Child Of Darkness. Jennifer Armintrout

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СКАЧАТЬ could have reminded him that she was Queene…. But she had never been his Queene. She could have ignored him and stayed…. But she had done so before, and had accomplished nothing. No subtle shift of power between them, no grudging reconciliation. He would forgive her when he chose and no sooner.

      Three

      It was simple enough to find the search party Malachi had ordered—what had he hoped to accomplish by sending them into the Darkworld?—and convince them to give up their search. He insisted on staying behind, in case there were stragglers, even after the soldiers insisted there would not be.

      And there would not be. That was not Cedric’s purpose in staying.

      When he’d put enough distance between himself and the guards, he changed direction, and pulled from his shirtsleeve the rolled paper diagram that would lead him to the Gypsy camp.

      The tunnels were not named on the drawing. Many of them went unnamed in the Darkworld, so it would not have helped. And only a few symbols, known only to those who were intended to find the place, indicated that it was a map at all. Dika had gone over it with him many times, though he’d protested ever needing to use it. He did not like to be in close proximity to mortals—at least, not large groups of them—and did not know how they would react to his presence. She’d been correct in her assumption that someday, his need to find her would be stronger than his desire to stay away.

      He followed the map, doubting every turn, fearful of what might lurk in the shadows. It had been a long time since he’d had to use his battle training, and despite what most outside of the Guild believed, he’d rarely gone on missions as an Assassin, content to orchestrate the assignments and send others to do the fighting. He knew of the horrors that could lurk in these tunnels, knew in theory how to protect himself, but he’d not had the practice for a long time.

      It was a relief when the tunnels became less dark, less damp. He knew it was a trick of his mind to equate light with safety, for untold horrors already stalked through both dark and light. But there seemed to be a life energy pulsing along the walls that Cedric could see in bright handprints and hurried smears where shoulders and limbs had brushed the cement in passing. These mortal imprints did not flare with terrified or angry energy, but happy excitement—the feeling of being home.

      It was a feeling that Cedric could easily recognize but not truly understand. Faeries did not have homes. A dwelling to return to every night was a prison. The true joy of their existence had always been in the roaming, the never knowing where you would wake that morning or sleep that night. Trooping, that was what they had been made for. It made their lives in the Underground a particularly cruel hell.

      Here, the feeling of home was pleasant, not stifling, and he continued on, alert for the rising of sound, which always accompanied the living spaces of mortals. The tunnel bent, and there were no more electric lightbulbs, but grates that let in the starlight. The scent of wood smoke, a smell he hadn’t experienced in decades, drifted up the tunnel, and, sooner than he expected, the buzz of mixed music and conversation. He rounded another bend and staggered on his feet at the sight of his destination.

      It was as if the Underground had disappeared. The ground was Earth. Hard packed, dotted with bits of crumbled cement at intervals, but real Earth. The walls were not the carefully constructed tunnels the Humans had burrowed through the ground for pipes and trains and sewage, but rough rock walls that arched high, surrounding a hole with irregular edges and no grates, no barriers between the Upworld and the Underground. Through it, the view of the starry sky was blocked only by the black shapes of trees, reaching into the night above the heads of the mortals below.

      And how many mortals! Cedric was certain the Humans here numbered far more than all the creatures on the Strip. Their dwellings were clustered in untidy, winding rows, pieces of property claimed here and there by stakes in the ground. Some of the dwellings were simple cloth tents. Others were built side by side and joined together by common walls of cinderblock and other materials. There were roofs made from blue sheets of mortal plastic or metal hammered flat, and some homes had no roofs at all. Mortal children ran without heed past mortal women stirring pots over communal fires or hanging sodden garments over lines stretched between tents. There seemed to be fire and joy and life everywhere, and for a moment, it truly overwhelmed him.

      There was something else, too…. A sense of expectation, of a burden lifted. He remembered Dika’s words, and it froze the joy within him to ice.

      He remembered why he had come. It occurred to him for the first time that, although he had found his way here, finding Dika would be a much different task. He would have to enter the settlement, not just survey it from afar.

      Dika had never told him what to expect of her home, nor what to expect of the people there. It was possible that she had not properly thought through the consequences of his being there, that she had no idea how other mortals would react to an immortal creature in their midst. But such carelessness was not like Dika, and so he concluded that it would be safe to enter the camp.

      There were no guards; at least, no formal display of armed might, but a few males wandered at the outskirts of the camp, and one, upon spotting Cedric, approached.

      “Do you speak our language?” he called, pulling something off of his back. A gun, one of those strange Human weapons that incorporated the magic of fire and force. Cedric stepped back instinctively. He did not care for such objects.

      “I have this,” he called out in lieu of answering the question. He held out the map, and when the mortal came close enough, he let the man take it.

      The man frowned at the paper. “Who gave you this?”

      “Dika.” It was the only name he had. Did mortals, Gypsies, have other names? Secret ones that only they used with each other? “She told me her name was Dika.”

      The mortal laughed. “Dika is a very common name. I suppose next you will tell me that she has dark hair and eyes?”

      Cedric had nothing to say to this. The man continued to regard him with wary amusement. He did not return the map.

      “I can walk you back to the Strip, friend,” he said, tucking the folded paper into the pocket of his shirt. “But you cannot become lost in our land again.”

      “I must speak with her.” Though Cedric tried to keep his voice even, he heard the desperation in his words. “She has told me that you are leaving soon. That this will all be gone. I cannot chance not seeing her…I have made a terrible mistake.”

      The mortal’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know of our leaving?”

      “Because Dika told me. She told me. I can’t give you proof, but please, I must find her.” Cedric could say no more, only look to the man with what must have been pleading on his face, and wait for his decision.

      Finally, the man sighed the heavy sigh of something giving way. “You are an outsider. You will have to take your case to the Dya.”

      “Dya,” he repeated the word, rolled the unfamiliar shape of it around his mouth. “Dika did not mention this.”

      “If you wish to see Dika, you will have to obey our rules, friend,” the mortal said, his smile not so kind.

      There was little else Cedric could do but agree and follow the man through the maze of the mortal city. They passed the rough dwellings, came to cleaner, neater homes—as clean and neat as anything in the Underground could be—made from the same mortal materials, but with a certain air of pride about them. СКАЧАТЬ