.
"And whenever he sang, the money poured out of the audience like rain. He put it in our hands and kept nothing for himself. Pretty soon, we weren't even interested in the money as much as the music we were making. Gorgeous music, perfect music, but it also hurt to make it, like it was blood being drawn. We couldn't stop. We followed him everywhere, and everywhere the shower of bills and coins, and everywhere the pain of feeling something sucked out of you. It's a terrible thing, to be enthralled by one of the fae. You get in danger of losing yourself. But he left us, just before I think we would have died from his genius. I was a bit sad when he left. The sadness lasted. The band didn't." Elcuin tested the edge of his dagger; a bead of red blood glittered against his thumb and nodded at his weapon approvingly.
"When he came back to me, he was different. Crueller, colder, older. He wasn't playing at being human any more. He'd done something strange to his hair, and he was all in black leather, like one of those punks looking for a rough ride. He had a baby with him." His eyes met Toby's, and he seemed at once to be thirty years old and a thousand years old. "He told me I was the last one left of our band, and that the child was my prize. For surviving him. He put that baby in my arms and told me where to find Red Branch. The Labyrinth-king's reputation opened their doors to me, but I think it was the baby that really won them over. Finnvah was a beautiful child, and so clearly marked out for something special."
Bee stared at the fire. In the darkness of Red Branch, the bright crackling fire was red, bright copper at the tips, white-hot and indecisive neon-blue where they sucked on the wood. There were black lizard-creatures crawling on the burning logs, cracked-skin and bright where the cracks were, like seams of hot magma. Salamanders, Bee thought. They're salamanders.
"I'd been in a bad place, a dark place, before that, but being responsible for a tiny child makes you re-evaluate priorities damn quick. I'm glad I did. Red Branch adopted us, and it made a world of difference for everyone involved. You see, when I came here with my son, Red Branch was dying off. All the houses of the Free People were—that's what they call themselves, the ones with a touch of the magic in their blood, who live here among human beings. They were all growing thin, in numbers and in magic. I remember suggesting to Eleutherios that we could do for the throwaway children of this city what the Goblin King had done for us. That's what we did. Red Branch took all the boys who looked like they might be raised to the blade, and we sent the remnant and all the girls to other houses starving for children. Pretty quickly, it seemed like these cute youngsters were having children of their own, and not a one of them untouched by some manner of magic. In less than two generations, Red Branch was revived. And not just us—there are other houses where the Goblin King delivered stolen children, and those houses also began raising the lost boys and girls. For that, many of the houses of the Free People owe the Goblin King their fealty and favor. But for my part, I remember how he gave me a little child who named me "Father," and for that gift, I'd give my life. And so you see, here I am."
The fire burned but didn't burn out. The largest brand among them was a massive tree-limb, golden-barked and many-branched, with a few leaves licking with fire, but not consumed. A magic fire. "Finn's a lot older than me then," Bee said, half asking.
"That can bother you if you let it, but it doesn't have to," Elcuin said. "He's still very young—practically a newborn in the ways the Gentry would measure time. As for his human nature… he's old enough to bear pain stoically, but it doesn't mean he feels things any less than you do. Be gentle with him, if he loves you."
Bee nodded. I got Finn into this mess. He wouldn't have gone looking for that fight if I hadn't manipulated him. I've got power over him. It was a heavy responsibility. "Elcuin... thank you. Everything that's gone wrong… so much of it is my fault. I want to make it up to you… to everyone, if I can."
"At least you speak like a man, even if you look like a child," Elcuin said. "Now tell me more of what's happened to the Labyrinth. Finn's message was full of essentials but thin on detail."
Toby held out his cup for a second pour, deciding how to tell the details. "I guess for me the story starts with a bad wish my sister made, and the goblins coming to take me away." Yes, everything starts from there, Bee thought. Every story about the Labyrinth begins with the choices people make, and the judgment of the Goblin King upon them.
