Like I told Bob, all I needed to do was stop the killing. And do that before the humans found any clue that led to a Real Folk perpetrator. There is way too much history about humans and things they don’t understand. We may have magic, but they have bullets. Bullets win every time.
So, I had to talk to Fionuir and she wouldn’t just let me walk in and chat. She was the queen and all the other Sidhe obeyed and protected her, or else. Getting an audience with Fionuir could be easy if she liked you. I’m not sure she had any feelings for me- yet. The Sidhe could be cruel and cold, but they could also be charming and funny. I just had to figure out how to get on Fionuir’s charming side.
I needed a contact.
The only one I had in the court was Melbe. He’s a sprite with a talent for management who runs the Sidhe household. And he owes me.
I grabbed my crystal ball off the shelf. It’s not like you think, a big round globe of clear crystal. It’s a roughly round dingy pink lump of crystal. It gets clear when it’s ready to deliver the goods. I put the crystal on a black cloth which covered the dirt part of the floor and then I sat.
Now I had to get my questions in order. I knew the Sidhe would be monitoring information requests and the longer I was on the crystal, the easier I would be to locate. And if I got caught, Melbe would also be caught- and he would be hurt.
I cleared my thoughts and brought his face to mind. Sprites all look pretty much the same, only one or two differentiators exist. Mainly size; they came in all ranges from eighteen inches to the size of an ancient sequoia. If you know what to look for, you can recognize individuals at a glance. Melbe had a notch in his left ear from a duel with a pixie.
I breathed on the crystal and whispered his name.
The crystal cleared and then faded again. That usually meant someone was ignoring me. I breathed on the crystal again and whispered, “Melbe.”
“Go away. I am busy.” Melbe’s brown face frowned at me. “Oh, it’s you. Just give me a minute to get someplace private.”
I saw the background move nauseatingly for a second then Melbe’s face came back into focus. “I can only give you a few minutes before someone will come looking for me. What do you want? And whatever it is, we’re even right?”
“Okay yes, we’re even. I want to know what’s going on with this fairies thing?”
He nodded. “Ah, the breeding plan?”
It bothered me that he seemed so blase about it. “There’s got to be more to this than trying to control the flow of baby fairies. What else is Fionuir up to?”
He glanced sideways. “What do you know about the Sidhe succession?”
“Not much, they keep pretty much to themselves and most of us find that to be a good thing.”
He chuckled. “Yes, I understand why. Anyway, they choose a queen every fifty years. They can choose the same queen or a new one.”
“So this is the end of the fifty years?” A political fight wasn’t going to be easy to resolve.
“Yes, Fionuir does not want to give up power so she came up with a plan to make herself the best choice.” He glanced around again.
“And that involves killing humans?”
He didn’t turn back to face me, but I could still hear his words. “Yes. You know how lazy the Sidhe are. Well, the killing is giving them power for no effort. So far it seems to be working.” He turned back to me and I could see the tension pinching his face.
I wondered if I could find an ally in one of the others, although no Sidhe could really be trusted. “If Fionuir is taking this much risk, the other contenders must be strong. Who is she most worried about?”
Melbe glanced sideways again. “I have to…” He faded from the crystal. Whatever made him leave must have been dangerous, it would have taken all his power to break the summoning. I hoped he was fast enough not to get caught.
At least he gave me some information. I could probably find out who the other Sidhe was and maybe she would be willing to stop Fionuir without extracting too big a price.
I wrapped the cloth around the crystal and put it back on the shelf. I was thinking about a cold beer when the rapping on my window started again.
I let Olan in the front door.
“Did you get any information?” He asked as he climbed onto the kitchen chair.
After I told him what I’d learned from Melbe he smiled and said, “So the Queen is worried. I’m sure she has reason to be. She’ll have made a few enemies while in power.”
I shrugged, that was like saying rain was wet. “I still don’t get why the fairies are suddenly becoming barren. What if it’s permanent? What happens when sprites can’t reproduce, or wizards? Or, pixies?”
Olan bobbed his head. “I’ve no expertise on fairy husbandry, and pixies are not having any problems in that direction. I doubt Fionuir is the kind to wait for fate to give her an opportunity. It’s my guess she created this whole situation.”
He had a point. This seemed like too much of a coincidence to me, too. I really wanted it to be more than a coincidence because I can’t do anything about fate, but I can stop a Bean Sidhe; maybe. “I need to talk to Fionuir. If I can get an audience, I might be able to get her to reconsider whatever the reason is for this.”
Olan snorted and hopped down to walk into the living room. He jumped on the coffee table and stood on tiptoes so he could look out the window.
I got tired of waiting for him to say what he had to say. “Do you know anything I can use to get to Fionuir?”
