allied with Unseelie are feeling the blackboil bite more often. Cures are sought everywhere. Some delay the sickness, but cannot halt it entirely. Rumor flies hither and yon.…” She shook herself, studied his face again, earnestly. “You, though, faced a plagued rider and lived. It makes them strong before it kills them.”
I don’t care. “Where do you come from?” The sweat was all over him now, his heart hammering. The marks on his arms tingled, ran with excruciating sensitivity. “Who are your folk? Are you part ghillie?” They were held to be beauties, the ghilliedhu girls.
She shook her head, impatient. “Shall I convey to her that you heed her summons and come soon as you may? Returning with me would be better, but… should you not wish to, Gallow, I will do what I may to sweeten her temper at the news.”
It was a handsome gesture, and one from a Half who no doubt felt a debt to him even though told otherwise. Which was not usual among the sidhe.
He opened his mouth to ask again, to demand she tell him, but her gaze sharpened. She sucked in a quick breath, paling, and he did not have to look to guess at what had drifted through the Oak’s low, wide door. He could smell them, since they used no glamour to mask themselves here. Clammy rotten dirt, decaying linen, pale metal at throat, wrist, finger, and belt. A chill went through the Rolling Oak, and there was a general rustling movement as the Folk within collectively stiffened.
The lone wight moved aside, and others pressed behind him. The branches at the door shriveled to blackness, and behind the bar the half-giant, half-drow Kosthril the Mammoth’s four arms dropped to his sides. His long, narrow nose twitched, and the bartender made a scraping, rumbling noise deep in his barrel chest.
NO PART OF THIS
23
Robin’s fingers turned to ice. They curled around the stem of the wineglass—she had chosen lithori not because she preferred its sweetness, but because it held flame so well.
Six wights, and if there were so many coming into the Oak, there were no doubt others outside. Four counts in, four counts out. “There will be trouble soon,” she said softly. “If you do not wish to accompany me to Court—”
“I’ll go.” As if the words stuck in his throat. His eyes had lit with green fire, and a fine sheen of sweat dewed his forehead. “You knew I would.”
I knew no such thing. There was little time for argument. She slid out of the booth, wine slopping inside the bowl of the glass. Still, it rankled a trifle. “I did not.”
He was already on his feet as the first pixie screamed, a tiny crystalline tinkle. His hands made an odd movement, as if clasping a slender stave not yet visible. “Stay behind me.”
Not here. “Go through the kitchen. I shall—”
“Do as I tell you, woman.”
The music below her thoughts sharpened. She turned on her heel, inhaled smoothly, and the first wight’s gaze settled upon her, chill as Unwinter itself. She would have unloosed a phrase of song, but Gallow’s hand closed about her bare arm, warm and hard, and he shoved her. The lithori went flying; she had the presence of mind to whistle a piercing, drilling note that ignited its shining arc. The whistle peaked, and a flaming whip hit the wight ghosting through the crowd.
Pixie screams shattered, the Unwinter hunters howling as well. She held the whistle as long as she could, whooping in a breath after the lithori-fueled flame, silvery at its edges, twisted dried-leaf as its impetus died.
Gallow moved forward, his boots slipping slightly in a foaming tide of ale—who had spilled their drink? It didn’t matter, though her own shoes slid a little, too, the battleground turned treacherous in more ways than one.
Had she thought to protect him? A moonlit lance resolved out of empty air, filling his cradling hands, and flicked serpent-tongue, its head shifting between narrow needle-blade and a broader one that glowed red as true iron, shearing off half a wight’s face.
The wights had swords and curses, but Robin had her breath back now. Her throat swelled, a net of throbbing sonic gold catching black-flapping maledictions, crushing them, stripping smoke-veined wings. The bartender, a four-armed drow-giant mix without a clanplug dangling from his large green ear, rumbled again.
Under a suddenly gold-stippled roof, the former Armormaster danced. Half-turn, lance sweeping, a wight’s black brackish blood rising in a perfect arc before splattering on