“Gonna leave some stuff here,” he said, though she hadn’t asked. The crystalline tears had dried to thin trails of salt on her soft cheeks. Even with reddened eyes and nose, she was beautiful. The matting of her wet eyelashes, the way her mouth turned slightly down, her blue eyes dazed and wide… it made a man think about all sorts of things.
It’s just because she looks like Daisy. Cut it out.
Except he didn’t even remember what Daisy truly looked like. Maybe handling her memory every day for five years had made it fade, like the mortal thing it was.
He dug in the backpack, extracted the spare boots, the Crown Royal bag, and a few other small things. Hung the backpack carefully, propping the boots at the bottom and tucking the purple bag into them. Glanced at her again. She simply stared over his shoulder, watching the mortals as they hurried past. Blinking every so often, and deathly pale.
She hadn’t wanted mortal breakfast. A few sips of milk, and that dazed, numb look. Was that why he was so unsteady? Why his hands wanted to shake, why he was hiding Daisy’s jewelry here in a steel locker?
“Do you want to leave anything here? It’s safe enough.” He realized it was a ridiculous question as soon as he asked it; she carried nothing. Her hands were bare and empty.
She shook her head. A little color had come back into her face; she reached up to scrape the salt from her cheeks with her long, pretty fingers.
He touched the backpack again, breathing a word in the Old Language, and another word of chantment as he swung the door closed, using the slam to cover the sound of crystalline ringing. When he turned back, it was to see Robin heading away, into the crush of mortals.
Did she really think to slip him so easily?
He trailed after her, soundless. When she halted, crossing her arms over her midriff, he found out what had drawn her.
A young man with a mass of dreadlocked hair, his coffee-colored hands gentle as they coaxed a fiddle’s strings into singing a wandering melody. His eyes were closed, the fiddle case set before him seeded with bright coins and dollar bills. Anything larger would vanish into the busker’s pocket as soon as possible, to save it from vanishing into the crowd.
Robin swallowed hard, tilted her head. She swayed a little in time to the music, and Jeremiah recognized the tune. An old, old plaintive song. He scanned the crowd, but there was no breath of sidhe. Too much cold iron here for them.
You know what, Robin? Let’s get on a bus and go. Which one? Any one. We’ll leave, and Summer…
That was a hideously stupid idea, but still, he was tempted. If he could somehow get to those cure vials, the ampoules Summer wanted so badly, and get Robin away from Summer’s murderous clutches in the process, maybe it would ease… well, not his conscience. Something else.
He watched her profile, trying not to hear the fiddle’s plaintive calling. You do me wrong, the tune went, to cast me off so discourteously.
“We should go,” he murmured, and closed his hand around her elbow. Her skin was alive with a Half’s fever-warmth, and before she shook him away with a single graceful motion, he could marvel at how soft she was.
Her fingers flickered, and a glittering landed in the fiddle case. A thin dime probably older than the boy, its edges worn-down and a subtle glamour threading up from it. Jeremiah eyed the chantment narrowly, and realized it was to lure more of its relatives, from coin to cash, into the case as well. A sidhe-gift, one that would likely make the fiddler more comfortable.
She remembered two mortal names, as well. She wasn’t the usual thoughtless, heedless sidhe-girl.
The Ragged was something else.
Robin turned away, and set off through the crowd again. Mortals bumping against every side, their salt-sweat despair drenching him, children hurrying along aside adults who took too-long strides, military men in uniforms and freshly cut hair, slinging their duffels on broad shoulders, harried women and students, those too poor to fly.
When he caught up with her, she had finished scrubbing the salt-tracks from her face, and her blue eyes glittered dangerously. If Daisy had ever looked like that—
“Are you finished here? We shouldn’t linger.” As if she was charged with his protection.
“I’m done. Where are we bound?”
“Elsewhere. To satisfy her.” Robin’s lip almost curled, and Gallow belatedly realized the question could be a suspicious one. Summer was not a forgiving creature.
