Copperhead

slip away. No matter how much there needs to be one who stays, the one who stays will always regret not going, and perhaps it takes a particular kind of strength to both stay and bear up under having stayed.

I am still not going to be one that kills. I am never going to be one who has killed.

Directly to the Fey King, so they all could hear, she said: “If I let you go, will you promise to go back to your homes in the forest and never fight us again?”

It flung itself around inside her mental grasp, screaming.

She waited, patiently, waiting for the tantrum to wear itself out. I can and will choose not to kill, she thought, and the heady rope of power thrummed around her. She felt a new kind of power settling in place somewhere in the back of her skull, the feeling that she could make and own her decisions, and that people could decide for themselves whether or not they liked them. It didn’t matter to her anymore. When you ended up with great power you had the responsibility to not abuse it, but you also had the responsibility to use it, if that was necessary. When Queen Maud turned back the Armada, did she worry about what the Armada would think? And now Helen had the power, and even though she had a lifetime of bad judgments behind her, still, perhaps it was time to trust that she had learned something from them.

But perhaps she didn’t mind threatening death, for a good cause. The Fey King had quieted down and so Helen said, “If you do not promise, I will kill you all now.” The large mass of blue on her side thrummed in dismay.

It grew cunning. “I am only one leader. What if they break their promises after I am gone?”

“Fey live a long time,” she said, as if bored by the whole discussion, though her heart pattered through her chest. “Make them all swear, for all their lifetimes.”

It raged again, but then it quieted down. There was a thrumming, and she felt the question go out, through her, through all the women, into the fey that carpeted the city. There were no words, but they said in the way that bits of fey said it, <<I swear,>> <<I swear,>> <<I swear,>> and she heard in that how glad they were to be going home.

“Then go,” she said, eager for all of this to be done, and through her the word went out and they all picked up. She sent her vision out to the ends of their reach and she could see the whole city, the blue lifting, peeling back from stone and step, lifting, going, going. They joined up with each other as they flew, bits of fey finding their counterparts in mad joyful rushes, and she could feel through that extension of power how glad they were to be back with themselves. The fey leader had a lot of power, she realized, to make them split like that and keep them that way. She remembered Jane telling her how in the old days the fey that ran all the bluepacks were little bits of fey, a punishment system. Is that how the self-styled Fey King had made his order stick? Presented making them split up and cover the city as punishment for not winning the war?

As the blue joined together the blue aura dimmed, because it was made up of them, and they were leaving. She suddenly worried whether the command would extend to the bits of fey in The Hundred’s faces, but the women were detaching themselves one by one now from the funnels, and they looked fine, and Helen herself felt fine. Perhaps it was because those bits were solidly embedded in the humans; perhaps it was because their punishments dated from the time of the Fey Queen, and therefore some unknown quantity of time had not yet been served. She did not know, but she was not ready for those bits to be gone quite yet.

The fey were at the edge of her range now, ecstatic, flying home to the forest. Helen thought that perhaps humans did not really need to worry about the run-of-the-mill fey, as long as there was not a leader hell-bent on making them do something it was not in their nature to do.

She thought, too, that the real thing was that you had to both try to do right, and then deal with the fallout, whatever it was. Strength was not something that happened in a moment, but a sustained note that you held over time. She gestured to the rest of the dozen to detach, which they eagerly did, leaving the warehouse at last, going home.

Helen herself let go of the copper hydra and stood quietly in the warehouse, feeling the power go, feeling herself become only and wholly herself.

She was feeling pretty good about the decision to bargain with the Fey King rather than obliterate him.

And then Grimsby attacked.

Chapter 15 BLOOD AND COPPER

Helen was flung back against the wall with the force of the Fey King’s power. Everything splintered, fractured. She was pushed aside and soon she would be no more.

And then as quickly as the attack had come it was gone and her mind was clean and clear. Rook was standing over Grimsby with a steel dagger, its point poking the soft flesh of his neck.

The tall man with the snake eyes cowered, blubbering. She saw the man he had once been: a weak drunkard, now pitiful and crying. Inside him raged the fey, sharp and cunning, choosing to let the human take control for the sake of those tears.

Rook’s knifepoint did not waver.

“No,” Helen said. “He’s not worth it.”

“He would have destroyed the city,” shouted Rook. “Sometimes things are worth it.”

She thought he might be right, but at the same time, she had seen his face when he told her about his past, his present, about the indentured servitude of spying that went on and on and on, all for the mistake of being born havlen. It was not right that this man should bear any more guilt. “No,” she said, and slammed Grimsby back, hard, into the wall away from Rook. He was hooked into the machine still, and so she still had access to the little power he had left, in addition to her own. He could never be stronger than her.

“You lied,” she said, and she was vast and blue. “I thought your kind had to keep promises.”

“You heard what you wanted to hear,” sneered the Fey King, and oh misery perhaps that was true. All the fey had promised except this one. But she was not going to waste time in self-recrimination. If she had to have a blot on her soul, so be it. Sometimes you had to bear up under things.

The fey from the city were all gone, but she seized all the power from Grimsby himself, sucking it through the machine and into her until he was nothing, an ordinary man with a bit of fey remnant, cowering in the warehouse.

“You can’t hold me forever,” he said weakly. “You have to let go or keep me inside you.”

Helen could feel the power of the Fey King thrumming inside and realized he was right, and that further, she knew how strong the Fey King was. He would wear her down and take her over if she was foolish enough to think she could hold him.

But there were not only two choices. She could contain him in iron, she thought. Forever. “Rook, get that iron cage. We’ll put him in there for now and then get handcuffs.” She pointed at Grimsby, motioning him toward one of the hundred cages. “Push him in the minute I say go.”

Snarling, Grimsby backed up. At the mouth of it he stood, and she had to leave the door open to let the fey completely back into him. “Watch him,” she said, and then she let the power unspool, going back, back, back, until Grimsby was starting to stand, whole and healthy and hale.

He started to lunge, and she shoved the last bit back into him with all her might, shouting, “Go!” but he leapt at her.

He leapt at her with a sharpened copper pipe in his hand and she hadn’t thought to counter for anything like that, and it was coming at her, and Rook was still turning, still hurrying, but it would be too late, too late.

Then a heavy bright shape flashed in front of her, an iron stake held high. It bore Grimsby down to the ground, and she saw then that the iron stake was held in two canary yellow gloves. The copper and the iron flashed; the bodies rolled over and over in a tangle before Helen could fully register that the dark shape was Grimsby, and the bright one was Alistair.

“Let him go,” Helen shouted, and Rook, who had no weapon, plunged in to try to pull Alistair free. Long after, she remembered that.

Rook shouted in pain and her rapidly beating heart threatened to break, a bright hot thing that would shatter