Chapter Ten: Death
Soundtrack for Chapter Ten:
"Everybody Wants to Rule the World"—Lorde
"Heat" –David Bowie
"Wind of Change"—Scorpions
Finn parried Lumarchin's overhead lunge with his longsword, taking the man's weight across the blade and then thrusting it all back. Lumarchin retreated a few feet, shaking the force with a one-handed spin that turned his sword into a silver wheel. Finn knew in the first parry that this was not going to go well for him. He'd been fighting consistently in the past few months in the city streets, and for years before that, safeguarding the Goblin City, but his opponents had invariably been inhuman, shorter or taller or moving in unusual ways. He was adaptable, but when it came to facing another human-sized swordsman, he was dangerously out of practice. And Lumarchin was good with a sword. Red Branch always were.
It will have to be words, he thought. Words sharp as a blade.
"Traitor," Finnvah spat. "Are you alone, or will I have to track down Beetleham after I've done for you?"
"No," Lumarchin gasped, the pain of his crotch obvious in his stance. "I've taken care of Beetleham. Your corpse can keep his company." He lunged for Finnvah again, but his agility was far less than it should have been. Oh, Bee had done well with that kick! His own wounds hampered him, but Bee's sock to Lumarchin's balls had gone a far way to evening his odds.
"I'm your brother!" He pitched his voice for sorrow, acting, although he meant every word. "How could you betray your family?" Finnvah parried another blow and backed up, trying to keep some distance between them.
Lumarchin wiped the blood from his nose and reaffirmed his grip on the hilt of his sword. "You've never been my family. Not a brother of mine. You serve the Goblin King." He circled around Finnvah counterclockwise, and Finn held his sword in the guard position, blade angled diagonally across his body. "You're a pawn, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. Pawn in a game between fae kings."
Lumarchin's strokes now came pizzicato style, shallow lunges meant to slash as they were parried, and the muscles of Finnvah's sides were taxed just to keep up. One stroke landed, cutting away part of his lapel. "I am a knight," Finnvah said, anchoring Lumarchin's blade with his hilt and wrenching it downward.
"You're the Prince of Spring," Lumarchin freed himself with a twist and cracked Finn in the hip with his pommel. Pain rolled out from the blow, grey and huge. Finnvah staggered backward, limping. "Or the King of Winter thinks you could be. He wants your head, and he's promised the rest of Red Branch amnesty when I deliver."
Finn skipped backwards. The pain was agonizing. It felt like a rusted hacksaw was scraping ice from his hipbone. Words! His brain screamed. Keep up! "Your father knows what you've done," he hissed between pain-clenched teeth.
"Noise," Lumarchin said, but he hesitated in his advance. "If you need to catch your breath, just say so, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix."
I have to push him harder, Finnvah thought. Cut deeper! He forced his voice to strength. "Your father sent me to collect you, head and coat. You've been disowned." Finn adjusted his grip on his hilt. "I'm hurt, but taking you down was important enough for our father to send me. After me, if I fail, others will come. John Company intends to destroy our House, and you've given him the excuse and the means. They all know it." He caught his breath and said, piercingly, "Even if you kill me, you will never sit down at the fire with your brothers again. Never."
Now all niceties of proper style were cast aside as Lumarchin advanced unthinking, hammering blow after blow on his parrying sword. He was suddenly quite dangerous, in the same way as a sentient levitating lawnmower would be dangerous. Dangerous, in short, as the Cleaners. But like the Cleaners, he was completely predictable, unable to move from a single track.
It had become a fight he could win. He braced his two-handed grip on the hilt and the flat of the blade as the buffeting sword came down like solid lightning. The force of Lumarchin's hysterical, angry swings made the edge of his sword bite into his right palm, and made his left knuckles first sing, and then go numb. One moment before they became perilous to his grip, Finn parried the blow, letting their swords slide together, making many sparks. As Lumarchin's shoulders followed his sword down, Finnvah kicked him in the knee with the square of his bootheel. He felt the other man's joint blow sideways, destroyed. As the rest of him passed by, two red coats rolled closely as carrots and avocado in a California roll, Finn brought his blade across his hamstring, severing the muscles and tendons in his other leg.
