The War of the Flowers

24 THE BUS STOP ON PENTACLE STREET

Streedy Nettle looked very carefully at the street sign to make sure it still said the same thing. He didn't think that streets usually changed names from one block to another, but he wasn't absolutely certain. In fact, he wasn't absolutely certain about very much, except that he was quite certain he wanted to get on the right bus and get home. He could only take shallow breaths because he was so nervous his chest hurt. This was the first time he had been out on his own since his new friends had found him, and although a part of him was proud to be doing something to help instead of just eating their food and taking up space, he didn't like standing in the middle of the sidewalk by himself under these gray afternoon skies. Still, it was an important errand. They had told him so. They had also told him that only he could do it — no one else! That had really made him wonder. But that didn't make being on the streets alone any easier. He wondered why… why… he struggled to remember the quiet, serious fairy's name… why Caradenus hadn't met him like he was supposed to do.

Sometimes he had to stop walking just to think, to make himself remember what he was supposed to do next, but when he did people often looked at him with anger on their faces as they stepped or flew around him. That frightened him. He thought that any moment they might suddenly point and say, "Look, it's the fellow who ran away from the power plant!" Then the constables would take him away and he would never get to see his friends again.

Streedy brushed his hair out of his eyes and squinted at the street sign. It said Pentacle Street like all the others had, which was good. His small friends had told him just what to do, and one of the things was to stay on Pentacle Street. He was supposed to keep walking toward the Twilight District, but before he got there, while he was still in Eventide, he would come to the place where Pentacle crossed Sour Milk Way and find the bus stop there. He didn't know this because he had got off the bus this morning at the exact same stop on his way into the middle of the City (although that's just what he had done with Caradenus) but because his friends had talked with him about how to get home over and over if he was ever left on his own. They had tried to draw a map for him, but it was too hard to read and understand. Easier to learn things like they were the words to a song, the way he learned that song he liked so much, "Broceliande Blue," just say them again and again and again until he knew them as well as his own name.

And he really did know the way home that well, and perhaps even better, because there were moments when he didn't remember his name at all — when the only thing that Streedy Nettle could think of to call himself was not a name at all but an idea, a memory of that horrifying golden instant in which the power of the entire plant had moved through him, had lived inside him as though he weren't a person at all but a beast of freezing fire as big as the sky. In those moments he was not the Widow Nettle's gangly son anymore, not the country boy from Hazel or even the new Streedy who found it hard to think but who wanted so badly to help his new friends: in those moments he simply was, a glorious, terrifying memory of being so full of light that he thought he might explode into glowing white fragments…

People bumped against him and cursed as they hurried past. Someone tried to brush by and must have felt the crippled wings hidden beneath his loose coat, because she — it was a woman, a young girl in a servant's cap, with wings of her own that glittered even in the dull autumn light — gave him a very odd look.

"All right for some," she said, then walked on quickly.

Streedy realized that he had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk again. He was in the way. People were noticing him. His friends had been very firm about that, as firm as they had been about him learning the route: he was not supposed to do things that would make people pay attention to him.

It was so difficult to think while he was walking, not just because thinking was hard work, but also because he was afraid that he would go past the place he was looking for while he was still trying to remember. And there had been so much to remember today! Not just how to get to where he had been, and how to get back to his friends again, but also not to stop in the street or say anything that would make anyone wonder about him. And then all the hard work to remember the things his friends wanted done in the middle of the city without Caradenus to help him! That had been the hardest part in some ways, but he was finished now, which was a relief.

But was he really finished? He stopped again, just for a moment, because suddenly he wasn't sure. He thought and thought, panic making his chest feel tight again. What if he had gone to the place but had forgotten to do the thing he had gone there for in the first place? "Go with me," he had begged his friends, "it's too hard to remember all these things!" but they wouldn't do it. "We can't go where you're going, Streedy," one of them had told him — he thought it was Doorlatch. "They'd follow us. They'd be watching us the entire time. It has to be you."

Suddenly, he remembered the bag he was clutching in his hands. The bag! Of course! If he hadn't done what he was supposed to do, the bag would be empty. He opened the top just a little, just enough to peer in. It was full of Truename cards, just like it was supposed to be. He sighed, relieved. He had done what he was supposed to — he could remember it now that he wasn't so nervous. Yes, now he could remember walking right in and doing all the things they had told him to do, in just the right order.

He was bumped again. Stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. That was bad. Time to walk again. Walk along Pentacle Street. Look for Sour Milk Way. That was how it was supposed to go. But was this really still Pentacle Street? What if he'd turned down the wrong street somehow?

He found a sign at last. Pentacle Street. So that was good. He resumed his march toward the bus stop.

"Get out of the street, strawhead!" someone shouted. Streedy Nettle at last pulled his attention away from the blinking blue light on the pole. It felt like it was blinking behind his eyes as well — such a strange sensation. And there were little smeary bits of light around everything, even the big black coach which had stopped in the center of the intersection, and whose driver was now shaking a fist at him, yelling out the rolled-down window. "Go back to Alder!"

"But I'm not from…" Streedy shook his head. The traffic light still seemed to be in his eyes, even when he looked down. A horn honked again. He hurried across the intersection and up onto the sidewalk on the far side. What street was he on? Pentacle Street? Good.

It hadn't always been like this. He couldn't exactly remember how it had been, but he knew it had been different before the accident. He didn't used to forget things so quickly, hadn't had to be reminded by his friends that he was going somewhere when they found him standing and staring. Blinking lights hadn't sort of put him to sleep like they did now, hadn't whispered in his ear, on off on off on off, ticking like midnight footsteps in a tiled room. In fact, he had hardly ever noticed lights at all before the accident. Now he could see them for what they were, a certain kind of cold heat flowing back and forth from brilliance to blackness like water sloshing in a bowl, but so fast that most other people couldn't see the changes. Streedy could, though, or could at least feel them. He was glad he didn't have to go out in the nighttime. Even from a distance the lights of the city center at night made his head ache.

He looked up at the next intersection and saw a sign that said Sour Milk Way. This time he remembered to move over close to the window of a store while he considered it. Yes, that was the name he had been looking for. Where Sour Milk Way crossed Pentacle. He was supposed to look for something. He frowned, but the frown didn't last long. The bus stop.

Pleased and more than a little proud, Streedy looked all around the intersection. There was a big store on one corner, a very high building with brightly glowing letters over the wide glass doors that said "Loosestrife, Licensed," and people coming out with bags and boxes. That wasn't it — no, that was some kind of store. He remembered stores. He remembered his mother taking him all the way into the town of Twelvetrees to get a winter coat, and the department store — much smaller than this one — called "Zinnia Brothers," which had been so full of unattainable objects like an entire small mezzanine floor of toys that to young Streedy it had seemed like a dream.

He blinked. Was he supposed to go to a store? No, the bus stop. Remember, Streedy! He was angry with himself.

He spotted it at last, just a few yards back up Pentacle Street. He had walked right past it. His friends were so smart, telling him to look for Sour Milk Way! It was just like the one a block away where the bus had dropped him off this morning, with glass walls and a gray-green copper roof in the shape of a giant elder leaf.

The Warstones and Dockyards bus, he told himself. That's what they said. Don't get on the wrong bus. Warstones and Dockyards.

There were already a half dozen people on the bench, three of them old women dressed in black or gray. There were also two younger women in domestic service uniforms, one of whom was small enough that she might be half-brownie, and a man whose expensive coat fit so snugly it was clear that he had no wings at all, not even crumpled and melted ones like Streedy Nettle's. He had a mirrorcase open on his lap and didn't even look up when Streedy almost bumped him. A few of the others did glance at him, but only for a moment. Streedy decided to stand, even though his feet hurt. He was afraid he might fall asleep sitting up as he sometimes did. It was harder to fall asleep when you were standing.

He was just wondering if the man in the suit had gone to a doctor to have his wings off, like people back at the power plant said that the supervisor Mr. Dogwood had done, when the little serving-woman tugged at the other woman's sleeve and pointed at the sky, saying, "What's that?" She didn't sound scared, just surprised.

Streedy looked south down Pentacle Street and was dazed by the succession of orange and blue traffic lights stretching away into the distance. It took him a moment to see what she was pointing at, a strange, angular shadow coming across the sky like a fallen leaf caught up by the wind.

"It's so big… !" said her friend.

Streedy wanted to laugh because it wasn't big at all, it was small, he could have reached out his hand and covered it like a spot on the wall. But then he saw that it was getting bigger and bigger very fast and he realized he was wrong, that it had only been so small because it was far away — he'd forgotten how that happened — and then he saw what it was and he couldn't think about anything else at all because he was freezing cold all up and down his body. He felt like he'd swallowed a block of ice as big as his own head.

"Bloody black iron… !" someone shouted — it must have been the man with the mirrorcase, but Streedy didn't look at him. He couldn't look at anything except the thing that was growing bigger and bigger in the sky.

"But there isn't any such thing!" one of the old women shrieked. "Not any more! There isn't!"

The thing blocked the light as it plunged down. The bus shelter fell into shadow, the air perfectly still for just half an instant. Then wind filled the street like a living thing, sending papers, leaves, dust spiraling up to cloud the sky. Coaches skidded, crunched into each other. A horn blared and would not stop.

As it leveled at the base of its dive, only a few feet above the top of the street's tallest buildings, the huge black dragon spread its wings — Streedy could hear the wind roaring and thrumming in the membranes. Signs tore loose from the walls and tumbled clattering into the street. Lights popped and fizzed with the gassy green light of escaping power, something that normally made Streedy want to run away as fast as he could, but his feet seemed stuck to the sidewalk. Glass spattered down the length of the sidewalk in a sudden downpour as windows broke all along the block, some of it clattering on the bus shelter roof. The people around him had been knocked to the ground, battered or terrified into silence. Streedy clung to the shuddering wall of the shelter as the huge black wormshape twisted in midair, its wings snapping up then down as it writhed back into the high sky. A moment later it was hurtling away north, no longer on the same line as the street. It did not vanish, though: Streedy saw it rise, wings spreading even wider, like the petals of some exotic hothouse flower, then a line of bright fire leaped down from its mouth toward the ground, toward some target Streedy could not see. The dragon flame was so searingly bright, as though someone had scratched a burning stick across his eyes, that for the first time Streedy Nettle shrieked and lost his grip and fell to the sidewalk like a half-empty sack.

Even through his closed, dazzled eyes he could see a great white flash, then something roared like a long peal of thunder. The ground jumped beneath him as though struck by a giant's hammer, bouncing Streedy over onto his belly. The cold pavement against his face was the only real thing for a moment — that and the stinging sight of dragonfire still painted on the inside of his eyelids like a razorslash of burning light.

"The dragons are going to kill us all!" someone shrieked. The voices crowded together — people were shouting up and down the street. More coaches crunched into things.

"That was Hollyhock House — that thing just burned down Hollyhock House!" screamed someone else.

"They'll kill us all!"

"It's war!"

"It's the end, the end, the end… !"

Streedy pressed his cheek against the cold concrete and listened to the winds rise. He didn't want to remember anything more. He didn't want to.

He was walking, although he didn't remember why. It was snowing, just like back in Hazel, which seemed wrong, somehow, but there it was, a constant flutter of gray and white flakes everywhere, in the air, sifting and swirling around his feet, getting into his nose and mouth so that he could hardly breathe or see for crying. Strange snow. The street was winter-dark, too, but nighttime had come only in certain places, great inky clouds of blackness in front of the sun but with bits of blue-gray sky peeping through. He didn't understand any of it.

No bus had come. He couldn't remember exactly why, but everyone else had stopped waiting before he had. In fact, they had all run away, except for one of the women, who had spread her wings to fly, but she was clumsy like she hadn't done it much, and also crying hard. She had fluttered awkwardly through the snowy wind until she ran into a wall and fell and then didn't get up again.

Streedy hadn't seen a big fairy like her fly in a long time. Something really bad must have upset her. He felt he should remember what that something had been — it seemed like it was important — but he couldn't. So now he was walking, his special bag still clutched in his hand. He didn't want his friends to be upset. He hoped he was walking in the right direction. Pentacle Street? He was pretty certain that was the right name, but he had no idea if he was still on that street. He tried to ask people where he should go, but most of the folk he saw hurrying through the gray snow, some holding things over their heads to keep the stuff off, some with scarves or shirts clutched over their mouths, didn't want to stop and talk. He finally found someone, a little ferisher in a suit who was standing on a streetcorner talking into a shell. Streedy asked him whether he was going the right way to get the Warstones and Dockyards bus.

"Warstones… ?" The little ocher-colored man put his shell in his pocket. He laughed, but he looked like he wanted to cry. His face and suit were very dirty. He looked like the kind of person who should know Warstones, Streedy thought, but the ferisher disappointed him. "Cracks in the Floorboard, how should I know?" He wiped sweat and gray snow off his forehead, giggling. "Three of the great houses — Lily, Daffodil, Hollyhock, all gone in an hour! Somebody said Parliament is shut down. It's war!" He stopped laughing and burst into tears, just as Streedy had thought he might. He seemed to be a very emotional fellow. "I can't help you. I can't help you. They say everyone's to be off the streets by sunset. It was that Thornapple fellow who was saying it, Lord Thornapple. Seemed very calm…"

The Thornapple name frightened Streedy, although at the moment he couldn't remember exactly why, but he also was confused by something else the man had said. "Sunset? But it's already night!"

The ferisher shook his head, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his suit coat, smearing the dirty snow on his face even more until he looked like he was wearing a mask. "Go home! Go to your children!" He turned and began trotting down the street. In a few moments he was lost in the swirl of gray and white.

"I don't have any children," said Streedy, but there was no one to hear him.

He walked on for what seemed like hours. He forgot what street he was supposed to be on and stopped looking at the signs, stopped trying to remind himself. It was hard to see, anyway — his eyes burned and burned and for some reason his lungs did, too, just as they had in the days after his accident. He kept stumbling and falling down, and each time it was harder to get up. But his friends were waiting for him back home. He clutched at his bag. His friends were waiting.

In a dark street where the snow was not so thick, a small, narrow street crisscrossed overhead not with streaks of fire but with washing lines, he crawled up onto a porch and fell against a door that had a smaller round door in the middle of it, set about the height of his stomach. He didn't know where he was anymore and he didn't know whose apartment or business this might be, but he remembered this kind of door — his friends had told him about doors like this with a hole in the middle. He slapped at it until he remembered to close his fingers into a fist, then went on knocking on the door, trying to remember what his friends had taught him about the right way to knock — three fast, two slow, two fast, then do it again and again and again…

The goblin that finally opened the inset round door and peered out did not say a word, but he did not close it again, either. Instead he watched Streedy with wide, fearful eyes. Voices washed out from behind him, buzzing goblin voices raised in argument, as well as the familiar tones of the mirrortalkers that had greeted Streedy every night back home when he came in from the fields, before he went away to work in the plant. His mother had loved her mirror. "My company," she called it. "My friends."

Friends. "Help me," said Streedy, and suddenly he was looking up at the goblin's face instead of down. He had fallen, somehow, and it was very hard to breathe, as though the snow was filling up his lungs, hot snow that smoldered inside him and pushed out all the good air. "Help me… find my friends. They live… under… a bridge."

25 A MILLION SPARKS

For long moments he waited to burn.

There was noise all around him, distant shrieks and the disembodied voice of a hob reporting danger and destruction, listless as a feverish child, but at the moment it seemed to Theo he was surrounded by, and sunken in, a deep and stunning silence.

I'm going to die, was the only coherent thought, and so it seemed his only thought: I'm going to die. But after a while he became aware that the silence was a kind of pall of shock, and that just as the world around him was actually filled with frantic noises, so his own mind was full of disconnected thoughts flitting, squeaking, and colliding like startled bats in a sealed chamber.

I'm going to die here. In Fairyland. Why had he sat waiting for this? Why hadn't he seen through Tansy before? Why had all the fairies he'd met been so certain that there wouldn't be a war? Well, they're all dead now so they're probably feeling pretty stupid. Through all the disconnected fluttering in his head, he knew he was stuck in the middle of a moment of great change, a point from which everything else could be seen as strands leading backward. He could only hope — but not quite believe — there might be strands leading forward as well.

If I don't die.

Gradually, through the dust and the sound of crippled beams creaking like the timbers of a storm-strained ship, he realized that if he was going to die it might not be for many minutes, or even longer. It was not his own floor that had been incinerated by that terrible winged shadow but one farther up in the building. He was half-flattened by bits of ceiling but not crushed; he could feel his feet moving, his toes flexing when he tried them. But he could not expect things to stay this way very long. Smoke was already beginning to creep down from whatever hell had been created above his head — he could smell it, the weird odor of things burning that he could not identify, combustion without familiarity. Already he was having trouble taking deep breaths. If he stayed here he wouldn't survive, but all else was vague and difficult.

Theo reached out in his dust-blindness and scrabbled at what was restraining him, but could make no sense of it by touch alone. He mopped at his eyes, turned the loose grit into a more general, stinging slime of sweat and dust. There was dust everywhere, clouds of the stuff mixed in with the smoke. Something crawled across his hand and he snatched it back with a shout, knowing even as he did so that it was ludicrous — as if any living thing could come close to the horror he'd just witnessed, a thousand square feet of glass turned to liquid in an instant, flame like glowing acid. His shout turned into a helpless, heaving cough. Little dusty bugs were crawling all over him, or at least they looked like bugs, though they were almost perfectly round. Their legs stuck out in all directions; none was bigger than a silver dollar, but some were small as confetti circles. One scrabbled across another a few inches from his hand and he saw gold gleam where the dust was scraped away.

Sitting on the floor, as helpless as an infant, Theo suddenly realized that Hellebore's pale, calm face had been talking soundlessly in the back of his mind all this time, a sort of horror tape-loop that didn't end, featuring the fairy lord's smile of infinite cruelty in the moments before the world caught fire. Hellebore was as empty as a ghost — was that what a ghost was, something that looked like a person but had lost all its kindness? — but he was also powerful, more powerful than even poor dead Hollyhock had dreamed. Lord Hellebore and his allies had sent a reptilian monster to deliberately and cold-bloodedly kill everyone in that conference room, along with God knew how many other hundreds or even thousands in Daffodil House as well. And the destruction might not be finished. If he was to have a chance of living, Theo had to get out.

What was pinning his lower body, he finally realized, was not part of the roof but the dust-caked length of the conference table on which the mirror had sat, its legs gone, one end propped by debris. It was far too heavy for him to push it off, but by shoving at it until he was breathing in ragged gasps, Theo managed to get one of his legs loose. The whole limb throbbed and he had to wait some time in the increasingly smoky dimness until he could use it to help shift the conference table a bit off the other leg, make enough space that he could turn his foot sideways where it was hooked under the table's far edge. He rolled completely onto his side and wriggled until that foot was also free, then he lay panting for a moment until a coughing fit got him up onto his knees, retching and spitting bits of gray-white mud. He shrugged off his leather jacket and his thin fairy-shirt and tied the shirt across his mouth and nose like an outlaw's bandanna. It seemed to keep out a little of the smoke. He was going to leave the heavy jacket behind and let sentiment be damned, but a piece of flaming debris dropping down from above made him think again. Despite his exhaustion, he pulled the jacket back on.

Where's the door? The room was getting extremely hot now, like an oven just starting to work. He had a brief vision of himself baked as dry and powdery as the ash that covered him. You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man… Finding the door seemed an impossible task. Debris lay everywhere, mountains of the stuff piled jaggedly to the collapsed roof. He couldn't make out where the walls were and which one was closest.

Groaning, coughing, Theo started to crawl. Within moments he put his hand down on someone else's hand.

Numbly, he scraped away at the dust and fragments of ceiling, working his way up the arm to the face. He had enough time for a dull shock of recognition before Tansy opened his eyes behind his shattered spectacles. "Help me…" the fairy whispered.

Theo looked at him for a moment. Hellebore didn't want me dead, he realized. He sent Tansy to get me out first, but it went wrong. Knowing that he was to have been spared was no comfort. The Excisors wanted him alive, but probably only so they could torture him for some information they thought he had.

"Who is… ?" Tansy blinked away blood. "Help… !"

"Danger," murmured the hob from everywhere and nowhere. "Attack."

Theo just shook his head and crawled on.

The idiot voice of the hob grew fainter and fainter and then stopped at last as he made a painfully slow progress across the room. Collapsed structural elements were what made it difficult, the fallen beams and large pieces of wall and ceiling which hung down or were piled in front of him like abstract sculpture, but Theo dimly recognized that it could all have been much worse — although that wasn't much solace. The interior of a modern fairy building seemed mostly built of very light materials, which meant he was digging his way through piles of shaped, very strong glass, strips of wood, and metal hammered almost as thin as gold leaf, all covered with a sifting snow of dust, instead of through concrete and cast iron. Still, by the time he had reached the door he felt as though he'd moved several hundred cubic feet of rubbish. He was sweating from the heat beating down from the burning floors above, but periodic showers of smoldering fragments from the dark spaces above made him glad he'd put the jacket back on.

Once or twice he thought he heard Tansy moaning in the rubble behind him, but it wasn't as hard to ignore as he had thought it might be: even with the hob silent, Theo's head was still full of yammering voices.

It took him a few minutes to get the office door open when he finally reached it — the whole floor seemed to have gone slightly out of true. The corridor ceiling had also collapsed. As he made his way out on his hands and knees into the wreckage and smoke he found bodies, all motionless and pretty clearly dead — half a dozen fairies, all full-size, who had been caught in the corridor when the ceiling had come down. He paused to peer through the floating dust, trying to decide which end of the hall was closer, but it was useless. He could only pick a direction and start crawling over and around the obstacles and past the silent victims, some of which were no more than feet or hands sticking out from under heavy wooden beams.

The smoke was getting thicker and the voices inside him were growing strong again, too, nattering away without much regard to what was really going on, like a bus full of querulous old people stopped by the roadside. He heard Cat talking about his many failures, Applecore calling him shallow. He heard Tansy's contempt and Lord Daffodil's scorn.

They all want me to die. A waste of space. He felt sorry for himself, because they were probably going to get their wish. But it hadn't always been that way. Everyone had always known he could make something out of his music. He had sung, and people had sat and listened, or stood and cheered. Even when he was back in elementary school the teachers had sent home notes, put it on report cards, "Theo sings like an angel…"

Or like a fairy. So was even that to be taken away from him? It turned out he wasn't special, he was just from another species. But Poppy liked my voice… She said so, and she's never heard anyone else but fairies…

The smoke was getting so thick that he kept forgetting where he was, kept thinking it was fog, that he was on one of the hills back home in San Francisco watching it roll down out of the west. Or back in his cabin with the trees turning misty and ghostlike outside…

Simply to make some homely noise, he coughed dust out of his mouth and throat and began to sing the first thing that came into his mind:

He barely made a sound at first, just a hiss of air with words, muffled by the shirt tied across his face. He found a bit of strength, coughed, and went on a little louder.

It was the old tune he'd sung to his mother as she lay dying. It didn't make a very brave sound — his voice was an unintelligible muddy croak and every syllable scraped his throat like steel wool — but it was a sound, something other than the internal drone of horror. He dug away at the wreckage and sang in a voice not much above a whisper.

An ocean. It would definitely be worth drowning if he could do it in blessed, cool water, just open his mouth and swallow it down…

He looked up, blearily aware something had changed. He was having so much trouble clearing the four-foot section of collapsed ceiling in front of him that he had failed to realize that what it was snagged on was a door handle.

Door handle.

Like Saul's revelation on the road to Damascus, it seemed blinding. Door handle. Which meant… door. A door. He had reached the end of the corridor.

He managed to slide the sheet of ceiling material to one side before lifting it again and this time he was able to get it upright then push it away so that it toppled onto some of the other rubbish that had accumulated at the end of the hall. Now he could see the actual handle, covered with dust like a tomb-artifact. His fingers curled around it. Opens in, that's what I need. Please, God, make it open in. If it opens in toward me, that means… what does it mean, again? He fought to keep his mind from wandering away and leaving him alone. Right. That will mean it's an exit — the stairwell, probably. But if it opens away from me, it's another office.

He couldn't bear to think about that much. He twisted the handle and pulled. It didn't open.

For long moments he sat in the dust, completely devastated, his eyes blurring with gritty tears. He turned and pushed but when that didn't work either he succumbed to a twinge of hope.

Maybe it's an out door and it just jammed.

He set his legs, grabbed the handle in both hands, and pulled hard. It didn't open, but he thought he felt the smallest little tremor, something wanting to budge that couldn't quite. Delusion — a dying man's self-delusion, that was what it had to be. But he squatted again, got a grip on the handle, and then set one foot against the doorframe. He pulled, straining for breath, almost screaming with the effort. The door popped open with one swift crunch like a bone breaking and in that moment he felt he could hear a sudden choir of angels drowning out all other voices in his head.

The stairway was nearly as full of rubble, dust, and smoke as the hallway, but he could see a way down through the leaning timbers. Hundreds or even thousands of the little golden beetles were on the stairs already, pouring out of broken pipes and then forming themselves into semi-orderly lines that went nowhere, pooling against obstacles, driven by some instinct he could not understand. In fact, their headless determination reminded Theo of himself. He would have laughed but his throat and lungs felt like they were full of singed wool.

Only a couple of floors to the ground, he told himself. Don't lose it yet, man.

He was halfway down the first set of stairs when something above him collapsed with a sound like a bomb going off, an impact that knocked him to the floor. The dust clouds billowed with the pressure change and his ears buzzed, a high foul tone that didn't go away again and made him feel sick to his stomach. He sucked air through his improvised mask and waited to be crushed into jelly, but again, Death seemed to be holding back — a giant skeletal fist trembling over his head. He clambered to his feet and began staggering down the stairs again.

What am I doing in the middle of all this? I'm a singer — a goddamn singer! I'm not even one of the guys that plays the guitar…

As the ringing in his skull finally began to die down new voices surrounded him, disembodied like the hob but not utilitarian, humming, chanting, even singing, a hundred different keys, a cacophony. He couldn't help wondering if something had fallen on his head and this was a symptom of brain damage or just some broken magic of Daffodil House spewing like a plumbing leak.

At the bottom of four flights of stairs that each seemed a mile long, he found himself in front of another door. Now, to his slow astonishment, he realized he was hearing voices that originated outside his head — real voices, loud and rough and fearful. He slipped and fell on the landing, then got up and pulled the door open, only to be nearly trampled by three dust-covered figures in the gray body-armor of police constables, their hooded silhouettes so bulky and distorted beneath their dusty cloaks that for a moment he took them for ogres.

One of them grabbed him, a hard clutch on his upper arm that made Theo cry out even as he marveled at the existence of other living people. Beneath the hood and the dust the constable was wearing prismed goggles like the compound eyes of a fly. A small shape holding a tiny glowing sphere hovered just above the constable's shoulder, dressed in a bubble-mask and blast suit like a toy space alien. Theo guessed it was some kind of rescue-sprite. One of Applecore's kin.

"Is there anyone else up there?" the constable shouted. "Anyone alive?"

"I don't know." The shirt over his face muffled his words and he had to say it again, louder. Applecore, he thought suddenly. My God, where is she?

"Right. Get out." His interrogator steered Theo roughly through the doorway. "Go on! Straight down that hall and then up into the lobby!" The constables pushed past him and started up the stairs.

Tingling, almost hyperventilating with relief, Theo hurried along the hallway. He would live. Much of the rubble had been pushed against the walls, leaving the way clear. He would escape out into the air. He would escape the dust and smoke and the moaning phantom voices and the horror, run away from this ruined place and keep running, didn't matter where, until he could breathe. Until he could sleep…

The hallway branched. There was a sign in the illegible fairy-script that he somehow could always read: Lobby, it proclaimed, with an arrow pointing the way to life and freedom like the kindly hand of a guardian angel. The cross-corridor sign read: Daffodil House Tower. It also had an arrow.

He paused without at first knowing why. Where had Applecore been when that… that horror had happened? Outside — or at least that was what he wanted to believe. She must have gone outside, she must have — that was the message she had left for him before he went to the conference center. The sprite was no idiot, either: if she had been anywhere out of the building she would have seen that thing coming through the air, that terrible winged shadow, and she would have gotten the hell out of Dodge City. Of course she would have.

But as Theo started into the corridor leading to the lobby, another thought struck him. Even if she did spot Tansy, she didn't follow him into the conference center where I was. What if she went upstairs to the big meeting, instead?

He stood at the place where the corridors crossed. If she went up there, she's dead and there's nothing I can do. If she's outside, she may have lived, but there's nothing I can do until I get out there. Where else could she be?

The comb. He didn't want to think about it, but he couldn't push it away. The comb underneath Daffodil House. He had no idea what had happened to the main tower, but he found it hard to believe that Hellebore and his allies would leave that proud, tall symbol alone. What if she had gone back to the comb? What if she needed help?

No, it was foolish even to think about it. Go into another damaged building to look for a person who probably wasn't even there, and would be almost impossible to find if she was? But even with his head buzzing and all his limbs achingly exhausted, Theo could not forget how she had flown against that undead thing like the world's bravest hummingbird, trying to save his miserable life with nothing but a corkscrew. And he could not forget her on the train, staying with him to the bitter end, huddled under his shirt even as the constables and the horrid, sluglike hollow-men approached. What had she owed him? Nothing. What did he owe her? Everything.

Just head up that corridor to the lobby, you idiot, the sensible part of his brain told him. She's probably outside, and if she isn't, what could you do anyway?

Shallow. The word jumped up like the blackest curse. Shallow. He could feel himself, all surface, empty as a plaster statue. Heartless. Gutless.

Better to be shallow than dead.

What else do I have, though? What am I holding onto? I'm not even human, I'm some kind of unwanted, rummage-sale fairy. She's my friend.

He turned around again and stepped into the corridor with the Daffodil House Tower sign. Maybe the main tower had escaped the worst damage, he told himself without quite believing it. It would have been the conference center Hellebore and those other sons of bitches really wanted, wouldn't it? All their enemies gathered in one place. Theo was shaken to dizziness by a sudden flashback of the meeting room collapsing in a gush of molten glass and billowing flames, of what must have happened to Lady Aemilia Jonquil and Hollyhock and even Spunkie Walter, working on a holiday…

Because it was mostly empty of rubble, anyone who had been in the offices along the corridor between the conference center and the main tower had not lingered: the doors gaped open on either side and the long hall was empty except for a fine haze of dust. After he had gone perhaps a hundred paces he reached a wider place where four other corridors radiated out, making a five-pointed star of hallways, not counting the smooth-sided vertical shaft that led upward from the crossing-point to some kind of skylight window at the surface a dozen yards away. Theo could see that it was dark outside now, a deep gloom pierced by beams of greenish-gold light filtering through the dusty murk. He didn't know whether the sun had actually set or the air outside was simply black with smoke. Either way it was depressing and disorienting: he had no idea what time or even day it was, could not guess how long he had been struggling to escape.

Only a few dozen paces beyond the star-crossing the corridor began to get hot and Theo began to have a pretty bad feeling about what might have happened to the main tower above his head. Within twenty more steps he was sweating profusely. Then the corridor dead-ended in a wall of gently smoking rubbish where the ceiling had collapsed.

Oh my God. Here, too.

He stood, swaying. It seemed clear that the destruction above must be general, and that it extended all the way down to this place, a floor beneath ground level. Which meant that he had just forced his way into the most dangerous parts of another crippled building.

But it's not as bad down here as where I was before. He clung to that thought. She might be trapped in there and the doors are just stuck closed. No more time to stand around: it was painfully hot and seemed to be getting worse. He pulled his jacket sleeve over his fingers and gingerly touched the vertical rubble, looking for a safe place to apply pressure, but it did not move when he shoved it. He turned and retreated back up the corridor.

Theo tightened the shirt over his mouth and wiped at his streaming eyes as he reached the five-way crossing. He chose one of the two closest corridors and followed it until he again reached another spot where deadfall from the ceiling sent him back.

Golden beetles with charred shells dropped from the crevices above, pattering on his shoulders and head, crunching underfoot when he walked. At least the humming, buzzing voice-leak had finally gone silent, dying as the hob-voice had died. He chose another corridor and followed a succession of twisting passageways, struggling to keep himself focused on which direction was the one he wanted, but he hadn't had time to learn much about the main house tower's geography and it was even more baffling from underneath. He stopped at another ragged wall of collapsed ceiling, heartsick and exhausted, but just as he was about to turn back once more he saw that one of the open doorways on the edge of the destruction led to a short passageway and another door.

Theo fought through the debris, protecting himself with the jacket as he pushed heavy pieces of beam out of the way, their charred edges still glowing in places. When he reached the other door he found it was blocked by an obstacle on the far side, but at last he managed to shove it open. An arm fell across the gap as he stepped through; he almost tripped over it and fell down another set of stairs. The fairy-corpse at his feet had been crushed by a large chunk of metal from above, which after doing its murderous work had tumbled on down the open stairway. The air duct or whatever it was had finally lodged about halfway down the steps, a black-smudged clot of silver.

Neither corpse nor fallen duct held his attention very long: beyond and below, spread across the massive chamber and visible only because much of the smoke was being drawn up into the ruined ceiling, lay a bewildering panorama of devastation.

Theo's first thought was that somehow, through some incomprehensible fairy-magic, he had stepped right out of Daffodil House and was viewing the great complex's destruction from some perch high above. It took a moment to realize that what he was seeing instead was an accidental reflection in miniature.

The ceiling of the huge, vaulted room that contained Daffodil Comb had come down in a tumult of flaming beams and shattered ducts and material, smashing the center of the comb flat and setting the remnants on fire: tongues of flame still leaped toward the ruined ceiling, filling the air with a swirl of ash and sparks, a storm of white flecks and orange glitter, so that the wide space seemed like nothing so much as a souvenir snowglobe out of Hell's giftshop. Bodies were scattered everywhere, on the floor and in the rubble. A dozen or so were Theo's size, ordinary fairies who had been visiting the comb for work or social reasons, but the ghastly majority were pixies and sprites and other small creatures, uncountable hundreds or even thousands of tiny bodies burned black, translucent wings curled and crisped, so that what had been an entire city of speaking, singing people now looked like drifts of dead flies. But not all had died in the first destruction: small cries of shock and pain filled the air, and Theo finally realized that what swirled through the chamber was more than bits of fiery ash, that the upper reaches were full of tiny, awkwardly fluttering shapes, some of them actually aflame, others just beginning to smolder — flying sparks hunting madly for escape but instead being sucked upward by the hot drafts. Others that had managed to stay below the updrafts were battering themselves against doors and walls as they died, blind and brainless. It began to seem like half of the million sparks that filled the air were dying fairies.

Theo stumbled down the stairs, batting out the flecks of burning ash that settled in his hair and threatened his eyes, but he already knew it was hopeless: the heat was too intense. He could not stay in the burning room long enough to reach the worst of the destruction, let alone search in that horrid, charred pile for one little body. He felt as though his eyes were coming out of his head, raw and so dry he could not even blink. The smell was terrible.

He stopped when he reached the floor. A great piece of burning beam fell from the hole in the roof and clattered into the rubble of the comb, sending up a massive plume of sparks and flame. In the momentary glare he saw that someone was kneeling on the ground not far away — someone his own size. Although debris had fallen very near and floating embers were settling on the figure's back, the fairy did not look badly burned. He was even moving, although very slowly, trying to pull himself across the ground.

"Stay there!" Theo shouted, but it came out as a garbled yelp. He pulled the shirt away from his mouth so he could make himself understood. "I'll help you!" The figure's head came up and glanced around, half-blinded by the smoke. To Theo's astonishment, he recognized him. "Cumber?"

He crossed the floor as quickly as he could, leaping over piles of burning debris, edging around those that were too large to vault, struggling to stay upright, blocking any thought about what was crunching and smearing underneath his feet. He reached the ferisher's side and dragged him upright, ignoring the protests of his own agonized muscles. Cumber Sedge looked at Theo for a long, stunned moment without seeming to recognize him.

"Come on, it's me — Theo! I'll help you. Can you walk?"

"My leg — something fell on it." Cumber took another step and almost fell. Theo got under his shoulder.

"Yeah, me too. You forget about it after a while. Hold on."

They went staggering back through the smoke like some sickly two-headed, three-and-a-half-legged monster. It was incredibly difficult for Theo to pull the fairy up the stairs — Cumber was nowhere near his size, but he was no thing of swansdown and dandelion fluff, either. Something buzzed past Theo's face whimpering and trailing sparks. The ceiling groaned and another large piece shifted and then smashed down, throwing gobbets of fire past them as they struggled to mount to the landing.

"They killed everyone," Cumber said sadly. "Everyone."

"Not you and me," Theo said through clenched teeth. He was beginning to think he'd have to put the ferisher over his shoulders. "Not yet."

The most difficult part was getting past the lump of metal that had killed the fairy at the top of the stairs. It had overbalanced since Theo had passed and rolled down another length of stairway and was now wedged crossways across the steps. Theo's only option was to climb past it himself, then lean back and try to help Cumber Sedge over the obstruction.

As the ferisher was struggling to climb over the hot metal, the duct began to shift again. Cumber more or less leaped off the chunk of metal, gasping with pain, just as it shifted, slid, and then tumbled on down the stairs to the fiery floor of the Daffodil Comb chamber.

Theo just stepped over the corpse at the top of the landing, but Cumber Sedge balked, although he had been surrounded by charred bodies only moments earlier.

"The rest of the roof is going to come down any second," Theo told him. "Step through this door or I'll slug you and drag you." He had actually raised his hand — he was coughing and his eyes were so teary he could hardly see, but he was definitely going to do it — when Cumber swallowed and stepped over the ruined body.

"That was Drift Burdock," he said as Theo pulled him through the doorway. "I've known him since I was small. He worked with my mother."

"We're heading for the stairs." There was nothing else to say, really. Theo got under Cumber's arm again, hobbling with him toward the star-shaped crossing. Behind them something began growling in such a deep voice that for a terrified instant Theo thought that the winged shadow, the dragon, had returned, had come down to the ground and forced its way into the vast room behind them. Then the walls of the corridor shook hard, the floor bounced, and the growl became a crackling groan. "The ceiling!" Theo shouted. He bent and got hold of Cumber Sedge as best he could, draping him awkwardly over his shoulder, then ran, his heart swelling in his chest until he thought his ribs would explode outward. He made only a dozen steps before there was a loud scraping, squealing sound followed by a titanic slam and a blast of hot air from behind them. The floor convulsed beneath their feet and Theo pitched over, Cumber falling awkwardly beneath him.