“Robin.” He caught at her arm again. “The musician—”
“I cannot sing for joy or sorrow.” She shook her head, removed her arm decidedly from his grasp again. “I found that out when I was young. He can, and he chooses to bring delight to his fellow mortals. Such a thing should be rewarded.” Her pace quickened; she slipped through the press of mortals like a minnow in a pond. “Don’t you think so?”
It curdled in his stomach. She had merely been kind, and was used to having her kindness trampled, whether by sneering or by the greedy. A soft heart to match her sister’s, maybe. A handicap in any Court, or in the mortal world itself. “Robin—”
“Come along, Gallow Queensglass.” The tears were gone, as if they had never existed. She slipped ahead of him again, and Jeremiah, his hands turning into fists before he shook them out, followed.
GUILT MUST WAIT
30
An hour later, her stomach was still a hard ball and her shoulders were drawn tight with tension. Downtown, everything was sheathed in concrete, no living green anywhere. Her entire body ached, her heart worst of all, but she held herself straight and proud as the revolving door spun hungrily.
His impatience wasn’t visible, but she still felt it, a cold weight against her back as her heels clicked against marble. The Dalroyle Building was pleasantly aged, its outside a granite monument to Art Deco and its inside worn but still shining with faded magnificence. The elevator worked, ancient and wheezing with complaints, and the brass wall sconces were restrained flowers. In some places they’d laid down cheap carpet, but the foyer was still marble and soft lighting, the restaurant opening off to one side exhaling a thin thread of coffee and roasted garlic.
“Why here?” Gallow trudged behind her like a clodhopping brughnie, though one of their ilk would have been following its nose to the garlic. And would probably receive a bite or two for its pains, a thought that cheered Robin immensely.
They had visited the bus station, where she gazed longingly at the ticket window while he stored his bag in one of the lockers. Now he wore his knives, but there was no sign of the pike he carried.
And he was asking her why here. Did he think her entirely brainless? “Because this is where I’ve led you.” She tapped down the hall toward the stairs. “If word has slipped out that I was carrying… well, any common hiding place would not be safe.”
“This is a hiding place? It’s gaudy.”
It is not. A sidhe who lived as he did—among mortals, in a trailer, perhaps he found anything else too luxurious. Maybe he hated Court’s deadly comforts, and any pleasure or magnificence would irritate him. “It’s secure.” And it has quite a few exits.
“This? Secure?”
“Very.” She pushed the stairwell door open, looked carefully through. Good. Clear, and no pursuit I can sense.
“What makes it secure?”
Could he truly not tell? “What do you smell?”
He inhaled deeply, coughed. Perhaps his senses had been dulled by living among mortals for so long, or perhaps she had grown so accustomed to danger, the slight glamour many predators employed unraveled under her attention.
“Christ.” He sounded a little pale now. “It reeks of brimstone.”
Only if you’re looking to smell danger. “Sometimes. There are kobold swellings in the basement, and a nest atop.”
“A nest?”
“Harpies. There’s good prey here, for them.” Among other things, some sidhe and some not. None of them, though, take kindly to Unseelie poaching upon their hunting-grounds. Her fingers ran l
ightly over the railing, layers of paint applied again and again chipping and cracking, a scaled hide. Come nightfall the stairwell would be dangerous, too, unless one was quick and lightfooted.
“That’s why you waited for midmorning.” Breathless now, as he climbed the stairs behind her. “Even nestguard kobolding won’t be awake yet, and the harpies—”
“They doze, this time of day.” Other things are awake. Her calves burned, but she did not slow. “At least, they generally do.”
“You’re insane.”
I won’t dignify that with a response. Though several burned and trembled inside her mouth, crowding for release. Her throat rasped with denying the song, too. Up the steps, quickly but not so quickly as to tire. She would need all her speed, soon.
The stairs stretched up, and up, twelve flights and one more. That was where she halted, and spread her hand against a fire door. The paint was a different vomitous green than the others, just a shade lighter.
To a mortal, there would be simply a blank wall. Unless whatever lay behind it was hungry.
