The Seelie King's War Read online

  She wondered if they would fight. Indeed, she wondered if they could.

  Sitting down next to the bowser, which was much more than a simple animate rug, she thought about how he’d greeted her originally—with a snarl and the baring of almost a hundred teeth.

  The bowser, so Odds had warned her that first time, didn’t ordinarily like females, though she and the rug had become friends of a sort soon after. Right now it was hard to believe he had any teeth—or any mouth—so hidden were they in the greasy grey folds of his body.

  She put her hand on his matted fur. “Who left you in this awful condition?” she said softly. “Has no one bathed you since the king and I went with you through those first skirmishes?” When there was no response, she added, “Want a bath now?”

  The bowser shifted, or rather he scrabbled on the floor and pushed a section of his dirty, grey, limpish body onto her lap.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, trying to push the filthy creature down. “But first I’ve got to get some water and some soap, and then you and I will have a wash.”

  The bowser still didn’t move, so she stood up quickly, and he tumbled back onto the floor of the wagon. “Back soon.”

  She got her riding clothes out of her saddlebag. She had to save the m’lady clothes for addressing audiences and speaking to toffs. And that meant the first thing she had to do was brush off some of the filth the bowser had left on the skirt.

  Then she changed back into her smelly, unwashed clothes and went outside. There she found a big wooden bucket and filled it to the brim with tepid water from a barrel. She uncovered a stiff brush—probably used for the unicorns’ manes—and some yellow soap.

  When she returned to the bowser’s room, the twins were hanging from hooks closer to the door, possibly to avoid the inevitable splashing water.

  The bowser had spread himself out flat so that she could reach every bit of his body.

  “Good,” she said, dumping some of the water in the very center of his back—or front. Without the teeth showing it was impossible to tell. Then she got onto her knees, scraped some of the rose-scented soap onto the brush, and got to work.

  The work wasn’t hard but it was repetitive, very like scrubbing a birthing room in preparation for the blessing event, which was what midwives often called the bloody mess of newborn babies.

  As she continued scrubbing, adding water and soap when needed, the bowser turned light grey, and then a kind of warm tan. On the third full wash she began to see gold shining through. She knew that once he was thoroughly gold on both sides, he’d be ready for his role in the days to come.

  Now it was just soap, water, push, pull, and a lot of bowser purr.

  WHEN THE BATH was finally done, the bowser—miraculously dry from some inner heat—draped himself over her shoulders. His rough tongue, rather like a cat’s, licked her cheek. She hadn’t known he had a tongue, only teeth.

  If he has a tongue, she wondered, can he taste things? Then a more important idea passed through her mind. If he has a tongue, can he talk? Other made things in Odds’s troupe talked—like Maggie Light. The iron spiders mostly grunted. But—she wondered—if the bowser can’t talk, why give him a tongue?

  Just because he’d never talked to her didn’t mean he was mute. Perhaps, she thought, he’s spoken to Aspen. Of course, Aspen had never mentioned it, and she believed that he told her everything. But then—she remembered with some shame—I thought he’d gotten married without saying a word. So what do I really know about him?

  She might have stayed there, wrapped in the warm comfort of the bowser’s gold body, but she heard a vaguely familiar sound: a kind of thump. And then a grinding noise followed closely, after which the entire wagon shook.

  At once she understood—Odds had pulled the rope that set the stage in motion.

  He was going to give the performance of his life.

  And possibly all of theirs.

  SNAIL KEPT THE bowser over her shoulders and walked out of the door onto the grass. Snap and Snaggle were gone, as were Dagmarra and baby Og. She assumed they were together, working to form the ragtag army. At least she hoped that was what they were doing.

  Shifting the bowser even higher on her shoulders and telling him how beautifully he shone in the sunlight—for he was ever susceptible to flattery—she made her way to the front of the big stage.

  The one big iron spider not on guard in the forest was surrounded by a dozen smaller ones, each the size of a war horse. They were pulling the panels and the parts of the stage out to its broadest.

  Maggie Light came over with her strange gliding walk, stopping not a handsbreadth away. “Shall I carry the bowser for you?”

  It made sense. Maggie was taller and had shoulders made out of some unimaginably strong material, but for some reason Snail resisted the offer. The bowser had chosen her, and she needed that connection to strengthen.

  “Thanks,” she said to Maggie Light, “but we have business later, the bowser and I, and should not be separated, not even for comfort’s sake.”

  Maggie bowed her head. “The professor chose rightly. Even before he knew you, he knew what you could do.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You will find it for yourself,” Maggie said. “To tell you sets you on a path not of your choosing.”

  She walked off, leaving Snail to puzzle that out. If I am already chosen by the professor, she wondered, does this mean my path is of my own choosing, or his? Am I free to not do what Odds wishes? Is my asking for his help part of Odds’s plan or the king’s? Thinking about all of this made her head swim, so she stopped.

  Just then she felt the movement of a thousand or more people around her pushing toward the stage.

  If I’m not ahead of them, she thought, I’ll be left behind.

