She turned to see a creature, as tall and thin as a scarecrow, shrouded in tattered black fabric that whipped through the air. His eyes were a dead, pupil-less white, and his teeth were clear as glass.
Kaye's scream died in her throat. Her nails scrabbled at the creature's arm and he let her go, pushing past. He moved so nimbly that by the time she'd turned her head, his skeletal hand was on the frozen man's throat.
Corny splashed up onto the bank and collapsed in the snow.
The creature pressed a thumb against the man's forehead and hissed some words that Kaye didn't know. The frozen man moved slowly to resume standing like an indifferent sentry, clothing soaked through and dripping.
"What do you want?" Kaye demanded, taking off her coat and wrapping it around a shivering Corny. "Who are you?”
"Sorrowsap," said the creature, bowing his head. His hair was thin and coiled like the tangle of roots beneath a weed. "At your service.”
"Great! That's just fucking great." Luis held his stomach.
Corny shuddered reflexively and pulled the coat tighter.
"My service?" Kaye asked. Looking across the forest, she saw the other human figures walk back to their original positions. They had been coming, had been perhaps only moments away from entering the fight.
"The King of the Unseelie Court commands that I guard your steps. I have followed you since you left his court.”>He had composed himself, and when one of his folk's clawed hands happened to push her, causing her to stumble as she crossed the threshold, he only looked up as though annoyed by her clumsiness. Beside him were bowls of fruit, brought cold from dark caverns; cordials of clover and nettle; and tiny bird hearts still glossy with blood. He bit into a grape, not minding the crack of seeds against his teeth.
"Ethine. Be welcome.”
She frowned and opened her mouth, then hesitated. When she spoke, she merely said, "My Lady knows she dealt you a terrible blow.”
"I did not realize your Lady liked to brag, even by proxy. Come, have a bite of fruit, take something to cool your hot tongue.”
Ethine moved toward him stiffly and perched on the very edge of the lounge. He handed her an agate goblet. She took the shallowest of sips, then set it down.
"It chafes you to be polite to me," he said. "Perhaps Silarial should have taken your feelings into consideration when she chose her ambassador.”
Ethine contemplated the earthen ground, and Roiben stood.
"You begged her to let someone else go in your place, didn't you?" He laughed with vindictive certainty. "Perhaps even told her how much it hurt you to see what your brother had become?”
"No," Ethine said softly.
"No? Not in those words, but I'll wager you said it all the same. Now you see how she cares for those who serve her. You are one more thing with which to needle me and nothing more than that. She sent you despite your pleading.”
Ethine had closed her eyes tightly. Her hands were clasped in her lap, fingers threaded together.
He took her glass and drank from it. She looked up, annoyed, the way she had once been annoyed when he'd pulled her hair. When they were children.
It hurt him to look at her as an enemy.
"I do not see that you care for my feelings any more than she does," Ethine said.
"But I do." He made his voice grave. "Come, deliver your message.”
"My Lady knows she dealt you quite a blow. She further knows that your control of the other faeries in your lands is spotty after the botched Tithe.”
Roiben leaned against the wall. "You even sound like her when you say it.”
"Don't jest. She wants you to fight her champion. If you win, she will leave your lands unmolested for seven years. If you lose, you will forfeit the Unseelie Court to her." Ethine looked at him with anguished eyes. "And you will die.”
Roiben barely heard her plea, he was so surprised by the Bright Queen's offer. "I cannot think but that this is either generosity or some cunning beyond my measure. Why should she give me this chance at winning when now I have near none?”
"She wants your lands hale and whole when she takes them, not weakened by a war. Too many great courts have fallen into rabble.”
"Do you ever imagine no court at all?" Roiben asked his sister quietly. "No vast responsibilities or ancient grudges or endless wars?”