After a few dazed seconds, when the rest of the roof and walls had not come down on top of them, Theo dragged Cumber up and hurried him toward the only place that he knew for certain led up and out to safety.

By the time they reached the stairs leading to the conference center lobby, smoke was roiling around their feet like swamp-mist. Cumber, dazed and in great pain, wanted to stop to get his breath, but Theo would not allow it.

The last moments went like a falling dream, like the instant between realizing you were about to be in a car accident and the first smash of metal on metal. As they staggered up out of the stairwell Theo saw that the lobby was full of people, mostly hooded constables helping victims out toward the open doors, but all those other living creatures might as well have been in some kind of parallel dimension, a place that although visible had nothing to do with Theo Vilmos. His only thought, the one thing that kept his legs driving, was to get out of the building, to reach air and light and to have nothing above his head but sky.

A huge daffodil made of wood and gold leaf had fallen from the wall and shattered, flinging pieces everywhere; it seemed an exhausting insult at this late point to have to lift his weary legs over the fragments, but he did. They stumbled out of the doors to stand stunned beneath black sky and the burning hulk of the main tower, the flames reflected a thousand times in the windows of Daffodil House's other buildings. The shorter, slenderer tower of Narcissus House was standing almost untouched just a few hundred feet away, although many of the windows were broken and some leaked smoke. The grotesque scene should have looked like something out of Dante — it did look like something out of Dante — but to Theo it was beautiful beyond description. It was the world again, the open sky, things he had been certain many times in the last hours were now lost to him forever.

They let hoarse-voiced constables shove them away from the door. Cumber disengaged himself and limped along unsupported. Theo smelled air that didn't have smoke in it, or at least that had more air than smoke.

Escape, he thought, blurry and tired, struggling to make something of his rattling thoughts. I'm out. I'm alive. Now what?

He couldn't think of much of anything that mattered, except taking a long, cool shower and then sleeping for a hundred years.

26 LOSING A FRIEND

The air outside was almost as smoky as what had been choking him inside the buildings, but when Theo could stop coughing for a moment it seemed almost deliciously pure, the breath of angels. He unknotted the sooty shirt around his face and threw it to the ground, then stood sucking in the wonderful stuff. He resolved to celebrate every single breath he ever took for the rest of his life.

Rivulets of golden beetles scuttled over the walls that still stood and across the ground, crackling under his feet as he trudged away from the conference center doors. Giant emergency lanterns had been set up all through the grounds of the Daffodil House gardens, out of reach of most of the falling debris, their lamps roofed over with lenses that beamed their mustard-colored light upward through the dark, swirling pall. Shouting constables and singed and dust-smeared victims were everywhere, as purposeless as the golden bugs except for one group of about a dozen fairies in long gray robes who stood in a circle at the farthest edge of the open space around the building, waving their arms in the air and singing. Some kind of religious group, he assumed, the fairy equivalent of the Salvation Army praying at a disaster scene, but then he heard a rumble of true thunder from high overhead and felt a spattering of rain on his face, and just at that moment the singing jumped up a key. Not holy-rollers, then, but a fairy version of the volunteer fire department, perhaps, their true mission meteorological rather than missionary. Theo shook his head. Time after time Faerie had almost killed him, yet he still understood so little about this place! But he could not afford to stand, dazedly watching them — he was still too close to the two most badly damaged buildings, the conference center and the main tower which seemed to be barely holding together. Bits of roof and façade came whirling down at intervals from the spotlight-painted heights to shatter against the ground, deadly as grenades.

With Cumber still in tow Theo staggered out toward the Daffodil House gardens and at last fell to his knees to retch up what felt like pounds of soot, coughing so hard that he could only lie on the ground when he had finished, too dizzy and weak to get up. For a long time he lay gasping, watching sparks drift past as he slid in and out of a fractured near-sleep while Cumber sat beside him, mumbling to himself and moaning. At last a female fairy appeared out of the murk, her eyes wide but her ash-smeared face wearily blank. She handed each of them what looked like an expensive goblet before she wandered off again into the near-darkness and the new rain. Theo sat up and drank a little of the water, coughed most of it up, then drank again. For a brief moment his entire life was in that silvery thread of water running down his throat, a thing of indescribable sweetness and wonder.

As he sat, feeling for the first time in hours that there might be some point to being alive, another shape came staggering toward them like a broken toy. That poor bastard's in worse shape than we are, was all Theo had time to think, then the wind pushed the smoke away and he could see a familiar face. For a moment he thought he must be wrong, fooled by the dim light, but as the figure came closer, ten paces away, nine, eight, he grew certain. Stunned and exhausted, he could not think of the name or remember why this sudden visitation should seem so unlikely, but he did know that filmy-eyed face, he did.

"Iron and blood," Cumber groaned, watching the approach. "Look at that poor bastard. He's been blinded."

"It's him," Theo said, almost too quiet to hear himself. "It's Tansy's cousin." A moment later the name came back too, but so did the memory of Rufinus weft-Daisy being stabbed to death in Penumbra Station. Before Theo could speak again, Rufinus' long coat flapped open to reveal the wrinkled, black-rimmed gape where the slit belly had collapsed inward and Theo felt an electrifying terror run through him. This was not Rufinus but something that wore his body, and Theo knew exactly what it was.

The dead thing came straight toward him. Air hissed through its gaping mouth as the hands came up, shriveled fingers flexing. Theo scrambled to his feet and tripped over Cumber Sedge. A moment later the corpse was on him, clutching at him with idiot strength. So frightened he could not shout for help, Theo smashed at the familiar but empty face that loomed over him, slamming his hand against it until he felt bones crack, but although he forced a belch of carrion air out if it, the thing did not lose its grip. The hands on his neck were icy cold. He grabbed at its body, trying desperately to push it away, and gobbets of flesh came loose in his hands like boiled chicken. The clutch on his throat grew colder, seemed to bury his thoughts in frost, turn his muscles into silt bleeding from the bank of an icy river. He could see nothing, think of nothing but the slack-skinned face…

Abruptly the fingers came off his neck and the living corpse tumbled from on top of him. He could hear Cumber's frightened grunting as the ferisher beat at the thing's head with his water goblet. Theo rolled over, gasping for breath but strangely dreamy and slow-minded as he watched the thing fight back in near-silence. It clutched doggedly at Cumber Sedge's scorched pants legs, crawling up him even as the whimpering fairy beat its head — the head that had once been Rufinus weft-Daisy's, and which still had the look of a grisly caricature — into a shapeless knob.

Shaking off the frost on his thoughts, Theo crawled across the ground and tackled the dead thing, which pulled Cumber down as well. For a moment they both thrashed in panic, tangled in each other as well as their clawing, relentless adversary. Theo got away first and kicked the thing as hard as he could, felt ribs break underneath the mummified flesh. He kicked it again and again until it had to let go of Cumber to protect itself, curling like a silent, stinking spider, but even after the ferisher was free Theo kept kicking it in a screaming fury of horror and disgust, kicking the torso into broken meat and fragmented bone, until Cumber Sedge yanked him away.

"It's dead now!" the ferisher told him. "It's dead!"

"It… was… already… dead," Theo gasped. He pulled free and kicked it again. The thing's eyes seemed completely dimmed now, the body finally motionless. "Hurry up," he said. "We have to get out of here." He grabbed at Cumber and began to pull him away from the body.

"Wait," Cumber said, "you need help. You're bleeding… !"

Another shape appeared out of the murk and stopped beside the huddled thing on the ground. "Here, what's going on — what have you done?" the newcomer growled at them. "Come back!"

"It's a constable," Cumber said, relieved. "Hold on, he'll help us… !"

Theo had no strength to spare on such nonsense. He sped to a staggering trot, tugging Cumber Sedge after him.

"That man attacked us!" Cumber shouted back at the constable; he was dragging at Theo's arm, trying to slow him down. "We didn't want to…"

"Shut up. Where do we go?" Theo demanded. Cumber was still staring. Theo looked back and wished he hadn't. The constable was kneeling over the body on the ground, and for a moment it appeared that he was giving the victim the kiss of life, but the thing's ragged arm was around his neck, holding him in place, and it was the constable who was twitching and struggling. "Oh, sweet Jesus," Theo murmured.

Cumber ran on half-heartedly, still staring back at the bizarre scene. "But what's… ?"

"It's taking a new body!"

"New body… ?"

Theo slowed down until Cumber Sedge was in front of him, then gave the ferisher a rough push that made him stumble and almost fall. "Damn you — run! That wasn't a person! It's that corpse-thing that already tried to kill me once!"

They had only gone half a hundred yards when the dark, bulky shape of the constable stood up and let Rufinus' limp body slump to the ground like a sack of rubbish. The constable swiveled his head in a very unnatural way until he located Theo and Cumber; then, like a mechanical toy or an insect, he turned the rest of his body to face the same direction before starting after them at a heavy, awkward trot.

Theo put his hand on Cumber's backbone and shoved him forward, propelling the ferisher back toward the smoking, spotlit hulk of the Daffodil House conference center and the greater safety of other people.

But would the frightened constables trying to save lives at a disaster site intervene to save him from what looked like one of their own? Even in his exhaustion and confusion Theo could see that it was much more likely they would hold him up long enough for the thing to catch him. As he suddenly veered from the glaring lights and confusion near the front door, Cumber slammed against him and they almost fell down. He looked back and saw the constable-shaped thing had narrowed the distance to only a few dozen yards.

"Where do we go?"

"There!" Cumber pointed to a door in what looked like a small hut or a public restroom just to the side of the looming outer wall of Daffodil House.

"Are you crazy? We'll be… trapped in there… !"

"Do what I say!" Cumber bumped him toward the door. Theo scrabbled it open and they plunged through onto a small landing, then almost fell down the stairs when the door closed behind them, sealing them in darkness.

"What the hell is this?"

"Down. Hold onto the railing."

They had reached the bottom of the fourth short flight when Theo heard the door groan open above them and the first sounds of booted feet on the stairs. He and Cumber spilled off the bottom landing and out into a flat space. Suddenly a greenish light leaped out all around them: Cumber had produced one of the small glowing spheres from his pocket. They were in a vast room, low but wide, and they were entirely surrounded by… parked cars.

"A garage? We're going to die in a garage?" A sudden spark of hope flickered through him. "A car — you have a car here!"

"No," said Cumber. "But there's a way out of here that leads to the other side of the grounds. This way!"

They stumbled to the far side of the garage, but when they pulled open Cumber's escape door it was to find the corridor full of smoking wreckage from above, the way blocked. Their pursuer had just come down off the stairs at the far side and started across the garage floor toward them, boots knocking echoes, a stone-faced, stiff-legged shadow.

Theo turned to the smoldering wrack, hoping that at least he could find a piece of burning wood to use as a weapon. Comic books and fairy tales and movie images flittered through his head — a torch, they're scared of fire, monsters are scared of fire, aren't they? — then Cumber began to pull in a different direction.

"Over there! The main stairs!"

"Are you crazy? We'll just get trapped inside the building and it'll fall down on our fucking heads! At least here we might be able to get past that thing, get out into the air…" Theo didn't want to die in some hole like this and he certainly didn't want to die gasping for breath inside the smoking husk of Daffodil House after he'd fought so long to get out.

"No," Cumber shrieked, "the stairs go down! There's a stop for the train!"

Theo stared. The constable-thing was moving swiftly but not hurriedly. Its arms were spread wide, and for a hallucinatory moment Theo imagined them stretching to fill the garage from wall to wall. Cumber yanked his elbow so hard he almost fell over. Hopeless, helpless, he allowed himself to be pulled back across the open floor toward the blockhouse structure at its center. The door would be locked, Theo knew it as surely as he knew his own name. He would have to play hide-and-go-seek around the structure like the smart pig locked out of his brick house, the wolf getting closer and closer until exhaustion ground him down and the hungry thing grabbed him at last.

But the door was unlocked.

When they had slammed it behind them, Cumber wasted a few critical seconds searching for a latch that wasn't there. They gave up and headed down.

More stairs, tripping, stumbling, sometimes falling in the shaking, near-useless light of Cumber's torch. Stairs. This is hell. Hell is stairs, was all Theo could think. I'd sell my soul for a goddamn elevator.

But I don't have a soul, do I? I'm some kind of fairy.

Okay, settle for an escalator, then.

"Do you actually think there are going to be any trains?" he gasped. Above them, they heard the stairwell door rasp open.

"Of course there aren't going to be any trains with the complex on fire! But there are tracks… and tunnels and…" Cumber tripped and caught himself, moaned with pain.

"Your leg — I forgot." Theo got under his arm. "Do you want me to carry you?"

"You can't do it. Just help me. I'll manage."

Two more flights, both of them gasping now, then they skidded out onto a platform, slipped and got tangled and fell to their hands and knees. The dimming light of Cumber's globe showed a tunnel mouth at either end of the tiny station, dark holes that the swampy light could not pierce.

"Look, that thing doesn't want you," Theo whispered as he helped the ferisher up. They could hear the steady slap of footsteps coming down the stairs, still distant but magnified by the echo. "Just me. It probably won't even notice you. Just wait until it comes after me, then go back up the stairs."

"Shut up," said Cumber wearily. "You make a wretched hero. Let's get down onto the tracks."

"Which way?"

"Away from where half of Daffodil House has probably collapsed onto them, don't you think?" Cumber Sedge crawled to the edge of the platform and began trying to let himself down onto the siding a couple of yards below. Theo, who despite his countless bruises and aches and his raw-scraped lungs was in much better shape than his companion and at least a foot taller, hurried to climb down first so he could help him. Here was another one who hardly knew him, he could not help thinking, but was risking his life on Theo's behalf.

"Thanks," he whispered as he lowered the ferisher down to the tracks.

"Let's not die. That would be thanks enough."

Gravel crunched underneath their feet as they limped toward the tunnel, the greenish light wavering on the walls, making everything seem misshapen.

"Back home you have to worry about stepping on the electrified rail. Is there something like that here?"

Cumber snorted. "Nothing so easy to avoid."

"And you're really sure there won't be any trains running?"

"You'll hear them if I'm wrong."

Theo sneaked a look back. The little station platform was still empty.

The darkness began to grow thicker and thicker around them. Theo worried that the tunnel was filling with smoke, that he had breathed so much now he could not smell it or taste it anymore, could only guess the air was thinning by the dimming of his sight. "Shit," he said when he finally understood what was happening. "Your little flashlight thing. It's dying."

"It's not meant to be used this long. It's for taking notes in lecture hall." Cumber narrowed it from a glowing orb to something more like a flashlight beam, but it did not seem to grow any brighter.

And when it finally goes out? Theo could not help thinking. When it's just us in this pitch-black tunnel… with that thing behind us… ? He strained for the sound of boots crunching behind them, but their own dragging feet were making too much noise. He stopped so he could hear better.

"Blood and iron, have you lost your wits?" Cumber turned and staggered back, grabbed Theo's jacket and pulled him hard. "It's either behind us or it isn't — what good is standing there listening going to do?"

Theo let himself be led forward again.

The light from Cumber's little globe had grown so faint that it took him a moment to notice that the roof of the tunnel was gone and that they were in the open again — or at least as open as anything could be this far underground. It was too dark to see much of anything, but he had the impression of vast spaces and thought he could smell something more primal than the tunnel smells, a yeasty funk primarily made up of mud and growing things and… water?

"It's a canal, a bit of Ys," Cumber confirmed. "Or rather, it's some tributaries that flow into Ys — it's all practically a sewer down here now."

"And think I see little lights out there, too." Theo squinted into the middle distance. The pinpoints of glow mounted up on either side of the track as though he and the ferisher were walking into some amphitheater built expressly for fireflies.

"It's Deeping Hollow, the kobold city," said Cumber. "Well, not just kobolds — all kinds of folk who've lost their places in the city up top. Goblins, tommy-knockers, undocumented bogles…"

"Would they help us?"

"Are you joking? The only reason we haven't been robbed and murdered so far is probably because they're all terrified by what's been happening aboveground so they're lying low."

"Then where are we going?" Theo suddenly did not like the look of the clusters of small lights, and he liked even less the series of distant whistling cries that began a few moments later along the upper reaches of the invisible valley, like coyotes howling to each other from the tops of desert buttes.

"I don't know. But wherever it is, it has to be better than standing around and waiting for that dead thing to get you, doesn't it?"

Theo could only grunt. It had already been the murderous mother of all bad days to begin with, and now he had to drag his bone-weary body through the depths. He was tired of pain, tired of endlessly walking, tired of being pursued. He was tired of darkness. I guess the only thing I'm not tired of is living, he thought. Which is why I'm doing all this other bullshit.

The cries from the sparkling darkness in the upper reaches of the kobold city were getting louder and more insistent. Theo bent to pick up a few good throwing-stones from the bed of the railroad track and the blood that rushed to his head almost tumbled him over. Then, abruptly, the whistling noises changed pitch, became more frantic, more confused. A moment later, the invisible observers all fell quiet — a blanket of silence that started behind Theo and Cumber Sedge and rolled over them. Theo looked around in surprise as the countless tiny lights began to wink out.

"I think they just spotted our friend," whispered Cumber. "And they don't like him any more than we do."

Theo supposed he was grateful that at least the ambush seemed to be on hold. He squinted back down the tracks, trying to figure out where the sudden darkening of the lights had begun. "It couldn't be more than a quarter of a mile, maybe less," he whispered. "That thing's slow, but it never stops — I don't think it even gets tired. Good God, it must have walked halfway across Fairyland with its guts fallen out just to get to Daffodil House… !" He turned back to the track ahead of them and looked up, startled. By the fading light of Cumber's globe he saw what seemed vertical towers looming up only a short distance ahead of them. "What the hell is that?" he hissed.

"Railroad bridge."

Theo didn't like walking on trestle bridges. He had almost been caught on one by a train while larking around stoned in the Marin hills with Johnny and a couple of the guys from one of their earlier bands, and although he had laughed about it in later years, he had never shaken off the memory of the few moments when he had not been certain he would get off in time, when he had been forced to think about jumping down forty or fifty feet into a rocky gorge. Now another such bridge loomed right above them, the trestles no more than a ghostly filigree, stretching away over an expanse of dark water that the failing light could not even touch, so black it might have been starless space.

"Do we have to go over it?"

"Unless you want to turn back and try to outwrestle that thing that's following us, yes, I'd say we have to." Cumber's voice was brittle with pain, but Theo was not going to be so easily silenced.

"How long is it?"

"How long? I've only ever been over it on the train. Not that long — a few hundred steps, I should think."

"Good." Theo clambered out from between the tracks and started down the embankment at the side. "Then we can swim across instead." He cocked his head to listen. The waters below were almost silent — there couldn't be much current.

"You are mad, you really are." Cumber staggered after him, clutched at his arm. "Look at this, Theo. Look!"

Theo couldn't understand what he was talking about. "Look at what? The bridge? I damn well see it!"

"No, look at what's on your wrist, fool." Cumber pushed up the sleeve of Theo's jacket, exposing the bracelet of grass. "That's a nymph-binding. Have you forgotten?"

Theo was nervous at how loud Cumber was getting. "Sort of, yeah. So what?"

"So what? You belong to the nymphs. The next time you get into any body of water bigger than a bathtub, you're theirs. No arguing. You won't be able to bargain your way out of it, either, unless you've been picking up some pretty fancy talismans on our little trip today and I just missed it."

"What are you saying? That… that I owe them my life or something? But I didn't agree to anything like that!"

"No, but Applecore did, to save you. A nymph-binding's an old loophole that gives you a chance to go find treasure to exchange for your servitude." He shook his head. "You may have fairy blood, Theo Vilmos, but you don't know anything, you really don't. Faerie works on bargains and agreements. Our science is all about agreements, not like that silly randomness they believe in your world. You ask, you get, you pay for it."

"So if I just dove in there… ?"

"Then whoever lived there would get to claim you. And I promise you, it wouldn't be a pretty little river-nymph like the ones Applecore saved you from, oh no. It would be something that lives deep in that black water and drinks and eats whatever the City spews out."

Now Theo was beginning to panic, and not just from the unpleasant picture Cumber was painting: they had been standing and talking far too long. "All right," he whispered, "you win! We can't swim. We'll have to cross the bridge. But let's hurry — that thing is going catch up with us any moment!"

They scrambled back up to the train tracks and onto the trestle bridge, forcing their endlessly aching muscles into yet another effort, stumbling every few steps. Theo did his best not to think of the distance down to the water that lapped at the pilings and what might swim beneath its opaque surface. They had only gone a few dozen yards when the tracks beneath their feet began to vibrate, a soft but distinct bumping that slowly grew louder.

"Footsteps?" Theo gasped. They looked back, but there was no sign of their pursuer. Cumber then swung the light around; nothing was visible ahead of them, either. Theo turned and took a few steps back, peering into the distance. The little globe still gave off enough light that he felt he should be able to see anything that made so much racket.

"Theo…" Cumber sounded very strange.

He whirled to see a nightmare shape climbing up over the side of the bridge in front of them, surprisingly nimble for its huge bulk. It was vaguely humanoid, with pale, warty skin that glowed like the underside of a luminous mushroom. It looked only a little taller than a man but about five times heavier: as it slouched confidently toward them it almost seemed to fill the bridge. It blinked a few times — its eyes were small and black as raisins — but did not seem otherwise put off by their light. The creature's rubbery mouth looked big enough to swallow Theo up to the shoulders. It stopped in front of them, but its body continued moving for a long moment afterward, like gelatin — it was hard to tell if the bulbous creature was sagging with fat or whether its skin merely bunched and accordioned like the folds of a rhinoceros' hide. The only thing certain was that it was monstrously big and incredibly ugly, and that it stank like a tidal flat.

"Yum," it said in a deep, bubbling voice. "Strangers on my bridge. What have you brought me?"

"I've crossed this bridge on the train a hundred times and never had to give you anything!" Cumber's righteous indignation was undercut a bit by the quiver of terror in his words.

"Ah, got a deal with the railroad, I have," the thing said cheerfully. "Family rights — we've had this bridge for centuries and I get my little slice, regular. But folk traveling on foot — that's a different matter. Tell you what, though," it said to Cumber, "you give me your chum's head, I'll let you have a free pass for three whole years." It leaned forward to examine Theo, who was rigid with fear and did not move a muscle even as the thing's dreadful breath washed across his face. "Well, two years," it said.

"We just need to go across this once," Cumber said. "We're being followed by something very, very bad."

"Worse than me?" The thing smiled, showing jagged teeth of many different lengths. "Come, now. You'll hurt an old troll's feelings."

"It might be," said Cumber, struggling to keep his voice even. "And it doesn't bargain."

"We'll see." The troll looked intrigued. "But first things first, if you're in a hurry." It scratched its chin — or the great shapeless pouch of leathery flesh where a chin should be — with a huge, cracked fingernail. "All right, then, I'm thinking…"

"Maybe you'd accept my rail pass?" Cumber asked hopefully.

The troll laughed, a sulfurous hiss. "Rail pass. That's a good one." It brought talon to chin again. "Tell you what. I can afford to be generous, since times have been good — not only my stipend from the railroad, but now that all these folk have moved down from aboveground there are always little ones playing on the tracks, so it's been a jubilee year for me. And if they're blowing each other apart up there, it will only get better. So I'll give you a bargain. A finger."

"A finger… ?" Theo had thought things were already at rock-bottom. "You want to have a finger from one of us before you'll let us cross?" He darted a look back and was half-certain he could see something coming down the tracks toward them out of the dark distance.

"No, no. A finger from each of you. That's a very generous offer, you know. In the old days, I'd have just eaten one of you. At least one."

Theo stared at the nightmare beast crouched in its armor of pale folds like some kind of giant sumo toad. He had a moment's fantasy of simply running past it, but somehow knew without being told that it wouldn't be so easy. He also thought that the bargain might not be so agreeable after it caught him.

This is crazy! This is a bad dream… ! He looked back. Something was coming toward them out of the shadow, a moving bit of darkness; it was only a distant speck, but getting bigger every moment.

"All right," he said out loud. He felt suddenly cold all over, sick to his stomach. No good delaying. "You can take them from me." He stuck out his left hand, tried to make a joke despite his spiking terror. "At least I'm a singer, not a guitar player."

"He can take one from each of us," argued Cumber.

"Now you shut up. You wouldn't even be in this if it weren't for me."

A huge, bumpy hand with skin like damp rubber folded around his own so that only his fingers stuck out, his hand and wrist gripped as though by an industrial vise. "Oh, you sing, do you? If you're ever back this way, you should drop in again — I love music." The immense mouth yawned open and Theo stared in horrified fascination at the tangle of rotting teeth. How would he be able to wash himself down here, clean and bandage the wounds? What kind of horrible diseases would infect him? He couldn't look. He curled his middle finger and index finger to keep them away from that filthy maw, shut his eyes tight and concentrated on not throwing up as he waited, waited… waited…

He opened his eyes again. The massive face was close to his hand, but the horror-movie mouth was closed, as were the eyes. The thing was sniffing, or at least its two pinhole nostrils were twitching.

"What is that smell?" the troll rumbled. "Like cow, but… but different."

It took Theo a moment. "My leather jacket?"

"I've never smelled anything like it." It flared its nostrils and inhaled deeply. "Cowskin! But not like any I know."

"It's from the mortal world," said Cumber. "That skin comes off a cow from the mortal world. Very rare."

"It's… lovely. Makes my mouth water something fierce." The troll turned to stare at Theo over his prisoned hand. The little eyes narrowed again in a cunning squint. "Tell you what, not that your fingers aren't nice in their way… but I'd be willing to make do with only one in exchange for this piece of skin."

"No fingers," said Cumber. "You get the cowskin, but that's all."

For an absurd moment, Theo almost argued — his beloved jacket! He'd had it for years. Then he thought about how long he'd had his fingers.

"Well…" The troll frowned a doughy frown then released Theo's hand. "Right, then. A bargain."

Theo hastily shrugged off the jacket, but pulled out his great-uncle's notebook before he handed it over. "It's yours."

"Nice," the thing said in its deep, suety voice. "I'm not even going to eat it all at once. I'm going to savor it. Thanks. Say, if you ever pick up anything else like this, remember — I love to bargain… !"

But Theo and Cumber were already hurrying across the bridge as fast as their weary legs would carry them. It was only after they had left the bridge and its guardian far behind that Theo realized he had left Tansy's telephone-brooch in the pocket of his jacket. He had no plans to go back for it, of course: as far as Theo was concerned, that piece of two-legged ugliness was welcome to blow out Tansy's long-distance bill or download a ton of troll-porn and charge it to the Daisy commune.

Betray me, huh? Taste the Revenge of Vilmos!

They collapsed at last and lay gasping for a long time until they regained the energy even to sit up.

"Come on," Theo said at last, climbing slowly to his feet despite every muscle in his body shrieking at him not to do it. Cumber's globe was only a flicker of green now, no stronger than a nightlight in a child's bedroom. "We can't stay here. That thing was right behind us."

"But it has to cross the bridge to catch us."

"You don't understand how bad that thing is, how hard to stop." A sudden and unwanted memory of it coming through the screened bathroom window of his cabin like cheese through a grater weakened his legs so much he almost fell down again. "You have no idea."

"Perhaps," said Cumber, "but you're probably underestimating how difficult it is to get past a troll guarding its own bridge."

"What if it takes the troll's body, like it took that constable's?"

Cumber considered for a moment. "I don't know if that's even possible. If it is, it will be slower but a great deal stronger. But it would have real trouble following us aboveground, I think. A troll like that probably hasn't seen full daylight for centuries. It would be like making it walk through an oven on red-hot coals."

"That zombie-thing won't care — it probably doesn't even feel pain. It kept Rufinus' body even with all the insides fallen out."

"Yes, but it would also be very conspicuous — people would certainly notice a cave-troll stumbling around like that. Make it a lot harder for the thing to sneak up on us." He frowned as Theo helped him stand, then they began to walk rapidly along the tracks again. "Yes, I think we need to think about going back aboveground once more."

"But where do we go? Do you have some friends that… that could hide me?" He felt ashamed for asking — he had already brought this young fairy nothing but trouble and terrible danger.

"Not in the City — not anymore. I've never lived anywhere here but Daffodil House. Let me think. We certainly do need to find someplace safe — I can't believe that Hellebore and his cronies would stage a monstrous attack like that and then let everything else go on as normal. It must be an all-out Flower War. They'll have troops out rounding up their enemies, most of whom won't be seen again."

Not only am I the strangest stranger I could ever be, Theo thought as they limped along the tracks, listening always for the sound of pursuit. Now I'm a fugitive, too. Everybody's trying to kill me. And at this very moment my favorite jacket that I've had since I was a teenager is being eaten like steak tartare. A laugh came out that was half sob, or perhaps it was the other way around.

This has to be the worst fairy tale there ever goddamn was.

Cumber's globe of light had shrunk to the strength of a dying, green-glowing match by the time they found a worker's ladder leading up from a switching station to the surface. Wearier than he had ever been in his life, it took Theo half an hour to climb the one hundred or so rungs, pushing Cumber up ahead of him step by cautious, exhausted step. They emerged at last out of a service hut on an empty railroad siding beneath a muted dawn sky full of dark, sooty clouds. Surrounded by trees and hedges, they could see little of the city, but at least half a dozen vast pillars of smoke still rose to the heavens around them.

"They've burned all their enemies' houses down," Cumber whispered.

Too tired to speak more, they climbed down off the railroad embankment and found themselves in an industrial district, but one in which there were few signs of life; the only movement came from swirls of snowy ash picked up and dropped by the circling winds. They found a bus stop and waited with dumb hopefulness, but after a quarter of an hour it seemed obvious that no buses were coming.

"We have to put some room between ourselves and that thing," Theo said. "We probably can't lose it completely — it's already followed me all the way from my world, and it certainly tracked me from the train station where it got Rufinus' body — but we can buy ourselves some time."

"Let's head for a main road," Cumber suggested.

It almost seemed a cruelty beyond any of the horrors Theo had survived to have to walk again when he was so tired and sore, to have to put one foot in front of the other. The streets were so empty that he could not help wondering if Hellebore and his army of Excisors hadn't done more than simply attack their enemies, if they hadn't found some way to destroy the entire populace of Faerie as well. But as they moved into what seemed more of a commercial district they saw a few signs of other living beings — a car passing at the end of a street, faces peering out through upper windows, and finally a line of people waiting to get into a small corner store — stocking up on necessities, Theo imagined.

Cumber abruptly hobbled out into the street, leaving Theo to gape after him. A moment later a tiny little truck appeared out of a side street and began to head away, but Cumber caught up to it at a limping run and stood talking with the driver for long moments, then waved Theo over.

"It's the end of the world," the little bearded fellow was saying as Theo approached. His skin had a distinctly azure cast and he had ears like a kangaroo rat. "Stone's honor. I'm heading out toward Birch where my people are. You'd be wise to get out, too."

The truck was of an appropriate size for its gnomish owner: since Theo and Cumber could not fit in the tiny cab, they stretched out on the bed of the truck, making themselves as comfortable as possible in the middle of a collection of weird tools and artifacts that seemed as though they'd only be useful for sitting on top of other things to keep those things from blowing away. The little truck moved agonizingly slowly, but it was bliss not to walk and they made fairly good time with so few other vehicles on the road. The knotted black pillars of smoke seemed to stare down at Theo like monstrous cobra gods, but even that could not keep him from sliding in and out of sleep as the little vehicle jounced its way across town.

He woke up, his head aching horribly, to find that the truck had stopped and Cumber was trying to get him to climb out of the back. The driver did not wait for thanks: as soon as they were both on the sidewalk he put it in gear and puttered away.

It seemed to be a public park. Theo did not care. He let Cumber lead him down a dirt path and then off the trail and into a grove of trees. They clambered into a tangle of ivy that blanketed a hillside and stopped. Within moments Theo had dropped into sleep like a stone falling down a well.

27 BUTTON'S BRIDGE

His first dream was a surreal horror, chewing and chewing on something that fought against him, something that actually struggled in his mouth. He was full of dark rejoicing but also horrified by his own casual cruelty, simultaneously exalted and revolted. He passed on into other dreams that were more ordinary but no less dreadful, full of images of tiny bodies falling to dust in his clumsy hands, of a mulch of crisp black wings whispering beneath his feet like drifts of charred onionskin.

He woke up shivering beneath a sliver of moon. The world was cold and dark and he hurt all over. He was alone on a hillside, tangled up in ivy. He was alone.

"Cumber!" Theo's voice was a raw croak and the effort made him cough until the stars that should have been in the sky but weren't frolicked right in front of his eyes.

"Ssshhh." A shadow came toward him. "Don't make so much noise!"

"I thought you were gone."

"I've been looking for firewood. Well, and I've been out getting the news. Here, put this on." He tossed him a tattered, dirty thing that might have been a bedsheet; after a few puzzled moments of examination, Theo decided it was supposed to be a shirt. "I found it in a rubbish bin," Cumber explained.

Theo realized he was naked from the waist up. Of course, my jacket… He pulled the shirt over his head. It was so big on him that he wondered if it had belonged to an ogre. "Getting the news? How?"

"You don't think you and I are the only folks hiding out in this park, do you? In fact, there are a lot more folk here than usual — not just the homeless ones, but all kinds of people who suddenly don't want to be in buildings anymore, who want to be under trees and sky like the old days. Everyone's terrified." Cumber sat and produced a small collection of twigs from his pockets. "I thought I'd never want to see anything else burning," he said. "But right now, I need a fire."

Theo sat in silence while the ferisher arranged the sticks, then took a piece of what looked like newspaper out of his pocket and rubbed it between his finger and thumb until the edges curled and began to burn. As he held it to the bits of bark he'd piled around the sticks, Theo asked, "Was that the paper? Or did you do that?"

"Make the spark?" Cumber shrugged. "I did. Quite an easy charm, really — you could probably do it yourself with only a little practice. But I couldn't have done it yesterday. Too sore, too tired to think."

"How are your legs?"

"Nothing broken, but they hurt and the burned parts itch like a gnome's knickers. How are you?"

"Miserable. Scared. Alive, though, and that's something." He stared at the small flames beginning to climb the pile of kindling. "What do we do now?"

Cumber Sedge shook his head. He had managed to clean some of the worst of the dust and soot from his yellow-brown face and looked almost like the young lab attendant he had been when Theo had first met him. "I don't know. It's chaos out there."

"What do you mean, 'out there'? Where are we?"

"Rade Park, in the Gloaming district. One of the biggest parks in the City — kind of a reminder of how things used to be, before Hellebore and the others — yes, good old Lord Daffodil too — tore down all of True Arden so the City could grow." He blinked. "It's hard to believe Daffodil is really dead, the old tyrant. Actually, he wasn't all bad. And Lady Jonquil was always kind to me, when she remembered I was there — I wonder if there's any chance… ?"

"No." It sounded harsher than Theo meant it to be. He reached out and gave the ferisher an awkward pat on the arm. "I'm sorry, but I don't think so. I saw what happened. Nobody got out of that meeting room alive."

"And Applecore… ?" Cumber Sedge seemed to be trying to keep hope out of his voice — out of his heart, too?

"She might have got out. Or not even been there when it went down. She left a message that she was going to go outside." A thought struck him. "Oh my sweet… of course! Applecore left me a message — said she saw someone I knew hanging around outside Daffodil House. I've been thinking she meant Tansy, but he said he didn't know anything about it…"

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Theo explained his brief, brutal encounter with the treacherous Count Tansy. "So he was the one who set me up in the first place, it seems pretty clear. But that doesn't matter. What I was saying was that I thought Applecore meant him — that Tansy was who she'd seen. But it wasn't, it was his relative Rufinus she'd spotted, or anyway it was his body walking around. And of course she found that a bit surprising because the last time we'd seen him, well, he'd been pretty much dead as a doornail. So she went off to find out why someone we thought was on the ex-citizens list was hanging around out in front of Daffodil House." He nodded. "Makes sense."

"So you're saying she went to go have a better look at… that thing? The thing that tried to murder you? The thing that followed us?"

"Yeah, exactly." He sobered as he realized what the ferisher was worrying about. They sat for a while in silence, staring at the flames. It was no good talking any more. They had little reason for hope, and nothing more practical to rely on. "So what did you hear while you were out getting wood?" Theo finally asked.

"It's war — the real thing." Cumber sighed and poked the fire. "The mirror-streams are full of it. Hellebore and Thornapple and their allies are claiming they only did it because they were going to be attacked, that it was self-defense. Nobody believes them, of course, but no one's in a position to argue with them, either. They have Parliamentary troops out all over the city, looking for what they're calling 'conspirators,' which basically means anyone they consider an enemy."

"Like you and me."

Cumber smiled. "Well, like you. I could probably still plead ignorance and be allowed to go back to the countryside — find a job herding goats or something." His smile faded. "Unless the mere fact of knowing you makes me an enemy, too."

"I don't think you want to find out," Theo said. "I think the questioning would be very bad for you."

Cumber let out a long breath. "Well, then I guess I'm a fugitive too."

"So is that it? It's all over — Hellebore burned down his enemies' houses and now he's the winner?"

"Not quite that simple. For one thing, he's made a lot of the other houses rethink things, even if they're not going to say or do anything about it right now. After all, how could you trust someone who'd do that to three of his oldest allies? Hellebore and the other Excisors are on top right now, no question about that, but they're going to be like the old kings of the giants who murdered to get their thrones, then always had to sleep with one eye open, watching for the one who was coming to murder them in turn." Cumber spoke with grim satisfaction. "And that's not all. The rumors — the least mad and unbelievable ones I've heard this evening, anyway — say that a lot of people got out of the houses or weren't around when the attacks came, including Lady Jonquil's son, Zirus. The rumor is that he's found refuge with another family, and even that he's planning to raise an army and fight back. A study of history suggests that the first reports are nearly always wrong, but it could be that Hellebore and the others haven't done as thorough a job as they'd hoped."

