though she was, she owed Gallow a favor or two. There went his best chance of finding what he wanted without cost. Still, if Ardie had left this here… either she was dead, or she guessed Gallow would come back for it, and did not dare to brave his wrath if he found it gone.
Daisy had been here once. Just once.
You and a mortal, Ardie had sneered, her nut-brown face screwing up with distaste. Don’t bring her to the Folk places, Gallow. You know better.
He’d waited long enough none could accuse him of leaving Summer for a mortal, but he still knew better than to bring one to places sidhe frequented. If anyone still bore him a grudge from his Armormaster days, well, Gallow was hard to harm, but a mortal girl was not. In the first flush of being able to openly court Daisy he’d been silly as a pixie and twice as scatterbrained.
Pixies. Now, there was an idea. If he could get them to concentrate long enough—
The air changed. Jeremiah’s head snapped up. The little bag slid itself into his pocket, and he was out from behind the bar in a flash.
“Over Hill and under Sea, what do I now see before me?” A high, almost girlish giggle, and Jeremiah’s skin chilled. “Come to pick the bones of the dead, Armormaster?”
“Goodfellow.” He didn’t sound surprised, at least. “This was once a nice place.”
“Not long ago, as mortals reckon.” A slim boyshape melded out of the shadows in the back corner, where the great clock had stood, its small gilded figures hopping out to chime the hours. If mortals entered this place, they would have noticed the clockface was blank—except at night, when the full moon rose and glowed through the skylights. Only then the clockface would be a sleeping woman’s, the eyelashes and pores drawn with a hair-fine brush, the mouth slackly open and sharp teeth visible.
Now the clock was shattered, and the spirit sleeping inside it loose to ride the night winds. Bits of ebony and glass crunched as the boy skipped forward on glove-shod feet. Brown leather molded itself to his slenderness; his hair was a raggedly cut cap of chestnut streaked with fine bits of gold. His ears came up to sharp points, poking through the fine smooth strands, and a leaf-sheathed dagger rested at his hip.
It was either very good fortune, or very bad, to meet him here. Gallow’s weight shifted back, carefully, and the boy’s eyes peered from under his messy hair.
Bright and changeful between yellow and green, those eyes, thickly lashed and beguiling, with hourglass-shaped pupils. His pipes hung at his silver-buckled belt, and his extra-jointed brown fingers dipped, stroking their soundless mouths. Goodfellow swept a graceful bow, doffing an imaginary cap. “Hail and well-met, brother mine. Did you come for coffee? The brughnie’s hospitality hath grown cold of late. Seven days ago it was scorch-hot, a mortal fire burning quickly and snuffed too late.”
A week, and just a bad-luck fire, not an attack. That was likely all Puck would give for free, and could be a lie as well. The marks on Gallow’s arms tingled. “What is a free woodland spirit here for? Picking bones as well?” Let him think me carrion, if he’s stupid enough.
Which Puck was emphatically not, and likewise did not take umbrage at. An almost-insult for an almost-insult, and all even.
It felt so familiar, measuring his words against the arcane rules of sidhe etiquette.
Puck’s smile widened a trifle. “Oh, searching, brother. One of our wayward girls has gone so much further astray than usual.”
“Who’s missing now? And why would you seek for her here?”
Goodfellow laughed. The sound was a crystal bell, wrongly tuned. He capered sideways. “You’ve grown dull among mortals, Gallow, and you reek of barrow-wight-death. The Unseelie ride hither and yon, striking down all in their way. Have you heard of the plague?”
“Some little of it.” Gallow eased the backpack on his shoulders, a loose rolling motion. “The Folk do not often fall prey to sickness.”
How quickly the odd speech of the sidhe fell back into his mouth again. Then again, Goodfellow might not answer if you spoke to him with what he considered impoliteness. It was rarely politic to piss off one of the truly unaligned.
“Oh, times have changed. Are about to change more, if you are a-wandering without your mortal doxy.” Goodfellow grinned, and the pearly edges of his teeth were sharp enough to cut his whistling laugh as it slid past them.