The road that led from Skyhollow Estate was made for creatures that walked on two legs; the ward simply didn’t acknowledge Brand’s presence, making it pointless for him to use it. Instead, he cut through the rocky, semiarid wilderness to the right side of the road, where his physics-bending strides would put him at an advantage over two-legged pursuers.
“We should have practiced this,” I grunted as we raced along, fast enough to make me squint against the warm dry wind. It was hard to stay seated properly without the full length of my leg muscles to squeeze against his back; mostly I just gripped his mane tight and held on for dear life.
Unfortunately, Brand had chosen the side of the road with most of the rock formations, and after a few minutes’ exultant gallop we found ourselves navigating a sort of maze. This side of the landscape had been on my left as I’d made my way to the estate before the heist, and I was almost positive it hadn’t been quite such a labyrinth at the time.
“Damn it,” said Brand just as I was about to ask him if he’d noticed the same thing. “He’s fucking with the landscape.”
“What do you mean? Who is? What’s happening?”
“Duke Skyhollow has a certain amount of influence over his land. He doesn’t want us to escape, and so the land is responding to that.”
Brand darted back and forth, trying desperately to find a view between the multiplying rock formations. It was like a dream; they never changed while we were watching, but then we’d turn to find more behind us than had been there before.
“At this rate we’ll never find our way back to L.A.,” I said, readjusting my grip on his mane in an effort to keep my seat through his wild changes of direction. “We’re fucked.”
He paused for a moment, giving me some relief. “Maybe if we cross to the other side of the road I can help us out a little,” Brand said, “but it’s not going to be pretty.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ll have to plan our escape route so that it passes by that abyss. Spirits won’t go near it; the closer we are to it the less likely that weird magic will spring up to stop us.”
“Is the abyss dangerous?”
“Not unless we jump in, but it’s fucking creepy.”
It was also on the other side of the road, which meant we had to find our way back across. We could no longer see the road over the maze of rocks, but Brand was able to estimate the direction we were moving by keeping his eyes on the slant of the shadows.
“So long as we keep heading this way,” he said, “we’ll eventually get back to the road. We were mostly traveling parallel to it, so it shouldn’t take long.”
Of course, the nature of a maze is that it makes it impossible to keep going in one direction, and without a bird’s-eye view, you can’t tell which turning is going to eventually point you the way you want.
“Why are we even bothering with this?” I said in sudden frustration. “Can’t you fly?”
“That’s bad for two reasons,” said Brand. “One, you’d fall right the fuck off if I did that. Two, as much of a pain in the ass as these rocks are, they’re also hiding us from the royal guards, who are still after us—don’t doubt it for a second. Skyhollow’s people too now, I’ll bet. The minute I launch myself into the air, they’ll make a beeline for us. They’ve got wings too; my only advantage is on the ground.”
“Not much advantage at the moment,” I said.
“Just be patient,” said Brand. “I’ve had contact with my Echo recently, so my mind is razor sharp. I’m tracking our position even as the rocks lead us off course. Pretty sure I know exactly where we are. Just have to find an opening.”
Putting my trust in a manticore was not a thing I’d ever anticipated needing to do, but there we were. As Brand paused again to consider his options at yet another blocked pathway, I leaned forward to give him a scratch behind the ear with my gloved hand.
“What have I said about petting me?”
“You’re Seelie now. You need to get used to cuddles.”
“I will fucking throw you off and eat you.”
He broke into a sudden lope, nearly unseating me. I held on tight as he made an unnecessarily complicated figure-eight pattern around a line of rock columns.
“You can stop punishing me any time now,” I said.
“I’m not sure I can. And hey, look there.”
Sure enough, the shimmering heat mirage of the road’s enchantment loomed before us, closer all that time than I’d dared to hope. Brand galloped across it to the other side, which was less littered with rocks but had a profusion of scrubby plant life and a few scattered, twisted trees.
“Do you know where the abyss is located?” I asked him. “I can’t remember exactly where it was along the path.”
“I can feel it,” he said. “It’s like reality has a bad headache. I just follow the throb.”
“Super sorry about that, by the way. Claybriar was only at that train station to get pummeled because of me.” Then I stopped, reconsidered. “But you were helping Vivian at the time, so fuck you, apology retracted.”
When Brand loped through the undergrowth, it writhed as though it were trying to catch at his limbs. He hissed in pain.
“Fucking Skyhollow!” he growled, trying to weave around the thickest plant growth and find bare patches of spongy Arcadian sand. Its golden expanse shimmered in the late-afternoon light.
I could measure our progress toward the abyss by the way the plants began to thin out and the sand to lose its luster. At last I spotted darkness on the horizon.
“I think that’s close enough,” said Brand. “Do you see anyone pursuing us?”