"Well, it's not as if that's going to do us any good," Theo said. "We don't have any influential friends. Of course, Zirus seemed to have a fond spot for you. Would he take us in?"

"Maybe. If we could find him. But of course, no one's going to admit just now that Lord Daffodil's nephew is their guest — not with Hellebore and Thornapple running the Parliament of Blooms like it was their own corner nectar-shop."

"So what do we do? Stay here?"

"Maybe for a day, but we're too vulnerable out here in the woods. We don't know how long it will take that dead thing to track you down, and this park has also got a bit of a werewolf problem at night during the best of times…"

"Say no more." Theo moved closer to the fire. The darkness of Fairyland, he had come to realize, not only might harbor nearly anything you could imagine, it almost certainly did. "So what do they want, Hellebore and Thornapple and those people? We still don't know why they're interested in me, either. Why go to all that trouble to try to kidnap me out of Daffodil House?"

"Power. That's usually the reason for everything." Cumber sighed. "As to where you fit in, I can't even guess. I'm used to reading about these things in histories or hearing about them from survivors. I never wanted to be a survivor."

"Maybe not, but it beats the hell out of the alternatives."

"True." The ferisher held his slender hands up to the warmth. "Well, whatever's going on, we can't stay. And we can't wander the streets, either. Most people don't like the Excisors, but they've got a firm grip on the City right now and there will be lots of folk interested in getting on their good side by turning in a couple of wanted fugitives."

Theo was thinking about werewolves now. He had already been thinking about walking corpses and wished he could have left it at just that, ghastly as it was. "God, it's cold. I can't believe you made me give away my jacket, Sedge. At least having fewer fingers wouldn't have made me any colder."

"That's gratitude for you." Cumber squinted at the lump in Theo's pants pocket. "What is that — if you don't mind my asking? I saw you take it out of the jacket."

"You already know what it is — my great-uncle's diary, notebook, whatever. I told you about it. I thought it was the reason that Hellebore's people wanted me, but now I know that's not true."

"You saved it?" Cumber brightened; he looked like a young boy holding his first Fourth of July sparkler. "That's wonderful news. Is there… do you think… would it be too much for me to ask to look at it?"

"Go ahead, knock yourself out." As Theo handed it to him, something small fell out and into his lap, a curl of white not much bigger than a receipt.

The ferisher stared at the book cradled in his lap with a sort of happy greed. "An actual record of a mortal's impressions of Faerie in the recent past! Mortal Studies is my specialty, you know — I've waited my whole life for something like this."

Theo lifted the piece of paper that had fluttered out of the book. He squinted, struggling to read it by the fire's flickering light. "Beneath the old Fayfort Bridge. What the hell is this?" Then it came back to him — the little bright-eyed creature on the bus. "Oh, right. A goblin gave it to me. I think it's some kind of mission or homeless shelter. Told me if I ever needed a place to stay…" He turned to Cumber. "Hey!"

The ferisher seemed more alarmed than pleased. "Who gave it to you? A goblin? Let me see that." He stared at the slip of paper as though he hoped to turn it into something else by force of will. "Fayfort Bridge — that's down by the Fenland, past Warstones, even — all the way on the other side of the City. And it's a terrible place, dangerous, full of poor people, criminals…"

"Are there werewolfs?"

"Werewolves." Cumber pursed his lips. "No, of course not. It's down in the wetlands near the city docks."

"Well, that's enough to recommend it to me — no werewhatevers."

"But… goblins!"

"You know, you fairies have some real problems with prejudice." Theo even smiled, pleased to have some direction again, a destination. "No goblin has ever done anything bad to me. Why are you all so set against them?"

"I can't speak for anyone else," Cumber said primly, "but a group of them ate my great-grandmother. Surely that's reason for a bit of prejudice."

Theo woke to dawn and skies that were still black with smoke, fouled like a mountain pool trampled to muddiness. Cumber Sedge was building another small fire. "About time you woke up, considering you slept the day away yesterday," he said. "I've already been up and visiting some of our fellow nature lovers." He held up something that looked like a coffee can with the words "Wing-Kleer" on it in big white letters. "I brought back some water from the stream." He produced a wrinkled bag from his pocket. "Oh, and got us some bread, too — here, break your fast."

Theo hadn't realized how hungry he was until he put the heel of crusty bread into his mouth. He barely chewed before swallowing it down, then took his time with the second piece. "How did you get this? You said you didn't have any money." He looked at Cumber more carefully. "Hey, where are your shoes?"

"I don't really need them. In fact, a lot of people in Daffodil House thought it was pretty funny I even wore them. Among the Flower-folk, there's an old expression for tarting things up in a vulgar way — 'You might as well put shoes on a ferisher.' Eat up. It's better than walking across the City on an empty stomach."

When Theo had emptied his bladder and they had put out the fire — fastidious Cumber insisted these be two separate activities, which Theo thought was a waste of water — he discovered that he actually could walk fairly well if he ignored the fact that he felt as though he had been run through some kind of industrial laundry-folding machine. "If I hurt this much, your leg must be killing you," he said to Cumber, wincing as he tried to get circulation into various suffering muscles.

"I'm not doing too badly. We ferishers heal quickly and we work hard without much complaint — that's why the nobility regard it as such a waste when one of us wants to use his mind instead. Come, let's get going. Luckily, we can go some miles through the park without having to go near a public street." Cumber seemed to have shed some of his civilized pessimism along with his footwear — he seemed almost cheerful as they set off through the trees. The ground was still wet, steaming with mist; it was hard to tell where the hilltops left off and gray sky began.

"Explain to me again how your grandma got eaten by goblins. I kept nodding off."

Cumber sighed. "I wish you'd quit going on about that — it's not a particularly pleasant story. I told you, she was mostly unlucky. And it was my great-grandmother. She and her husband were… what would you call them? They wanted their own land, so they made a farm in a very wild area."

"Homesteaders, that's what we'd call them back home. Pioneers."

"I suppose. Anyway, it wasn't all the goblins' fault. They were wild and it was their land, I suppose. This was just before the last goblin war. The local clan got into a dispute with my great-grandfather and he shot a few of them."

"With a gun? One of those… beehive things?"

"This was centuries and centuries ago, Theo. They didn't have modern weapons. It was an old-fashioned crossbow. Anyway, the goblins came back and attacked them. My great-grandfather got away but my great-grandmother was killed. So they ate her."

"Yeesh." Theo made a face. "I can see why you don't approve of them, I guess."

"Well, to be fair, they ate their own as well, if they were killed in a battle. Sort of an honor, I suppose. Perhaps they were even trying to show respect for old Great-Grandmother, by their lights. But my great-grandfather didn't take it that way."

"Wow. That's like one of those Old West movies or something. So why are there all these goblins in the City now? Do they still eat people?"

"Only as a mark of high honor, I'm told. And only their own kind." Cumber led Theo over a ridgetop where they had a fleeting glimpse of some of the City's highest towers, gold and rose in the smoky morning light, before they made their way down into cover again.

The highest towers that are still standing, he thought. His lighthearted mood evaporated.

"After the last goblin war," Cumber resumed, "when we had well and truly defeated them and the City began expanding out onto what had been goblin lands, there was a lot of argument about what to do with the goblin tribes. Some of the Flower families just wanted to do away with them, kill them all, but some of the more farsighted suggested that there would be a growing need for cheap labor. So the goblins were put to work. A lot were brought into the City itself in the last couple of centuries as the expansion began in earnest." He made an awkward gesture. "Now that things have slowed down, what with the energy shortages and all, there's not enough work for all of them, but they don't really have anywhere to go back to. It's a problem."

"But there are still some living wild, right? I saw some on the train, in Great Rowan."

"Grims?" Cumber looked surprised. "You saw grims in Great Rowan? Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Applecore saw them too." He pushed on past the moment's sad silence. "They looked like, I don't know, Genghis Khan's Mongols or something. Wild. Fierce."

"I don't know what Gengus Konsmongles are, but I've seen the grims too, out in Ash where most of those who didn't come into the City and into the towns still live." For a moment his eyes lost focus and he slowed his brisk pace. "Stirring, in a way."

"So your family were settlers, then? Country folk?"

Cumber laughed, a touch bitterly. "Oh, yes. Still are. Rustic as dirt."

"But you're, like, a college graduate or something."

This time he didn't even laugh. "You saw my back, Theo. Do you think the trade was worth it?"

"Good God, is that really the entrance requirement for fairy universities? And the kids back home think they've got it tough."

"It's not that straightforward, of course." Cumber shook his head, watching his own bare feet crunch through the undergrowth. This shoeless stuff didn't seem to bother him at all. "My mother came to the City from the Jonquils' country place — she was a favorite of Lady Aemilia's, kind of a pet. When she had me, well, of course she raised me here around her mistress' children, and Lady Aemilia indulged her. But I wasn't the same as the Flower children, and one of the most obvious ways to tell was that I had wings. They haven't had wings in the Daffodil Clan for several generations now, not even rudimentary throwbacks. So Mum saved up her money — she wouldn't even let Lady Aemilia help out! There's pride for you, won't even take charity to help mutilate your son. And I had the operation. But you know something, Theo? Even the ones who didn't see my back, even the first day I was at the Academy with Zirus and the rest, the other students knew. I was a ferisher, wasn't I, and ferishers are supposed to have little wings. They thought it was funny. Well, the nice ones did. Some of the others thought I was getting above my place and let me know it, regularly and forcefully."

Theo couldn't think of much to say. Except for occasional run-ins with the jock crowd, his cheerfully stoned high school days back at Hillsdale High didn't really compare.

"It's just the way things are," Cumber said. "Not much use complaining. They'll be worse, now, with Hellbore and his lot in charge."

"So I guess even before this, some folks weren't too happy with the way things are around here." Theo had barely ever considered Fairyland before winding up as an unwilling guest, let alone the real possibility of class warfare.

"All too true. But it hasn't always been like this. In the old days, things were a lot simpler. Everyone had his or her patch, and everything just sort of went on. Boring, maybe, but you didn't see gnome children begging on street corners. Things began to go bad when the king and queen died. That was really the start of the whole thing. The seven most powerful families — six now — got into power and began changing things right away." The sudden realization was painful to see. "Three families now. And probably before long it will be down to one. The Hellebore Empire."

Theo supposed that some things weren't that different from his own world. The people in power were always trying to get more of it. It wasn't enough to be eating the best meat while the rest of the population chewed old bones. The big dogs all seemed to have the same secret goal, each one dreaming of the day when he alone would be the one biggest dog, eating sweet bloody flesh until he was full to vomiting while others starved.

"Did it hurt? Having your wings cut off?"

"Hurt? No, no, of course not. This is the modern age. They can cut away your entire life and you'll never feel a thing."

It took them most of the morning to make their way across Rade Park. The intervening day had made his emotional wounds a little less raw, and Theo was at last able to talk about Applecore, although neither he nor the ferisher could bear to speculate over what might have happened to her. Theo found himself telling Cumber at great length about her bravery and the deep well of kindness guarded by her exceedingly sharp tongue, and was surprised to discover how much Cumber already knew about her — the ferisher and the sprite seemed to have had a few long talks during the time in Daffodil House. The conversation began to feel like a wake — Cumber seemed at least as miserable as Theo about the fact that they had lost her, and that it was probably forever. At last, in frustration and sorrow, they fell into silence.

They stopped to rest about an hour past noon and Cumber produced the rest of the bread he had acquired that morning. Theo was astonishingly hungry and happy to have it, but he was beginning to want more. Real food. A real bed. Safety.

But you're not going to get it, are you? Not anytime in the foreseeable future. So live with what you've got. Complaining was more than useless, it was a display of foolish ingratitude. He had survived what should have been certain death several times with nothing worse than a bruised, aching body and miserably crusty lungs. He had a companion — a friend, perhaps — who was risking his own life to help him. Theo was fairly certain that even though the City might not be a safe place for Cumber Sedge right now, there were spots in the countryside where even a wingless ferisher could find shelter and aid, yet here he was, patiently answering questions so basic that he must have felt like a kindergarten teacher at the end of a long, long field trip.

Speaking of questions, Theo was still having trouble getting the hang of the local chronology. "So you said the seven families took over, what, a few centuries ago?"

Cumber gave him an amused look. "Are you planning on taking a test? I don't think it will be your uncertain grasp of history that will be the biggest strike against you for citizenship at the moment."

"No, I'm just trying to figure things out — mostly where I fit into all this. Hellebore and his cronies want me, so the reason I'm here has something to do with him. But he certainly didn't need anything I could give him or tell him to launch his little Flower War." Theo frowned, struggling to think and keep up with Cumber at the same time: the barefooted and apparently revitalized ferisher was proving an exhausting hiking companion. "I know I keep saying this, but I'm not anybody. I'm just an out-of-work musician. It doesn't make sense."

"No, it doesn't."

"Right. Well, there must be something I don't know yet. So help me out. I'm supposed to be a fairy, okay. My only other connection with this place is that someone I thought was my great-uncle was here about thirty or forty years ago. That's in my-world time. How much is that here? How long ago?"

Cumber shook his head. "It's not that simple, I'm afraid. The time flows differently in our world and your world, and often it seems to flow faster here — but not always. You're combining two unstable systems. And there are geographical effects to factor in as well, which won't make much sense to you. I've studied your world enough to know that places that are proximate in your world stay proximate."

Theo considered that for a moment. "Yeah," he admitted. "Generally, if a train goes from San Francisco to LA, you don't wake up one day and find out that suddenly it stops at New York between the two."

Cumber smiled. "What amazing names. I never get over them. The pictures they make in my head! San Francisco! Like a name from a dream."

"Yeah, you should see the fair folk dancing down in the Castro on Hallowe'en." Theo snorted. "It's something out of an old folktale, all right."

"Time to be walking again. We're moving along the edge of the Twilight District now, but we still have a very long way to go and I'd like to get there before nightfall."

Their path began a long descent. The hills were more and more sparsely covered with trees and now Theo could see glimpses of a great expanse of silvery water to their right.

"Ys," said Cumber. "The islands of Hy Breasil are just out of sight beyond the horizon to the east there. I've often thought I'd like to go there. Get away from this terrible city…"

"So is it an ocean? Or a lake?"

"It's just the water," Cumber said, and shrugged. "If you go out far enough, it's the ocean. But here it's a lake — well, kind of a bay in places. I don't think I can explain."

Theo could also see vast stretches of urban housing and industrial blocks between the park and the water, but the district below them had little in the way of the high towers that dotted the city center. "Is that where we're going?"

"No, that's Eastwater. We'll go through one end of it on our way. Mostly warehouses and very, very cheap flats for very poor people. Farther north — see out there, where there aren't so many buildings? That's the edge of the Fenland. It's a sort of swamp between the City proper and the dockyards. The Moonflood River lets out there, and the old Fayfort Bridge is one of the last bridges across the river. Hardly ever used now, I think, because the railroad and the main highway bypass it and come in through Eastwater."

"I still can't get used to hearing the word 'railroad' used to describe something in Fairyland, let alone 'power plants.' When did all this happen?"

"When the City expanded, after the Seven Families took over. Lord Hellebore may hate mortals, although I can't think of any reason he should, particularly — they say he used to visit the mortal world regularly, before the Clover Effect was in place — but he and his kind certainly love all the things that mortals have come up with. It's one of the reasons we have so many power problems — the Flower families have built so much, so fast. It used to be that the power for all the charms and cantrips and spells of Faerie could be provided by the king and queen — well, by what the king and queen did."

"What exactly did they do?"

"I don't know, really. Provided the power, or perhaps channeled it — they simply were, and somehow that was enough. But with them gone and the City growing so fast, the Seven Families and the Parliament had to find other ways to provide power to make everything work. So they developed the plants."

For a moment, Theo was confused, imagining some utopian scheme of deriving energy from soybeans. "What kind of plants?"

"Power plants, of course. Where they make the scientific energy that runs the lights and the coaches and the trains and… and everything. And so Parliament passed the Power Generation Laws and they began the conscription."

"Hang on, you've lost me again. A conscription — that's like a draft, right? Like when they pick you to go into the army, whether you want to or not?"

"Is that what it means in your world?" Cumber nodded. "I knew you used the term, but since your science is so different — we don't even think of it as science, to be honest — I couldn't imagine what it meant, and it's so hard to find reliable texts even in the university libraries."

"I'm still confused. Why do people get… conscripted here? Not to go in the army, I take it."

Cumber shook his head. "No. You really didn't know? Sorry, but it's the kind of thing every schoolboy learns even if he's only going to spend his life grazing sheep. The conscription determines who goes to the power plants."

"That doesn't seem so bad — it's a job, anyway. Why do they have to force people?"

Cumber Sedge stopped. Theo, when I say that people are conscripted to go to the power plants, I don't mean to go work there, supervise, take care of the machinery, do the bookkeeping. They have ordinary employees who make decent wages who do that, people who go home to their families every night and live in houses or flats. No, the people who are conscripted are the ones who generate the power. Or rather, after they lose the lottery, they're taken off to the plants and the power is drained out of them. A few years — ten at the most — and then they're retired, but there's not much left after the plants are done with them, no matter what the government propaganda claims. 'I did my bit, and now I've a long, golden retirement in front of me, thanks to Thornapple Generation, LPB!' or whatever they call it. I've seen a few of the real survivors, people from my own village, before the operators wised up and started shutting them away in Power Worker Retirement Hostels so their potential replacements didn't have to walk past them every day on the village high street and see them shuffling and drooling."

"You mean these power plants somehow… suck the power… out of people? Out of live fairy people?"

Where else would it come from? Cumber's sour laugh returned. And why do you think my mother was so anxious for me to go to school and get my name taken out of the lottery? Modern power generation is the wonder of science, Theo. 'So few giving so much for so many.' That old darling, Lord Daffodil, who was just burned to crackling yesterday, invented that phrase — he used to get a tear of pride in his eye when someone quoted it back to him. He used to talk a lot about the good old days when the farm boys would come spilling off the wagons, anxious to take their place in the generators and do their bit for the good of Faerie."

Theo had to walk without speaking for a while. Bile was swimming in his throat and he was afraid if he opened his mouth he might throw up.

By the time they left the park and the trees behind them for good and descended by a series of winding, cobblestoned roads back into the city, an industrial area full of boxy warehouses and equally boxy flatblocks, with washing rippling on the line on every balcony like flags of surrender, it was midafternoon and Theo was losing the surprising energy that had kept him going through the morning. The pall of smoky gray clouds overhead mirrored his mood.

As he stared at the long blocks stretching before him, the buildings featureless except for the surreal silver rooftop sculptures called mirror-masts (which Cumber's confusing explanation seemed to suggest were a bit like television antennas) and the occasional flowering of graffiti on a wall, the symbols even more cryptic and abstract than what he was used to back home, he found himself thinking of Anna, a girl he had dated for a while in the mid-Eighties. She had been a self-proclaimed Wiccan, although her version seemed largely self-invented as far as Theo could tell. She never cursed or thanked in the name of "God" but always "the Goddess," and had a deep and reverent love for dragons, unicorns, and fairies. Theo had thought she was a bit dippy, in fact, but their off-and-on relationship, built mostly around long days spent under her hand-made quilt in her tiny apartment, had lasted for the better part of a year and had been a bit of a refuge for him during a fallow period of his life. He had not thought about Anna in a long time, but now he found himself remembering her solemn explanations of what the fairy-folk got up to with both cynical amusement and a kind of regret.

It's just as well old Anna never made it here, he thought, watching a tiny housewife out on her balcony, pulling so many different children's outfits off the line that he was almost certain she was only renting the until she had the deposit together for a shoe. This is the actual place she used to talk about so much — "Where all the magic comes from," she used to say. "They live off our dreams." And you know what? She was right. But not in a very nice way. He remembered what the now very dead Lord Hollyhock had said about Hellebore's plan, about something called the Terrible Child. And it's going to be even less pleasant soon. They're going to be living off our dreams the way leeches live off blood, except leeches don't have to destroy their victims' whole society.

"You look dreadful, fellow," said Cumber. "Don't worry, we'll be out of the City and into the Fenlands soon."

"It's not that, not really. I just… I was just thinking about how people — my people, or at least the kind of people I thought I was…" He paused, having confused himself a bit. "About how so many human stories are about Fairyland. Poetry, songs. And whether they think the place is wonderful or scary, they always imagine of this place as… beautiful. Magical. Terrible but glamorous. And there is some of that. But a lot of it's… like this."

Cumber nodded slowly. "If you find that depressing, imagine how someone like me feels about it. This is where I live."

Gently but effectively silenced, Theo kept walking.

They ate the last of the bread as they passed through a district even less prepossessing than the one they had just traversed, a sprawling shantytown that looked like it was constructed of white plywood. It was a bad neighborhood by any standards, but the locals who came to watch them from the doors of their hovels or peered down at them from low rooftops, a rabble of dirty and distracted full-sized fairies along with brownies, gnomes, and squint-eyed pookas, seemed far too beaten-down to pose much of a threat. Still, as they walked through the narrow, twisting alleys, Theo kept an eye out for Fairyland muggers.

They were just about to cross the local equivalent of a main road, where the shanties stood some half-dozen paces apart and tire-treads rutted the muddy street, when Cumber suddenly grabbed Theo and pushed him back into the shadow of a doorway. They watched as a strange, open car rolled past, more like a jeep than anything else, but with differences in shape and line that would have irritated or even panicked most mortal designers. Half a dozen constables in heavy cloaks and helmets were perched on it, all armed with the beehive guns, their outfits decorated with the abstract flower-glyph that Cumber had told him was the parliamentary insignia. A rabble of children from what looked like a dozen species followed in their wake, little goblins among them, begging for food and money. The grim-faced fairies on the jeep paid no attention to the children but Theo was grateful for the noise and distraction: the vehicle did not even slow as it drove past their hiding spot.

"How far do those guns shoot?" he asked in a whisper when the constables were well past them.

"As far as they need to," said Cumber. "Well, the hornets get tired after flying awhile, especially if they've been in the clip for too long without being fed."

Theo shook his head. "You mean there are real live bugs in there?"

Cumber nodded. "Sort of. They're made out of metal. It's a scientific thing."

"Metal, but they still eat? What do they get fed?"

"Bronze shavings, mostly."

Theo sighed. He sometimes thought he could live here for years and still not understand a thing.

Soon after the brush with the constables, they left the last of the Eastwater shanty town behind them. The whole of Ys now seemed to be spread before them, but it was strangely uninspiring. The land between them and the water was a descending set of rolling hills studded with rock outcroppings, patchily covered with low trees bent into bizarre shapes by the constant wind — a wind that was already making Theo's clothes snap and flutter.

"It's pretty gloomy out here."

"Didn't use to be. Do you see that silvery line, there? That's the Moonflood River. It used to be the lifeblood of the place — went right past the Great Hill where the first fairies lived. But when they began building the City up they dammed it and re-routed it, and cut channels so it could be used to irrigate the lands west of the City, until it wasn't much more than a trickle." He swept his hand across the flat, dismal prospect. "This was all True Arden, covered with trees. The queen used to have her dances in the forest meadows past Warstones, below what's now Battle Hill — you can see the hill if you squint, over there. Yes, that ugly piece of rock. But they blocked the river and cut down the forest and this all became mudflats, rocky hills… well, you can see for yourself."

The view wasn't particularly inspiring, but the walking was a little easier across the sparsely forested hills and Theo was grateful for that. Still, he couldn't help contrasting the emptiness with the almost hallucinatory beauty of the woods on Larkspur's land and said so.

"Oh, that." Cumber shrugged. "That's not a real forest, that's a rich man's preserve. It used to be part of the Silverwood — in fact, all of Larkspur's lands used to be a tiny section of the Silverwood. It's the same old story, Theo. You must be tired of hearing it by now — I'm certainly tired of telling it. It's gone. They just saved a little piece for Larkspur and his friends to hunt in."

"You people really do like to imitate my world."

Cumber only smiled sadly.

An hour later they had reached the Moonflood, more a sluggish canal than a river, hemmed by stone embankments on either side which were the highest features for miles other than a few lumpish hills. The sun had fallen low in the west, the beginnings of a spectacular red glow illuminating the smoky skies behind the peak Cumber had named Battle Hill. The temperature was dropping and mist was rising from the flat, muddy lands around the river. Theo shivered. It had been bad enough sleeping out of doors in the park, with its sheltering ivy and trees. The idea of spending a night exposed in this glum wrack, listening to the distant shriek of seabirds, was miserable indeed. Even Cumber seemed doubtful.

"There it is — the old Fayfort Bridge." He pointed to what looked like nothing more than a pile of wreckage, visible now as they crested a long shallow slope. It squatted over the river like a discarded parade float, a fantasy castle that had been sat on by a giant.

Good God, Theo thought, around here that could have really happened.

The bridge towers had mostly collapsed: great round shards of wall lay half-submerged in the moving water, causing the only curls of white Theo had seen the whole sluggish length of the river. A few sections still stood atop the bridge, but only one tower had kept most of its stones. It stood at one end of the wide span like a single tooth in the mouth of a cartoon witch. On either side, where the bridge met the muddy riverbanks, lay more tumbles of fallen stone, half-vanished into the muck and looking so much like the turds of some immense animal that Theo found himself wishing he had never thought about giants at all.

"This bridge used to guard the river, when that was the City's most vulnerable and important artery," Cumber said. "When the river mattered."

"I don't see anyone around."

"Maybe they've been chased away." Cumber didn't sound anywhere near as sad about it as Theo was.

"No, wait — there's someone moving up on top of it." Theo shielded his eyes. "Not very many of them. I think they see us, too." Whether they did or didn't, a moment later the distant figures had vanished from the bridge's crumbling fortifications and the landscape seemed entirely lifeless again.

It took them another quarter of an hour to follow the river's course down to the foot of the bridge. The space under it was choked with refuse, pieces of wood, piles of stone — Theo could barely see water and was amazed that the river could find places to flow through it toward the Ys. Up close, he was even more surprised by how big the ancient structure was, hundreds of feet from one bank to the other. Its single remaining tower was almost half the height of Daffodil House. He was still staring up in amazement, wondering how many carefully chiseled stone blocks had gone into such an immense thing, when someone shouted at them to stop.

"Do not move." They could barely hear the invisible sentry over the wind sawing through the bridge's broken stones. "There are guns looking upon you."

Theo and Cumber kept very still as a wiry little shape clambered down from one of the broken towers near them. It was a goblin, dressed only in a loincloth and vest despite the wind. At first Theo thought it might be the one who had given him the slip of paper, but after a moment he saw that this one was smaller and older, with grizzled white whiskers surrounding his wide mouth. Still, his movements were sure: he leaped down from stone to stone until he reached the lower fortifications, then clambered down the outer wall on a rope that Theo had not even noticed and came toward them.

"What do you seek?" The goblin looked more put out than nervous, despite the fact that even Cumber was almost a head taller than he was. Maybe there really are guns pointed at us, Theo thought. It was a depressing idea. He felt too tired to outrun a banana slug, let alone magical metallic bees. He started to reach into his pocket, then remembered all the television shows he'd seen about police standoffs and hostage situations.

"I have a piece of paper," he said slowly and clearly. "A goblin gave it to me, invited me to come here. I'm going to take it out of my pocket now."

The white-whiskered goblin looked distinctly unimpressed. "Produce this paper, then, or a mighty stinging is what you will receive."

"Friendly folk around here," Theo said under his breath. He reached into his floppy fairy-shirt and experienced a moment of real panic before he finally found the paper crammed down into the bottom of the pocket.

The goblin squinted at it, then held it up to the western sky as if looking for a watermark. His eyes grew round and his finger-length nose quivered. He looked at Theo and Cumber with something like astonishment, and for a few bad seconds Theo thought they were both going to be shot.

"Follow me, kind fellows," the goblin said. He actually bowed before turning around to lead them to the foot of the bridge.

"By the Trees, look at this!" Cumber had stopped to lean over the side of the bridge. Theo, who had been surreptitiously scouting around for the hidden marksmen with whom they had been threatened, checked with their goblin guide to see if it was all right to look. The goblin didn't seem to care, so he went to stand by the ferisher.

The shanties had been invisible from the direction Theo and Cumber had come, but they were packed up against the other side of the dilapidated bridge along both banks as though a great flood had left them behind. The little town extended far down the riverside toward Ys; Theo thought he could see the end of the shanties about a mile away, but it was hard to tell through the growing shadows. The camp was full of many kinds of fairy-folk, although the slender brown and gray goblins seemed to be in the majority.

"There must be hundreds of people here," Theo murmured. "No, thousands."

"And another thousand or so right under your feet, a-living in the fortifications of the bridge and beneath the pilings and even on rafts in the river underneath." The whiskered goblin sounded quite pleased with these arrangements. "But you young masters probably have heard these truths already, if intimates you be of our great Button."

"Button?" Theo shook his head. "Who's Button?"

"Ah, yes." The goblin shook his head approvingly and laid a finger beside his long, long nose. "The more quiet now, the less shouting later."

Theo could only wonder what that was supposed to mean, or what weird misunderstanding he had started with his slip of paper. He noted with some surprise that instead of taking them down toward the shantytown along the riverbanks their goblin guide was leading them over the length of the bridge toward the one remaining tower. As they neared it, two large creatures stepped out of the shadowed doorway. They were ogres, Theo was surprised to see, and at least as large and ugly as Tansy's bodyguards, Teddy and Dolly. They glared suspiciously at Theo and Cumber, but at a cheerful gesture from the old goblin they stepped back, their misshapen gray faces suddenly more respectful.

The two new arrivals were led up a narrow flight of stone stairs into the tower. Theo was already exhausted, and after they had climbed what he guessed was about five floors' worth he was hoping that if for some reason this was all an elaborate trick to capture them, the capture would quickly be followed by an execution, just to stop his legs from aching. Instead, they reached a heavy wooden door at the top of the stairs. The goblin pushed it open and stepped aside, waving for them to walk through.

"He speaks to some perry dancers who've come all the way from Gateway Oak," their guide whispered as they went past. "So it is possible that you may have need to wait a while before you can be in audience with him."

At the far end of the room sat another, slightly larger goblin, wearing a brown robe so basic that it might have been something a Franciscan monk would put on while his good clothes were out being cleaned. Behind him sat a half circle of goblins and other fairyland creatures, perhaps a dozen in all, of which only one was the kind that looked mostly human, a handsome, golden-haired man in the ageless middle years of his sort. He and the others looked up as Theo and Cumber came cautiously forward, but the goblin did not take his eyes off the trio of almost impossibly slender beings who sat before him, dressed in diaphanous silks and looking more like dream-creatures than things of flesh and blood.

The goblin at last held his hand up and spread his fingers, bowed his head briefly toward the fey trio, and then for the first time looked to the newcomers. Theo recognized him as the one who had given him the paper in the bus station. A smile curved gently across the goblin's thin face.

"You have come. I hoped that it would be so. I am honored by your trust." He shut his eyes for a moment as if dropping off to sleep. "Sad, I am sad, but at the moment I have these other honored guests who have need of, hem, my poor thoughts and meager assistance." He made a graceful gesture toward the sylphlike creatures that Theo guessed must be the perry dancers the other goblin had mentioned.

"Do you need me longer, Button?" the white-whiskered goblin asked.

"Doorlatch, thanks to you. Go if you wish. Oh, but would you be so kind as to bring my friend Nettle up to see me before you return to your post?"

The old goblin called Doorlatch gave an oddly casual wave and headed back down the stairs.

"Now," the one called Button said to Theo and Cumber, "until I can give you of my time and offer you to drink as is proper, I think perhaps you will have the most comfort with one of your own kind." He turned to the yellow-haired fairy. "Caradenus, perhaps you could see that these guests are well hosted?"

"Certainly." The fairy rose. He was quite tall, and wore a kind of loose, unconstructed suit that looked like it belonged on the veranda of a sugarcane plantation. "Come with me," he told Theo and Cumber.

"Very many thanks to you for your patience," called Button as they were led back to the stairs, Theo groaning inwardly at the thought of having to go all that way back down. "Soon we will speak together."

"Excuse me for asking," said Theo as they started down, "but who the hell was that?"

The golden-haired fairy turned to look at him in surprise. "If you do not know, what are you doing here? And why should you receive such kind treatment?" His eyes narrowed, more puzzled than hostile. "You speak strangely, friend. Where are you from?"

"A long way away. Are we safe here?" He didn't know how much he dared to give away just yet. "I mean, can we spend the night here? We're very tired."

"Of course," the one called Caradenus said. "By the falling light through the leaves, of course you can. Button has said so — nobody here would dare say otherwise."

"So he's… in charge? That goblin?"

Again Caradenus looked at him. He turned away for a moment as they stepped down off the stairs and nodded to the ogres by the door, then turned back to stare at Theo again as they walked out of the tower and onto the bridge. The sky was already much darker; fires had been kindled all through the shantytown. "Forgive me, but there is something terribly familiar about the way you speak — like something I've heard in a dream. Where are you from?"

"Rowan," said Cumber flatly, "he's from Rowan," but it was clear by the yellow-haired fairy's face that he did not believe it. He continued to stare at Theo, then his frown suddenly turned to something else — a wide-eyed look of surprise.

"I have it. You speak like a mortal I once knew. You speak like someone from the mortal world. It is faint as the scent of a flower beneath the snow, but it is there. How can that be?"

Theo was tired. He didn't like subterfuge, and he didn't want to stand here in the middle of the bridge with everyone down in the shantytown staring at him.

"Because I am a mortal," he said wearily. "Or at least, I come from the mortal world and thought I belonged there until a couple of days ago. I'm not quite sure what I am. Does that explain it?"

Caradenus was still staring, even more intently if possible. "And do you know a mortal man named Eamonn, of the house of Dowd?"

"Eamonn Dowd? You knew Eamonn Dowd?" Theo was so shocked that he lost his grip on any kind of discretion. "He was my great-uncle!"

The fairy took a step backward as though he had been struck across the face. His astonishment turned into something more complicated, an expression of puzzlement and perhaps even sadness. "Then I am in a terrible situation," he told Theo.

"Why?"

"That's enough," said Cumber, a worried edge to his voice. "Let's not say any more until we've had a chance to talk to this Button fellow again."

"Because I fear I must kill you." With a gesture as economical as it was graceful, Caradenus reached into his loose jacket and drew out a knife as long as Theo's forearm. He lowered it until the blade pointed unwaveringly at Theo's heart. "And yet, you are the guest of one I hold dear. But the honor of my entire house rests on me." He shook his head, his narrow face now miserable but very determined. "I see only one solution. After I kill you I will have to end my own life. It will not expunge all the dishonor, but there is nothing else I can do."

Theo looked at the tall fairy and his terrifyingly sharp blade. "Oh, shit," was all he could think of to say.

28 GOBLIN JAZZ BANDWAGON

"If you have a weapon," said the fairy who seemed quite sincerely intent on murdering him, "this would be a good time to produce it. The obligations of honor do not extend so far as to prevent me killing you if you are unarmed, but I will feel better about things if you defend yourself."

Theo kept backing away. His weariness had burned away in the rush of fear, but he knew he was too exhausted even to run, let alone fight back against a taller man with a long, sharp blade. "You don't need to do this," he said, but the one named Caradenus was still walking toward him. Theo tried to think of something else that might save him but his brain seemed to be short-circuiting. "Jesus Christ, Buddha, and Mohammed! Saint Francis of Assisi! Hooray for the Pope!"

Cumber winced and lifted his hands to his ears, but the fairy with the knife only blinked.

These people are hanging out in clubs named "Christmas" now, Theo thought miserably. I guess they're getting over the whole God's-name thing. "Why are you doing this? I've never met you — I've never met my Uncle Eamonn, either, for Christ's sake!"

Not even a blink this time. "You have my pity but nothing more. I am sure you are innocent, in your way, but your blood is not. Just as punishment is a dynastic responsibility, so is the original crime." The blade began to move in small circles, mesmerizing as the sway of a cobra's head. "Your great-uncle defiled my sister and disgraced the Primrose clan. Be glad my father is dead." For a moment the fairy's face twisted with something like grief. "Be glad the traitor Hellebore has murdered him, because my father would not have offered you the kindness of a quick death."

"But Hellebore is my enemy, too!"

The face had again settled into an expressionless mask. "It does not matter. This is not political. This is a matter of a blood oath on the waters of the Well." The fairy lunged.

Theo stumbled as he dodged backward, which probably saved his life, but the tip of the blade still pierced his shirt at the shoulder; a moment later he felt a cold sting that told him the skin beneath had also been cut. The fairy did not stop, but continued toward him, the blade hunting his heart again.

"Stop!" said Cumber Sedge. "He is not who you think he is!"

"Trickery will do him no good. He has confessed from his own mouth."

Theo flung himself backward again as the blade snapped out and suffered no more than another, longer rip in his shirt, but there was stone behind him now and he could go no farther. He had backed across the width of the bridge.

"But that's just it!" Cumber started to step between Theo and the fairy; the slender blade almost took him in the eye. The ferisher's dark golden skin lightened a full shade. "He calls him his great-uncle, but he's not! Theo, tell him what you've learned!"

"Huh?" His heart was thumping so hard he felt like someone had hooked an industrial compressor to his arteries. It was like the worst speed rush ever. The blade was wavering only inches away from his chest. It rose until it danced a slow weave in front of his throat. "What? Tell… ?"

"What you learned! At Daffodil House! About what you are!"

"Oh! I'm… I'm not a mortal. That's what they told me." He couldn't take his eyes off the silver blade decorated with twining symbols of deer and flowers.

"What is this nonsense?" the fairy demanded. "What has that to do with the honor of Primrose House?"

"Because if he's not a mortal — if he's really one of our kind — how can he carry the blood guilt for something that Eamonn Dowd did to your family? He only thought he was related to Dowd, but he's not — he can't be!"

It was almost as surprising to Theo as it was to Caradenus Primrose. He had only begun to think about what it all meant — his mother not really his mother, his life a kind of lie. But Cumber Sedge was right. If he wasn't mortal, then Eamonn Dowd wasn't really his great-uncle.

There was some kind of coincidence there, something big and strange and significant, but at the moment all Theo could think about was the tall, yellow-haired person who wanted to kill him.

