Part 21 (1/2)
”Aye,” said the anonymous lord, ”if you would keep a thief from me.”
Now police cars were filling the intersection and both ends of the block. Edie looked nervously one way and another, waiting for men and women with guns to start piling out of the vehicles and charging forward, but for now they seemed content to wait.
New York's Finest knew better than to get between a magician and an elf-lord.
”A thief?” Matthew asked, with an elaborate glance over his shoulder. Edie could still hear the heaving breaths of the horse, smell the sweat and fear of the girl. ”I see someone who has sought sanctuary in my city. And as you owe fealty to King Ian, you are bound by my treaty with him. What is she accused of stealing ... Sir Knight?”
”What's there before your eyes,” the Fairy answered, as his companions of the hunt-men and women both-ranged themselves around him. ”That common brat has stolen the great mare Embarr from my stables, and I will have her back. And the thief punished.”
The mare snorted behind them, her harness jangling fiercely as she shook out her mane. ”He lies!”
At first, Edie thought the child had spoken, and admired her s.p.u.n.k. But when she turned, she realized that the high, clear voice had come from the horse, who p.r.i.c.ked her ears and continued speaking. ”If anything, t'was I stole the child Alicia. And my reasons I had, mortal Magus.”
”The mare,” said the elf-lord, ”is mine.”
Matthew did not lower his hands. ”Be that as it may,” he said. ”I cannot have you tearing my city apart-and it is my city, and in it I decree that no one can own another. The girl and the horse are under my protection, and if you wish to have King Ian seek their extradition, he is welcome to do so through official channels. Which do not-” Matthew waved his hands wide ”-include a hunt through Greenwich Village.”
The Fairy Lord sniffed. ”I have come here, where iron abounds, and where your mortal poisons burn inside my breast with every breath, to reclaim what is rightfully mine. By what authority do you deny me?”
He stood up in his stirrups. His gelding took a prancing, curveting step or two, crowding the horses and hounds on his right. They danced out of the way, but not before Edie had time to wrinkle her nose in the human answer to a snarl. ”This is going to come to a fight,” she whispered, too low for anyone but Lily and Matthew to hear. The whisk of metal on leather told her that Kit had drawn his sword.
”Why doesn't the girl speak for herself?” Matthew asked.
”Because,” the mare answered, ”His Grace had her caned and stole her voice from her when one of his mares miscarried. But it wasn't the girl's fault. And I'll not see my stablehands mistreated.”
Lily squeezed Edie's hand and leaned close to whisper. ”Edith? s.h.i.+ft to wolf form.”
Edie shook her head. ”I told you, it's been-”
”Do it,” she said, and gave her a little push forward from the elbow.
Edie toed out of those boots and stood in stocking-feet on the icy pavement. She ripped her blouse off over her head and kicked down the stockings and the sequined skirt.
Everyone was staring, most especially the Fairy lord. Lily, though, stepped forward to help Edie with her corselet and gaff. She handled the confining underclothes with the professionalism of a seasoned performer, folding them over her arm before stepping back. Edie stood there for a moment, naked skin p.r.i.c.kling out everywhere, and raised her eyes to the Fairy lord.
”Well, I'll be a codfish,” he said callously. He looked not at Edie, but at Matthew. ”The b.i.t.c.h has a p.r.i.c.k. Is that meant to upset me?”
”The b.i.t.c.h has teeth, too,” Edie said, and let the transformation take her.
She'd thought it would be hard. So many years, so many years of enduring the pain, of resisting, of petulant self-denial. Of telling herself that if she wasn't good enough for the Pack to see her as a wolf, then she didn't want to be one.
Once she managed to release her death-grip on the self-denial, though, her human form just fell away, sheeting from the purity of the wolf like filth from ice. Edie's hands dropped toward the pavement and were hard, furred paws before they touched. Her muzzle lengthened; what had been freezing cold became cool comfort as the warmth of her pelt enfolded her. The migraine fell away as if somebody had removed a clamp from her temples, and the rich smells of the city-and the horse manure and dog p.i.s.s of the hunt-flooded her sinuses.
She snarled, stalking forward, and saw the Fairy hounds whine and mill and cringe back among the legs of the horses. She knew the light rippled in her coat, red as rust and tipped smoke-black, and she knew the light glared in her yellow eyes. She knew from the look the Fairy lord shot her-fear masked with scorn-that the threat was working.
”So you have a wolf,” the Fairy lord said, though his horse lowered his head to protect his neck and backed several steps.
”And your high king is a wolf,” Matthew said. ”You know how the pack sticks together.”
