Page 58 of Night and Silence

“You seem to have some preconceived notions of what a Fetch is, so I guess we’re even,” said May. “I should have known who you were the second I saw your face in October’s memories. It should have been the first thing I said when she and I met. ‘The woman who condemned us all is here, in San Francisco, and she has your child.’ I should have known. But memory fades when it gets overwritten. A Fetch is a palimpsest of people they aren’t anymore, because every new life removes pieces of the old one. I didn’t know you, and I’ll be carrying that forever, especially if Gillian has been hurt to get to you.”

“You don’t know why I did what I did,” said Janet. “You weren’t there.”

That wasn’t always a safe assumption to make, with May, but under the circumstances, it was a reasonable one. No one had been there. “So tell us what happened,” I said. It was a way to keep her talking and calm until the Luidaeg came back; it was a way to keep the squirrels in my mind from chasing each other down dark holes. Gillian was out there somewhere. She needed me to find her, to bring her safely home. But if I left while the Luidaeg wanted me to stay, I would have more problems added to the pile I was already carrying.

Janet looked at me defiantly. “You won’t listen,” she said.

“Try us,” said Quentin.

Janet looked at him. Looked at me. And took a breath.

“It was a very long time ago . . .” she began.

FIFTEEN

“MY FATHER WAS A landholder in Scotland. He had fields such as stretched nearly to the horizon, and he could have been a king, if he’d wanted to call himself such. He didn’t like the idea of a crown, though, nor the thought of people coming to take it from him, and so he contented himself with land, and hall, and the knights that helped him hold it. We were comfortable, and content, and happy enough. He loved me.” Janet paused, lips curving in a small, secret smile. I felt like an intruder, looking at that smile. “I was his eldest daughter, and I looked so much like my mam, and she gone to the grave after the birth of my little brother, and he loved me so. With a son in line to inherit his lands, and set to care for me no matter what, he could afford to love me. I didn’t have to be handed off to the first wealthy man to come along and promise to fill my stomach. I could be his pretty girl, and all the world was mine to have.”

“Spoiled little rich kid,” I said. “Got it.”

Janet’s lip curled as she looked at me. “Things were different then. Being able to love your children when they were no longer children was a luxury most men never had.”

“Very few of the people in this room were permitted by circumstance to enjoy the company of a doting father,” said Tybalt blandly. “You will please forgive us if we are not as sweetly touched by your tale as you believe we ought to be, and hunger instead for the meat of the thing. We have a child to find, after all, and linger here only so long as we must.”

Not entirely a child, to the rest of the world, but forever a child to me. Not only me: Janet winced, nodding.

“My apologies,” she said. “I was . . . as I said, I was not an only child, not set to be his heir, but well enough treated and spoilt as to believe the world was mine by right. He set a patch of farmland and forest on me as my dowry, a place called Caughterha, where the grass grew as green as the sky was blue, and the river ran heavy with fish throughout the year. It was a rich place. Any man who married me would have it for his own, and if I never married, it would keep me fed even if my brother tired of me or had a wife who would see me set aside. Legally, it was complicated for a woman to own such, but my father was well-loved among the local landowners and his men alike, and he was fairly confident no hand would try to wrest it from me. No mortal hand did.”

Janet’s lip twisted again, this time not in my direction. The look of disgust seemed to be turned inward, at someone who wasn’t here. “The fae knew a good piece of land as well as we humans did, and they anchored one of their parasitic halls in my wood, near my river. They even spread the word through the towns nearby, said ‘I forbid you maidens all as wear gold in your hair to come nor go by Caughterha.’ As if that ever worked.”

“It would work on us,” said Quentin. She turned to him and raised an eyebrow. I almost jumped. How had Cliff missed how much his new wife’s expressions looked like mine? He shrugged. “I know you may not believe it, but I’m only as old as I look. I’m a little younger than Gillian. And if someone said, ‘don’t go in that one, specific forest, bad things will happen if you do,’ I wouldn’t go. Ignoring that kind of warning gets you killed. Unless you’re a hero, you wouldn’t.”

Tybalt nodded agreement. I frowned.

“I think this is where the changeling experience differs, guys,” I said. “I would absolutely have gone to see what all the fuss was about.”

“If you had, if you broke that rule, I hope what would have happened to you would have been different from what happened to me,” said Janet. “I went. I had to. I needed to know. I tied my skirts above my knee to keep them from dredging up the dew, and I braided my hair to keep it free of the trees, and I went to Caughterha with all the arrogance I was heir to. And I met a man.” Her voice and face softened. For a moment, she looked so young it ached. “I met a beautiful, charming man who came out of the trees and told me not to pick his roses. Me, who had planted them, tended them, known them as my own for my entire life! I laughed in his face, told him if he wished to deny a girl her pleasures, he’d best hie himself out of my wood. And I left.”

We were quiet, waiting. We didn’t have to wait long.

“I left, and then I went back, again and again, over and over, until spring melted into summer, until he kissed me among the roses. He didn’t know I was a local landholder’s daughter. He knew I claimed to own the wood, but he had laughed and said his mistress would be mightily interested to hear that, and I never felt, even for a moment, that he believed me. To him, I was nothing but a human woman, and to me, he was a human man.”

“A human man who had sold himself, body and soul, to the Queen of Faerie,” said the Luidaeg. I turned. She was standing in the doorway that led to the kitchen, a plate in her hand and a weary expression on her face. “Don’t forget that part. I know he told you, because he didn’t have a choice. That was part of the agreement. Seven years of everything he wanted, no matter how extravagant, no matter how depraved. Seven years of paradise, his needs met, his belly full. And at the end—”

“A tithe to Hell,” snapped Janet hotly. “How could any man be expected to honor such a bargain?”

“Because he made that part up,” said the Luidaeg. “We geased him to tell anyone human he encountered that he was in the service of the fae, and they needed to keep their hands off if they didn’t want to incur our wrath. He said he needed some freedom to stay healthy and happy and we believed him, or, rather, Mother believed him because she always wanted to think the best of you humans.”

“You never did,” said Janet.

“Because I had actually paid attention to more than a few humans. I knew, even then, how much trouble you could cause.”

“Will you deny that you intended to sacrifice him?”

“No. He was the tithe. But it wasn’t to Hell, and he came to us willingly. Seven years of everything he wanted, and at the end, a peaceful death. That’s more than most men got in those days. Hell, that’s more than most men get now.” The Luidaeg walked over and shoved the plate at me. “Cold chicken and cheddar cheese with strawberry jam, just the way you like it.”

Janet blinked. “You . . . like that?”

“If you’re going to be disgusted, go for it,” I said, taking the plate. “Cliff used to make gagging noises and think he was the cleverest man alive.”