The fairy stared, first at Cumber, then at Theo. The blade stopped moving, but stayed very close to Theo's neck. At last he turned back to Cumber. "Do you swear this is true? That you are not merely trying to save your friend? Do you swear on the timeless Trees?"

"I do."

The blade wavered for a moment, then dropped until it pointed at the stones of the bridge beneath their feet. "I… I do not know what to say." Primrose looked so confused that Theo almost felt sorry for him, until he remembered how close the fairy had come to pushing that shish kebab skewer into his heart. "If I have accused you wrongly, I beg your pardon. Someone else must be your guide. I have shamed Button and myself." He turned abruptly and walked a few steps up the bridge, then vaulted onto the wall and leaped down out of sight.

"What did he do?" asked Theo, stunned. "Kill himself?"

"It's only a few yards down," Cumber reminded him. "And unless he landed on a sharp tent pole, I think he's probably doing just fine." The ferisher made a disgusted face. "These bloody Flower-folk and their debts of honor."

"He wanted to kill me. I never even met him before and he wanted to kill me!" Theo leaned against the side of the bridge trying to catch his breath again, waiting for his heart to slow down. "He said Hellebore murdered his father. There were Primrose people in that conference room when… when the dragon came. That must mean…" Theo already felt sick to his stomach with fear; he did not want to think about what he had seen in Daffodil House. It was still hard to muster sympathy for the golden-haired fairy, but if his father had been in there with Hollyhock and Lady Jonquil and the rest…

"Since what we told him is true, I don't think you'll have to worry about him any more. That honor thing cuts both ways and he seemed pretty upset he might have killed you for a bad reason." Cumber's smile was not a cheerful one. "Anyway, nothing's really changed. We still need to decide what to do next."

Discussion was put off by the sudden appearance of two figures, one familiar, one not. "What am I hearing?" asked the goblin Doorlatch, his wizened face full of concern. "A fight between guests? Between the friends of Button? But this is a terrible thing!"

"All is well now," said Cumber. "A misunderstanding."

"But you have no one to be your guide…" the old goblin began, then suddenly the second figure lurched forward. The man's movements were so awkward that for a long, heart-stopping instant Theo thought his undead nemesis had found him again.

The tall young fairy was dressed in little more than rags. He had an unruly thatch of hair like a comedy wig and was so thin that he made an ordinarily slender fairy like Cumber look like the first Rotarian in line at the all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast. He also had eyes that did not quite focus, or rather focused a little bit past the apparent subject of their attention. Despite the incomplete eye contact, though, he seemed fascinated by Theo, or at least by something in Theo's vicinity.

Whatever it is that's caught this weirdo's interest, Theo decided, he certainly is standing uncomfortably close…

"Ah, well." The goblin darted a nervous glance at the skinny fairy, as though he were a dog that might suddenly decide to run out onto the freeway. "Once I have brought our friend Nettle to esteemed Button, I will come back and help you myself. Did I share my name? I am called Doorlatch."

"Yes, I'm Cumber Sedge. And this is my friend, Theo."

"You… !" The tall thin fairy leaned even closer to Theo, who had a sudden nightmare vision of the rest of his time in Faerie consisting of a series of vengeance-duels, but Nettle only squinted and raised his long-fingered hands as though he wanted to feel Theo's face. "She… she knows you," he said. "She… talked about you." He spoke as though he had some kind of problem thinking and expressing himself, as though he had suffered brain damage or some kind of birth defect.

"Who?" Theo was beginning to feel more than a little overwhelmed by the way everybody in this damned camp seemed to know him. "Who are you talking about?"

"Poppy. Her name is Poppy. I like her."

"Poppy Thornapple?" Of course it was Poppy Thornapple — Theo only knew about three women in all of Fairyland. "Wait a minute, you know her?"

The thin fairy shook his head. "I hear her." He tapped his long skull. "In here."

"I don't understand."

"Do not alarm yourself, master," said Doorlatch. "Our friend Nettle, he is not like others. He is full of strange ideas." He curled dark fingers around the fairy's wrist and began to lead him away toward the bridge tower. "Come. Button wishes to see you."

"Button is good to me," Nettle told Theo. "He brought me food. He helps me think."

Theo was rapidly losing his grip on what was normal. "But I do know the woman he's talking about!" he shouted after them.

"We will speak when I return!" Doorlatch called back. "Wait for me!"

"I think I've reached my saturation point," Theo said as they disappeared into the tower. "Fairies who want to kill me for family honor, telepathic fairies — I can't take any more strange stuff."

"I must say, you certainly seem to attract it," Cumber observed.

"Back home, my luck was just bad. Here, it's bad and weird." He slumped down on the bridge, his back against the wall that only a few minutes earlier had blocked his retreat and almost killed him. "And all the people who could send me back are dead now, aren't they? Killed in Daffodil House?"

Cumber frowned sympathetically. "Well, it's not sending you back that's the problem so much as getting rid of that dead thing that's chasing you. It's probably safe to say that most of the people who could get that thing off you and send you home — and who also don't want to kill you — well, they're dead, yes. I suppose there might be some other possibilities…" He sighed. "But believe me, Theo, some of them could turn out worse than just staying here. Actually, some of them could turn out worse than being stabbed by that Primrose fellow."

Theo squinted into the orange-streaked distance. The long sunset of Faerie was over and twilight was rushing on. "That's a lot of help, Cumber. Thanks. I'm grateful that you kept that guy from killing me and everything, but if any other encouraging thoughts like these occur to you, could you just keep your mouth shut?"

"There we are, cozy as toast, eh?" Doorlatch carried a slim torch; behind him, the sky was velvety black and the frozen-firework stars of Faerie had sprung into view. Theo realized he had dozed off sitting against the bridge wall. A little panicked, he looked around for Cumber and was relieved to discover the ferisher sitting beside him.

Theo climbed onto unsteady feet. He'd had just enough of a nap to feel even more exhausted and groggy. "Who was that tall guy, that… what was his name? Nettle?"

"He is a very kindly young fellow, like yourself," said Doorlatch. "And a great favorite of our Button, oh yes."

"What did he mean when he said he heard Poppy Thornapple in his head?"

The little goblin shrugged. "It is all too deep for this old fellow. He often says things I do not understand. He is… damaged." The goblin didn't seem to want to talk about it much. "You must ask Button. He is the one who found young Nettle. He thinks very highly of him, so of course the rest of us also do, oh yes."

Cumber had fallen in alongside them as they made their way down to the end of the bridge and off, then clambered down the crude wooden stairs to the riverbank below and the shantytown. Theo looked at the ferisher's alert face with no little irritation. If we're both fairies, Theo thought, how come he looks rested again and I feel like shit? "Are all these people homeless? Is that why they're here? Is the goblin named Button in charge of all of them?"

"You have many questions, young master. Too many for old Doorlatch. You must save them for those who can give proper answers." He led them through a jumble of tents and cook fires as crowded and active as a Moroccan marketplace, but with a variety of inhabitants a hundred times stranger. There were many of what Theo thought of as "ordinary fairies"— the ones who looked mostly human, either with or without wings — and even more goblins, but there was also an impressive sprinkling of other types.

A group of small, sullen looking fellows who were covered with short fur just like a Weimaraner dog's glared at the passersby as though the intruders might be intending to steal the flames out of their campfire. "Capelthwaites," Cumber explained quietly. "They're shape-shifters, or at least they used to be. They formed a union and now nobody can afford to pay them to do it, so they just stay like that. Rather an unfortunate, liverish color to be all the time, it has to be said. And those nice-looking ladies over there are Green Women. They might ask you to dance. Don't do it. They used to keep young men like you up all night dancing, then eat them. They don't do that anymore — at least they're not supposed to — but they'll still happily take your purse and your clothes and leave you to wake up naked and bruised in a meadow somewhere."

"Charming," said Theo. They made their way through the crowd, ducking the ubiquitous sea birds and marsh birds and crows that seemed to swoop down and take up any space left momentarily free of people.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not a bigot. Most ferishers are just thrilled about doing household tasks — they hate disorder — but I'm not one of those kind of ferishers, so I suppose there are also Green Women who are vegetarians or who don't like to dance, and tommyknockers who are uncomfortable in enclosed places. But by and large, one of the differences between mortals and fairies is that humans are all pretty much the same and fairies have… well, we have roles, I suppose. We're most comfortable when we're doing what we're expected to do."

"Like doonies becoming drivers when the roads were taken over by the government."

"Yes, perhaps, although I'm not sure…" Cumber suddenly grabbed Theo's arm and swerved to the right. "Careful! Don't step on the klippies."

Theo looked down to see a group of tiny people with dark faces staring up at him. A moment later they scattered, running under the wall of a tent.

"Almost there, almost there," said Doorlatch. "I was going to put you with young Master Primrose — ah, how very sad, I have just realized he must be Lord Primrose now! But since you aren't getting on together, hmmm, I'll have to make another arrangement."

Cumber was still thinking about what Theo had said. "Yes, I suppose you're right. The doonies would rather come down in the world — they used to be quite a powerful clan, you know — than give up their beloved roads. And look at me! I think I'm so different, the first ferisher ever to take an advanced degree, but what do I wind up doing with it? Working as a helper in a great house instead of in a small one, that's all. Tidying up. I'm still a servant. I might as well be hauling firewood for some provincial farmer for a bowl of milk and a place to sleep in the barn. I couldn't stand to see the way Lady Aemilia left that laboratory, you know, and so long after she'd gone down to supper I'd still be there, putting everything back to rights…" He shook his head. "She wasn't all bad, though, Lady Aemilia."

Theo was watching a group of what looked like gamblers, mostly brownies and goblins. Someone had drawn a ring in the dirt near one of the fires, and two beetles were walking around in the circle — walking very eccentrically, Theo thought, as though someone were prodding them with an invisible stick to make them go in one direction or another. Finally one of the staggering beetles crossed the perimeter and immediately rolled over on its back as though the effort had nearly killed it, kicking its legs feebly as a cheer went up from the winners and the losers cursed.

"But you don't work for Lady Aemilia any more," Theo said as the collapsed beetle was snatched up and a new one was tossed into the ring next to the champion of the last bout. The shouting began again. "You don't have to be… whatever you were. Daffodil House is gone. If there was ever a time to change…" And me, what do I need — a boulder to land on my head? I've been yanked out of my own world. I'm a stranger. This is my chance, too — my chance to be something I can be… what? Proud of? Is that what I want? That elementary school civics stuff?

"You're right, Theo," Cumber said. "And you have helped give me my life back, give me this chance to do something different. I thank you for that."

"Me?"

"I would never have made it out of Daffodil House. I had given up. I would have died there."

"Well, you've saved me a few times. I think we're even."

"Here we are!" said Doorlatch. "It is small, but it will be chummy and so friendly, I think."

Theo stared at the rectangular yellow tent. It leaned to one side, but it was a good eight feet from end to end and more than half that wide — quite reasonable for two people who had been sleeping rough in a park. "That looks like it should be fine."

"Splendid. I will just come in with you and introduce you to your new… what is the word? Tent-sharers? Room-companions?"

"Huh?" But before he could ask any questions, Doorlatch had pulled back the flap and stepped in. It was a very low door, and Theo had to concentrate on getting under it without getting tangled in the flap. By the time he was all the way in, Doorlatch was already talking.

"Here are two fellows I have brought, and very fine fellows they are. Button himself has asked that you show them every courtesy and share your home with them."

The cramped interior of the tent was lit only by a foxfire lantern whose light had a faintly green-gray tinge, but it was enough to see that neither of the two people already in residence seemed exactly delighted to see their new roommates.

"Two more of Button's special friends?" asked a small, round-faced creature dressed in nothing but red overalls with silver buttons. The pugnacious face and fringe of orange hair made the stranger look a little like a tiny ginger lion; it took Theo a moment to realize that at least one of their new roommates was female. "That was the excuse you used to inflict Streedy on us, and the Well take me if we don't spend every night listening to him thrash and talk to himself. And when he farts, the whole room lights up like the signs in Strawflower Square! Makes it cursed hard to sleep."

"None of your joking, Mistress Twinge. You know you're fond of that lad." Doorlatch shook his grizzled head. "And he relies on you!"

"Well, he does make a ghastly lot of noise," she said, but Theo could see now that she was smiling. "Right, bring 'em in. We might as well get crammed in together — probably won't have much less room than this in the cells under Hellebore's place after we all get arrested for harboring anti-Flower ideas. What do you think, Coathook? Guests okay with you?"

The tent's other inhabitant was a goblin, but a different sort from Button and Doorlatch, smaller and even more wiry, and with more black than brown or gray in his bristly hair. His yellow eyes blinked slowly as he considered Mistress Twinge's question. "Don't care," he said at last.

"Splendid!" said Doorlatch to this less-than-ringing endorsement. "It's all settled. You two newcomers get some sleep. I'll come back for you near midnight. Button's going to tell a story."

"A story? At midnight?"

"Of course. Everyone will be there. Mistress Twinge, Coathook, help these two find their way around while I'm gone, will you?" Doorlatch backed out through the flap.

Something came flying across the tent and almost hit Theo in the head, but he got his hands up and managed to catch it. It was a battered metal flask, the kind that fit closely in a hip pocket. "It's wine. Have a swig," said Mistress Twinge. "Welcome to our humble home. We call it Poison Ivy House." Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Cumber Sedge, who seemed a little stunned. "Is that a problem for you? Are you one of those Flower-folk like young Primrose whose sense of humor died of starvation years ago? Or is it just you don't like the idea of living with emancipated women?"

"N-no!" Cumber shook his head for emphasis. "No, neither of those things. I'm certainly no Flower." But he looked almost pleased to have been misidentified. "It's just… I've never met a wild goblin before."

"Coathook? He was born wild, but brought up here in the filthy bad City like the rest of us, right, Hooky?" The goblin didn't reply. "He's not the strangest here at the bridge," she said with a laugh. "He's not even the strangest living in this tent."

"I gather there are going to be five of us," Cumber said.

"Ah, yes." Mistress Twinge gestured for Theo to hand the flask to Cumber, who took a careful sip, then a larger and more enthusiastic one.

"The stories are true!" Cumber Sedge was smiling now. "You pookas do have the best wine. What is it, dandelion?"

"And burdock. With a few bumblebee behinds to give it some sting." She laughed loudly but briefly. "Sting. Shite, but I'm funny."

"Is that what you are?" Theo asked. "A pooka?"

"Isn't it obvious? But I don't know your name, lad. I'm Piper Twinge of Blind Pig Street. You've met Coathook."

"Theo. Theo Vilmos." His own name sounded odd to him now. It had been a little weird growing up with a Hungarian last name in the suburbs, where most of the other kids had been named Johnson and Roberts and Smith, but once he had moved to cosmopolitan San Francisco where he was surrounded by Nguyens and Battistinis, Chavezes and Khasigians he had never thought about it much. Now for the first time in decades he again felt awkward — it almost seemed he should be named Honeysuckle or Cauliflower or something, just out of courtesy. "And this is my friend, Cumber Sedge."

Why did Mom and Dad move up from San Mateo, anyway? he wondered. He had never really thought about it before. Dad was retiring and didn't have to commute to the city anymore, so it didn't really make any difference for him. Could it have been that… that Mom, or even both of them, wanted to be closer to me? It was a strange and novel thought, made even more strange by the still almost incomprehensible idea that they had not been his true parents.

"We are all well-met, then," said Mistress Twinge, breaking his reverie. "Although not everyone feels that way."

"What?"

"Our friend, the young laird of Primrose, came mumbling and hissing past here a little while ago." She produced a cigar and lit it with a raspy flick of her fingers. Within moments the tent began to fill with foul-smelling smoke. "I tried to get him to tell me what was on his mind that had set him so palely loitering and he said something about a young mortal lad, or a not-quite-mortal lad, another stray puppy that Button had brought back. Seems he'd had a falling out with him, matter of honor, so on, woof woof woof — it wasn't very clear. Primrose is a good lad, but he talks rubbish at the best of times. Anyway, he was in a dither about it. You've got a mortal name. You've just arrived. You're a friend of Button's, apparently. So I'm jumping to conclusions. Am I landing on anything?"

Theo blinked tears out of his eyes. Mistress Twinge's cigar in the small tent was almost as bad as being back in Daffodil House. Still, he couldn't help being amused by the little pooka-woman's easy manner — she was a bit like Johnny Battistini with a sex-change and a leprechaun makeover. "Yeah, we had sort of a run-in. A misunderstanding." But inside himself it was not so easy to dismiss. Primrose had clearly intended to kill him — had been only moments away from it — and you didn't just forgive and forget something like that as though it were a schoolyard argument. Theo took the proffered flask and drank. It burned a little on his still-raw throat, but it set something warm glowing in his stomach. His muscles relaxed and the smoky confines of the tent suddenly seemed comfortable.

Good God, he realized, I'm drunk on one long swallow. This shit is potent. It didn't help that he was exhausted. "Where can I lie down around here?" he asked, and suddenly realized that, uncomfortable as it might be for him to be crammed into such a small space, it must be more so for the ones who had already been living here and had become used to having that much room. "Just a corner. I'm dead on my feet."

"Can he fit in over by you, Coathook?" asked Mistress Twinge.

The goblin scrabbled up a few carefully folded bags that looked as though they might have contained fast food about a century or so in the past — Theo could read the faded words "Willow Farms Fresh!" on one of them — and produced a bundle of dark cloth that looked too small even to be a prison blanket. "Have a bedroll?" the goblin asked. His voice was flat and his face didn't show much emotion, but he had very intense, bright eyes. "No? Use my cloak."

"That's really nice. Thanks." Theo spread it and stretched himself out on what felt like scratchy black wool. Beside the natural lanolin of untreated fleece, he could smell another scent, something strong, almost musky, but not altogether unpleasant. It was a bit like sniffing the interior of the big cat house at the zoo, he thought, growing groggier by the second. Or something else. The fox house? The wolf house? Do they have wolf houses at the zoo… ?

The last thing he heard was Cumber Sedge saying in a grim but almost proud way, "We were there. We were in Daffodil House when it happened…"

Theo woke up with a heavy, fuzzy head and a mass of aches where he should have had a body. The tent was dark, but some light leaked through from a fire outside. A shadow moving on the fabric of the tent told him he wasn't alone.

Theo poked his head out cautiously and saw the goblin Coathook sitting cross-legged before the fire cooking something, or perhaps just burning the end of a stick. The yellow stare swiveled toward him.

"Where is everybody? Is it midnight? Did I miss this story-telling thing?"

Coathook pulled his stick out of the fire and examined it, then rubbed the point on a flat stone for a moment before putting it back into the flames. "Not midnight yet. The pooka took your friend over to the beetle game."

"Cumber doesn't have any money, so I guess that's safe." Theo wasn't sure what to say. "Thanks again for loaning me your cloak."

The goblin shrugged. "Won't need it much until winter comes. You use it. Friend of Button's, so."

Theo sat down across the fire from him. The goblin moved very slowly, but gave the impression he could move much faster if he wanted to — and those eyes! Theo remembered his brief semi-dream about the zoo's wolf-house. He looked at the dark, silent Coathook. Could a goblin be a werewolf? It seemed a bit much — over-egging the pudding. Mistress Twinge the pooka had said he was half-wild. What would wild mean in a goblin — was he one of those grims Theo had seen from the trains? They had been, as he remembered, distinctly impressive.

"Can you tell me a little bit about this place?" he asked. "I mean, I only came here because Button gave me a card that had the name of the bridge written on it. Everybody seems to think we're friends of his, but we don't really know him at all."

"He knows you." Coathook examined his stick again, tested the end with a finger. "He invites only people he knows are right. He lets the rest of us bring in other new folk." At the end of this, the longest thing Theo had heard him say, the goblin put the stick back in the fire.

"So he's… what, the leader?"

Coathook shrugged. "He's the smart one. The one with the ideas. He… knows things."

Theo shook his head. "I don't really get it. I mean, is Button sort of the mayor of this… tent city? Was he also the one who started it?"

Coathook grinned. His teeth were yellow too, and quite sharp. "There have always been people here since the river changed. Poor people. Hungry people. Button helped them. But the… mayor?" He laughed, a noise like a wheezy cough.

"Maybe I'm using the wrong word…"

"No, I know that word. Fairies who are chiefs of towns, of cities. Fat ones who make important-sounding speeches. No, Button is not that. He is not a mayor. I think he is a general."

It took Theo a moment to catch on. "You mean, this is… an army?"

"Not yet. Soon, maybe." Coathook withdrew the stick to test the point again.

Unsure of what to think, Theo stared at the blackened piece of wood, scraped against stone until it had a needle-sharp point. "What are you going to do with that? Anything?"

The goblin nodded his head. "Oh, yes. If we do not soon get a chance to kill some of those Flower bastards, then I am going to go across the camp and stick this into the ear of a brownie I met named Wicker — all the way into his thinking organs." Again he let out the wheezing laugh but there was an unpleasant glimmer in his eyes. "Which will teach him not to cheat me at cut-stones."

"It will certainly make sure he doesn't do it again," Theo said earnestly. "Did I tell you how grateful I was for the use of that cloak?"

He left the goblin behind, not without a certain relief, and went to find some food. He hadn't eaten since he had shared bread with Sedge in the late afternoon and the day's walk had been a long one. Coathook had told him that there would be a meal after Button's speech or story or whatever it was, but Theo didn't want to wait that long — he wasn't actually certain he wanted to stay up all night just to hear some goblin-mullah toss parables or rabble-rouse or whatever it was the guy did.

The camp was an even stranger place by night with the birds gone and fires burning everywhere. Weird shapes loomed up before him, each more alarming and startling than the last. Theo still had to remind himself that the people around him weren't wearing Hallowe'en masks or hanging around backstage at some children's theater: they really looked like that. In fact, many of them probably felt that an arrangement like he had, with two eyes, two nostrils, and a mouth all laid out in a symmetrical fashion on the face (and only on the face) was downright disturbing. But since they were almost all polite enough to hide this sentiment, he decided he could be too. He nodded and smiled at two old women with storks' legs who were dangling their clawed feet in the river, and then smiled as he patted a small child with the head and tail of a fox. He did his best to keep smiling even after the child almost bit his finger off and the mother — or perhaps it was the father — came running after him, pointing and barking and calling him names.

By the time Theo was a few yards away the yappingly anxious parent could barely be heard above the general din of the camp, of fairy-folk laughing, shouting, and arguing. The place was so full of noisy life that he had wandered quite far from the tent by the time he noticed he had been hearing an interesting sound for some time now without ever quite being conscious that he was listening to it. It was music, at first only a distant drone and snap of drums with the occasional wail of what sounded like singing voices, but getting louder and more complex to his ear with every step.

Since he had been unlucky about getting himself fed (he had quickly realized that since he had no money he would have to beg food off people who clearly had little to spare) he now let himself be tugged across the camp by his ears instead of his stomach, following the exotic strains through several wrong turns that either nearly dumped him into the sluggish Moonflood or dead-ended him at its muddy upper bank, or landed him right in the middle of someone's private space — particularly embarrassing and even traumatic when one such private space proved to be occupied by two ogres making love. He did not stay long — in fact, he turned and ran — but the sight of all those acres of wrinkly gray flesh in spirited congress was something he felt sure would come back to him in nightmares for years.

The music drew him, although he couldn't say why, except that it was music, however strange. It was not the sort of thing he liked even at his most eclectic, altogether too alien, a kind of endless, whining drone that did not yield very much information to his untutored ear, but he had no other destination. Fairy children watched him pass, some with sharp interest, others with eyes dulled by hunger or illness. Can I catch the diseases they have here? he wondered. I sure as hell wasn't vaccinated for any of them before I came. The sudden worry only underscored how lost he felt, how strange. All these folk, some with wings, some with donkey ears, some so small he could barely see them by the light of the campfires, were part of a different world. He might as well have been the first man on Mars in some old science fiction book.

No wonder Eamonn Dowd wanted to write about it, he thought as he watched a group of children with dirty faces and wings playing an elaborate game with a stick and a wheel off what looked like a baby carriage. It's so different. It's not even like the fairy tales. You could live here your whole life and not understand how everything works, the assumptions, the rules. An abrupt realization that he might indeed have to live here his whole life brought an intense pang of homesickness. It's not missing cheeseburgers and television and things like that, it's missing a place where I know the rules. Where I know what someone means when they say something, where I'm not always having to guess.

Now, to add to his vast fund of ignorance, he had another pressing mystery to deal with: What did Eamonn Dowd do to get that Primrose guy so crazy? Or what does Primrose think he did, anyway?

The music was quite loud now. Theo turned down a long narrow space between two clusters of tents and found himself at the end of a cul-de-sac where the camp backed up against the river's old stone-walled banks. A crowd had gathered around the musicians; Theo felt a little touch of unease when he saw that they were all goblins, and not the friendly, civilized sort like Doorlatch, either. The musicians and most of the crowd were small, lean, and hard, most dressed in tattered, earth-colored clothes. A few were wearing brighter fabrics, robes of what even in the dim light were clearly bright reds and yellows, and many of the goblins dressed this way were dancing. It took him longer than it should have to realize these must be goblin women. Their long-nosed faces, or what he could see of them, since many of them wore hoods, were a little different than the men's, but what made him sure at last was what he could see of their bodies, slender above the waist but with wider hips than Coathook or the other goblins he'd met.

A few paused to look at him — some a bit suspiciously, he thought — but did not stare long before turning their attention back to the music. There were at least half a dozen goblins playing, long fingers moving like spider's legs, one goblin blowing on an instrument with long twinned pipes like a forked recorder, another couple playing more ordinary fifes or whistles. A tall, long-whiskered goblin held something that looked like a boat's paddle with strings on it across his lap, and the rest seemed to be playing different kinds of drums and shakers. It was hard to tell for certain, because the dancing women, and some dancing male goblins, kept swaying back and forth in front of the musicians.

The strangeness of the scene and the almost painfully unfamiliar music sent another wave of melancholy over him. He closed his eyes, half-listening to the wind instruments skirling around the drone of the musical paddle and the complicated, nearly arrhythmic scatter of drumbeats. What the hell am I doing here? Besides the obvious, trying to stay alive? The greatest adventure anyone could ever have, and I can't even appreciate it — I just want to go home. If I were Great-Uncle Eamonn, I'd try to write about it, but I couldn't even hack those essay exams for junior college. What am I, really? A bum. A fairy, maybe — he still couldn't quite believe it — but definitely a bum, no matter what. An out-of-work singer. A delivery guy for a florist, with no girlfriend and no family. That's the funniest part of the whole thing — the idea that someone thinks I'm worth trying to kidnap or kill. Give me a break! I can finish myself off. Just give me another thirty or forty years…

He was beginning to hear patterns now in the polyrhythms, odd percussive ellipses, things left out that emphasized the things that were left in. He found himself swaying. Look at me — like a stockbroker at a jazz festival, he thought derisively. Too dumb to know he's uncool. But that wasn't really fair, was it? He'd believed most of his life that you didn't have to be cool to appreciate music, that it didn't even matter if someone liked uncool music. That was one of the things that had driven him crazy about Kris Rolle and his bandmates, that youthful certainty that there was good music and bad music and that they knew which was which. "Bullshit," he'd told them once. "A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good." That was when he cared enough to argue with idiots like Kris. That was when he cared.

Theo was beginning to hear some of the sounds in the music, to get a tiny glimmering of what it was, and also, perhaps more importantly, to get an idea of what it wasn't. When people heard something or saw something unfamiliar, they had to compare it to something they knew. That was fine. But breaking away from that first identification was important or you'd spend the rest of your life thinking of it as a subset of the familiar thing. Theo was listening closely now, feeling the beat but also realizing that the goblin music wasn't any number of things it had sounded a little like at first hearing: it wasn't Middle Eastern music, wasn't Indian, wasn't Asian. It had too many strange unplayed bits in it to be any of those. If there was anything he knew that came close, it might have been the Qawwali stuff, the Sufi devotional music he had listened to for a while as a matter of rebellion when all his musical friends had suddenly discovered African music and were raving to him about King Sunny Ade and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Not that they weren't fine, but he simply hadn't wanted to be the last guy onto the bandwagon, any bandwagon.

Hey, now I'm definitely the last guy on the goblin jazz bandwagon, at least on this world. But if I ever get home, I'll be the first goblin jazz guy on my block — on anybody's block.

He smiled, his eyes still closed, head nodding to the beats he was beginning to hear, even the ones that weren't being played. That's what I am, when you come down to it, he realized. I may not be making any money off it, but I'm a musician. I'm a singer.

Time passed — five minutes, half an hour, he couldn't tell. The dancers, male and especially female, had shied away from him at first, but now it was as though they no longer noticed him: he had sunk into the music with them until he was invisible. He was hearing things he couldn't have heard when he first arrived in the dead-end street, his brain making some sense out of the larger patterns of the music, some of which seemed to last for minutes before repeating. The musicians gave out occasional bursts of vocalization, swooping cries that scurried up the minor scale before holding for a moment, but they never lasted for more than a few seconds. Occasionally someone in the crowd would join in, singing a quick babble of unfamiliar words or even letting out a wordless cry, but otherwise the music had no singer's part.

What was odd, though, was that there seemed to be such a part, or at least a place for another instrumental voice of some kind, implied in the shape of the music as he now understood it, commented on by the instruments and percussion as though it were actually being heard. Sometimes this gap disappeared, filled by the frantic, almost colliding sounds of the musicians; other times, especially when the drone softened and the drumming dropped to a faint purr of fingers on taut skin, the gap seemed so obvious that Theo yearned to fill it. He found he was humming, half-singing to himself as he swayed, trying not simply to fill the perceived emptiness with something of his own creation, a blues vamp or jazz scat, but to create what should be there.

The music wound around him, compelling as a drug, endless as a necklace of bright beads running continuously through his fingers. Someone was filling the space in the music now, cresting the drone then dropping back into the sinewy muddle of instruments, moving in delicately wordless, staccato sounds through the quiet stretches.

When he realized that he was the singer, and that he was as loud as any of the instruments, he stopped singing and opened his eyes in shock. The dancers nearest him were watching him, but they were still dancing. He looked up to the musicians but the only one looking at him was the long-whiskered goblin with the string instrument, who met his eye and nodded. He was not smiling, but he was not frowning, either. The string player nodded again, then moved his head in a way that looked very much like "Go on." Tentatively, Theo began to vocalize again. The goblin still did not smile, but he nodded once more and closed his eyes as he lowered himself back into the river of music.

Theo kept his own eyes open as he sang, at least at first, but although many of the goblin crowd looked at him with interest and even a little surprise, he saw nothing else — no resentment, no bitterness. He began to breathe more easily. He didn't want to be some American tourist crashing into someone else's ceremony, but unless goblin body language was completely upside down from his own, they didn't seem to mind, even seemed to accept and enjoy it. He let himself bask in the music once more, let the worried thoughts drop away until he found again the place he had been. The hole in the music led him on like a firefly over evening hills, like a will-o-the-wisp through midnight swamps. He did his best to follow, to fill the space without filling it up entirely, to let the music breathe around him. When he worked hard, when he tried to think too much, he lost his way, but when he simply felt for it the bright thing was there before him, leading him through a world that was completely foreign and yet somehow at least a little familiar.

This is who I am, he thought as the musicians crashed in with a loud, discordant break and he caught his breath. He was high, light-headed, happy. The more he forgot himself and sang, the more he felt like he truly was himself. Whatever else I might be, human or not, I'm a singer. No one can take that away from me.

The frenzied blare died away. For a moment just the drums went on, an expectant, slithering patter as quiet as a small rock bouncing down a steep slope. Then the paddle-shaped instrument began to caw like a blackbird in a bare tree and Theo talked back to it in a high keening wail like the wind and his words and thoughts went away and he disappeared into the music again.

29 THE HOLE IN THE STORY

Theo was just taking another long hit from the ivory pipe and marveling at stars stuck on the celestial firmanent like lumps of burning napalm — whatever else about Fairyland might be disappointing or terrifying, he had to admit that the stars were almost worth the price of admission — when Cumber found him.

"Theo, I've been looking all over for… what are you doing?"

He held it in for a few more seconds before replying. "Hanging out with some new friends. Smoking some ghostweed." He turned to the goblin musicians. "That's what it called, isn't it? Ghostweed?" The musicians had not been particularly chatty before, but with Cumber's appearance they had all gone silent. "Whatever," Theo said. "It's pretty cool. You want some?"

"No!" Cumber waved his hands. "No. You'd better give that… thing back. We're late. We're going to miss Button's story."

Theo shrugged. "These guys said that he never starts until everyone who's supposed to be there is there. Right, Bottlecap?"

The stringed-instrument player nodded slowly. "He always knows the right time."

"Well… well, I think we should go anyway, Theo. There are things to talk about."

Theo handed the long-stemmed pipe to Bottlecap, who tapped out the ashes against his bare heel and slipped it into his baggy coat. "Okay. Well, thanks, guys. Thanks for letting me sing with you, too."

"You sang with them?" Cumber seemed unusually agitated. "Theo, you didn't let anyone give you anything called philtre, did you?" His voice dropped. "Or… pixie dust?"

The goblin musicians glanced at each other and began to disperse. One of them began to hum a plaintively droning little air. Bottlecap looked back at Theo and smiled deep in his furry face. Apparently some things were universal, and one of them was how musicians reacted to straight people.

Cumber had his elbow and was practically dragging him away. "Man, what's the problem?" Theo asked. "Those people were nice to me." He couldn't get very upset, though. The ghostweed had crept into some of the draftier cracks in his mind and sealed them up. He felt warm and connected to everything from the smoldering stars on down. "What's with this pixie dust you're in such a panic about? Is it addictive or something?"

"Yes, it is, but the main objection is that it's made from real pixies."

"Say what?"

"Mummified. In any case, just stay away from it if someone offers it to you. I was worried because everyone says that the goblins come into the city and sell it — mostly to the rich Flower kids."

"Those guys were just players. Good, too — you should have heard them! And I joined in after a while. We had fun."

Cumber shook his head. "You never cease to amaze me." He had let go of Theo's elbow but was moving purposefully and Theo had to move faster than he wanted to keep up. "What's it like?"

"What? Singing?"

"No, ghostweed. I've… I've never tried it."

"Not even when you were at the university? Man, what were you doing?"

"Studying." There was a stiff edge in his voice. "Some of us couldn't afford to ease our way through. Some of us couldn't have Daddy and Mummy send special tutors down to help us cram for our Transmutation finals."

Theo had been about to tease the ferisher a bit, but there was too much pain in Cumber's answer to ignore. "Well, you didn't miss that much. It's… I don't know, it's just copping a buzz. Sort of like marijuana back home, or a few beers. At least I think so, but this is my first time — maybe an hour from now I'm going to be screaming and seeing green tigers."

"Once a term, after finals, Zirus and the others used to drag me out and make me drink with them. The first time I was a bit proud and excited — these were the children of very important families, you know, famous families. But I drank too much and made a fool of myself, started crying about how much I missed my home. Do you know what Zirus did the next day?"

Theo shook his head.

"Invited me out again. You see, they loved it. They thought it was hilarious. The little ferisher who couldn't hold his liquor."

"Well, based on what I saw at that Christmas club, maybe you're the kind of guy who shouldn't drink — weird things start to happen when you loosen up. That's just how it is sometimes with people who are a little too tightly wrapped. Don't take offense — you know what I mean."

Cumber nodded sadly. "I do."

"Hey, what's going on up there?" Theo had just noticed that they were not the only people moving toward the bridge, and that most of the camp seemed to have arrived ahead of them. A row of torches had been set along the wall of the bridge with an empty spot in the middle where a small knot of people were standing, looking down at the crowd. "It looks like Elfapalooza or something. Is there going to be more music?"

"Button's going to tell a story. Everybody's been saying that for hours. Don't you listen, Theo?"

"Yeah, I listen." He was not going to let Cumber take the sheen off his mood, or harsh his ghostweed buzz, or whatever it was. "I just didn't think it would be like this."

It was strangely quiet as they worked their way into the densest part of the crowd, nearest the bridge. Most conversations around them were being carried on in low tones; only the cries of birds and the occasional happy or angry shrieks of children lifted above the abnormal stillness, which gave everything a tense, expectant air.

They had reached a point in the gathering where if they were going to get any closer they would have to squeeze between a group of ogres who were passing a hogshead of something around, and even in his cheerfully stoned state Theo could see it might not be a good idea to try to shove past drunken ogres. They moved back a little bit so they could see over the large gray folks, who were even taller than they were wide.

"All this for Button?" Theo marveled. "The little guy who gave me the card? What is he, some kind of rock star? A magician? Does he do tricks?"

Cumber, who had fallen into a morose silence, did not reply.

As if Cumber and Theo were indeed the two he had been waiting for — although they were surely too far back in the crowd for him to have seen them — the knot of people at the center of the bridge split apart and a small, slender shape stepped forward to the edge. Theo couldn't be certain, but he thought that beside a couple of ogre bodyguards, one of Button's companions was Caradenus Primrose, the fairy who had tried to kill him. At least Primrose didn't look proud of himself: from what Theo could see of his long face at this distance, the fairy seemed as depressed as Cumber Sedge.

"By the Taproot, there are many of you here today!" said Button cheerfully, surveying the crowd. Somehow, either by particularly fortuitous acoustics or magic of the more ordinary Fairyland sort, his voice seemed to fly to Theo's ears as though the little goblin stood only a few feet away. "So many have come since the terrible day when the dragons flew. But you all are welcome! My clan name is Button. In the nest I was called Mud. My other name — well, hem, we shall talk about that. Goblin names, like goblin stories, always have a hole in the middle."

"We're hungry!" someone shouted in a rasping voice. A few others echoed the cry, but on balance the crowd seemed patient and interested in what Button had to say.

"And we shall feed you. Many kind people have brought food to this place and it will all be shared. First, though, because there are so many new ones here, I ask you to listen to my story.

"But this is not truly my story, no — it is not the story of Mud of the Button tribe, although I am in it, as you are in it, and you, and you. In fact, we are all in it. Rather it is the story of a very beautiful land of forests and fields and rivers. The goats and cows and sheep grazed the hills that the sun warmed, roaming as far as they wished — or at least as far, hem, as their herders would let them. In the evening the white stag came stilting out of the forest to watch the moon rise. There was room for all, food and shelter for all, fire and water and earth and sky for all. Do you know this place, this wonderful place? Faerie, it was called."