In dreams, Finn fought Onoskelis again and again. She offered him everything he had ever wanted. Formless and with form, she filled his senses; the heat of fire, the scent of bitter aloes, an engine of golden automata frogs which croaked rubber-bladder love-songs around a fountain of blood. "Follow, follow," she sang in his ear. "Give me your name," she begged, caressing the tattoos on his shoulder, tracing their characters with one soft and warm fingertip, devastating him with her touch.
She pressed visions under his eyelids, and he became a goblet of golden wine she drank from, and it was a pleasure to be drunk. He became a leopard she hunted, and he died a thousand orgasmic deaths upon her spear. "Come be nothing, be unread, give me your name."
No, you, he insisted, also without words. You go be nothing. Awkward, like a child just learning to walk, he transformed himself as well. He became the knife in her hand, and he cut her, and drank the golden ichor that flowed from her. She tasted like pain.
"So cunning," she whispered to him, and he was the one being cut. "I'll savor you slowly, and make you last." The pain was so fresh, as sharp and hot and fever-making that it felt just as it had when Jareth had carefully and painfully taken up iron and carved his name in his skin. The blade had been hot, and it had hurt. He'd gone to the Labyrinth with nothing more than the red-covered Triskaideque and solid advice from Elcuin, and had had to kneel down at the Goblin King's feet and promise his life to him before he would do so much as speak one word to him.
"Tell me about my mother," Finn had asked him. And his answer: "No."
His words had hurt, and the blade had hurt, making the tattoo in the old way, with hot blade and ash. He hurt now. Please stop! Finnvah whimpered, pushing Jareth away, pushing Onoskelis away. You're hurting me!
Finn opened his eyes and stared out at the curtains separating his sleeping alcove from the others. He blinked slowly, not sure of what time it was. Bee was gone, and his wounds burned under the dressing. His leg felt tight and stretched.
Someone had obviously come in to check on him while he slept, and they had left a pitcher of water and the necessary supplies to change the dressing. He grimly went about this business, cleaning away the blood and fluid cracking through the poultice. His tattoos were still there, but fainter and smoother than they should have been. Onoskelis had exacted payment for what she had taught him about his fae nature, and she had taken payment in flesh. But in return, he had learned how to use his Gift to heal himself. His scars and Bee's own exhaustion were proof enough of that. He was ashamed of his weakness. Given enough time, and no Bee coming to his rescue, she would have had everything from him.
He bandaged up his hip and thigh, covering up the faint trace of the scarified tattoo that the fae woman hadn't dug deep enough to take completely. The mark she had left on him in return went deeper than the skin. It was made of wanting.
He had wanted what she had offered—transformation, a definitive category, an end to being a liminal person even inside a community of liminal people. Even at Red Branch, where he belonged, where the adopted and gathered-in and called members had the blood of the Free People or the human in them, he stood apart. None of the brothers had the hand of the fae as strongly and surely laid on their bodies as Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. None of them had the ability to give him what Jareth had denied him—fae magic, fae power, the things which were his birthright. Onoskelis had. All she had asked in return was everything he was.
Finn sighed and began to dress, hungry for his breakfast and for the sight of his own-father and his brothers and Bee, who loved him.
Jareth, why didn't you let me be your son? No reply was forthcoming, but Finn thought maybe he finally had the courage to ask him in person, the next time they met.
He found his way to the easements by memory and touch in the dark, noting with unsurprised and grim pleasure that the work of relocation had gotten well underway while he slept. Still, his father was here, and so was Bee. He misliked that. His instincts told him it was now the time to run, run like the deer before the beaters and their dogs, and so he was glad to find Luc waiting for him as he emerged from the stall, serpent's scales glittering in the lantern light.
"Is this going to be a fight?" Finnvah asked him. He slung his baldric off his shoulder and rested it at the ready on the line of sinks.
"Oh, there'll be a fight, brother, but not with me. Not today, at least." Luc held up his hands, open, empty. He was unarmed. Finn allowed himself to relax just a little. "The vanguard has left, the new home claimed. All that remains here is to collect the fire and see to the traitors."
