Мэгги Стивотер - Ballad

"Please leave."

"I'm afraid I can't do that. As annoying as James is, I'm loath to watch him die."

"He is annoying," admitted Eleanor. It was as if I didn't have a knife stuck at her throat. As if her current consort-- was he still current if he had a hole in his chest?--weren't writhing on the stage. "And very cocky."

Sullivan inclined his head in agreement. "That being said, I'll need my other student as well."

Eleanor frowned gently; the most beautiful frown the world had ever seen. My chest heaved with the pain of it. "Do not ask me for her. I will give you this idiot. And I'll let you leave. But do not ask me for things I can't give."

"Won't give," Sullivan said, and his voice had changed too. "It's always won't, not can't. It's priorities."

It was like Eleanor and Sullivan were the only ones in the room.

"My subjects come first. Don't tell me you don't understand, Patrick Sullivan. Because you came storming in here not for you, but for your students. I will have freedom for my fey."

"Cheap at the price of two humans," Sullivan said mildly.

Eleanor's voice crackled with ice. "You cannot preach at me. Did you think twice about the two bodies you stepped over to stand before me? I think not--because they were only fey, yes?"

I looked down at Dee. She lay on her back, a bruise darkening her right cheek, and her eyes were on me. Totally unfathomable. I knew what she was capable of. She could blast us out of here, if she wanted.

"If I think that way, Eleanor, it was only because I learned from the best," Sullivan said. "For an endangered species, you are very casual about killing your own."

"They are not the easiest race to govern," snapped Eleanor. "I would like to see you try it."

"As I recall, I had some suggestions that worked nicely."

Eleanor backed away from my knife to better glare at Sullivan.

"Would have worked nicely. If I'd had an extra set of hands to implement them."

"I was more than willing to fill that role. I knew the dangers."

Eleanor looked away, her expression furious. "That was not a price I was willing to pay."

"And this is?" Sullivan asked.

Eleanor looked back at him.

And then there was an unremarkable pop.

I didn't understand what the pop meant until, behind Sullivan, I saw Delia, Dee's damn, ever-present evil aunt, step over the two faerie bodies by the door. In her hand was a very small, fake-looking gun.

Sullivan very carefully laid a hand on his stomach, and then stumbled in slow-motion against one of the folding chairs. I closed my eyes, but I saw what happened anyway. He fell to his hands and knees and threw up, flowers and blood.

"I can't believe I'm going to have to be the one with the backbone here," Delia said. "I've been staying in a hotel for two weeks and spending every single evening up to my elbows in dead fey. Cut her heart out before I get pissed off."

Eleanor's voice was below zero. "My finest horse to whichever faerie in this room brings me that woman's left eye."

My thoughts exactly.

"Wait!" snapped Delia, as every hand in the room reached for a knife. "You can cut out my damn eye if you like, but what you should be cutting out is her heart. It's nearly eleven. What will you do if he's here and her heart's not in him?" She gestured to the consort on the stage.

I crouched down and, seizing Dee's arm, hauled her to her feet.

Eleanor and Delia just looked at me. Delia and a gun were between me and the door. Eleanor and her damn voodoo were between me and everything.

"Why don't you save yourself?" I hissed at Dee. This summer, there'd been more faeries, and I'd been mostly dead, and she'd still gotten out of it. Now, Nuala was burning by herself, Sullivan was bleeding on the floor, and Dee wasn't doing a thing to stop it.

But Dee turned to Delia instead of to me. "What did I ever do to you, anyway?" Her voice sounded hoarse, like she'd been screaming or singing.

Delia shook her head and made a face that was like a caricature of disbelief, like she couldn't believe Dee even thought the question worth asking. "I just want your voice when you're done with it."

Siobhan said, "My queen--there's no time. Cut out her heart, put it in him, and make Karre a king."

In my head, I heard the thorn king's song as he approached.

Only, instead of singing grow rise follow, the words were follow feast devour.

Eleanor looked at Siobhan and nodded shortly.

It all happened in a blur then. Siobhan leapt toward Dee, one hand stretched as if to seize Dee's shoulder, the other gripping the knife. Dee frowned at the blade, pointed unerringly at her heart. And I flung out my arm, smashing the back of my arm and my wrist against Siobhan's face.

Siobhan squealed--strangely high-pitched--and stumbled backwards, the knife clattering to the floor. Flowers were pouring from her face. Or her face was falling into flowers.

Eleanor stepped back just as Siobhan, a blanket of petals, flopped to the ground at her feet. She looked pissed.

I looked at my arm. The sleeve of my sweatshirt had pulled down to reveal the iron bracelet on my wrist; a single yellow petal was still stuck to the edge of it. So the damn thing had turned out to be useful for something.

I held my wrist out toward Eleanor. "Will this do the same thing to you?"

She looked really pissed.

"James," Sullivan called from the aisle. His voice sounded wet. I tried not to pay attention to that. "Stage left."

Of course. The exit at the back of the stage. I grabbed Dee's hand and pulled her up the stairs, going sideways so I could keep watching Eleanor. Cernunnos' song was deafening in my ears. It was time to get out.

"I wouldn't do that," Delia snapped, staring at us. "This thing has a lot of bullets in it. And I'm not above shooting someone at the moment."

Eleanor folded her hands gently before her and said coldly, "Someone else." She looked away, at something in the aisle, and said, "Patrick, pull your coat over your head."

I just had time to realize what she was saying when the back door busted open.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence and sheer, absolute cold, our breaths clouded in front of us.

And then the dead came pouring in. They ran along the walls, fluttered around the lights like moths, cast crazy shadows on the floor and the chairs. They stank of sulphur and damp earth.

With them came noise: shrill screams, gurgling calls, guttural singing. They ricocheted off the faeries as if they were nothing more than stones, but when they saw Delia, their noises changed to something more urgent.

Delia spun and let off a shot, right before they fell on her. She disappeared under the weight of intangible darkness, and if she made a sound, I couldn't hear it over the sounds of them screaming over her.

And then the dead noticed us.

"Dee," I said, "Do something. I know you can."

Dee looked at me, her eyes wide. I recognized the look. It was like her system was flashing a little warning sign at me that read overload overload overload. Seeing it now, I realized that she'd been working toward this moment--this moment of utter giving up--for a long time, and I wondered that I hadn't recognized it until now, when it was too late.

The dead rushed over the chairs, crawled up the windows, sank claws into the edge of the stage. Delia was a rustling, kicking pile on the floor. I gripped Dee's shoulders and looked right in her eyes. "Dee. Do this for me. You owe me. You know you owe me."

Dee's eyes were locked right on mine, and I could almost see her processing my words. I waited for her to do something-blast the dead to the back of the room, call down heaven's wrath, anything.

But all she did was take my hands and step backwards.

Just as the dead broached the stage, I looked down and realized that, with that one step, we now stood inside the dark circle with Eleanor's consort. The dead swirled around the circle, rushing past us, making strange shapes that I didn't think I'd ever seen before. Dee tugged my hands to make me step forward a little, farther away from the circle's dusty edge.