A few people laughed as though it was the punchline of a joke, but Theo was feeling the effects of the ghostweed quite strongly and had been slipping into a pleasant reverie, seeing the pictures Button made in his mind's eye; he didn't like people laughing at them.

"Yes, it seems strange now, when most of the trees stand behind the walls of the great houses or are fenced in as part of those households' country estates to shelter the animals our lords hunt for pleasure, to know that once the forest covered much of Faerie. Most of you remember, but those of you who are too young — imagine! Only imagine! A black squirrel, leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree, could spend her entire life crossing Faerie without ever touching the ground. Trees like an ocean! Trees more ancient than Flower lords or gnomes or even goblins. Trees which saw the first sun, which were old when the first mountains thrust up from the ground, trees so broad that an entire town such as you find at any railroad station could have sheltered under the branches of one, trees so tall that their leaves touched the clouds and their roots were set in the very scales of the world-worm. Hem. Is it any wonder that the fairy-folk, when they arose in the long grass of that first evening, looked on those ancient trees with awe? That in the long days that followed, those among them who distinguished themselves in power and beauty took the names of trees for their own? Where have they gone, those ancient Tree lords and Tree ladies? We know their names, for we live in their old fiefdoms, the fields of Lord Rowan of the fair hair, of Lady Birch tall and slim, of Oak and Alder and stately Willow, all of them lovely and wise beyond our understanding. Where did they go? Why is there nothing left of them but their names?"

The crowd was silent now. Theo had begun to forget that Cumber was standing next to him, let alone that he was himself only one in a crowd of hundreds — no, it must be thousands. It seemed like the little figure standing on the bridge was talking to him alone.

"But, hem, I hear you ask, what does a goblin know of such things? What does a goblin know of the beautiful masters of Faerie who tamed the world but wisely left its heart wild? Well, I will tell you an astonishing thing — there were goblins there too! Ah, yes, it is hard to believe! But there were in those long-lost days the ancestors of my own people, and they too were handsome and bold. They walked the plains and the deep forests, they spoke to birds, they swam in icy rivers and feared no water-spirit, they ran beneath the stars and sang to those stars as they ran — and the stars sang back. Stranger still, they served no one but themselves. When one of the great Tree-lords wished to cross goblin lands, he brought gifts and gave them to the goblins and they feasted together. And when he had crossed the goblin land or hunted in the goblin forest, he gave them more gifts and thanked them. And when a goblin chieftain wished to cross the lands of a Tree lord to follow the birds, or to find new grazing for his horses or sheep, he brought gifts to the Tree folk and they feasted together.

"Yes, I know, to our civilized ears it sounds strange indeed, but those were the most ancient of days, when no one knew any better.

"And watching over all were the king and queen. Lean closer and I will tell the youngest among you a very, very surprising thing. All those who have grown to maturity must surely know this, but the children will find it most astonishing."

Theo found himself bending forward, one stalk of windblown wheat among thousands of others, all leaning in the same direction.

"Here is the secret. The king and queen — they were king and queen of the goblins, too! King Goldenstare and Queen Silverclaw, we called them. Yes! And they were also monarchs of the dwarves and the pixies, sprites, gnomes, hobbanies — all the creatures of Faerie! One king! One queen! Deep in the Old Hill at the center of Faerie they sat on their thrones, robed in darkness and crowned in air and light, and had the ordering of everything in their hands. If they loved the tall Tree lords of the shining hair, no less did they love the clever, nimble-handed gnomes, the arrow-swift sprites, or the laughing, freedom-loving goblins. There were some creatures who did not venerate them, like the giants, but even the wind that bears them up is not, hem, loved by every bird.

"This is a goblin story, of course, and as all but the very youngest of you know, goblin stories always have a hole in the middle. The Tree lords are gone now, gone to their graves in the Cathedral Grove that circles the Old Hill in Midnight. Their grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren rule Faerie in these days, and where the tall trees once covered the land and drank from the sun and moon, yet still made shelter for all who stood beneath them or harbored in their branches, the Flower lords of this day are too busy covering themselves with bright colors and climbing toward the light to make shelter for others.

"The king and queen are dead now too, and with them has gone the order that gave to each goblin and fairy and troll and woodwight an equal share. Yes, it is astonishing, especially to those of you who are children — the rest are old and wise and knew these things already — but there was a time once when there was no City, when there was no servitude, and when the power to make a fire or to call the rain or to cure an illness came not from the factories of Flower lords but directly from the king and queen themselves, flowing like the waters of a great river, so that each and every man and woman and child could go down to its banks and take what they needed. So old-fashioned! So impractical! Because, of course, as any goblin or fairy child who has ever played on a sandy shore knows, you cannot spread your sand widely if you wish to make something stand high. You must push the sand together, pile it up and up, and that is how you make something tall and impressive like the house of a Flower lord, or even like our great City. If that means that you must take from elsewhere to have enough for a proper pile — well, then! The magic of Faerie is not sand on the riverbank for all children to share together, goblin and pooka and fairy lordling alike, especially since there is not as much of it to go around as there once was, it seems — perhaps because we no longer have our king and queen. In any case, only the mad or the selfish would suggest that the beauties of our City and the power of its lords and ladies might have been put to better use if shared with all. Those days are over! Who could wish such old-fashioned ways to return?"

The crowd was beginning to murmur now. It was a noise of unrest, and even through what had been a general haze of well-being, Theo could not help worrying that the things Button was saying were angering them, that any moment they might storm the bridge, ogres or no ogres, and pull the little goblin down. Theo's mood took a sudden downward turn. The crowd around him seemed strange and menacing. I don't belong here. What am I doing? What does all this talk mean?

Button went on as though he did not hear the growls and the growing chorus of angry shouts. "Some would say that we goblins should feel particularly aggrieved, oh yes. For although all the races of Faerie now serve the Flower lords, only the goblins were brought in chains to help build the City, were stolen from their forests and plains and loaded onto railroad cars — women separated from their men, parents from their children. When the jobs were done, we found the lands where we had lived now belonged to Flower lords and Flower ladies, that the forests were fenced and the plains had been plowed and covered with towns and railroad tracks."

"You're not the only ones they stole from! The dwarves did not give in without a fight!" someone shouted in a deep voice from a few yards in front of Theo. "They broke our guild. They starved our families. Eight hundred and twelve of us died just in the battle at Golden Mountain, cut down like rats in a grain house — the goblins are not the only ones who've suffered!" A few other voices echoed him. Someone else shouted something about wood-nymphs and the rape of True Arden, and Theo suddenly realized that the crowd's growing anger was not directed at the little goblin.

"Ah," said Button. "Well, there you see, I am only a foolish goblin, a young one myself and thus ignorant of history, hem. Perhaps it has not been my people alone who have suffered for this mighty flower of truesilver and crystal we call the City." He was swaying a little; his voice moved again into its singsong cadence. "But listen. It is late and I have not finished my story. It is late and the children should be asleep.

"I told you that all goblin stories have a hole in the middle — like all goblin names. It is not for me to tell you what fits in that open place, that well of mystery at the center of Faerie. On one side were the Tree lords and all other fairy-folk living together. Today we stand on the other side of that hole, with the Tree lords gone and the Flower lords now masters of all, with the goblins and the dwarves and others forced to serve at their tables and hope for a crust they may take home to their families. On one side was Faerie in the days of the king and queen, when the land was rich and belonged to all. Today we stand on the other side of that hole, with the masters of the Flower houses fighting among themselves for power, unleashing great dragons, burning not just their enemies but any who must live where they are fighting their war. What is in that empty space? It is not for me to say. The stories of my people do not work that way."

"The Flower houses must fall!" someone shouted.

"They've robbed us!" screamed someone else. The crowd began to make noises like an animal waking up, a huge and unhappy animal.

"Careful, my friends!" said Button. "In these days, when all power rests with the feuding Flower lords, it is foolish to offend them. Who would speak ill of Lord Hellebore or Lord Thornapple when it is their charity that keeps the poor of the City alive without jobs, and their forebearance which keeps armed soldiers from coming to this camp and arresting all of you who left your homes without permission during a time when the Parliament of Blooms has set the City under military law? Why, at any moment, it would be within the mandate of Parliament to send in troops and haul every citizen of this wrongful enclave away to a work camp, or even to execution."

"Let them try!" screeched a tall, celery-colored woman. A dozen other voices echoed her.

"Calm, calm," said Button. "We must have calm. For the lords of the Flower houses surely have your best interests in mind, and the power to keep the City under their just governance, and the rest of Faerie under governance of the City." He paused as if listening to the discontented murmuring, gazing slowly across the sea of torchlit faces. Theo wondered what it must look like from the bridge. Carnival. Hallowe'en squared.

Above the cries of discontent, a lone wolf-voice howled out its misery.

"Did I think that the Flower lords were corrupt and their rule criminal," cried Button suddenly, "then I would have to tell you a very different kind of story." The crowd fell silent. "I would feel honor-bound to say that the day is coming when the Flower houses must give up their power. Hem. I would feel compelled to say that for once there will be no hole in a goblin tale, to point out that the death of the king and queen was observed by no one but the masters of the famous Seven Families, and that those families are now down to three, as a troop of bandits may slit each others' throats in the night over the swag from a rich robbery they have just committed. That the king and queen who ruled all with an even hand have been taken from us, and perhaps that was no accident. Now their successors set each others' houses on fire and drive our children through the streets with whips.

"In fact, if I thought that the rule of the Flower houses needed to be resisted, I would not only fill the hole in my story, I would tell you that until the day comes when all is made right or I breathe my last, I would no longer hide behind the hole in my own name."

A hoarse goblin-voice shouted, "No!" — whoever it was sounded quite shocked, even frightened. A small chorus of other voices joined him, trying to stop Button from doing something Theo didn't quite understand, but Button only smiled.

"Oh, my friends, if I thought resistance to the Flower houses was important," he went on, "I would have to say that secrecy, even when it is an old tradition, is for cowards — that sometimes even mystery must go naked." He raised his slender arms in the air. "I would stand here before you as though a child at my Naming Song, and say to anyone who can hear that my clan name is Button, the name I was given in my nest is Mudlark… and that the name I call myself, my name-of-secret-despair, is Bug." Another shocked cry rose from the goblins in attendance. "I would tell it to everyone, because the day is coming soon when even the smallest, crawling things must stand up and be counted.

"That is what I would do. 'My name is Mud Bug Button,' I would say, 'and I shall not rest until I have back my home-soul — my honor!' And on such a day as that, I would ask you all to join me."

Many of the goblins in the crowd were still reeling with obvious horror at the revelation of Button's other name — apparently it was a big deal, although Theo found it only another confusing detail buried in the mass of myth and rabble-rousing and strange conditional declarations. But even among those goblins there were a few who recovered quickly, who seemed fired with excitement, and they began to chant the full name. To look at their faces made clear that something was happening beyond even the powerful anti-Flower rhetoric, whether Theo could grasp it or not.

"Mud-Bug-Button. Mud-Bug-Button." The chant grew, but it was celebratory, not threatening, and others beside the goblins were now chiming in. The initial moment of frenzy was past — Theo had felt it like dry tinder all around him, that if the little goblin had given them a target to attack, the crowd would have thrown its bodies against that target, no matter the consequences — but the madness had not altogether cooled. The gathered fairy-folk were elevated and strangely bonded. They shouted at each other, even argued loudly, but there was also laughter and cheerful boasting, embraces between different types of fairies and curses against the effete Flower clans, even some music and dancing starting up underneath the fiery stars. As Theo slowly came out of his dreamy state he saw that goblins and other folk were moving through the crowd with baskets of hard bread and river fish, passing out food.

A tall shape appeared in front of him. "Button was right. He said you were here. He has sharp eyes." It was Primrose, the young fairy lord who only hours before had held a knife to his throat. Theo's first response should have been to flinch away from him, but the ghostweed he had shared with the musicians had left him feeling strangely detached, as though nothing quite mattered.

"What do you want?" It was Cumber, oddly enough, who sounded angry and defensive.

"First and most importantly, to tell you that Button has asked for you. He and some others are taking a meal and he would like you to come and share bread with him." Primrose hesitated. "The other thing is that I would like to make an apology to you. I… I have not left behind as much of the world I came from as I thought, and when I heard two days ago that my father had died, it… it reminded me of loyalties to him I once felt strongly, loyalties to the family name, even though I had turned against them, to his sorrow and my unhappiness." He lowered his head as though waiting for the executioner.

My God, Theo realized after several long seconds had passed, he really wants me to forgive him. He's waiting for it.

"You tried to kill him," Cumber said.

"Any of my kind would have done the same," Primrose replied with a hint of angry pride. "I am one of the few who would stop to learn why I might be wrong. I am perhaps the only one who would come to you and apologize."

And it was true, or seemed that way: Theo could see that the fairy's whole demeanor suggested someone doing something incredibly difficult, that Primrose was stretched tight as piano wire. If he rebuffed him, Theo did not fear that the fairy lord would attack him — the time for that had passed — but he suspected that Primrose himself would suffer some deep wounding.

It's hard to learn to be flexible, Theo thought. It's hard to trust. He had been there himself, fighting with Cat about things, afraid to give an inch.

"If you promise to tell me what you know about my… about the man I used to think of as my great-uncle," Theo said, "I'll be happy to forgive you. No, I'll forgive you anyway, no conditions. But I would like to hear what brings you here — and also what you know about Eamonn Dowd."

Something like a grateful smile flickered on Primrose's androgynously handsome face, but it did not last long. "It is shameful, what happened. Shameful to my family."

"Okay, I won't force you. But if you're going to trust me with an apology you can probably trust me with some family shame as well. And even though Dowd wasn't really my uncle, I've thought of him that way for some time, so I think I'll have to share this shame you're talking about."

"I'm… I'm rather hungry," Cumber ventured. "I was out with our tent-mate Mistress Twinge this evening while Theo was… singing. She took me out to see some sights, meet some people. Most of it had more to do with drinking than eating and my stomach aches. Could we go?"

Primrose nodded. He suddenly seemed much more relaxed, less stilted. "Come. Button's table will be good, simple food. Just the thing for someone who has been keeping company with a pooka."

Even with all the people now in it, the top room of the bridge tower seemed bigger than it had the first time Theo had seen it. At least two dozen fairy-folk of all different shapes and sizes were sitting on the floor around a carpet covered with bowls and cups, eating and talking. The old goblin Doorlatch sprang up at their entrance and almost skipped over to greet them.

"Ah, Master Vilmos and Master Sedge, very good, very good. And we have made up our quarrel with Lord Primrose, I see. Splendid!" He took Cumber by the arm and steered him to an open space next to an attractive young fairy woman who had tattered clothes but magnificent, shimmering wings furled tightly against her back. He politely directed Primrose to sit next to Cumber, then took Theo by the arm. "An honor for you, young master. Button has asked you to sit beside him."

It required convincing a bodyguard ogre the size of a midsize sedan to move over and make room, but Doorlatch got Theo shoehorned in next to Button before vanishing off to pursue some other errand.

"Please," said Button, who was again wearing what Theo thought of as his Franciscan habit, "make yourself welcome at our table. The field mice in honey are very good."

Theo tried to keep his smile. "Thanks. I think I'll just have some fruit and bread and… is that cheese?"

Button nodded. Up close, he was much the same small, unassuming figure who Theo had seen on the bus. It was hard to reconcile that with the demagogue who only half an hour earlier had been so deftly playing the crowd. "May I serve you?"

"That's really kind, but I can do it myself." He busied himself trying to get a small object with a shiny rind like a melon out of a stack of fruit without tipping the whole thing over. "I'm… I'm confused. When I first met you, I…" He took a piece of bread from a woven basket. "What were you doing riding the bus?"

The goblin smiled. His teeth were yellow like an old dog's, and sharp. "It is, hem, faster than walking."

"Yeah, but you seem a little too important around here just to be sitting on the crosstown bus handing out cards to people like me."

The smile broadened. "From what I understand, Master Vilmos, there are not very many people like you to be found here in Faerie."

"Fair enough." The little guy was hard work. Theo looked down to see Cumber trying to listen to something earnest Primrose was saying while still keeping a conversation going with the attractive sorrel-haired fairy woman on the other side of him. Poor Applecore, he thought. We're neither of us being very faithful to your memory. It made him feel guilty and it hardened his resolve. "Look, I guess I'm trying to figure out what you're doing here, for one thing, and why you invited me — why you care about me at all. You're obviously an important guy."

Button turned to whisper something to the ogre on the other side of him, who looked at Theo with something like amusement on his elephantine face before going back to his energetic chewing. "I told him you were the one who was singing with the goblins this evening. There is much talk about you already. You wonder why I invited you? As I said on the bridge tonight, perhaps it will soon be time to fill empty places in some important stories. You have been here less than a day and yet you already found a very powerful empty space to fill. Your kind and my kind do not make music together."

"Really?" He was flattered and a little nervous. Apparently he hadn't just been jamming, he had been performing some kind of weightily significant cultural exchange. Theo was suddenly very grateful he hadn't known. "Okay, it worked. I'm distracted again. And I'd love to talk music sometime…"

"Then you must speak to Doorlatch. He was a sacred hilltop singer, once."

"… But that's not really what I want to know now." He took a breath. "Please, if it's not rude to keep asking, what's going on here? Who are you?"

Button's laugh was easy, unforced. "I am just what you see — Mud Button." He made his face solemn. "No, I forgot, I have abandoned mystery. I am Mud Bug Button. I am a storyteller."

"And the stories you tell sound like you're trying to start a revolution. That makes you pretty important."

"What goes on here is important. I simply happen to have come here at a particular time. It is the others who are also here, and the reasons that brought them to this place, that are important."

Halfway between a blood-and-thunder preacher and a politician, Theo thought. He seems like the best kind of each, but how the hell would I know for sure, especially here where all the rules are different? "Are people going to fight back against Hellebore and his friends? Because if they are, maybe I am in the right place after all. I owe those bastards something."

"More than you guess, I suspect." Button again made his strange throat-clearing noise as he returned his attention to the bread and the sopping, glazed field mouse on his plate, making it all into a sort of sandwich.

Theo didn't really want to see the mouse go down, so he concentrated on filling his own stomach with some less avant-garde delicacies. He poured himself a cup of wine that smelled of oranges and cinnamon, then offered the jug to Button, who shook his head. Theo drank off the whole cup before venturing another question. "I met someone who was coming to see you today… a pretty strange guy named Nettle…"

Button looked up, smiled, nodded. "My good friend, yes. You will get to see more of him since you are sharing a tent."

"Hold on, he's the other roommate? They said it was someone named Streedy."

"Streedy Nettle, yes. That is his name."

Theo recalled the unfocused gaze with more than a little dismay. "We're sharing a tent with that guy? The tall one? The… strange one?"

Button was about to laugh, but he managed to keep it off his face. His eyes betrayed him, though; they glittered with amusement. "So you have met him. Good."

Theo shook his head. "All the more reason for what I was going to ask you. So what's with him? I mean, he said he knew someone that I know — that he heard her voice in his head."

"Is that someone in the, hem, Thornapple family, by any chance?"

"Yes!"

Button nodded. "Let me tell you a little bit about Streedy Nettle."

"Is this another story with holes in it?"

"You must judge for yourself. But since there is no such thing as a story with a true beginning or a true ending, then they must all be circular, and if they are circular, it stands to reason that they will all have a certain… open space in their center."

Theo waved his hand in surrender. "Streedy Nettle. The Thornapples."

"Yes. He worked for the Thornapples, did my friend Streedy, if you can dignify it with such a name. Do you know anything about how power is generated in Faerie, Master Vilmos?"

"I've heard a little," Theo said grimly. "Slave labor until they burn out, basically, right?"

"A fair summation. And Streedy was one such producer of power, working in a Thornapple power plant as a capacitor, which suggests he had some native abilities beyond what is normal. In any case, long before he had reached his natural age of diminishment, Streedy was involved in a very bad accident. It is hard to say what happened, exactly, but there was a terrible overload of power for some reason and he was right in the center of it."

"When you say power here, you're talking about what I call magic, right?"

"Ah, yes, you are of the mortal world originally. I suppose that is right. But whatever you call it, it was a terrible event. Streedy was almost killed — he should have died, in fact, but for some reason he did not. When he felt well enough, he ran away. Delirious and slowly starving, he found his way to the outskirts of the City and wandered the streets of Eastwater. I found him. I fed him. I brought him here."

"Well, that explains about what he's doing here at the bridge, I guess, but not about…"

"The Thornapples?" Button took another bite of bread, then wiped his mouth daintily with the sleeve of his garment. If it weren't for the finger-shaped nose and the yellow fangs, Theo would have felt himself to be in the company of some Bedouin chieftain. "That is a mystery even to me. Something about his accident, the way he was changed. He hears voices. At first I thought it was only madness from a damaged mind, but it is more than that. I have heard enough to know that somehow he has made, hem, a connection of sorts with the power systems of Thornapple House — a fleeting and irregular connection, but it is there — and that he hears things, learns things, because of it. He cannot explain them all, and even though he now seems to understand what has happened, it is still very troubling to him to hear those voices in his head."

Theo sat back. He was full and almost happy: the despair of the past days was, for the moment, at an acceptable distance. Ghostweed and music, he thought. And a good dinner. It may not be the best way to get through something, it may not rebuild your life or bring back your friends, but it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. "Well, that's all pretty weird, for sure," he said to the goblin, "but at least it makes some sense. I have to stop thinking that the rules I know apply here. It makes me stick out like a sore thumb. It gets me in trouble."

"Oh, but that's just what you should not stop doing, my friend." Button pushed his own plate away. "It is important that you keep thinking like what you are, or what you long believed yourself to be — a mortal."

"What are you talking about? And how do you know I'm not a mortal, anyway?"

The goblin did not smile this time. "You have few secrets left in this camp, Theo Vilmos. But do not fear. We are your friends, or we would like to be. And we need you."

"Need me? For what?"

"I am not sure yet. But the bad days are coming, the days of fire. No, they are already here. And I sense that we will need you, and need you very badly. Even so, it may not be enough. We live in the days of a Terrible Child, Theo Vilmos. Days when bad dreams walk living under the sun."

It was too much to absorb. Theo closed his eyes, let the babble of the table flow over him. "Can I ask you one more question?"

"Of course."

"You telling your other name tonight. Was that as big a deal as it seemed?"

"I do not think any other goblin has ever admitted it to any outside his nest, and certainly not to any who were not of his own tribe. But these are times of change. It seemed the right thing to do."

"The other goblins seemed to take it okay."

"Most here are almost mad with anger — yes, and with hatred of the Flower clans. They are willing to go through nearly anything to find their home-souls again, although some will feel uneasy tomorrow to have heard such a private thing spoken in a public place, and said in front of Uneaten as well — those who are not goblins." He showed a small, yellow smile. "And I daresay there will be more than a few of my kind who will want to kill me when they hear, the tradition-lumbered folk of the Ash Plains Covenant, others who fear the new more than they fear death. And of course there were spies from the Flower families among those gathered tonight. But Choo-Choo and Topsy will protect me." He reached out to pat one of the ogres, who grunted with a mouth full of food. "Long enough, anyway, for me to accomplish my work." Button straightened up. "Come, we have talked enough of such things. Tell me of your world. We goblins seldom see those lands in these painful days. Do mothers still frighten children with our name?"

Theo considered. "Not really. I suppose there are monster movies, things like that…"

"Monsters moving?" Button looked at him with a shrewd eye. "I am sure your world would be stranger to me than mine is to you. Tell me a little, then I will let you go and sleep, for I know you are tired."

And so as the lamps burned down and the fairy-folk talked and laughed and whispered all around him, Theo did his best to stay awake and tell the goblin stories of a strange, magical world in which everyone grew old, the trees had no spirits, and none of the people, not even the lowliest folk, had wings.

30 FAMILY MATTERS

The limousine full of bodyguards was already loaded and waiting, a cloud of tiny powersparks drifting up from the coach's exhaust vent. The air in the underground garage was thick with the stuff — Poppy could feel it prickling on her skin. They had been waiting for her a long time.

Good. She couldn't care less.

She saw glimpses of thick gray faces as her father's guards looked out at her through the smoked windows. Even behind darkened glass, their expressions were respectful. Everybody knew what had happened to an ogre named Blocks who had been caught leering at the daughter of his employer, Lord Periwinkle. What was left of the body had been sent back to Blocks' family in twelve attractive ceremonial cases, each bearing the Perwinkle crest. None of the boxes had been very large, although Blocks in life had been a massive fellow. Lord Periwinkle had been voted an official Bestowal of Praise by the parliament for his gesture — more for its deterrent effect on bodyguards and servants everywhere than for the courtesy shown to the bereaved family.

Wayside, the driver, stood by the door of her father's coach. He nodded his blind, equine head at her as she approached. He was bigger than the average doonie, tall and broad across the shoulders, effectively giving the Thornapples an extra bodyguard: if other doonies were slender thoroughbreds, he was a plowhorse.

"Afternoon, Mistress."

"Good afternoon, Wayside. I suppose my father's in a horrid mood because I've kept him waiting?"

"I've seen him more cheerful, Mistress." He opened the door for her, then closed it behind her with a silent thump that always made her ears pop.

As she sat down, her father gave her the withering look that used to send a spasm of panic right through her when she was a child, from the nape of her neck to her groin. She was impervious now, or as close to it as you could get when the person in question could still have you killed with a snap of his fingers.

Would he do that? she wondered. If I made him angry enough? Her stepbrother's murder had left Aulus, Lord Thornapple, with no heir, so presumably he had some use for his daughters, although she felt sure that was the only reason he cared about them. After Orian's birth had killed his first wife, her father had married three more times, but to his secret shame and public irritation the succeeding wives had produced only five girl children. The other four daughters were all married to scions of important client houses…

Client, as in rhymes with "pliant," thought Poppy.

… But none of them seemed the type to which her father would entrust what was now, with the destruction of the Daffodils, one of the two most powerful houses in the city.

Fine, she thought. Better than fine. Let Lavinia's husband Saxifrage have it all. The faster he runs it into the ground, the happier I'll be. Murderers. She stared at her father, mirroring the emotionless mask he habitually made of his features. You and that monster Lord Hellebore. You all deserve to die.

As that dreadful, cold thought grew in her like ice crystals, the luxury coach bumped up out of the garage and slowed to be waved through the gate and out into Henbane Square. The usual rabble of beggars, protesters, and supplicants was gone; instead, the square was full of well-armed parliamentary constables, a mark that the ruling families were still not entirely certain of their victory. Wayside slowed to let the coach full of bodyguards clear the gatehouse and catch up.

Her father finally broke the glacial silence. "You have made me wait." With his pale skin, snowy eyebrows, and thick, tar-black locks, he looked like a marble statue that someone had painted hair on for a prank. "By making me wait, you have made our host Lord Hellebore wait, too. Two of the most important people in all Faerie, on whose words and thoughts thousands of people depend, have lost half an hour of their precious time because of a slip of a girl who cannot be punctual."

"I didn't want to go in the first place." She hated the sound of her voice — dealing with her father seemed to leave her only two choices, frightened or spoiled and whiny. "What do you need me for?" You can think up new ways to murder people on your own, she wanted to say but did not. Poppy's rebellious streak had always stopped well short of suicidal candor, but she was finding it harder than ever these days to keep her mouth shut. The news of the destruction of the great houses and the deaths of her father's and Hellebore's rivals in the Six Families, along with hundreds of others — not to mention the incessant discussion of it among even her most unpolitical friends — had shocked her profoundly when she thought her brief life had made her a complete cynic. The magnitude of the destruction still gave her nightmares.

And all because my father and Foxglove and that evil, evil man Hellebore wanted more power. I heard them planning it! That was in some ways the hardest part of all, though even now she recognized there was nothing she could have done, not without knowing exactly what was about to happen.

"What do I need you for?" Her father had been silent so long she had forgotten they had been having what passed in Lord Thornapple's chill, reptilian way for a conversation. "Is that all you can think of to say to the one who has given you every advantage? To one who has raised you in a luxury which even the children of the other high houses would envy?" He shook his head. "It is not as though I ask much of you, Poppaea. To make an occasional appearance at family functions. Not to disgrace us with bad behavior in public. It is not much to ask in return for the life you have been given."

No, she thought. It's not much. You could ask me to care about you and the family, and that would be a price I couldn't pay.

"Well, then, Father," she said. "How may I pay you back for all the kindness and generosity you've shown me?"

He flashed a tiny smile, sudden and cold as a patch of ice on the road. "You have your mother's tongue. It's too bad she was… that she could not learn to control her impulses more carefully. I hope you will not follow her in that way."

Follow her to what? A philtre overdose that might or might not have been an accident, and might not even have been self-inflicted? At least she knew how to love. She even loved me. "No, sir. I wouldn't want to do that."

His smile flickered out like a weak flame. It was a miracle it had lasted so long. "I hear your friend, young Foxglove, has announced his engagement to Monkshood's eldest daughter. What do you think of that? Were you two not… close?"

She shrugged. She didn't really know what she felt about Malander and his new totsy, but it wasn't much. It was abundantly clear to Poppy that the city was full of Flower boys who wanted to get into her pants. What did she care who their daddies were? What did she care about any of it? And, more importantly, why should her father care about it?

He settled back against the seat. "Enough of this. You will mind your manners today. It would not hurt for you to apologize for making us late. Nidrus Hellebore is tolerant and understanding of the foibles of children, but a little courtesy goes a long way."

Silence returned, the familiar waters in which her father swam like a shark. The great window-speckled ivory tusk of Hellebore House was in view now, looming above the smaller buildings. People on the sidewalks peered at the passing luxury coach; Poppy thought their faces miserable, even haunted. She ached to make some noise, to disperse the oppressive quiet, but there was something in her father's manner that she couldn't quite understand.

Guilt? she wondered. After murdering all those innocent people, after he and Hellebore had filled the streets with soldiers and turned the Parliament of Blooms into nothing more than a dog house for their tail-wagging sycophants, could it be something as ordinary as guilt?

No. She felt quite certain it wasn't that.

A phalanx of ogre bodyguards cleared the ordinary workers of the house-tower lobby out of the way like they were trash, shoving them back to the walls as Lord Hellebore himself came down to meet the guests. It was an honor that her father appreciated immensely, she could tell, although the handclasp he shared with the master of Hellebore House was a mere brush of the palms — the respectful salute of two predators.

But Father is still the smaller animal. He wouldn't have thought up something like that attack on his own, or had the courage to do it. In another time, another place she might almost have admired Hellebore for his boldness — there was something quite attractive about ruthlessness — but she could not get past the death of innocents. And all for what? More power, more political power, for the man who already more or less ruled Faerie.

He looked it, too. He wore a suit of hand stitched cream-colored spidersilk that a dozen indentured ferisher women had probably gone blind making, and his hair was cut at the youthful and slightly trendy shoulder length. "Poppaea," he said and took her hand, looking her over. His skin was cool and extremely dry. "You are more lovely each time I see you."

"Thank you, Lord Hellebore," she said at last. "I'm sorry we're late. It… it was my fault."

"It is Beauty's privilege to keep others waiting," he said, so smoothly and kindly that for a moment it almost seemed like there might be a heart beating inside his chest. His black eyes flicked over her again, slowly but not unduly so, an expression of power so great that it did not need to insult others to prove itself. It was like being examined for preferred cuts by a goblin who had every expectation of eating you one day. "Yes, very lovely."

Her father was nodding ever so slightly. Her breath caught in her throat. Was this the plan, why she had been brought here? Was she simply going to be given to the master of Hellebore House as a kind of tribute?

With only the most gently proprietary air, Hellebore took her arm and led her and her father toward the largest elevator — the "ogre box" as it was sometimes called in the great houses. It had to be large and strong: two pairs of bodyguards got in with them, shoving their huge bodies back against the walls to maximize the protection and also to leave as much room as possible in the middle of the elevator for their smaller employers. All four guards had set their lumpy faces in expressions of blank seriousness. She was sure her own expression wasn't any more cheerful, and her father nearly always looked like the funerary portrait of some famous general. Only Hellebore, murderer of thousands, appeared to be enjoying himself. He caught Poppy's eye and winked. She managed through sheer strength of will to keep her knees locked and her body upright.

It had been years since she had been on the upper floors of Hellebore House — some kind of parliamentary holiday party decades back was the last time she could remember — and she was a little surprised now to see how relentlessly ordinary it was. The décor was fashionably sparse, the paint fashionably luminous, but other than a certain drained and nervous look on the faces of the employees scuttling past (who all stopped to bow and tug their forelocks before passing their master, though he never acknowledged the tributes) things did not seem much different than in Thornapple House or any other of the most powerful family house-towers. It was only in backwater operations like Loosestrife House or the Bluebell-Mallow Cooperative that you heard someone whistling or singing, or saw people stopping to converse within sight of one of the ruling clan. Only in those families where they had given up on attaining power did things ever get lax.

How she longed to live in such a family!

"I hope you'll forgive us, Poppaea," said Lord Hellebore suddenly as they stepped out of an elevator on the fifty-second floor into a wide lobby with a midair fountain at one end, an endless curl of running water hovering in the air. "I have some important business with your father — it will not take us long. If you'll wait here for just a moment, I'll find someone to show you around."

"Oh, no, please." The idea of being left on her own for a while was the most hopeful thing she had heard all day. "Don't bother anyone just for me."

Hellebore smiled and winked again. Her father was smiling too, which made her skin crawl. "No trouble at all. And then we'll see you for lunch. They do a rather nice white venison here in the house restaurant."

The pale woman behind the desk — very pretty, with the ropy hair and drowned, woeful look that suggested she might have nymph blood, nodded respectfully at Poppy as she rose from behind the desk. "Can I get you anything, Mistress? Betony tea? Some spring water?"

"No, I'm fine, thanks." Poppy took a seat. A magazine rack suddenly glimmered into view beside her where a moment before there had been only bare wall. Impressive touch, she thought. She plucked out a copy of Tower Life and opened to a fawning article on Lord Lily and the massive re-decoration of Lily House. A chill ran along her spine as though someone had slipped an ice cube down the back of her blouse. Lily House was gone now, rubble and ashes. She looked at the date on the magazine and saw that it was only a few weeks old. She supposed it had come out just before the attack. The real question was why the Hellebores still had it in their waiting room.

But they'd think it was amusing, she realized, and went cold and prickly all over again.

"Mistress Thornapple? Poppy Thornapple?"

She looked up, startled. The figure looming over her was so tall that for a moment she took him for a polevik. When he stepped back she saw that although he was extremely long and lean, several handspans taller than she was, he was still only an ordinary fairy like herself. Then she got a good look at his face, emotionless as a mandragorum's, and started wondering again.

"Yes, I'm… that's me."

"My father wants me to show you around."

"Father? You're…"

"Antoninus Hellebore." He nodded slowly, as though someone was whispering the instructions on how to do it in his ear. "They called me Anton at school. You can call me Anton."

Poppy was startled again. She knew the name — Lord Hellebore's eldest had been at school with Orian — but had never met him before. Among the Flower houses he had always been said to be a bit unusual. Once, as a very young girl, she had even convinced herself that "unusual" could mean "kind," and had developed a short-lived fantasy of Anton Hellebore being someone who might take her away to live in a beautiful castle full of singing birds. She was glad her younger self had grown into a woman who could look at this slack-jawed scarecrow without feeling disappointed. "Hello, Anton. You knew my brother Orian back at Dowsing Academy, I think."

"Oh, yes." He nodded again. "Orian died recently, didn't he? I remember someone telling me that he was killed." She expected him to say something about how sorry he was, but instead his next words were, "Follow me."

As he led her on a rather perfunctory tour of the family-compound portion of Hellebore House, Poppy had a chance to observe him. She couldn't quite put her finger on what made him so strange, other than his polevikian physique. He was a little dull, especially in the social niceties, and your average stone had more of a sense of humor, but she could also see streaks of intelligence, and sometimes more than streaks: his explanation of the family tower's complex mirror-system was dizzyingly technical and far too offhand to be mere show. But there was something damaged about him, as though at some point his brain had been removed and then restored and the connections hadn't grown back just right. It was more than faintly creepy. He talked with something approaching genuine pleasure about inanimate objects, especially things that were dangerous, but he not only didn't acknowledge any of the employees, servants, and distaff family members who saluted him, like his father he didn't even seem to notice them, as though they were vibrating at a frequency that Poppy could see but he could not.

Finally, though, a family member arrived that he did see — that he couldn't avoid seeing.

"You have a friend!" The woman was sharp and shiny and beautiful as the blade of a saber, her hair a brilliant gold that belonged on the head of a dairymaid, and perhaps once had been. She wore a youthful pants and shirt combination — perhaps a little too youthful, but that was Poppy's opinion, the harsh judgment of actual youth. Poppy could smell expensive anti-aging charms. So far, they seemed to be working. "Anton," the woman said, "you must introduce me."

His face churned with emotions she could not read, but he only said, "Yes, Mother. This is Poppy Thornapple."

"Oh, of course, we met at your family's Midwinter's Day party a few years ago, didn't we?" She took Poppy's shoulders in her hands and placed kisses like the nudge of a parrot's beak on each cheekbone. "So nice to see you here. How are your… how is your father?" She seemed to have remembered at the last moment that Poppy's mother was dead.

"Fine. He's with Lord Hellebore right now."

Aurelia Hellebore showed an impressive amount of teeth. "And so Anton is keeping you company. Charming! I tell you, you must come for tea some day and we can get properly acquainted. And shame on your father for not bringing you here sooner, although these hostilities have been hard on us all. How old are you now, dear? At least a hundred, yes? Well, you've grown into a most delightful young woman." She waved her hand. "Now you must excuse me — I have ever so much to do today. I'm only in town until tomorrow then it's back to the country. You young people have fun!"

Lady Hellebore vanished, followed by a small retinue of servants.

Poppy was still trying to figure out why the meeting had felt so unspontaneous — it was Lady Hellebore's house, after all, so why shouldn't they run into her? — when Anton Hellebore made a strange growling noise in his throat. His face had grown even more childishly sullen, as though the presence of his mother had momentarily sucked away half his age.

