Ironside

Corny paused, thinking of the paper in the drawer. "Are you the Fixer? Did you slip Kaye a note?”

The man looked puzzled, then shook his head. "He's a human, like you.”

"Okay. Adair, if you're not the Fixer, what do you want with Kaye?”

The faery was silent for a long moment. Corny slammed the can into the side of the creature's head.

"Who told you to come here?”

Adair shrugged and Corny hit him again. Blood stained his mouth.

"Silarial," he gasped.

Corny nodded with satisfaction. He was breathing hard, but each breath came out like a laugh. "Why?”

"The pixie. I'm to take her to the Seelie Court. Many of my Lady's subjects are seeking her out.”

Corny sat down on Adair's stomach and fisted his hand in the golden hair. "Why?”

"Queen wants to talk. Just talk.”

A man with a fauxhawk opened the door, blanched, and then shut it with a slam. The faery twisted himself around, pushing upright.

"Tell me something else," Corny said. His clenched fingers shook. "Tell me how to protect—”

At that moment the bathroom door swung open again. This time it was Kaye. "Corny, they're—," she said, then seemed to focus on the scene in front of her. She blinked her eyes rapidly and coughed. “This is so not what I expected to see when I walked in here.”

"Silarial sent him," Corny said. "For you.”

"The bartender's calling the cops. We have to get out of here.”

"We can't let him go," Corny said.

"Corny, he's bleeding." Kaye coughed again. "What did you do? I feel like my lungs are on fire.”

Corny started to stand, to explain.

"I curse you." The faery rolled onto his side and spat a reddish gob of spittle onto Corny's cheek. It ran like a tear. "Let everything that your fingers touch wither.”

Corny staggered back, and as he did so, his hand brushed the wall. The paint under his fingers buckled and flaked. Stopping, he looked at his palm, the familiar lines and grooves and calluses seemed, suddenly, to form a new and horrible landscape.

"Come on!" Kaye grabbed him by the sleeve, steering him toward the door.

The metal of the knob tarnished at the stroke of his skin.

Chapter 5

Hell is oneself,

Hell is alone.

—T. S. Eliot

A faun with bloodstained claws sank into a low bow before Roiben's throne. They had come, each of his vassals, to boast of their usefulness, to tell him of their service to the crown, to win his favor and the promise of better tasks. Roiben looked out at the sea of them and had to fight down panic. He gripped the arms of his throne hard enough that the braided wood groaned.

"In your name," said the creature, "I have killed seven of my brethren and kept their hooves." He emptied out a sack with a clatter.

"Why?" Roiben asked before he thought better of it, his eye drawn to the jagged chopped bone of the ankles, the way the gore had dried black. The mortar that grooved the floor of the audience chamber was already discolored, but this gift freshened the ruddy stains.

The faun shrugged. Brambles snarled the fur of his legs. "It was a token that often pleased Lady Nicnevin. I sought only to ingratiate myself with you.”

Roiben closed his eyes tightly for a moment, then opened them again and took a deep breath, schooling himself to indifference. "Right. Excellent." He turned to the next creature.

A delicate fey boy with tar-black wings curtsied. "I am pleased to report," he said in a soft, shivery voice, "I have led nearly a dozen mortal children off of rooftops or to their deaths in marshes.”

"I see," Roiben said with exaggerated reasonableness. For a moment, he was afraid what he might do. He thought of Kaye and what she would think of this; he thought of her standing on her own roof in the T-shirt and underwear she wore to bed, swaying forward drowsily. "In my name? I think you amuse only yourself. Perhaps you could find something more vicious than children to torment now that the war has begun.”

"As my Lord commands," said the winged faery, scowling at his feet.

A small hunched hob came forward. With gnarled hands, he unrolled a hideous cloth and spread it over the floor.

"I have killed a thousand mice, keeping only their tails and weaving those together into a rug. I present it now as a tribute to your magnificence.”

For the first time he could recall, Roiben had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. "Mice?" He looked at his chamberlain. Ruddles raised a single brow.

"Mice," said the hob, puffing out his chest.

"This is quite an effort," said Roiben. His servants rolled up the rug as the hob walked away, looking pleased with himself.

A silky made a bobbing bow, her tiny body clothed only in her pale yellow-green hair. "I have caused fields of grapes to wither on the vine, becoming black and heavy with poison. The wine from their juice will harden the hearts of men.”

"Yes, because the hearts of men aren't nearly hardened enough." Roiben frowned. His diction sounded human. He didn't have to guess where he had picked up those phrases.

The silky did not appear to notice the sarcasm. She smiled as though he were offering her great praise.

And so they came, a parade of deeds and gifts, each more grisly than the last, all of them done in the name of Roiben, Lord of the Unseelie Court. Each hideous feat laid before him as a cat drops the bird it has finally killed, once all possible amusement has been wrung from toying with it.

"In your name," each one said.

In his name. The name that no one living knew in full, save for Kaye. His name. Now that it belonged to all these others to conjure and to curse by, he wondered who had the greater claim to it.

Roiben gritted his teeth and nodded and smiled. Only later, in his chambers, sitting on a stool in front of his mouse-tail rug, did he allow himself to be filled with loathing. For all those of the Unseelie Court, who cut and slit and gutted everything they touched. For himself, sitting on a throne in a court of monsters.

He was still staring at the gifts when a terrible, thunderous crash made the walls shake. Dirt rained down on him, stinging his eyes. A second shock reverberated through the hill. He raced out of the room, toward the noise, and passed Bluet in the hallway. Dust covered her, and the long twisted spikes of her hair nearly obscured a fresh cut on her shoulder. Her lips were the color of a bruise.

"My Lord!" she said. "There has been an attack!”

For a moment, he just stared at her, feeling foolish, not quite able to understand. For all his hatred of Silarial, he couldn't quite accept that he was at war with those he had loved, those whom he still considered his people. He couldn't accept that they'd struck first.

"Attend to yourself," he told her dazedly, moving on toward the sound of screams. A handful of faeries darted past him, silent and covered in dirt. One, a goblin, stared at him with wet eyes before rushing on.

The great hall was on fire. The top was cracked open like an egg, and a portion of one side was missing. Gusts of greasy black smoke rose up to the starry sky, devouring the falling snow. At the center of the brugh was a truck—a semi—its iron body burning. The chassis was twisted, the cab crushed under heaps of dirt and rock, as red and gold flames licked upward. A sea of burning oil and diesel fuel spread to scorch everything it touched.

He stared, stu