He gave Lumarchin time to get to his knees before giving him a swift punch to the crotch with his pommel. At Red Branch, they called this move "winemaker," because it always liquefied the grapes. Still on his knees—and Finn respected his tenacity, he could see it was a struggle for him to stay upright—Lumarchin screamed like a rabbit in the fox's jaws and cradled his pulverized nuts. More importantly, he dropped his sword. Finn kicked it away.
A little engine of rage was turning inside Finn's heart. He hated doing this, and he hated that Lumarchin had forced him to this end. It was appalling, to have to kill a brother. He didn't think such an event existed in living memory, with the possible exception of Father Eleutherios, who was incredibly ancient. He was outraged and greatly offended.
"I'll give you time to say your prayers," Finn muttered, weak-lipped from self-disgust. "Maybe some out-of-luck god can be persuaded to receive you." He aimed his sword carefully and pierced Lumarchin through the upper quadrant of his left lung. The blade slid smooth as butter through flesh and between his ribs. It was climactic. Finn sighed and shuddered as he withdrew his blade, full of self-loathing, but also pleasure. Bitter, bitter, this pleasure, this shame. He had given a slow death, and a cruel one, where the recipient would be able to think and feel and speak until his chest cavity filled and he drowned, slowly, conscious to the last moment, in his own blood.
It was the type of wound Lumarchin had tried to kill Bee with.
Lumarchin jabbed a pair of fingers into the wound, staunching it, but only for a time. Finn was sobered by his ex-brother's pragmatism. They both knew that the outcome of this wound was certain. Finn wondered at his stoic acceptance, where he himself would have raged, or willed himself to instantly die, or perhaps begged for mercy. "There are more," Lumarchin gasped. "They know where you are. They know who you are. They're here now."
"Who are here?"
Lumarchin pointed with his free hand. "Winter's," he grunted.
Finn backed out of arm's length, almost to the perimeter of the glamourous circle of combat, and risked a glance outside. It might have been a ploy—it was an honorable defeat, to take a victor down with you, to launch a thrown dagger taken from his coat, or to blow out a bag of poisonous spores with adrenaline's last breath—but he looked, just the same.
The subway-station was relatively deserted now that the train had departed, taking Toby and the bulk of the crowd with it. Still. There were six loiterers. Four paid no attention. Two wore black suits and overcoats. One was filming the fight on camera. The other was speaking on one of those slim new phones, the oblongs of black that Bee coveted, that his eyes danced over whenever they paused in front of an electronics store.
Both were intensely interested in this fight; both could see it. But so far, neither were inclined to get involved.
Servants of the King of Winter, Finnvah thought. Oh, shit. I need to get out of here.
"Please," Lumarchin said weakly. He coughed once, a burbling cough, full of pink sputum. When he continued, his voice was weaker. "Tell Father I died well." He smiled dreamily, lips turning blue against red drool.
"I will," Finn said gently. "I'm sorry it came to this." And he was, he was. In a single blow, he took Lumarchin's head off at the shoulders. It bounced away, spurting blood. Three strokes of his sword and he removed Lumarchin's left sleeve without cutting his flesh. A sleeve would have to do as symbolic of the whole coat. He didn't have time for anything else. Finnvah's ears pricked up; he heard the sound of feet coming down the steps and he knew without looking that these would be more of the King of Winter's goons. He stuffed the red sleeve into his pocket and turned to face an entire ring of men in anonymous suits. Two of them leveled weapons at him; stun-guns.
"You didn't bring anything lethal?" he scoffed with false jollity. "I'm insulted!"
"Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix, you will lay down arms, and come with us," said the one in the forward position, the leader.
"No," he said cheerfully, although he'd never felt less cheerful in his entire exciting, stupid life. Twinned darts sprang forward to bite him, venom of electricity flowing through their viper's fangs. He parried, cutting the cords, even as another pair of darts launched. Less quick this time, they hit him, driving through his coat and kissing his flesh. He felt the current course through him, and it made the pain in his hip seem like a tickle. Anguish, anguish, as the electricity ate at his bones. With jerky movements and main force of will, he grabbed their tethers and pulled the darts loose. His hands were shaking, and so was the rest of him.
