“Did you tire of aging flesh?”
Rage rose, red wine turning to vinegar, but Gallow forced his hands to remain loose. Still, he traded insult for insult, openly this time. “What sidhe are you hunting, then, Goodfellow? A woman? Hardly your usual quarry.”
“Boymeat is sweet, but this is not for eating. News has spread that His Majesty, unhallowed be that name, seeks a certain winged sidhe-girl. The reward is vast.” Goodfellow cocked his selkie-sleek head. “So vast I almost think it a risk to tell you. For if once Gallow rides in pursuit, how can one little bird hope to escape?”
It can’t be. If Puck was looking for her, and musing aloud that Unwinter wanted her caught, it would be better if Gallow was there when she was found by anyone. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll hear it on the wind anyway. To see you hunting here in the ruins, Goodfellow, makes me think that I should perhaps simply ride in your wake.”
Amazingly, the boy laughed. “And I thought you would take convincing. Come, let us taste some ale. You are not the best drinking companion, but the ash in the air makes my eyes misty. It must be my age.”
Gallow’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “It would be an honor.”
The boy’s smile widened, too far to be human. His eyes twinkled with sheer sickening goodwill. “Then come. I shall show you where to ask questions, and require no tithe. It suits me tonight. How long has it been since you tasted proper ale?”
I think I prefer Coors. But oh well. “Long and long, Goodfellow. Lead on.”
It was not a short walk, and night had risen with cold, penetrating rain on a moan-soaking wind. He knew where they were bound halfway there, but still he walked with Goodfellow, whose light banter had vanished. The silence might have been a warning.
In any case, the Rolling Oak was as good a place as any to begin his search afresh.
The entrance was a shopfront that looked vaguely foreign from the outside, and would give mortals a subtle chill. Except for the lonely or suicidal; those would feel a pull right through their marrow, a false promise of relief.
Inside, it was close and warm, full of the smell of wet earth, burning applewood, and splashed ale. The fume of candles in squat lanthorns, the barely perceptible spice-tang of sidhe flesh with only the slightest tinge of mortal blood to tarnish its edges, meat roasting on a spit, the rich illusion of coffee. Down three age-blackened steps, brushing aside the branches—wood coaxed from the walls, leaves pale from lack of sunlight surviving by drinking in the aura of strange and delicious and making little whisper-chuckle sounds as they fingered each patron.
Bark-skinned sweet-loving brughnies and woodwights at the bar, kobolding in a corner sharing a keg the size of a fat pony, the flittering that was pixies with their gossamer shrouds and the gleam of their wicked-sharp teeth. Hobs and grenteeth and jennies or jacks of every shape and size, galleytrots and churchgrims with their snouts in brass bowls on the floor, their sad wise eyes half closed. And more. It all closed about Jeremiah Gallow, and he took a deep breath.
Puck capered for a dark corner, pale mushrooms crawling the wall in pained corkscrews. Here the black vinyl booths were sticky, and the tabletops spattered with scorch and other marks scrubbed at the end of the night with bleach and muttered chantment. A kelpie, broad shoulders straining at a dark coarsewoven shirt and his ropy hair long wet draggles, hunched in one, staring into a bowl of smoking fly-covered chunks of wet glistening meat still twitching from its former owner’s agony.
In the furthest booth, a russet gleam. A pale flash—but she relaxed as Puck swung away. She had her back to the wall; the Rolling Oak had only one exit. Unless she planned to brave Peleaster the Cook’s wrath, and in the smoke-hell of the kitchen such a thing was not to be done lightly.
She studied Jeremiah as he settled across the table from her. A single glass of silty red wine, with a faint glow in its depths. Evergrape, called lithori. Expensive, but what could a Realmaker not afford if she chose it?
His palms were damp.
“He brought you.” The same contralto. The same tilt to her head, and her fingers played with the glass’s stem. Its top was a tulip, frozen cunningly in sidheglass. “I thought him…” A shadow across her face.
You thought him a