Ironside

Kaye looked up as the hall went silent.

Roiben had entered the room with his courtiers. Thistledown, the Unseelie herald, ran in front of the procession, long golden hair streaming from his wizened head. Then came the piper, Bluet, playing her lilting instrument. Next marched Roiben with his two knights, Ellebere and Dulcamara, following him at an exact three paces. Goblins held up the edges of Roiben's cloak. Behind them were others— his chamberlain, Ruddles, a cupbearer holding a winding goblet of horn, and several pages holding the harnesses of three black dogs.

Roiben mounted a moss-covered dais near a great throne of woven birch branches and turned toward the crowd, going to his knees. He leaned his head forward and his hair, silver as a knife, fell like a curtain over his face.

"Will you take the oath?" Thistledown asked.

"I will," Roiben said.

"The endless night," Thistledown intoned, "of darkness, ice, and death is ours. Let our new Lord be also made from ice. Let our new Lord be born from death. Let our new Lord commit himself to the night." He lifted a crown woven of ash branches, small broken stubs of twigs forming the spires, and set it on Roiben's head.

Roiben rose.

"By the blood of our Queen which I spilled," he said. "By this circlet of ash placed upon my brow I bind myself to the Night Court on this, Midwinter's Eve, the longest night of the year.”

Ellebere and Dulcamara knelt on either side of him. The court knelt with them. Kaye crouched awkwardly.

"I present to you," called the herald, "our undoubted Lord, Roiben, King of the Unseelie Court. Will you humble yourselves and call him sovereign?”

A great joyful shrieking and screaming. The hair stood up along Kaye's arms.

"You are my people," Roiben said, his hands extended. "And as I am bound, you are lashed to my bidding. I am naught if not your King.”

With those words, he sank into the chair of birch, his face blank. Folk began to stand again, moving to make their obeisance to the throne.

A spriggan chased a tiny winged faery under the table, making it tremble. The ice bowl sloshed and the tower of cubes collapsed, tumbling into disarray.

"Kaye," Lutie squeaked. "You're not looking.”

Kaye turned to the dais. A scribe sat cross-legged next to Roiben, recording each supplicant. Leaning forward from his throne, the Lord addressed a wild-haired woman dressed in scarlet. As she moved to kneel, Kaye glimpsed a cat's tail twitching from a slit in her dress.

"What am I not looking at?" Kaye asked.

"Have you never seen a declaration, pixie?” sneered a woman with a necklace of silver scarabs. "You are the Ironside girl, aren't you?”

Kaye nodded. "I guess so." She wondered if she stank of it, if iron leaked from her pores from long exposure.

A lissome girl in a dress of petals came up behind the woman, resting slim fingers on her arm and making a face at Kaye. "He's not yours, you know.”

Kaye's head felt as though it were filled with cotton. "What?”

"A declaration," the woman said. "You haven't declared yourself." It seemed to Kaye that the beetles paced a circle around the woman's throat. Kaye shook her head.

"She doesn't know." The girl snickered, snatching an apple off the table and biting into it.

"To be his consort," the woman spoke slowly, as though to an idiot. An iridescent green beetle dropped from her mouth. "One makes a declaration of love and asks for a quest to prove one's worth.”

Kaye shuddered, watching the shimmering beetle scuttle up the woman's dress to take its place at her neck. "A quest?”

"But if the declarer is not favored, the monarch will hand down an impossible expedition.”

"Or a deadly one," the gri

"Not that we think he would send you on a quest like that.”

"Not that we think he meant to hide anything from you.”

"Leave me alone," Kaye said thickly, her heart twisting. Lurching forward through the crowd, she knew that she'd gotten far drunker than she had intended. Lutie squeaked as Kaye shoved her way past winged ladies and fiddle-playing men, nearly tripping on a long tail that swept the floor.

"Kaye!" Lutie wailed. "Where are we going?”

A woman bit pearl-gray grubs off a stick, smacking her lips in delight as Kaye passed. A faery with white hair cropped close enough to her head that it stuck up like the clock of a dandelion looked oddly familiar, but Kaye couldn't place her. Nearby, a blue-ski

Kaye felt the impact of the dirt floor before she even realized that she had fallen. For a moment she just lay there, gazing across at the hems of dresses, cloven feet, and pointed-toed shoes. The shapes danced and merged.

Lutie landed close enough to Kaye's face that she could barely focus on the tiny form.

"Stay awake," Lutie said. Her wings were vibrating with anxiety. She tugged on one of Kaye's fingers. "They'll get me if you go to sleep.”

Kaye rolled onto her side and got up, carefully, wary of her own legs.

"I'm okay," Kaye said. "I'm not asleep.”

Lutie alighted on Kaye's head and began to nervously knot locks of hair.

"I'm perfectly okay," Kaye repeated. With careful steps she approached the side of the dais where Lord Roiben, newly anointed King of the Unseelie Court, sat. She watched his fingers, each one encircled in a metal band, as they tapped the rhythms of an unfamiliar tune on the edge of his throne. He was clad in a stiff black fabric that swallowed him in shadow. As familiar as he should have been, she found herself unable to speak.

It was the worst kind of stupid to be pining after someone who cared for you. Still, it was like watching her mother onstage. Kaye felt proud, but was half afraid that if she went up, it wouldn't turn out to be Roiben at all.

Lutie-loo abandoned her perch and flew to the throne. Roiben looked up, laughed, and cupped his hands to receive her.

"She drank all the mushroom wine," Lutie accused, pointing to Kaye.

"Indeed?" Roiben raised one silver brow. "Will she come and sit beside me?”

"Sure," Kaye said, levering herself up onto the dais, unaccountably shy. "How has it been?”

"Endless." His long fingers threaded through her hair, making her shiver.

Only months ago she'd thought of herself as weird, but human. Now the weight of gauzy wings on her back and the green of her skin were enough to remind her that she wasn't. But she was still just Kaye Fierch and no matter how magical or clever, it was hard to understand why she was allowed to sit beside a King.

Even if she had saved that King's life. Even if he loved her.

She couldn't help but recall the beetle-woman's words. Did the dreadlocked girl with the drum intend to make a declaration? Ask for a quest? Had the girl with the cat tail already done so? Were the fey laughing at her, thinking that because she had grown up with humans, she was ignorant of faerie customs?

She wanted to make things right. She wanted to make a grand gesture. Give him something finer than a ragged bracelet. Swaying forward, Kaye went down on both her knees in front of the new King of the Unseelie Court.

Roiben's eyes widened with something like panic and he opened his mouth to speak, but she was faster.

"I, Kaye Fierch, do declare myself to you. I . . ." Kaye froze, realizing she didn't know what she was supposed to say, but the heady liquor in her veins spurred her tongue on. "I love you. I want you to give me a quest. I want to prove that I love you.”

Roiben gripped the arm of his throne, fingers tightening on the wood. His voice sank to a whisper. "To allow this, I would have to have a heart of stone. You will not become a subject of this court.”