"I don't want to get married," he said.

For a long moment Poppy had no idea what he was talking about. Then, just as she made sense out of the whole day and abruptly found herself fighting a wave of nausea, Anton turned to her. "Do you want to see my stepbrother?"

"What?"

"My stepbrother. Well, my adopted brother. Everybody always asks me about him — they all want to know what he's really like. Mother and Father won't let anyone meet him."

So this is your little thwarted bit of revenge, she decided. A rule you can break. Because they're thinking about pairing you up with me, and you're probably not even interested in girls. Or boys, either. "I've heard about him. People call him…"

"A Terrible Child." Anton smirked, then turned and walked toward the elevator, this time without even a "Follow me."

"It's a stupid name," he said over his shoulder. "He doesn't do anything." He waited until the elevator door had closed behind them, then leaned close to her. His breath smelled like copper. "I've killed lots of people," he told her in a conspiratorial whisper.

She didn't know any way to respond to that except to keep her mouth tightly shut and to breathe shallowly.

"I have!" he said, a little defensively. "In my experiments. You don't find anything out if you don't. I'll show you my laboratory later if you want." The elevator opened and she had to move out because he was behind her. "Just this way," he said.

The air on this floor was noticeably warmer, as though the household hob had forgotten to keep it circulating. It was damp, too — Poppy was suddenly conscious of her blouse sticking to her back. She was not conscious of much else except a distinct queasiness. She felt like she was floating, as though her head were a bit of dandelion fluff being carried on a breeze down the hot, moist corridor.

The window began halfway along the passage and continued for a dozen paces. The room on the other side of the glass was so cloudy with steam that it was impossible to make out anything except a few vague shapes — furniture, as far as she could tell, low white chairs and a white table. Even the walls seemed to be white. The whole scene reminded her uncomfortably of an underground mirror-show one of the girls at school had gotten hold of, and had shared at a late-night party. Supposedly copied from a scientific research project, it purported to show the ghostworld — the place where all the mirrors connected — and at the time, surrounded by giggling housemates, Poppy had thought it mostly boring, but the roiling emptiness of it, the suggestions of faces and contorted shapes, had come back to her in several nightmares.

As if summoned up by those unsettling memories, something emerged from the back of the steamy room and came toward her, only stopping when it reached the long, water-beaded window. It was a child, a boy, quite ordinary looking at first except for the curly sparrow-brown hair and slightly plump face, but there was some other subtle oddness about him that she could not immediately name. He was a little shorter of limb than most children his age, and his eyes were a most unusual color — not violet or emerald green or robin's egg blue as she was used to among the Flower families, but brown. It was only after a moment that she realized his features and proportions were not simply outside the usual norms. He was a mortal.

"There he is." Anton was striving to sound jocular, but was not altogether succeeding. "Wave to him."

The little boy watched her, expressionless, separated from them by a pane of glass and less than an arm's length of distance. It was his eyes that held her, and not just their strange, earthy color, like a mud-stirred puddle: they had a quality of intelligence that did not match the rest of his childish features, a regard as deep and cold as a cloudless winter sky. Then the boy smiled at her, a slow exposure of teeth that made his adoptive father's predatory grins seem warm and benevolent. She turned away, gagging.

"Wait!" Anton Hellebore called after her as she hurried back toward the elevator. "Don't you want to see my experiments… ?"

She found her way back through the maze of corridors to the waiting room. The nymph-secretary looked a bit startled to see her, but offered tea again.

"Nothing." She could barely make herself speak. It felt like something was screaming in her ear, telling her to run as fast as she could. She sat, tapping her fingers, a magazine unread on her lap. What was she doing here? Being led around like a prize heifer while the Hellebores sized her up, that was what. But even though they might want to marry her to that gangly freak, she had no illusions as to which bull she would be expected to service. There was no misreading the cool, satisfied look that Hellebore Senior had given her.

And that thing in the foggy room… !

She stood up, thinking for a moment that if she did not get to a bathroom to splash cold water on her face she would faint. But once she was on her feet she kept moving toward the door.

"Mistress Thornapple?" called the secretary. "Are you leaving? You really shouldn't walk through the house by yourself."

She opened the door to the corridor and the elevators.

"Is there a message for your father… ?"

She pulled the door shut hard behind her.

31 IN THE BLOOM YEARS

Caradenus Primrose came into the tent with the rigid face of a man submitting to judgment. No, not just an ordinary man, Theo thought, but some king forced to answer to commoners.

"You have been here several days now," the fairy lord told him, "and my debt is still undischarged." His voice sounded much more troubled and sorrowful than his expression would have suggested, and Theo immediately softened.

I guess he can't help it — it's like he went to some stick-up-the-ass private school. Well, he probably did, but even for a Flower-fairy he's pretty puckered. "I think I said that I wouldn't force you."

Primrose shook his head. "You did say that. But to be candid with you, Master Vilmos, it is my own knowledge that I did wrong to you that causes me pain, not any compulsion you have put on me."

"Did someone just fart?" asked Mistress Twinge. "I mean, either someone just squeezed off a real goblin-barker or someone's talking about principles of honor. Either way, it's getting pretty thick in here for folk like us pookas who don't have any honor to worry about. Believe I'll take a stroll. Coathook, you want to help me find Streedy? I haven't seen him since breakfast and I want to make sure none of your goblin chums are cheating him out of his shoes or something."

"Goblins do not cheat," said Coathook, brow furrowed.

"As in, 'Goblins don't cheat anyone who doesn't deserve it'? Could be. Could be." Mistress Twinge jabbed a cigar into the corner of her mouth, lit it with an ostentatious flick of her fingers, then sashayed out of the tent leaving a trail of smoke thick as molasses hanging in the air. Coathook followed her, grumbling.

"The pooka is always trying to shock me, but without much luck," Primrose said when they had gone, and almost smiled. "They are kind people, your friends."

"They've been nice to us. But I don't think I know them well enough to call them friends yet. I'm not sure I know any of you well enough for that. Sorry, Cumber, no offense. But just… I don't really get how things work here." How about Applecore? he asked himself. She was a better friend to you than most of the people you've called that over the years. But he didn't want to think about Applecore just now. "Speaking of, should we offer you something? I don't think we've got much but we might have a bottle of Twinge's dandelion wine under a blanket somewhere."

"No, thank you." Primrose sat down in a comparatively uncluttered corner. The fairy was graceful in everything he did, but he still couldn't make himself look comfortable with the present cramped and — it had to be admitted — smelly circumstances. Theo wondered if getting the story about his great-uncle was going to be worth the trouble.

"So you actually knew my Great-Uncle Eamonn?" he asked. "Or the man I used to think was my great-uncle?"

"Would you like me to leave, Theo?" asked Cumber.

"No, please stay. You've already kept Lord Primrose and I from having one… unfortunate misunderstanding. You're kind of like my translator for the fairy world."

Primrose made an interesting hand gesture, bringing his palms together until they almost touched. "I am grateful to you too, Master Sedge. And perhaps, Master Vilmos, you would be good enough to call me 'Primrose,' or even 'Caradenus.' "

Now Theo did laugh. "Sorry! It's just that if you want me to call you Caradenus, you'd better find something to call me besides 'Master Vilmos.' Agreed? It's Theo. Now go on. Tell me how you knew Eamonn Dowd."

"It was a goodly time ago — between the last two wars. I met him at a house-party."

"When you say 'between the last two wars,' remember I'm pretty shaky on the history of Faerie. Which two wars? How long ago?"

"Between the final Gigantine War and the most recent Flower War." Primrose's face hardened. "Most recent before this one, I should have said — and may that murderer Nidrus Hellebore go screaming into the Well for dragging us all into such suffering again!"

"About two centuries to a century and a half ago," Cumber volunteered. "Our time."

"Good God," Theo said. "So while thirty, forty years went by in my world — that makes it four or five times longer here?"

"It isn't always that direct a correlation," Cumber reminded him.

"In any case," said Primrose, "it was during what we call the Bloom Years. People look back on it now as a golden age, a time of high living and exciting changes, but even though I was much younger then, I still should have guessed things couldn't be that simple. And so should a lot of other people, but most believed what they wanted to believe. There was a sort of giddiness in the air. People were relieved because even though the king and queen had died in the war, the City hadn't fallen, Faerie hadn't disappeared, things seemed to be continuing — something nobody had been quite sure would happen. It's almost hard to believe that now, but you have to remember that back then no one could remember a time when Oberon and Titania hadn't ruled all the known lands — there weren't even any books in the libraries about such a time! And now they were really gone, but things hadn't collapsed, so of course we were relieved and thrilled. And the Parliament of Blooms seemed to be making changes everybody had wanted, as though the king and queen had been holding back the modern age simply by existing, so now things could move forward. It wasn't as clear then that the Parliament was pretty much controlled by the Seven Families — and for people like me it was even less clear. My family was one of the Seven, so I didn't really notice that not everyone was so very happy, that there were beggars on the streets everywhere, that the war with the giants had destroyed thousands of peoples' homes and livelihoods. There are probably folk out there in the ruling houses today who think what Hellebore and the others have done is just a bit of upset, and who are still going on about their lives, worrying about things like who'll take the Trooping Banner this year. A hundred years from now they won't remember the beggars and corpses, either."

Theo could not help but think of Poppy Thornapple, of her schoolgirl cynicism and ennui.

"I suppose it was at one of the parties at Stock House where I met him," Primrose continued. "The Stock clan had made a lot of money during the Gigantine War and wanted people to know it, so they used to throw the most tremendous parties almost every week's-end. The new horseless coaches would line up at the gates, trailing back for miles, and all the windows of the tower would be lit up. You could hear the music from blocks away." He smiled. "It may have been false in some ways, but it was certainly exciting.

"Anyway, at that time there were very few mortals left in Faerie. At the height of the Gigantine War the Parliament of Blooms had passed a number of laws to make it harder to get in and out of Faerie — not that the giants were likely to be sneaking in unnoticed. The Clover Effect dates back to that parliament. Powerful science was put to work to make sure no one cheated on the travel restrictions and it made a lot of hardships, especially for those with strong ties to the mortal world. But that was the mood of the time. You know, we almost lost that war. That's the thing you have to understand, why people ignored so much and let so much happen that should have been resisted. Because we almost lost. In the last battle alone the giants destroyed what seemed like half the City. Right near where we're sitting, most of the Longshadow district was smashed to dust by their catapults during the invasion — that's why we call it Warstones now. I don't know if you've seen it. It's never really been rebuilt properly. The fight was terrifying, even from a distance — if you've never seen a giant fully armored for battle…" He shook his head. "Forgive me. I'm losing the thread of my story.

"In any case, because there had been so few mortals around after the war, your uncle was a little bit of a celebrity — a very minor sort, but still well-known and welcome in many high houses. The Stocks were what are now called Symbiotes or even Creepers — sympathetic to mortals — and so Dowd was a regular at their weekend gatherings. Tertius Stock sort of made a younger brother of him. Tertius is dead now — killed in the Flower War that happened a few years later. He and his family sided with the Violets against the other six ruling families and lost the gamble, but that's another story…"

"So what was Eamonn Dowd like?" Theo asked. "Remember, I never knew him. He'd been dead a quarter of a century or so when I first learned of him."

Primrose sat silent for a long moment, considering. People were shouting outside the tent, children shrieking, laughing, enjoying the afternoon sun by the ancient river. "It's hard to describe him fairly, since my view of him has been so colored by what happened later, what he did to my sister…" He closed his eyes; Theo waited as patiently as he could. Cumber Sedge, he saw, was actually making notes in a small writing book. "He was amusing, that was one of the first things you noticed about him. He knew that to us he was very strange, that his appearance and habits seemed hopelessly odd, so he played them up. That was one of the reasons the Stocks liked him, I imagine — he was their trained mortal, as charming as a dog dressed up like a person and standing on its back legs. I beg your pardon if I offend, but that is how we felt about mortals, and that was why Eamonn Dowd proved so clever. It is hard to fear something that mocks itself."

"What did he look like?"

The fairy gave him an exasperated look. "What did he look like? A mortal. I find it hard to tell one of that kind from another, to be honest with you. I suppose by the standards of his race he was fairly ordinary — not too short, not too fat. He had skin like yours, dark hair, and dark whiskers on his upper lip."

"A mustache."

"Just so. We do not wear them here, although there are some kinds of gnomes that do, who in fact grow them extremely long. Your great-uncle used to make this part of the joke, often signing himself 'the Tall Gnome' in his letters."

"He wrote letters to people here?"

"We all did. It was considered rude in those days to use one of the swifter but more scientific means of, say, answering an invitation. I was too young then to be much concerned with such things myself, but I remember when one of our cooks, worried that she would be too late to buy the best something-or-other for that night's dinner party, actually flew to the market. Used her wings while on house business! Mother was horrified, of course — nothing like that had happened in our family since the Winter Dynasties. So, yes, we all sent letters and notes, usually hand-carried by servants."

"Did you like him?"

Primrose frowned. "Again, it's hard to say. I suppose I did, but not in the same way as the Stock clan did. I found it admirable that he worked so hard to fit in, that he took his rebuffs — and there were many rebuffs, of course — without rancor. Insulted in public by one of the mortal-hating families, he would make a joke of it and continue on. Balked in some business or social scheme by the same attitude, he would smile and try to find another way to manage. I wonder now if he was not all the time hating us for what we did to him, how we treated him…"

"Not from what I've read."

"Pardon?"

"I have a notebook of his. Cumber has it at the moment, actually. I've read it and most of what he has to say about New Erewhon — that was his name for this city — is pretty admiring. Of course, it doesn't cover his whole time here…"

Primrose leaned forward, alert now, his long body almost seeming to tremble as though he were a pointing hound. "What does he say about my family? About my sister?"

The sudden intensity of the fairy lord was unnerving. "Nothing, really. I went back and re-read after you… after you and I met. He doesn't say anything about your sister, not if she's also named Primrose, but he does mention you in passing — that he saw you coming back from a moon-brandy party or something with some kobos…"

"Kobolds," said Cumber.

"Ah. Sphene and… and Jasper." Primrose's eyes were focused near the tent ceiling.

"Huh?"

"The two kobolds. I cannot remember their family names. We were great friends during the Bloom Years." It was the first real smile Theo had seen from him. "They were lovers — not of mine, but of each other. They were artists. No one remembers them now, I imagine — even back then very few people wanted to see art that wasn't sanctioned by the Flower elite. They were a little bit fashionable for a while during the Bloom Years among the more adventuresome crowd, but I lost track of them when the Flower War came. I wonder where they are?" He came back from his reverie. "Please forgive me. What were we discussing?"

Theo shrugged. "I was telling you about Eamonn Dowd's notebook. It ends kind of suddenly. His last entry sounds despairing. Probably because of whatever happened with your sister."

"Might I see the book sometime? It is possible I might recognize things that even Master Sedge would miss, since I was there."

"Sure. You and Cumber can work it out. So, not to open the wound or anything, but what did happen with your sister?"

The fairy's thin face darkened, a pale golden flush that almost matched his hair. "It is not a surprising story, really. We Primroses pride ourselves on our open-mindedness, and my sister Erephine was always a rebel. Mother and Father liked to say tolerant things about mortals? Well, she would take a mortal for a lover and see what they thought about that! That was bad enough, of course — my father and mother did not really want their principles tested to that degree — but then Eamonn Dowd went too far. He dishonored my sister and the family, although the first dishonor was milder than the later, crowning blow."

"What did he do? Did he… did she get pregnant?"

For a moment Primrose's look of anger turned to confusion, then he laughed, a sharp bark. "Shade and Stream, no! We live long lives. Even a mortal lover is more a notoriety than a disgrace, and a halfling child — well, suffice it to say that in the old days, it's said, fully a tenth or more of the children of Faerie were half-mortal. Short-lived but fertile, your adoptive race. No, he convinced her to marry him."

"Marry… That was the dishonor?"

"It is one thing to make love to a mortal, even to bear a half-mortal child — a woman may have many children in her life by many men, after all — but quite another for that mortal to force himself into one of the oldest clans. By marrying a daughter of Primrose House your great-uncle was inserting himself into something almost as old and precious as Faerie itself. It was a disgrace my parents could not simply ignore."

Theo shook his head. "You'll have to bear with me, but to me it doesn't… it doesn't seem like that big a deal. No offense."

"I suppose to one raised among mortals as you say you were, it might be hard to understand. But here it is a grave insult to the family. Worse, it is dangerous to a family like ours. Our bloodlines and the handing-down of family power are important to us in ways you may not understand…"

"Yeah, but even so, why is it only Dowd to blame? Wasn't it her fault at least as much as his?"

Caradenus Primrose scowled but his words were civil. "She would not have done it unless he pressed her. Something so shocking — it had happened here only one or two other times in recorded history, although there are many more instances of it happening in the mortal world. But with a daughter of one of the famous Seven Families? He might just as well have set Primrose House itself on fire. No, it was worse, because the house could have been rebuilt, but honor can never truly become spotless again." He was shaking. "I apologize for my anger. It is still close to my heart."

"I've gathered. And I'm sorry I don't get it," Theo said. "I'm not just sticking up for my… for Eamonn Dowd. Maybe he just didn't understand the rules as well as you think he should have."

Primrose was fighting hard to find his equanimity. "I might, with the greater knowledge and maturity I now have, be able to agree with you that part of his crime was due to misunderstanding our ways, despite all the time Dowd had lived among us. But you have not heard the second part.

"The marriage was brought before the Parliament of Blooms to be unmade. It was a terrible blow to family honor to have the union paraded in public, but it was the only way to separate them in accordance with the Old Law. My sister at first did not wish to part from Dowd, and had even gone so far as to move into his terrible little house out in Forenoon, doubling our family's shame. The parliament, to its credit, did not waste time and promptly ended the marriage. Dowd was banished from Faerie and my sister returned to the care of her family. She was angry, but I truly believe she was already regretting her headstrong decision to marry a mortal. She raged against my parents and their interference in her life, but I never heard her profess to be broken-hearted at losing Dowd.

"Dowd himself perhaps felt differently, but whatever the case, his banishment was mandated and carried out, although for some incomprehensible reason it apparently was not effective. These were unsettled times — the Violets were feuding with some of the other Seven Families and everyone could feel the growing likelihood of a Flower War. In any case, somewhere in the early days of open and violent hostilities between the ruling families, Dowd reappeared, to our complete surprise. In truth, we did not know he had reappeared at first, we only knew that my sister was stolen right out of Primrose House. In fact, at first it was suspected to be another move in the already deadly struggle between the great houses. It was only later that we caught the lawless gang of cave-trolls who had perpetrated the act and learned that Dowd had been their ringleader, that they had delivered Erephine to him. But by the time we discovered that, it was too late. Dowd was gone again and my sister was… ruined."

As the fairy fell silent, remembering, Theo wondered how much of this dramatic story was true and how much was Primrose family legend. The Eamonn Dowd who wrote Theo's book might have taken great risks for love, but it was a little hard to believe he would do anything quite as criminal as this sounded. Still, Theo did not want to voice any open doubts — his relationship with this fairy lord was far too fragile. Instead, he ventured another question.

"I'm sorry — I'm sure this must be painful — but why do you say he was banished and came back as though that was such a surprise? I mean, he got here in the first place, didn't he? It might have been illegal or dangerous or whatever for him to come back, but it wouldn't have been that hard, would it?"

Primrose was still brooding, so Cumber answered. "It's the Clover Effect, Theo, remember? People — mortals and fairies — can cross from one world to another, but only once each way. Once your uncle was sent back, he couldn't return. Not wasn't supposed to — couldn't. Lord Clover and the people working with him invested a lot of powerful science to make sure that would be true. If there are loopholes, none of us has ever heard of them."

"So if I finally manage to get out of here, I can't come back." Not that at the moment that sounded like a bad thing, but this was the first time he'd even considered it. "Ever?"

"Not unless the law changes, and that would take a unanimous vote in the Parliament of Blooms," said Cumber. "Then they'd have to undo it, which would be terribly hard — just the thaumaturgic foundation for the Effect took months to install. But as Lord Primrose said about something else, that's another story."

There was still much of Primrose's tale Theo didn't understand. "Back to your sister, if it's not too hard to talk about it. Ruined, you said. How? What happened to her?"

"It's been many years," said Primrose. "It should not hurt so much. It happened in the middle of many larger and, yes, more terrible things, but it still causes me great pain. My parents never really recovered. We rescued her, you see — that's how we know it was definitely Eamonn Dowd who took her, why his guilt is proved by more than the word of the hired kidnappers who never actually saw his face. The place she was held in had been paid for by money out of Dowd's accounts here in Faerie, and the letter he had written to welcome her was found, too, and it was unquestionably in his handwriting. But he was gone by the time we found his lair. He left her behind like a cast-off shoe." The fairy took a deep breath. "We do not know what happened, what he did to her, but when we found her, she was mad — unalterably mad. No, worse than that. In those who are mad there is at least a trace of what they were, sometimes far more than that. In my sister there was — and still is — simply nothing of the woman we knew."

"What does that mean?"

"She is empty. What we found lives and breathes, nothing more. She is a husk. Dozens of the most esteemed doctors have examined her over the years but none of them could help her. She seems to have had her thoughts and… and her entire person… expelled from her like a yoke blown out of a hole in an eggshell." A tear glittered in the corner of his eye, shocking Theo: he had never seen one of these people cry, or even seem close to doing so. "It would be far better if she had died. Then we could have given her to the Well, mourned, and gone on. Instead she is a walking corpse in a sanctuary for the mad located outside the city. I go to see her a few times a year. It used to be more often than that — I would arrive with plans to read to her, to tell her family news and sing to her songs from our nursery days. She must be inside that shell, somewhere, I would tell myself, the pretty, kind little Erephine you knew. Now I visit her only on festival days and cannot wait to leave again. I do not read stories to her. I sing no songs."

After a long silence, Primrose abruptly stood. "But this is not your fault, and my attack on you was wrong and unfair. My tragedies are not yours. I hope we can be friends, Master Vilmos."

"It's Theo, remember? And… I'm really, really sorry about your sister."

"Thank you." He gave Theo and Cumber a kind of salute, one long finger touched to his jaw, and then went out of the tent, eyes still a little shiny in the corners.

"Wow," said Theo after a bit. "Just… wow."

"I will not deceive you," said Mud Bug Button. "It will be dangerous for you to go. But I fear it will be even more dangerous for you to stay here."

This is certainly our day for visitors, Theo thought. More surprisingly, the most important person in the entire refugee camp at the Old Fayfort Bridge had come alone to see them in their tent, without even his bodyguards. He's got the common touch, no doubt about that. "You want us to leave here already?" he asked.

"No, you misunderstand me." The goblin looked far more at home squatting on the dirt floor than had their previous visitor. "Only for tomorrow. Certain voices have spoken to me, told me that tomorrow will be a bad day for you to be here."

"Voices?" Theo looked uncertainly to Cumber, who was listening quietly. "Do you mean spirits or something?"

Button smiled. "No, Master Vilmos, no spirits. I speak of, hem, certain employees in the Lord Constable's Chamber who are sympathetic to our cause. They tell me there will be many, many parliamentary constables here tomorrow. The reason they will give is to protect those distributing food and supplies to the many poor people who have fled their homes and come to the bridge, but the real reason is to look for you and Primrose and others wanted by the Parliament of Blooms. Perhaps for me, too, but I do not think they know my name yet, only my… shape."

"Shape?"

"Hellebore and the others know that someone is resisting them. I have arranged certain… events that have probably been noticed, although I flatter myself our enemies do not understand my reasons or my plans. But they will have gathered that someone is playing an opposing game to theirs. In fact, I hope you will assist me with one such small event tomorrow, thereby helping me and also keeping you out of the hands of the constables."

Good lord, what are we into here? "What exactly do you want?"

Since it was almost sunset, Mistress Twinge, Coathook, and Streedy Nettle had gone off to stand in the food lines, leaving Cumber and Theo the only people in the tent with the little goblin, but still Button lowered his voice. "The less you know the better, but I will tell you that Streedy's accident has made him… useful to me in many ways. I have put him to those sorts of uses several times already, but he must always be accompanied because he becomes confused. Last time it was to be Primrose to help him and ensure he got back to us again, but by misfortune it was the day of Hellebore's attacks on Daffodil and the other houses. Caradenus Primrose left here as a member in good standing of the ruling elite — an extremely useful ear and eye for me among the Flower clans. A few hours later he was a wanted criminal, his family dead, their house-tower besieged and then invaded by parliamentary forces. He had to flee the City center at risk of his life. Streedy was left to make his way back alone through that chaos, and if not for the help of some of our sympathizers in Goblintown…" Button shook his head.

"But we're probably wanted too," Theo said. "At least I know I am. What good will it do sending us?"

"Because tomorrow I need Caradenus Primrose for something else — something only he can do in a place only he of all of us could go. You two will have to help Streedy Nettle in a rather more public place. You are wanted by Hellebore and his tame parliament, yes, but the mirrortalkers have not spoken of you to the populace at large and there are no pictures of you yet in circulation." The goblin shrugged his small shoulders. "Still, it will be dangerous. I will not lie to you. You might be caught. If you are, I am sure you will be taken straight to your enemies."

"But we can't stay here, either. At least not tomorrow." Theo looked to Cumber again. "What do you think?"

"I'll go if you go, Theo."

He turned back to Button. "And will whatever we're doing… will it be something against Hellebore and those bastards?"

The goblin smiled his yellow smile. "Oh, yes."

"And it won't hurt any innocent people? I'm not going to plant any bombs or anything."

"I promise you, no one will be hurt by what you do tomorrow. But I must warn you that the day will come when it, hem, may not be possible to fight Hellebore and Parliament and still keep your distance from things that might harm people. Nothing less than a war will defeat them." He showed his yellow teeth again, this time without humor. "War is suffering, after all."

"I'll deal with that when we get to it." Theo took a deep breath. "Okay, I'm in. Tell us what we need to do."

Streedy Nettle's odd appearance and even odder behavior — he twitched and mumbled even when he was at rest — had attracted the attention of some of the other passengers and Theo was beginning to feel nervous. He had never been a wanted criminal before, if you didn't count a bench warrant for unpaid speeding tickets, and he was beginning to think he wasn't cut out for it. All this, and somewhere out there an undead something was hunting for him, too. It didn't seem fair.

"Streedy's so conspicuous," he whispered to Cumber. "Wouldn't it have been better if we walked?"

"Yes, if you didn't mind arriving in the center of the City at sunset, after all the offices are closed. It's a long way, Theo."

"Ssshhh! Don't use my name." He tried to smile at a chubby brownie woman sitting in one of the half-size seats, who was watching Streedy Nettle with disapproval. She sniffed and looked away. In an effort to get the runaway capacitor's attention, Theo took his hand; Streedy immediately calmed. That's just great, Theo thought. I'm going to have to literally hold his hand the whole time. The fairy's skin was warm and seemed almost to tingle, so that Theo felt like his own hand had gone to sleep. The little hairs on the back of his arm stirred as though charged with static electricity. Jesus, what if he electrocutes me or something? Can you get electrocuted by magic? He looked at the fairy's dazed face, thought about the charred wing-stubs he had seen when the young fairy took off his shirt to bathe, and decided that whether it was like being electrocuted or not, he really didn't want it to happen to him.

Still, it was either hang onto Streedy's hand or have people stare at them. Theo hung on.

The bus climbed through the Sunset district. The houses were small and boxy, but near the crest of the hill they were neat and well-cared-for, most of them painted in vibrant colors and topped — as if to make up for the similarity of their shapes — with highly individualized roofs. Some looked almost like pagodas, others like folktale castles in miniature, sprouting tiny conical towers like crayons sticking out of a box. A few children were out early, probably on their way to school, the younger ones accompanied by parents or even occasionally by one of the rainbow nanny-bubbles he had seen back in Penumbra Fields. If it were not for the coaches full of armed parliamentary constables cruising slowly up and down the streets — Theo had seen half a dozen so far — it would seem to be a fairly ordinary day in an ordinary and fairly prosperous working class neighborhood.

The bus reached the top of the hill. Theo could see most of the City laid out before him like a patterned quilt, lumpy with hills where he was, sloping down toward the bright blue-green waters of Ys. Except for the strange shapes of the towers in the center of the City, gleaming in the morning sunlight, he could be looking down on any modern and attractive human city — Geneva, perhaps, or Sydney.

"That's Rade Park where we went the first night we escaped," Cumber said quietly, pointing to a band of dark green shadow that cut across the middle of the Gloaming district like a cummerbund. It suddenly made Theo aware of how little vegetation there was in New Erewhon, as Dowd had named the place, how just as in one of the human cities it resembled, the fairy metropolis had subordinated trees to houses and factories. They really have done their best to imitate us, he thought as the bus bumped down a steep street and the city-vista disappeared again behind the nearer buildings.

"Okay," he said, "I guess I understand why we're taking the bus. But if Coathook is helping us, how come he's not here too?"

"Button said that a goblin traveling with three of us might attract attention. And apparently he also needs to arrive alone for whatever part he's going to play to work properly. He's taking another bus."

Theo sighed. "You sound like you believe everything Button says already. Like you've joined Button's army for real."

"Don't you believe him, Theo?"

"What he says about what he means to do, sure. But that doesn't mean I believe my life is as important to him as it is to me, just for instance."

"What do you mean?" Cumber looked around before leaning closer. "He thinks you're incredibly important! He's said so several times!"

"Yes, but that's a politician talking — no, a general. He's important too, but he seems to be very casual about the possibility of some other goblins assassinating him for announcing his middle name in public or whatever that was he did." Now Theo was leaning close too, his lips almost touching Cumber's ear. "Look, Button's fighting a war. He expects there will be casualties, maybe including him. I don't care if I'm important to anyone else. I just don't want to be a casualty, especially the 'oops, we underestimated' kind. It's not even my war."

"But it was Hellebore and his allies who've been trying to kill you."

"And if I get my fingers around somebody's throat who deserves it, don't worry — I'll remember all that. But if I can get home and avoid the war altogether…" He shrugged, leaned back. "No offense, Cumber, but I don't feel like one of you and I don't really understand most of what goes on here, let alone care about it. I certainly don't want to die in a power struggle between rich fairy families."

"Most people don't risk their lives for power, Theo, even here. Most people do it to protect other people — people they care about."

Theo did not have a reply to that, but even if he had, he was suddenly finding it hard to concentrate. He had been trying to pull free from Streedy's grip for several seconds without much luck: the fairy was clutching his hand very tightly. Hair rose on Theo's head and a strange prickly feeling had begun to throb up and down his spine.

"Slow 'em down," Streedy's long face was full of panic but the calm voice coming from his mouth seemed to belong to someone else entirely. "Wave 'em over here to the side. I'll take the front, you take the back."

"It's the constables, Theo." Cumber was clearly frightened. "They're all over these days. They're stopping us."

As the bus slowed and pulled over to the side of the road, Theo realized that somehow Streedy had heard and repeated the communications between the two parliamentary constables who were about to board the bus. "What's my name supposed to be again? I can't remember!" he whispered to Cumber, but the ferisher was already sliding down the seat, putting a little distance between himself and his companions. Theo felt a burst of panicky resentment until he remembered Button's instructions. Cumber was a different kind of fairy: they would attract less attention if they didn't appear to be traveling together.

"Bloody iron!" Cumber Sedge squeaked as the first constable got on at the front of the bus. Theo's heart pattered — Cumber almost never swore. "They've got a Black Dog!"

Theo could only sit and watch as the constable worked his way down the bus, an ebony mastiff the size of a pony filling the aisle behind him. The dog was silent and made no overtly hostile moves, but the passengers on either side shrank away from it. Red eyes glowed like barbecue briquets as the huge animal padded silently after the constable. Even with sunlight streaming through the windows the creature reflected no light: but for that terrible stare, it was only a dog-shaped shadow.

I have fairy blood, Theo told himself over and over. There's no reason it should notice anything wrong about me. But what if it smells fear? He stared at the shadowy head and decided that if it did smell fear, the dog must seldom smell anything else. He ransacked his mind for what he was supposed to say if they asked him questions, but it was horribly difficult to think with the mastiff slowly moving toward him, nose up and sniffing. Oh my God, he thought, what if Streedy starts babbling radio-speak again?

A heavy hand fell on Cumber's shoulder and the ferisher jumped, which made Theo jump too. The other constable had come in through the back door of the bus and had reached them first.

"Identify yourself." His voice was muffled by his helmet. The mirrored visor gave him the look of a man-sized hood ornament. "Your Truename card."

Cumber fidgeted out the prismatic piece of shaved stone or whatever it was — Theo had never been able to figure it out — that Button had given him. The constable stared at it for a moment, flicked his eyes over Cumber, then handed it back. Theo had his in his hand already and passed it to the looming constable without being asked. "You're from out in Hazel Wand," the faceless man said to Theo. "What are you doing here?" He turned toward Streedy, who sat bobbing his head, eyes closed, locked in what Theo could only pray would remain a silent paroxysm of fear. "What's wrong with him? Where's his Truename?"

Theo reached into Streedy's pocket. The capacitor whimpered at Theo's touch but allowed him to take out the forged credential and pass it to the constable. "He's my cousin," Theo said, trying to stay calm, struggling to remember what he was supposed to say. "He's a bit… touched. Hurt his head in a farm accident. I'm taking him into Elysium House to help him with his worker benefits."

The other constable had arrived and blocked the aisle going forward. The dog was close enough now that Theo could almost have reached out and touched the matte-black muzzle — not that he planned to do any such thing. Other passengers on the bus were turning to watch, interested and also relieved that someone other than themselves had attracted the official attention.

"And your name is… ?" It was a trick; the constable had already looked at his forged Truename card.

"Stonecrop." Theo was so thrilled he'd remembered he almost let out a cheer. It was a country name, common as grass. "Jacky Stonecrop, that's me. And my cousin Paddy here's a Myrtle."

The constable stared at him a long time, then exchanged a visored glance with his companion, who had let the dog's leash go slack. The animal moved a step closer, until it was leaning across terrified Cumber Sedge to sniff at Theo and Streedy, pulling in so much air that Theo could feel the breeze. The light in its eyes flickered like a torch behind thick glass. It was quite hypnotic…

"I said, where are you staying in the City?"

Theo shook his head, trying to reassemble his thoughts. "Pigwidgeon Acres. My uncle lives at the hostel there, but he's too frail now to go out with Paddy. That's why I came up to the City." They weren't leaving. He hazarded a bit of extemporizing. "Is it always like this? I heard there were some people tried to overthrow Parliament. Is that what all the fuss is?"

The constables exchanged another mirrored glance, then the one who had been questioning Theo handed him back his card. "You're to be back in the hostel by sundown. And while you're at Elysium House, make sure you report your address. All non-residents have to go on the list. Otherwise you'll wind up visiting Lord Monkshood's cells, and that wouldn't make a very nice holiday for a country boy like you." He waited while his companion pulled back the Black Dog, then they all headed toward the front of the bus.

Theo could not even talk for several minutes after the bus was moving again. Streedy Nettle appeared to be crying.

They wound slowly into the heart of the city, through Twilight and across the edge of the Gloaming district and into Eventide. Perhaps because of Theo's mood after their brush with the constables, the downtown districts seemed gray and cold despite the clear, fairly sunny skies. The streets were emptier than he remembered — on his trip to Hellebore House with Cumber and Zirus and Applecore this district had seemed to throb with life, even at night. That journey seemed years away, now, and not just because of what had happened since. Eventide's sidewalks were nearly empty, the fairy-folk waiting for buses huddled deep in their coats as though to avoid attention. The people who were walking hurried, and did not even seem to see the others who shared the sidewalks. Only a few of the fairy-light signs glowed. Theo shivered. He wished he had his leather jacket back instead of the flimsy fairy-garb he was wearing. Then again, his old jacket would have probably just made him more conspicuous, and he definitely didn't want that.

As they rounded a corner into a canyon of tall buildings, Theo suddenly spotted the strange bulk of Hellebore House in the distance, its hundreds of windows like flyspecks on the curd-colored façade. He could not help staring at it, despite the disturbing sensation that the windows were shadowed eyes that watched him in turn. "They're all dark," he said. "It looks deserted."

Cumber Sedge looked up and knew without asking what Theo was talking about. "Some kind of special shutters," he guessed. "They're at war, Theo. The whole City's at war."

Streedy gave a little moan.

The bus stopped on the corner of Hedgerow and Springfair. Almost all the passengers who had watched their interrogation with such interest were gone; no one even looked up as they made their way down the stairs and onto the street.

"It's over there," Cumber said, pointing at a low, broad building at the far end of the block. "We've made pretty good time, all things considered, but we can't afford to dawdle."

With Streedy between them, swiveling his head like some kind of mechanical toy, they walked toward Elysium House. They stopped in front of a mirrorcase store a few yards away from the entrance to review Button's instructions. The storefront behind them was filled with rows of display shelves full of gleaming mirrorcases where dozens of identical scenes flickered: serious faces in the Parliament of Blooms, shots of armored constables in the streets, and once a view of the smoking ruins of Daffodil House. Theo turned away.

"… So even when we see him, we don't go near him, understood?" Cumber was saying.

"Got it. We pretend we don't know him." Theo looked to Streedy, who was staring up at the carved façade of Elysium House, his lips moving as though he prayed. "But I still don't understand what we're supposed to do in there."

"Nothing." Cumber shook his head. "Well, not after we make the first application, as Button said. We're mostly here for Streedy, to help him get here, do what he needs to do, and then get home."

"You mean he's going to know what to do by himself? And manage it without attracting attention? Look at him!"

"Yes, but apparently he's done this before, or something like it. Now come on, Theo, before I lose my nerve."