She concentrated, and found, to her relief, that the tingle of too-dangerous-to-risk did not run along her nerves. “Come.”
“No.” He caught at her arm again. “I’ll go first. I’m to keep you alive.”
“Only until you know I have the cure.” Then it’s a quick knifing, and back to Summer with your prize. Their faint kinship would not make him hesitate, not when her death was his ticket back to Court.
Besides, he did not seem the hesitating sort. And he had served Summer once. She knew better than to think such a service was easily cast aside.
Especially for a man.
“You think me faithless, Ragged?” He didn’t sound even slightly insulted, merely curious.
What had Daisy seen in him? Had she softened him, or had her death turned all of him to bitterness, as it had done for Robin? He did not speak on his grief, and she would not either. So she settled for the truth. “I think you a man.”
“Is that an insult?”
“No.” Anything male is dragged around by its breeches, and she holds the string attached to them. Besides, you served. You need only a look or a tone to understand what she wishes done with me. As do I. She touched the doorknob, found it ice-cold. As usual. Twisted it and stepped through, shaking away his grasp. It was easier when he was not seeking to paint her with more bruises. He had grown fond of clasping her, it seemed.
The instant blackness was a balm, and she pitched aside, rolling. A clatter of metal, a tearing sound, and light returned, blazing fit to blind, but she had her eyes firmly closed. Gallow shouted, but Robin was already up, counting her steps as she ran down the hall.
This corridor, tucked sideways into the building, lit with bright emerald radiance once the dark-glamour was pierced. Doors frowned on either side, moss growing thick and verdant on the walls, and juicy green vines slid against each other as her nose filled with the scent of living growth. She was oriented by the time she opened her eyes, skipping nervously along the left-hand side of the hall where the safe path was, leaping from rock to flinty rock thrusting up from the matted green-moss floor. Behind her, Gallow cursed, understanding where they were.
A Tangle’s lair, and like all such lairs, a place-between.
She found the door she wanted—a half-size, tiny little thing almost swallowed by the moss—and scrabbled at the knob. A shrill piercing whistle between her lips, and it turned easily.
Of course, most sidhe doors opened to a Realmaker. Grudgingly, perhaps, but they still opened.
He would be occupied fighting off the Tangle some while longer. It would eat if it could, but it probably could not take a canny opponent such as Gallow. If he survived, he would begin hunting her.
The door creaked as she forced it open.
“Robin!” Why did he cry her name?
She squeezed through—and there was another reason she’d chosen this method of escape. He was taller and wider than her, and wouldn’t fit through this particular passage.
“Robin, no!”
I will not stay to let you kill me when you think I have what she wants. I have much to do before I see Summer again.
And I will.
She was through, and tugging the metal ring—not cold iron, for this place was purely sidhe—to swing it closed behind her. A puff of green scent, a blast of warm air, and his cries cut off midway through her name.
He would certainly find her again, if he lived. But Robin Ragged had bought herself a little time.
During the day, the glamours in the ruins of the trailer park were pale and thready, since sun would do the work of keeping Unseelie away. They were broken and scattered now, those various chantments, even those laid with the aid of trinkets from Summer herself. Every trailer that hadn’t been smashed was now cracked open like an egg, including the so-familiar one Robin stood before, hugging herself and staring at the wreckage. It did not smoke, though it was blackened and reeking of strange mortal chemicals.
She would have been forced to pick her way into the shattered tin-can home, but the crumpled rag of a mortal body, spectacles fused to his charred skull by a blast of unimaginable heat, had been pulled from the refuse and hung from a streetlamp that would never shine again.
Henzler—or what was left of him—swayed gently in the chill afternoon breeze. They had strung him by his heels, and it was little consolation that he probably was already gone by then. Robin hugged herself harder. It looked as if Unwinter had found him; it did not smell of them overmuch here, but the reek of mortal chemicals and broken chantment was almost too thick to breathe. The poor mortal, probably still screaming whatever name Summer had used to bewitch him with, had hopefully been prey to heartshock.