"Come with us," their leader repeated, calmly reloading another charge into his diabolical weapon.
Finnvah sighed deeply, the precursor to the good heavy sob he intended to have the moment he had a spare second. After everything else—the fight with Onoskelis, the confrontation with his father, convincing Bee to leave him, and then killing a sworn brother who had tried to kill him—he had had enough. He could see very clearly that he was going to lose, since it seemed electricity could do to him what cold iron could do to the fae. But he also saw very clearly that he wouldn't willingly go wherever it was they planned to take him, because it was sure to be dreadful.
"No," he said again.
The leader leveled his weapon at him, and Finnvah saw his finger move over the trigger, coy, ready to hurt him again with a pain he couldn't ignore.
Finn used his Gift, the dark side of the blade that Onoskelis had shown him.
He looked the man straight in the eyes and gave him a vision of such potent and violent pleasure that it caused blood-vessels to burst in his enemy's head. And then, couthly, Finnvah drank that pleasure, pulling the dying man's life-force out of him as easily as a zipwire through a toy car. He felt the raw power humming inside him as Winter's minion collapsed. When another moved to stand in his place, Finnvah repeated the process. This time, deep misgivings came with the life he took. It was an evil thing he was doing, an inhuman thing, but he couldn't stop himself. It felt magnificent. It felt like a line of coke, like a golden crown, like a glorious fire that burnt away all his human frailty.
Time seemed to slow for him. He watched, contemptuously amused at the slow-motion arc of another pair of taser-darts that came stringing at him. Not wanting them, he turned them into silver clockwork crickets, and they bounced harmlessly against the thick wool of his coat.
"You should go now," he told the remainder of Winter's goons. Or did he say it? Afterward, he was never fully certain. The servant recording all of this was almost invisible in his emotional life, purposefully dim, a nonentity, and Finn ignored him. But the others, ah. They were plastic soldiers in plastic suits, full of feeling and life, like peppermint jelly squeezed into a Betsy Wetsy doll. He thought he heard them screaming as his passing idea of what they were came to abrupt reality, flesh and plastic and jam and hair all swirled together in an awful mess. The life he'd taken fed his desire and his power, a glamour so potent that it bent reality to his slightest whim, and he was helpless to stop it. It came of itself, the glamour, the Gift, and it burned reality where he touched it with his eyes.
No, he thought in joyful panic. (Oh, yes.) Company's servants cried out in pain, flexing shiny pale plastic jaws. I can't do this! (This is what I can do!)
He heard other people, human voices, screaming in pain and fear. There were human beings left alive in the gulf of the tracks, full of pain and fear and madness. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them. He wanted to give them the faces of lambs and police klaxons.
No! he screamed at himself, and he was able to ignore them, to blot them almost entirely out of his notice. The walls were warping around him, turning into eggshells and spun-sugar confections of dirty ice. Like a child who makes a terrible, dangerous mess, he felt it would all somehow be fine if he ran away from the scene of the crime. It would fix itself in his absence, but only in his absence. "Leave your heart behind," Jareth's voice whispered. "Your heart is a snare. Scourge out your humanity with our fire, and you'll be one of us."
"Yeah, okay," Finn muttered to that voice, his vision blurry with golden fire, heart rabbiting in his chest. It seemed like perfectly reasonable advice. He had to use his sword as a walking-stick, limping awkwardly up the steps. The sounds of moans and the stench of melting plastic and blood and peppermint were unhappy irritants, probably best left behind.
It hadn't really been Jareth who said that to him, of course. It had been his alter-ego, the Host of the Revels in the fairy ring. But they were essentially the same, reflections of each other. And his attempt to seduce Finn away from his humanity could also be interpreted as a dire warning not to do that very thing. "Right?" Finn asked himself. He paused on the steps, which had become intricate mosaics of milk-jug and bone fragments.
He turned and looked back at what he'd done with his unfettered power.
The subway station was a hellscape, plastic and jelly and blood from end to end. Some of Winter's servants had managed to run; the others were lumps of plastic dolls as if twisted by aggressive hands, his hands. Lumarchin's corpse was curled on its side, unrecognizable, clipped-off head nowhere in evidence. And the people cowering in the gap, crying in pain, and none of it remotely their fault.
