The door handle rattled, followed by a heavy thump as something hit it hard.
“Dave,” said Blackbird. “Pull the curtains down, Use them to climb down the outside and get Lesley away.”
Dave went to the window and started furiously tugging at the curtains.
“What about you?” said Lesley.
“I’m the reason they’re here,” said Blackbird. “They’re not going to allow me to leave.”
“But the baby,” said Lesley. “What about little William?”
“Get yourself out,” said Blackbird. “When you’re safe, I’ll follow you down.” What she didn’t say was, if you can get down.
Dave rattled the window open, and pushed it wide to the night air. The cold rushed into the room, chilling it further. He’d got the curtain loose but was now having trouble finding anything to secure it to.
“This is not going to make very good rope,” he said.
“Use the bed to anchor it,” said Blackbird. “It’s heavy enough.” The door thumped again, and then again, as whoever was on the other side became more determined.
“This doesn’t work,” said Dave.
“I know,” said Blackbird. “It’s the wrong sort of material. Can you smell smoke? Is that coming from outside?”
“Then why the f…” said Dave.
At that moment the doorframe split from the wood panelling of the wall and the edge of the door splintered inwards. “Knock, knock!” said Raffmir, from beyond the door.
“Step out of the way,” said Blackbird.
“What are you talking about?” said Lesley. “What do you think you are doing?”
“I’m doing what I must,” said Blackbird. “I’m ordering you as Steward of the Eighth Court to stand aside.” She stood up straight, lifted her chin, and patted the baby’s back gently. “There, there, honey,” she said.
“But Blackbird…” said Lesley.
“Dave, move her out of the way. It’s me he wants.” Blackbird flinched as the door crunched and split under the force of his blows.
“At least give me the baby,” said Lesley. “At least give me little William.” Dave was drawing her back towards the window, but she pulled against him.
“He wants William too,” said Blackbird. “It’s what they’re here for.”
Raffmir grabbed the edge of the splintered door and wrenched it, breaking it in two and tossing the pieces over the gallery banister into the hall below where they clattered. “They don’t make them like they used to,” he said. He kicked the chest aside, and it lurched, the leg buckling so it collapsed. He pushed it aside with his foot.
“Have you any idea how difficult all this is going to be to replace?” he said. “Still, out with the old.” He drew his sword. The edge glittered in the dim light.
“I demand that you leave this place immediately,” said Blackbird. “You are not wanted here.”
“You demand?” said Raffmir. “You have a nerve.”
“I invoke the wardings of this place. Begone!”
Raffmir laughed softly. “I was setting wardings here before you were born. This was our court long before it was ever yours.”
“Then we would request your leave to vacate and leave you to it,” said Blackbird.
“We are a little beyond that, do you not think?” said Raffmir.
“As the Lady of the Eighth Court, I demand the right for me and my people to withdraw peacefully.”
She said it with all the dignity she could, but Raffmir simply chuckled to himself. “There are so many things wrong with that, I can hardly count them. There is no Eighth Court. You are not a Lady of the High Court of the Feyre. There is no High Court — it’s gone… dissolved… ended.”
“Some of us still hold to our laws. Did you not swear that you would do me and mine no harm? Is your word worth nothing, Cartillian, Son of the Void, Star of the Moon’s Darkness?”
“You invoke my name? Very well, Velladore Rainbow Wings, daughter of Fire and Air, I remind you how you came by that name. You bought my name with the life of my sister. You killed her with your own hand.”
“She broke the law.”
“She did nothing! She would have drawn back. She would have remembered herself, if you hadn’t killed her first.”
“No,” said Blackbird. “She wouldn’t, and you know it.”
“Well, now there is no law, there are no courts, and there is nothing between you and the edge of my blade.”
“Oath-breaker,” said Blackbird.
“A badge I shall wear with pride,” said Raffmir. He stepped forward, and as he did a shadow materialised behind him. There was the flash of a blade. He twisted on the spot, and parried the cut on the edge of his blade about six inches from his neck.
“Cousin,” he said, as he used his sword to push mine away. “I was beginning to think that you had disappointed me and fled.” He twisted the blade so that his slid free and sliced into the space where I stood so that I was forced to jump backwards out of reach.
Amber finished dragging the pieces of fallen timber into the loose horseshoe she had formed around the Way-node. The broken branches wouldn’t prevent anyone reaching the Way-node, but the wardings she’d placed on them would give her warning.
She stopped again and listened to the sounds of the woodland around her. The night was still, and the trees reached frozen fingers up into the night air. She shrugged and returned to the small mound in the centre of the hollow where the Way-node was, placing her feet above the node. She breathed in slowly, and when she exhaled, a few of the fallen leaves around her lifted from the ground, floating on the air in a gentle dance, circling around the inside of the barrier she’d made. More joined them, until a silent column of floating leaves, brown, orange and gold, circled slowly around her. She stood at the centre, sword in hand, eyes half-closed, feeling the drift of the air, sensing each fluttering leaf, searching for disturbances that shouldn’t be there.
After a while she opened her eyes. “If I were you,” Amber said quietly, “I’d find another way.”
Where the hollow had been cold, now it chilled further, as three grey shadows coalesced into being beyond the barrier of branches.
“You are the one who is in the wrong place,” hissed one.
“We are three,” said another.
“And you are one alone,” said the third. The leaves continued to circle as the three shadows formed a triangle around the column on leaves. “You can try and escape down the Way, but we will follow you wherever you go.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” said Amber, quietly.
The three figures hissed as one. Around the barrier, the twigs began to crackle and the sticks to rattle against each other as a blackness deeper than the night spread over them. The sharp smell of decay crept through the undergrowth, reaching inwards for the figure at the centre of the whirling column. As it did, the column of leaves expanded, until it encompassed not just the barrier, but the insubstantial grey shadows at the edge. The leaves didn’t touch them, but passed over and around them, until they were shadows within the column. The blackness raced across the leaf-litter towards her.
“And now you’re committed,” said Amber.
In response she lifted her arms, sword held out. She turned swiftly, scribing a circle in the air around her with the tip of her sword. Into the hollow came a different smell, the smell of bonfires and autumn. There was a hiss and crackle from the barrier, and all at once it flashed into fire, the flames rising through the floating ring to the screams of the Shades caught there. The centre of the ring was a column of orange flame with Amber at the core. There was a low, whump expanding outwards, and a ball of smoke rose from the hollow into the night air, extinguishing the flames.
When it dissipated, all was silent. Amber walked naked from the mound at the centre of the hollow, holding only her sword, and regarded the charred ground. She shimmered and her glamour re-clothed her. She shook her head and her dark hair fell back into the short feathered style it had always had.
“You were warned,” she said.