When Claybriar returned, he brought company: a stunning sidhe woman leading a lean, shaggy canine by a chain. I was so distracted by something unidentifiably wrong about the animal that it took me a moment to recognize my former boss Inaya’s Echo. Vicki Plume, a.k.a. Foxfeather, the homeless baroness.
She was homeless, incidentally, because Brand had destroyed her estate. What the hell was Claybriar thinking?
Once the trio stepped off the enchanted path, I hurried to meet them halfway, as though I could prevent them from seeing the giant red lion-beast that was sprawled on the sand next to Caryl.
“What is this?” I said uneasily to Claybriar.
“Millie, this is Baroness Foxf—”
“I know who it is. Why is she here? And what’s with the dog?”
Only when I glanced at the pointy-eared beast from closer range—a coyote, monstrous and lanky, its back at my hip level—did I notice what had disturbed me about it from a distance. It had no eyes. The glittering chain around its neck looked to be made from diamonds. Its tongue lolled, dripping; ribs showed through the golden fur. But it had no eyes.
“Hello again, Ironbones,” said Foxfeather. She had eyes: lavender novas. Her hair was an undulating stream of opal silk, and diaphanous wings caught and scattered the sunlight where they lay folded against her back. She reached a four-fingered hand toward me in greeting, and I took it gently with my glove.
“Sorry for being rude,” I said. “But given the situation, I thought Claybriar was supposed to be keeping certain things secret from you.”
“He was right to tell,” she said, a little pouty. “Despite what the manticore did to me, his Echo and my Echo are partners. So I have decided to redeem him. And redeem this wretch here.” She jerked the eyeless coyote’s chain. It let out a choking sound, then a menacing snarl.
“What exactly did it do?”
“It betrayed me. It was my vassal, the one who cast my estate’s wards. It knew the Words of Power.”
“She means he knew the spirits’ names,” said Claybriar. “He’s a trickster with spirit-sight.”
“And spirit-sight means . . . ?” I prompted.
“He sees the same way the spirits do. Well, not exactly; he has a limited field of ‘vision.’ But to see a spirit lets you figure out its name. This asshole befriends them and then enslaves them for the sidhe.” He looked down at the beast with such contempt I thought for a minute he was going to actually spit on it.
“That is no crime,” said Foxfeather. “The beast’s crime is that it joined forces with the manticore to betray me. The manticore made me believe it was safe to leave my estate, and once I was gone, the trickster canceled all the protective wards that it had cast!”
Sidhe estates were closely tied to their owners; their wards could not be destroyed, even by the original spell casters, so long as their owners were inside them. That was why Vivian had spent decades hatching a plan to spill fey blood at all the corresponding spots in our world simultaneously. That would have bypassed the problem by dumping all the noble estates—wards, owners, and all—directly into the void.
I looked between the creepy, blank-faced coyote and Brand, conspirators to destroy Foxfeather’s little barony. “You’ve brought these two pals back together why?”
“Justice,” said Foxfeather. She beamed at Claybriar. “The king gave my ex-vassal a choice. A poetic end—devoured by the monster he allowed to devour his friends—or he could rot in Skyhollow’s prison forever.”
“Fey are big on poetic ends,” explained Claybriar. “Religious thing, sort of. Or as close as we get to it.”
I turned back to Foxfeather. “So Wile E. here wants some sort of religious absolution. How does this square things with you and Brand?”
Foxfeather smiled. “The manticore has been well punished, according to King Claybriar. Now he will be redeemed in a different way. He will swear fealty to the Seelie Court.”
“Ohhh boy,” I said. “Yeah, I think Brand’s probably going to pass on that.”
Claybriar looked up at me entreatingly. “Millie,” he said. “Shiverlash nearly got Brand to murder Caryl. If he’s going to be working with us, he needs a kinder person holding his leash.”
“I’m not arguing the logic,” I said. “Just saying he’s not going to do it.”
“I can persuade him,” said Foxfeather.
“You’ll . . . persuade the guy who destroyed your estate.”
“Trust me,” she said with a smile. Something about her reminded me so much of her Echo Inaya in that moment that I was willing to believe she was capable of anything.
“Worth a try,” I said.
The four of us approached Brand and Caryl. Caryl knelt in the sand a little too close to those jaws for my liking; Brand lay with his eyes half-closed. When Foxfeather approached, though, Brand made a futile effort to sit up.
“Shit,” he said.
“Hello, friend,” said Foxfeather. “I brought you something to eat.”
“Really, I couldn’t,” Brand said. “Couldn’t eat another bite. Your aunt was incredibly filling.”
“Cut it out, Brand,” I said.
“You know,” Caryl observed, eyeing the listless manticore, “your Echo would be displeased to see you mistreating Foxfeather. Foxfeather’s Echo is Inaya West: Parisa’s partner and best friend.”
“The manticore and I were friends too,” said Foxfeather softly. “Once he let me climb on his back and ride all over Skyhollow.”
“Pfft,” said Brand. “I just like to make sidhe trash straddle me.”
“He was lonely,” Foxfeather insisted. “And I wasn’t afraid. We had fun together, until I found my Echo. Then he got so jealous.”
