Mark Del Franco - Undone Deeds

“Enough to commit treason?” I asked.

Ceridwen smiled. “Maeve has violated the most fundamental laws of our Court, Grey. She caused the death of an underQueen. It is not treason to hold her accountable for it.”

“You’re going to war,” I said.

“Maeve has moved her forces onto the Continent. Tara is empty. I cannot let the opportunity pass,” she said. She took a pawn out with a rook.

I reached for another pawn, then withdrew when I realized I would lose my other bishop. “Ceridwen, I know she betrayed you, and, well, you ended up dying, but do you really want to start a war over your death? More people will die.”

She chuckled. “Wars have been started over lesser things.”

“This isn’t Faerie,” I said.

“No, it’s not, but the same rules apply. The threat of war often accomplishes more than war. The Seelie Court never was about one person, but Maeve has made it so. While she wastes time and resources threatening the Teutonic Consortium, the rest of the Celtic fey suffer. It’s time for a change, either with Maeve or without her.”

“She doesn’t sound like the type for compromise,” I said.

I moved my remaining knight. Ceridwen glanced down at the board, then at me. “When faced with two courses that will lead to the same result, which would you choose, Connor? The one that causes bloodshed or the one that causes even more?”

“I guess it depends on one’s principles,” I said.

“I have you in checkmate in six moves. You lost this game two moves ago. Shall we continue?” she asked.

I laughed as a knock sounded from the door. Ceridwen glamoured her face with a haze that masked her features as a servant answered the door. A young dwarf entered, cap in hand, his blunt face giving him the appearance of age. He bowed. “Forgive the intrusion. The Lord of the Dead asked to be informed if any scryers were about, ma’am.”

Ceridwen had kept her identity a secret from even her followers. By wearing the glamour, they thought—or feared—that she was the mythical King of the Dead who rode out on a horse of fire bringing death to the unwary. I think she liked the outfit more than the mystery. “What say you?” Ceridwen asked.

“A strange woman has entered the Tangle. She scrys as she walks but speaks not,” he said.

“No one can scry any longer,” Ceridwen said.

“Indeed. I tremble to err,” the dwarf said.

I stood. “You know what? I’ll take this. If anyone can tell a true scryer, I can.”

Ceridwen faced the chessboard, her expression invisible behind the glamour. “You didn’t finish the game.”

“Save it. I have six moves to prove you wrong,” I said. Her laugh followed me out the door.

The dwarf led me through an abandoned floor of an old brownstone. All the walls had been blown out, the support structures replaced with essence barriers to hold up the roof. I didn’t like places like it in the Tangle. The barriers often needed to be recharged to keep a building from collapsing, and it was never clear who or why someone maintained the empty buildings. I always worried I was in a building that was about to come down on my head.

The dwarf stopped at an open window and pointed. “She should be coming through any second. You can see her from here.”

I looked down into the street, a jagged stretch of a pavement that connected two main avenues. In the middle of the lane, a feminine figure wore a sequined white jumpsuit with red boots. People grouped on the sidewalk, more curious about a large flat package than the strangely dressed figure. The package caught my eye, too—was probably what was catching everyone’s eye down there. It blazed with essence. The strange part under the circumstances was that the essence resonated like scrying. Even four flights up, it pulsed against my senses. I kept my body shield activated as a matter of course in the Tangle. Even though the stone suppressed the problems the dark mass gave me, the darkness still reacted to scrying. It pressed against the stone, a heated wave of pain, struggling to shut me down.

“That’s a friend of mine. Pull him out of there,” I said.

The dwarf snorted. “Are you sure that’s a friend?”

“Bring him to the Hunter’s hall. I’ll meet you there,” I said.

He looked me askance. “Is that wise?”

“It’ll be fine. It’s shielded, so people will lose interest.” The hall was Ceridwen’s receiving room, where she appeared as the Hunter to her people.

The dwarf crawled out onto the fire escape. I didn’t watch him descend but made my way back through the building. The next floor down had a missing wall into the next building, which had a crumbling sky bridge across the alley behind it. From there, I hit the roof and walked the length of the block, then down a stairwell into the basement and into a tunnel. Secret and convoluted paths riddled the Tangle, which made it possible for so much illegal activity to occur. I had been learning the routes, more for expediency than secrecy. People knew I was down here, but I didn’t have to make it easy for them to track my movements.

I reached Ceridwen’s hall several minutes later. The room held a chair, which only Ceridwen sat in. Essence lanterns hung from the ceiling to throw dim light. Old-fashioned wooden torches soaked in kerosene lined the walls. They were lit for atmosphere when Ceridwen was rallying her troops or intimidating the hell out of someone.

The entrance shimmered open—an opaque essence barrier that was stronger than any door would be. The dwarf leaned in and cocked his eyebrow at me, but I nodded for him to leave. Ceridwen’s people were protective of me, but I wasn’t worried.

Shay strolled in with his crazy outfit and the package like he had come from shopping on Newbury Street. The two of us had a complicated and unexpected history. Through some residual arrogance from my Guild days, I had gotten his boyfriend killed during a murder investigation. Shay had almost died a couple of times since then because he had gotten sucked up in my wake.

No matter how hard I tried to leave him alone, something conspired to bring us together, and not in a good way for Shay. He had saved my life, but committed murder to do it. He hid the stone bowl for me, and I had almost killed him in his own apartment. I knew his boyfriend, Robin, was hiding in the city, one of the many Dead, but kept the information from him. He didn’t deserve what I had done, and I didn’t deserve his friendship.

He flipped his long hair over his shoulder. “That was faster than I thought it would be.”

“Are you insane coming into the Tangle dressed like that?” I asked.

Shay held his hands out dramatically from the waist. “Exactly, Connor. Anyone who shows up in the Tangle looking like this is either too crazy to deal with or too powerful to screw over. I made more people nervous than the other way around.”

“How did you know how to find me?” I asked.

He leaned the package against the chair. Essence radiated off it—the paper was insufficient to block it. I didn’t look directly at it. It shifted and swirled and made my head hurt. “Process of elimination. Your apartment’s being watched. I didn’t think you’d abandon the bowl, so I figured you were still somewhere in the Weird. The end of Oh No is too close to the police and stuff, and you don’t strike me as the type to hide out in a burned-out building. The Tangle was the only thing left.”

Shay was too smart for his own good sometimes. “What’s in the package?”

Shay ripped the brown paper to reveal a painting canvas. “It’s your friend Meryl’s painting.”

He flipped it around to show me the plain white surface, but plain only in the visible sense. “That doesn’t look like much of a painting to me, Shay.”