I know well the sounds of my shop, even sequestered in my room: the metallic hum of machines, the chime on the door as it opens, the low conversation of the women waiting their turn. But my ear is also tuned to a deeper sound, the quiet crackle and decay of women’s bodies as charmed inks turn their spleens black as gall. I delight in their febrile pulses as my spells invade the marrow. I hum to the noise, shaping it into a death song so sweet that even the hollow-eyed girl I am working on offers me a hopeful smile. I stop tapping the needle into her skin and stroke her cheek. She closes her eyes, grateful for the soft touch of my hand, as tears escape from beneath her pale lashes.
They will all die of course; some quickly of an unnamed illness, others by their own hand. And some I help, like Jenna, whose skin was covered with my runes. I refused her, angry that the girl she brought me did not return. I went with Jenna down by the river, holding her hand while she stumbled and wept. I promised her peace, but did not tell her it would come in the grave. I summoned the monstrous Jenny Greenteeth to the bank and bid her feed. Hungry as always, Greenteeth made short work of the woman, taking her by the ankles as she waded into the river and dragging her beneath the dark current. What harm was there in that? Let her death offer nourishment to even the least of our kind who are still better than any mortal woman. The water churned as I watched from the bank, and only when I saw the thick, ruddy foam rise and float on the swirling eddies, did I turn and leave.
I look up from my work, suddenly aware of the silence. I hear nothing; not even the ordinary sounds of the street and the shop. I reach to draw back the curtains of my private room when they are drawn for me with the fierce jerk of a gloved hand. I curse that I have become so used to the mewling of weak women that I have not thought to keep my dagger close at hand.
A woman fills the doorway, wrapped in a full cloak of gray with a hood that hides her face. I step back, into the room, opening wide my arms and bowing my head just enough to acknowledge the power of the woman who has silenced even my own song. The girl on the table turns on her side, curling her knees up toward her wounded heart where I had placed a tattoo of a bell that she may know only the clang of calamity.
Flushing with anger, I am outraged at the impertinence of my visitor. I was once Hugh, son of Etar, clan leader of Inver Chechmaine, though now I am known as Long Lankin, the knight of blood and death. No one enters my rooms without permission. Not even here in this mortal realm.
But the silence holds me bound. I cannot speak or spell until the unknown woman releases me. My mind rushes like water spilling over a dam. Can it be the Queen? For the first time a prick of fear invades my blood.
The woman stands on the threshold of the narrow room, and I know that from beneath the hood, she is surveying it, seeking to know what I have kept hidden from the Greenwood and the courts Under the Hill.
Though frightened, I am defiant, my rage burning with the righteousness of a Highborn Lord. Let her look, I fume, fists curling around the poisoned needle still in my hand. Let her feel my power in the branded girl on my table. Let her smell it in the caustic stench of my inks. Suddenly, I do not care anymore that she knows. That any of them know.
She turns to me and pushes back the hood to reveal her face. It is in fact not the Queen, though the breath catches in my throat. It is Aileen, sister to Gwenth, my lost wife, and the only one who offered herself to me when I near drowned in sorrow. Despite my anger, I soften at the familiar sight of her face, the milk-cream skin framed by wings of black hair. I remember the feel of her breasts, and the comfort of her arms holding me while I grieved. But that was long ago and the bright gold eyes stare at me now with a mixture of pity and contempt.
“Is this how you honor the memory of my sister and your wife?” she asks, glancing at the girl coiled in pain. “How many have you marked, Hugh? How many have you doomed before their time?” She steps closer to me and I weaken at her scent—rosemary and betony—so like my wife’s. “This is not our way.”
“Aileen, why are you here? I did not send for you.” I close my hand on the needle to feel its prick, thinking that the pain will destroy her glamour. I have no concern for the poison, for it is mine and it knows its master. Still, it leaps like fire in my veins.
“I heard rumors that Long Lankin was abroad again, come to the mortal realm to bleed a sacrifice for the tithe, even though you were forbidden to do so by the Queen. I prayed it was not true, but I could not ignore the warnings of my own heart.”
Angrily, I look away, refusing all memory of our brief time together, when our mourning made a kind of marriage between us. “Curse the Queen. Have not our kind suffered long enough? Did not Gwenth suffer enough? We deserve better.”