Brand snarled, making Foxfeather jump. “Fuck off,” he said. “Or I’ll eat you, too.”
“I know you’re hungry,” Foxfeather said, unruffled, leading the coyote closer. “To show that I forgive you, I offer you a choice. You may—”
Brand, showing a sudden strength I could never have anticipated, lunged forward over the sand, mouth stretched wide, and engulfed the coyote in one swift hrrrrrlllllp.
I shrieked, slapped a hand over my mouth. Foxfeather leaped back, dropping her end of the diamond chain, which Brand drowsily slurped into his mouth like a spaghetti noodle.
Foxfeather burst into tears, turned, and clung to King Claybriar.
“Welp,” he said.
“Yep,” I agreed.
Brand squeezed his eyes shut, swallowed hard. I heard muffled crunching, as though the muscles of the manticore’s throat were so impossibly powerful that they pulverized the coyote’s bones into a fine paste on the way down.
“Holy mother of garbage disposals,” I said.
“I feel sick,” said Caryl. I went over to rub her shoulders.
Brand, still in the process of doing whatever it was he did to render an entire live wriggling carnivore digestible, did not answer. After a moment he collapsed back onto his side with a groan.
“Well, now what?” I said to Foxfeather. Claybriar was stroking her hair. I suddenly realized he’d probably slept with her, too, and tried not to get too distracted picturing it.
“Not fair!” Foxfeather exploded at Brand, still clinging to Claybriar as she stamped her foot.
“Unseelie,” Brand reminded her.
“Commoner,” she riposted.
Clay stopped stroking Foxfeather at that; she almost fell over as he approached Brand.
“Hey, buddy,” he said. “Feeling better?”
“Not your buddy,” Brand said, tail giving a peevish twitch.
Caryl sighed. “I suppose I knew better than to expect gratitude.”
“All right, coyote breath,” I said, going to stand in Brand’s eyeline. “Caryl and Claybriar and I have just literally given you your life back. So I suggest you start showing us a little respect.”
“Or what?” said Brand, glaring back at me. “Obviously you need me, so don’t pretend you did this because you’re so very fond. Let’s get to what you want, and what you think you can offer.”
“Besides giving you back your body?”
“I didn’t ask for that. So I don’t owe you shit.”
I had a feeling that even though he wasn’t willing to eat me, it probably wasn’t a good idea for me to punch him repeatedly in the eyeball.
“Well,” I said instead, “we can give you a new facade, which means you can come back to our world, see your Echo.”
He was quiet for a minute.
“Can’t she come here?” he finally said.
We could, technically, arrange for Parisa Naderi to visit Arcadia now that she had a confirmed Echo. But he didn’t know that.
“Nope,” I said.
Claybriar opened his mouth, then closed it. Smart boy.
“So what is it you need from me?” Brand said.
“We need you to bind all those wraiths again,” I said. “They got out of your book.”
“I’ll have to see Parisa first,” said Brand. “After what I just went through, I don’t remember the names. Barely remember hers.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “If you weren’t fey,” I said, “I would be a hundred percent sure you’re bullshitting me right now.”
“And if I weren’t fey,” he said, “I absolutely would be. So jealous you guys get to do that.” He let out a deep sigh.
“So if we put you in contact with your Echo, do you promise you’ll bind all those wraiths again? Same ones you bound before?”
“I promise,” said Brand.
Caryl rose from the sand to stand next to me, so that we both loomed over him. “Say the entire sentence,” she said.
“Fine!” Brand repeated my phrasing of the promise more or less word for word, though he inserted a few colorful adjectives and adverbs.
Foxfeather hung back watching, nibbling adorably at her lower lip. “I don’t know what to tell the duke,” she said nervously. “Does this mean the manticore is on our side now? Or not?”
“He is,” I said, at the same time Brand said, “I’m not.”
“Damn it, Brand!” I said to him in frustration. Then I looked back to Foxfeather. “Read my mind a second,” I said. “I know you sidhe can do that, right?”
Her eyes went as wide as though I’d suggested she put her hand in my jeans. But she said, “All right.”
I looked at her and thought, as hard as I could, You tell the duke I’m still going to make Throebrand swear allegiance to the Seelie Court. I have his Echo; I can make him do anything I want. The manticore is not going to be any more trouble to you.
“All right, all right!” said Foxfeather, folding her arms in a way that showed off some intriguing, opalescent cleavage. “You don’t have to shout.”
• • •
Shock had the facade ready. The kid was a pro, and possibly motivated by a combination of shame at his previous failure and an infatuation with a certain someone. Even only being able to work on the body under the radar, it had taken him just five days. Finding time to slip away and meet us was hard, though; he had to work around not only the watchful eyes of mundane authorities, but also those in Arcadia monitoring the three portals he needed to use to get here.
Finally, he messaged Caryl that he could meet us on Wednesday after eight a.m. our time, which was after eleven p.m. in Hong Kong. That was an easier time for him to slip away from school using only the tiniest traces of magic to divert attention, and as for his dad, he could tell him that he’d heard a rumor the manticore was active again. He had. I’d told him.