I did this, Finnvah thought, aghast.
Exhausted, resigned, and still not certain whether he was doing the smart thing, but fairly certain that he couldn't abandon his responsibility, Finn slowly limped back down the steps, hopeful that the last vestiges of the life-force he'd stolen could be put to restoring what he'd so thoughtlessly, easily broken. The Labyrinth, Jareth, and Bee would all have to wait, dire as their need was.
He wouldn't be heartless. He wanted Bee to recognize him when he saw him again.
Jareth lay his palm on the crown of the severed head. My boy, my beautiful boy. Forgive me.
"So young, to have so much power," Company murmured. "One wonders what he might have become, given time."
"He was enough as he was," Jareth confessed unthinking, numbed in horror. "He was perfect, and I wish I had told him so." He spread his hands out in a familiar gesture, his thumb and pinky just touching the warm bone of his boy's horns.
It was that moment where he felt a flicker of hope. Things were not at all as they seemed to be, and this was not Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. His fingertips should have met those horns at their first joint, and they did not. He'd touched him this way too many times—the only gesture of affection toward the boy he commonly allowed himself—to be fooled by imitation.
He looked up to see the King of Winter smiling at the words he'd too carelessly let drop, gloating at his pain. Jareth lowered his head to hide his face as he considered the possibilities. The tattoos themselves were no sham—he had carved them into Finnvarrah's hip and thigh himself, and he knew his own work. Is he alive? Jareth wondered. Yes. If the King of Winter had him, he would bring him before me in chains, to use his life as leverage in this game.
This is a game.
I'll make you pay for this," Jareth said, meaning every word.
"It would be amusing to see you try."
Jareth slammed the cover of the chafing dish down over the grisly remains—whosoever it was—and concealed the parchment-rolls of Finnvarrah's skin up his sleeve as he did so. "I trust he died well," Jareth said, as Company sauntered to the sideboard where there were confectionaries in towers and decanters of wine. He's alive. But where is he, if Company has his tattoos? And where is young Toby?
Jareth put his hand in his pocket and felt the warmth of his conjured crystal. It could show him either Finnvarrah or Toby, or both, if they were standing closely together. He desperately wanted confirmation of their safety, but he couldn't risk it. Not yet. I'll be able to conjure one vision with this only, and that only if I'm lucky. I must save this for the endgame. He removed his hand from his pocket just before Company turned his head to look at him.
"He died squealing like a pig, begging for his father to come save him." Company's eyes were manic with glee. He poured a wine as black as his heart. "I saw to him myself." This last lie was so obvious as to be unimportant, but for the pleasure Company obviously took at the idea. No word about Toby. He doesn't have either of them!
"You destroyed an entire house of the Free People just for the transgressions of one. That seems excessive, especially after you destroyed House Crocus."
"No one cares about those soft-hearted healers," Company sneered, taking a sweet and crunching it between his teeth. "Their power was wasted on them. Anyway, I was hungry." The filling of the sweet was syrupy cordial; it stained the King of Winter's teeth with rust-brown blood. "Have some of these; they're quite tasty."
"You know I won't."
"Then perhaps you'll take some wine," Company suggested. He poured out a second goblet and left it on the table, not quite offering it to his guest. "You're weak these days. Weak," the King of Winter teased him. "I've found this vintage to be wonderfully restorative. Drink it."
Oh, that cup was alluring. The light caught on the crystal facets seemed to sing to him, begging him to partake. Fairy wine from a fairy ring, its heady smell spoke of children joyfully welcomed in old age, and children grieved for, dying in youth. He believed he knew the individual ingredients of this wine. Bottled House Crocus. Less than an hour ago, he had been within an inch of destroying their last child. He was tempted, but drinking this wine would be an obscenity. He'd never be able to look Shiprah in the eye again.
He pushed the goblet away with one finger.
"How very human of you," Company said with disdain. "I'm disappointed."
"And I'm pleased to disappoint." He meandered around the table, took insolent possession of the King of Winter's own thronelike chair, and contemplated his own opening move. Beginnings were the roots of endings, and he needed this game to end with himself walking away free. He would be damned before he would be imprisoned in a box ever again.