"So we do have traitors," Finn said. "Do we know who they are?"
"All the brotherhood is accounted for, with the exception of Lumarchin and Beetleham, who both left yesterday, shortly after you arrived. One of them or both of them have gone to report to their master. It doesn't matter who it is. They aren't the problem. You are. Father Elcuin has refused to leave without his precious baby boy."
"He knows I can't go with you," Finn said. "I have to get to the Labyrinth and warn the Goblin King. What's he playing at?"
"He has the smell of last stand on him," Luc said, scowling. "Blaze of glory, defending hearth and home, doomed but epic battle, all that."
Finn cussed, not inventively, but explicitly.
"Exactly," Luc said sourly. "You really suck, you know that, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix? Why do you always have to be such a big damn hero? It makes the rest of us look like cowards."
"It just works out that way," Finn said. "I'm sorry it gives you so many opportunities to look like a punk, little brother."
Angrily, Luc took him strongly by the back of the neck. "I never liked you," Luc said. "Dad's favorite, everyone's favorite, so special with your Gentry gifts." He banged their foreheads together. "But you're my brother and I love you. I'll always be on your side. No matter what."
Finn listened from the shadows as Elcuin delivered Bee a lesson in Red Branch history.
Finn knew this story as well as his own bones—though it was strange to hear it recited in vernacular prose instead of the rolling notes of harp-chant—how some three hundred years ago the Autumn Oracle had willingly laid his life down to the turn of the seasons, inaugurating Winter's reign. How the Autumn Oracle, the Fall King, had negotiated the terms of this sacrifice to protect the Brotherhood of the Red Branch, granting the knights of the order their charter and their independence from all obligations and service save the ones they undertook willingly. The Oracle had told the young King of Winter that no season was eternal, and that he would be cast down in his turn. Finally, the lesson went, there was what the Autumn Oracle had vouchsafed only to the knights of his court—that the Prince of Spring would be succored by Red Branch, be a fosterling of the Labyrinth, fae-touched, born of woman, herald of the new age.
As with every time he heard it, Finn had doubtful feelings about this story. There were times when some Elders of Red Branch looked at him as if he were the fulfillment of prophecy, and times when he had felt pushed to live up to their expectations. But I'm no Prince of Spring, Finnvah thought. That was the thing about prophecies—if you had to work all the angles to make them come true, they were more descriptive than predictive.
He crept close to the fire and sat down beside Bee and Elcuin, a red and brown shadow in the red and brown firelight. Bee leaned against him instinctively, gazing up at him in contentment. Finnvah rubbed his cheek against his.
"Feeling better?" he asked Bee. His father handed him a bowl of the last of the morning meal, and he ate quickly and gratefully.
"Much," Bee said. "I like your family. You look better. Are you better?"
"I'd better be," Finn said, staring at his father, who said nothing. "It's time for us to go." He swallowed his last bite. "Go get your things," he told Bee. "I mean we're leaving now."
For once, Bee obeyed him without asking persnickety questions. That was good, because Finn didn't trust himself to face down his father with an audience. "It's time for you to leave, too, Father," he said.
"Are you trying to give me orders?" Elcuin said, shaking back his be-feathered hair. "That would be a mistake. There are traitors in our brotherhood. I intend to collect their coats."
"The only thing you'll collect is a slit throat," Finn said, hating himself, choking on love. "You're what, pushing seventy? Father? The best you'll be able to do is slow them down if they slip in the puddle your blood makes."
His father stood and clasped the hilt of his short-sword. "Would you care to test my mettle, son of mine? I may be old, and the beauty of my youth gone, but I can still swing a sword. Try me and see. Go on, draw your blade. Winner stays."
