here it was not as confusing. “My poor favor is not worthy of your kindness, my lord.”
“Listen to me!” The words echoed, so sharp and hard Robin actually halted, letting him scurry, panting, level with her.
She gazed down. While she wore heels, his nose was level with her bellybutton, and he was filthy as any black dwarf could wish to be. His beard was scanty on his cheeks, but his chin and upper lip more than made up for it, and was tangled into elflock-braids. Pearls of sweat stood out on his forehead, streaked the soot and dirt on his cheeks.
“Listen,” he repeated, breathless. “There are Unwinter waiting for you, Ragged, outside the front gates. Do not rush so blindly into their arms.”
Do you think they’d treat me kindly, if I did? “No fear of that. They hold no love for me, and none for you, either.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. They cluster about our gate. MacDonnell was visited not an hour before you knocked on our side door, and I overheard the parlay. Saying a ransom was paid. Someone knew you would come here, pretty Ragged, and wished you to receive whatever you bargained for, and to leave unhindered.”
“Was there a chance I would leave otherwise?”
“With MacDonnell, always.” The lazy-eyed little man paled even further. He actually wrung his horny little hands together, griming them further. The rings he wore took no foulness, sparkling clean as all dwarvenwork. “Please, please, Ragged, do not run into their jaws.”
She essayed a careless smile, and bent low. Of course he would peer down her dress, but Robin found she did not quite mind. Her lips met his bald, greasy forehead, though she shuddered internally. A healthy heat-haze, like the ripple over a blazing forge, rose from him, and the sour tang of unwashed sidhe-skin. Over that was the much-more-sour reek of outright fear.
“Thank you, Figurh.” For your concern. Misplaced as it is. “If indeed I find them waiting for me outside the gates, I shall remember your kindness in warning me. If not…” She shrugged, straightening.
“Are you so desperate to die?” He actually hopped from foot to foot, his heavy boots creaking.
Maybe. “Not until I have run my course.” She patted her left skirtpocket, as if distracted. Keep the fiction, Robin. It’s your best defense now. “You’d best return to your duties; you’ll be missed.”
“Not likely,” he mumbled. Under the filth and sweat he was pink now. “Thank you, lady Ragged. Should you survive, and need a favor I can provide, call.”
“Certainly.” I notice you don’t specifically say any favor. So much may not be in your power, if I ever come knocking. In any case, he’d delayed her long enough. “Goodbye, stoneborn.”
Five minutes later, the jumble of MacDonnell’s tunnels was behind her, and the tall black metal gates worked with his device of hammer and flail reared before her. They were ajar, no warden in sight, and she suddenly wished she could have trusted Figurh’s words.
Or anyone’s, really.
Chin high, Robin swept for the gates, to become a running hare once again. This time, though, she was prepared.
So she told herself. It did not stop the cold fear-sweat beginning all over her.
WHISTLING AT DEATH
34
Finding the Unseelie was easy. They made no effort to hide.
She’s too smart to come out this way. Please let her be too smart to come out this way.
Yet this was where they congregated, a cluster of cold intent as the sun settled a mere few fingerspans above the horizon. Not just fullborn barrow-wights, but a knight or two, wrapped in sable and utterly still among the run-down houses. They were not a-horse, not yet, and there were low slinking shapes with silver coins for eyes, flickering through the Veil and back, sliding through shadows.
The rest of the city was bare of Unseelie, as far as he could tell. They could merely be waiting for nightfall. Or they could know, without a doubt, where she would be.
A wave of tension passed through him and away. Learning to wait was all about letting those waves come and go, swaying just a little as they rocked you. It kept the muscles warm, not precisely a fidget but not a conscious movement either. Just a respiration, tree branches on a cool breeze.
There was little cover in this decaying residential neighborhood, so he perched on the gabled roof of what used to be a Catholic school, then a bar—certainly the most ironic reversal he’d seen in a building lately. Now it was boarded up,