War For The Oaks Part 26

She felt comforted. "It's more than you deserve. Well, if neither of us did this"-she flourished her mended jacket-"who did? w.i.l.l.y?"

The phouka made a dismissing gesture with his coffee cup. "Once you're fully awake, I trust you'll recognize the folly inherent in that suggestion."

"I wasn't serious."

"I also trust you'll observe that it's not just your jacket."

Eddi looked around. The sun streamed uncommonly bright through the blinds. That held her attention for a moment. "The windows are clean," she said at last, wondering.

"Very good. Don't stop there, sweet."

In fact, everything was clean. And the apartment smelled of fresh bread, which, she realized belatedly, was what had awakened her in the first place. "You made bread?"

"No."

"Then what do I smell?"

"Bread."

She pushed past him to look in the kitchen. There were two round brown loaves cooling on the counter. There was a pot of coffee made, as well. She drew back and looked him in the eye. "And you didn't do any of this."

"None, I'm ashamed to say."

"So?"

He sucked in his cheeks and looked thoughtful. "If I were required to be forthright, which, thank earth and air, is rarely necessary, I would have to say that you've acquired a brownie."

Eddi stared at him. "That's silly," she said after a bit.

"Possibly. But just in case, don't offer up any thanks for all this. I don't really enjoy was.h.i.+ng dishes."

Eddi paced the apartment, touching things. Perhaps she'd had so many intrusions into her life lately that she'd gone beyond resenting any more. Or perhaps the nature of this intrusion was different-its character was so clearly a smoothing of the waters of daily routine. Whoever had come and gone had left nothing in the way, nothing that wasn't useful, nothing that Eddi had to rearrange her life around. The message of the clean apartment, the bread, the mended jacket, was, "The irritants are gone, the mundane details are taken care of. The important matters are left to you."

She couldn't say thank you. But she remembered how pleased the phouka had been at praise. "This is great," she said softly. "The place never looked so good."

Eddi stood at the window, not really seeing the rooftops and the waving trees of Loring Park. It was more than just clean windows and mending. She felt as if her future was back in her hands. She was not just baggage for the Seelie Court, an amulet that brought death but had no life of its own. She had allies, however uncertain. And she had knowledge, and would get more.

So she had her own glamour, did she? And w.i.l.l.y had found that alarming. He'd made a great fuss, also, over her unbedazzled state during the binding ceremony, and over the Queen of Faerie speaking English.... All pieces of the same puzzle. The clearest part of it was that she shouldn't have understood the ceremony. The bread-and-blood of it tended to overshadow the words-what were they?

Mortal flesh, and doom, and something else, there were three things mortal. Spirit in flesh, spirit in doom-no, that was wrong, the other way around. And all of them under... will? Yes, that was the third mortal thing. It sounded like heavy metal lyrics, or imitation Aleister Crowley. Flesh, the body. Will, the mind. Doom? Mortality, fear of death? That made sense. It was, after all, what the Seelie Court wanted her for: to bring death to the battlefield.

Why had the Seelie Court supplied the mortal? Did the Unseelie Court not want their enemies dead?

Or was it just the good guys' turn to bring the party supplies? But that was a digression; one thing at a time.

Spirit-the soul? But then the whole thing became metaphysical, and hardly dangerous for her to know.

Spirit, spirit...

"Magic," the phouka said behind her, and she realized she'd spoken her last thought out loud.

"Spirit is magic?"

"Or more exactly, the power of Faerie. If, as I think you are, you're quoting the Lady."

Then Eddi remembered the context of the quote, and another puzzle piece came to her hand. This was the price of Eddi's services as Angel of Death, this was the risk worth taking.

"d.a.m.n," she said. "What were her exact words?"

The phouka watched her as he spoke, something eager in his expression. "'Mortal flesh and mortal doom be one, and mortal will may rule them. Spirit shall reside in flesh, doom reside in spirit, and all shall bow before will.'"

"Impressive. Do you have the whole ceremony memorized?"

"No, my sweet. Just that crucial bit." He was biting back a grin.