"You taught me that words cut as close as a blade, and sharp reason beats sharp steel. We're already fighting now. Who will carry the fire to the new house, if not you? Who will teach the young ones their history if you die? And if you're taken, who will stop our enemies from torturing the location of the new house from you? I am going. There's no need for you to protect me, so you are going too. Now put away your sword."
"You shame me," Elcuin said, and his face looked old.
"I don't want to," Finn said. His heart ached. "Tell me you yield, and I can stop." On cue, Luc emerged from the shadows and gently took Elcuin's sword from his hand.
"Father," Luc said. "You will come with me?"
Elcuin had one last surge of strength. "You," he said, grabbing Finn's shoulder. "I leave it to you to uphold the honor of our house. I charge you, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. The traitors' heads must be brought to Red Branch. Their coats must be stripped from their unworthy backs. Don't return to us until this task is done."
Bee, returning with his pack on his back and Finn's in his arms, bit down on a protest when he heard Finn's father give him his ultimatum. You horrible old man, he thought. But Finn only bowed his head in submission, and gave his assent.
He had watched as Finn and the viper-man had lifted the great branch from the hearth between them, balanced on shovel and tongs. It shrank to minuscule size, salamanders and all, still burning as they wrapped it in foil and then in a layer of asbestos blankets, still smoldering. When it was done up like the world's weirdest Christmas present, Elcuin had tucked it into one of the innumerable inner pockets of his red coat and nodded.
All that had been left on the hearth was one red-brown acorn, flaming with light, unconsumed. Its light flickered out, and Bee let out a gasp as the vaulted ceiling and its beams and even the hearth itself vanished from sight, leaving only blowing plastic sheets where the curtains on the alcoves had been, and a hearth made of two cinderblocks. Red Branch was just an abandoned gymnasium, doors bricked up, with a hole in the ceiling letting in the sleet and the cold. Luc and Elcuin had vanished into the shadows, leaving Finn and Bee in possession.
Remember, he thought to himself. Remember, so that someday you can draw it as it was here.
"It's fine," Finn told him, as they walked to the subway, glamour powerful as shields embracing them with invisibility.
"Well, I just don't see why we've got to do that on top of everything else," Bee carped, adjusting the straps on his pack. "You shouldn't have to do an epic task just to come back to your own home. That's not fair. Why do you have to pay the price for someone else's bullshit?"
"Well, I guess because we're not aligned with Winter," Finn said philosophically. "Seems to me that that's the King of Winter's whole creed. Let someone else pay for it. Me-me-me-me-me. Want a monument built? Make slaves and let them mortar the stones with their own blood. I get mine, everyone else go fuck themselves. It's a child's way of thinking. So this is how it has to be, since I'm an adult. Red Branch can't allow traitors to the brotherhood to walk away free. I wasn't going to make my father do it, but he's right, someone has to. Why not me?" He smiled, eyes as bright as the day was dark. "That's what adulthood is. Putting yourself aside. That's why our trials for membership include living a year on our own, so we can understand just how far me-me-me will get you. There's a way there, but it must be a cold way, and I don't want it."
"The Goblin King acts like that," Bee said darkly. "Me-me-me. He treats you like a slave. A favored slave, but still a slave."
"Yes, I suppose that's so," Finn replied shortly, surprising him. "I decided this morning that things were going to change. Either he releases me from his service, or I break my oath, but I'm done with the relationship as it is. I've been walking the line for a long time, trying to belong to either the Labyrinth or Red Branch and not really doing my duty to either. Well, I'm choosing family. I'm choosing this world, not the Labyrinth."
"Pretty big talk," Bee said as they walked down into the subway station, wondering if Finn would really actually defy Jareth when it came down to brass tacks, or if he'd bow.
"It'll be a piece of cake," Finn said lightly, and that was when everything went to hell.
In the middle of the crowd, someone grabbed him so suddenly and swiftly that he didn't have time to react. "Just stand where you are," a voice said in his ear, and he felt something hard dig into his side. There was an arm in a red sleeve around his neck, holding him securely. "Call to him or I'll stab you through," his assailant commanded, and Bee watched Finn continue blithely walking, talking to a Toby by his side that he hadn't noticed was no longer there.