When he showed up early on Wednesday morning, he surprised us by whipping the lid off a large hatbox and saying, “Ta-da!! Your manticore’s new ride.”
Caryl and I peered into the box. It was a crow. Not the same type Brand had occupied before, but a big handsome thing with a bold white breast.
“Shock,” I said. “Do you want to get eaten?”
The princeling shook his head, grinning. “This is best,” he said. “Brand has months of experience operating a body like this. This one is an African pied crow; they are legal to own as pets in your country. His Echo can walk around with the bird on her shoulder, looking incredibly cool. He should be pleased!”
He should have been, but he wasn’t. When the three of us arrived in Arcadia to meet him and Claybriar, he took one look at the bird, dug his claws into the sand, and let out a jangling, brassy roar that made me wish I’d been born without ears.
When Brand started yelling in English, it was actually an improvement.
“I WILL EAT YOU! ALL THREE OF YOU, AND SPIT OUT THE IRON IN THAT MONSTER’S BONES!”
“Relax, sir, please,” said Shock, and then began to murmur a few words in the Unseelie tongue.
Brand interrupted him with a powerful swipe of one paw, sending the poor kid sprawling back across the sand. The hatbox fell; the lid rolled one way and the box another. The crow just lay limply on the sand like something freshly dead.
Caryl stood for half a second before getting a sort of oh! look and racing over to kneel next to Shock.
I moved to retrieve the facade, picking up the disturbingly warm, lifeless thing and dusting the sand from its feathers.
“This is your revenge,” snarled Brand, narrowing his eyes and coming to loom over me in a way that made me very aware of my intestines. I bluffed; Caryl had said something about never letting predators see fear.
“You think I’m going to be any nicer to you than I have to be, after the way you’ve treated us?” I said, clutching the crow to my chest. “I was operating under the assumption that you and I were friends. But you made it clear we’re not, so you don’t get a damned thing more than we’ve agreed on.”
Brand actually hesitated. His uncertainty spurred me on.
“We said you’d get to see Naderi again, and I’ll keep my word, because you know I want the names of those wraiths. But if you ever want to see her after that, you’d better get used to rules, and playing nice, and the Accord—once we get a third one nailed down—because fey who break the rules don’t get fired, they get executed. And I am not going to watch Naderi go through your death a second time. Prove to me that you know how to be helpful, if you ever want to see a Project contract.”
Brand looked at me silently for a moment with the hatred of two worlds all concentrated in his baleful stare. Then he lowered his eyes to my feet.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” he growled.
“Three things,” I said. “Do three things for me, and once you’ve done those, I will start putting the wheels in motion to get you a contract made up. The first,” I said, holding up the crow, “is that I want you to agree to have this facade bound to you by a consenting spirit.”
“Wait,” said Shock. “I thought I was going to cast an enchantment.”
“You are,” I told him, passing him the bird. “Enchantments are spirits, Shock. Caryl and Claybriar will explain. It’s the same spell you’ve always cast—you’re just going to ask first.”
Shock looked uneasy; I turned back to Brand. “You going to play ball?”
“Fine,” he said. “What’s the second thing?”
“The second thing is that you’re going to gather an army of commoners willing to destroy the White Rose.”
“What?” said everyone more or less at once. Brand sounded slightly more delighted than the others, though.
But then he shook his head irritably. “I doubt we could lure the queen out,” he said, tail lashing. “Although—if we had two like you, one at each of the standing stones, you could unravel the lofting wards and send the whole thing crashing down, wards and—”
“Brand!” I interrupted in alarm. “I am not actually planning an act of terrorism here! I just need you to find a bunch of commoners who’d be willing. As many as you can. And make sure the rumors get out.”
“Gotcha,” he said, looking visibly disappointed. “Third thing?”
“I want you to swear fealty to Claybriar.”
“WHAT?”
“Don’t you start roaring again. Remember when Shiverlash took control of you last fall? Remember what she made you do?”
Caryl silently rolled up her sleeve, showed him the ugly scars on her forearm. His tail lashed again.
“There’s only one way to release a monarch’s hold on you,” I said, “as I learned last fall with Blesskin. You’ve gotta swear fealty to the other Court. Once all the dust has settled, you’re welcome to go back to the Unseelie Court, if they’ll have you.”
He began to pace, his great shoulders rolling, his face contorted with feckless rage. “Why would they? They won’t. I’ll be stuck serving the Creampuff Court for eternity.” He growled, deep and menacing, and let me see his three rows of razor-sharp teeth.
My stomach had just started to tie itself in knots when he suddenly fell onto the sand, prostrating himself before Claybriar. I had never seen the four-legged version of the pose before; it was actually a bit comical, with his front paws outstretched and his hindquarters in the air. But this didn’t seem like the best time for a giggle.
Claybriar scratched at a horn, nonplussed. “Well,” he said. “I accept your service. Welcome to the Seelie Court.”
“Now,” I said as Brand heaved himself to his feet. “Claybriar, Caryl, please walk Shock through the process of binding Brand to his facade the Good Guys’ way. I’m going to go catch a couple hours’ more sleep.”