"I bet you could tell me what it means, too."

"But it's much more fun to watch you do it."

"You jerk. Okay. Mortal flesh and doom are one-humans die, it's part of the business of being human.

What was the next bit?"

"'... And mortal will may rule them.'"

"Hmm. Mind over muscle, sure-but is that saying we control our own deaths?"

"Have you never heard of those who seem to lose their will to live?"

Eddi considered this. "I suppose. Now, spirit resides-"

"Shall reside."

"Picky, picky."

The phouka shook his head. "This, remember, was her warning to the a.s.sembled Court: Spirit shall reside in flesh, as a result of what we would do here."

Eddi could feel her scalp begin to tingle. "Repeat the whole last half, that begins with 'Spirit shall reside in flesh.'"

"'Spirit shall reside in flesh, doom reside in spirit, and all shall bow before will.'" The phouka looked at her expectantly.

"My G.o.d," she whispered. "She wasn't lying-?"

"In the midst of a piece of ceremonial magic? No, my primrose. She was not lying."

Eddi raked her hair off her forehead. "Then... I've got the power of Faerie, Faerie's got my mortality, and if I want, I can control both of those?"

"Close," the phouka said. "Faerie still has its power, and you are still mortal. But you have become, conditionally, part of Faerie, as symbolized by your acceptance of food from the Lady's hand. Our power is thus yours by right, as it would not be had we taken you captive. You are not a captive-your answer to the Lady last night made that clear. Your answer also showed that you had not come as a willing sacrifice. You were there as an ally of Faerie, a.s.suming the bonds as a formality."

"Wait, wait, wait-which answer was this?"

"'If the obligations of friends.h.i.+p are constraints, then I'm constrained to be here.'"

Good G.o.d-he memorized that? "But I didn't mean friends.h.i.+p with Faerie. I meant..."

He gave her that grin, and that wicked look through his eyelashes. "You're a poet, my sweet," he said.

"Surely you know that sometimes your words have more meaning to others than they do to you. And as for your ability to control what goes on... well. You have exactly as much control over magic as you do over your body, or your fate."

"I haven't had much control of that lately."

"If you believe that, it's true, and you have no magic," the phouka said harshly. "And I have been as much a fool as w.i.l.l.y Silver claims I have."

"Is that my fault? What do you think I-"

His voice overpowered hers. "But I don't think you truly believe it. If you did, you would not have fought back when the redcaps threatened to overwhelm us. You would have curled up and let death ride over us all. I chose you in part because you were strong. I believed you would fight for your own life, if for nothing else. Now I believe you would fight for a great deal more."

"If you think that not dying is just a matter of not wanting to," Eddi sighed, "then boy, have you got a surprise coming."

He wouldn't smile. "Do you understand me, my heart? I offered you the key to magic, and you responded with denial. I cannot let that pa.s.s, even once. You must believe that what I have made possible is possible, or we have already failed."

Eddi paced the living room rug. That she was a part of Faerie now-it was surprisingly easy to buy. She remembered the searing feeling of the Seelie Court's power pa.s.sing into her through every pore, and the sc.r.a.ps of knowledge that had come with it.

But the phouka was offering her magic, power of her own. Not possible, surely not. Yet why would he want her to believe in the impossible? Was this a trick? Would he make a fool of her? No. He was entirely capable of making a fool of her, but not like this.

"Why me?" she said softly. He looked startled. "You told me I'd get all my questions answered on May first. And that's always been Question Number One."

"You heard what I told w.i.l.l.y...."

"About musicians and glamour? Do you want me to believe that in a town full of musicians, I'm the only one who meets the specs?"

He shook his head.

"Was I the first one you found?"

"No. Do you know how many brilliant musicians are stupid, or crude, or determinedly ignorant, or in some way wholly despicable?"

"Sometimes I feel as if I've met every one of them," Eddi replied. "But the Seelie Court doesn't need someone lovable for this job. They don't even really need an artistic type, do they?"

"No, though the chances are very good that we would have chosen one, simply because we like them.

My primrose, before we go on, do you suppose I could at least have more coffee?" He held up his cup and looked pitiful.

