Silver's Edge. Anne Kelleher

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СКАЧАТЬ yourself. Now you know about a problem you wouldn’t have known otherwise.”

      He slumped back in the chair, assessing her eager face, her shrewd eyes, and resisted the urge to wipe his brow. “I shall instruct my soldiers to search for him, maiden.”

      “Then I’ll leave and not tell you what else I know.”

      “What else you know about what? Maiden, these are troubling, difficult, dangerous times we live in. I don’t have time to play games with you.”

      She folded her lips and turned her head away. Exasperation boiled through him. No wonder the sidhe were warned to avoid mortals. This up-and-down rush of feeling was dizzying, disorienting. He slapped his hand down on the desk. “What is it that you want?”

      “I’ll go back and warn my people, so you can go to the Queen and take this news to her. But I want to come back. And when I come back, I want you to help me.”

      Deny her, shouted the voice of what he knew to be common sense. But something made him hesitate, and think, for just a moment, of what up to now had been unthinkable. The mortal was most likely dead. The odds were great that by the time he’d returned here from the Court, the mortal’s body would’ve been found—either here, by one of the patrols, or in Shadow. It may even have been found already. How likely was it he would have to actually help her search? It was a reason to visit the Shadowlands—a reason to visit a smithy—possibly even to see a mortal smith at work. One quick glimpse, he thought, a turn of the glass or two was surely all that was required to fill the void with some image of the father he’d never known. And the girl—she might be filthy, but she had acted bravely, and while she was clearly motivated only by a desire to save her father, she had undeniably performed a great service. How otherwise might they have known that the power of the Caul had failed to keep a goblin out of Shadow? She deserved some reward.

      So he leaned forward and spoke softly, quietly. He had to be careful. There was far more at stake than either of their fathers. “If you go back, just as you say, and warn your people, and promise to wait for me to come for you, I’ll help you search for your father, after I see the Queen. But you must be patient—remember that time does run differently and I must get leave from my commanding officer. But I give you my word that I will come myself, if you give me yours you won’t come back on your own and you tell me everything you know.”

      “Agreed.” Her eyes filled with tears, but she spoke with a simple dignity befitting Alemandine herself.

      She was not at all what he had been led to expect. He wondered suddenly what sort of human her father was, to have raised a daughter of such determined character, and who her mother was. She’d been lost in Faerie, the girl had said. Did that mean she was still here? But there was no time for idle speculation. “Well, then?”

      “Last night, two visitors came late to the forge. They spoke a while to my father, then left. But he was up half the night hammering away at something, and the last we saw him, he was carrying whatever it was toward the lake.”

      “And what has this to do with the goblin or the Caul?”

      “One of the visitors was a sidhe, for in the firelight, I saw his eyes—they gleamed the way all of theirs do.”

      And mine don’t? he wanted to ask.

      She jerked her head slightly toward the door, and continued. “I saw how his skin shone. I understood why some call them the Shining Ones.”

      Them? he nearly shouted. It offended him to his very core that she excluded him from the people he thought of as his own. But this new piece of information was as tantalizing as a little puzzle piece, one of those that could fit nearly anywhere. It teased his brain, tempting him to gnaw at it like a hound over a bone. With effort he dismissed it. He rose to his feet, resolving to think on it while he rode. “We must both be off.”

      But her next words made him reel. “Was it your father who was mortal?” she whispered.

      He fumbled for the gloves he usually wore tucked inside his belt, and when they weren’t there, he flexed his hands, wondering what she would say if he told her the truth. “My father—” He paused. Her father was the center of her world. His was nothing more than the name of a minor character in a holiday masque. Nothing he could say now would make sense to her, and to say more would only delay them from their purpose. “My father is of no concern to anyone anymore.” She looked at him as if he’d slapped her, but he was too unsettled to feel anything like remorse. There was part of him that whispered how easy it would be to follow her over the border, to peek, as it were, into his father’s world. She could even show him a smithy. But another part of him hoped the blacksmith’s body would be found with little further ado as quickly as possible, and suddenly he wanted to be away from this dark-eyed mortal who saw so much. This was the part that would prevent him from following her into the Shadowlands. He tugged his doublet into place, and scooped a hunk of cheese out of the pot with the crusty heel of the bread. It was warm and tangy and rich in a way he instinctively knew nothing of Shadow could match. He chewed and swallowed and gestured to the door. “Come with me, maiden. We must get you across the border ere the shadows lengthen over Faerie. It’s at dusk the goblins hunt.”

      Timias was not terribly surprised when a face materialized in his mirror just as he had finished adjusting the drape of fresh sandalwood-scented robes more comfortably around his shoulders. He was, however, quite horrified to see the wrinkled features of a house-gremlin coalesce within the glass. The small figure stepped out of the glass and bowed. Silently it proffered a wax-sealed parchment.

      Out of habit, Timias took it, broke the seal and scanned it. Amazingly, it was from the Lady Delphinea, but the fact that a gremlin had stepped through the mirror appalled him. Such magic was only the purview of the sidhe. The idea that a gremlin had unlimited access to the network of mirrors throughout the entire Palace made his blood cold, and he wondered who would have thought to teach one such a thing. He would have to speak to Delphinea at once.

      He looked at the gremlin, brow raised. “Who told you to come through the mirror?”

      The gremlin bowed, its impassive face not changing. The gremlins had long ago been forbidden to speak, since their voices were so harshly discordant. Instead they communicated with the sidhe by means of gestures, involving both hands and tail. With eyes downcast, the gremlin answered: The Lady Delphinea bid me come to you through the mirror, great lord. Her matter is of great urgency.

      “I understand that,” replied Timias, deeply disturbed. “But who taught you such a thing? Who allowed you admittance?”

      The Lady Delphinea, great lord. One day when the Queen was in great distress. It’s been said I saved her life.

      Timias raised one eyebrow as he felt a deep foreboding. Delphinea’s understanding of the gremlins and their nature was obviously deplorably lacking, but what truly troubled him was the fact that this rank newcomer to Court, this young girl who scarcely looked as if she belonged away from her mother, not only knew the mirror magic but understood it well enough to teach it to a gremlin. He would have to speak to her about it. But there was no help for it now. The damage was already done. This one knew the mirror magic. Soon they all would, if they didn’t already. Steps would have to be taken to protect the Queen. “Would the lady receive me now?”

      She bid me tell you she will come to you at your convenience, great lord.

      There was nothing wrong with the gremlin’s attitude. He spoke with sufficient humility, not a hint of aggression or bad temper. But it galled Timias nonetheless to think that Delphinea may have unwittingly exposed the СКАЧАТЬ