Prince of Ash

(Book Two of the Shadow Fae Trilogy)

Prologue

The night was dark and cold, born from the depths of a winter more bitter than even the oldsters could remember. No gaslight reached the ruin of the burned-out shop, but the cloudless sky was spangled with stars. The constellation of the Hunter strode over the horizon, a silver shape amidst the blackness of the infinite sky, proclaiming the dominion of winter.

Pook stood in the street for a while, watching for any movement, any sign that whatever lay within the ruins knew that he was there. Even from a distance, he could smell old smoke, the echo of fire wafting from the charred beams that rose, stark as bones, against the moon. The place had been a chandler's shop before the fire had taken it, and maybe flame and the memory of flame was why a seelie fae had claimed it for a lair.

Eight kids found dead, Rose had said, as she read the newspaper to him. Coroner thinks they was strangled, but there weren't no marks on 'em.

It had been near the back of the paper, just a short paragraph, the brief tale of a curiosity barely worth noting. Eight children, all of them guttersnipes, dustbin kids, not even indentured, and so of no value to anyone who mattered. But Rose knew by now what would catch his interest. Two years of looking through the paper whenever they could buy or steal one, two years of searching for any story that might hint of bad things to come, had attuned them both to the signs of fae activity.

Pook sighed, and his breath formed a cloud of steam in front of his face. Damn it was cold, so cold he was almost glad he wasn't all the way human. Then again, if he'd been totally human, he wouldn't be here now, would he? He'd be back at the Trap, or at the Sevens, snug and warm, with gin in his belly.

And it'd be somebody else's job then, wouldn't it?

But who else would do it? Not the dyana, that was for damn sure. She had the power to enslave the minds of other faelings, plenty to keep her safe, so why worry about what the fae were doing in some other part of town?

Someday she's going to find me. Someday I'll slip, and she'll feel it, and then...

He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and thrust it between his lips, trying to distract himself with the ordinary. The matches, he carried in a small tin. He struck one, then held it up for a moment, staring at the fire as if it were something alive.

I ain't afraid of you, he told it. Maybe someday that would even be true.

Pook sucked smoke into his lungs, let it soothe his nerves. Somewhere far off, cathedral bells tolled midnight. In his blood, something turned, marking the hour of greatest darkness.

Time to go.

The smell of ash and old fire grew stronger as he approached the burned shop. The roof hadn't entirely collapsed; no wonder it had seemed like a good place for children to huddle together through the long winter night. Their little corpses must have been black from soot when the crushers pulled them out.

Pook shuddered and pushed aside thoughts of other soot-stained corpses. His life circled around, leading him back to fire, again and again, and damned if he knew why. Maybe God had it in for unseelie faelings like him. Hell, maybe God just had it in for everybody.

He paused in the soot-filled shadows, listening and smelling. No matter what Darcy thought, he wasn't stupid--if he was going to do shit like this, then he was going to do it when the advantage was all his, not the seelie's. Midnight on a winter's night, and he couldn't ask for the cards to be stacked more in his favor, and he thought for a moment that maybe the fae would just cut and run.

A flicker of light touched the corner of his eye--that was all the warning he got. Heat seared him, sucking the air from his lungs, and for a moment he heard flames and felt the dying struggles of the children whose breath the seelie had stolen.

Pook pulled cold from the night all around, banishing the suffocating heat. The memory of frost clung to the stone floor under his feet, and he built it into a shield, driving the fae back. He got a look at it then; it was a small thing made all of light. Dragonfly wings hummed in the air, and gossamer draperies clothed its tiny, perfect form. It was beautiful, enchanting--in short, exactly the kind of thing that most easily seduced kids to their deaths.

It flew at him with a buzzing sound, like an angry hornet. The tiny mouth formed into a sucker-like shape, striving to steal the life from his lungs. Claws raked him, leaving a trail of scorch marks across the sleeve of his coat. For an instant, he caught sight of its angry eyes, like quicksilver mirrors that reflected his own face back at him, a dark shape of brown skin and night-black hair.

He staggered back, struggling to put space between them, and flung shadows at its eyes. A high, thin shriek, like the sound of breaking violin strings, tore from its throat as it fell, blinded. He snatched the advantage it gave him, digging his fingers into the stone floor. Earth and shadow responded, opening like a maw, then closing around the seelie fae's small shape. Its light winked out, but he could still feel it struggling against the dirt that pressed in on it. Closing his eyes and forcing himself to concentrate, he shoved it deeper into the earth, down and down and down, until water seeped around it and put out its light for good.

Pook opened his eyes and found the night silent around him. He stood up slowly and wiped his hands absently against his thighs, smearing ash everywhere. Not that it made much difference; his clothes were already so filthy that it was hard to imagine anything making them worse.