The great hall of Elysium House was a bizarrely perfect representation of a forest grove created entirely in multicolored stones and gems. The sky — in reality the interior of the dome — appeared to be a mosaic of pure lapis lazuli, big as a football field, with pearl clouds. The tree-columns had crusty bark in a variety of brown and silvery tones; one near the door rang like a chime when Theo rapped it with his knuckles. The fat-bellied redcap guard gave him a look of irritation and Theo quickly put his hands back in his pockets. Even the birds were picture-perfect creations with feathers of jade and alabaster and polished coral — but they did not move or sing. The dozens and dozens of fairy-folk who milled around the wide-open spaces were not singing either. They were filling out forms at the small carrels dotted about the massive chamber like flat mushrooms growing up out of the grass-patterned green tiles, or waiting in lines to speak to one of the row of Elysium House functionaries sealed behind glass like ambered flies. If he had seen this wide array of creatures a few weeks ago, when he was newly arrived, Theo would have been amazed by the woolly padfeet and tiny but dignified gnomes. Instead, he looked at them all with more familiar eyes now and saw just a group of sad and frightened people. For a moment, surrounded by petrified birds and diamond-hard flowers, Theo found himself nostalgic for places he had never seen, the original forests of Faerie that this stone grotto so carefully yet lifelessly imitated.

"There are some application machines down there," Cumber whispered, pointing to a spot along the wall between a pair of marble birch trees. "That's the shortest line I see."

"But aren't we supposed to wait for Coathook… ?"

"We're supposed to be ready when he gets here, and who knows how long it will take us to get to the front of the line?" Cumber indicated the huge sundial which, against all common sense, hung flat against the wall, out of any direct sunlight, and yet displayed a prominent wedge of shadow that had crept up the face until it was standing almost straight up. "He'll be here at noon. Come on."

They got into line behind some kind of possum-woman who had what looked like a couple of dozen children draped all over her, in her pockets and on her shoulders and one even sitting in her grocery bag, which she rested on the floor after each shuffling step forward. The possum-fairy child in the bag stared at Theo with round brown eyes as it licked the remains of something sticky off its pointed muzzle.

They reached the front at last. Streedy had his eyes closed again and was talking to himself, fingers twitching as though he conducted an invisible orchestra. Cumber Sedge stepped up to the machine. Theo would never have known it was a machine if Cumber hadn't told him: it had the shape of a large, very realistic rock, tall as a Neolithic standing stone, with a large chunk broken out of it about chest high to reveal a crystalline interior like a geode.

Cumber put his hands on the stone and leaned in toward the glittering, faceted opening. "Entry permit application," he said.

"Purpose?" the rock asked him in a calm tenor voice.

"Visitor and livestock."

"Number of livestock?"

"One."

"Number of visitors?"

"One."

"Originating field of visitor… ?"

While Cumber answered questions, Theo looked around. The time must be drawing near when they would have to finish their business and let the next person in line use the machine, and the sundial on the wall was definitely reading noon, but he saw no sign of Coathook. He wished he knew what exactly it was that Button planned.

"By the Elder Trees," someone shrieked, "what's wrong with him?"

Terrified that Streedy had done something bizarre, Theo whirled around, but the tall, shaggy-haired fairy was still leaning against the wall beside the application machine. Everybody else had turned to look at something in the middle of the vast room. Theo turned too, and saw a group of different kinds of fairies beginning to crowd around a brown figure twitching on the floor. It took him only a moment to grasp what was going on.

While the other folk in line were facing away from the permit machine, watching the thrashing goblin and the excited throng around him, Cumber grabbed Streedy and pulled him forward to stand in front of the glittering geode-machine. The damaged fairy let himself be shoved closer, until his palms touched the stone, then the hair on Streedy's head began to stir as if in an unseen breeze — no, more slowly, Theo realized, as languorously as seaweed in the clutch of the tide. The fairy leaned forward until it seemed he might kiss the exposed crystalline interior. The geode glowed and Streedy's head became, for a moment, no more than a shock-haired silhouette.

Cumber leaned toward Theo. "This will take him a few moments at least," he whispered. "Go help keep people's attention over there."

Theo had a moment of pure panic as he ran toward the spot where Coathook was still snapping and moaning on the green tile floor. Several fairy-folk seemed to be considering helping him, but none of them appeared willing to get very close to his sharp yellow teeth.

"Someone help him!" Theo shouted. "Someone get a doctor!" A few bystanders turned to stare at him blankly. Shit, Theo remembered, that's not the word for a regular doctor here. What did Applecore and the others call them again? "A chirurgeon!"

He kneeled close to Coathook and put his hands on the apparent victim's shoulders to make sure he wouldn't get cut accidentally by the goblin's long nails. "Just a little longer," he whispered. "We're almost done, I think." He straightened up and announced, "I think he's starting to come out of it!"

The fat security guard had finally worked up the courage to approach. He kneeled, not without effort, keeping Theo between himself and the still-twitching Coathook. "What is it?" he asked breathlessly. "Is he dying?"

"No!" Coathook gasped. He really did look and sound dreadful. "Just… a goblin fit."

"Drunk, most likely," the guard said quietly to Theo. "They're like fish in Ys, always wet."

"I need water," Coathook panted. "No, not you, him. Bring water!" he rasped at Theo.

"I'll be right back," he told the guard reassuringly as he got up. "See, he's getting better already." And indeed Coathook was beginning to twitch more slowly.

He pushed his way through the crowd gathered around the goblin and almost ran directly into Cumber and Streedy Nettle coming from the other direction. Streedy could barely stand and looked as though he'd been badly beaten. At any other time the tall, staggering fairy would have caught the attention of many of the people in Elysium House, but at the moment they were all far more absorbed watching Coathook trying to climb back onto his feet, using the fat security guard as his crutch before tumbling them both down onto the floor. People were laughing now and Theo could even imagine that Coathook would manage to walk out of the building again without being handed over to the constables.

"Did it all get done?" he asked. Cumber nodded his head in reply, but he was too busy keeping Streedy upright to talk.

They went out the massive front doors, down the stairs, and headed along Hedgerow Avenue toward the bus stop, but had only gone a few steps when Cumber abruptly stopped. "Theo, look!"

Theo's first response to Cumber's despairing tone was to glance back at the doors, expecting to see a crowd of angry fairies chasing them, but Cumber was pointing in another direction entirely. Theo turned to look at the shop window where they had stopped before entering Elysium House.

The rows of display mirrorcases all showed the same face. Theo's.

"Jesus! Shit, that's me!"

His face — a startled, candid image he'd never seen before, but which was still quite recognizably him — looked back at him for only a moment longer, then was replaced all across the window by the replicated faces of Lord Nidrus Hellebore — but Hellebore's image was not still. He was talking.

As Theo and Cumber dragged Streedy Nettle forward, half-hoping to block the display from the other people on the street, the viewpoint pulled back to show Hellebore sitting at a vast black desk that was empty but for two objects, a crystal vase with a single pallid flower, and a bell-shaped bottle, almost more like a specimen jar than anything else. It was hard to see what was inside, but it appeared to be moving.

"What's he saying? I wish I could hear the sound," Theo said.

"Do you really need to?" said Cumber miserably. "It's almost certainly something to the effect of, 'We want this fellow. Bring him to us and we'll make you rich. Help him and we'll have your skin off.'" Cumber turned away from the shop window, eyes already roving up and down the street. "We have to get out of here fast, Theo! We have to get back to the bridge before someone recognizes you."

But despite the chill of terror that had raced through him at the sight of his own face being broadcast across the city, the knowledge that he was not only a fugitive now but a famous fugitive, Theo could not move from the spot. The camera, or whatever medium brought the picture to the ranked mirrorcases, had finally managed to bring the bottle on Lord Hellebore's desk into sharp enough focus that Theo could recognize what was huddled inside it, wings beating weakly on the inside of the glass.

"Oh, Cumber, that's… that's Applecore. He has Applecore."

32 TRENDY FUNGUS

All the way back he felt certain everyone on the Warstones-Dockyards bus was staring at him, a few only trying to decide why he looked familiar, but others no doubt whispering into their shellphones, alerting some parliamentary tactical squad that they had spotted a wanted criminal. Or maybe Hellebore and the others wouldn't bother with anything so subtle as a troop of constables. Maybe they'd just send another dragon swooping down out of the sky to roast the whole bus like a canned ham in a blast furnace, meat and bone and fairy-metals fused together into one grotesque mass… No, Hellebore and Thornapple tried to capture me before, he told himself, fighting panic. They sent Tansy. So they probably won't just kill me. He was shivering and almost sick to his stomach.

Of course, the idea that instead of being killed in a flaming second he might wind up in some soundproofed modern dungeon in Hellebore House did not provide much solace, especially since he still had not the slightest idea of what they wanted from him.

And they have Applecore. She's alive, but they have her. Knowing that was worse in some ways than being a fugitive himself. She was bait for a trap, of course. Theo had seen it in enough second-rate action movies: get the hero's sidekick as a hostage, force him to enter the Evil Villain Lair. It would have been ludicrous if it weren't so horrible when it was really happening.

Besides, what makes anyone think I'm the hero?

No, if I'm smart, I won't do anything. Because I'm not some guy in a movie. I couldn't even buy groceries and make change here, let alone pull some big Die Hard rescue. But that seemed too terrible to think about — how could he just leave Applecore to be… what? Tortured? Maybe with help I could do something… He looked over to Cumber, who had not lost the shocked look on his face in the half hour or so since they had seen Hellebore's broadcast. Look at him — he really cares about her and she didn't even save his bacon twenty times like she did with me. I bet he'd risk his life for her in a heartbeat. But what could either of them do? Cumber was a lab assistant, not a master spy or an ex-soldier. And Theo was… a musician, basically. Look out, evildoers! He felt weak and miserable. Test-Tube Boy and The Man Who Sometimes Plays the Tambourine are coming for you!

No, it was pretty clearly hopeless. But did that mean that he should avoid trying? Even though he would probably wind up being razored into pieces by Hellebore and some crazy fairy-doctors because they thought he knew something that would help them conquer the fairy universe? And what the hell is it they think I know, anyway? Something about Eamonn Dowd? Or something he wrote about? But I have his actual notebook and nobody's been interested in it so far except people like Cumber. If the bad guys wanted it, they could have had a maid steal it out of Daffodil House easily enough.

Still, it couldn't just be a coincidence that his great-uncle had lived in Faerie and that now Theo had been dragged here too, could it? But maybe it wasn't anything to do with the book. It certainly hadn't led him here — he had still thought it was a novel when all hell came shambling after him. Maybe there was something about Theo himself…

Theo felt someone's eyes on him. A male brownie with a package on his lap was watching him suspiciously; for a moment he felt certain he was about to be denounced. Then he realized he had probably been squirming and mumbling to himself. He tried to give the brownie a reassuring smile. Jesus, he thought, I'm turning into Streedy.

The fairy into whom he was turning sprawled at the end of the seat as though someone had folded him up and then he had come violently unfolded again. Streedy Nettle was so exhausted by whatever effort he had put out at Elysium House that he wasn't even talking to himself: he stared out the window with the stunned look of a combat survivor. So this is how it is, Theo reflected. I'm a fugitive but I don't know why. I'm working for a goblin, promoting a revolution I don't understand. My best friend here is stuck in a bottle on the desk of the most evil bastard in this world. What else can happen?

Something made a loud popping noise and the bus swerved violently. Theo threw himself onto his belly in the aisle and lay there, waiting for whoever was shooting out the windows to get on with their job, but the bus rolled to a bumpy stop and the windows stayed where they were. Theo peered up from the middle of the aisle to discover most of the nearby passengers staring down at him in surprise. He hastily climbed back into the seat.

"What are you doing?" Cumber whispered. "Everyone's staring!"

"I thought someone was shooting at us. At me."

Cumber shook his head. "A ruptured tire, that's all. Try to look a little more normal, will you?"

"Oh, sure. No problem."

The bus driver, an old gray doonie with a receding mane and a straw cap perched between his ears, climbed back onto the bus after a few minutes, shaking his head and clicking his huge flat teeth in disgust. "We'll have to wait a bit," he announced. "They'll send another bus along for you while we get this fixed."

"How long until the new bus gets here?" asked a harried-looking gnome woman with two small but extremely active children.

As the driver began explaining some complicated formulation that seemed to add up to "I have no idea," Theo began to panic again. The idea of sitting by the roadside under the casual scrutiny of every jeep full of constables that passed was more than he could stand. "How far back to the bridge?" he asked Cumber.

"It would take us a couple of hours to walk."

"Do you think Streedy can make it without us carrying him?" Taking off on foot felt at least as dangerous as staying, especially when that undead thing was almost certainly still looking for him, but they'd be getting closer to sanctuary with every step instead of waiting to be recognized and arrested. "Yeah? Then let's go."

Theo's terror eased a little as they escaped the center of town, leaving only a dull ache in his stomach. Although several convoys of armed constables drove by them, he and his companions were part of an entire throng of goblins and short-legged dobbies and other poor fairies making their way back to the outskirts of the City ahead of the curfew. None of the troops seemed to give them more than a cursory glance. It was, however, a long, hard walk; by the time they left the crowds behind and had climbed to the highest of the hilly streets along the border between the Sunset and Twilight districts and were on their way down the other side toward the fenlands, Theo was so exhausted and footsore that even the prospect of being captured by Hellebore's minions didn't seem quite so dreadful. At least they'd probably drive me somewhere before they started torturing me — I'd get to sit down for a while. Jesus, I'm in terrible shape. You never see one of those action-hero guys wheezing before he's even started climbing up elevator shafts and all that.

As they trudged down a winding street into the glare of the late-afternoon sun, seemingly alone in the neighborhood but for furtive movements at the round, curtained windows as the local gnomes and boggarts peered out at them, Cumber squinted toward the coppery line of the river stretching below them and particularly at the dark mass of people and tents sprawled along the banks beyond the Old Fayfort Bridge. "There are a lot of coaches and trucks parked beside the camp," he announced.

"Do you think it's Hellebore's soldiers?" Button had said something about an inspection, a spying mission by the Parliament of Blooms, but it had blown out of Theo's head in the confusion of the afternoon. Were they going to have to spend all night hiding in the weeds?

Cumber shaded his eyes. "I don't know — there are more trucks than coaches, but they don't really look like the kind of thing that constables would be driving. Still, we'd probably better go carefully."

At the bottom of the hill they picked a more indirect path across the hilly waste ground between the edge of the City and the fens, and were fortunate enough to meet up with a party of goblins who were passing around a bottle of something as they returned to the bridge after having spent the day looking for work in the City. At first the goblins looked at Theo and the two fairies with distrust, and they did not seem to recognize Coathook's name when Cumber tried to use him as a reference, but when Theo asked them if they knew the musician Bottlecap, and demonstrated a little snatch of the song he had sung with the goblin musicians his first night in camp, they began to smile. One of them even recognized him then, laughing and calling him "the petalhead throathonker" in an almost friendly way — which Theo assumed meant something like "the fairy who thinks he can sing"— then offered him the bottle full of brackish liquid. Courtesy dictated he try some. It tasted like it was made out of tree-moss and had a kick that made his eyes water. The goblins enjoyed his expression and noises very much.

They continued toward the bridge together, Theo and his friends now at least with the dubious camouflage of the returning laborers — dubious because Theo and even Cumber were obviously too big to be goblins themselves, let alone Streedy, who was nearly a yard taller than any of their new companions.

"I don't see any constables," Cumber said as they neared the bridge, "although I see quite a few civilian bodyguards around. In fact, it looks like other than the bodyguards, most of the ones I don't recognize are women — Flower-folk, by the look of them, or at least they're dressed too nicely to be people from the camps. I think they're giving away food. And clothing." He squinted again and shaded his eyes. "And stuffed toys."

"Oh, man, I keep forgetting we're living in a refugee camp. Button did say something about a charity thing." Theo shook his head. "I knew my life was screwed up, but I never thought I'd end up on the wrong end of a bunch of rich ladies doing good. Can we avoid this entirely?"

"Well, if we keep circling around to the riverbank instead of going straight in past the bridge, we can probably get down into the camp without attracting too much attention." Cumber frowned. "But there are a lot of people at this end of the camp. They are giving away free food, after all."

The goblins had also figured out what was going on and were heading toward the bridge to investigate. Theo didn't want to go near enough to risk being recognized by any of the outsiders. In fact, all he really wanted to do was get back to the tent as fast as possible, lie down, then pull whichever blanket was the least filthy over his face for a while and just be hopeless and pathetic.

They skirted the bridge and all the activity there but as they crossed the broad levee toward the river Theo's attention was arrested by one of the Flower women, part of a group of nearly a dozen standing on a flatbed truck as they handed down sacks of something or other. It took a moment to be certain it was her: she was dressed in something a great deal less fashionable than the dress she had been wearing when he last saw her.

"Oh my G…" He grabbed Cumber's arm. "It's Poppy."

"Who?" Cumber had to let go of Streedy, whom he had been helping. The tall fairy wavered like a radio tower in a high wind, but stopped before tipping over.

"Poppy. This girl I met on my way to the City." She was a good twenty yards away and her raven-black hair was confined under a scarf, but he felt sure he wasn't mistaken. She had on a sort of shimmery, earth-colored jumpsuit which he guessed might be the Flower equivalent of worker's clothes; with her headscarf, she resembled some idealized Rosie the Riveter off a Second World War propaganda poster. Actually, even in his miserable mood he had to admit she looked quite fetching. "Poppy Thornapple."

"Poppy Thorn… Y-You mean the First Councillor's daughter?" Cumber sounded like he'd just tried to swallow a hedgehog.

Theo stared at her, full of revulsion for what she represented, but also a surprising longing. The Thornapple name had not meant much to him when they had first met — an intellectual rather than a visceral understanding that she was one of the enemy, if not herself personally guilty. Now it was hard to separate her from the smirk Hellebore had worn as the dragon swept down on Daffodil House with a belly full of murder.

Still, it was impossible to watch her and not feel a twinge of regret for what might have been. He remembered her pushing herself up against him, warm and soft and trusting…

And her father helped murder a thousand people in Daffodil House. An image of the scatter of charred bodies on the comb floor swam up to him. He was at war with himself, that's what it felt like. Even if it wasn't her fault, she's part of that, right? Like one of those pretty little frauleins that went to Hitler's parties and never wanted to know what was really going on. He turned his back on her and gestured to Cumber that he was ready to continue. After all, that's what her daddy does so she can go to her private school and hang out in clubs snorting pixie dust with the other rich Flower kids. While her daddy's partner Hellebore keeps my friend in a jar on his desk…

Oh sweet Jesus, of course — Applecore! Maybe she can help me get to Applecore! "Hang on," he said, and turned back again. Cumber sighed wearily but snagged the back of Streedy's shirt. The tall young fairy stopped again without comment or evident curiosity, like a toy whose battery had run down.

Theo examined the scene more carefully. Not only was Poppy in the middle of around a dozen other Flower women, but even if he wanted to dare it and could elbow his way through the crowd of refugees until he was close enough to make her hear him, the truck itself was surrounded by huge ogre guards and a few almost equally tough-looking doonie drivers. Even if they hadn't seen Hellebore's little version of Fairyland's Most Wanted, (or didn't just beat the bejesus out of him on principle) they might still remember his face when they eventually did see it on the local equivalent of the nightly news. He had no right to risk bringing parliamentary troops down on the camp. Even if he happened to be gone by then, it would probably land Button and Primrose and the rest in a dungeon somewhere and destroy the little goblin's plans.

So much for the sudden idea that Poppy might be some use to him getting to Applecore. He couldn't reach her without too much of a risk and in a little while she'd be gone. He obviously couldn't go to her house and ring the doorbell: "Hi, Mr. Thornapple, I'm the guy you wanted to torture — can Poppy come out and play?"

Unless…

It was a ridiculous idea, but so was being a fugitive in Fairyland, not to mention dragons and goblins and every other damn thing that had happened to him; he turned to the gangly figure beside him. "Streedy, you said you know Poppy, right? Poppy Thornapple?"

"Theo, what are you doing?" Cumber looked worried. But Cumber always looked worried.

"I'm asking him a question. Streedy? Did you hear me?"

It was like watching a piece of an iceberg crack, break loose, and tumble into the sea, a process so achingly slow that you could only sit back and wait. After what seemed half a minute, the tall fairy blinked and said, "Poppy. She's nice. I like her voice."

"Because you hear her talking sometimes, right? I want to talk to her now. Is there some way you can make that happen?" He looked at the long, puzzled face and his heart sank. It was ridiculous, of course. Most of Streedy's strange abilities seemed to be involuntary. Just because he seemed to be able to hear Thornapple House communications didn't mean…

"But Theo," Streedy Nettle said slowly. "You don't have a shell."

Shit. He'd just assumed something magical could be done — that Streedy could somehow connect him directly to Poppy. But Fairyland magic seemed to work in a much more mechanical way than that, or at least it did in this modern era. Of course he didn't have a shell.

"So I can talk to her, I guess," said Streedy. "But how can you talk to her?"

"I know, I know, it was a stupid idea." He scuffed his toe in the dirt. She was standing up now, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, staring off across the fens. He wondered what she was thinking. "Whoa, hang on," he said as the fairy's words caught up with him. "You can talk to her?"

Streedy nodded. Cumber's worried look grew by a brow-furrow or two. "What in the name of the Trees are you trying to do?"

Theo ignored the ferisher. "Then will you talk to her? Will you tell her what I tell you to say?"

"I'll try, Theo. But my head… it hurts a bit."

"I know, and I'm sorry. I'll keep it short. Go ahead — see if you can reach her."

He was surprised to see Streedy lower his long chin to his chest and close his eyes instead of facing the truck where Poppy and the other women stood, then realized that unless he had been paying a lot more attention than he usually did, Streedy probably did not even know she was a few yards away. He thought about telling him, but across the camp Poppy was already reaching her hand into the pocket of her garment. She took out a slim object that Theo felt sure must be the same silvery wand she had used in Starlightshire Station and lifted it up, listening.

"Have you ever talked to her before, Streedy?" Theo asked suddenly.

Streedy started to repeat his words, then shook his head.

"Then don't bother to tell her who you are. Just tell her that Theo wants to see her — no, meet with her. That you're a friend of his and it's important Theo gets to meet with her."

Streedy spoke the words into midair, paraphrasing awkwardly. Theo watched Poppy. He could not quite make out her expression from such a distance, but she turned away from her companions and walked a few steps up the bed of the truck as though seeking privacy.

After a pause of some seconds Streedy Nettle opened his eyes and looked at Theo, face full of distress. "She says how does she know I'm a friend of yours. How does she know, Theo?" He was shivering a little; Theo felt a pang of guilt at putting him through what was clearly a difficult task after the heavy lifting he'd been doing at Elysium House.

"Ask her if she remembers the songs I sang to her." But she probably wouldn't recognize the words to "New York, New York" even if he could coach Streedy through singing it. "And tell her that I still remember how old she is, but I don't care."

Jesus, what are you thinking, Vilmos? he asked himself as Streedy haltingly relayed the message. You had to pick two things that are all wrapped up with romance. What are you doing, messing with this girl's feelings? He took a breath. Saving Applecore, of course. And it wasn't entirely false, either. He did like Poppy Thornapple. He had been confused, and he was even more confused now, after what had happened at Daffodil House, but there was still something there. Yeah, but she's a schoolgirl, he told himself. A schoolgirl old enough to be your great-grandmother, came the predictable rebuttal from somewhere deep in his hindbrain. He looked up and saw that Streedy was waiting for him patiently. "What does she say?"

"She says she has to finish doing something this afternoon, but she'll meet you this evening. Where?"

"Tell her to pick a place and a time." He was pleased with the success of using Streedy as a conduit, feeling a little of the ebullience he had felt that first night, rolling into the City despite all that had gone so disastrously wrong. "And tell her to make it close to where she is now. I know what she's doing today."

Streedy dutifully recited Theo's words, then listened to the reply.

"She wants to know how you know what she's doing."

"Tell her to look just east of the bridge."

"Theo!" Cumber's worried look had taken a turn into real fear but Theo ignored him. As Poppy turned from side to side, staring out from the back of the truck, Theo took a few steps away from Streedy and Cumber Sedge and waved. Again, he couldn't quite see the look on her face, but this time he could guess. "Tell her that's to show I trust her."

Streedy listened to her reply for a long time. Cumber was pacing. "She says she'll meet you at a place called The Chamber of Congregation, on Glaistig Haven Road between Twilight district and Eastwater. When the Queen's Ring rises."

Theo had no idea what that meant — a star, he guessed — but he figured someone could explain it to him. "Tell her that's great. I'll come alone. I hope she will too."

"Theo!"

"Shut up, Cumber. Tell her that, Streedy, then we're finished. You can hang up or whatever you do."

She was still staring in his direction. He waved again, a little less broadly this time, then turned away. He had a feeling he couldn't quite explain, a certain faith that she wouldn't immediately call in her father's bodyguards or the constables, but there was no sense standing out in public in case he was wrong — and no sense getting Streedy and Cumber into trouble too if he had let himself get overconfident. "Come on, Cumber. I want to think. And someone has to tell me what time it is when the Queen's Ring rises."

It rose at what would be about eight o'clock, mortal time, a fat yellow star near the western horizon. Theo saw it gleaming bright against the black sky as he found the restaurant and ducked in through the low door.

The Chamber of Congregation was a kobold place, a small, windowless, self-consciously hip establishment in an alley just off Glaistig Haven Road, which was at the center of a sort of raffish shopping district near the Eastwater docks. Kobolds were cavern-creatures and the lobby was very dark, but Theo still felt unpleasantly conspicuous. He wedged himself into a corner behind the maitre d's table, next to a glass tank full of blind white cave salamanders, and hoped Poppy would show up soon. It was the kind of place where every customer who came through the door gave him at least a quick inspection — not because they recognized him, he realized after some panicky moments, but because they were hoping he was someone worth recognizing. It was just the kind of place where everybody checked out everybody else just as a matter of principle.

Trying to look natural, Theo turned away from the front door and examined the slate walls that gave the restaurant the look of having been carved directly into solid rock. All around the lobby strange pictures of what he guessed were kobolds and various underground animals had been incised into the dark surface and then lightly brushed with some phosphorescent chemical so that they seemed to float a few inches out from the walls. Theo had no idea if they were purely decorative or based on actual kobold folk-art. In fact, he didn't even know if there was such a thing as kobold folk-art, and even if there was, he couldn't guess whether it was ultra-cool, just respectable — sort of "last year"— or tacky as bullfight pictures and card-playing dogs. Of course, even a black velvet bullfight picture, in the proper context, could be cool again…

I just don't know how any of it works here, from the most important stuff to the least important. I should make a note to myself: under no circumstances try to pretend you're someone who actually grew up in Fairyland…

"Theo?"

He turned and felt his insides lurch just a little. Even in the dim light she didn't look like an enemy, but like a friend. At the least. "Hi. Thanks for coming." He paused, uncertain of what to do, then took her hand and held it for a moment before letting go. Oh, that's smooth, he told himself. Maybe after you finish shaking her hand you could give her a free sample of floor wax or something.

"I didn't think you'd really be here." Poppy was still not quite making eye contact. She was dressed up a little more than when he had seen her at the bridge, black coat and long skirt and a simple gray sweater, yet somehow there was a determinedly bohemian air to the outfit. Perhaps it was the flat sandals, or the gleaming strand around her neck of something that looked like silver but glinted in colors of firelight. Theo knew enough about women and their clothes to recognize she was trying to strike an appropriate balance between… what? Between liking him and hating him? Between wanting to look good and not wanting to look too available? Just because he knew a mixed message when he saw one didn't mean he knew exactly which messages were being mixed.

After an awkward pause, he said, "Could we sit down? I'm feeling a bit… conspicuous today."

"Who called me?" she asked as a little kobold in a decorative hooded jacket led them to a table. "He was very strange."

"Stranger than you know. I'll explain later." The table was along one of the back walls, out of the direct line of the firelight. As he relaxed, he realized he was extremely hungry. "What do they serve here? Is the food good?"

"It's lovely, although I've only been here a couple of times." She looked around. "You know, my brother was killed in a tavern just down the street."

"Oh my… ! Poppy, that's terrible. Are you sure you want to eat here?"

She shrugged. "I know you think I'm ghastly, but we were never close. In fact, I didn't like him at all. He was a nasty, cruel boy." Clearly uncomfortable, she opened up her menu, which glowed with a thin ivory light of its own. "What are you going to have? It's almost all fungus but they do amazing things with it."

Mushrooms, he reminded himself after a slight flinch. Mushrooms are fungus. Lots of fungus in Chinese food, too. Still, it was hard to get too enthusiastic. "You order for me." The ethereal light from the menu bathed her face as though she were a portrait by Vermeer. It was seductive — all of it, not just the pretty young woman across the table from him. It was wonderful to be sitting in a restaurant again, just as though he had returned to normal life. If he squinted his eyes so he didn't notice the bird-headed woman in a booth nearby, if he pretended another customer's aggressive display of wings was a costuming affectation rather than living appendages, he could imagine he was back in his own world.

In fact, it was too seductive.

A kobold waiter stood by the table. Theo had not even noticed him approach. He was not the most attractive type Theo had seen in Fairyland — kobolds, although humanoid, had a bit of the look of hairless rodents, their noses large and prominent so that the rest of their faces seemed to lag behind, their almost translucent pale pink skin wrinkled like someone's toes who had been in the bath too long. But despite the underslung jaw, the waiter had a shy, sweet smile, and Theo suddenly wondered if he were like Cumber — a student working in a restaurant to pay his way through university, determined to make a life among those who thought themselves his superiors. Had he fought his way up from someplace like that midnight-dark kobold village under the railroad line… ?

Yeah, everybody's got a story, he thought, and looked at Poppy. Do I know hers as well as I think I do?

"Did the masters want anything to drink?" the waiter asked.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, Theo asked for water. Poppy, perhaps being cautious for reasons of her own, ordered a glass of wine instead of a Wingbender.

"Look," he said when the little waiter had retreated, "there are some things I really need to talk to you about…"

"Oh, me too. I've run away from home."

"What?"

"I've had a terrible fight with my father. The real kind, not just the shouting-a-lot kind. He wants me to marry Lord Hellebore's son, Anton. It's impossible. He's completely mad — disgusting. And that stepbrother of his, or whatever he is…" She shuddered. It wasn't a theatrical gesture. "It would have happened anyway. I just can't live with those people anymore. And after what they did to Daffodil House and the Hollyhocks and the Lilies… Theo, I saw you with Zirus Jonquil, you must have heard what happened to his family's house — to his whole family."

He looked at her, stunned. She had run away. Good for her, of course, but for him…

"What's wrong, Theo? You must know about Daffodil House, even if you are from out of town."

"I… I was there. I was in it. When it happened."

"Bleeding black iron! Were you really?" She stared. "I wondered why you didn't call when I practically… Oh, Theo, that's… I'm sorry." To his chagrin, she began to cry. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your fault." What had happened to the careless schoolgirl who dismissed her own brother's death as an inconvenience? He tried to hand her his napkin but she had already found a handkerchief and was half-heartedly wiping her nose. "It wasn't your fault, Poppy."

"It was my family. My horrible family."

"Have you really run away? Could you go back?"

She shook her head and then blew her nose again. "My father has the household guards looking for me all over the city. That's why I couldn't meet you at one of the places I usually go. He doesn't like being defied, the old monster."

Theo took a deep breath. Not only wasn't he going to be able to use her to get to Hellebore as he had half-hoped, he now had the added danger that he might be picked up by her father's troops if they happened to find him with her. Well, there it is — I'm fucked. That's it. Period. End of story.

He supposed it didn't really matter, anyway: even if she could have got him into Hellebore House, he hadn't had even the ghost of an idea where to go from there. In a way, it was liberating. He still had to think of something to do about Applecore, but he didn't have to manipulate Poppy to do it. He hadn't felt very good about that.

He looked her over carefully. He wanted to open himself to her, but he couldn't quite shake the image of blithe, pretty Hitler-maidens going to lovely parties in Berlin while the SS dragged the undesirables off to camps. "Have you really left? Not just having a little moment, then you'll go back if Daddy says you don't have to marry the Hellebore kid, maybe raises your allowance?"

The tears were still rimming her eyes, but her face abruptly went cold. "Is that what you think? That I'd go back and live with those… murderers? For a bigger allowance?" She picked up her purse and began to stand. Theo reached out to take her arm but she shook him off. "I really am a fool," she said. "I tried to tell myself that what my father was doing was just politics. Wrong. And I tried to tell myself that I had misjudged you, that it was my fault for playing games, that you were really a nice guy. I was wrong about a lot of things, I guess."

Theo stood up as she started to turn away. His chair fell over. Other diners had begun to look at them. "Poppy, please, I just needed to know. To test you a little, I guess. Please, come back, I… I have some things to tell you." The fairy-folk on either side of them were whispering. Shit, he thought, if they don't recognize me, they'll probably recognize her. "Sit down, please!"

She let herself be drawn back down. He righted his chair and hunched over the table. "Tell me what?" she asked, dabbing at her face again.

"I have to confess something." What the hell, right?

Her face became still and her eyes mistrustful, as though a curtain had been drawn and she were peering out from behind it. "You have a wife back home in Daisyland, right? A little suburban place in Rowan? Children? Your own secondhand hob?"

He laughed despite himself, even though he felt like he was about to jump out of a window without knowing what was on the other side. "Oh, no. Nothing like that. No, I wanted to tell you…" He leaned forward. The other diners appeared to have lost interest again, but there was nothing wrong with taking precautions. "I'm thirty years old, Poppy."

"What? Do you think that's funny?" She started to get up again.

"Don't! It's the truth."

"Liar! How could that be… ?" She stopped, goggled. "Black iron, you're a mortal!"

"Ssshhh!" He took her hand to keep her close. She tensed, but did not pull away. "No. Well, sort of. It's a long story. Do you want to hear it?"

The little waiter picked this juncture to arrive with plates full of food that Theo could not even identify — ethnic cooking gone mad and then confined in a lightless cave for centuries — and began setting them out, ignoring with professional skill the abrupt silence that had fallen over the table. Theo couldn't tell what was garnish and what was dinner, and could only identify which things were plates because they were on the bottom. It didn't matter, though: he was far too nervous to eat.

When the waiter had slid off again, Theo told her everything, starting with a capsule summary of his life before crossing over to Faerie. It was tempting to glamorize things but he didn't do it, giving her instead the exact and accurate picture: thirty years old with a dead-end job, pretty fair musician, less-than-overwhelming people skills, especially when it came to relationships. He tried to gauge her mood but what he thought of as the austere Flower mask was still on her face: she sipped at her wine, picked at the food, and listened, but she kept her thoughts to herself. He told her of finding his great-uncle's book, about the sudden entrance of the sprite followed closely by the undead thing, about his startling arrival in a place he had never believed existed.

By the time he got to the part about Applecore leading him to Daffodil House, the first wash of adrenaline was gone and he was beginning to feel how hungry he was. He chose one of the least disturbing things in front of him, speared a piece on an odd, long-tined fork, and put it in his mouth. It was not too bad, although the combination of sweet and musky was a little hard to get used to at first, but the easing of terror made a very good sauce. As he told her the rest of what had happened to him, carefully avoiding any mention of Button or his plans and activities — he had no right to put the lives of the goblin and his comrades at risk, after all, no matter what he thought about the girl — he tried more and more of the kobold delicacies. The discovery of an arrangement of candied millipedes atop one of the dishes put him off for a moment, but he eventually made a mound of those things he liked best on his own plate. Eventually, almost every sentence of Theo-history was punctuated by forkfuls of food.

She was silent for a while after he finished. She drank off her wine, then picked up her purse and stood.

"Are you leaving?" The fear suddenly clamped him again. He had let himself relax too much. Was she angry enough to sell him out?

"No, I'm going to the toilet. Is that all right?"

He nodded. He wanted her to assure him she wasn't going to call someone, that he wasn't going to be sitting here like an idiot when the special constables came crashing through the door, hornet-guns blazing or buzzing or whatever they did, but he knew that if he was going to keep her on his side he would have to trust her. People have died for worse principles, he thought. But I'd rather not die.

It was perhaps the longest ten minutes he'd spent since escaping from the burning wreck of Daffodil House. He sipped his water, pushed the remains of the kobold cuisine around on his plate, and did his best to appear to be someone not worth a second glance from any of the other diners. When he saw her coming back down the aisle, the mask of indifference still on her face, he had two simultaneous and completely different reactions.

So was I an idiot? Did she make a deal with her father — her freedom for mine?

She's really beautiful.

Poppy settled in, not making eye contact. "I just want to know one thing," she said at last. "I have to know. Did you come here because you wanted to use me to rescue your friend?"

He suddenly wished he'd ordered a real drink, too. "Yes. That wasn't the only reason, but I hoped you could help me, somehow. She's been more than a friend… I mean, she saved my life. More than once."

Poppy nodded slowly. "But that wasn't the only reason, you said."

"I like you, Poppy. I always did. When I saw you at the camp, I realized that I'd… missed seeing you."

She squinted at him. "If you're trying to weave a glamour over me, Theo Whatever-Your-Name-Really-Is, you'd better remember that you're a beginner. If you're lying to me I'll do worse to you than that lizard Hellebore could ever dream of." Her gaze dropped back down to the table again. "I can't help you, Theo. Even if I went back — and I'll never go back — they wouldn't let me onto the family floors at Hellebore House, not after the scene I made getting out of there. But I don't blame you for wanting to save your sprite friend, even if she is a snippy little bitch. So if you want to leave now, just tell me the truth and go. You don't have to worry about me — I won't betray you. But if you lie to me and pretend you care about me, thinking that you'll find a way to use me to help your friend after I've told you I can't, then I'll make you wish you hadn't ever met me. I truly will. Understood?"

He was so relieved that he almost laughed. "Did anyone ever tell you that you're pretty scary for a hundred-and-five year old? I'll bet that ogre kid still has nightmares."

She looked blank. "Ogre… ?"

"When you threw me out of the car, back when I first came to the City." His smile began to feel uncomfortable. He still didn't feel very good about that day. "You'll be happy to know that Applecore told me I was a jerk about the way I treated you."

"Jerk?"

"Sorry. A mortal expression that doesn't translate, I guess. An idiot. An inconsiderate fool."

Poppy nodded. "Then I hope you do save her. At least she's got some sense."

"What is it with women? You can hate each other's guts but you all still band together to agree that men are pigs."

"Because men are pigs." A little bit of a smile had crept onto her face now, but as if she too felt she wasn't quite ready to deploy that particular bit of her arsenal, she grew serious again. "So does this mean that you believe me when I say I can't help your friend?"