"Pour me one, too." He disappeared into the kitchen. She called after him, "And cut a couple of pieces of bread, for G.o.dsake!"

Eddi plunked down on the couch and tucked her feet under her. So many things to deal with. Explain all this to Carla, figure out what to do about Dan (what the devil had moved Carla to tell him?). Then there was w.i.l.l.y, and... Hedge? That Hedge was another denizen of Faerie made a certain c.o.c.keyed sense. It explained his determined air of the outsider, and all that new equipment. What local music store had found a little surprise in the cash register that time? Living with the hosts of Faerie, it appeared, was like running a home for incorrigible children.

The phouka balanced two cups of coffee and two pieces of bread and b.u.t.ter into the living room. He seated himself cross-legged on the floor, handed her her coffee, and looked expectantly up.

"Don't give me that c.o.c.ker-spaniel routine," she scolded. "I want some answers, son."

"Oh, but you have to ask me the questions first, love. It's not in my nature to smooth the way for you."

"I have one pending."

"Bother. I was hoping you'd forgotten." He refolded his legs. "Why you. A short question with a long answer. You met, as I've said, the few requirements of the Court. The rest were mine."

"I kind of figured that out. You have an axe to grind in all this, don't you?"

"Yes." Then he closed his lips firmly and looked stubborn.

"Phouka." She leaned forward and pinned him with her eyes. "You've run a lot of risks, and gone to a lot of work, and all to turn me into a bullet for your gun. But I'm a bullet that thinks for itself, and I want to know what I'm being shot at." He winced. "Are you a traitor?" she asked gently.

"No! At least, I devoutly hope I'm not." He ma.s.saged the bridge of his nose. "Ah, Eddi, Eddi. If I fail, I will become a major figure in the history of the Seelie Court. Reviled for centuries, I imagine."

"And if you don't fail?"

"Well, that's the cream of the jest. If I succeed, I will be barely noticed."

"What is it you want to do?"

He rubbed his hands along his trousered thighs, as if his palms itched, or were damp. "You may have seen, my primrose, that the Fey Folk are the merest bit cla.s.s-conscious. We would, by our nature, make very bad anarchists. We do make excellent monarchists, however, under ordinary circ.u.mstances." He cut the air with one hand in a frustrated gesture. "There are no mortal structures to which I can compare this.

None have lasted so long. A very bad a.n.a.logy-do you remember bad King John and the Magna Carta?"

"A little."

"John was not bad, precisely. But he'd a tendency to do as he pleased without regard to the lesser lords whose men-at-arms kept him in power. The situation became untidy for a while, until those lesser lords forced John to be a little more thoughtful."

"And you want a Faerie Magna Carta?"

The phouka shook his head. "As I said, there is no proper human a.n.a.log. The Sidhe have a habit of rule cultivated over more than two thousand years. What mortal government has lasted so long? And the rest of Faerie has a habit of obedience of corresponding length. Even the most solitary of the Folk will not run directly counter to the will of the Sidhe, though they may, when convenient, fail to hear the expression of that will."

"Like the brownies?"

"And the oakmen, and others. But none of the Seelie Court would rise up, as King John's lordings did, and bring the Sidhe to book."

"Do they need it?" Eddi asked, thinking of w.i.l.l.y, and not knowing what to think.

The phouka drew his knees up and rested his chin on them. "They have ruled for so long, my sweet.

They are an unbroken dynasty, and while there have been faction fights and quarrels, there has never been a voice raised to say that perhaps the Sidhe have led us long enough. A thousand years and more of consent. After so long, who can blame them for forgetting the obligations of monarchy, and ruling only for themselves? Who can blame them for thinking that those who never speak are voiceless?"

"Have they... done something awful?"

"In time, I think they would. They have forgotten the Folk they govern, and how to feel for them. And so the Folk slip away from them, looking increasingly toward the only other part of Faerie with a tradition of rule." He let out a long breath. "There are high lords of the Unseelie Court as well, you see."

Eddi did see. "This really is a civil war, then."