  She moved to the left, climbing back into the wagon, and then went through the linked rooms till she came to Odds’s own bedroom. She entered without knocking and found the professor himself standing at the far end, holding open the door that was the entrance to the stage.

  “I thought you’d never get here,” he said. “I was about to send Maggie Light out to—”

  “To sing your people into submission?”

  “Compliance is a better word.”

  “Not,” she said sharply, “if you’re the one complying.”

  He laughed. “You didn’t complain before, not when it helped you plow through the crowd.”

  She knew he was right, but didn’t thank him. Being beholden to him gave Odds power over her she didn’t like. “Are we ready to begin?” she asked brightly.

  “Oddly ready and ready against all odds,” he said, then preceded her through the door, saying, “Stand to my right, neither ahead of me nor behind.”

  She thought that a good idea. That way they would be seen as being of the same status. Even amongst the humans, for whom status seemed to be more changeable than in the two kingdoms, that was probably the best way to present themselves.

  Once out on the stage with the sea of people in front of her, Snail’s knees suddenly went weak. But the bowser growled in her ear, which made her giggle. At least I have him right-side up.

  Against the stage was a knot of handpicked strong men and a handful of gawky boys standing beside Snap and Snaggle. They were all attentive but not at attention, obviously placed there by Dagmarra, who was even now conferring with Maggie Light. She gestured with her left arm to the small force. Her right arm was full of baby Og, who was napping in the midst of all the commotion.

  Snail pretended she saw none of them, nor did she try to pick out faces in the crowd she’d known before. If she fogged her eyes, they all seemed to disappear into a kind of mist. But even that wasn’t enough to distract her from the mass of them following her every movement. So, to distance herself even further from the vast audience, she shifted the bowser f
rom her shoulders and took a long while spreading him out on the stage floor.

  “Soon,” she crooned. “Soon, golden one.”

  The bowser gave a little shiver and a shimmer, then lay quiet.

  One of the iron spiders, a small one only the size of a wildcat, hauled out a box twice its size to the center front of the stage, grumbling in its clanky voice. Then it clumsily unfolded three short steps from one side of the box. Once the box was ready, and steady, Odds walked over and climbed up carefully.

  The crowd cheered him as he rose to the top, planted his feet widely, then raised his hands.

  Almost directly in front of him, but standing sideways against the stage, so she could watch Odds’s movements and catch Snail’s eye as well, stood Maggie Light. As soon as the professor’s hands were in the air, she put two fingers in her mouth and gave a shrill whistle that cut through the cheers.

  The crowd went suddenly and totally silent.

  “My friends, my people,” Odds thundered.

  Snail was surprised at how strong his voice was, stronger than any man’s had a right to be, till she noticed Maggie’s mouth was wide open. The sound of Odds’s voice was issuing out through her, amplified in some magical way Snail didn’t understand.

  “All of you are my partners in this human experiment,” Odds said, hands now before him, palms up. His gesture encouraged them to roar their approval back at him.

  The roar was so loud, it shook the stage, and the bowser scrunched up a bit closer to her feet.

  Odds raised his hands again, Maggie Light whistled once more, and the crowd grew silent for a second time.

  Professor Odds got right to the meat of what he meant to say.

  “You all know we are in a war not of our choosing. That it’s a war of faerie factions is not lost on any of us. And maybe you’re thinking: What do I care if an ogre kills a brownie, or a Border Lord maims a troll?”

  At the mention of a troll, Dagmarra looked up and bared her teeth at Odds but was otherwise silent.

  Odds never noticed her protest and kept on speaking. “But we’re caught in the middle of this muddle. We don’t have wizardry and dark magicks on our side. And so we are more vulnerable than they. We have already seen this, having so recently buried loved ones.”

  “But we got some of them buggers ourselves!” someone called out, and the sea of people started to call out examples of the same.

  “Me and my brother snagged a Borderer!” Two large men, gap-toothed and looking far too jolly to have beaten a Border Lord, held up their arms as if in victory.

  “And then we hanged him,” shouted an equally large woman.

  The midwife in Snail made her wonder if the large men and woman were halflings: part human, part giant or troll.

  “I cut off a drow’s head,” shouted a young lad in Snap and Snaggle’s group. “Well, after my da beat him to his knees with a shovel.”

  “And we brought down an ogre with ropes around his ankles, and when he fell, he went face-first into the fire,” cried out a group of men, each of whom was not much larger than the dwarfs.

  Odds let the crowd exhaust itself with its bloodthirstiness before putting his hands up again, which got most of the crowd’s attention. Maggie whistled the rest back to silence.

  Snail was still not sure if there was magic in Maggie’s whistle or just a shrill call to attention. Either way, it worked.

  Odds went on. “Yes—one or two of the fey company we can manage. But we aren’t an army, not one that’s organized. Not soldiers. Not warriors, as the Seelie troops call themselves. Not the monster hordes, as the Unseelie are known.”

  There was a mumble and groan around the stage as the listeners took this in. Not anything they hadn’t known before, but being spoken by Odds made it more real somehow.