He was going to have to ask a direct question. All of his instincts told him it was a question that he needed to have answered, but he would have to pay for it by answering a question of equal import. Those were the rules when dealing with the fae; like for like. "Why did you really want to destroy Red Branch? When the Free People find out, they'll turn against you in open rebellion. There must have been some greater profit in it than simple revenge. Tell me what that was."
John Company rubbed his hands together with delight. "Oooh, questions!" Thunder boomed far overhead as he answered. "I've averted the Autumn Oracle's prophecy. I learned of it some ten years ago, from one of the more forthcoming Red Branch boys." He saw the incomprehension Jareth couldn't hide. "Don't try to pretend you didn't know. The Autumn Oracle's last prophecy foretold that the Prince of Spring would come from Red Branch and the Labyrinth, born of woman, fae-touched, herald of Winter's end. That prophecy. That's what you were up to, hiding Robin's son among the red brotherhood. You thought to use your boy to destroy me. But your boy is dead and Red Branch is destroyed, and the Labyrinth will be mine, and Winter will reign forever. There will never be another Spring."
"Ah," Jareth said, raising his foot to inspect his boot. "I didn't know about that prophecy."
"Liar," Company snapped.
"Yes, there are certainly some lies perfuming the less-than pleasant air in here." Jareth nudged the dish containing the stranger's head with his bootheel, making his meaning clear "But so far, they're all yours." Your turn, John. I am calling your bluff.
"Oh, Jare'th. How I've missed playing with you. I'm not your servant, to fetch you notarized proof. So let's deal in essentials. Let's speak of the Labyrinth." Company smiled and sucked the chocolate from his fingers. "Your kingdom is slipping from you. I can taste your exhaustion and your fear. Answer my question. Isn't it true that even now, the Labyrinth has drifted out of the never-never and surfaced into the world I control? Isn't it true that to take it, all I need to do is wait… for you to fall?"
The thunder sang again, somewhere over the mountain, as Jareth answered. "Yes."
"So you can see, I've been quite generous with you, inviting you to my table, giving you an opportunity to negotiate."
"Yes," Jareth said, more quietly.
"That's what I thought," Company said. "This conversation is all details. There is the side business to manage, however. Your she-ape, and how I plan to hurt her."
At this, Jareth sat up in his chair, heart fluttering in his chest. No. He can't touch her. "You might have a problem with that, considering she's not here to be hurt. Or do you have a packet of crisps in your pocket you're going to pass off as her heart?"
"Oh, she'll be along shortly," the King of Winter replied, eyes cutting at Jareth. "I sent the dwarf to fetch her. You remember him. He used to work for you, didn't he—Hoggle."
Yes." He ground his teeth over the word, cursing himself for leaving the dwarf to his own devices after his wedding-invitation had gone so rudely unanswered.
"Well, he works for me now." Company drained his wine and poured more. Jareth let his own glass go untouched, although the smell of it, heady with fae magic, still tempted him. "It didn't take much to convince him to change employers. You underestimated the dwarf's talents, Jare'th. He's proved a most valuable ally. He can unlock any door in this Labyrinth, he knows so many secret routes and passages through it… yes, Hoggle has been a boon to me."
"He's a craven and a bully, and makes up for it with the most monstrous ego." Jareth considered this. "Actually, saying that, I can see why the two of you get along so well."
"All three of us," Company agreed. "For aren't you also a coward and a bully? Ask the boy's head; he can tell us both a sad story about his mother, about how the Goblin King stole the few paltry coins she'd managed to store. The cruelest theft of all, however, must have been the theft of her child. Child of the robin. Robin Zakar. She ended in suicide, you know."
"I know," Jareth said. "And I know I'm paying for my sins now."
"Sin," Company sneered. "You need a soul to sin, Jare'th, and even you haven't fallen that low. In any event, Sarah Sophia Williams trusts the dwarf. I believe the word he used was 'friend.' He will use persuasion to bring her. If that fails, he will use threats. She knows better than anyone else how mortal you are now."