Heartshock was quick. Much quicker and kinder than anything else the Unseelie would do to him.
She could not count on it, though. If he had been alive for even a short while, perhaps he would have babbled about the cure. And, of course, Robin’s name or description. Maybe Puck’s as well, but that wasn’t her concern.
Her concern was not joining the mortal on the gibbet-pole. Henzler had been dead the moment Summer snared him.
We were all dead the moment we were taken. Gallow’s voice, unwelcome. He could be tracking her even now, if he had fought free of the Tangle. She had to move.
Still, she tarried, staring at the body as it swung lazily. Like a hideous fruit in a mockery of Summer’s orchard.
Her throat filled, she opened her mouth, and the song burst out, surprising her. She hadn’t meant to sing, but the wall of noise smashed into streetlight and skeleton-thin corpse, flushing fiery gold at its edges. She had plenty of breath. As the lamppost twisted, curling and blackening, the remains shredded, black dust working itself finer and finer until she had to gasp, her eyes leaking again and the weird weightlessness of oxygen deprivation filling her skull. She staggered back, almost fell as her left shoe met a plastic bag and had to dig down sharply, scraping against cracked concrete.
Most of the streetlamp was gone. Henzler was truly gone as well. He would not be joining the Sluagh once dark fell, either. The host of the Unforgiven Dead would be denied one more to swell its ranks.
Robin panted for a little while. Holding the song without breath was dangerous; it could just as easily burn her to ash. She shuddered, great gripping waves passing through her, and sought to calm herself.
When she could finally stand upright again, she shook her hands out. Guilt would have to wait, again. There was much to be done before she let anyone, Gallow or Unseelie, catch her.
I must visit the dwarves. She winced, shook the plastic bag from her heel, and set out, grim-faced, her jaw clenched so tightly her teeth ached.
WHAT PRICE?
31
The throneroom was vast, lofty ceilings hung with sheets of red and black velvet. Stone logs, chipped and oozing the slow resin of their tearing from the Rim’s cliffs, burned with a bright blue, heatless flame, each shadow knife-edge
d as it danced with the flickering. Those flames, contained in a shallow, circular firepit, darted toward the runes carved into the lip of the pit and retreated as the angular shapes twisted menacingly. An obsidian-glass floor ran with ghostly clouds below the surface, and some said it was by gazing at their shapes that Unwinter discerned all that befell within his borders—and many other places, besides.
Summer had a Stone, and Unwinter’s was the Throne. It crouched patiently at the end of the hall, its spines glistening, and its heartsblood cushions were hard as stone itself. Sometimes it appeared of smooth dark metal, other times of granite, but always, the Throne’s sharp, high-rearing daggers exuded that faint hint of crimson moisture.
Even a Throne hungered, and required feeding.
High, narrow doors opened, a crack of ruby glow from outside shivering as it fell against pallid stonelight. A shape appeared, coalescing out of the glow, and it stepped onto the obsidian floor with a tiptapping instead of glove-soled softness.
The shadows deep in the Throne’s embrace stirred. A high-peaked helm, chased with silver, lifted slightly, but the armored form of Haahrhne the Hunter, Unwinter himself, once-Consort of Summer, Lord of the Fell Host, did not otherwise move. Two crimson pinpricks kindled in the helm’s deep eyesockets.
He did not speak, watching the guest solemnly pace around the firepit. The stoneflames leapt again, hungrily, but the visitor did not falter. He merely made his way to the deep-etched star-compass before the Throne, its carved lines rasping as they slid through the obsidian, and bowed, deeply, doffing an imaginary cap. “Greetings to you, O Lord of the Fell, from a humble traveler.” Yellowgreen irises flashed, a darting glance to the Throne, and the guest did not straighten. His ear-tips twitched slightly, though, poking through a silken mat of brown hair.
Unwinter stirred. “Goodfellow.” Soft and cruel, the syllables mouthing velvet hangings, making them flutter uneasily. “You dare much.”
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