He turned back to me. “Well, I’m thinking you don’t have to do this alone.”
This was going to be a problem. I didn’t like to put other people in danger, and Olan was just unreliable. “I work alone. I could use information, but that’s all. This is going to be dangerous. Really dangerous.”
“Yes.” Olan turned back to me. “I was here when the Sidhe arrived. That’s, what? Five hundred years ago? I knew they’d be trouble then. I’ve been proven right more than once since. Remember when they thought Father Bear was mocking them?”
Father Bear was one of the old Pacific Coast Folk. They had been around since time began. Literally, they started time. “I’m only three hundred years old. What happened?”
He sat down and laid his bodkin spear across his lap. “Ah, you kids, you don’t know anything about history. Well it was Fionuir’s mother who got it into her head that there had been an insult. In revenge she burned half the forest. Father Bear got a singed paw.” Olan gave another laugh. “Ah, well, it wasn’t that bad; no one got killed and the forest did need to be refreshed.”
“Okay, we all know the Sidhe don’t have a lot of perspective when they’re mad.” I remember a few stories myself. “That’s why I’m going to do this alone.”
“Alone is not good,” Olan said. “Better to have many talents together. When you spread the work, you make it harder for your enemy to break you.”
Great, wisdom from a pixie. “I don’t want anyone hurt.”
Olan walked back and forth. “Nor me, but doing it alone won’t stop the hurting. What happens to one of us hurts others. And, no matter how prettily you ask, Fionuir is not going to just change her plans to make you happy.”
He was right. I thought about how Cate would feel if I got killed. I know how I would feel if I got her killed. Crap, thinking about this wasn’t going to get the problem solved. “I know; that’s not what I was planning. I’m hoping I can get something to hold over her head. Or, if she’s done something, find a way to reverse it.”
“You need help.” Olan seemed to be stuck on one path. It was like arguing with a two-year-old. Time to try a different tactic.
“Okay, I need help. I need information. When I have that, I’m working on my own.”
“I might be able to find you any information.”
“I was thinking of someone more reliable, Olan. I can’t be second guessing every step of the way. If you pull a trick, the whole plan could be screwed. It’s too important for that. You know the humans will kill us wholesale rather than look at us.”
“I swear I’ll not trick you.” He stifled a smile. “I am required to keep the humans safe. The only way I see clear to do that is to stop the Sidhe taking contracts out on them. I’m a bit too small to do that on my own.”
One thing still bothered me. “Why is The Morrigan angry with you?”
Olan jumped down from the table and started to walk away. “It’s nothing to do with this.”
“See, you won’t give me important information and you want me to trust you.”
He turned to face me and I saw a green blush under his skin. “It is embarrassing and it’s not important. What is important is information about the Sidhe, or about the fairies.”
Nice try. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. “The Morrigan is part of the same world as the Sidhe. If she is angry she’ll get in the way just to spite you.” I wondered why Olan was being so dense.
“I may have given insult to her. She may have misunderstood something.”
“Olan, just spit it out. I won’t agree to us working together unless you come clean.” I was getting really tired of this. It just proves my point, working alone is best.
“Okay. I was talking to Brother Eagle about the general advantage of being a bird. It was a great conversation.” He smiled up at me. “But, The Crow was listening and I might have made some comment, not being mean mind you, about how some black birds were bossy. Now Brother Eagle just laughed, but he has a sense of humor.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you think you can avoid making it worse?”
He leaned against his bobbin and stared at me, and then he sighed. “I promise to try.”
“All I can ask.” I resigned myself to having a partner. It would be better to have Olan officially on my side, rather than have him ‘helping’ unofficially.
While Olan went snooping for more information, I was going to try to figure out why it had to be poison. Why not just a convenient accident, or a suicide? Poison seemed to be too obvious for Real Folk; too likely to bring attention. The Sidhe wouldn’t want that any more than I did.
I didn’t feel like sitting in the basement, and I didn’t need to work magic to do this research. I had a regular book on poisons, one I could read in public. So, I took it with me to the park, and enjoyed a bit of sunshine while I read about the effects of various plants on humans. Fairies would use plants. I remembered the way the woman convulsed that night. And started with Belladonna then looked at various mushrooms and flowers. They all gave pain and hallucinations and killed fast; most of them worked by ingestion. It would be difficult to keep some of them fresh enough to be guaranteed fatal. I figured two options, Belladonna and Lily of the Valley. So great, now I had information but no idea what to do with it.
“Hello, Quinn.” Olan’s voice in my ear startled me. He was standing on the back of the bench, staying in a shadow. I looked around, but there were no humans near enough to notice him.
“Did you find something out?” I felt the tickle of an idea still in my mind.