"She's very late, if she's coming. Perhaps we should find out where she is." Jareth took out the crystal in his pocket, the crystal glowing with summer's fire, and was pleased by the surprise and dismay on the King of Winter's face as he summoned her image bold enough for both of them to see.
There was Sarah, standing in her bedroom, with Shiprah there to guard her, and the tiny fox-knight and the smelly orange night-troll who doted on her. She was holding a crystal. She was looking for him, just as he looked at her.
I am alive and well, beloved, he told her. Stay where you are. I am coming back to you. The crystal popped like a soap-bubble in his hands.
He saw quite clearly then what he'd have to do to make good on that promise, to get past John Company and make his escape from this awful zone of his power, and it was a terrible thing. It was truly a terrible thing. There was only a chance, one slim chance, that he wouldn't have to do it.
"You have no leverage, John. If you want to coerce me to abdicate, you'll have to do better than a stranger's head and confidence in that dwarf's ability to follow through." He picked up a fork from the place-setting and tested the sharpness of the tines. "It's your own fault I'm so tenacious. My trials made me capable of enduring quite a lot of pain, and your petty cruelties in the Observatory have only made me stronger. I have tolerated you like an inconvenient rash, and nothing you do will make me scratch." He shook his head. "Let me propose an alternative ending to this game. Let us declare stalemate. We can be as we were before, un-brothers and un-enemies. We will both walk away, both free, both alike in wounded dignity."
"Why would I do that, when I'm winning?" Company finished his wine.
Jareth narrowed his eyes, and gambled on Sarah's intuition. "Because I know you're still a prisoner here. Even if Hoggle opened the door to your cell, you can't leave the Observatory. You would have brought your armies and your demands to my very doorstep if you could. You would have more servants to attend you here, if it was more than a prison. Sarah has bound you here, but I can set you free."
"I can wait," Company hissed. "Your wife will come here seeking you eventually. In the meantime, my power grows, Jare'th. The winds and the weather obey me—you saw what I did to the stones outside. As Winter waxes here, I can raze this paltry kingdom until no stone stands on another, and bury it in snow and ice deep enough to freeze every heart. I will hurt Sarah Sophia Williams, too. If I can't bring myself from this mountain, I will bring the mountain down atop your kingdom. It will only take time."
Jareth began to laugh, one part despair, one part relief. So it has come to this, after all.
"What's so funny?" The King of Winter asked. Jareth's laughter increased. "You've lost. I've beaten you!" He kicked the loose chess-pieces across the icy floor. "Why are you laughing?" he screamed, cords straining in his neck.
"Because this is a farce," Jareth said, calming himself. "I know how this ends—with me renouncing my kingdom. My fate was sealed long ago." Jareth removed his amulet.
The chain clung to the tendrils of his hair, ripping strands out in its desperation not to be parted from him. It swung from his right hand, like a mesmer's bauble, catching the light with the time of his heartbeat. "You want this," Jareth said. "My kingship. My authority. You've always wanted it for yourself."
"Yes," John Company hissed, eyes full of wanting, tantrum forgotten. In the cold light of the television screens, the amulet seemed to take on different forms, different shapes. A crown, a bronze mask, a prisoner's key…
"I'm prepared to yield it, but I have conditions, John. You must swear that no harm will come to the people who were once my vassals. You will work no revenge against them, or me, or my family. In return, I'll renounce my kingdom. Is it a bargain? Shall I let go?" The amulet swung like a pendulum over the table.
"Yes." The King of Winter's eyes were black with covetous desire, and his hands drifted up to snatch, to steal.
"Very well. Let it be so compacted between us." He dangled the amulet from its chain, and let it drop to the tablecloth. "As long as you hold to your promise, I hold to mine. I abdicate. I am no longer King of the Labyrinth."
Thunder boomed over the dome of the mountain, bearing witness to his vow. It was done. Almost. Company reached out a trembling hand to grasp the amulet, the symbol of his power, his name, his heart. Jareth felt icy pain stab him as those cold fingers closed over the metal.
That was the moment when Jareth brought the fork down and stabbed Company through the bone-joints of his wrist, pinning him to the table. Blood, surprising in its intense redness, gushed forth and ran down the cloth, and the King of Winter screamed.
Jareth smiled.