His cigarette had fallen to the ground sometime during the battle and gone out. Pook picked it up, checked that the coal was truly dead instead of just smoldering, and put it in his pocket for later.

Got to move. His wards were as good as he could make them...but in the end, he just didn't know if they would be good enough to keep the dyana from finding him. So he never lingered after a battle, not even when he had been hurt.

Pook left the ruin and took to the streets. Within a quarter hour, he was back amidst the crowds that thronged the slums down by the Blackrush. Even the bitterest cold couldn't keep the truly desperate at home, and they filled the garbage-covered streets, looking for the false warmth to be found in gin or whores. He moved through them without drawing a look; just another ragged youth, no different from a thousand others. The symbols scrawled on some of the walls warned him that he was flirting with the edge of another gang's territory, so he kept his head down and his step quick, knowing there were some who'd like nothing better than to catch a Rat Soldier alone.

But then, when wasn't he alone? Even when he was with the rest of the gang who'd taken him in, he felt like he was on the edge of things, not in the heart. Except for Rose, none of them knew that they had a changeling in their midst, a thing less than human. And even she couldn't help him in his battles.

Every night I fight alone. And every day I dream of the sea.

He shook his head sharply. Getting maudlin, that was what was happening. No sense in it, no sense at all. It couldn't change anything--and what was there to be changed, really? He was still alive, wasn't he?

But for how long, b'hoy? Been damned lucky so far, haven't I? Ain't never run into nothing worse than I could handle. But someday...if the dyana don't find me and suck my brain out my eye holes...if I don't get knifed or shot on the streets...if I don't get some bad gin and keel over dead five steps out of the saloon...someday I'm going to find myself up against one of the great ones. One of the Gentry.

The creature he had fought this night was just a poor country cousin to the Gentry. Dangerous enough, God knew, but in the end, its power was a candle before the sun. Every time he went out and faced down a fae, there was always the chance he could find himself up against something really deadly, something that would burn him up in a second. And there was no way to know beforehand. No way to know until he was face-to-face with it, and it was too late to run.

But there was nothing else he could do.

* * *

Mina stood in the shadows near the burned chandler's shop, peering into the darkness. Her eyes cut through the night, catlike, revealing the small clues left from the battle that had taken place earlier: disturbed earth and fresh footprints in the ashes. But her other senses told a fuller story; she could smell the tang of power on the wind, taste it like dark wine on her tongue.

"It's the same one," she said finally.

Wheels creaked over the uneven cobblestones, and a pale streak of moonlight fell across her husband's face, sparking off his spectacles and earrings. "Yes," he agreed; the word became a plume of steam in the air. She wished that Duncan had stayed home; despite his coat, muffler, and gloves, she could see that he was shivering. Too human to be out on a night like this, she thought wryly, although she would never say it. He had his pride, after all, or else might mistake "too human" for "too old."

So he was here with her, teeth chattering but eyes intent. His long nostrils flared, scenting magic. "Definitely male. Young enough that he's just beginning to come into the fullness of his power."

Mina prowled restlessly near the boundaries of the broken building. "Why?" she asked the night, not expecting any answer that made sense. "Why's he doing this?"

The wheels of Duncan's chair creaked again as he maneuvered closer. The moonlight picked out the gray threaded through his long brown hair. "What is it that you think he's doing?"

The tone of his voice gave her pause. "Fighting a private war against the fae," she said uncertainly. "Do you have any other explanation?"

"No. But I think it unwise to assume too much at this juncture."

"Maybe." She stuffed her hands deep into her pockets. "If he attracted our attention, he's attracted that of others, too."

"I fear on that count you are likely correct."

Mina shook her head, her mouth tightening into an angry line. "Damn it."

 Chapter One

It was cold the day Alex's old life came to an end. Snow fell in fat, wet flakes that dissolved as soon as they touched the dark water of the river. Spume flew back off the steamer's prow, a spray of mist that verged on ice, making the decks slick, and crackling off the heavy ropes. Gulls shrieked, wheeling like white ghosts against the low, gray clouds.

They scream like the ben sidhe, Alex thought, standing in the prow of the steamer and watching as the docks drew closer and closer. And perhaps the gulls were harbingers of death, in a way, even if it was only the death of everything she had ever known.

Or perhaps it is my death they herald, here in this far, foreign land.

She sighed and tried not to be bitter if it were. Weariness ached in her bones; but more, it ached in her very soul. The physical exertion of her flight across her snow-bound homeland had largely been healed on her ocean voyage, and she had gained back all the weight she'd lost, thanks to the cook's generous helpings. But it would take far longer for her to stop looking over her shoulder, to stop thinking that at any moment she would hear voices shouting for her capture.