This time, the gelding backed and circled because the Fairy lord reined him around. When he faced Edie and the others again, he was ten feet further back, and his pack had fallen back with him.
”I don't understand why the horse didn't kill you,” he called to the girl, over Matthew's head. ”They don't let slaves ride.”
He yanked his horse's mouth so Edie could smell the blood that sprang up, wheeling away.
”Oh,” said the mare, ”is that why you never dared get up on me?”
As the lord rode off, spine stiff, the rest of the hunt fell in behind him. Edie was warm and at ease, and with the slow ebb of adrenaline, swept up in a rush of fellow-feeling for those with whom she had just withstood a threat.
A veil opened in the night as before, s.h.i.+mmering across the pavement before the phalanx of squad cars. Edie and her new allies stood waiting warily until the Fairy lord and his entourage vanished back behind it. The mare eyed Matthew quite cunningly. She planned this, the wolf thought. But the mare said nothing, and Edie would have had to come back to human form to say it-and what good would it do at this point, anyway?
”Well, I guess that's that,” Matthew said, when they were gone.
He made a hand-dusting gesture and turned away, leaving Kit to handle the girl and the mare who had stolen each other while he walked, whistling, up the road to speak with the a.s.sembled police. Edie went and sat beside Lily, tail thumping the road. Lily reached down and scruffled her ruff and ears with gloved fingers.
”Good wolf,” she cooed. ”Good girl.”
In New York City's storied Greenwich Village, on the island of Manhattan, there is a tavern called the Slaughtered Lamb. A wolf howls on its signboard. In one corner lurks a framed photo of Lon Chaney as the Wolf Man. The tavern is cramped and dark and the mailbox-sized bathroom-beside the grilled-off stair with a sign proclaiming the route to The Dungeon closed for daily tortures-is not particularly clean.
The Slaughtered Lamb (of course) is the favored hangout of Lower Manhattan's more ironic werewolves. Edie hadn't been there even once since she came to New York City. She'd been an outcast even then.
Now she strode west on 4th Street from Was.h.i.+ngton Square, her high-heeled boots clicking on the preternaturally level sidewalks of Manhattan. Her feet still hurt across the pads, but the worst was healed. She wore trousers to hide her unshaven legs. A cold wind curled the edges of damp leaves, not strong enough to lift them from the pavement.
4th was wider and less tree-shaded than most of the streets in the famously labyrinthine Village, but still quiet-by Manhattan standards-as she made her way past the s.e.x shops, crossing Jones in a hurry. An FDL Express truck waited impatiently behind the stop sign, rolling gently forward as if stretching an invisible barrier when the driver feathered the clutch.
She hopped lightly up one of the better curb cuts in the Village and crossed the sidewalk to the Slaughtered Lamb's black-and-white faux-Tudor exterior. Horns blared as she let herself inside. A reflexive glance at her watch showed 4:59.
Rush hour.
”And so it begins,” she muttered to no one in particular, and let the heavy brown nine-panel door fall between her and the noise.
There was noise inside, too, but it was of a more welcoming quality. Speakers mounted over the door blared Chumbawumba; two silent televisions s.h.i.+mmered with the sports highlights of the day. A gas fire roared in the unscreened hearth behind the only open table. Edie picked her way through the darkness to claim it quickly, sighing in relief. It might roast her on one side, but at least it would be a place to sit.
She slung her damp leather coat over the high back of a bar stool and jumped up. She was barely settled, a cider before her, when the door opened again, revealing Matthew Magus and a tall, slender young man with pale skin and black hair that touched his collar in easy curls.
They sat down across from Edie. She s.h.i.+fted a little further away from the fire. ”Edith Moorc.o.c.k,” Matthew said, ”His Majesty Ian MacNeill, Sire of the Pack and High King of Fairy.”
”Charmed,” Edie said, offering the King a glove. To her surprise, he took it.
”Edie is a New World wolf,” Matthew said. ”Apparently, your grandfather did not find her ... acceptable ... to the Pack.”
”Oh, yes,” Ian said tiredly. ”It's about time the Pack got itself out of the twelfth century.” He steepled his fingers as the server came over, and both he and Matthew ordered what Edie had. ”I can't imagine what you would want with us at this point, though-”
Edie's heart fluttered with nervousness. ”An end to exile?”
”Consider it done. Do you plan to remain in New York?”
Edie nodded.
”Good. The Mage here needs somebody to look after him. Somebody with some teeth.” Ian paused as his cider arrived, then sipped it thoughtfully. Matthew coughed into the cupped palm of his glove. ”The better to eat you with, my dear,” he muttered.