now. One bared its teeth and snapped, halfheartedly, before it shredded into long thin trails of steamsmoke.
The woman stared at him. Her eyes were even bluer now, matching her dress. She still looked like his dead wife, but shock had robbed her of the glare of sidhe over her features. Some would say that glare was perfected or refined.
He’d call it false. A pretty, pretty lie.
He didn’t want to talk to her after all. It was just a coincidence, and he’d saddled himself with one more death.
“You’re free now.” The words were ash against his tongue. “Go in peace.”
The lance vibrated in his hands. The last of the dogs’ lamplike eyes winked out, and he was suddenly aware his fingers didn’t want to let go. It would be easy to take a single step forward; the point that could strike home through Court-crafted armor of either kind would make short work of her flesh. The light would go out of her eyes, and maybe her body would rot the way the horseman’s had.
That thought freed his hands. The marks on his arms hurt, power returning to its home under his skin. He turned on his heel, and saw the oilslick of foulness that was the horseman. The last vestige of fog vanished. Fallen stars of broken glass littered the dark street; sirens howled in the distance. The diffuse roar of city traffic came back.
“Wait!” The girl skipped and scrambled behind him, footsteps clicking. He made a fist, shoving the feeling of the lance away. If he turned around now, she ran a good chance of feeding the weapon’s endless hunger.
That was another wrongness. There had been no shock of life ending, torn away and pulled into the lance’s thread-thin, eternally thirsting core.
“Go away.” He stepped over the stain. Down where he had run from, the streetlamps glowed and ran with the reflection of blue and red—police cars. Ambulances. A fire truck. “Christ.”
A shocked inhalation. If she was Court-raised, the mild mortal blasphemy might be a physically painful insult.
He didn’t care. He kept going, willing the tingle in his arms down, and set off for the lighted end of the street to find Clyde and Panko.
LEE TO GIVE
9
W hat in the name of Stone and Throne was that?
Her mouth all but hung ajar. Robin clutched at the bricks, fingers cramping and her calves aching. Her sides heaved and burned.
He was just a shadow, tall and broad-shouldered, green eyes alight and his hair black even in the shadows, ruthlessly short. The lance had appeared from nowhere¸ but he wasn’t full sidhe. She’d smelled a tinge of mortal on him even through the burning gunpowder of anger and the reek of blackboil death. The lance was a sidhe trick, a thing of cold moonlight and solid silver except when it dulled to cold iron, which meant he had some mortal blood, and he had killed a plagued Unseelie rider. What manner of man, mortal or sidhe, did that and simply walked away?
Go in peace.
She should. Her teeth would be clicking and clattering had she not clenched her jaw tightly enough to shatter them. Her breath had finally returned, and with it the mortal discomfort of cold and damp faded.
The slippery, loose fearfulness of having just narrowly escaped death at the needle-teeth of possibly plagued Unseelie hounds, however, would not disappear so quickly.
She collected herself as well as she could, smoothing her hair back, her gasps evening out as a measure of calm returned. Her heart hummed in her wrists and throat. She examined her arms and legs as well as she could in the dim light, and found no trace of plague. No rash, no black stipples. Pale, smooth, unmarked, uncontaminated. Her skirt dropped back below her knees with a sweet low sound, draggled with water and spattered with less-wholesome things but still intact.
Just like her skin. Still healthy.
Harsh breath caught in her throat. Robin stared at where he’d stood. Appearing out of nowhere, like a glamour sung into being by a Loremaster, an illustration of a courtsong or a riddling tale. Disappearing just as quickly, his boots smacking heavily on the pavement, as if he did not know the lightfoot, and his voice a harsh growl.
Go away. Christ.
She edged for the mouth of the alley. The sidhe rider was gone, only a stain on the concrete marking his untimely passing. It reeked of rotting fur and spoiled fruit, maggots squirming, and she held her breath until she was past. She flitted across