  The professor raised his hands again, and this time he needed no whistle from Maggie. The crowd hushed at once. “We can be at the mercy of the winner of this war or we can be merciless and dictate our own terms.”

  “Dictate!” cried the big woman. Suddenly she lifted a large shovel over her head. It had, Snail noticed, an iron blade. Snail was used to wooden-bladed shovels, of course. No fey would have been able to use iron, so the Unseelie had none.

  Maggie’s whistle forestalled any reaction, and Odds said quickly, “As I have already done. Our doctor here . . .” And he pointed to Snail, who rashly raised her hand, and then regretted doing so when the entire audience swiveled toward her. “Our doctor,” Odds reiterated, “has come back to me with many concessions from the Seelie king, who promises us much if we will support and hold the backs of his army. The backs, my friends, not the fronts.”

  A huge roar went up, and even Maggie’s whistle had trouble controlling it. But at last the roars and shouts died down.

  “Not only freedom and complete equality with the Seelie folk, but gifts of estates and fortunes for all to work side by side with the fey. As equals. Plus anyone who desires to leave Faerie and go into the human world, will be given a pocket of gold for the journey, plus a fine steed to ride.”

  Snail was astonished at the professor’s amazing soup of half-truths and part-lies made from the thin broth she’d brought him. And then she was amazed that she was astonished, given what she knew of him.

  But then he added, “Though I warn you that you’ll live a much shorter life out there, and a softer one here if you stay.”

  “Shorter than dying in their bloody war?” shouted a green-jacketed woman on the edge of the crowd.

  “Some of us will die anyway,” Odds told her. “Whether we support this king or not. Worse even than dying would be living under the barbarous Unseelie folk, should they win. You have seen them and know what they can do.”

  The green-jacketed woman was having none of this and shouted again, and now there were several yelling along with her, “Why not just head for the Door?”

  Snail assumed they meant the Door out of Faerie and into the human world.

  “The Door! The Door!” her followers chorused.

  But just as the crowd was about to cross the border into mob, Maggie whistled so loudly they were stopped in an instant. And then she began to sing.

  “Right!” Dagmarra handed baby Og off to a startled Snaggle, who immediately passed the little troll to Snap. She jumped onto the stage and ran to Snail. “Fingers in ears.”

  Snail had already done so, though the first few words of Maggie’s song-spell still drifted through her mind.

  The gate between the trees is open.

  The way will be quite steep.

  Stones as hard as hearts the markers . . .

  She remembered as if in a dream the familiar next line, Do not weep, child, do not weep. But with her fingers in her ears, there was no longer power in the words to enchant.

  Dagmarra looked at her and smiled, turned, and went back down off the stage. As she turned, Snail noticed the bog cotton in her ears. Dagmarra had been ready for such an eventuality.

  As Snail watched, the dwarf strode through the crowd, found the green-jacketed woman, who was as entranced as the rest, and hauled her off. To where, Snail had no idea. Nor did she want to ask. Not then, at any rate.

  When she was positive the danger was past, Maggie stopped singing. And when Snail realized people were coming around again, she took her fingers from her ears, though she still heard the line Do not weep, child, do not weep, over and over again in her head.

  Odds was haranguing the newly awakened crowd about the Door. Snail turned toward him just as he said, “But since we have yet to find the Door, better to work with the king who knows where it is and how to go through it. He has given his promise, written on this paper . . .” At that, he raised a scroll in his hand that Snail had never seen before, and certainly doubted the king could have sent. “This scroll in which he promises to put together a troop of fey explorers and
an equal number of our people to find the Door. But all these concessions are for naught if the Seelie can’t beat back the Unseelie tide. And without our help . . .”

  From somewhere off to the side—the side where Dagmarra had gone to deal with the green jacket and her followers, Snail realized—a single voice rang out. “See-lie! See-lie!” She knew that voice.

  That single voice was quickly joined by two and then three voices, some from the back and some—she noted—from the front. The front voices had been started by Snap and then Snaggle, and their handpicked crew. And finally, the cry was taken up by an avalanche of fervid tongues.

  Odds let the sound rise and rise and then tumble down the mountainside of his people’s desire for peace. When it was all but finished, he pointed dramatically at Snail. “Go, our doctor, our sister, our comforter, our skarm drema, and tell the Seelie king we will hold his back.” He smiled. “We will hold to our purpose. And we will hold him to his promises!”

  She knew the time had come. Nodding, she sat down on the bowser, put her hands in his gleaming fur, formed a picture in her head of Aspen’s palace, and said, “Take me to Astaeri, golden one. As fast as you can manage.”

  Just as the bowser began to tremble beneath her, Snaggle leapt onto the stage.

  “M’lady,” he called as he ran toward her, “how shall we get you in safety to . . .”

  The bowser had already lifted a hairbreadth off the stage floor, and then two. Before Snaggle could reach Snail, the bowser suddenly lurched upward at a high rate of speed and began to circle toward the south.

  It was all Snail could do to hold on. Waving at the people below was impossible. She inched closer to the edge of the rug and cried out to Snaggle, “Do what Alith would have done. . . .” But the rest of what she tried to say was taken by the wind.