“And this is better?” She stretches a gloved hand to the girl who is rocking in silent weeping. “Gwenth would not have wanted her death celebrated with such . . . cruelty.”
“Perhaps, if I had acted sooner, she would not have killed herself. There would be a child of our blood between us. There would have been a light in our hearts.” I turn to face her. She dims the harsh glare of her golden eyes.
“Hugh, grief has made you into a monster. You must stop this. No good can come of it. When the time of the UnSeelie rises, all must join to help the Queen in holding back their hunger for death and misery. This time it promises to be the Battle We Most Fear. The Queen forgave you once but she will not a second time and we need you at the court. We cannot do this without you, old love. Come with me and leave this dark sorrow behind.”
Her words move me; awaken a longing for the joy I thought destroyed with Gwenth’s death. But my jaw sets against another injury. One she has forgotten to mention.
“I too hear rumors, Aileen. The Queen has whelped a child.”
Aileen purses her lips in annoyance and her eyes flash like sunlight striking water. “It is mere tale-telling, spread by boogans with no wit nor wisdom to separate truth from lies.”
“What says the Queen of this charge?”
“Nothing, and why should she? She is above reproach. There is no child.”
I cannot help myself, I reach out and touch her cheek. Impatience with me spreads a rosy blush across her face and slender neck. Her skin is warm and she shivers at the caress of my cold fingertips. I want to go with her, but it is too late. There is no mercy for me, not even the Queen could cleanse my honor so stained as it is with mortal blood. I have no choice but to follow the path I set for the future of my house and my clan.
“For all that you know, the Queen has birthed and murdered her offspring like any miller’s daughter, hiding her crime beneath the stones. She has too much power and no one to temper her wanton desires. Perhaps it is her lust for power that has—”
“Enough, Hugh,” Aileen snaps, and I stop, knowing I have put my finger into an open wound. As Highborns, we trust our clans but never the Queen. We serve her, but do not love her.
I turn away so as not to see the tears brimming in those golden eyes. “One day, there will be a child of pure blood born to the House of Inver Chechmaine again. The blood tithe will give us back our future. And were you to ask, you would find many a Highborn lord hopes for just such a resurrection.”
I lay a hand on the wretched girl and she uncoils at my command. Her eyes are red with weeping but she is submissive as I dip my needle into the bowl of ink and stab its point under her skin. A bead of blood rises to the surface. I wipe it away to show Aileen. I am in no hurry to collect the blood.
It is only when ordinary noise erupts again that I know she has left. A phone rings, the overhead lights buzz, the door to the shop opens with a chime of artificial bells. I listen for the sibilant hiss of the ink penetrating the girl’s skin and force a smile as I hear her moan.
* * *
LATER, AFTER EVERYONE HAS GONE, I think about the Queen’s bastard child. Aileen’s dismissal does not ring true. How old would such a creature be? I wonder. And what sort of mongrel’s face does the child have? For the Queen is a cold bitch, and I cannot imagine her gifting one seed of her own power or beauty, even to an offspring.
But—I think—how valuable might such a creature be in a game of blood and politics? I know that answer: for rumor has it that the Dark Lord has sent his servant Red Cap abroad in the world to find the child, to make it his own, and thus taunt the Queen and weaken her more.
I touch the lid of the casket that holds my precious vials of blood and reflect on the girl who challenged me not too long ago. She was difficult to subdue, and her blood rolled away from me, refusing to enter the pipettes. I thought her nothing more than the unexpected descendant of an old throwback; the distant child of a goody wife who once wet-nursed a fairy child with her own and mingled faerie blood and milk into her veins.
I shall find her again, for I laid the trouble knot deep into her skin. And when I do, I will strike a bargain with Red Cap, dupe him into believing she is the child he seeks—for she carries enough of the sap of the Greenwood to feel true. In exchange, I will demand the UnSeelie court grant me the fertile power of the tithe and I will use her blood and these collected vials to pay the price. There will be no shortage of Highborn women willing to conceive an infant, even if it is under the dark of a withered moon. Light will come from dark, and pure blood will rise again from the polluted springs of mortal veins.