“You forget yourself,’ he said, letting his eyes wander around the room, taking in the decor. “I do believe the old place has had a lick and a promise,” he said. “It’s almost as if we were expected.”
“You cannot be here,” Blackbird said.
“Cannot?” said Altair. “Do not presume to tell me what I can and cannot do.”
“The barrier…” said Blackbird.
“You forget,” said Altair, “assuming you ever knew in the first place. The barrier was created after we left. We were not sent away, we took ourselves apart. We crossed the void so that we might have peace and safety.” He looked around at the gathered faces. “What we could once cross, we can cross again.”
Kareesh hobbled forward. “Always the tricksy one,” said Kareesh in her crackly voice. “Never to be trusted.”
“Why is it, Kareesh?” asked Altair, “that wherever trouble is, you turn up? Somehow I knew you’d be here.”
“I came to plead,” said Kareesh.
“For their lives?” said Altair. “They were never meant to be. This is your doing, old one. Their pain is your burden. Their blood is on your hands.”
“Not to plead for them,” said Kareesh. “For you. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“Oh, please,” said Altair. “Not this again? Surely we are beyond that at least.”
“Long ago, I saw the future of the Feyre,” said Kareesh. “Long ago, I knew that without change they would stagnate and eventually die. It was as inevitable as the tide.”
“Spare us,” said Altair, looking at the ceiling.
“I knew my time was near, my last chance to save them all. It began with you, Altair. You had your chance,” said Kareesh. “You could have mixed the blood of the courts and all would have been well again.”
“You wish to justify your own perversions,” said Altair. “Purity will out.”
“And there’s none more pure than you, is there Altair?” she said, her voice wavering.
“You cannot sway me with compliments,” he said.
“And so there was another path,” said Kareesh. “By mixing the bloodlines with humanity the Feyre could endure.”
“Half-breeds,” said Altair. “Mongrels. Neither one thing nor the other. A dilution of the noble quality of the courts to be replaced by charlatans.” He looked around the faces, “Fakery, frauds and dog-witches, begging a seat at the hearth for a handful of herbs and a tin whistle.”
“You would have killed them all, but the barrier kept you apart. In time those children bore their own offspring, each generation renewing the pattern,” said Kareesh. “Now that pattern emerges again.” She searched the faces around her, looking for something she recognised.
“We tried to cleanse them,” said Altair. “But the High Court would not listen. The Warders stepped in, and we were beaten back. Well, not this time.”
“Why not?” I asked. “Why not this time?” I looked between Kareesh and Altair, but they were focused only on each other.
Kareesh ignored me. “When the barrier fell, you would have wiped them away, but it did not fall.”
“Your meddling will be your undoing, old one,” said Altair.
“How you must have raged,” she said, “to find yourself denied by a stripling girl and an untutored novice.”
“We will be denied no longer,” said Altair. “Tonight it all ends.”
“So it does,” said Kareesh. “The sun will rise and they shall fall. So say I.”
“…they shall fall,” echoed Angela.
I looked between Angela and Kareesh. “What?” I asked them. “What does it mean?”
Kareesh looked up at me with those unblinking black eyes. “I am so sorry,” she said, “that the burden must be yours, but you would have died in any case, had I not despatched her to the platform at Leicester Square to save you.”
“…so much brightness,” said Angela.
“What is it?” I shouted at them. “What are you telling me?”
“They are telling you that tonight is your last,” said Altair. “It is the winter solstice and tonight the sun has reached its nadir. From tonight it will rise, each day a little higher in the sky.”
“And tonight,” said Raffmir to me, “I will finally have my revenge. You will die by my hand.”
“You can’t kill me,” I told him. “You are sworn not to harm me or mine. If you do then under fey law your own life is forfeit.”
“There is no fey law,” said Altair. “The courts have fallen. They are dissolved. There is only one law, and it is mine.”
“But Kimlesh, Yonna, Mellion?” said Blackbird. “If you do this they will stand against you.”
“Kimlesh is dead,” said Altair. “So is Yonna. Mellion has fled, and Barthia is fuel for her own pyre. Krane is a ragged pile of fur and dust, and Teoth? Teoth is buried in his own earth.”
“They have fallen,” said Kareesh sadly. “The sun is at its darkest. There is no night longer than this.”
A shadow emerged behind Kareesh. Altair saw it and called out, “No, don’t…!”
There was a soft punching sound, and the tip of a blade emerged from the front of Kareesh’s shift. She looked down, not in surprise, but in recognition. The blood welled around the blade, soaking into the soft grey cloth. “So it begins,” she said, and slumped forward, her body crumpling into a heap at Deefnir’s feet.
“Enough words,” said Deefnir from behind her, wiping the knife and returning it to the sheath at his side. “She talks too much.”
Altair looked on in shock. “Deefnir, you do not know what you’ve done,” he whispered. Then he shouted. “Kill them! Kill all of them!”
“Run! Hide! Get away if you can!” I shouted, passing the baby to Blackbird and drawing my sword, as the people behind her scrambled past each other to get away. I backed towards the door.
“This ends tonight,” said Altair. “I want them all, no matter where they run, wherever they hide.”
Raffmir stepped forward, baring his sword in one smooth movement. He extended his free hand and the lights died. In a second he was outlined in cold fire. “Hide and seek,” he said. “My favourite game.”
I turned and ran through the door, looking for Blackbird, Alex, and William.
Sparky grabbed the wrist of the dark-eyed girl and pulled her out of the press heading for the main door. “Vicky, this way!”
“Let me go,” she said, pulling back resentfully, trying to rejoin the outward flow.
“Where are you going?” asked Sparky in a hoarse whisper.
“We have to get out. Didn’t you hear?”
“Yeah,” said Sparky. “They’ll be waiting out there in the dark, you mark my words.”
“You think so?” she said, watching people pushing through the main doors in their rush to get away.
“Course they will,” he said. “Stands to reason doesn’t it? First you cause panic, then you divert everyone straight into the mouth of the trap.” He clasped his hands together like the teeth of a beast, and she flinched and looked away.
“What are you going to do then?” she said. “They’ll be here in a minute and then it won’t make any difference.”
“We’ve got to use our heads,” said Sparky, tapping the side of his. “Come on, follow me.”
“Where are we going?” she whispered after him.
“Where we’re not expected to be. We’ll hide out somewhere quiet and emerge when all the fuss is over. We can slip away when no one’s the wiser.” He ducked into a door under the stairs which she hadn’t seen before. Inside, he pressed the door closed until it gave a light click.
“It’d be better if we could lock it, but there’s no lock so that’ll have to do,” he whispered. “I daren’t put a light on in case it draws attention.” In the darkness they felt around.
“Oi! Pack that in,” said Vicky.
“Sorry,” said Sparky. I can’t see a damned thing. I was exploring with my hands.”
“Well explore somewhere else,” she said firmly.
She didn’t sound too cross, though, and Sparky was beginning to think he might have fallen on his feet. There were coats hanging from pegs along the wall. They smelled musty and faintly of wet woodland walks and stale dog. Sparky started going through the coats one by one.