Free Wasteland King by Lilith Saintcrow

could tell what he held.
    These halls were larger, and less dusty. The same thread of bustling activity ran parallel to their silence; they moved in a deserted bubble. Doors reared up, were opened, passed away. The ceiling and walls drew away as the passages became larger, and finally, acres of polished glassblack stone rang under his boots and the shushing of the Steward’s robes.
    The great gates of Unwinter’s Keep stood open, and the bridge over the murky moat stretched threadlike over the fluid underneath, also glassy and smooth. Gallow wasn’t fooled—the Watcher in the Moat was capable of blinding speed, and if the tentacles didn’t get you the sheer horror of the thing probably would. More than one idiot attacker, just after the Sundering, had discovered as much.
    â€œ
I am to ansswer any quesstionss.
” The Steward’s tone plainly said he hoped for none.
    Well, Gallow had a few, but there were only one or two that needed answering. “The pennants.” Gallow pointed vaguely upward. “Black.”
    No reply. The bleached-bone unface regarded him, the mouth closed tight. Of course this sidhe wouldn’t give anything for free, especially without a direct question.
    â€œWhat do the black flags mean?” Gallow persisted.
    The sidhe made a low creaking noise. Dust puffed from its robes, and Gallow realized the creature was laughing.
    After a few moments, the mouth bubbling with blue-tinged saliva at its corners, the Steward inhaled wetly, tongue flicking out once to test the air. “
Foolissh Half, do you not know?
” There was no pause for any answer Gallow might have made. “
My lord Unwinter is no longer patient; he ridess to war
.”
    Ah.
Gallow didn’t have to ask against who. A plagued Unwinter had nothing to lose, especially with Summer weakened as well.
    He lifted the medallion, and the Horn, perhaps sensing what was about to happen, twitched as it unfolded, its curve elongating. It was one of the few things older than sidhe or Sundering, that flute-lipped instrument, and its shape was of no geometry a mortal could look upon without queasy revulsion. It was whispered that Unwinter himself had been the only sidhe to escape its deadly call since the first dawning of Danu’s folk, when mortals were merely a bad future-dreaming.
    Silver-glinting, curled and chambered, the Horn grew heavier, neck-chain thickening as it took its true shape. The Steward hissed and fell back, and Gallow didn’t even feel good about the way the other sidhe ran pell-mell for the interior of the Keep and whatever precarious safety the black lacework bulk of stone could provide. He tipped the Horn back and forth, watching the play of light on its surfaces, as he stepped over Unwinter’s threshold and onto the bridge.
    To give the ancient thing a blast of living breath was to call the Wild Hunt in its full strength, both Unseelie and, more importantly, the Sluagh, the ravening unforgiven. The smaller horn-whistles the knights carried were copies, and awful enough, their ultrasonic cries chilling every living thing, even those that could not hear it. Unwinter had not ridden the full Hunt in a few hundred years, and he’d been about to wind the Horn on Gallow himself not too long ago.
    Or at least, he had been before Gallow had knocked it out of his hands and run for his life. And more importantly, for Robin Ragged’s.
    Attempt this, and we are at quits,
Unwinter had said quietly, coldly.
If you succeed, very well. If you do not, just as well. But in either instance, I will watch over your Ragged, and give her every care and protection I may offer.
    How long that care and protection might last with Unwinter plagued was a different matter. Still, the promise was better than he thought he’d get, and Gallow found he didn’t give a fuck how this fit into Unwinter’s plans or war with Summer. The two of them were ancient, the Sundering their goddamn war,