Brand began to back up, his eyes on the wall of sidhe guards advancing on us.
“Explain,” he said to me.
“First we need to bait them. Can’t let them know we’re leading them somewhere; it needs to look like we’re panicking.”
“That doesn’t seem too hard.”
“Also you need a plausible reason to run slow enough that they think they can catch us. Can you fake an injury?”
“I can do better than that!”
And without warning, the stupid manticore charged directly at the guards.
They had all moved close together, instinctively trying to shield one another, so Brand just plowed through them like bowling pins. There weren’t enough of them to stand up against an all-out cavalry charge, but their mental unity worked in their favor; one of the sidhe at the edge of their row managed to keep his feet. He quickly brought his staff into play, striking Brand in the rear leg as he charged by.
Brand let out a brassy roar of real pain, making me cry out as well, since I was too busy clinging to his mane to shield my ears against the noise. He wheeled around, knocked two guards to the side with one forepaw, while I hung on desperately, still screaming. For a moment Brand looked as though he were gearing up for a second charge; the guards arranged themselves as though to prepare for it. At the last minute, Brand bolted to one side instead, the change in momentum nearly unseating me.
He was hobbling three-legged now, one hind leg dragging in the sand, but even so, the guards were barely able to keep him in sight as he lurched away.
“Are you okay?” I said. “Did they hurt you for real?”
“That fucker cracked my fucking thigh bone,” he moaned. “Charmed staff. The pain . . . bothers me more than I thought it would. I’m not used to even caring about it.”
“Don’t go all feathery on me now, Brand,” I said. “I need you at maximum badass.”
“If they catch us,” said Brand miserably, “you know they’ll have no problem killing me to get to you.”
“Not going to let you die on my watch again,” I said. “If only because Naderi would tie me to the back of a truck and drag me down the 10. If they catch us, you just dump me and fly away. It’s me they want, so I doubt they’ll chase you.”
“You’re sure they won’t kill you?” he said. He was panting as he ran; he hadn’t done that before. I felt a twinge of genuine concern.
“I haven’t had a trial,” I said. “Pissed off as they are, they’re Seelie. They don’t just murder people. Worst-case scenario, I’m decorating the duke’s dining hall in a nice suit of vines, or back in that cage under what used to be the White Rose, until they decide what to do with me.”
“Which, let’s face it, will probably be to execute you.”
“Are you caring about that now?” I said. “I can’t keep track.”
The sidhe guards fanned out in such a way that they actually helped us, herding us directly toward the abyss we were hoping to lead them to. They must have thought they were corralling us against an impassable obstacle, forcing us to surrender, which was fine by me.
As we got close enough to the abyss for even me to feel the bone-deep dissonance of its presence, Brand began to falter a little.
“How’s the leg?” I asked him.
“Not the problem,” he said. “This may not be such a good idea, Millie. They’re still following. Just how close do you expect me to get to this thing? And what makes you think they won’t be willing to get even closer?”
“Trust me,” I said.
“I really hate it when you people say that. Especially you, with your track record of getting me killed and whatnot.”
As we got closer to the void, further approach became almost unbearable. The nearer we got, the less there was to look at besides void, and the more my stomach churned and my ears rang. Brand slowed, hesitated, and finally stopped.
“I can’t go any closer,” he said. “If this isn’t close enough, you’re just going to have to carry on without me.”
“All right, then,” I said, and started to carefully slide off his back.
“You’re insane,” he said.
“Sweet-talker.” I ignored the tremor in my voice and the faint taste of copper on my tongue, giving him a slap on the shoulder before I checked the Vessel’s position against my hip and then started walking right up to the edge of that thing.
The guards made it as far as Brand’s stopping place, at which point he promptly launched himself into the air. A couple of them went after him, but the rest must have seen it as the diversion it was, because they stayed, fanning out to block my escape routes.
I pulled out the Vessel from where my pants had been pressing it against my hip and held it up so they could all see. I searched and found Greyfall in the group, addressed him since I knew he could understand me.
“Do you recognize this?” I said.
All the guards’ eyes went glassy and unfocused for a moment, in a way that suggested to me that they were communicating among themselves.
“That’s the Medial Vessel,” said Greyfall, hesitating for the first time. “For building Gates.” His tone held a hint of reverence, and as I looked around at the faces of the other guards, I saw that they, too, knew exactly what I held.
“You know how this goes,” I said. “You’ve been threatened by me very recently. So this is the part where I tell you that if you don’t turn around and go straight back to Skyhollow, I am going to toss the Medial Vessel into the void.”
“As you point out,” said Greyfall, “I have been threatened by you very recently. And what I learned from that is that you’ll probably destroy the Vessel anyway, even if I give you what you want.”
