Silver and Salt by Rob Thurman Read Free Book Online Page A

spotted Ialach he became Buttercup to the entire Dark Court. That was the cause of our first duel. It was a tie, but as I swore up and down it was only because I could not stop laughing every time I addressed him as Lord Buttercup.
    When we had come here and discovered what the humans had wrought, I’d stumbled across a sweet in one of their shops. Butterscotch it had been called and it was similar to the color of Ialach’s then much shorter hair. As a peace offering between new partners, I called him Butterscotch instead of Buttercup and tried to kill him for only the first week or two. Eventually we discovered something from the time we remembered humans last: uisge beatha . The ‘water of life’. Scotch whisky. Scotch had seized upon several bottles and drank nothing but that or water from then on. Taking the name for his own. After three years, I gave in and stopped telling anyone and everyone in the outposts we passed the truth of it. Once you decide not to kill your partner, you have his back. Not in the Courts, but here. Always here.
    And then he goes and stabs you in the chest. Where had I gone wrong?
    I woke up to a night sky. Hazily I counted ten lonely stars. Not long now. No, not long. I coughed against a dry throat and asked hoarsely, “Are my boots on?”
    “No.” Scotch’s voice was beside me. I turned my head to see him squatting by a small fire to add another chunk of dried manure. “Just in case you were weak and useless enough to die, I wanted you to wander what lies beyond eternity in your socks cursing my name. My real name.”
    I was lying on a sleeping bag, covered with two blankets, but I could see my toes. I wiggled them. Nothing but socks was right, the bastard. Not that I didn’t like socks. That was one thing humans had done right. Thick, warm socks beat striding black marble floors in silk hose and knee-high boots…oh, damn, and a crimson lined cloak that was be-spelled to drop blood-tipped black thorns in my path. I really had been a fucking douche-bag. I didn’t know what a fucking douche-bag was, but a human had spat it at me before I gutted him. I took that to mean it was a fair enough insult.
    “And why aren’t I dead? With the silver and then you helpfully stabbing me in the chest, I expected something less in the living realm.”
    “I didn’t stab you in the chest. I cannot believe all the Seelie that you bested in duels. Swatting pixies should’ve been beyond you. You whine like a satyr who’s lost his nymphs and his cock.” He sat beside me, stirring a can of beans. Another human invention, less appreciated than the socks. “I didn’t stab you. I cut only as deep as needed to remove the bullet.” He had his gloves off and I could see the silver-burns on his fingers where he had plucked it out of me. “Unfortunately it wasn’t deep enough to discover if you in fact have a heart. Now none will ever know.” He ate a bite of beans. “Then I stitched you up with a few of Pie’s tail hairs.”
    I was alive. Shit. That was damn near unheard of. Human speech, bad habits—easy to slide back into when you can throw all that grand ‘leave your partner with a good memory’ fairy princess crap out the window. “They’ve tried taking silver bullets out before. They go too deep. Nobody lives. The poison of the metal spreads too fast.”
    “Guess I’m a helluva sight damn faster than any other sumbitch ‘round these parts.” Scotch grinned.
    I laughed, groaned and held my chest, and laughed again. Ten years to bring a Seelie down to my level or at least half way between. It was worth the wait. “Hungry?” Scotch spooned up some more beans and hovered them in front of my mouth. I growled that I wasn’t an infant and reached for the spoon. I managed to get at least one third of the spoonful in my mouth, the rest on my chin and blanket.
    “So,” Scotch said as I mopped my face with the blanket, “I’m still waiting on that story. Why are you called Seven?”
    I had