“I did.”
“Okay wait a minute. I need to work out this idea in my mind before you tell me anything that will distract me.”
Olan sat on the back of the bench and started to braid some red threads into a rope. “Can I help?”
“I figure the fairies are using Belladonna or Lily of the Valley. The key seems to be more pain, more fear, and more power.” This was Olan’s opportunity to show how much better it was to be working together instead of alone.
“That sounds about right. No one gets energy from a peaceful death. Fionuir probably knew that since she was a tiny thing. Have you never noticed that the Sidhe can be found around violence?”
“No, I don’t tend to hang around violence myself. So, something tells me there’s more to this than just increased power.”
“Nothing I can think of just now.” Olan stuffed the rope into his pocket.
He wasn’t helping. The itch in my brain didn’t go away nor did an answer come.
Olan rubbed his chin and frowned. “The fairy you saw at the murder, were they from the Belladonna or Lily family?”
“Yes. But it’s not just those clans affected. Bob didn’t say it’s just two clans, he said fairies.”
“What was in that book about Belladonna?”
I shrugged. “It grows here and it is fairly easy to get.”
“Lily of the Valley, is that the same?”
“Almost every garden on my street has some.” The tickle of an idea started to increase. “I think we’re getting warm.”
“Well, is there a place where the fairies might harvest the plants?”
“There’s a patch of both down at the other end of the path. But I think it’s a red herring. If we stake out that patch, we could be wasting our time. Like I said, both grow everywhere.”
“You don’t need much to turn the flower into poison in either case.” Olan looked up at the sky. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” I wasn’t really listening; his interruption chased the idea away before I could grasp it.
“Nothing there. It must be my imagination.” Olan turned back to me. “Are you ready to hear my news?”
“Sure, go ahead.” I hoped it was worth more than what I’d come up with.
“I have a friend who supplies the Sidhe court with jewels. She tells me that the women of the courts are competing for position. There is a lot of backstabbing going on and Fionuir may lose her control of the court.”
“Who is your friend?” His information was important but didn’t get us anywhere.
“A brownie, she likes to find shiny things. The Sidhe take half her supply and pay with food and protection for her family.”
“Is this information reliable?”
“As far as I know.” Olan sidestepped closer. “Are you willing to work together?”
“It’s not like we’ve made a lot of progress, but we haven’t screwed anything up yet either. What could go wrong?”
For a while, we tried to think of the best way to get close to Fionuir, or find a source of real information, but eventually we ran out of ideas. The sun was warm and no one was nearby. I felt so tired and started to doze off.
“Pixie.” A voice screeched from the treetops. I dropped the book and pulled out my wand. There was threat in that one sound. If I had to cast a protection spell I would, and be damned if a human saw.
Olan climbed off the back of the bench. I heard him say, “damn that bird.”
A crow the size of a small plane streaked to the earth, The Morrigan. Mad as hell and bent on Olan. I put my wand back in my pocket and stepped aside. Olan was capable of taking care of this all by himself. I looked around in case I needed to put a veil spell on us, but there was no one in sight.
The Morrigan landed beside Olan, she shrank to double his size and stalked him. “I have been looking for you.”
“Now, Morrigan, dear. Why do you sound so angry?” Olan tried to sidestep away from her. “I told you I didn’t mean what you thought.”
“What did you mean by ‘the crows give birds a bad name’?” She flickered in and out from crow form to a blur of black. “How am I supposed to have taken it?”
“I see. If that is what you heard I can see how you would be upset.” Olan kept sidestepping as if he thought he could escape. “What I actually said was, ‘they are so intelligent that they give other birds a bad name’. It was a compliment.”
“You think me a fool.” The crow shifted into a beautiful woman, then back to crow. “Do not try your games on me.”
Olan didn’t respond.
“What has he told you, wizard?” The Morrigan took the form of a woman again, she was beautiful. You could tell she had something to do with the Sidhe, the same fine skin, but hers was pale without the rosy blush of the Sidhe. Her hair dropped below her waist but it was black and straight, not fair and curly. She stalked toward me and the world disappeared as I met her green gaze. “Tell me.” Her voice surrounded me.
“Just gossip about the court.” I heard myself say.
“Hmm, those children are doing what comes naturally. Leave them to my protection.”
I felt a poke on my ankle, but I couldn’t look down.
The Morrigan leaned in and I fell into her eyes. “He will betray you when you need him the most.”
Then she let me go. I saw her shift back to a crow and she lunged at Olan before launching herself to the sky, one of the feathers from Olan’s staff in her beak.
I sank back onto the bench. Olan hopped onto the back and said, “She took a feather. That must mean she likes me.”
I laughed. It was going to be fun, even if it killed us.