Copper Ravens(22)

“Unmade?” I repeated. I glanced at the pile; they still looked pretty made to me.

“I turned them back into normal metal, which is what they should have been all along,” Mom explained, coming up behind us, with Sadie cowering behind her. “As they were, they were little more than meddling nuisances.”

“Mom, you can’t do that!” I said, standing to face her.

“Oh?” she countered, raising a brow. “It appears that I did.”

“Well, undo it!” Mom crossed her arms and lifted her chin, defiance written across her face. Good grief, the ageless Queen of the Seelie Court was acting like a two year old.

“Fine!” I spun around, turning my back to my lunatic mother. Micah hadn’t moved, his eyes still fixed on the lifeless silverkin. I crouched beside him, and asked, “Is there any way we save them?”

“We need to replace their sparks,” Micah murmured. “Now that she’s taken them, they cannot be reanimated, much as if you or I were to die, no one could install another soul in our bodies.” I shivered, imagining a horde of tiny metal zombies. “That is the problem we now face.”

“Oh, Micah,” I murmured, lacing my fingers with his. “Can you make more?”

“I can, but they won’t be the same.” Micah reached out and traced an immobile silver limb. “My mother created them, all of them…so long ago, she made them…their sparks were born from her. They are all a part of her. Now that their sparks are gone, they are as good as dead.”

Gods, I’d had no idea that the silverkin were created by Micah’s long-deceased, yet still very much beloved, mother. This situation needed to be fixed, and quickly. But how?

Sparks…Micah had said that Mom had taken their sparks. Yesterday, when Max and I were in the village, the pixie had taken the iron warrior’s spark, held it in her hand like it was a regular old tchotchke, then she’d flown away with it. Which meant that Mom probably still had the silverkins’ sparks, in her hand or in a pocket or—or somewhere. Which also meant that I should be able to get them back. Well, assuming that my mother decided to act like an adult.

I glared at my mother over my shoulder; I’d read somewhere that you always wanted to confront a wild animal head-on and look it directly in the eye. Probably so the animal knew what it was about to munch on. “You see what you’ve done?” I demanded. “You’ve destroyed a part of Micah’s family. What did they do to you, anyway?”

“They…they are annoying,” she said, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture.

“Annoying?” I was on my feet again, standing directly in front of Mom and yelling in her face. “Listen, this isn’t the Raven Compound. You can’t just dispose of servants because your bath’s too hot or your tea’s too cold. The silverkin are Micah’s; they’re all he has left of his mother, and you are a guest in his house, and…and you need to behave!”

Mom’s eyes widened; I bet she forgot that I knew exactly why we’d had a mansion and no maids, not even someone to fold the laundry. Oh, we used to have maids, back when Dad was around to protect them from Mom’s wrath. By the time Dad had been gone for a full year, Mom had hired and fired six maids and ten cooks; by the time Max got arrested, word had gotten out and no one even applied. What was the point of a job that would only last a few weeks, and one working for a crazy lady to boot?

I missed the cooks the most.

Mom just stood there, her face a mask of shock and anger, and for a moment, I thought I was going to end up permanently immobile, just like the ’kin. Then her gaze fell on Micah’s hunched shoulders and softened a bit. Not much, but a bit. “He feels their loss so deeply?”

“Yes. He does.” I held out my hand. “Please, give them back their sparks. I’ll tell them to leave you alone. Promise.”

My mother is a lot of things—haughty, indignant, and even a bit bloodthirsty at times—but she’s not cruel. Being that she’s not a metal Elemental, she couldn’t even be blamed for how she felt; she saw the silverkin as nothing more than bits of moving furniture, certainly not as the only companions a lonely orphan once had. Even so, something about Micah’s despair spoke to her, and she placed her hand on mine. In another moment, I held a double handful of glowing orbs, but they weren’t all that similar to what the pixie had held after she had stopped the iron warrior from attacking Max. The iron warrior’s spark had been a dull gray and had lain in the pixie’s palm like a dumb lump. The silverkin’s sparks were white, and they wiggled back and forth as I held them. I couldn’t say why their sparks were so much more active, save perhaps that their sparks were a reflection of their makers—one dull and uninteresting, the other happy and full of life. And, they tickled! One adventurous spark tried climbing up my arm, but I corralled it in the crook of my elbow. I couldn’t risk losing one, not now that I’d just gotten them back.