Bee stood still and watched Finn walk away, lips sealed. The traitorous brother of the Red Branch cursed him and called out. "Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix! I've got your boy."
And Finn turned.
Time seemed to slow down. The other people in the subway station made an oasis of unconcern, not seeing, not hearing, moving around the perimeter of the glamourous circle like sands flowing around a rock-face in the desert. The pressure on his ribs became a jab, like a spoon stabbing through a blanket, and his captor laughed.
"Let him go, Lumarchin," Finn said, drawing his long steel sword. Bee felt the hard jab in his ribs again, and then the pressure lifted. The traitor's hand held a wicked sharp pigsticker of a knife, but bloodless, but Finn screamed as though he'd seen Toby stabbed through.
It's the coat, Bee thought, furious and delighted. Proof against blades. My coat! And before he could second-guess himself, he used Lumarchin's surprise at his not-dead state to drive an elbow backward into his solar plexus, breaking his grip and stealing his breath. Without thinking, he spun drove the rubber-soled toe of his sneaker square into his attacker's crotch.
Lumarchin crumpled at the waist, dagger clattering to the cement, and Bee slammed his knee into his too-tempting face, amazed at himself, amazed that it worked. Cruising high on victory, he kicked the dagger away. It caromed off the shoes of the oblivious bystanders, and dropped over the ledge. He ran to Finn.
"You're alive?" Finn said, grinning all teeth through his fear. He patted Toby's side, unzipped his coat and felt his side all whole. "He stabbed you. Gods under, Toby! I saw him stab you!"
"I'm okay," Toby said, keeping one eye all this time on the fallen man in the red coat. "I'm okay, I'm fine, Finn, go kill him!"
"I will. I will." Hot stale air blew over their faces as the train arrived. "But first, you've got to go. Please get on that train. You've got to get to the Labyrinth. You've got to warn your sister. Please. Go." Finn embraced him fully, and Bee inhaled deeply, marking the smell of him in his memory. There was so much to say still, and there was no time. Arguing and coming to consensus would only make his choice for him. Lumarchin, now bloody-nosed, had risen to his feet and drawn his own sword, steel-blue under the industrial lights.
"Come back to me," Bee said. "Kill him and come back to me, Finn. I love you! I love you!"
He let the crowd take him, pulling him in their oceanic current into the subway-car. He pushed his way between grumbling and unhappy people sitting on the seats so he could look out the window. The last thing he saw of Finn was him parrying Lumarchin's overhand lunge. Then the train was through the tunnel, into the dark.
Every stop the subway made was like a scream in his ear, demanding he go back to Finn, that he help Finn, that he not abandon him. It took all the willpower he had to stay on the path he had chosen. He transferred at the proper place and waited, an agony of waiting.
The train to the Labyrinth refused to arrive, no matter how hard he wished for it to come. Knowing he'd get on a car going the other way unless he kept moving, Bee eased himself down onto the tracks and began to walk. Somewhere behind him, he heard voices. He ran faster.
Get to the Labyrinth, he told himself. Get to the Labyrinth.
He stopped short, cracking his head against a wall of ice. There was no way through. The route to the Labyrinth had been iced over, iced through. Light reflected off the ice, flashlights in the hands of police officers. One of them spoke into the radio on his shoulder, and the other one shone the light bold in Toby's face as he turned around.
"Hands up!" he barked. "Give your name."
He put his hands up. "I'm unarmed," he said, hating himself for failing so completely. It was over. It was all over now. "My name is Toby Williams. My father is Justice Robert Williams, from the New York Supreme Court."
They came and ripped his backpack off him, and slapped cuffs on his wrists, and told him he was under arrest.
"That's fine," Bee said calmly. "Take me in. I have a phone call to make."
Next… Chapter 8: "The Chariot, Reversed."