"Yeah. I'm trying not to think about that too much. It makes me feel like the lowest scum in the world. Here I am, sitting in a nice restaurant, and she's in a bottle."

"But if they want you, they won't do anything to her. She's just a sprite. She doesn't matter."

"Do you believe that?"

"I used to, I suppose. But I meant she doesn't mean anything to them. Hellebore is cruel but mostly he's about power. His son and… and that other creature, well, they might do anything, but he won't let them have her until he doesn't need her anymore. Which means when he has you. As long as you're free, she's probably more or less all right."

Theo sighed and sat back. "It all makes me feel sick. Let's talk about something else. What are you doing? Where are you staying? Are you going to go back to school?"

"Do you really want to know?" Her neediness scared him a little, but he remembered that there was steel in her, too, that he shouldn't underestimate her. That street-punk ogre probably did still have nightmares.

"Yes, really. And I think I'll have a glass of wine, too."

She was staying with a friend named Drusilla, it turned out, a girl she'd known from school who had dropped out to get married to a young fellow studying to be a chirurgeon. The two of them were living in a little house in the rundown Forenoon suburbs at the city's extreme southern end — "Practically on the moon, but it's a sweet house and Drusilla and Donnus are very happy," she explained. She didn't know what she was going to do about school. "It's my last year and I hate the place. They don't want you to ask real questions, they just want you to learn enough to make polite conversation at dances with the boys from Dowsing Academy." She shook her head. "That's not for me, Theo. I've been trying to help out with some of the organizations like the Daughters of the Grove that are doing things for people who've been hurt by the fighting — it's the least I can do, considering my monster of a father started it all — but I don't think I can stick with that either. Most of those women are more worried about getting seen doing these good things than just getting them done. Yesterday, when you saw me, we were half an hour late starting because they wouldn't unload the truck until the scribes and the other mirror-people were in place. It's like the Young Blossoms, except that everyone's surrounded by a cloud of youth-charms so thick you could choke. I hate that."

He had finished his wine and despite feeling more relaxed than he had for days he was beginning to worry about staying in one place too long. "Could we go for a walk? I'd like to get out of here."

She gave him an appraising look. "A walk? Like on our legs? Sure." She paid the bill by, apparently, waving her fingers over it. He wondered how easy it would be for her father to track her down by her purchases. Rich girls, he suspected, didn't often think about things like that. He hadn't known many, but the few whose acquaintance he had made before Poppy hadn't led him to believe otherwise. There had been Sandra, for instance, a famous musician's daughter he had met at a club and briefly dated. She would simply walk out of restaurants and bars without paying, not intending to cheat anyone, but simply assuming — usually correctly — that everyone knew who she was and would bill her father. Or bill her father's manager, to be more accurate, since the eminent bass player and sybarite who had sired her didn't take care of his own accounts any more than did the Queen of England.

The Chamber of Congregation was less than a mile from the dockyards and the smell of Ys was very distinct outside, much more like an ocean than it had seemed to him in the muddy flatlands next to the Old Fayfort Bridge. She led him down some of the narrow lanes of Eastwater where the leaning buildings and dark alleys felt like something out of the mortal world's early 1800s — New Orleans, perhaps, or the backwater districts of Naples. Strange music, as strange as that of the goblins but undeniably different, drifted down from some of the upper stories.

"Kobolds?" he asked, thinking of the restaurant.

Poppy laughed. "You really are the ultimate out-of-towner, aren't you? You couldn't get a kobold to live on an upper story if you gave them the flat for free. No, most of the people around here are regular working fairies, but that sounds like nixie music. There are more than a few of them out here, but most of them live right down in the dockyard area or even on barges and houseboats."

Theo liked the music and he liked walking, feeling almost normal. He liked Poppy, too. He considered for a moment then took her hand, knowing that he was crossing a sort of Rubicon, no matter how small the gesture might seem. They continued for a while in silence, the two of them for this moment moving effortlessly through the warm, damp night like dolphins slipping side by side through tropical waves.

She pulled him to a halt against a shadowy wall, just outside the will-o'-the-wisp gleam of a streetlight. For a moment he thought she had seen someone she knew in the crowd of young men laughing and talking loudly as they spilled out of a tavern across the street, but when they had vanished into the night he realized that she had not stopped him out of fear at all. He put his arms around her, felt her fitting herself against him with the careful absorption of someone building something important. "I'm glad you called me," she said. "I thought about you a lot."

He didn't want to say anything stupid. He didn't want to say anything at all. He had got himself into trouble in the past by struggling with the question of what to say in these situations and he was even less certain now. But he hadn't told her a lie: being with her was enough, for now. So what else needed saying?

She was a very good kisser. She went at it with fierce determination — not in a hurry, but not playing games, either. There were only a few moments when he could concentrate enough to wonder why fairy kissing was so similar to human kissing, or to ask himself whether all fairy-folk kissed each other like it was the most important thing to do in the entire universe, or was it just Poppy Thornapple? The fact that she was technically a schoolgirl, which had worried him ever since she had first made her feelings clear, began to seem less important. However she might fit into her own society, by the chronology of his world she had been living her life since somewhere before Teddy Roosevelt was in office, and that meant if anybody was jailbait around here, it was him. By fairy standards Theo was probably in kindergarten or first grade.

Her work in assembling their connection had not been in vain: she was molded against him so closely that it almost felt as though they were growing together, and every small movement she made seemed to touch him in several places at the same time. He was beginning to wonder if he might not just be blasted out of his mind on that single glass of Faerie wine: his head felt quite floaty and the rest of him warm and pleasurably itchy. Was it love? Now there was a staggering thought. It was certainly lust, but there seemed to be more.

He pulled himself free, just a little, and laid his face against the side of her head. Her hair smelled like vanilla, like honeysuckle, like other things he couldn't even name but which he wanted to keep smelling for the rest of his life. Half an hour ago he had been arguing with himself about whether he was leading this girl on, but now he was beginning to feel that he was the one in danger of falling hopelessly and helplessly. Could she have used some charm on him? He didn't believe that — maybe when she had first met him, but after she had screwed up her courage to give him that ultimatum, leave or stay, but be honest about it?

God, I think it's real. I think it's… real.

Lost in the warm night, leaning against the wall and holding Poppy so close that he kept forgetting which way was up and other important things, it took him half a minute to notice the shape at the far end of the street. She was breathing in his ear and kissing and nibbling on it at the same time, and it was the most amazingly, distractingly nice thing that had happened to him in some while, but there was still something about the movement of the distant figure as it staggered from pool of light to shadow and then out into the light again that seized his attention. It lurched into another wash of light from a streetlamp, perhaps a hundred feet away from them, and he saw that it was wearing the armor of a police constable.

His heart suddenly froze into a lump in his chest. He stepped away from the wall, almost knocking Poppy over, grabbed her arm and began to walk away so quickly that she stumbled.

"What is it?"

"Behind us. That police… that constable. You can look, but for God's sake keep walking."

"But we'll make him suspicious, dashing away like this… !"

"Not unless it's a real constable — and I don't think it is. I told you about that thing that was after me. The last body it took was one of the constables at Daffodil House. Walk faster. When we get around the corner we're going to run."

"I'm not going to run from some… bugbear, Theo. I have a protection charm in my purse…"

"You don't understand, Poppy. This thing is bad, bad as it gets. Unless you have a charm that's the equivalent of a small-scale atomic bomb, we're better off just getting the hell out of here. Is it running?"

This time she sounded a bit more disturbed. "It's… it's walking fast. It moves really strangely."

"It probably has some pieces missing by now. How did you get here tonight? Please tell me you drove."

"I borrowed Drusilla's runabout. I hate trying to get a hired coach back from Eastwater at night."

"How far away is it? Never mind — we don't have any choice. I don't think even going into a place that's full of people is going to stop it. It just doesn't care. Here comes the corner." He squeezed her hand hard. "You'll have to lead us. Wait until we're out of its sight… now… run!"

They did, pelting up the street, heading back across Eastwater toward the restaurant. A few older fairies coming out of another building had to jump out of their way and shouted genteel imprecations after them, but Theo had no time to waste on someone's hurt feelings.

Poppy had parked the small, sleek little car on a side street around the corner from the Chamber of Congregation. Theo could only bounce from foot to foot in nauseated panic as she fumbled through its unfamiliar door-charm. On the third unsuccessful try, a bulky silhouette lurched around the corner and into the dark street, pausing for a moment to swing its helmeted head from side to side, more like a radar array than like a person actually looking for something. If Theo had retained any doubt about the identity of their pursuer it was gone now. The thing did not move like any normal person, fairy or mortal. The arms hung slack at its sides and the head swiveled like something mechanical.

"Got it!" Poppy said as she yanked open the door. Theo ran around to the far side and climbed in, vaguely conscious that the seat seemed to wrap itself around him in a disturbingly lively way but in too much of a panic to think about it.

"Just drive," he said. "Distance." He turned to look. The thing was coming up fast now, stiff-legged but still horribly quick. He could see the face bouncing slackly under the helmet as it ran, its wearer uninterested in conveying mortal emotions, perhaps not even comprehending such things. "Now! Hurry!"

The car hummed to life and almost jumped away from the curb. Theo had only a moment to pray that they were not parked in a dead-end street. They weren't. He looked back again to see the thing watching them go. There was nothing in its posture that spoke of defeat or frustration. It would simply start all over again — already it was walking after them as it dwindled from view. Theo was suddenly extremely grateful the thing hadn't captured any bodies that had wings. It didn't really seem to plan, so its horrible single-mindedness had at least one useful side effect.

Still, given a choice, he would rather have not been chased by a relentless, deathless monstrosity, even if it did have a character flaw. But nobody was giving him a choice.

Half an hour later she pulled into the access road that led to the Old Fayfort Bridge, parked and turned off the runabout's lights. He reached across and took her hand. "Well, pretty interesting date, huh?" He tried to laugh but couldn't really manage. It was all a bit too awful for anything but the grimmest kind of humor.

"What are you going to do now?"

"About Applecore? Or about… you and me?"

She shrugged, smiled sadly. "Both, I guess. It's not a very good time for us, is it?"

"I don't know. I don't know much of anything. But I'm not going to just disappear or something, if that's what you're worrying about. Well, I suppose I might, but it won't be by choice."

"Don't say that, Theo. We'll think of something. I have friends — some of them know important people…"

"Yeah, but nobody, no matter how important they are, is going to make Hellebore stop what he's doing, and for some reason nobody can explain, I'm wrapped up in that." There were dozens of questions he should ask her, he realized, things that the daughter of Hellebore's partner might know that others wouldn't, but it was too late and he was too damn exhausted. "Can I see you again?"

"Of course." She took his hand, held it to her lips, then pressed it against her cheek. He stroked her black hair. "Of course."

"I need to think. I need to ask questions. I know some people too. But I'll call you soon — if I can figure out a way, I'll even do it myself this time."

Their kiss again threatened to turn into something much more involved. It was extremely hard for his conscious mind to raise a quorum for letting go of her — his feet and legs wanted sleep after a day of walking and running, but the rest of his body thought the feet and legs were idiots, and the bits between his legs were on the verge of staging a full-scale mutiny. He pulled himself free while he still could, kissed her a few more times, then backed clumsily out of the small car. It wasn't that it was too early in their relationship — it was wartime, for God's sake! — but more that he didn't have a place for her in his life yet, and feelings this surprisingly serious and strong would just blow him apart, otherwise.

"Theo?" she asked as he came back around to the driver's side window to kiss her goodbye again. "Do you really share a tent with a goblin? And sing with them?"

"Yeah, pretty much." He hesitated, worried that she would say some stupid upper-class thing about them being dirty or criminal and, without meaning to, make him feel wretched about liking her so much.

"That's so great. I always wanted to know a goblin. My father never let me go near any of them."

He thought of Button's apparent plans for revolution. "Everyone may get to know the goblins better one of these days." He kissed her. "Goodnight, Poppy. Thanks for… for everything."

"I shouldn't say this," she told him, "but I'll say it. You'd better call me."

Theo waved as she made a laborious three-point turn and then headed back toward the City. He felt more like a teenager than he had in years. Yeah, been here before — I live in a world that makes no sense, the authority figures are all out to get me, and my glands have taken over.

He walked back to the refugee camp feeling a bit like he should sneak in quietly so he wouldn't wake his parents.

33 THE LAST BREATH THEY TOOK

"I am pleased that you have come to see me, Theo Vilmos."

Theo took a seat on the woven mat across from Mud Bug Button. The goblin handed him a bowl and poured steaming water into it from something that looked pretty much like a teapot, but Theo was learning not to make assumptions. "Thank you. What is it?"

"Tea."

"Good." He sipped, blew, then sipped again. It tasted a little bit like root beer and a little bit like cilantro, but it wasn't too bad and there weren't any small animals floating in it so he decided he'd leave the inquiry at that. He sat for a moment just holding the bowl, letting his thoughts settle like the bits of leaf drifting down through the tea, although it was a bit hard to concentrate with all the grunting going on at the far end of the bridge's tower room. The two ogre bodyguards were taking turns doing two-handed lifts with a chunk of granite the size of a home entertainment system.

"Why are they always in pairs?" Theo asked. "Ogres, I mean. Nobody's ever got just one."

Button smiled his pointy smile. "Is that truly what you came up here to ask me? The reason is that they are usually brother and sister, at least among what the fairy lords call the better houses — 'better' meaning of course 'richer.' It is a superstition among the Flower-folk that siblings work together better than any others, and since ogres often give birth to male and female twins, and since the security trades draw ogres in the same way that housecleaning draws ferishers and home-management draws hobs, it is not, hem, impossible to find brother and sister pairs willing to work as guards, especially since they can draw the highest salaries." He looked over to Choo-Choo and Topsy, then lowered his voice. "In fact, the belief runs so strong that when one sibling is killed, even when that death saves their master's life, the other is almost always let go afterward. Can you imagine something so terrible? To lose your twin and then your job as well? But it is only a belief, as so many things are, unquestioned and even foolish. A surviving ogre twin, called a 'widow' or 'widower,' will often be a very fierce protector for the next master, since they no longer have divided loyatlies." He shook his head. "The Flower-folk never understand that, or do not want to believe it, and they continue with their fetish of sibling bodyguards. It is a common insult among the fairy lords to say, 'So-and-so's guards had never even met until they started working together,' meaning that, hem, So-and-so was too poor to afford to hire twins."

Theo watched the gleam of sweat on leathery hides, the bulge of muscles. "So are your bodyguards brother and sister?"

Button laughed. "These two? They are indeed. But I am no slave to Flower fashions, I hasten to say! They are the bodyguards of Caradenus Primrose. They came with him, but he has, hem, transferred them to me, I suppose. He fears for my life. He is a kind fellow, Primrose."

"I wouldn't have agreed with you the first day, but I think I do now. How did he come to be here? He's never said anything to me about it."

Button poured himself another bowl of tea. "I sense that you are avoiding the true concern that brought you here, Theo Vilmos. But I am in no hurry, and we may reach the mountain by many roads." He sipped, contemplated. "Actually, how Primrose came to be here is very closely wrapped up with how I came to be here."

"I wondered about that, but I didn't know if it was rude to ask…"

"It is never rude to ask a goblin anything because we love to tell tales, but what you will get — as you must know by now — is a story with a hole in it, as we always say.

"Perhaps you have thought on this a bit, Theo Vilmos. Perhaps you have said to yourself, 'Button must have suffered some terrible loss at the hands of the Flower-folk, to bear them such a grudge.' Perhaps you imagined my family, hem, brutally slaughtered, or my mate ripped from my arms and dishonored by young fairy lords. But it is nothing so simple. In fact, I wonder how often it is that people who have suffered such losses can work usefully toward the sort of changes of which I dream. It seems to me that when the wheel on which a pot is made is crooked, the pot will be crooked also, however ambitious the potter. The bigger the pot, the more severe will be the flaws. Make it big enough and that original crookedness will cause it to shatter the first time you set it over the fire.

"That is how I feel. I believe a change is coming for the way we live. I look back and see I have been on a long journey, and some of it has been through evil times, but nothing so simple as, 'They killed my family, and thus they must be overthrown.' My mother and father are alive, living here in this city. My father is a gardener, now with a business of his own, taking care of the grounds of some of the greatest houses. He is happy — or, hem, he thinks he is. My mother, too, after many years washing windows and cleaning floors, now has the leisure to spend time with her grandchildren. You see, Theo, I have several brothers and sisters and they are not so concerned with the machineries of Faerie as I am. They have lived more… conventional lives. So my mother, too, believes herself happy. Perhaps she is.

"Ah, but you see, I had the evil luck to achieve some education. I was the youngest and so by the time I grew my parents could scrape together enough money to send me to one of the goblin academies. You look surprised! There are such things, truly."

"I didn't doubt it," Theo said. "I only… are they just for goblins?"

"Of course. The Flower families and their admirers are hard put to share schools and neighborhoods with lesser fairies of their own type. I imagine your friend Cumber Sedge could tell you some stories of what it means to be a ferisher living in one of the high houses…"

"He has."

"Just so. No, the Flower gentry are not yet ready to see their children studying alongside goblin children. For one thing, it might make them question the differences between us that they have always seen as beyond dispute. And now you may hear a little bitterness in my voice, Master Vilmos. Because of course, I did not conceive these ideas by chance. There is no tale of some singular terror, but there is of course a catalogue of petty insults and small denials, heaped one upon the other, day after day, until taken together they weigh more than any one event. I do not know much of the mortal world but I imagine there are people there who experience the same things I have…"

"There are. Of course."

"Then I wish I could have met such mortals — it would have been instructive to consider the similarities and differences. What drives me is not what you would think, perhaps. The worst was not when some rich idiot would curse me and call me a 'skin-eater' or suggest I was dirty or a drunkard without bothering to learn anything about me. Even the knowledge that had we goblins proved useful for their power-generation needs our entire race would have been burned away like kindling by the Flower lords with scarcely a second thought was not what galled me most — that is almost too big for one home-soul to encompass. No, the worst was that even the kinder fairies I met, the decent sort, had to keep reminding themselves that I was another living, thinking being. The surprise when I said something intelligent! The praising of almost any achievement by me as if I were a farm animal who had learned to solve cipher-charms! It was this more than the outright cruelties that ate at me, Theo Vilmos. And when I came out of the academy, afire with new ideas and puzzled that all my classmates were not blazing, too, it was to discover that, hem, my own family no longer understood me either, and that there was no occupation awaiting me where I could usefully employ my mind. Unless I were to strike it lucky and be taken up as a sort of curiosity by one of the more unconventional Flower families, as with your friend Cumber, I could look forward to nothing more challenging than clipping the hedges of the wealthy or, perhaps, owning a small store on the edge of Goblintown.

"Years went by and I could find no satisfying uses for my learning, for my ideas. You have seen the condition of our society, Theo Vilmos. It is not a happy place and the more I studied it, the more I learned of what had happened since the Gigantine War and the death of the king and queen, the more I became convinced that the edifice was rotting from within. Perhaps it is wishful thinking, because if the system survives I doubt I will see any change for my own people within my lifetime, however much longer it lasts." He smiled and looked over at Choo-Choo and Topsy, who were resting and drinking from a bucket of water. "Which will likely not be long, no matter how well-prepared Primrose's ogres might be."

He poured himself more tea. "There are no great surprises in this tale, Theo, as I mentioned. I met Caradenus Primrose while my father had the contract to maintain the endless north lawns of Primrose House. We are great ones for agreements and contracts, we goblins. We hold our honor dearer than our lives and we have always considered our given word the most sacred bond. Thus a contract, any contract, is to us a thing of powerful science. To my proud father this compact with a Flower family seemed a sort of acceptance by his betters, whereas to them he was only another sort of servant. But that is beside the point.

"Caradenus has always been an unconventional member of a very conventional class and he went out of his way to talk to us and the other laborers on the family estate. He had even learned some words of Goblin, which, hem, he liked to practice." He chuckled, then had to wipe tea off his lower lip. "By the Taproot, he speaks it abominably! Like a man with a cockatrice struggling to get out of his mouth. But never tell him I said so!" He looked quickly over to the bodyguards again in case they had heard. "It is admirable Caradenus has tried to learn, but the first time he tried it on myself and two of my comrades he actually came up to us and said, in our tongue, 'Greetings, my head is Primrose the smallest and you are commanded to eat your names with me.' The habit of subservience runs very deep — not surprisingly, when my people have been killed in the past for insufficient respect in nearly all the high houses, and every work camp in Willow and Birch has a grave pit where the bodies of those goblins who have been worked to death or have resisted authority can be discarded — so we did not laugh. I found out later he would not have minded, or rather he would only have minded that he had the words so badly wrong."

Theo didn't want to think too much about grave pits. "So you became friends?"

Button looked surprised. "Oh, no. Not so easily — I still am not sure whether we could call each other friends. He and I are from different worlds, almost as much as you and I. But we spoke often and learned from each other. He, hem… hem — your pardon, I have an old injury to my throat — he thought more about the problems of the world than any Flower I have met, although we did not always agree on the solutions and he was still bound very strongly to some of the most conservative ideas of honor and tradition, even as he questioned things that were more fundamental, like the difference between types of fairies and the inequalities of our society."

The goblin took a long drink of his tea. "Primrose was a great help to me when I most needed him, although it troubled his principles, I think. But it is a mark of how different he is from his fellows that, just as he weighed his debt of honor against you in the light of what he learned, then decided he had been wrong, so he put even his own beliefs to the test when it mattered. In any case, he helped me to escape when no one else of his class would have even considered it.

"So I left my family and our little foothold in society behind. When Primrose found me again he too had begun to break with his own clan, although it was more in his heart than in his head. He loved his family, you see, and could not entirely separate who they were from what they were." Button poured himself a little more tea, then filled Theo's bowl as well. "He was not ready yet to break entirely with the way of life in which he had been raised and I think he still harbors some hopes that it can simply be… reshaped. I do not feel the same." He showed his long teeth; it was not a smile. "But we agree that change must come, and he is honorable. So, no, Theo Vilmos, Caradenus Primrose and I are not quite friends — I fear the gulf between our peoples is too great — but we have found something that is useful and perhaps even comforting to both of us."

Theo sipped the tea. Somewhere, he had lost the thread. "But you said he helped you to escape… Escape what? It sounded like you were just working for your father and…" He lowered the bowl. "Oh. I get it. That's the hole in the story, huh?"

Button took a little more tea.

"Do I have to guess? You had to escape because you did something — got in trouble. Right?"

Button swirled the dregs in the bowl and looked back at Theo.

"But you didn't do anything to his family, because then he would have thought he had to kill you, like he did with me." He pondered. "And you didn't just run away, or put up some inflammatory posters or something, because you said 'escape' and you also said his principles were troubled. So you must have done something really bad." Theo suddenly found the yellow, slot-eyed stare difficult to meet. "Did you… kill someone? One of the big-deal fairies?"

Button's very sharp teeth appeared again. "You are practically a goblin yourself now, Theo Vilmos. You have filled the hole in the story. More tea?"

"Hang on. I've been helping you because… because you seem like you're trying to do the right thing. But I think I need to know about this." He looked over to the bodyguards, who had finished their workout and were regarding him with an offhand but nevertheless focused sort of interest, as though they could feel his tension from across the room. "What happened?"

"Nothing surprising when you consider how my ideas had been changing. I was in the street, waiting for the bus. A very simple thing! And just in front of me a fairy began to beat a goblin porter who had, hem, dropped one of his packages. I still do not know that poor goblin porter's name, and I fear he may have suffered badly — that the authorities must have afterward assumed that he knew me, but in truth I was a stranger to him. In fact, perhaps it happened because he was a stranger to me. In that moment, while the fellow I only found out later was a member of the Hydrangea clan bludgeoned him with a heavy walking stick until he could not get up, then continued to kick and beat him, that huddled, whimpering figure became every goblin I knew — myself, my father struggling through night courses at a shabby school to learn polite words to soothe his fairy masters, my brothers and sisters living in urban hovels, six to a bedroom, and still calling them 'nests' as if that would make them so, and all the nameless corpses in the lime pits of Willow — to me he was every one of us, and his self-promoted master was the dead hand of the Flower nobility, who had not been content to take our lands and our forests away, but now must crush us like insects.

"That is where my other name comes from, Theo, the one I have kept hidden until now. We hide them because they are names of shame, deliberately taken. They remind us every day that we are, hem, lowly and wretched. Do you know what my last free ancestor was named? Shiningstone Fox. When the Flower-folk took us into captivity they even took away our names, and those of us who worked in their houses they named after small and demeaning things, unimportant objects. But the names we saved for ourselves, Worm, Roach, Carrion, Stain — these are our legacy of despair… and, just perhaps, strength. Bug! I am a bug as far as the Flower lords are concerned, a lowly and crawling thing, but on that day they learned that even the lowliest thing can bite."

Anger came off him now like a shimmer of heat — Theo could almost squint his eyes and see it. Paradoxically, as he spoke Button became more and more still, as if he were retreating back into some internal place that Theo could not even imagine. "It was too horrible to watch any longer. I threw myself at the beast from Hydrangea House with only the idea that I might absorb some of the beating and it would give the porter a chance to escape. But he could not rise — many bones broken — and the fairy lordling turned his attention to me. He was astonished by my arrival, but the astonishment quickly became rage and he struck out at me with the stick, damaging my throat. It is still in my speaking to this day. But that first look of surprise he gave me did something to me that the blows only strengthened. He could not believe that anyone, even another goblin, would be so foolhardy as to interfere with him. Do you understand? He felt he had every right to beat that porter to death. And it was true, the bus stop was full of all kinds of fairy-folk, big and small. Some turned away in dismay, but most simply watched. They were not surprised, not outraged.

"I went mad, Theo Vilmos. He struck me and struck me again while I hung onto his leg — I was too close for him to hit me as hard as he would have liked — and before he could immobilize me with some charm or call for help I climbed up his body and I ripped open his neck so that he bled to death. Yes, with these teeth."

Theo sat through the long silence, not sure what to think. Button had certainly ceased to be the charming, cartoonish character he had thought him to be, but now that he considered it, even with this sick feeling in his stomach he had to wonder if that Button had ever truly existed. No, he had been a version that Theo wanted to believe, a sort of Mahatma Gandhi of the fairyland revolution.

Button smiled, but this time kept the sharp ends of his fangs hidden, perhaps in deference to Theo's troubled expression. "You do not like the Mud Bug Button you see now so much, eh? Then I should tell you that I have killed again, twice. Both times to defend myself and avoid capture — and once captured, Theo, have no doubt that after a few months as an unhappy guest of Lord Monkshood and his parliamentary constables I would wind up in a lime pit somewhere, or a furnace. Neither victim was anyone that I think you would mourn much, but that may not lessen the offense in your eyes. They were fairies, your kind. I had no right to resist them, let alone kill them. But I did."

"People like that aren't my kind, whether I think of myself as a fairy or a mortal."

"Ah, but the lines are not so easy to draw, Theo Vilmos, as I think I told you the other day. You have already, hem, helped me. As a result of that help, people may die. Not the innocent, I hope, but war is a demon in a box and when the lid opens it flies where it wishes to fly."

Theo had not come to the bridgehouse with the idea of exploring Button's background — he was too consumed with his own problems for that — but he realized that the goblin had his own agenda and had deliberately set him a sort of quandary. More holes, he thought. He straightened, met the goblin's melted-butter stare. "If you're asking me if I want to join you, the answer is still 'not entirely.' I'm sympathetic. I've been here long enough to see that things are wrong, that a change is needed. And your enemies are my enemies, I guess. I don't know — what do you want to hear from me? I still want your help. I'll still do my best to help you, if it makes sense to me…"

Button shook his head, amused. "You are no soldier, Theo Vilmos, that is certain. Soldiers are not allowed to make such distinctions. But I have soldiers — those who will do what they are told and only think about it afterward, if at all. And I suppose that until we know why you are so important to Hellebore and Thornapple and their minions, you have some bargaining power."

"Speaking of doing what you're told," Theo said, "what exactly were we trying to accomplish with Streedy at Elysium House? I saw something on the screen — well, on the mirror, I guess — about getting permission for one immigrant laborer and one livestock animal."

Button nodded. "Yes. And you and Streedy Nettle and Cumber Sedge and Coathook did your jobs very well."

"But what does it mean? What are you going to accomplish by smuggling one person and one animal into the city — unless it's a giant riding on a dinosaur or something…"

"A dinosaur… ? Ah, wait, yes, I have heard of those fabled beasts." The goblin laughed, a quiet hissing sound. "You are full of wit, Theo Vilmos. No, that is not quite what I plan, but I think you are best not knowing — after all, we are all liable to capture, and the technicians of Hellebore House in particular are very, very skilled. But you cannot tell what you do not know, no matter how much you might wish to do so."

"But…"

The goblin suddenly looked up. Theo turned to see Caradenus Primrose waiting in the doorway, his face a smoothly handsome mask of patience. "Ah, you are returned, my comrade," said Button. "Please, come and sit with us. I will make more tea."

Primrose seated himself cross-legged on one side of the rug. He nodded to Theo in a way that was not unfriendly, but he seemed in no hurry to speak. In fact, both he and Button were quite content to sit in silence while the teapot heated on the brazier. Even though he had not actually talked to Button about what was most important, Theo began to wonder if they were waiting for him to leave so they could talk in private and he was just ignorant of the fairyland social protocols.

"I… I did have something else I wanted to discuss with you," he said. Jesus, man, Applecore's a prisoner, bait to trap you, and you make it sound like you don't think there's enough donuts in the break room at work. "Something important. Really important."

Button inclined his head. "Of course, Theo Vilmos."

"Should I leave?" asked Primrose.

"No! No, in fact, I'd like to hear what you think about this, too." He sipped his now-cold tea. "But I don't want to hold you two up, either."

Primrose almost smiled. "It is true that I have something I wish to give to Button, and the sooner the better." He raised an eyebrow in inquiry. Button nodded. "Good," Primrose said. "It feels very heavy to me. Not in weight, but in substance, and I have felt that all eyes were on me." He reached into the pocket of his long coat.

"Did you have trouble?"

"Less than I expected — it was quite strange. I would not be able to walk into my own house without being arrested, but I was able to walk into the Parliamentary Museum and not only did no one recognize or question me, I was able to take it out of the case using only the simplest charm to quell the protections." He withdrew something wrapped in dull velvet or fur and held it out to Button. "I suppose it is because the wing dedicated to the Goblin Wars is not often visited these days. The cases were dusty, the room empty."

Button cradled the bundle, apparently in no hurry to unwrap it. Theo felt his heart quicken — was it some legendary goblin weapon? It wasn't big enough to be a sword or an ax — maybe some sacred dagger or a kind of magic gun that could kill Hellebores from a mile away?

The goblin peeled back the black covering.

"It's a stick," said Theo in surprise, and then raised his hand to his mouth, afraid he had insulted a sacred goblin treasure. Treasured or not, it was definitely a stick, a piece of a slender branch about eighteen inches in length. Bark had been peeled from it in a spiral pattern, and signs that could have been writing — but which, unlike normal fairy-writing, Theo could not read — had been carved into the white wood where the bark was gone and then rubbed with something dark to make them visible.

"It is indeed," said Button, almost smiling. His eyes seemed unusually bright. "Small things make all the difference." He contemplated the object for a moment. "Should I do it now? No, perhaps not yet. An audience is what I need, I think." As Theo watched in befuddlement, the goblin carefully wrapped the stick in the covering cloth again and tucked it into his robe. "I thank you, Caradenus Primrose," he said. "You have perhaps changed the world — let us hope it is for the better."

The fairy nodded solemnly. For a long silent moment they just looked at each other; then, as if on cue, they turned their attention to Theo.

He was still struggling to understand what he had just witnessed, especially the air of high seriousness that had surrounded the passing of a piece of wood, but he had already been Button's guest for what must be a couple of hours without mentioning his true purpose. "Shall I start?" he asked. The goblin nodded and poured him more tea.

Button already knew most of what Theo had experienced since coming to Faerie, but Primrose still did not know many of the details so Theo quickly sketched out his recent history, trying to make clear how much Applecore had done for him. Then he told them both about the bit of broadcast news or whatever it was he had seen on the mirrorcases in the display window — Hellebore and the nasty bell jar beside him on the desk.

"… And don't tell me it's a trap, because I know that. I may not know why they want me, but I'm not an idiot." He stared at Primrose and Button as if daring them to suggest otherwise. "But you both think a lot about honor, so I know you'll understand that I can't just leave her to suffer, even if I know that me trying to rescue her is exactly what they want."

The fairy and the goblin were quiet for some time after he finished. Theo was beginning to wonder what the two of them were like together on their own — did they even talk, or just sit side by side, silent as bookends?

"I am not surprised by much," said Primrose at last, "but I am surprised to learn that Quillius Tansy would do this. Not because I like the fellow — I never have — but because I did not know he coveted anything enough to be bought by Hellebore."

"His life, perhaps," Button offered.

"Perhaps." Primrose did that sinuous thing that among the Flower-folk passed for a shrug, but to Theo looked more like a snake easing an itch in its nonexistent shoulders. "But this does not answer Master Vilmos."

The goblin nodded. "You know, Theo Vilmos, that even were every living creature in this camp to take up arms and march on Hellebore House it would not be enough. Zirus Jonquil is alive and gathering some resistance fighters from the other Flower houses — you met him, I believe — and there are others who might play some part, but even if we all join together our numbers would still be very small compared to what Hellebore and his allies can muster. We hope to throw down that grim place of Hellebore's when our day comes, Theo, but I cannot say how far away that day will be, or whether your sprite friend will be alive to see it — although of course, hem, there is always hope. So there is little I can offer you in the way of direct action. We cannot allow our plans to be changed — and thus put at risk — for any one individual, especially at such a critical point.

"I don't care," Theo said, and realized that, in an odd way, that was true. "Well, I do care — of course I do, I don't want to die. But I can't just leave her there, either, so I might as well not think about it too much. Just help me figure out what's going to be least likely to get me caught, even if the odds of failing would only be ninety-nine percent instead of a hundred."

"You must give us more time to think, Theo Vilmos," said Button gently. "You have waited some time to tell us of your problem. Allow us a few moments to think about it."

He sat back, frustrated, but relieved that at least they weren't trying to tell him that Applecore was just a casualty of war and that he should forget about her. Unfortunately, their acceptance of his debt of honor had also made it clearer to him that he really didn't have much choice: he was going to have to do more than talk about it. He was going to have to risk his life — and probably lose it — trying to get her free. The thought of what he was up against made him go cold all over, made his balls try to climb back into his body. Now he understood why the military made sure you had a bunch of other guys with you, so that you'd be ashamed to run. And why there was usually a sergeant with a gun, too…

"What about the one who lives down at the waterfront?" Primrose said suddenly. "You know who I mean. The old one."

While Theo was wondering how mind-bogglingly ancient you had to be before a fairy called you "old," Button stirred and said, "You refer to the one often called the Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles? He has shown no sign of being sympathetic to our cause. Hem. Rather the reverse."

"Yes, but that is because he is largely mercenary. Certainly in the most recent years he has done little — or so rumor suggests — that was not purely for profit, even if that profit was more often in favors than in gold." Primrose frowned. It hardly even creased his smooth forehead. "It is not a pleasing idea, I know, but unless we can come up with another…"

"Hang on, who is this 'Remover of Obstacles'? I mean, it sounds like an old Black Sabbath song title or something." Theo pushed on past his companions' blank looks. "Just tell me what you know. I deserve to be in on the conversation, since I'm the one who's going to be putting his ass on the line."

"The mortal world gives you a very colorful way of talking," noted Primrose. "But you are right, of course. I'll tell you what I know and Button can supply whatever's missing."

"Never, never expect a goblin to fill the gaps in the tale," Button said with a quick smile. "It is against our nature."

Theo thought Primrose looked like he would have liked to appreciate the joke, but hadn't yet had the humor update for his software. "Yes," said the fairy. "Well, what little I know of the one called the Remover is second- or even third-hand. He is very old — nobody I know can remember a time when he was not around, and when I was growing up our nurses used to frighten us by threatening that he would come to take us if we were bad. I am told he is extremely unpleasant to look at."

And in a world full of ogres and trolls, Theo thought, that must mean somebody is pretty damn ugly. "But what does he do?"

"Only what he wishes to do, and only for those who can afford his price. He has amassed secrets of science over his centuries of study that no one else can touch. It is said that many a lord thought to be too well-protected to be assassinated has instead found that the Remover's terrible face is the last thing he sees. But these are not the only sorts of obstacles he removes, only the most dramatic. As I said, his command of the scientific arts is broad. Doubtless many things in our society, things we now take for granted, began as a notation in the Remover's diary."

"So he's part wizard, part mercenary killer."

"I will say this for him. I have never heard of him killing an innocent. That proves nothing, though. There are no doubt as many false tales as true, and doubtless far more tales that have never been told at all." The fairy lord turned to Button. "Do you agree?"

The goblin nodded slowly. "You know more than I — he has never had dealings with my folk, to my knowledge. He is powerful. He is without loyalty except to his agreements, as far as anyone can tell. That is perhaps the true sum of what is known about him."

"And how on earth would I persuade this person to do something for me?" Theo asked. "Even assuming he could help me get into Hellebore House."

"Or perhaps he could get your friend out without you having to risk yourself," said Button. "Would that not be the best alternative?"

"Good God, yes — I'm no hero. But why should he help me?"

The goblin tented his long fingers so that the talons clicked against each other. "You are an unusual person, Theo Vilmos, and there are still mysteries around you. Perhaps there is something you know that can buy the Remover's help."

"And maybe he'll just whack me on the head and call Hellebore on the shell phone and make some easy money. But I suppose it's a better risk than me trying to sneak into Hellebore House in a wagon full of guest towels or something." He spoke with a lightness he did not feel. He had more than an inkling now of what it might mean to know your platoon was heading for the front lines at dawn. "So just tell me where it is and I'll go."

Button raised his hand. "I hope you will prepare with a little more caution than that. Also, there are still things in your story I would like to understand better, before you go to see the Remover."

"Before I go get myself killed, is what you mean."

The goblin smoothed the fur on his jaw. "We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take, Theo Vilmos."

That was so obviously and depressingly true it made Theo want to kill himself now, just to end the suspense.