I glanced over my shoulder, which almost made me slip sideways, but I steadied myself as I turned forward again, feeling a surge of hope. “I think we lost them,” I said.
“Not slowing down,” said Brand, “just in case.”
“Do you know how to find the Gate from here?”
“I think so,” he said. “But I’ll admit I wasn’t really paying close attention the last couple of times I got dragged through it.”
“When we get there,” I said, “just drop me off. I need you to stay on this side, help Caryl and the others if they need it.”
Brand was still moving fast enough that the abyss quickly shifted its way along the horizon and out of our sight. I was happy to have it behind us.
More rocks appeared as we began to get close to the Gate; I knew the Gate was located atop a large formation that I’d easily be able to recognize. It had been invisible to me before I’d signed the Project contract, but thanks to Caryl’s little lecture about anti-civilian wards, now I understood why it wasn’t anymore. Ah, Caryl. I hoped Winterglass was keeping her safe.
As we rounded a jagged wall of vermilion rock, Shiverlash appeared in our path so abruptly that Brand’s paws threw up a spray of sand and I slid halfway off his back. He had to crouch so that I could ease myself gently the rest of the way onto the ground.
Leaning against Brand’s side, I stared at the Beast Queen of the Unseelie Court in the full glory of her eyeless natural form.
“What fresh, roaring trash fire is this?” I said.
The queen’s greasy black wings were folded, her talons braced in the sand as she turned her melted-wax face toward us. Despite her wings, there was no mistaking her for sidhe; she was half again as tall, and her proportions were all wrong, more avian than human. It occurred to me suddenly that Foxfeather’s doomed coyote friend had also lacked eyes. Something tried to knit itself together in my memory about that, but my brain refused to cooperate.
Shiverlash opened her jawless mouth, a vertical oval, and a stream of guttural Unseelie words poured out.
“Nice try,” said Brand. “I’m not your pet anymore. I’ve sworn fealty to the Seelie King.” For the first time, he seemed pretty smug about that.
Shiverlash hesitated, clearly not understanding his words, but having no trouble noticing that her command had not compelled him. After a moment’s pause, Caveat appeared on her shoulder, projecting a weary not-again vibe that was straight out of Tjuan’s playbook.
“Caveat? Where the hell did you come from?” I asked her. “Weren’t you with Caryl?”
“The queen summoned me,” she said. “To translate. Again.”
“But how did she summon you? Did you tell her your name?”
“She can see it,” said Caveat. “Anytime I come to her. And I’ve come to her a lot.”
Spirit-sight. That’s what I’d been trying to remember about that coyote. Reading the names of any spirit that came to him.
“Shit, Caveat,” I said. “This is not good.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” said Caveat. “To you she’s a monster; to me she’s just the queen. She has the right to give me orders, and she’s never asked me to do anything I objected to. Can we get back to the topic at hand?”
“Yes, of course, sorry.”
A voice emerged from the queen’s direction, though her mouth didn’t move. Her face was turned toward Brand. “Why do you resist?” she said.
Brand snorted. “It’s not rocket science, Birdbrain. Did you think, after what you did to my Echo, and what you made me do to my allies, that I wouldn’t jump at the first chance to defect to the sparkly side?”
For a moment Shiverlash stood in silence, seemingly unable to process the enormity of the betrayal.
“Caveat,” I said quietly. “Did Shiverlash order Elliott to destroy the White Rose? Do you know?”
“Are you serious?” said Caveat blandly. After a moment’s delay, she remembered to project her astonishment. “Did you think even for a minute that he did it on his own? Just because he won’t take abuse indefinitely, you assume he’s evil?”
“Whoa, whoa . . .”
“The queen didn’t know his name. So she had to wait until he—”
Caveat froze like a bad Skype connection as her queen’s command overrode her communication. The disembodied voice of Shiverlash spoke again, instead.
“Your ‘Elliott’ is my subject,” she said, “just as this one is. But his name was not imprinted into my memory. I could not call him until he released himself from bondage, and then he was drawn, as all spirits are, to my song.”
“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” I said, “what the fuck? Don’t you have enough hell to raise in your own lands?”
“I do not have access to the ‘portals’ that King Winterglass uses, and so for the time being I am stranded here while I devise another means of return. Meanwhile, you provided an opportunity that I could not, in good conscience, let slip away.”
“Did you seriously just use the word ‘conscience’ to describe that decision?”
“Even by Seelie standards,” said Shiverlash, “that was among the most nonviolent actions I might have taken. We are at war. But I should not be surprised by your lack of appreciation for my restraint. From our very first encounter, you have treated me and my cause with profound disrespect. But as a creature of honor I could not help but attempt to find common ground with the one who freed me from my own enslavement.”