"Concordat!" Company wept. "You've broken concordat!"
"Not at all," Jareth said, peeling the amulet out of his spasming fingers and putting it back around his neck where it belonged. It was cold now, so cold, empty of import, empty of magic, only a piece of jewelry. "Concordat applies to monarchs. I'm no longer King. I've surrendered my kingdom, but not to you."
"Cheater!" Company screamed, trying to pry himself loose. "Cheater and sneak! This isn't over!"
Jareth nodded. "You're right. Two things remain. First you must show me the door out of here." He drew his knife and let it wink under the King of Winter's eyes, guaranteeing his attention. He felt giddy, enraged, triumphant, despairing. He felt as though he had gone utterly mad. "A pity I can't kill you, Your Majesty, but I know even better than you do how impervious your flesh is to any lasting harm. I do have this, though," and he twirled the blade in his hand. "It will hurt you terribly if I use it on you. And I will, unless you let me out of this room right now."
"Oh, you had just better pray to all the devils of Hell you get out of here before I get loose!" Company screeched. He rocked the fork with his good hand, trying to wrench it loose, and Jareth was pleased by his own speed and accuracy. He'd driven the fork deep, and pinned nerves and tendons between the tines. But Company was right; it wouldn't hold him forever. Jareth heard the squeak of the wood as he tried to wrench himself free.
With that same agile deadliness, he used the knife to chop off three of the fingers of John Company's free hand. The iron blade sizzled against inhuman flesh and fae blood.
"Hand of glory then," Jareth said, wiping the blood off on the tablecloth and resheathing his knife. He selected the longest digit on offer and lit the manicured finger-tip with his lighter. "A candle, a candle, to light me to bed." Though the finger twisted in his hand like a bony viper, it could not extinguish itself. The hidden door was revealed by its light.
"I will kill you for this!" Company wept, still struggling with the fork with his mutilated hand.
"The second thing," Jareth said, and now his anger came in the space where madness had been, hot anger, coloring both his eyesight and his brain in tones of blood red. "There's still my ritual insult to deliver. Here we go." He drew a breath. "You are boring. You are tasteless and banal. You never make anything new, or engender fruition. All you've ever been able to do is provoke and exasperate the talented." Jareth spat, and the spittle landed against Company's cheekbone, where it sizzled like acid. He peered at Company from several angles and nodded in approval, even as the King of Winter wiped it away and screeched more imprecations and threats.
"Ah-ah," Jareth said, gesturing with his gruesome candle. "I'm not done. Listen well. The icing on this cake, now that I've glazed you, is that Sarah is pregnant with my child. Mine. She will deliver our baby in the spring. Do you understand me? Our children will inherit everything. The Labyrinth, the world. The children of the Labyrinth will destroy you, John Company. And all of this because you couldn't leave my kingdom well enough alone."
A second reverberation shook the Labyrinth, not of thunder, but of the warm gasp of water-vapor released from ice, the scent of new flowers blooming. Jareth was surprised with himself. He'd never spoken a prophecy before.
As he left the prison-cell at the heart of the Observatory, at the heart of Winter, John Company screamed his name. If it was a curse or a plea, Jareth couldn't say. He was sure of only two things. He knew that from this moment until the end of time the King of Winter would bend all his will to finding a loophole in their bargain, and he knew that he had to get to Sarah as quickly as possible. No more time for dignity; dignity was for kings. Jareth ran.
Next… Chapter Eleven: "The Tower" (Conclusion of Act I)
Author's Note: ... yup. All that really happened. Jareth has abdicated; Finnvah is not dead.
Thank you very much, all the readers who responded to this story while it was on hiatus and prompted me to get this chapter out. The problem with this story (is it really a problem?) is that each chapter is huge, and even when I'm excited to get to the next part of the plot, I have to wait and take it there the long way to earn the next piece. I've never told a story this big with so many leading characters. It's a challenge.
Also, you know that show with the dragons and the games and the chair that Jareth could probably never sit in comfortably, despite all the memes to the contrary? Something about Winter arriving? Yeah. Well, in the Labyrinth, Winter has come, and I promise you, it's not going any time soon. But the last chapter in this act is probably on its way. Thank you again.