After I thought that but before I could actually turn around, there was a swirling in the waters near my feet, and a slow spiral of water spray spun up from the surface of the lake, a bizarre sight. The spray rolled up and away from a female form, beginning at the feet, bare and pale, and rolling up over a medieval-style gown of emerald green. The gown was belted with a woven silver rope, and a slightly curved, single-edged knife of some dark, glassy material hung at an angle through it.
When the spray rolled up over the woman's face, I expected my godmother's blazing wealth of copper and scarlet curls, her wide feline eyes of amber, her features that always made her seem smug and somewhat pleased with herself, in absence of the animation of any other emotion.
Instead I saw a long, pale throat, features of heart-stopping, cold beauty, canted eyes greener than any color to be found in the natural world, and long, silken hair of purest white, bound within a circlet of what looked like rose vines surrounded in gleaming ice, beautiful and brittle and cruel.
Behind me, a deep-throated snarl burst forth from Mouse, back on the shore.
"Greetings, mortal," said the faerie woman. Her voice shook water and earth and sky with subtle power. I felt it resonating through the elements around me as much as heard it.
My mouth went dry and my throat got tight. I leaned on my staff to help me balance as I cast a courtly bow in her direction. "Greetings, Queen Mab. I do beg your pardon. It was not my intention to disturb thee."
My head shifted into panicked, quick thought. Queen Mab had come to me, and that absolutely could not be good. Mab, monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, the Queen of Air and Darkness, was not a very nice person. In fact, she was one of the most feared beings of power you'd find short of archangels and ancient gods. I'd once used my wizard's Sight to look upon Mab as she unveiled her true self in a working of power, and it had come perilously close to driving me insane.
Mab was not some paltry mortal being like Grevane or Cowl or the Corpsetaker. She was far older, far cruder, far more deadly than they could ever be.
And I owed her a favor. Two, to be exact.
She stared at me for a long and silent moment, and I didn't look at her face. Then she let out a quiet laugh and said, "Disturb me? Hardly. I am here only to fulfill the duties I have been obliged to take upon myself. It is no fault of thine that this summons reached mine ears."
I straightened up slowly and avoided her eyes. "I had expected my godmother to come."
Mab smiled. Her teeth were small and white and perfect, her canines delicately sharp. "Alas. The Leanansidhe is tied up at the moment."
I drew in a breath. My godmother was a powerful member of the Winter Court, but she couldn't hold a candle to Mab. If Mab wanted to take Lea down, she certainly could do it-and for some reason the thought spurred on a protective instinct, something that made me irrationally angry. Yes, Lea was hardly a benevolent being in her own right. Yes, she'd tried to enslave me several times in the past several years. But for all of that, she was still my godmother, and the thought of something happening to her angered me. "For what reason have you detained her?"
"Because I do not tolerate challenges to my authority," she said. One pale hand drifted to the hilt of the knife at her belt. "Certain events had convinced your godmother that she was no longer bound by my word and will. She is now learning otherwise."
"What have you done to her?" I asked. Well. It didn't sound like a question so much as a demand.
Mab laughed, and the sound of it came out silvery and smoother than honey. The laugh bounded around the waves and the earth and the winds, clashing against itself in a manner that made the hairs on my neck stand up and my heart race with a sudden apprehension as I felt an odd kind of pressure settle over me, as if I were closed into a small room. I gritted my teeth and waited the laugh out, trying not to show how harshly it had affected me. "She is bound," Mab said. "She is in some discomfort. But she is in no danger from my hand. Once she acknowledges who rules Winter, she will be restored to her station. I can ill afford the loss of so potent a vassal."
"I need to speak to her now," I said.
"Of course," Mab said. "Yet she languishes in the process of enlightenment. Thus am I here to fulfill her obligation to teach and guide you."
I frowned. "You locked her away somewhere, but you're keeping her promises?"
Something cold and haughty flickered through Mab's eyes. "Promises must be kept," she murmured, and the words made wave, wind, and stone tremble. "My vassal's oaths and bargains are binding upon me, so long as I restrain her from fulfilling them."
"Does that mean that you will help me?" I asked.
"It means that I will give you what she might give you," Mab said, "and speak what knowledge she might have spoken to you were she here in flesh, rather than in proxy." She tilted her head slowly to one side. "You know, wizard, that I may speak no word that is untrue. Thus is my word given to you."
I eyed her warily. It was true that the high Sidhe could not speak words that were untrue-but that wasn't the same thing as telling the truth. Most of the Sidhe I had met were past masters of the art of deception, speaking in allusions and riddles and inferences that would undermine the necessary honesty of their words so thoroughly that they might be much stronger lies than if they had simply spoken a direct falsehood. Trusting the word of one of the Sidhe was an enterprise best undertaken with extraordinary caution and exacting care. If I had any choice in the matter, I would avoid it.
But there was nothing I could do but forge ahead. I still had to find out more about what Sergeant Kemmler's Lonely Hearts Club Band was doing in Chicago, and that meant taking the risk of speaking with my godmother. Mab was simply more of the same risk.
A lot more of it.
"I seek knowledge," I said, "about the one known as the Erlking."
Mab arched an eyebrow. "Him," she said. "Yes. Your godmother knows some little of him. What would you know of him?"
"I want to know why all of Kemmler's disciples are grabbing up all the copies of the White Council's book about him."
Nothing that I could imagine would truly rattle Mab's composure, but that sentence apparently came close. Her expression froze, and with it the wind came to a sudden, dead halt. The waves of the shore abruptly stilled to a sheet of glass beneath her feet, dimly reflecting the glow of the city skyline in the distance and the last shreds of purple light in the leaden sky.