Of course. Of course she’d want to see that place crumble to the ground, and not just because it would devastate the sidhe. When Shiverlash had been trapped in the form of a harp, the White Rose had been the site of her imprisonment—and regular use—for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. That situation had been due to her own ridiculous act of spite, but still. I was disappointed in myself for not having spotted her hand in this immediately.
“What did you do to Elliott? Is he all right?”
“Why should I wish to harm my subject?” said Shiverlash. “Once he had executed my command, he chose to abandon the body and destroy his link to it. His actions not only prevented my repeating the command, but showed me the extent of his objection. I released him from my service and will not call him again. My intent was not to harm him.”
“Cry me a river.”
“I do not understand why you act as though we are adversaries,” said Shiverlash. “We both wish freedom for every being in Arcadia.”
“Yeah, yeah, and we’re both great at destroying shit, but that doesn’t make us alike. I’m just a clumsy idiot; you do it on purpose. I refuse to set one Arcadian race free by destroying another, and that’s what you want. Don’t lie to me—oh that’s right, you can’t.”
“There comes a time when a people are too corrupt to be saved,” she said. “Do you not, even in your own world, kill those who kill? Take the lives of those who are too dangerous to live?”
“Honey, the vast majority of the people you want to exterminate are about as dangerous as inbred kittens. Most of them don’t even realize spirits are people. It isn’t their fault they’ve been lied to for longer than they have memory.”
“You delude yourself,” said Shiverlash, “but I am not here to debate a child who has lived barely the length of a lightning-strike. I still have need of you, now that there is no honorable way to access another creature of iron.”
I let out an exasperated sigh. “You don’t just get to ‘access’ me,” I said, “but, unfortunately, I also still have need of you if there’s going to be any hope of a united High Court against Dame Belinda. There has to be some way we can find a compromise.”
“There will be no united Unseelie High Court while Winterglass lives.”
“I beg to differ,” I said, holding up the bag. “I got what he asked for. But you’re going to have to let me go so I can deliver it to him. Once that’s done, he’s on my side. Bound to my side, in fact. So he has to listen if I start talking about freeing the spirits.”
“Forget about Winterglass,” she said. “He is easily destroyed.”
“Well, he just saved my best friend, and also I happen to need him. For something you’d never help me with.” Namely, sending a spirit to prison in Tjuan’s place.
“Ask, and we shall see.”
“If I even tell you what it is, you’ll rip me to pieces. Not risking it.”
“It disappoints me,” said Shiverlash, “that you still fail to see the inevitable. Two worlds are arrayed against us, and we have only each other to rely upon.”
“If we’re really such great pals,” I said, “then let me go. Let me get what I need from Winterglass, and then I’ll come back and help you build a better Arcadia. I know my promises are worthless to you, but I’ll give one anyway.”
Shiverlash was silent for a long moment. Then she simply spread her wings—God, they seemed to swallow the whole sky—and launched herself into the air, leaving Caveat behind. The little construct still hovered in the air in the same spot, at the queen’s shoulder height.
“Hey,” I said to her gently. “Do you think you’ll be able to keep an eye on the queen? Will you be able to get free to report to me if she tries any more fuckery?”
“I’ll do my best,” she said, and then she vanished.
Brand crouched down. I pulled myself up by his mane, resettled myself on his back. “Let’s go,” I said. “We have to be close by now.”
Sure enough, he’d not loped another five minutes before I saw the tall rock formation with the winding path up the side. I could even dimly spot the black semicircle of the Gate at the top of it.
“There,” I said.
“Right!” said Brand. “That’s the fake drop-off that hides your Gate, right? I hate that ward.”
A vast wave of relief swept my worries away; even if Brand were to disintegrate underneath me, I’d still be able to hobble the rest of the way on my own.
Brand loped toward the Gate, but as we approached, five White Rose guards and a half dozen of Skyhollow’s retinue emerged from where they’d been crouched behind scrub, waiting for us.
“Not good,” said Brand.
“They knew where we were headed,” I said. “They didn’t even bother following; just took the road. Slowed us down so they’d have time to cut us off.”
“I can take them,” said Brand.
“All of them? At once?”
“Enough that you can get away. It’s just a few steps past them.”
The guards began to advance toward us. Some had staves, but no bows, no sharp blades. They were still trying to take me alive.
“Wait,” I said to Brand. “They aren’t armed to kill; you are. I’m not turning this into a massacre when they’re just doing their jobs.”
“Fucking cream puff.”
I tried to think, fast. We didn’t have a lot in the way of nondeadly resources. “How close do you think they’d dare get to that abyss?” I said.
“Seelie are cowards. They’ll scream and run like gazelles at the sight of it.”
“And you? Are you afraid?”
“Terrified. Difference is, I’m still Unseelie enough at heart to enjoy it.”
“All right then,” I said. “It’s time to play a little game of chicken.”