“Please don’t do this,” said another voice. Whisperdrift, the steel-blue woman with the yellow wings. She advanced to stand at Greyfall’s side. “Just come with us,” she said. “I know that you’re King Claybriar’s Echo. He is a good man; try to be worthy of him. Do the right thing here. Face justice.”
“I can’t,” I said. “This is about more than me at this point. Dame Belinda—our queen, you’d call her—she is not a good woman. She’s a tyrant. If I let you take me, you’ll take the Vessel back to her. And if she has it, very bad things are going to happen. Old bad things will continue happening, and she’ll think up some new bad things to keep anyone from rebelling again. We’re this close to completely remaking the Arcadia Project without her.”
“It is not your place to depose your queen,” said Greyfall in disgust. “This is exactly what happens when even one commoner gets lifted above his station. The next thing you know, you have collapsing palaces, war, mayhem.”
“What else are the commoners supposed to do, exactly?” I said. “What other powers, besides mayhem, have you allowed them? The Project hardly ever lets them through the Gates to look for their Echoes.”
“It’s too dangerous,” said Whisperdrift, looking fretful. “They won’t follow the rules that keep everyone safe.”
I recognized Belinda’s rhetoric, as I’d heard it filtered through Alvin last fall. Even the sidhe themselves apparently embraced Belinda’s line of bullshit as though it were religion. It all seemed so futile; she’d had decades to indoctrinate everyone. I felt anger eating away at my composure.
“That’s all lies,” I said. “A faun and a manticore did just fine, once they had Echoes to ground them. The sidhe get let through in droves just to look for their Echoes, so why do you act like it’s some kind of natural superiority that allows you to—”
“Silence!” Greyfall began resolutely to approach. “Enough of this,” he said.
I could tell by the wide darkness of his eyes, by the lashing of his tail, that he was as terrified of the void as I was. I was lucky enough to have my back to it, so I had to respect his bravery.
“Give me the Vessel,” he said, “and your cooperation will be weighed in your favor at your trial. Do not make this more contentious than it needs to be.”
“Wait!” I said, reaching behind me over the void and letting the Vessel dangle. That brought him up short. “Please just listen to me,” I said. “I’ll go face my trial. I will. But you have to let me take the Vessel somewhere safe first. Safe from Dame Belinda. I can’t exactly explain why, but giving this to her will give her the power to harm a huge number of humans, most of them innocent. And it will make everything I’ve done all month, everything that has been lost, absolutely meaningless!”
“Even if I cared about that,” said Greyfall, “which I do not, your promises are worthless.”
“Here’s a promise you can take to the bank,” I said, trembling with fury. “If you take a single step closer to me, any of you, and I mean a single step, I promise I will toss this bag into the void.”
He continued to approach, and I realized that, only partially through my own fault, I had created a man I could no longer bluff. For a moment I whited out in complete panic.
I need to stress that it was only for a moment, and that what I ultimately did was a calculated decision, a split-second weighing of pros and cons. Most of the pros and cons, anyway. There was one I’ll admit I didn’t consider at that precise juncture.
I didn’t do the thing panic yelled at me to do, which was to take a step backward. Just to let myself fall. To get out of the corner I’d painted myself into the only way I could, by ceasing to exist entirely. That thought pulled at me like a black hole, but apparently I’d not yet reached the event horizon, because I veered away from that decision, savagely cut off all access to my emotions, and looked at the facts.
Radical acceptance: I could not stop myself from being captured. I would go to an Arcadian prison. They might execute me; they might not. But the world would go on either way. It could either go Belinda’s way, or it could go my way. My way mattered. My way mattered more than me, more than anything.
More than this priceless artifact.
I couldn’t get the vials to L.A.—in fact it was possible I myself would never see L.A. again—but I could keep them from Belinda.
With what I hope was a very dramatic sweep of my arm, I hurled the Vessel into the void.
The guards all cried out at once, and their outrage overcame their fear. They charged toward me, void be damned, and I let them come, raising my hands in a gesture of surrender.
All at once, everything was all right.
It happened very suddenly. All my problems vanished. I couldn’t even really remember where I’d come up with the whole idea of “problems” to begin with. Life was a beautiful song.
So beautiful.
The guards all seemed to agree. They stopped and stood there, enjoying the song with me. We all understood now that there was nothing to fight, never had been. Nothing much to do at all but relax and listen to the perfect, nihilistic sound of our own utter surrender.
There was a lot of wind then, which was fine. There were huge talons wrapping around both of my arms, which was also fine. The song continued, so that meant that everything was fine, even the ground falling away, way down below me, moving away, my feet dangling over it. Maybe especially that. I was flying! What could possibly be wrong with that?