And how long will it be before I stop seeing their faces in my dreams? Before I no longer hear Gosha pleading for help? Before Mama's screams fall silent?

The steamer slowed, angling towards its berth, and sailors moved about on all sides of her, their breath making frozen plumes in the air. They complained bitterly of the cold, and one or two of them cast her odd looks, as though they thought her mad for choosing to wait in the weather. She had claimed that the frigid climate of Ruska had prepared her for the worst Niune could summon, and that her heavy layers of petticoats and her thick jacket would keep out everything short of a blizzard. There was even some truth to it; although, in fact, she was human enough to wish she could have waited until spring.

But that had not been a choice. Her powers were too slender, her fae blood too thin; best to make her escape in the dead of winter, when her magic was at its height. When only a madwoman, or the daughter of one, would try to make a journey across half of Ruska. Across a hundred miles of frozen rivers, snow-covered forests, and open plains, where the wind howled like wolves and savaged the traveler with just as deadly an intensity. It was a journey that would try even a full-grown man, let alone a girl.

With any luck, they gave me up for dead a month ago.

The boat bumped gently against the docks, and she heard the coarse yells of the sailors. They'd put into port many times since leaving Ruska's ice-clotted seas, but this was the final stop for her. She picked up her battered valise and made her way carefully over the ice-slick deck towards where the sailors were already running down the gangway.

The smell of the river rose up all about her. Flotsam of every possible type choked its turbid waters: sodden paper, raw sewage, dead animals, the offal of butcheries. I wonder what makes the water black, though? Perhaps I could run some tests--

But no. That was over now. There was no mother to tolerate her experiments, to share the secret and keep it concealed from disapproving male eyes. She had to remember that her old life was over, had been buried along with Moira.

"You'll be getting off here, then, miss?" the captain asked.

Her heart sped for a moment, and she felt fear trace an icy hand down her back. What if he refuses to let me leave? It was an insane, paranoid thought, but she couldn't entirely suppress it.

"Yes," she said, and fixed him with the coldest look she could summon.

He nodded, rubbing his hands together to warm them. "Good luck to you, then. You did us a right good turn, fixing the boiler like that. If'n you change your mind and decide you don't want to stay here, we'll be in port for the next three days. Just come back, and you can have free passage wherever you like."

And Father always said there was no use in educating a woman, she thought with a wry twist of her lips. Well, now at least she knew the worth of all the years of reading and experimenting she and her mother had done while Aleksei was away in the capital.

They summed precisely to the price of passage on a squalid little steamer.

"Thank you," she said, knowing that she wouldn't be taking him up on his offer. Where else would she go?

Even so, she almost balked at her first sight of the docks. The Blackrush was a deep river, allowing ocean-going vessels to sail into the city of Dere. Books had told her that Dere was the largest city in Niune, and that most of the kingdom's commerce was conducted there. But somehow...the words had failed to convey anything of the chaos that now confronted her.

Apparently, mere bad weather wasn't enough to make anyone in Dere stay home. Dockhands and sailors unloaded cargo, lashed ropes, hauled on nets, sang, bickered, and brawled. Captains screamed orders, while well-dressed merchants ranted over damage to their goods. Carts pulled by enormous horses rumbled and rattled about, some of them barely able to navigate between the mountains of boxes, crates, bales, coils, and barrels that cluttered the wharves. Vendors selling parsnips, noodles, mollusks, pastries, and beans sang loud songs praising their wares, while donkeys brayed and dogs barked, and above all, the gulls screamed.

Chernovog, god of the waning year, protect me. I can't do this, Alex thought. Crossing Ruska alone in winter had been one thing--then she'd had only to contend with the elements. But this...

I didn't think there were this many people in the entire world.

So many people, and none of them friends. Her cold-chapped hands clenched tightly on her valise, she closed her eyes, then opened them again, as if she hoped the madness of the docks were some trick of her thick-lensed spectacles. Her feet felt frozen to the deck of the little steamer, and her heart pounded in her chest like a bird in a cage.

I can do this. I have to. I don't have any other choice.

I do. I could take up the captain on his offer. He hasn't been bad to me--he didn't ask for anything but gold in payment, and most of the hands stopped trying to get under my skirts after I fixed the boiler. I could go with them. Go somewhere else--anywhere else...Dere didn't have to be my destination. I could go to Grynnith, try to find Mama's family there--

But that was the first place he would look, if he thought there were any chance Alex had survived. Her mother had been Niunish by birth, the product of an alliance between a small and unimportant noble house and the third son of a Grynnithian marquise. Moira was a mere child when her family was slaughtered, and she escaped to her father's relatives in Grynnith only through providence and the help of loyal servants. But she had always considered Niune her true home.