Simon Green - A Hard Day's Knight

She leaned forward on her Ivory Throne to fix me with her unblinking gaze. “What poor damned mortal dares disturb me in my Court?”

“That would be me,” I said cheerfully. “John Taylor of the Nightside, not in any way at your service. Ah, I see you’ve heard of me. That saves time. And here with me is the returned King Arthur, of Camelot. He calls you to parley with Oberon and Titania, that we might avert the coming civil war between the elves, and to discuss something more ... interesting.”

Queen Mab looked past me at Arthur. He nodded courteously to her, and she actually bowed her head to him.

“Arthur,” she said. “It has been a while, has it not? You haven’t changed.”

“Neither have you,” Arthur said gallantly.

Mab made no comment, still studying Arthur’s face. “So, it seems I am not the only one to return to trouble this world again. If things had gone differently, if we had wed, what a world we might have fashioned together. But there was Tam, my lovely Tam, and nothing was ever the same again, after that.”

She turned abruptly to face me, fixing me with her intense golden stare. “If any other mortal had insulted me in this way, John Taylor, I would have ripped the meat from his bones with my own bare hands for such effrontery. But you have brought me a face I never thought to see again. That buys you some time. I am ... intrigued. Arthur’s presence changes everything. Yes, I will parley.”

“You sent the elves into the Nightside, didn’t you?” I said.

“Youngbloods,” said Queen Mab. “They wanted so much to prove themselves in battle, and who was I to deny youth its chance?”

“Most of them are dead now,” said Kae. “The London Knights hold the survivors captive. Their continued survival depends upon your good behaviour.”

“Kill them all,” said Mab. “Let them all die, for failing me. I am Mab; and I will do what I will do.”

I decided to press on, while she was still in what passed for a good mood. I raised my gift again and sent it searching; and this time I found King Oberon and Queen Titania in their Unseelie Court, in Shadows Fall. I found another connection and opened up another gateway; and more light fell into the Nightside as I connected one hidden place with another.

Oberon and Titania sat side by side on two great Thrones made of bones. Strange shapes and sigils and glyphs had been cut deep into the hundreds of interlinked bones that made up the two Thrones, detail upon detail, in a design complex beyond hope of human understanding. Oberon was easily ten feet tall and bulging thickly with muscles, wrapped in a long blood-red cloak to better show off his milk-white skin. His hair was a colourless blond, hanging loosely down around a long, angular face dominated by piercing blue eyes. He looked effortlessly noble, regal, and perversely intelligent. Oberon had come to his Throne through intrigue and violence, and it showed.

Titania wore a long black dress with silver trimmings, and wore it with a careless, heart-breaking elegance. She was lovelier than any mere mortal would ever be, and she knew it, and didn’t give a damn. She was a few inches taller than Oberon, with a skin so pale that blue veins showed clearly at her temples. Her hair was blonde, cropped short and severe, and her night-dark eyes were calm and cold.

Nobility hung about them both, like a cape grown frayed through long use.

“We know you, John Taylor,” said Oberon, in calm, bored voice. “Why do you trouble us?”

“King Arthur’s back,” I said briskly. “That’s him, right there. Isn’t he marvellous? He and his knights have kicked the crap out of the elves Queen Mab sent to devastate the Nightside. He has asked her to parley, to find a way to avoid the forthcoming elf civil war, and she has agreed. He now asks you to parley, in the same cause, and swears he has another, viable option to propose.”

“There still exist ancient pacts, of honour and blood, between the Unseelie Court and Camelot,” said Arthur. “Tell me the elves have not forgotten honour.”

“No,” said Oberon. “The elves still remember honour.”

“But what if we do not want peace?” said Titania. She did not move at all, her rich and sultry voice seeming to hang on the air.

“Would you rather face extinction?” I said. “You know that once the war has started, you’d all fight to the end, to the very last of your forces, rather than admit defeat. You’d use any tactic, any weapon, die to the very last elf and take all Humanity and the Earth with you, before you’d let your hated rival win. Arthur is offering you a way out—a way for the elves to survive as a race, with honour. And if you can’t trust King Arthur of Camelot, whom can you trust?”

Oberon smiled slightly. “Why not? If nothing else, this process should prove ... illuminating. I see you, Mab. What say you, to this offer of parley, and a possible solution to our dispute?”

“No-one summons me anywhere,” said Mab. She turned her unblinking gaze on Arthur. “You don’t have Merlin any more. And without him, your forces failed at Logres.”

“Who needs Merlin?” I said. “We have Arthur and the London Knights, and I can call upon the Lord of Thorns, Jessica Sorrow the Unbeliever, and Razor Eddie, Punk God of the Straight Razor. I could even give the Droods a call ... Do you really want to fight one more useless battle; or shall we try something different for a change?”

“If a suitable neutral ground can be found and agreed on,” said Mab, “I will attend. But only because it has been such a long time since I have seen you, Arthur. One does miss ... old friends.”

I turned back to Oberon and Titania, in their Court at Shadows Fall. But before either of them could speak, another figure appeared suddenly from behind the two Thrones of bone, a face I already knew. A short, stocky figure, almost human-sized, though the sheer scale of the King and Queen made him appear smaller. His body was as smooth and supple as a dancer’s, but the hump on his back pushed one shoulder down and forward, and the hand on that arm was withered into a claw. His hair was grey, his skin the yellow of old bone, and he had two raised nubs on his forehead that might have been horns. He wore a pelt of animal fur that melded seamlessly into his own hairy body, and his legs ended in cloven hoofs. He smiled a lot, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile.

I knew him. He had led me a merry dance across the Nightside, all to protect a Peace Treaty he never had any faith in. He brought me Excalibur. He was Puck, the only elf that was not perfect.

He lounged artlessly against the arm of Titania’s Throne, and she patted his head fondly as he grinned out of the opening in the air.

“And so the call to parley comes, from an old and yet respected human King; and who are we to say no to such a courteous summons? I say, let us go, and talk, for talk is cheap and therefore costs us nothing. After all, nothing shall be decided, nor considered binding, unless both Courts agree on it. And how likely is that?”

“Dear Puck,” said Queen Mab. “Still so wise and so provoking.”

“Let’s do it,” said King Oberon. “For the hell of it. It has been so dreadfully dull round here, lately.”

“But no more than us,” said Queen Titania. “Just us, and no-one else.”

“Of course,” said Queen Mab. “We might want to say and admit things our people would never approve of.” She looked at me. “Assuming, again, that you can find a neutral ground where we cannot be overheard. And how likely is that?”

“Oh, I’ve got somewhere in mind,” I said. “Somewhere that will impress even the King and Queens of Faerie. Certainly a place where I can guarantee no-one will overhear you.”

And driven by the anger that still hadn’t let go of me, I raised my gift again and found the place I’d been thinking of. I used my Portable Timeslip to transport Oberon and Titania and Puck, Arthur and Kae, Mab, Suzie, and myself out of the Nightside and into the future. To the Nightside at the end of the world, the devastated future that I had helped to bring about.